February 2, 2026 • 46 mins
What does it mean to live a meaningful life? How do you find direction when you feel stuck or you’re unsure about your purpose? Dave Evans and Bill Burnett, co-founders of the Stanford Life Design Lab and authors of How to Live a Meaningful Life join Dr. Laurie to challenge our assumptions about where meaning really comes from. They share practical strategies from the world of design thinking to create a more purposeful and fulfilling life while making the most of your current circumstances.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life
How to Live a Meaningful Life: Using Design Thinking to Unlock Purpose, Joy, and Flow Every Day
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are
"Overly Shallow?: Miscalibrated Expectations Create a Barrier to Deeper Conversation"
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Let's be real for a second. The world feels
pretty overwhelming right now. Lots of us are feeling exhausted
and despondent. We spend our days grinding at work and
then trying to zone out when we get out of work,
which often means scrolling endlessly just to unwind. And if
(00:38):
that sounds familiar, you might be wondering quietly to yourself,
is this all there is? How do I feel better
when the world feels so blah? What if there was
a way to hit the reset button on how you
experience life, To see the world with fresh eyes like
you did as a child, when everything felt alive, full
of possibility and somehow a little magical.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
The mere fact that anything exists at all is astonishing.
So just take a longer, deeper look into almost anything
and some wondrousness might be available to you.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Well.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
In today's episode, the last one in our series on
how to Get Unstuck in twenty twenty six, we'll learned
that this mindset can be within reach. In fact, today's
two guests will share their tips for how to design it.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Greetings, this is Dave Evans, the co founder of the
Stanford Life Design Lab, so glad to be here today
with doctor Laurie Santos and my dear partner, Bill Burnette.
We've been teaching life design for twenty odd years and
now Hi.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
I'm Bill Burnette. I'm an adjunct professor at Stanford University
teaching the Designing Your Life series of classes, and now
the co author with my good friend Dave of a
new book called How to Live a Meaningful Life Using
design thinking to unlock purpose, joy, and flow.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Every day You're going to live to hate that long
a subtitle every time you have to say I learned
about Dave and Bill's work because our professional stories are
surprisingly similar. Like me, they created a class aimed at
improving college students well being, one that ended up going viral,
and like me, they've decided to share the insights from
their class widely with people of all ages, far beyond
(02:15):
the university setting.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
We teach you the improv skills to live life more fully.
Life is an improv. It really is this thing you
make up as you go along. But you can get
a lot better at them making up as you go along.
So we teach a class that starts out with debunking
a bunch of dysfunctional beliefs, really wonderful things that people
often think are true and guide their lives, but happen
not to be either helpful or even true at all,
(02:38):
of which there are many. Once we get through the
dysfunctional beliefs, we start giving them tools and techniques for
how to figure out what they want, how to meet
people can animate that thing in them, how to actually
go and engage with the world and get going.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
And so core idea of this class is this idea
of design thinking, which I think a lot of folks
don't really know what that means.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Bill.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
What's design thinking?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Human centered design? Now we call it design thinking. It's
a way of solving problems. It's deeply human and engaged
with the problems humans have. And so it was obvious
to me when we started thinking about how our students
might approach building a meaningful life that it was a
design problem because designers make things new to the world
all the time. I was at Apple for seven years
(03:19):
before Stanford and I worked on the very first laptops,
and when you're building something that's never existed before, you
can't just engineer it because you don't have any data
about the thing that's never existed like your future, and
so it's using human centered design to figure out what's
the next cool version of you.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
I love this idea of the next cool version of
you because often when we think about designing, we think
about designing something like emphasis on the thing. But you've
really argued that we can design ourselves and our own
lives and interesting ways. What are some of the features
of design thinking we should bring in when we're thinking
about designing our own lives.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Well, it starts to you know, again user centered to
human centered. So it starts with like, what does it
mean to be a person? Well, you know, our sort
of definition is a human person is a becoming, a
never ending story, and so what you're growing into is
the for the revealed version of yourself. All of us
contain more aliveness than when lifetime permits us to live out.
(04:15):
I either there's more than one of you in there,
so there is no getting it right because you are
way bigger than it when it is your lifetime. So
all of us are only going to express a small
portion of the fullness of our humanity. We have multiple
choices in front of us, both between which of me
do I want to give a chance to get out
on the stage and the next season of my life.
(04:35):
And by the way, what does the world think might
be an interesting thing for me to be collaborating with
other people on. So I'm looking for the nexus of
those things, which is evolving all the time. And now
all of let's go have some ideas and get started
to start prototyping what the future of that person might be.
So it really does begin with the very first dysfunctional
belief is I have to find my passion, purpose answer thing. No,
(04:57):
I have to find the next one that will be
interesting enough to live into what will become after that.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
So if you're feeling a little off track, stick around
because Bill and Dave have some excellent advice on becoming
of version of yourself that feels more engaged and more live.
We'll learn all their tips after some quick ads. Dave
(05:28):
Evans and Bill Burnett are best known for their popular
Stanford course Designing Your Life and the best selling book
that grew out of that class, but they've recently put
out a new book called How to Live a Meaningful Life.
One of their biggest insights is what's known as the
Designer's Way, a mindset for intentionally engineering the life you want.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Designs inherently value free, except we always try to make
the next design better. Right, we think we can improve
the world. So you start with wonder. I'm naturally curious.
If I'm a designer, I'm curious about the world and
how to make things better. It's not just who has
that work, but oh wow, how amazing is that? I
wonder how that works? Right? Then we say availability, be
(06:08):
available to the experiences of the world. That's where the
interesting stuff happens. Radical acceptance like availability plus acceptance is
like we always say, design starts in reality. You've got
to start right here where you are, not in some
place where you think you should be because you saw
it on social media or something else. Right, and then
(06:28):
being fully engaged but commonly detached from the outcomes. Because
we know a lot about decision science. You can make
a good decision, but that doesn't assly mean you're going
to get the outcome you want. So be fully engaged
in your life, be intentional, but give yourself some grace
about the outcomes, and then God in the world and
tell your story or create your world. So as mindset's
(06:50):
put together, we call it a designer's way, but I
when you put it together, it's like, approach the world
with a sense of wonder, be available to the things
that are happening, root yourself in the reality of the world,
and then tell that story to people. Because when you
tell the story, you're creating the experience of the world
that you want to have.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
I loved this idea of the Designer's Way in part
because it's not just great for human centered design or
even designing your life. I think it's so useful for
navigating all the stuff that can come up in a life.
It fits with a lot of the happiness evidence we
talk about on the show, Dave in particular. I know
what this idea of radical acceptance you've talked about, how
you use that to navigate a really painful time of
grief in your own life.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Yeah, you're probably referring to the death of my beloved wife,
Claudia So on March eighth of twenty twenty, she got
a terminal diagnosis. She beat breast cancer once before twenty
years prior, decided to give it a second try, picked
a much nastier cancer, and she was four ways metastasized
in terminal. On day one, she thought she had bronchitas.
She came home with the destines. She had sixty to
twenty four months to live. We got nine, and she
(07:52):
died at seventy. She was sixty nine at the time,
so she died fifteen years ahead of the contract. We
had a deal and she broke the deal. You know,
I was pretty pissed. But the first thing was to
frame what is this? We said, Okay, well, I'm gonna die.
I was going to die before she is. Now I
know when, and so oh it's sad, not tragic, because
at seventy I've kind of done everything I need to do.
(08:13):
There's nothing really missing. She goes, but I'd love second
helping is of a couple of things before I go.
So the mantra for the next year was second helpings,
which we didn't get that many up because between COVID
and fires and everything else is pretty tough. But nonetheless,
the holy idea was to decide how to think about it.
Mindset was everything. So I started interviewing widows, people who
(08:33):
I thought had widowed. Well, so I'm going to borrow
other people's wisdom. One of the best pieces of wisdom
I got was from a guy whose wife went through
a nine year death process. He said, look, Dave, don't
waste one second thinking about how are you going to
handle this after she's gone, because no matter what you do,
since you had an intimate marriage, it's going to rip
(08:53):
your legs off, it's going to blow your brains up.
There's not a chance in hell you're going to be
prepared for this. So the don't always time trying to prepare,
and every bit of energy you take away thinking about
that future, you're stealing from the present. So lean into
doing nothing but enjoy the Heck, at the time, you
guys have and as soon as she's gone you can
figure that out. Then that's exactly what it did, was
exactly the right thing to do. So I learned a
(09:15):
ton about grief, but there was all in that framework
of it just happens to be really painful. I wonder
what the lessons might be.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
And also just not going away from reality. You mentioned
this idea before that you can't design things well if
you're not taking into account the reality of the situation,
as crappy and as terrible as it might be.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Well, you know, design is an empirical process. So if
it's empirical, it has to work in this place called real.
It's the only place design works. We can't work with
you and the landa should. We only do real stuff,
and in reality you can make it better.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
I mean, just also mention Claudia was an exceptional woman
and her ability to accept radical acceptance isn't about happiness
per se. It's about no reality, which means radically accepting grief.
But Claudia was brilliant at this. You could imagine a
different situation with someone clinging to false hope or something else,
(10:13):
but having watched Dave do this, it was both incredibly
tragic and incredibly beautiful in a way that they together
managed this acceptance a situation that neither one of them,
neither one of them wanted. So that was battle testing
one of our mindsets for sure.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
And it's situations where right now we're walking through this
with a couple of our significantly older friends, where the
guy is going down swinging. I mean, he's not going
quietly into this night. He is rejecting everything right and
he's ruining his life in the life of everybody around him.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
And it's a choice.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
So choosing well on this acceptance thing has an amazing upset.
It really is one of the biggest mindsets of all time.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
So you all are living in your daily life teaching students,
and you give them these incredible tools for designing their
lives in wonderful ways. But you, like me, sometimes have
the interesting moment of a student who comes back a
little bit later on and you know, maybe later in
their twenties, and they often feel like my ill students
(11:14):
sometimes feel, which is it like they're kind of feeling
a little lost, Like they're kind of feeling like they
tried to follow what you were telling them, but life
isn't turning out the way they thought. Bill, tell me
about some of these conversations you had with your students.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
I love meeting students two years out, five years out,
seven years out. I just talked to somebody who was
like fifteen years out and came up and said, oh,
Professor Burnett, I haven't seen you. So they come back,
and often, you know, I get two reactions. One is, hey,
I remember the class and it's still very helpful. And
in fact, even my friends ask me sometimes and I
tell them read the book or whatever. And then sometimes
(11:49):
they say, you know, I used all these tools, but
I'm still my life still doesn't have the meaning or
the purpose or the impact that I wanted to have,
particularly impact, because the gen zs all want to have
a lot of impact. And so that was one of
the reasons we wrote this last book, How to Live
a Meaningful Life, is that even after designing a pretty
good life for career, they're still looking for well, wait
(12:10):
a minute, where's the payoff, where's the impact, Where's the meaning?
And we wanted to go back and look at that
kind of step back from the life design I yet
really look at more at meaning and purpose because our conclusions,
they were looking in the wrong place, and we wanted
to give them better navigation. I guess in that question.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
And I think students sometimes get it wrong, especially when
they're in that position of feeling like something's missing. When
I talk to my own students who are in this position,
I often get the sense that they think what they
need to do to fix things is to like detonate
their life, like I'm going to buy a van and
I'm going to move across country or I'm going to
move to a farm. But do you both have argued
that there are other ways around this that doesn't involve
detonating your life. Why is it the wrong path to meaning.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Well, not never there, I mean every now and then
I'll say, yeah, I think you probably should quite out
of that horrible, toxic job working for that voracious boss.
But that's pretty rare. What it boils down to is,
you know, I'm going to talk about the college of
those college ships. I mean, while you're in college, you
know it is about you. It's all about you. And
a good day is when you heard something you never
heard before, you saw something in a saw, before you
did something. So life is cool when I'm on a
(13:11):
really steep learning curve. Well, if you're out in the world,
whether you're in medicine or the marketplace or the military,
whatever you're doing, that world is about mastery and it's
not about doing something for the first time six hours
a day. That's called incompetency. We don't let you do
that to patients or customers or investors. They actually want
people who know what they're doing. So I go from
(13:33):
this thing where it's all about novelty to all about mastery.
It's a huge shift, and that's a longer, more patient pathway.
So sometimes people are looking for the but it's not
amazingly new every single day. I must be in the
wrong place. No, you're just thinking about the paradigm of
life wrong. And we keep talking about getting more out
of life, not cram more into it. Oh, I need
another hobby, I need a bigger thing, I need more. No,
(13:55):
you don't need more. You need to get more out
of what's already there. And so we start teaching people
more how to live into that life, to get more
full of liveness from it.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
And this is the idea of really designing for meaning
and designing for the right kind of meaning, which means
we need to be honest about the kind of meaning
that we can design for and the kinds of meaning
that we can't really design for. And so talk about
the kind of meaning that people usually want to get,
the very big meaning, and why that's different from the
meaning that you're talking about designing.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
In your book.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
It's a design book, not a philosophy book. So we
don't try to answer the meaning of life the big question,
you know, what's the meaning of life? Is there a God?
Blah blah blah. That's not a designable question, But getting
more meaning out of life is a designable question. And
this idea of getting more out of not packing more into.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
First of all, am I going to change the world.
Probably not, And that's a good thing to aspire to.
But if that's the only egg in your meaning basket, boy,
are you at risk? And so, first thing you get
beyond impact and then becoming fully human, it means I'm
not just making a difference, but I'm also living more fully.
And so the key thing we do is we try
(15:04):
to give people, you know, more food groups, not just
the meat of impact, but the vegetables of wonder and
the beverages of you know, flow, And so we try
to get people a couple more crayons in the box
to mix the metaphor.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
So it sounds like we're not going after the meaning
of life. We're going after meaning in life. And a
thing that we need to radically accept to do that
is that we need to understand how tiny sometimes the
meaning in life buckets are. And I think this gets
us to this idea of the scandal of particularity. Dave,
do you want to explain what this is?
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Yes, a scandal particularity is a philosophical idea, actually started
as a theological idea by Walter Brugman. But what it
really boils down to is It turns out the ultimate
is only accessible in the particular. To put it differently,
the sublime is actually found in the ridiculous beauty, truth, love, communion, unity,
These lovely things we all aspire to, and when we
(15:57):
experience them deeply, we're kind of go ooh, that's really it.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
You know.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
You see that amazing sunset and everybody kind of goes, ooh,
I want more of that. That's what I was made for.
And so that alt is beckoning to all of us
all the time. But it turns out it only arrives
in small, partial chunks. They're all essentially reflections of that fullness,
they're not full embodiments of it. Every one of those
(16:22):
experiences of something wonderful, frankly, it leaves you wanting more,
Like you know, that was a really great kiss, but
it stopped too soon. You know, you can never have
all of it. So the scandal particular is it's kind
of scandalous that these wonderful things only come in these
little cupcake sized bits, you know, that little tasting thing
(16:45):
they give you at Costco. You know, like, where's the
rest of the pizza? And oh, that was a really
good bite. And the fact that I long for more
is the promise that life will continue to be interesting.
So the huge shift is in the scandal particularity. You
go from it's still not what I really want too,
that was lovely and mores to come. It's a complete
(17:06):
transformation of your relationship with finitude.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
We humans don't like finitude. When something feels good, we
want more, more accomplishment, more success, more kisses, more nachos.
But chasing more isn't how we get to capital m meaning.
To do that, we have to embrace the finite bits,
however scandalous that might feel. But the big question is
how do we do that? How do we notice and
(17:31):
make the most of these tiny, beautiful moments. We'll find
out when the Happiness Lab returns after the break. Stanford
(17:52):
designers Dave Evans and Bill Burnett argue that instead of
trying to find the big elusive meaning in life, we
should instead focus on the little stuff, tiny moments of
beauty and wonder. In fact, they think we should all
be putting our efforts into creating these kinds of moments.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Well, you can design moments right, design any experience, and
what you're looking for is to connect that moment to
something bigger than yourself, right s transcendence that moment can be.
I always make my grandmother's purple cabbage. It's a recipe,
you know, Germany from the thirties. It's just purple gabbage
with some vinegar and sugar. But it's a thing. And
(18:29):
when the purple cabbage comes out, the moment is everybody
remembers Grandma. So it's these particular moments where we can
discover a connection to the ultimate meaning of life. I
guess love community a memory of an important person in
our lives. You have opportunities all around you to create
these moments. I just you know, I live in an
(18:50):
industrial neighborhood in the city, and I'm walking to the train.
I'm noticing there's this bush that's got a bunch of
purple flowers on it. I don't know why it's blooming
in December, but there's this bush doing its thing. I
stood there for a moment and I watched probably twenty
other people just walk right by it. But to stop
and take some pictures, just to have a moment to
(19:12):
savor the beauty of nature. Part of this moment making
thing is change what you're looking for, pay attention be
available to what's right in front of you, this bush
with purple flowers, the friendly barista who you know heated
up my muffin. All the little things actually are packed
(19:33):
with meaning. And you can design those moments, and you
can also recognize and savor those moments, And in either case,
you're changing the way your brain is wired. Right, You're
starting to look for things that are imbued with the
scandal of particularly the meaning in life, not the meaning
of life.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
What's really going on in you know, we're designed guys.
We're going to give you tools to design something, to
make something. What are we making? So if I go
right to making meaning, nine times out of ten, the
people we talk with, well from twenty to ninety they're
all having the same problem. They go up this impact thing.
So if I want these other forms of meaning, they're
found in a different way of seeing the world.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
To really get into this idea of moment making, we
need to make a distinction between two different kinds of worlds. First,
the world that we often find ourselves in, the world
of outcomes and instrumental value and capitalism and et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera. What you call the transactional world. So, Dave,
what's the transactional world?
Speaker 2 (20:30):
We've posited this idea of the tale of two worlds.
There's the transactional world where I go and get stuff done,
and there's the flow world, which is the fullness of
the cosmos that's happening in this very moment, right in
front of me, right under my feet, right around me.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
All the time.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
We're playing with which world you're participating in in terms
of directing your attention. Transactional world, you know, it's the
world of lists. Frankly, it's a world where you're living
almost entirely in the past or the future. I am
criticizing what it did last time and learning from it
so it can do it better. And I'm thinking about
you know, I'm still a post it note, Gude. I
am literally looking at my desk and I've got one, two, three, four,
(21:06):
of five, six, seventy, got eighteen things on a post list,
and there's circles next to them, and if the circle
has an excident, it's done. So right now I have
twelve out of eighteen things with exues and six things
with circles. And you know what a really good day
is A really good day is when there's all exes.
What it can't wait is for that to be over
All the transaction world wants to be is done and successful,
(21:28):
successfully done, and the feedback is money and accolade and
social media likes, and you get tons of feedback. So
it's an easy world to be completely stuck in. And
some people tell you it's the only real world, and
that's that's kind of heart pricking.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
And so you make a distinction between this transactional world
and a different world that you call the flow world.
So Bill, what's the flow world? How's it very different
from the thing that Dave was just talking about.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Well, in terms of what Dave just said and transactions,
it's looking backwards to see what I got done and
looking forward to see what's next. And I'm never right
here in the moment, in the present moment, and the
flow world is more about the present moment. Again, it's
available all the time. There's nothing inherently wrong with the
transactional word, but it's when you make intrinsically float things.
Let's say I have a mindfulness practice or I have
(22:16):
a yoga practice, which should just be about being in
the moment, in that place where you're in a sort
of a flow state. You can turn that into transaction. Hey,
I went to yoga five times this week. Check and
none of those things are the way the flow world
actually works. You can be in both worlds at the
same time. By the way, I can be in a
totlet flow state looking at the purple flowers and still
(22:38):
get to the train on time. Right, there's no contradiction here.
It was the work of you know, doctor Lisa Miller
at Columbia. We're talking about the awakened brain and the
achieving brain, or the left brain and the right brain,
if you want to use that model, whatever it is.
They're both on all the time. It's just you're not
paying any attention. You know. The left brain is the
one that talks. And if you're like me and Dave,
(22:59):
there's somebody talking in my head all the time, and
it's taken up all the space. The ability to access
your creative of self here into it. It's all there.
It's just underdeveloped in our society. And as they mentioned,
people trust the transactional brain, the brain the talks. They
think it's the real one, and they think this other
(23:21):
one is sort of you know, it's it's okay, but
it's not quote real cute. It's just is real, in fact,
even more real. If you want to be a whole
human being, you have to accept the reality of your creativity,
your intuition, your awakened brain. All these things are neurologically true.
(23:44):
It's just we live in a society that doesn't value them.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
You know, we're talking about reframes all the time, but
point of a reframe is to look at something differently,
change your point of view. And we're trying to free
people up to get them access to a bunch of
stuff that they're missing. Now or are you doing this
work too? So let me turn the arrow around. Now,
you've got this struggle with your students. What are you
finding helpful in number one, convincing them that this is
available in legitimate actually spending some time and energy on it.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Well, I think this was one of the reasons I
was so excited to talk to you and so excited
about this concept of the transactional world, because I think,
especially my type A Yale undergraduates, spend a lot of
time in this transactional world. You had this quip that
the transactional world is very imperialistic, which I was like, yes, yes, yes,
because I think it sucks you in. You Bill, you
mentioned this idea of you're doing your meditation, which in
(24:34):
theory should be like full on flow world, you're just
being present and nothing else. But I'm taking it off
my list. I also have my meditation on a post
it note, and I'm trying to do it so that
I work better in my you know, investment, make a
job or something like that. So I'm curious what you
all think of, like how to fight the imperialism. This
transactional world is so prone to suck you in. Especially
I think if you've been successful and benefited from the
(24:56):
transactional world in the way that a lot of our
Ivy League students have done.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Well, one of our tools is savoring. And I know
you're a saving fan as well. You're sitting at a
red light and your favorite song comes on and you
kind of go, oh, that's great, Oh no, no, really love it.
Oh my god, I love that Dylan song. It is
so drop all the way into it for seventeen seconds
and then off you go. And if you start learning
(25:21):
how to do that, you start learning how to do
a sudden savoring like it's a good cup of coffee. Wait,
hold that one on your tongue for three seconds, longer
three seconds. Oh my god, I can actually taste because
I make half calf, I use dark decaf and medium
grind calf. Can I taste both beans?
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Oh god? It can.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
That moves the needle.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
One of the reasons I love this suggestion is that
it's just a reminder that we can switch back and forth.
One of the suggestions you give in the book is
to literally tell yourself, okay, switch And this was something
I found myself even using right after reading the book.
Is you know, I'll be prepping for a podcast and
you know, kind of in full transaction, urgent mind head,
and then I just remember, like, oh wait, switch. Ah,
(26:04):
I'm paying attention to the light in the world, or
like the seat under me, or you know, someone walking by,
let me smile at them. It's almost like you give
yourself the task of noticing what you can notice in
the flow world. And that works pretty well.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Yeah, it really does. The idea of flipping the switch.
Like Dave and I were prepping for this, you know,
the podcast, and we're looking at our notes and that
was all transactional and then just before we came on.
It was the moment when I flipped the switch to like,
oh wow, I get to talk to this really interesting person,
Laurie Santos. This is an amazing body of work. This
is going to be fun. There's the ways you can
(26:41):
get on stuck that are really quite simple. I don't
think you have to spend ten years developing a meditation practice.
Go ahead, that's probably a good thing. But even the
zen monks would say that enlightenment is instantaneous. And one
of my favorite quotes is if you can't find enlightenment
right where you are, where do you expect to find it?
Is it over there? Is it over there? That's right here?
(27:03):
And it's in just little moments. So it's easier than
you think. You don't have to spend a lot of time.
Savoring is one thing, the idea of just practicing acceptance. Hey,
I'm just going to try to be in the real
world today and see what happens and availability can I
change what I'm looking for. It's all about connection. It's
all about love and people and things beyond yourself. So
(27:26):
is there a moment where you can have a little
more community? Can you talk to that person on the train.
Can you chat with someone at the coffee shop? Find
a way to connect? You know, these little tiny design
moments that help you get unstuck and figure out that
you know, maybe there is some meaning in the life
(27:47):
you're already living, and you don't have to go find
it somewhere else.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
One of the reasons I love your books so much
is you tell us some really good techniques for making
that switch, for kind of switching to the flow world.
And one of the big ones you talk about is
this idea of wonder Dave. You mentioned that you give
your students the mantra of pursuing late wonderfulness. What do
you mean by that?
Speaker 2 (28:09):
You know, minset matters. And if you walk into a
room you're walking any experience. Oh, it's probably going to
be boring. I don't think I even know these people.
Your chances of fulfilling that expectations are extremely high. If
you're walk in kind of going, man, I bet this
is going to be great. It can't wait to meet
these interesting people. Now you maybe doesnappointed. Then maybe all
absolute dults like, oh oh well, but when you round up,
your chance of finding it goes way up. Use confirmation
(28:32):
bias as a friend, give yourself a chance. You know,
we're learning how to play the game to win here.
So the pursuit of late and wonderfulness is there's something
wonderful going on all the time.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
On the late and wonderfulness. This is also a response
to our students, you know, have a very high bar
for everything. It's like, I'm not going to go interview
at a big company because big companies are bad. Well,
how do you know that? Well, that's all all my
friends tell me. All right, here's your assignment. You know
you're going to go interview at you know, Apple and
Google and come back. And now one students that I
will never interview at the CIA, say, okay, go interview
at the CIA. There's a twenty percent chance that there's
(29:05):
something in there that's interesting. Go find give it a shot,
Go find it. And inevitably they come back and they go,
do you know that the CIA is working like ten
years ahead? In the AI thing? They talked about stuff
nobody's talking about in the valley. I totally want to
work there. So our students said a ridiculously high bar
for their experiences, and if they're not going to be amazing,
(29:27):
they don't want to do it, and so they shut
themselves out of so many things they could try because
their bar for late and wonderfulness is if it's not
one hundred percent, I'm not going to do it. And
then when you actually get down to how do you
know it's not going to be cool, they don't know.
They just heard it from a friend, or more likely
they're just afraid to try it. And so this is
(29:47):
a way of getting them unstuck.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
So that's seeking out these moments of wonder and maybe
even these tiny moments of wonder, not putting wonder like
you know, capital w wonder out. They look for. A
second strategy you've talked about a lot, is to attend
to coherence. Dave, what's coherence and why is it so important?
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Okay, So we define coherenceatives the intersection of the alignment
of who you are, what you believe in, what you're doing.
The research on meaning will say that if you can
interconnect those three dots, who am I, what do I believing,
what am I doing? Then my life is coherent. I
am making sense in the world. I'm acting just like myself.
And if I don't have those dots connected, the chance
(30:26):
of meaning making goes way down now. Of course, the
prerequisite to connecting those dots is locating them. So we
have an exercise called the compass exercise which has three
components my current story, my workview, and my life you
so three a little essays you're write that will help
you figure out the narrative that describes kind of who
you are now. Is that the totality of who you are? No,
but it's a real good start. We've been doing this
(30:48):
a couple one hundred thousand times now, so we kind
of got to hang out and it seems to be
working well for people. So coherency is when I'm actually
living out who I really am in the world, including
the compromises that I have to make. And a coherency sighting,
which is a meaning making tool, is catching yourself in
the act of when was I coherent today? So example,
(31:10):
a really lovely coherency siding for me, which is so
easy to miss, you know. One of the growing edges
of life design at Stanford is not more and more classes,
but classes to different affinity groups. So there is a
pilot on designing your Muslim life. So the kids who
adhere to Islam feel pretty isolated and they would like
to be in this life conversation with people of a
similar mindset. So Bill gets them in a room the
(31:33):
Muslim chaplain. Bill the existential atheist are co teaching a
class and designing your Muslim life. And I'm the guy
with a seminary degree. I'm sitting in the back of
the room watching my atheist partner teach a spirituality class,
and I'm thinking, this is so cool. I helped build
a place where people are integrating the spirituality even beyond
(31:55):
their personal ideology. That is such a coherent moment for me.
This is as good as it gets. And so it's
about catching ourselves in the act when it's actually working,
and guess what, it's working more often than you think.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
It's time for a quick break. But when we return,
we'll explore some of my favorite tips for stepping into
the flow world, and we'll hear the surprising way that
Bill is able to stay in the flow world almost
all the time. The Happiness Lab will be back at
a moment. We've been chatting with designers Dave Evans and
(32:34):
Bill Burnett and exploring how to get out of the
transactional world of doodoo doo all the time, so that
we can find ways into the flow world. Now, flow
is an idea that we talk about a lot on
the Happiness Lab, but Bill and Dave have developed their
own unique take on the concept.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
The original definition of flow according to me head check
Sime High the founder of this concept and a wonderful researcher,
and you know, the definitive work flow the Psychology of
Optimal Experience comes out some time ago and defines the
flow channel as being a zone where the challenge of
the task in which you are currently engaged and your
skill level are close to matched. Meaning you're not underskilled
(33:11):
and now you're anxious because you're going to fail. You're
not overskilled, and you're bored because you could do this
in your sleep, but you're kind of really on it.
And so what happens is the task demands enough of
you that you could be fully engaged, and that zone
is a place where you might drop into flow. There's like,
you know, APEX, when you're really in the zone that
(33:32):
amazing US hockey team to beat the Russians, you know,
you're totally in flow. That's great, and most people think
that's what flow is. But here's the problem. It's this
APEX experience, which makes it way too hard, particularly in
the simple task where I might be overskilled. We redefine
what we call simple flow. You don't have to let
(33:53):
boredom steal your brain. I mean, last night, the heater
went on at one in the morning, What the heck?
And I went upstairs and the thermostat had kind of exploded.
So I went all the way down the nerd rabbit
hole of an old school thermace that didn't work very well,
and it only took me forty five minutes and I
fixed it, and I had the best time because I
(34:16):
went all the way into Not this is such a
pan of ass on, but it's kind of like Jeae.
I wonder what that nineteen eighties engineer was thinking when
he designed one of the worst UIs of all time.
How interesting this could be? And so I just chose
to go all the way in and enjoy the heck
out of solving my thermostat problem and saving a little
gas for Pacific asnal. You so just go with it.
(34:36):
That's a choice flow, full engagement in what you're doing,
which allows you to experience as much of your liveness
as that particular activity will permit to be expressed in
your scandalously particular self in this scandalously particular moment could
be a flow mode.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
I love that flow really plays on this idea of
the scandal of the particular, because we can only ever
get it in the present moment. It's not something we
can design for the future. Think about in the past, Bill,
you've also talked about how these moments of being in
flow really require being a little bit more embodied. Why
is embodiment so important?
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Oh, you know this thing, this body, isn't just a
thing that takes my brain to meetings. I mean, we
know that there's a lot of neurology going on in
the gut, in the vagual nerves, and all the other systems.
So we are embodied creatures and we learn by moving
and working in the world. There's our intelligence, our IQ,
I guess you would say, the talking part of our brain.
(35:31):
There's our EQ, our emotional part of our brain. There's
our kinesthetic understanding of the world. How do we move
in the world, the appropriateception in our body. There's a
whole bunch of stuff coming up now around how the
body actually understands itself in the world. And so, you know,
don't talk to me about artificial intelligence and disembodied computers.
You have to be inside this embodied intelligence because it's
(35:54):
also where where we feel our intuition, our curiosity, and
many of the triggers for flow have to do with,
you know, either releasing a dopamine circuit or releasing some
kind of a neural circuit that engages the rest of
the body in that experience, which is why athletes often
to talk about being in the zone or things. It's
(36:15):
a physical kinesthetic flow. So these are all embodiments of
ourselves in a time and space in the world that
are all triggers to what we were calling simple flow
or the flow state that's available all the time. One
of our analogies, it's like an aquifer running right under
the surface. All you got to do is drill a
hole and there's plenty of water. You just got to
(36:36):
dig into that thing that's right beneath you.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Bill I called the flow Master. Bill has love flow
for a long time. He's like Captain Flow. Bill. You know,
more than a few times you'll tell me something like,
oh God, you know, it's really been great. I've been
in flow for four days now. I mean, you claim
to attain this persistent flow state. Can you give the
listeners any tips on how the heck do you pull
(36:59):
that off?
Speaker 3 (37:00):
It's both something I try to do and it's a
mystery fundamentally, but I really get back to it depends
on what you're looking for. And so when I start
my day, I've been for along many many years now,
I start the day with an affirmation where I say
I live in the best of all possible worlds because
as date mentioned, I'm an extential atheist, so truly the
(37:25):
radical acceptance that this is it might as well be
the best, And everything I do today I choose to do.
Choosing into my experience, I think is there's the number
one way in which I find flow.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
That's the voice of availability. But that's what availability sounds like.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
I'm pretty good at being simultaneously I get stuff done.
I mean, you know, some people might I'm absent minded,
but it's just because my mind is something else, not
on whatever their priority is in the transaction world. But
it's also you know, I've practiced creativity. I'm a painter
and I'm an artist. I spend a lot of time
(38:03):
in that wonderful you know's a quote from Robert Henry.
The goal isn't to make artists to be in that
wonderful state of mind that makes art inevitable. So I
try to spend a lot of time in the state
of mind that makes flow inevitable.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
Another thing you seem to both spend a lot of
time in is the last suggestion that you have for
everyone for how to get into the flow world more,
which is that you both spend a lot of time
in community. Why is community so important for design thinking generally?
Speaker 3 (38:31):
Well, community, I mean, in terms of design, design is
always done on teams. It's always done with people. You
want to radically collaborate with people of different points of view.
But the community part in the new book really comes
from Dave's experience teaching apartment standard called the Distinguished Career Institute.
It's a gap year for grown ups. People come to
Stanford for a year after a distinguished career and they
(38:53):
spend time trying to figure out the pivot, the thing
they're going to do next in their lives. These are
pretty smart, successful people, Dave, how does this community thing
work with them?
Speaker 2 (39:03):
Well, it's been interesting, first of all, and we do
community work at all our classes, and we often say
it's almost impossible to hear yourself by yourself. Dan Siegel,
you know, formerly out of the UCLA at the Mindset Institute,
will remind us all that, in fact, the autonomous itself
is a profoundly toxic c line. We now know scientifically
the consciousness extends. This is the nature of human consciousness.
We are deeply involved with each other. So if you
(39:25):
start understanding that, then you really want to leverage what
it means to be in community, because that the fullness
of you is really only available as part of us.
And so what we found at this distinguished Careers group,
I started putting people into design teams, not to design
the life after their program, but to get the most
from it in the present moment. And the nice thing
(39:46):
about these folks, these thirty five to forty five people
forty five to ninety years old, mostly fifty five to
seventy five thinking about what do I do next? And
they're here to become their fuller selves and they spend
some time just exploring. So this idea of we're all
becoming can you become more intentionally? And so the fellows
look at each other kind of go, well, hi, who
are you? You know, I'm Dave, I'm Lori Santos. What
(40:08):
are you into? I'm going an happiness thing. Oh really,
that's so cool. And they take each other at face
value and the only thing they want to do for
each other is help one another become their more authentic selves.
And what's funny is that a couple of weeks into
the program they will all say, these are the best
friends I've ever made. And mylne is I'm not buying it.
You created corporate cultures. Almost all of them have big families,
(40:29):
aren't most of you offending off hundreds of people.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Saying where are you?
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Or mische you've been going for you and you're telling
me these thirty five yahoos that some admission officer at
Stanford threw you into a room with you've never met
before in six weeks become the best friends you've ever had.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
Really, And they go yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
And the reason is because they're in this kind of
community where the intention of our interaction is not just
having a good time. That's a social gathering. It's not
getting something done that's a collaborative gathering. And my argument
is ninety nine percent of what people do in the
transactional world is social or collaborative wonderful things. But then
there's a formative community, which is why are we together.
(41:08):
We're together to become our better selves and to enjoy
more fully of the self we're presently trying on. So
that is a different conversation with different questions and a
trans I don't have to be in the same thing.
So the climate change fanatic and the person who wants
to become a fine artist, they can be in the
same group because they're not collaborating on the content of
their lives. They're collaborating on the intent of their lives,
(41:30):
which is becoming. So when we set people in relationships
that allow becoming to occur, which all you need to
be as a thoughtful, self aware person, stuff happens.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
And so for folks that maybe can't join this Stanford
group but really want to form a similar formative community
and focus on becoming any tips, the.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
Savile answer is, frankly, come up with some generative questions.
I did this at Thanksgiving, actually three Thanksgivings, and in
all the dinners I brought three questions, and those questions
were formative, not transactional or entertainment. One was boy, the
world's kind of full of a lot of ugly things
these days. When were you recently surprised by someone doing
(42:10):
something good? They've restored your faith in humanity? And guess what,
everybody had an answer. I asked directly, what have you
become this year? Or what are you hoping to become
next year? And you know, maybe two out of ten
people are like, WHOA, that's a little much, you know,
But in addis tid oh, well you know what I'm
becoming is? And the other is is there a letter
(42:30):
in you that needs to get out? And if so,
what is it and who's it too? And those are
all becoming kinds of questions and people are surprisingly available.
So the key thing if you want to start forming
a more formative community is have better question.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
Yeah, this is something that I think we get wrong
all the time. There's such a lovely work by folks
like Nick Eppley that find that we often go for
shallow questions, especially for a dinner party something like Thanksgiving
or holiday meal or something. But really what people resonate
with answering are these so called deep questions, questions that
are vulnerable, which I think have a lot of features
of these becoming questions. Right, what are these emotions that
(43:07):
you want to share? How can we focus things in
a different way, How can you take a different perspective,
How can you reframe to steal the designers thinking It
seems like we've known this in social science for a while,
but we can really apply it to becoming more in
the full world and finding these moments of meaning making.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
People want to have the experience of interacting with each
other in meaningful ways, So think of a way to
say something kindly. Have your own story ready to go.
Don't make it be about you, But if you want
to get it in the deep water, jump in the
pool first, and I think you'll be surprised. People are
pretty good to each other if.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
You give them a chance, and they're desperate for these
conversations and these kinds of communities, right the loneliness epidemic.
They're not going to find it on social media. They're
not going to find it in these other places. You know,
when people are trying to think about how can I
improve my life? What can I do to make it better?
Getting rid of these dysfunctional beliefs, leaning into these meaning
making moments and creating communities instead of echo chambers and
(44:01):
arguing and all this other stuff that's going on. You know,
Dave is a big Jesus guy and I'm a big
you know, not needs just needs you. Again. We've been
collaborating for twenty some years on this work and it's
the best collaboration I've ever had. So you don't have
to agree on things in order to be in the collaboration,
(44:22):
particularly if the collaboration is about how to become the
best version of yourself. And with that intention, do anything.
Start a book club, start a sell on where people
get together and everybody gets to ask one question. But
the questions can't be in the transaction world. That's the
only rule.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
So thank you so much for figuring out ways that
we can find a few more of these moments of
meaning if we're doing it in a way that I
think really resonates with everybody that's feeling stuck right now,
which is not by creaming more in but getting more
out of the moments that we already have.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Well, thanks, And here's the little ps by the way,
while we duck the question what is the meaning of
your life? And let's just live more meaningfully along the way.
Let's live more purposefully on the way too. Whatever we're
going to find later. It turns out, if you get
good at this, that meaning of life thing is going
to come into view a lot more soon, a lot
(45:13):
more Clearly.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
Figure out the meaning of life is hard, but I
hope that this episode has convinced you that there's plenty
of ways to find a meaning in life, even when
it doesn't feel like it. If you're feeling stuck, why
not commit to turning towards some new moments of meaning
this week? And if you want even more advice about
how to do that, check out Bill and Dave's new book,
How to Live a Meaningful Life, which is out this week.
(45:38):
That's a wrap on our series about getting unstuck in
twenty twenty six. What do you think? Why not let
us know? You can email us at Happiness Lab at
Pushkin dot fm, or leave us a review to tell
us what you liked. You can also sign up to
learn more about the science of happiness with my free
newsletter on my website, Doctor Laurie Santos dot com. That's
(45:58):
d R l a U ri E. Santos dot com.
We'll be back next week, just in time for Valentine's
Day with a new series on the Science of Love.
In our first Step episode, we'll explore what we get
wrong about love. We'll learn why the love we get
from others doesn't always register emotionally, and what we can
do to open ourselves up to it.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
We can be loved, you know. We can have all
these people in our lives that kind of objectively love us,
or we don't actually feel loved by them, or maybe
not feel loved by them or as much as we
want to be.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
That's next week on the Happiness Lab with me Doctor
Laurie Santos
Pushkin. Let's be real for a second. The world feels
pretty overwhelming right now. Lots of us are feeling exhausted
and despondent. We spend our days grinding at work and
then trying to zone out when we get out of work,
which often means scrolling endlessly just to unwind. And if
(00:38):
that sounds familiar, you might be wondering quietly to yourself,
is this all there is? How do I feel better
when the world feels so blah? What if there was
a way to hit the reset button on how you
experience life, To see the world with fresh eyes like
you did as a child, when everything felt alive, full
of possibility and somehow a little magical.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
The mere fact that anything exists at all is astonishing.
So just take a longer, deeper look into almost anything
and some wondrousness might be available to you.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Well.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
In today's episode, the last one in our series on
how to Get Unstuck in twenty twenty six, we'll learned
that this mindset can be within reach. In fact, today's
two guests will share their tips for how to design it.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Greetings, this is Dave Evans, the co founder of the
Stanford Life Design Lab, so glad to be here today
with doctor Laurie Santos and my dear partner, Bill Burnette.
We've been teaching life design for twenty odd years and
now Hi.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
I'm Bill Burnette. I'm an adjunct professor at Stanford University
teaching the Designing Your Life series of classes, and now
the co author with my good friend Dave of a
new book called How to Live a Meaningful Life Using
design thinking to unlock purpose, joy, and flow.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Every day You're going to live to hate that long
a subtitle every time you have to say I learned
about Dave and Bill's work because our professional stories are
surprisingly similar. Like me, they created a class aimed at
improving college students well being, one that ended up going viral,
and like me, they've decided to share the insights from
their class widely with people of all ages, far beyond
(02:15):
the university setting.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
We teach you the improv skills to live life more fully.
Life is an improv. It really is this thing you
make up as you go along. But you can get
a lot better at them making up as you go along.
So we teach a class that starts out with debunking
a bunch of dysfunctional beliefs, really wonderful things that people
often think are true and guide their lives, but happen
not to be either helpful or even true at all,
(02:38):
of which there are many. Once we get through the
dysfunctional beliefs, we start giving them tools and techniques for
how to figure out what they want, how to meet
people can animate that thing in them, how to actually
go and engage with the world and get going.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
And so core idea of this class is this idea
of design thinking, which I think a lot of folks
don't really know what that means.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Bill.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
What's design thinking?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Human centered design? Now we call it design thinking. It's
a way of solving problems. It's deeply human and engaged
with the problems humans have. And so it was obvious
to me when we started thinking about how our students
might approach building a meaningful life that it was a
design problem because designers make things new to the world
all the time. I was at Apple for seven years
(03:19):
before Stanford and I worked on the very first laptops,
and when you're building something that's never existed before, you
can't just engineer it because you don't have any data
about the thing that's never existed like your future, and
so it's using human centered design to figure out what's
the next cool version of you.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
I love this idea of the next cool version of
you because often when we think about designing, we think
about designing something like emphasis on the thing. But you've
really argued that we can design ourselves and our own
lives and interesting ways. What are some of the features
of design thinking we should bring in when we're thinking
about designing our own lives.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Well, it starts to you know, again user centered to
human centered. So it starts with like, what does it
mean to be a person? Well, you know, our sort
of definition is a human person is a becoming, a
never ending story, and so what you're growing into is
the for the revealed version of yourself. All of us
contain more aliveness than when lifetime permits us to live out.
(04:15):
I either there's more than one of you in there,
so there is no getting it right because you are
way bigger than it when it is your lifetime. So
all of us are only going to express a small
portion of the fullness of our humanity. We have multiple
choices in front of us, both between which of me
do I want to give a chance to get out
on the stage and the next season of my life.
(04:35):
And by the way, what does the world think might
be an interesting thing for me to be collaborating with
other people on. So I'm looking for the nexus of
those things, which is evolving all the time. And now
all of let's go have some ideas and get started
to start prototyping what the future of that person might be.
So it really does begin with the very first dysfunctional
belief is I have to find my passion, purpose answer thing. No,
(04:57):
I have to find the next one that will be
interesting enough to live into what will become after that.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
So if you're feeling a little off track, stick around
because Bill and Dave have some excellent advice on becoming
of version of yourself that feels more engaged and more live.
We'll learn all their tips after some quick ads. Dave
(05:28):
Evans and Bill Burnett are best known for their popular
Stanford course Designing Your Life and the best selling book
that grew out of that class, but they've recently put
out a new book called How to Live a Meaningful Life.
One of their biggest insights is what's known as the
Designer's Way, a mindset for intentionally engineering the life you want.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Designs inherently value free, except we always try to make
the next design better. Right, we think we can improve
the world. So you start with wonder. I'm naturally curious.
If I'm a designer, I'm curious about the world and
how to make things better. It's not just who has
that work, but oh wow, how amazing is that? I
wonder how that works? Right? Then we say availability, be
(06:08):
available to the experiences of the world. That's where the
interesting stuff happens. Radical acceptance like availability plus acceptance is
like we always say, design starts in reality. You've got
to start right here where you are, not in some
place where you think you should be because you saw
it on social media or something else. Right, and then
(06:28):
being fully engaged but commonly detached from the outcomes. Because
we know a lot about decision science. You can make
a good decision, but that doesn't assly mean you're going
to get the outcome you want. So be fully engaged
in your life, be intentional, but give yourself some grace
about the outcomes, and then God in the world and
tell your story or create your world. So as mindset's
(06:50):
put together, we call it a designer's way, but I
when you put it together, it's like, approach the world
with a sense of wonder, be available to the things
that are happening, root yourself in the reality of the world,
and then tell that story to people. Because when you
tell the story, you're creating the experience of the world
that you want to have.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
I loved this idea of the Designer's Way in part
because it's not just great for human centered design or
even designing your life. I think it's so useful for
navigating all the stuff that can come up in a life.
It fits with a lot of the happiness evidence we
talk about on the show, Dave in particular. I know
what this idea of radical acceptance you've talked about, how
you use that to navigate a really painful time of
grief in your own life.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Yeah, you're probably referring to the death of my beloved wife,
Claudia So on March eighth of twenty twenty, she got
a terminal diagnosis. She beat breast cancer once before twenty
years prior, decided to give it a second try, picked
a much nastier cancer, and she was four ways metastasized
in terminal. On day one, she thought she had bronchitas.
She came home with the destines. She had sixty to
twenty four months to live. We got nine, and she
(07:52):
died at seventy. She was sixty nine at the time,
so she died fifteen years ahead of the contract. We
had a deal and she broke the deal. You know,
I was pretty pissed. But the first thing was to
frame what is this? We said, Okay, well, I'm gonna die.
I was going to die before she is. Now I
know when, and so oh it's sad, not tragic, because
at seventy I've kind of done everything I need to do.
(08:13):
There's nothing really missing. She goes, but I'd love second
helping is of a couple of things before I go.
So the mantra for the next year was second helpings,
which we didn't get that many up because between COVID
and fires and everything else is pretty tough. But nonetheless,
the holy idea was to decide how to think about it.
Mindset was everything. So I started interviewing widows, people who
(08:33):
I thought had widowed. Well, so I'm going to borrow
other people's wisdom. One of the best pieces of wisdom
I got was from a guy whose wife went through
a nine year death process. He said, look, Dave, don't
waste one second thinking about how are you going to
handle this after she's gone, because no matter what you do,
since you had an intimate marriage, it's going to rip
(08:53):
your legs off, it's going to blow your brains up.
There's not a chance in hell you're going to be
prepared for this. So the don't always time trying to prepare,
and every bit of energy you take away thinking about
that future, you're stealing from the present. So lean into
doing nothing but enjoy the Heck, at the time, you
guys have and as soon as she's gone you can
figure that out. Then that's exactly what it did, was
exactly the right thing to do. So I learned a
(09:15):
ton about grief, but there was all in that framework
of it just happens to be really painful. I wonder
what the lessons might be.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
And also just not going away from reality. You mentioned
this idea before that you can't design things well if
you're not taking into account the reality of the situation,
as crappy and as terrible as it might be.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Well, you know, design is an empirical process. So if
it's empirical, it has to work in this place called real.
It's the only place design works. We can't work with
you and the landa should. We only do real stuff,
and in reality you can make it better.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
I mean, just also mention Claudia was an exceptional woman
and her ability to accept radical acceptance isn't about happiness
per se. It's about no reality, which means radically accepting grief.
But Claudia was brilliant at this. You could imagine a
different situation with someone clinging to false hope or something else,
(10:13):
but having watched Dave do this, it was both incredibly
tragic and incredibly beautiful in a way that they together
managed this acceptance a situation that neither one of them,
neither one of them wanted. So that was battle testing
one of our mindsets for sure.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
And it's situations where right now we're walking through this
with a couple of our significantly older friends, where the
guy is going down swinging. I mean, he's not going
quietly into this night. He is rejecting everything right and
he's ruining his life in the life of everybody around him.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
And it's a choice.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
So choosing well on this acceptance thing has an amazing upset.
It really is one of the biggest mindsets of all time.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
So you all are living in your daily life teaching students,
and you give them these incredible tools for designing their
lives in wonderful ways. But you, like me, sometimes have
the interesting moment of a student who comes back a
little bit later on and you know, maybe later in
their twenties, and they often feel like my ill students
(11:14):
sometimes feel, which is it like they're kind of feeling
a little lost, Like they're kind of feeling like they
tried to follow what you were telling them, but life
isn't turning out the way they thought. Bill, tell me
about some of these conversations you had with your students.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
I love meeting students two years out, five years out,
seven years out. I just talked to somebody who was
like fifteen years out and came up and said, oh,
Professor Burnett, I haven't seen you. So they come back,
and often, you know, I get two reactions. One is, hey,
I remember the class and it's still very helpful. And
in fact, even my friends ask me sometimes and I
tell them read the book or whatever. And then sometimes
(11:49):
they say, you know, I used all these tools, but
I'm still my life still doesn't have the meaning or
the purpose or the impact that I wanted to have,
particularly impact, because the gen zs all want to have
a lot of impact. And so that was one of
the reasons we wrote this last book, How to Live
a Meaningful Life, is that even after designing a pretty
good life for career, they're still looking for well, wait
(12:10):
a minute, where's the payoff, where's the impact, Where's the meaning?
And we wanted to go back and look at that
kind of step back from the life design I yet
really look at more at meaning and purpose because our conclusions,
they were looking in the wrong place, and we wanted
to give them better navigation. I guess in that question.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
And I think students sometimes get it wrong, especially when
they're in that position of feeling like something's missing. When
I talk to my own students who are in this position,
I often get the sense that they think what they
need to do to fix things is to like detonate
their life, like I'm going to buy a van and
I'm going to move across country or I'm going to
move to a farm. But do you both have argued
that there are other ways around this that doesn't involve
detonating your life. Why is it the wrong path to meaning.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Well, not never there, I mean every now and then
I'll say, yeah, I think you probably should quite out
of that horrible, toxic job working for that voracious boss.
But that's pretty rare. What it boils down to is,
you know, I'm going to talk about the college of
those college ships. I mean, while you're in college, you
know it is about you. It's all about you. And
a good day is when you heard something you never
heard before, you saw something in a saw, before you
did something. So life is cool when I'm on a
(13:11):
really steep learning curve. Well, if you're out in the world,
whether you're in medicine or the marketplace or the military,
whatever you're doing, that world is about mastery and it's
not about doing something for the first time six hours
a day. That's called incompetency. We don't let you do
that to patients or customers or investors. They actually want
people who know what they're doing. So I go from
(13:33):
this thing where it's all about novelty to all about mastery.
It's a huge shift, and that's a longer, more patient pathway.
So sometimes people are looking for the but it's not
amazingly new every single day. I must be in the
wrong place. No, you're just thinking about the paradigm of
life wrong. And we keep talking about getting more out
of life, not cram more into it. Oh, I need
another hobby, I need a bigger thing, I need more. No,
(13:55):
you don't need more. You need to get more out
of what's already there. And so we start teaching people
more how to live into that life, to get more
full of liveness from it.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
And this is the idea of really designing for meaning
and designing for the right kind of meaning, which means
we need to be honest about the kind of meaning
that we can design for and the kinds of meaning
that we can't really design for. And so talk about
the kind of meaning that people usually want to get,
the very big meaning, and why that's different from the
meaning that you're talking about designing.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
In your book.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
It's a design book, not a philosophy book. So we
don't try to answer the meaning of life the big question,
you know, what's the meaning of life? Is there a God?
Blah blah blah. That's not a designable question, But getting
more meaning out of life is a designable question. And
this idea of getting more out of not packing more into.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
First of all, am I going to change the world.
Probably not, And that's a good thing to aspire to.
But if that's the only egg in your meaning basket, boy,
are you at risk? And so, first thing you get
beyond impact and then becoming fully human, it means I'm
not just making a difference, but I'm also living more fully.
And so the key thing we do is we try
(15:04):
to give people, you know, more food groups, not just
the meat of impact, but the vegetables of wonder and
the beverages of you know, flow, And so we try
to get people a couple more crayons in the box
to mix the metaphor.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
So it sounds like we're not going after the meaning
of life. We're going after meaning in life. And a
thing that we need to radically accept to do that
is that we need to understand how tiny sometimes the
meaning in life buckets are. And I think this gets
us to this idea of the scandal of particularity. Dave,
do you want to explain what this is?
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Yes, a scandal particularity is a philosophical idea, actually started
as a theological idea by Walter Brugman. But what it
really boils down to is It turns out the ultimate
is only accessible in the particular. To put it differently,
the sublime is actually found in the ridiculous beauty, truth, love, communion, unity,
These lovely things we all aspire to, and when we
(15:57):
experience them deeply, we're kind of go ooh, that's really it.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
You know.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
You see that amazing sunset and everybody kind of goes, ooh,
I want more of that. That's what I was made for.
And so that alt is beckoning to all of us
all the time. But it turns out it only arrives
in small, partial chunks. They're all essentially reflections of that fullness,
they're not full embodiments of it. Every one of those
(16:22):
experiences of something wonderful, frankly, it leaves you wanting more,
Like you know, that was a really great kiss, but
it stopped too soon. You know, you can never have
all of it. So the scandal particular is it's kind
of scandalous that these wonderful things only come in these
little cupcake sized bits, you know, that little tasting thing
(16:45):
they give you at Costco. You know, like, where's the
rest of the pizza? And oh, that was a really
good bite. And the fact that I long for more
is the promise that life will continue to be interesting.
So the huge shift is in the scandal particularity. You
go from it's still not what I really want too,
that was lovely and mores to come. It's a complete
(17:06):
transformation of your relationship with finitude.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
We humans don't like finitude. When something feels good, we
want more, more accomplishment, more success, more kisses, more nachos.
But chasing more isn't how we get to capital m meaning.
To do that, we have to embrace the finite bits,
however scandalous that might feel. But the big question is
how do we do that? How do we notice and
(17:31):
make the most of these tiny, beautiful moments. We'll find
out when the Happiness Lab returns after the break. Stanford
(17:52):
designers Dave Evans and Bill Burnett argue that instead of
trying to find the big elusive meaning in life, we
should instead focus on the little stuff, tiny moments of
beauty and wonder. In fact, they think we should all
be putting our efforts into creating these kinds of moments.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Well, you can design moments right, design any experience, and
what you're looking for is to connect that moment to
something bigger than yourself, right s transcendence that moment can be.
I always make my grandmother's purple cabbage. It's a recipe,
you know, Germany from the thirties. It's just purple gabbage
with some vinegar and sugar. But it's a thing. And
(18:29):
when the purple cabbage comes out, the moment is everybody
remembers Grandma. So it's these particular moments where we can
discover a connection to the ultimate meaning of life. I
guess love community a memory of an important person in
our lives. You have opportunities all around you to create
these moments. I just you know, I live in an
(18:50):
industrial neighborhood in the city, and I'm walking to the train.
I'm noticing there's this bush that's got a bunch of
purple flowers on it. I don't know why it's blooming
in December, but there's this bush doing its thing. I
stood there for a moment and I watched probably twenty
other people just walk right by it. But to stop
and take some pictures, just to have a moment to
(19:12):
savor the beauty of nature. Part of this moment making
thing is change what you're looking for, pay attention be
available to what's right in front of you, this bush
with purple flowers, the friendly barista who you know heated
up my muffin. All the little things actually are packed
(19:33):
with meaning. And you can design those moments, and you
can also recognize and savor those moments, And in either case,
you're changing the way your brain is wired. Right, You're
starting to look for things that are imbued with the
scandal of particularly the meaning in life, not the meaning
of life.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
What's really going on in you know, we're designed guys.
We're going to give you tools to design something, to
make something. What are we making? So if I go
right to making meaning, nine times out of ten, the
people we talk with, well from twenty to ninety they're
all having the same problem. They go up this impact thing.
So if I want these other forms of meaning, they're
found in a different way of seeing the world.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
To really get into this idea of moment making, we
need to make a distinction between two different kinds of worlds. First,
the world that we often find ourselves in, the world
of outcomes and instrumental value and capitalism and et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera. What you call the transactional world. So, Dave,
what's the transactional world?
Speaker 2 (20:30):
We've posited this idea of the tale of two worlds.
There's the transactional world where I go and get stuff done,
and there's the flow world, which is the fullness of
the cosmos that's happening in this very moment, right in
front of me, right under my feet, right around me.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
All the time.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
We're playing with which world you're participating in in terms
of directing your attention. Transactional world, you know, it's the
world of lists. Frankly, it's a world where you're living
almost entirely in the past or the future. I am
criticizing what it did last time and learning from it
so it can do it better. And I'm thinking about
you know, I'm still a post it note, Gude. I
am literally looking at my desk and I've got one, two, three, four,
(21:06):
of five, six, seventy, got eighteen things on a post list,
and there's circles next to them, and if the circle
has an excident, it's done. So right now I have
twelve out of eighteen things with exues and six things
with circles. And you know what a really good day
is A really good day is when there's all exes.
What it can't wait is for that to be over
All the transaction world wants to be is done and successful,
(21:28):
successfully done, and the feedback is money and accolade and
social media likes, and you get tons of feedback. So
it's an easy world to be completely stuck in. And
some people tell you it's the only real world, and
that's that's kind of heart pricking.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
And so you make a distinction between this transactional world
and a different world that you call the flow world.
So Bill, what's the flow world? How's it very different
from the thing that Dave was just talking about.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Well, in terms of what Dave just said and transactions,
it's looking backwards to see what I got done and
looking forward to see what's next. And I'm never right
here in the moment, in the present moment, and the
flow world is more about the present moment. Again, it's
available all the time. There's nothing inherently wrong with the
transactional word, but it's when you make intrinsically float things.
Let's say I have a mindfulness practice or I have
(22:16):
a yoga practice, which should just be about being in
the moment, in that place where you're in a sort
of a flow state. You can turn that into transaction. Hey,
I went to yoga five times this week. Check and
none of those things are the way the flow world
actually works. You can be in both worlds at the
same time. By the way, I can be in a
totlet flow state looking at the purple flowers and still
(22:38):
get to the train on time. Right, there's no contradiction here.
It was the work of you know, doctor Lisa Miller
at Columbia. We're talking about the awakened brain and the
achieving brain, or the left brain and the right brain,
if you want to use that model, whatever it is.
They're both on all the time. It's just you're not
paying any attention. You know. The left brain is the
one that talks. And if you're like me and Dave,
(22:59):
there's somebody talking in my head all the time, and
it's taken up all the space. The ability to access
your creative of self here into it. It's all there.
It's just underdeveloped in our society. And as they mentioned,
people trust the transactional brain, the brain the talks. They
think it's the real one, and they think this other
(23:21):
one is sort of you know, it's it's okay, but
it's not quote real cute. It's just is real, in fact,
even more real. If you want to be a whole
human being, you have to accept the reality of your creativity,
your intuition, your awakened brain. All these things are neurologically true.
(23:44):
It's just we live in a society that doesn't value them.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
You know, we're talking about reframes all the time, but
point of a reframe is to look at something differently,
change your point of view. And we're trying to free
people up to get them access to a bunch of
stuff that they're missing. Now or are you doing this
work too? So let me turn the arrow around. Now,
you've got this struggle with your students. What are you
finding helpful in number one, convincing them that this is
available in legitimate actually spending some time and energy on it.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Well, I think this was one of the reasons I
was so excited to talk to you and so excited
about this concept of the transactional world, because I think,
especially my type A Yale undergraduates, spend a lot of
time in this transactional world. You had this quip that
the transactional world is very imperialistic, which I was like, yes, yes, yes,
because I think it sucks you in. You Bill, you
mentioned this idea of you're doing your meditation, which in
(24:34):
theory should be like full on flow world, you're just
being present and nothing else. But I'm taking it off
my list. I also have my meditation on a post
it note, and I'm trying to do it so that
I work better in my you know, investment, make a
job or something like that. So I'm curious what you
all think of, like how to fight the imperialism. This
transactional world is so prone to suck you in. Especially
I think if you've been successful and benefited from the
(24:56):
transactional world in the way that a lot of our
Ivy League students have done.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Well, one of our tools is savoring. And I know
you're a saving fan as well. You're sitting at a
red light and your favorite song comes on and you
kind of go, oh, that's great, Oh no, no, really love it.
Oh my god, I love that Dylan song. It is
so drop all the way into it for seventeen seconds
and then off you go. And if you start learning
(25:21):
how to do that, you start learning how to do
a sudden savoring like it's a good cup of coffee. Wait,
hold that one on your tongue for three seconds, longer
three seconds. Oh my god, I can actually taste because
I make half calf, I use dark decaf and medium
grind calf. Can I taste both beans?
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Oh god? It can.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
That moves the needle.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
One of the reasons I love this suggestion is that
it's just a reminder that we can switch back and forth.
One of the suggestions you give in the book is
to literally tell yourself, okay, switch And this was something
I found myself even using right after reading the book.
Is you know, I'll be prepping for a podcast and
you know, kind of in full transaction, urgent mind head,
and then I just remember, like, oh wait, switch. Ah,
(26:04):
I'm paying attention to the light in the world, or
like the seat under me, or you know, someone walking by,
let me smile at them. It's almost like you give
yourself the task of noticing what you can notice in
the flow world. And that works pretty well.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Yeah, it really does. The idea of flipping the switch.
Like Dave and I were prepping for this, you know,
the podcast, and we're looking at our notes and that
was all transactional and then just before we came on.
It was the moment when I flipped the switch to like,
oh wow, I get to talk to this really interesting person,
Laurie Santos. This is an amazing body of work. This
is going to be fun. There's the ways you can
(26:41):
get on stuck that are really quite simple. I don't
think you have to spend ten years developing a meditation practice.
Go ahead, that's probably a good thing. But even the
zen monks would say that enlightenment is instantaneous. And one
of my favorite quotes is if you can't find enlightenment
right where you are, where do you expect to find it?
Is it over there? Is it over there? That's right here?
(27:03):
And it's in just little moments. So it's easier than
you think. You don't have to spend a lot of time.
Savoring is one thing, the idea of just practicing acceptance. Hey,
I'm just going to try to be in the real
world today and see what happens and availability can I
change what I'm looking for. It's all about connection. It's
all about love and people and things beyond yourself. So
(27:26):
is there a moment where you can have a little
more community? Can you talk to that person on the train.
Can you chat with someone at the coffee shop? Find
a way to connect? You know, these little tiny design
moments that help you get unstuck and figure out that
you know, maybe there is some meaning in the life
(27:47):
you're already living, and you don't have to go find
it somewhere else.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
One of the reasons I love your books so much
is you tell us some really good techniques for making
that switch, for kind of switching to the flow world.
And one of the big ones you talk about is
this idea of wonder Dave. You mentioned that you give
your students the mantra of pursuing late wonderfulness. What do
you mean by that?
Speaker 2 (28:09):
You know, minset matters. And if you walk into a
room you're walking any experience. Oh, it's probably going to
be boring. I don't think I even know these people.
Your chances of fulfilling that expectations are extremely high. If
you're walk in kind of going, man, I bet this
is going to be great. It can't wait to meet
these interesting people. Now you maybe doesnappointed. Then maybe all
absolute dults like, oh oh well, but when you round up,
your chance of finding it goes way up. Use confirmation
(28:32):
bias as a friend, give yourself a chance. You know,
we're learning how to play the game to win here.
So the pursuit of late and wonderfulness is there's something
wonderful going on all the time.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
On the late and wonderfulness. This is also a response
to our students, you know, have a very high bar
for everything. It's like, I'm not going to go interview
at a big company because big companies are bad. Well,
how do you know that? Well, that's all all my
friends tell me. All right, here's your assignment. You know
you're going to go interview at you know, Apple and
Google and come back. And now one students that I
will never interview at the CIA, say, okay, go interview
at the CIA. There's a twenty percent chance that there's
(29:05):
something in there that's interesting. Go find give it a shot,
Go find it. And inevitably they come back and they go,
do you know that the CIA is working like ten
years ahead? In the AI thing? They talked about stuff
nobody's talking about in the valley. I totally want to
work there. So our students said a ridiculously high bar
for their experiences, and if they're not going to be amazing,
(29:27):
they don't want to do it, and so they shut
themselves out of so many things they could try because
their bar for late and wonderfulness is if it's not
one hundred percent, I'm not going to do it. And
then when you actually get down to how do you
know it's not going to be cool, they don't know.
They just heard it from a friend, or more likely
they're just afraid to try it. And so this is
(29:47):
a way of getting them unstuck.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
So that's seeking out these moments of wonder and maybe
even these tiny moments of wonder, not putting wonder like
you know, capital w wonder out. They look for. A
second strategy you've talked about a lot, is to attend
to coherence. Dave, what's coherence and why is it so important?
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Okay, So we define coherenceatives the intersection of the alignment
of who you are, what you believe in, what you're doing.
The research on meaning will say that if you can
interconnect those three dots, who am I, what do I believing,
what am I doing? Then my life is coherent. I
am making sense in the world. I'm acting just like myself.
And if I don't have those dots connected, the chance
(30:26):
of meaning making goes way down now. Of course, the
prerequisite to connecting those dots is locating them. So we
have an exercise called the compass exercise which has three
components my current story, my workview, and my life you
so three a little essays you're write that will help
you figure out the narrative that describes kind of who
you are now. Is that the totality of who you are? No,
but it's a real good start. We've been doing this
(30:48):
a couple one hundred thousand times now, so we kind
of got to hang out and it seems to be
working well for people. So coherency is when I'm actually
living out who I really am in the world, including
the compromises that I have to make. And a coherency sighting,
which is a meaning making tool, is catching yourself in
the act of when was I coherent today? So example,
(31:10):
a really lovely coherency siding for me, which is so
easy to miss, you know. One of the growing edges
of life design at Stanford is not more and more classes,
but classes to different affinity groups. So there is a
pilot on designing your Muslim life. So the kids who
adhere to Islam feel pretty isolated and they would like
to be in this life conversation with people of a
similar mindset. So Bill gets them in a room the
(31:33):
Muslim chaplain. Bill the existential atheist are co teaching a
class and designing your Muslim life. And I'm the guy
with a seminary degree. I'm sitting in the back of
the room watching my atheist partner teach a spirituality class,
and I'm thinking, this is so cool. I helped build
a place where people are integrating the spirituality even beyond
(31:55):
their personal ideology. That is such a coherent moment for me.
This is as good as it gets. And so it's
about catching ourselves in the act when it's actually working,
and guess what, it's working more often than you think.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
It's time for a quick break. But when we return,
we'll explore some of my favorite tips for stepping into
the flow world, and we'll hear the surprising way that
Bill is able to stay in the flow world almost
all the time. The Happiness Lab will be back at
a moment. We've been chatting with designers Dave Evans and
(32:34):
Bill Burnett and exploring how to get out of the
transactional world of doodoo doo all the time, so that
we can find ways into the flow world. Now, flow
is an idea that we talk about a lot on
the Happiness Lab, but Bill and Dave have developed their
own unique take on the concept.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
The original definition of flow according to me head check
Sime High the founder of this concept and a wonderful researcher,
and you know, the definitive work flow the Psychology of
Optimal Experience comes out some time ago and defines the
flow channel as being a zone where the challenge of
the task in which you are currently engaged and your
skill level are close to matched. Meaning you're not underskilled
(33:11):
and now you're anxious because you're going to fail. You're
not overskilled, and you're bored because you could do this
in your sleep, but you're kind of really on it.
And so what happens is the task demands enough of
you that you could be fully engaged, and that zone
is a place where you might drop into flow. There's like,
you know, APEX, when you're really in the zone that
(33:32):
amazing US hockey team to beat the Russians, you know,
you're totally in flow. That's great, and most people think
that's what flow is. But here's the problem. It's this
APEX experience, which makes it way too hard, particularly in
the simple task where I might be overskilled. We redefine
what we call simple flow. You don't have to let
(33:53):
boredom steal your brain. I mean, last night, the heater
went on at one in the morning, What the heck?
And I went upstairs and the thermostat had kind of exploded.
So I went all the way down the nerd rabbit
hole of an old school thermace that didn't work very well,
and it only took me forty five minutes and I
fixed it, and I had the best time because I
(34:16):
went all the way into Not this is such a
pan of ass on, but it's kind of like Jeae.
I wonder what that nineteen eighties engineer was thinking when
he designed one of the worst UIs of all time.
How interesting this could be? And so I just chose
to go all the way in and enjoy the heck
out of solving my thermostat problem and saving a little
gas for Pacific asnal. You so just go with it.
(34:36):
That's a choice flow, full engagement in what you're doing,
which allows you to experience as much of your liveness
as that particular activity will permit to be expressed in
your scandalously particular self in this scandalously particular moment could
be a flow mode.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
I love that flow really plays on this idea of
the scandal of the particular, because we can only ever
get it in the present moment. It's not something we
can design for the future. Think about in the past, Bill,
you've also talked about how these moments of being in
flow really require being a little bit more embodied. Why
is embodiment so important?
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Oh, you know this thing, this body, isn't just a
thing that takes my brain to meetings. I mean, we
know that there's a lot of neurology going on in
the gut, in the vagual nerves, and all the other systems.
So we are embodied creatures and we learn by moving
and working in the world. There's our intelligence, our IQ,
I guess you would say, the talking part of our brain.
(35:31):
There's our EQ, our emotional part of our brain. There's
our kinesthetic understanding of the world. How do we move
in the world, the appropriateception in our body. There's a
whole bunch of stuff coming up now around how the
body actually understands itself in the world. And so, you know,
don't talk to me about artificial intelligence and disembodied computers.
You have to be inside this embodied intelligence because it's
(35:54):
also where where we feel our intuition, our curiosity, and
many of the triggers for flow have to do with,
you know, either releasing a dopamine circuit or releasing some
kind of a neural circuit that engages the rest of
the body in that experience, which is why athletes often
to talk about being in the zone or things. It's
(36:15):
a physical kinesthetic flow. So these are all embodiments of
ourselves in a time and space in the world that
are all triggers to what we were calling simple flow
or the flow state that's available all the time. One
of our analogies, it's like an aquifer running right under
the surface. All you got to do is drill a
hole and there's plenty of water. You just got to
(36:36):
dig into that thing that's right beneath you.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Bill I called the flow Master. Bill has love flow
for a long time. He's like Captain Flow. Bill. You know,
more than a few times you'll tell me something like,
oh God, you know, it's really been great. I've been
in flow for four days now. I mean, you claim
to attain this persistent flow state. Can you give the
listeners any tips on how the heck do you pull
(36:59):
that off?
Speaker 3 (37:00):
It's both something I try to do and it's a
mystery fundamentally, but I really get back to it depends
on what you're looking for. And so when I start
my day, I've been for along many many years now,
I start the day with an affirmation where I say
I live in the best of all possible worlds because
as date mentioned, I'm an extential atheist, so truly the
(37:25):
radical acceptance that this is it might as well be
the best, And everything I do today I choose to do.
Choosing into my experience, I think is there's the number
one way in which I find flow.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
That's the voice of availability. But that's what availability sounds like.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
I'm pretty good at being simultaneously I get stuff done.
I mean, you know, some people might I'm absent minded,
but it's just because my mind is something else, not
on whatever their priority is in the transaction world. But
it's also you know, I've practiced creativity. I'm a painter
and I'm an artist. I spend a lot of time
(38:03):
in that wonderful you know's a quote from Robert Henry.
The goal isn't to make artists to be in that
wonderful state of mind that makes art inevitable. So I
try to spend a lot of time in the state
of mind that makes flow inevitable.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
Another thing you seem to both spend a lot of
time in is the last suggestion that you have for
everyone for how to get into the flow world more,
which is that you both spend a lot of time
in community. Why is community so important for design thinking generally?
Speaker 3 (38:31):
Well, community, I mean, in terms of design, design is
always done on teams. It's always done with people. You
want to radically collaborate with people of different points of view.
But the community part in the new book really comes
from Dave's experience teaching apartment standard called the Distinguished Career Institute.
It's a gap year for grown ups. People come to
Stanford for a year after a distinguished career and they
(38:53):
spend time trying to figure out the pivot, the thing
they're going to do next in their lives. These are
pretty smart, successful people, Dave, how does this community thing
work with them?
Speaker 2 (39:03):
Well, it's been interesting, first of all, and we do
community work at all our classes, and we often say
it's almost impossible to hear yourself by yourself. Dan Siegel,
you know, formerly out of the UCLA at the Mindset Institute,
will remind us all that, in fact, the autonomous itself
is a profoundly toxic c line. We now know scientifically
the consciousness extends. This is the nature of human consciousness.
We are deeply involved with each other. So if you
(39:25):
start understanding that, then you really want to leverage what
it means to be in community, because that the fullness
of you is really only available as part of us.
And so what we found at this distinguished Careers group,
I started putting people into design teams, not to design
the life after their program, but to get the most
from it in the present moment. And the nice thing
(39:46):
about these folks, these thirty five to forty five people
forty five to ninety years old, mostly fifty five to
seventy five thinking about what do I do next? And
they're here to become their fuller selves and they spend
some time just exploring. So this idea of we're all
becoming can you become more intentionally? And so the fellows
look at each other kind of go, well, hi, who
are you? You know, I'm Dave, I'm Lori Santos. What
(40:08):
are you into? I'm going an happiness thing. Oh really,
that's so cool. And they take each other at face
value and the only thing they want to do for
each other is help one another become their more authentic selves.
And what's funny is that a couple of weeks into
the program they will all say, these are the best
friends I've ever made. And mylne is I'm not buying it.
You created corporate cultures. Almost all of them have big families,
(40:29):
aren't most of you offending off hundreds of people.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Saying where are you?
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Or mische you've been going for you and you're telling
me these thirty five yahoos that some admission officer at
Stanford threw you into a room with you've never met
before in six weeks become the best friends you've ever had.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
Really, And they go yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
And the reason is because they're in this kind of
community where the intention of our interaction is not just
having a good time. That's a social gathering. It's not
getting something done that's a collaborative gathering. And my argument
is ninety nine percent of what people do in the
transactional world is social or collaborative wonderful things. But then
there's a formative community, which is why are we together.
(41:08):
We're together to become our better selves and to enjoy
more fully of the self we're presently trying on. So
that is a different conversation with different questions and a
trans I don't have to be in the same thing.
So the climate change fanatic and the person who wants
to become a fine artist, they can be in the
same group because they're not collaborating on the content of
their lives. They're collaborating on the intent of their lives,
(41:30):
which is becoming. So when we set people in relationships
that allow becoming to occur, which all you need to
be as a thoughtful, self aware person, stuff happens.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
And so for folks that maybe can't join this Stanford
group but really want to form a similar formative community
and focus on becoming any tips, the.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
Savile answer is, frankly, come up with some generative questions.
I did this at Thanksgiving, actually three Thanksgivings, and in
all the dinners I brought three questions, and those questions
were formative, not transactional or entertainment. One was boy, the
world's kind of full of a lot of ugly things
these days. When were you recently surprised by someone doing
(42:10):
something good? They've restored your faith in humanity? And guess what,
everybody had an answer. I asked directly, what have you
become this year? Or what are you hoping to become
next year? And you know, maybe two out of ten
people are like, WHOA, that's a little much, you know,
But in addis tid oh, well you know what I'm
becoming is? And the other is is there a letter
(42:30):
in you that needs to get out? And if so,
what is it and who's it too? And those are
all becoming kinds of questions and people are surprisingly available.
So the key thing if you want to start forming
a more formative community is have better question.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
Yeah, this is something that I think we get wrong
all the time. There's such a lovely work by folks
like Nick Eppley that find that we often go for
shallow questions, especially for a dinner party something like Thanksgiving
or holiday meal or something. But really what people resonate
with answering are these so called deep questions, questions that
are vulnerable, which I think have a lot of features
of these becoming questions. Right, what are these emotions that
(43:07):
you want to share? How can we focus things in
a different way, How can you take a different perspective,
How can you reframe to steal the designers thinking It
seems like we've known this in social science for a while,
but we can really apply it to becoming more in
the full world and finding these moments of meaning making.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
People want to have the experience of interacting with each
other in meaningful ways, So think of a way to
say something kindly. Have your own story ready to go.
Don't make it be about you, But if you want
to get it in the deep water, jump in the
pool first, and I think you'll be surprised. People are
pretty good to each other if.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
You give them a chance, and they're desperate for these
conversations and these kinds of communities, right the loneliness epidemic.
They're not going to find it on social media. They're
not going to find it in these other places. You know,
when people are trying to think about how can I
improve my life? What can I do to make it better?
Getting rid of these dysfunctional beliefs, leaning into these meaning
making moments and creating communities instead of echo chambers and
(44:01):
arguing and all this other stuff that's going on. You know,
Dave is a big Jesus guy and I'm a big
you know, not needs just needs you. Again. We've been
collaborating for twenty some years on this work and it's
the best collaboration I've ever had. So you don't have
to agree on things in order to be in the collaboration,
(44:22):
particularly if the collaboration is about how to become the
best version of yourself. And with that intention, do anything.
Start a book club, start a sell on where people
get together and everybody gets to ask one question. But
the questions can't be in the transaction world. That's the
only rule.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
So thank you so much for figuring out ways that
we can find a few more of these moments of
meaning if we're doing it in a way that I
think really resonates with everybody that's feeling stuck right now,
which is not by creaming more in but getting more
out of the moments that we already have.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Well, thanks, And here's the little ps by the way,
while we duck the question what is the meaning of
your life? And let's just live more meaningfully along the way.
Let's live more purposefully on the way too. Whatever we're
going to find later. It turns out, if you get
good at this, that meaning of life thing is going
to come into view a lot more soon, a lot
(45:13):
more Clearly.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
Figure out the meaning of life is hard, but I
hope that this episode has convinced you that there's plenty
of ways to find a meaning in life, even when
it doesn't feel like it. If you're feeling stuck, why
not commit to turning towards some new moments of meaning
this week? And if you want even more advice about
how to do that, check out Bill and Dave's new book,
How to Live a Meaningful Life, which is out this week.
(45:38):
That's a wrap on our series about getting unstuck in
twenty twenty six. What do you think? Why not let
us know? You can email us at Happiness Lab at
Pushkin dot fm, or leave us a review to tell
us what you liked. You can also sign up to
learn more about the science of happiness with my free
newsletter on my website, Doctor Laurie Santos dot com. That's
(45:58):
d R l a U ri E. Santos dot com.
We'll be back next week, just in time for Valentine's
Day with a new series on the Science of Love.
In our first Step episode, we'll explore what we get
wrong about love. We'll learn why the love we get
from others doesn't always register emotionally, and what we can
do to open ourselves up to it.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
We can be loved, you know. We can have all
these people in our lives that kind of objectively love us,
or we don't actually feel loved by them, or maybe
not feel loved by them or as much as we
want to be.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
That's next week on the Happiness Lab with me Doctor
Laurie Santos
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