[00:00:00] Dr. Adam Dorsay: Nina, what you were doing is so important. I said it offline, but I’ll say it now. Really, really geeking out to the topic of friendships may actually be what saves humanity. It could be one of the most important components of our mental health. it’s something that we need to think about more, and actually put into play. So I’m really grateful to you for the work you’re doing. I’m using that as a future testimonial.

[00:00:27] Nina: Welcome to Dear Nina, Conversations About Friendship. I’m your host, Nina Badzin. You’re listening to episode number 132. Is that helpful to know? I don’t know if listeners like to know episode numbers. I have found it helpful when I’m looking for episodes of other people’s podcast to refer to.

So every so often, I like to throw the number in here to give us a place in time. 1 32 is pretty far along, but not as far along as my guest is on his podcast. I’ll tell you about that in a moment. Today’s episode on Dear Nina, 132, is about four important ways people connect that are essential to our deeper sense of happiness.

One of them is, of course, friendship. The other three areas of connection are to ourselves, the world, and something greater. I did not come up with that framework. I have Dr. Adam Dorsay. He is a psychologist in Silicon Valley and the host of the award winning podcast, SuperPsyched. And he’s the author of the book, SuperPsyched: Unleash the power of the four types of connection and live the life you love.

I was on Dr. Adam’s podcast, super psyched recently, episode 247 for his podcast. So that’s how much further along he is. It’s kind of a funny story, the way this all came out. Actually, we recorded this episode first. Adam’s just more on top of his game. The way things ended up a little behind the scenes podcast life, we recorded this episode. We got along really well. We were like, we need to continue this conversation.

And Adam very generously invited me on his podcast where he’s had incredible guests. I was quite honored to be part of that list. And we talked a lot about friendship about, my philosophies of friendship. It was a really fun interview and my husband, Bryan loved it. I know he will love this one too. Dr. Adam’s voice, like his literal voice, is one of the best voices you will ever hear. Just the sound quality of it.

Little more about Dr. Adam. He has provided nearly 20, 000 hours of intensive psychotherapy, treated hundreds of patients from adolescent gang members to survivors of torture, to fortune 500 executives and professional athletes. All in the pressure cooker of Silicon Valley and the common thread through all of his work that he’s done is that they’ve all struggled with the same sense of seemingly unshakable unhappiness.

Adam and I ended up speaking a lot off camera first before we recorded this episode and I maybe it’s because he’s a therapist.I don’t know. I ended up talking to him about my dad and about all the games that my dad used to take me to in Chicago, even though I’m not a sports spectator at all. I was not then I’m even less so now other than my kids sports. the reason I’m saying this is because Adam ends up incorporating it into the episode. So I wanted to explain why he knew this moment of my childhood is because I ended up telling him that. He’s really easy to talk to. I think you will really enjoy him. This is a deeper, philosophical, existential conversation about connection.

Why don’t we welcome Adam on here? Finally. Hi, Adam. Welcome to dear Nina.

[00:03:31] Dr. Adam Dorsay: I’m delighted to speak to you particularly because, as far as I’m concerned, you’re a pioneer. You were way ahead of the curve on friendship. One of the most important topics out there, period. Aww,

[00:03:47] Nina: Well thank you for saying that. I appreciate that. I have to tell listeners, I had to force myself to press record because Adam’s so easy to talk to when we were chatting a bunch before. And I was like, no, we had to actually record this episode because I know he’s busy. as listeners always heard, like all these amazing people who blurbed your book.

I mean, what a dream these are. It’s incredible. And Adam had to receive a very uh, unusual email from me late last night where I said, here’s what I was going to have us talk about, which was his whole chapter on friendship. I really recommend his book super psyched and his chapter on friendship is chapter 10, but then I was like, actually, I want to talk about other parts of the book that are less talked about on my show.

And starting with Adam has a very unique take on the word connection. the word connection gets thrown around this podcast a lot, but will you explain how you see the word connection, how you define it in your book?

[00:04:33] Dr. Adam Dorsay: Yeah, so it was the byproduct of, about 20, 000 hours of providing psychotherapy to individuals and having many guests on my podcast, all talking about this nebulous term called connection. to your point, I wanted it to find no one really has defined it. And it seems that it’s got a great definition beyond just connecting with a person.

We connect with ourselves and then almost rippling outward with these concentric circles. We connect with others the way I’m connecting with you or the way I’d connect with my wife or my kids, of course, differently, but you get the idea, somewhere external. And then we connect with the world and we connect with something greater. Even the most hardcore atheist would agree that going to someplace like the Grand Canyon incurs awe.

Anyway, I consulted about 10 licensed mental health professionals to work with me on a working definition of connection. The short answer is it’s two pages long, but, you know it when it’s happening. It’s something that brings you alive. It’s vitality. It is life force it’s there or it’s not there.

And I would contend, you know, I know that your father used to take you to the Bulls games, and there were seasons when you probably found it a fairly expensive place to kind of space out, and at other times when, Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen were playing, where you were really engaged, and you can’t fake that. You know it when it’s there.

[00:05:49] Nina: That’s right. I call it chemistry too. Is that kind of the same

[00:05:52] Dr. Adam Dorsay: Oh, for sure. Chemistry, electricity, it’s it’s all the same. It’s, do you come alive? Are you feeling vital around this thing? And everyone has different connection formulas. my father could watch a six hour opera, and to that earlier point, I would find it kind of an expensive place to sleep.

I can go two or three hours in an opera and be fairly engaged. But for me to really come alive, like, I just didn’t have to fake it over the weekend. It’s not wicked. And I just had a perma smile. Like, you know

[00:06:21] Nina: It was one of the very few things that did not disappoint. It lived up to the hype. You know, I saw it probably a week before you huge Broadway nerd. I am love wicked. I read the book 20 years ago. I saw the show on the stage three times and I was like, Oh, there’s no way this lives up.

I would say it exceeded expectations. It was so exciting. And you’re right there. You feel the chemistry between the two main actors, but everybody,

[00:06:43] Dr. Adam Dorsay: 100 percent and you can’t fake it. It’s either there or it’s not there. And one of the problems that we have is we’re told that we should do these things that don’t actually bring us alive. So many of the people who come to see me, they followed the rule book. They did all the quote right things according to their parents or society or whomever, and it wasn’t theirs.

And here they are at 45 asking me, what have I done? I’ve done all the right things. I’ve got all the correct measures. And I’m Not happy. I don’t feel alive. And the problem was no one really sat with them kind of to midwife connection with them and say, yeah, is this, is this where you come alive? And one of the things that you and I both know, and Dan Pink talks a lot about is the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic.

Extrinsic benefits, we know that if you go a particular path, in all likelihood, this will be a good money making idea. But if you don’t love it, you’ll never be great at it. You might be good enough, but you won’t come home stoked. Versus if you do something that you absolutely love.

[00:07:36] Nina: Another thing I loved about your idea of this formula and My show is so focused on friendship, but you also have, and we’ll get to that, but the connection to self, as you mentioned, others, which we’ll put friendship in and, you know, your maybe primary relationships too, and then the world and something greater.

This is a different idea. And I loved how you said, You recommend one to three, actions and actions are huge, not just thoughts, not, you know, passing, goals, but actual actions in each of those categories. So working on something that is a connection to yourself, to others, to the world and to something greater.

Is this something you work on with your, did you say patients?

[00:08:11] Dr. Adam Dorsay: It’s funny, that’s a great question. I remember when I was newly licensed, I didn’t feel comfortable with the word patient because it felt too pathologizing and feel comfortable with client because it felt too much like it was all about just the money exchange. I ultimately came to the people who come to see me, they are.

[00:08:26] Nina: That’s kind of clunky. I’m not gonna lie.

[00:08:29] Dr. Adam Dorsay: on the invoice, I have to write patient name, but I refer to them as people who come to see me

[00:08:34] Nina: okay. Well the people who come to see you, Do you, is this something you work on with them like in each of these categories?

[00:08:39] Dr. Adam Dorsay: Absolutely. One of the classics, uh, if you can imagine this guy, I’ve changed his profession somewhat to anonymize him, he’s listed as a biotech worker in my book similar with a PhD in biology. single man come home at night, hit the bong, smoke a lot of weed, watch 1970s TV and go to bed and go back to work and have face a long commute.

in his case, what we did was we reinvigorated an old love of his, which was botany and gardening. What happened was he started really getting into it. He would read about botany. He’d ask himself, how do I landscape my backyard? Just perfectly. He’d wake up early before work. He’d get a workout in to support his muscles.

instead of having, he called himself having the dad bod of dad bods. He now says he only has a dad bod, just a regular dad bod, but because he’s been working out so much, but he doesn’t smoke weed very often at all. He instead finds himself going on YouTube channels to learn more about gardening. He invites people over for barbecues. We’ll talk about the feed model a little bit later, but you know, he’s a classic definition of An acronym that is F E E D.

He’s he has fed himself. He feeds himself. In fact, I’ll even just name it. The F stands for flow. It’s challenging. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who is The primary, investigator of flow. When you get really immersed into a thing, three hours of doing a thing can feel like 30 minutes. the next one is E, energized.

Does it require energy and does it give energy back? The second E stands for educate. Does it move the needle along in terms of your learning? And D, depth, is it meaningful? And all of these are research based. The depth for meaningful, uh, Michael Mead said on my podcast that we aren’t just homo sapiens, we’re homo symbolicus.

We are people who chase meaning. And Viktor Frankl, of course, spent an entire book called Man’s Search for Meaning, talking about that. Existentially, we need to do things that are meaningful. And that’s one of the big predictors of aliveness.

[00:10:32] Nina: You had a quote in your book, I’m putting two lines together from different paragraphs, It really relates to this. You wrote, instead of addressing our connection needs directly, we often find ways to self medicate and distract ourselves from the pain and despair of disconnection. We tend to do this by using technology, substances, retail therapy, and other medications. In other words, well, there was a lot more between here everybody, but I’m just added on another favorite couple of lines. In other words, to treat the pain we feel from our lack of connection, we disconnect further. This disconnection habit tends to create a snowball effect over time.

Unwittingly, we push life away, but if we’re ever going to find meaning or happiness, we need to understand that what we are doing isn’t working. That exactly what we were talking about with your. person who came to see you, your patient client, where the botany became something that actually plugged into several categories, connected him to the world, connected him to himself, but it also, you said he invited people over, it kind of worked in almost every category.

[00:11:30] Dr. Adam Dorsay: It really did. And if you think about it, the DSM, which is the diagnostic and statistical manual that we use for diagnosing people, it’s the American Psychiatric Association, virtually every described mental condition has in it a form of disconnection. Depression, we disconnect with the present because we’re thinking about the past.

Anxiety, we’re disconnecting from the present because we’re thinking We’re, we’re thinking about the future and with trauma, we’re disconnecting from the present because we’re dissociating or having an out of, various out of body experiences depersonalizing and a whole bunch of other things. So if almost everything we don’t want contains disconnection within it, it seems logical.

And it’s been my experience that virtually everything we want has connection within it. It’s the common denominator for, I think it’s the precursor for happiness and well being.

[00:12:18] Nina: the disconnect thing is even happening when we’re with people, which is actually kind of scary. Cause I think when people hear the word disconnection, they thinking alone, but you can absolutely be disconnected while you’re with people. I mean, I spend a lot of time with people and we’re all on our phones sometimes but sometimes it feels like we’re connecting while we’re doing that.

But other times it feels like we’re just so used to doing that as a way to relax that we don’t even know how to relax with other people. I don’t want to be like the school marm who’s like, let’s all put our phones away. But it’s a problem.

[00:12:46] Dr. Adam Dorsay: Totally. And a lot of people think that if you’re around people, you won’t be lonely. And everybody also knows that you can be lonelier in a not so great relationship, then you would be actually alone. And there’s a big difference between loneliness and solitude. Loneliness is the byproduct of us feeling like we were cast away, kind of like Tom Hanks in the movie.

And being, in solitude is something we might choose. We might want to go on a hike alone. We might want to do something by ourselves to regenerate, particularly for the introverted, but even for the extroverted of us, doing stuff alone by choice is lovely.

[00:13:19] Nina: You, uh, bring up Castaway for a second. There was a moment in your book that I really, uh, Felt deeply. You used cast away as an example of just how deep rooted our need for connection is to other people.

And how, as a viewer, when you’re watching cast away to remind listeners, like, Adam said, you know, Tom, Hank’s characters literally cast away on an Island. And the only sort of connection he creates is with his, his family. Was it a volleyball or a soccer? I think a

[00:13:42] Dr. Adam Dorsay: This is a volleyball, yeah, Wilson.

[00:13:43] Nina: Wilson, he draws a little face on it and that moment in the movie, spoiler alert, but I mean if you haven’t seen Castaway, that’s on you, where that ball like drifts away or blows away, we cry. As an audience, we cry. Can you explain that as the therapist, from the therapist’s point of view?

[00:13:58] Dr. Adam Dorsay: Nobody even needed to question that. We all knew that being so alone on that island, not having any other mammal with whom to speak, he created basically a face of a mammal and put it on a volleyball that was in the crash of the airplane, he crashed on to an island.

and again, if you haven’t seen the movie, it’s on you. You definitely got to see it. and we’re not ruining too much, but eventually the volleyball actually gets taken away by the ocean in a storm. I believe it’s been a long time since I saw it, but nobody in the audience needed to have any, uh, prompt to say like, do you understand this? Everybody got it. It was visceral.

that volleyball represented his last connection to any form of humanity that he could recognize externally he was bereft upon losing Wilson. He was just totally devastated and, and the audience was too.

[00:14:49] Nina: You know, in the, um, friendship category of these four different areas of connection we’re talking about, obviously that’s the piece I have the most interest in and most to say about, I’m curious, in your work, of the three buckets of friendship, I see friendship in three buckets, making friends, keeping friends, ending friendships.

Any issue in there, people are talking about, my daughter didn’t get invited to the prom group, and I’m really mad at my friend for not making sure my kid was invited. Whatever the intricate issue is, it’s either making friends, keeping friends, ending friendships.

[00:15:18] Dr. Adam Dorsay: Brilliant.

[00:15:18] Nina: I’m curious, in your work, when people are dealing with friendship issues, within those three, what do you see more of? That’s what I’m asking.

[00:15:25] Dr. Adam Dorsay: I would say it’s keeping friendship.

[00:15:27] Nina: hmm.

[00:15:28] Dr. Adam Dorsay: Oftentimes they were born in the Midwest, educated on the East Coast, did graduate school somewhere in the South. Now they’re in Silicon Valley and each of those locations they had friends and they promised they’d stay in touch. This is not the end. This is not it. And of course, those friends fell by the wayside because they got busy, so to speak, or out of sight, out of mind, whatever it might have been.

But in so many cases, these really cool people who come to see me, tell me, Oh my gosh, I have no real friends. I mean, if they’re parents, they might say, you know, I’m friends with my kids, friends, parents, but there aren’t people I would have chosen. And one of the first things that I do is I have them, um, Basically do an archeological dig, dig up old friendships that have fallen by the wayside.

Be willing to be vulnerable. Say, I feel a little bit awkward, but I haven’t spoken with you in a long time. I know I said we’d stay in touch and we didn’t. And very often those friendships actually become revitalized. And a lot of times they’ll say to me, but they live across the country I’m not going there.

And I do zoom all week. I don’t want to meet with them on zoom. Um, and I say to them, And I had this very strong insight, by the way, over the summer, I saw my buddy, Jed Goldstein, who lives in New Jersey, greatest guy ever, he’s talked about in the book, he’s thought of by my family as the coolest guy ever, because he’s the coolest guy ever. He’s got a family of four, and he lives in New Jersey, and I’m not out there, and I haven’t seen him in nine years, and I realized, oh my gosh, if we continue at this clip, and I saw him over the summer, it’s amazing, if we continue at this clip, I will see him five more times in my life.

[00:16:52] Nina: Wow, that’s

[00:16:53] Dr. Adam Dorsay: not okay. And the fact of the matter is, even if you spend all week on Zoom, and you can’t imagine doing Zoom, it’s very different when you see the face of a beloved friend. Crack open a beer, drink some coffee, whatever it is, it’s not the same as a business Zoom. So I want to disabuse people of the idea that even if you’re on Zoom all week, it’s a very different vibe when you’re connecting with somebody who’s awesome, who’s going to bring you back to life and revitalize you in that way.

but first thing I have people do is try to reinvigorate the old friendships. The second thing I do is I ask them, which hurts more? Loneliness or the vulnerability that it takes to reach out and awkwardly say, Hey, I’m, I know we’re in our forties, but do you want to come out and play, you know, like, when you, when you live next door to somebody and you’re in single digits, that’s no problem.

when you’re older, the possibility of getting rejected or finding out that it’s actually not really a good connection, even though you thought it might be, because all of the on paper, they seem like good friend potential, but in reality, not so much. that’s one of the things that I have them do is either, or actually both, reach out to old friends.

And awkwardly broker that and reach out to new friends, possibly going to, an activity Where they might actually meet people. Like a good hiking person Goes out for a hike at a meetup on sunday worst case scenario They get a good hike in. Best case scenario they might get the digits of somebody who could be friendship material.

[00:18:17] Nina: You said something really profound in your book about activities as it relates to friendship. I talk about activities a lot. I never said it quite this way that we are so much more willing when we’re kids to try something new, right? Or your parents sign you up, maybe you don’t sign up, but you, you might try, to be in band at school, or you might try a sport You never played before, but there’s always that space between never knowing something and knowing something. And we’re more willing as kids to try. When we’re older, it’s somehow we get this idea like we can only do things we’re already good at.

I mean, these are like my own words on your words. But then you limit your activities a lot and the people you’re going to meet, if you were only going to do things that you happen to learn to do when you were 10. Why are we stuck with that stuff that maybe our parents chose for us a long time ago or didn’t choose for us, so we don’t know how to do those things. I often advise people, if you’re going to try new activity to make friends, you should be a beginner and only be with other beginners. You’re learning together.

[00:19:08] Dr. Adam Dorsay: Such a great point

[00:19:09] Nina: Because there’s vulnerability in there. Everyone’s bad at it. So you’ll learn together.

[00:19:13] Dr. Adam Dorsay: Yeah, 100 percent agreed. The other thing, and one of the reasons that we have this self consciousness that you’re describing, this awkwardness of trying the new, is there is this internal component in our psyches that occurs somewhere around adolescence called the imaginary audience. we’ve been clowned on, we’ve been, you know, before, when you’re six years old and you’re asked to sing in front of the class, people usually don’t care.

Right. Right. Right. But somewhere around seven or eight or nine, somebody starts clowning on you, kind of Nelson from The Simpsons, you know, Ha ha, I can’t really do that. And suddenly you feel like really ashamed and embarrassed and you, you retain that person who clowned on you as a memory of like, I don’t want to be clowned on.

So I’m going to monitor myself and not do stuff that That requires vulnerability, possibilities of failure and embarrassment. that’s the reason why people don’t really learn how to speak foreign languages, because you have to look stupid for a while while you’re learning it. That’s the only reason I speak Japanese fluently is I was willing to pay the price of looking so dumb in my 20s, Guy Kawasaki said on my podcast something that I’ll just never forget. He said, there’s a Hawaiian term, a kind of pigeon term. You’ve got to make ass, meaning you’ve got to make an ass out of yourself. If you want to do something. He learned how to surf on the mainland. He’s from Hawaii, but he learned how to surf in the 60s on the mainland.

And he was willing to make ass. And now he surfs every day. The cost of admission, the tuition, is embarrassment, failure, making mistakes, and being self compassionate as you do so.

[00:20:38] Nina: And there’s so many rewards if you can get over those things. I want people so badly to push themselves. Just try. And the great joy of my adult life. This comes up in a lot of podcasts. Sorry, listeners, you’re hearing this again, is tennis. only started playing three years ago. I used to play as a kid but I was 15 when I stopped. And then I had other friends who played in their thirties and probably in their twenties, but I didn’t know them then.

And I kept having this feeling like, Oh, I’d like to play tennis, I think. But I didn’t do it year after year. And I was like, Oh, but everyone’s getting so much better. So I didn’t want to do it. Cause I didn’t think I’d be good at it. I also didn’t feel like I had time. Activities and sports were for kids, not for me.

And I didn’t want to have to go buy the gear. I felt embarrassed to even walk into a tennis store. Finally I did. And it has been the most wonderful thing. I’m on leagues, my whole personality is tennis now. That’s like all I think about all I talk about.

[00:21:23] Dr. Adam Dorsay: Nina, there’s a good reason why you bring it up a lot. Your listeners need to hear it a lot so that they can break through their own resistance to do those things that make them feel embarrassed. it was really interesting when I was learning Japanese, I was 20 years old. I was at Pitzer college, but you’d take it at Pomona college with a really, the real smart kids.

And there were 120 of these self described smart kids. I shouldn’t say self described, but they, they knew they were smart. They got into Pomona. And at the end of two years, to my recollection, there were 12 of us. So there was a 90 percent attrition rate because Their self concept was I’m smart and therefore things should be easy.

You know, we think about Carol Dweck and mindset, the fixed mindset versus the growth mindset, and you were really entering the growth mindset. You said, you know what, it’s worth the price of admission. a hundred percent agreed when you are 98 years old, looking back at your life and you see these slides of you playing tennis

later in life, you’re going to be stoked and you would be so full of regret if you didn’t give it a shot. We know we regret what we didn’t try and failed at, we, or succeeded at. We, don’t regret trying things and you went out there and did that. So I think you’re doing a great service for your listeners by repeating and repeating your tennis journey.

[00:22:27] Nina: I, I do think, this has kind of come up in our conversation. We haven’t quite named it, but a lot of what keeps people back, the shame, the embarrassment, whether it’s an activity or reaching out to an old friend, making a new friend. It is that rejection, that , fear of rejection, that’s gotta come up in your work a lot.

[00:22:43] Dr. Adam Dorsay: A million percent. And if I could go back in time, by the way, and I could whisper one little thing to myself, it would be handle rejection well. Handle failure well. If I was able to do those two things, that would have Cause me to try more things. And people ask me, how do you get these guests on your podcast?

Well, you have no idea how many people say no. I know for a fact, you gotta buy a lottery ticket if you want to win. it’s much lower stakes, you know, reaching out and trying things than buying a lottery ticket. The likelihood of winning on that is it might win 2 after a hundred tries, but getting what you actually want and being willing to fail, some of them describe mistakes as missed takes. That was Matthew Abrams said. My friend Bonnie calls it tuition. Our mistakes and failures are tuition and, Dory Clark says failure is merely data. And if we’re able to just be super dispassionate in our pursuit and say, oh, I failed. I missed the basket. I’m going to try something else or try again in a different way.

if we could just get over ourselves, quiet the internal monologue that we get from our imaginary audience, and say, you know what, I’m going to cultivate self compassion. Even the Navy SEALs use self compassion, which is, one of the roots is talking to yourself the way you would talk to a friend. We, we talk to ourselves in a way manners that if we talk to our friends that way, we would have no friends, but if we could talk to ourselves the way we talk to our friends, oh my gosh, and we think that will be tougher. We have this lionized idea. I’m gonna be tough on myself. I’m really hard on myself.

No one’s harder on me than me. Well, maybe that’s not great. Maybe there’s another way. Maybe you are going to get actually better results than the Navy SEALs have been showing that they get better and faster by being kind to themselves when they’re doing these seemingly impossible things.

[00:24:19] Nina: Yeah. I read something about connection in your book that I needed to hear at the time I needed to hear it. And I actually think it is loosely connected to rejection. we’ll make the leap together here. you said that it was as a reminder to people, it’s like, we all know this, but we need reminders that people do not connect the way we do necessarily.

what we may be perceiving as rejection is just that someone doesn’t. connect that way. And I needed to hear it because I have to remind myself, people are not going to text as quickly as I do. I also constantly helping readers and listeners with this too, I’m pretty quick. And it’s not just because like, I’m such a good friend and I’m always there for people. I mean, I’d like to think I am, but sometimes I text quickly because I can’t stand it being in my, Sort of mental to do list. Oh, I had to get back to this person and maybe I don’t trust my memory. So I’m like, I’ll just do it. I’ll just do it.

[00:25:07] Dr. Adam Dorsay: Mm

[00:25:07] Nina: a mole and yes. But then when someone who I perceive to be on their phone a lot, like, cause I’ve been with them in my life and I know they have that phone in their hand. I know they’re on Instagram. I know that. and days go by and they haven’t texted back.

I’m annoyed. And it’s hard not to take it personally or just be annoyed at them. I don’t even question the friendship. I’m more just like, really? Okay. You couldn’t take two, it’s like inconsiderate, but then I’m like, well, maybe they don’t connect that way. it doesn’t matter to them. now I’m your patient.

[00:25:32] Dr. Adam Dorsay: I love that one. One of the biggest themes in all psychotherapy is don’t take things personally. Very easy to say, very hard to do. You were talking about insights versus action. Insights are lovely. But there can be a huge chasm between what we know and what we do, and we have to apply what we know to what we do and think about that for a second.

How many things do you know that would actually make a big difference in your life that you’re not putting into play right now? Common sense is not common practice. people say, well, that’s obvious. Okay, then do something and I love that you are all about that. One of those things that we need to do is to remember it’s probably not about me.

It’s probably their style. Sure, if that person got a text from their favorite movie star or fill in the blank influencer, yes, of course they would respond quicker. But we fall in for the rest of us. You’re probably not being treated all that differently. I remember having that experience with many people thinking, Oh, my gosh, am I not compelling enough?

Why are you not responding? And it’s not about me necessarily. It’s really about them. they’re styles. I’m not taking anything away from them. I am a hardcore responder, just like you. I tend to respond very quickly. of late, my inbox has been a little bit heavy, but I still, you sent me something last night and I responded relatively quickly, as you might’ve noticed

[00:26:45] Nina: yeah, I appreciated it.

[00:26:47] Dr. Adam Dorsay: yeah, so I, I’m, of your ilk, but many people are not of our ilk,

[00:26:51] Nina: And maybe they’re having a healthier balance of, you know, it’s probably smart in a way to train people in your life to not expect to hear from me right away. And then maybe in some ways I’m just jealous of their ability to not feel like They have to wow. that must be an interesting way to go through the world. I can’t relate to it, but I can respect it

[00:27:12] Dr. Adam Dorsay: Exactly. And personally, I’m terrified of being considered, you know, spacey. So I am a quick responder. I had ADHD growing up and I still have it, of course, but it’s been treated and most people would never know that I’m somebody who’s in recovery from that condition. I put myself through five years of really, really hardcore self induced executive training so that I would be marriageable. and it’s been, it’s been good. but, uh, at the same time yeah so that’s part of what prompts me to respond so quickly. And yet, to your point, maybe they are healthier. Uh, in that way.

[00:27:47] Nina: That’s interesting to know what your own motivation is. I think mine might be, I’m kind of a pleaser. And I think my fear is being seen as rude, not nice, not inclusive, not like all these things. And so I’m just constantly connecting that way, but it probably can feel overbearing, to people.

[00:28:04] Dr. Adam Dorsay: Every strength has a weakness behind it and every weakness has a strength. I just think about the shot putter who’s got this roided out arm and can’t even lift a coffee mug to their face because that’s just a, for instance. Super pleasers have difficulty pleasing themselves.

They please others, but inside there, they can be very miserable. I see that theme a lot in my office. one of the things that we’re looking for is cognitive flexibility. Can we see it a little bit differently? Can we turn it around? There’s an old Talmudic idea of turn it around and look at it from various perspectives.

Can we see okay, what’s good about this way of engaging with people? What, what might be costing me? And if we can ask ourselves with curiosity and openness and non judgment, is this the way I want to live the dash between my birth and my death date? we don’t do that enough. And then we get to the end.

It’s like, Oh my gosh, that’s the end. I regret not having given that a shot. So cognitive flexibility is the opposite of cognitive rigidity. We want to be less cognitively rigid, which I clearly am when it comes to responding to people. maybe if I could find some systems to be able to contain those incoming and find more perhaps measured ways of responding. That that’s an area of growth for me.

[00:29:12] Nina: Some people recommend and I just could not do it. You know, you spend an hour a day just answering emails and text and anything that comes in and out besides that that’s for another day. I couldn’t possibly, I don’t think, but I could see how that would make you really productive the rest of the day.

That would be such a. different way to be. okay. I want to keep us on track and we’ll wind us down. We didn’t define super psyched. We didn’t define the title. will you do that?

[00:29:37] Dr. Adam Dorsay: I’d be very happy to. Well, initially Super Psyched was born as a podcast during the pandemic. I was no longer needing to take my kids to school. My father very wisely said, Hey, Adam, you’ve got a couple extra hours. Like you’ve always wanted to start a podcast. And I thought about it for a long time. Like, what will I call it? What will my angle be? And it just dawned on me, my nickname in high school given to me by the drummer in my high school band, was enthusiAdam. one of the things I want is to be more super psyched, but not just super psyched in the way that it would be implied in normal vernacular, which is like, I’m really excited, but also super connected to our psyches, super connected to Our brains are hearts and really monitoring our thoughts and feelings so that we can be better informed by the data that circulates through us.

Super psyched might actually, in this case, being connected or psyche might mean grieving well,. That doesn’t seem like super psyched, but grieving is a very important part of life. if it’s not attended to, it may fester and it needs to be expressed in some way. So what I, my hope is that people while they’re alive, if they feel more alive while they’re alive and more connected to their psyches and of course, during the moments that they can be super excited and experience awe.

awe, one of the greatest experiences in the world. Could be described as radical amazement by Abraham Joshua Heschel, who some of your listeners may have heard of, but awe, has been showing so much promise as an antidepressant and it costs nothing. And all you need to do is look at, for example, as my colleague, Dr. Michael Amster describes, watch the batter of a pancake go from liquid into solid and just really take it in like, Oh my gosh, this is happening right before my eyes or look at a sunset that’s never happened before like that and will never happen again and really take it in or really look at your friends and take them in and say, wow, It’s quite miraculous that we were born.

the statistical likelihood of any of us being born is, I mean, the best estimation I’ve seen online was 1 in 10 to the 7. 29 millionth power. So if you can imagine 7. 29 million zeros, I mean, much better chance of anything it’s zero of us being born. So there’s so much awe around us, and I do want people to be able to experience that as well.

[00:31:51] Nina: that’s beautiful. I am. Really hoping that more of my listeners will get that book in their hands. I’m going to recommend it highly to them. And it’s an easy read. And by easy, I don’t mean not complicated and deep. I mean, really readable. I mean, you can tell even with the way Adam’s talking, his writing is as clear and digestible as, the way he speaks.

So listeners go get it. It’s super psyched. the subtitle is Unleash the power of the four types of connection and live the life you love. as we talked about here, that’s through connecting to yourself, connecting to others, connecting to the world and connecting to something bigger, something greater than you, which is what we were just talking about with. Uh, Adam, thank you so much for being here.

[00:32:31] Dr. Adam Dorsay: Nina, what you were doing is so important. I said it offline, but I’ll say it now. Really, really geeking out to the topic of friendships may actually be what saves humanity. It could be one of the most important components of our mental health. it’s something that we need to think about more, and actually put into play. So I’m really grateful to you for the work you’re doing. I’m using that as a future testimonial

[00:32:55] Nina: Thank you. Here’s how I end every episode and I know you will relate to it. I always say, come back next week when our friendships are going well, we are happier all around.

[00:33:04] Dr. Adam Dorsay: Oh, that’s nice.

[00:33:06] Nina: that’s it, right?

[00:33:07] Dr. Adam Dorsay: 100%.

[00:33:08] Nina: All right. I’ll see you around. Thanks, Adam. Bye.

[00:33:10] Dr. Adam Dorsay: I’ll see you around, Nina.