Who Are You, Really?  🔗 **Source:** [Who Are You, Really?](https://share.snipd.com/episode/03e790cd-0180-49d3-b4cb-564b9b9f118f) ## Highlights - **Three Decades Chasing A Single True Self** - Eric Oliver chased spiritual practices, relationships, and prestige for decades trying to find a single true self. - He tried meditation retreats, psychedelics, yoga, failed relationships, and a Princeton job before therapy shifted his approach. Transcript: Eric Oliver It landed really well. I was having a very bumpy adolescence, as most adolescents experience, and really just unsure of who I was or where I was going. And I had this wonderful teacher, Mrs. Malone. And one day she wrote, Know Thyself on the blackboard. And she said, distilled in these two words was the collective wisdom of the ancient Greeks, you know, those marbleized founders of democracy and poetry. And she said, if we wanted to heed their wisdom, we would need to know the self. And she was such a great teacher. And I took her words to heart. And I thought, yes, this is something I really want to do. So I spent the next three decades of my life trying various ways to get a handle on what's behind this lived experience that I'm going through. And in college, I started reading deeply into psychology and philosophy. After college, I moved to Northern California and I started doing yoga and practicing meditation. I experimented with everything from psychedelics to hiking naked in the wilderness to backpacking through Asia. I tried to seek out gurus and priests and Turkish rug sellers who often have a surprising amount of knowledge about spiritual matters. I was basically trying to do everything to click every box on the spiritual seekers bucket list. And it was a very enthusiastic and a very sincere desire to get at what was behind this experience of being. Hmm, hmm. Shankar Vedantam I understand that at one point you felt that finding the right person to love would be a way of discovering who you really were. Eric Oliver Well, I think this was a big part of my feeling of discontentment was a lot of my own psychological instability at the time, which probably traced back to my own bumpy family life. And I had this very romantic idea that there was some perfect person out there who, if I could just meet that person, they would complete me. They would fulfill all of my needs and all of my longings and they would provide me with that sense of psychological stability that would just anchor me. If that was a big part of knowing myself and figuring this out was, oh, finding that right person. And what ended up happening, ironically, was that I had a series of failed relationships and bumpy relationships. And I realized if I was going to have a successful relationship, I actually needed to figure myself out first because in a lot of ways, I was my own worst obstacle for getting the love I So desperately wanted. Shankar Vedantam I understand that in some of these relationships, you actually felt like there were parts of you that were at odds with other parts of you as you pursued these relationships. Eric Oliver Well, yes, there was that part of me that was longing for connection and attachment and love and that feeling of just, you know, great effervescence. And yet oftentimes, as soon as I started getting close to someone and their full humanity started getting revealed to me, I would freak out. And I would find other parts of me pulling back in fear and finding myself being avoidant and saying, oh, this is a real human being who I'm in relationship with. This isn't the magic elixir and something must be wrong because surely, you know, it wouldn't be bumpy if it was right. Shankar Vedantam I understand it wasn't just in your love life that you felt like you got in your own way. You were an ambitious and driven young person, but when you achieved what you thought yourself wanted, a prestigious job as a university professor, it turned out to not be what it was Cracked up to be. Eric Oliver Yeah, I struggled through grad school like all graduate students. You know, there was a lot of work, a very long time for a very uncertain outcome. And I got my first job at Princeton. And that shocked me as much as all those people around me, I think. And I get to Princeton and I'm like, this is as far as an academic goes, this is as good as it gets. And I get there and it's this wonderful university and I have these amazing students. And I get there and my life kind of falls apart. A long-term relationship I had been in ended very abruptly. I suddenly found myself really depressed, living, you know, alone in central New Jersey. I barely knew anyone. And all of this pain that had come from kind of the earlier stages of my life really welled up in me. And I could barely function in front of my classes. I wasn't eating. I wasn't sleeping. And I have to say that was probably for me one of the kind of low points of my life. And there was this irony of like, oh, my God, I got everything that I worked for and life feels kind of terrible. Shankar Vedantam Understand that it got bad enough that you briefly consider taking a rather drastic step. Tell me what happened in that moment, Eric. Eric Oliver Well, I was standing on the sidewalk of a very, very busy street in New Jersey, and I'm standing there right on the curb, and I was just carrying around so much pain. And it occurred to me that, oh, all this pain would go away if I just stepped in front of the speeding truck that was coming towards me. And then that impulse, I've never had an impulse like that before, scared the daylights out of me. Because A, it was this kind of very strong self-destructive impulse. And B, you know, getting run over by a garbage truck in central New Jersey seemed a truly humiliating way to go. So it was at that moment that I said, okay, I need to fix things. ([Time 0:04:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/983c52c9-5717-4410-8f18-d687f35f9ac4)) - **Know Thyself Originally Meant Know Thy Place** - The ancient injunction know thyself historically meant know thy place in your community, not discover an autonomous inner essence. - Modern individualism from the Enlightenment and capitalism created the expectation of a single, discoverable self. Transcript: Shankar Vedantam Eric, you say that in fact the Greeks themselves did not mean know thyself when they told us know thyself. What did they mean? Eric Oliver They really meant something more like know thy place. And for most of human history, these were probably the best three words you could live by. Most of our ancestors lived in very small tribes tightly bound by custom and tradition. They didn't worry about what made them happy or how they would find true love or what their purpose in life would be, because all of those things were arranged for them. Who they were, who they should love, what they should do, all of those things were prescribed by custom and tradition. And so the best thing they could do was simply to go along with that custom tradition because in return, the tribe would protect them and nurture them and keep them going. It was only around 300 years ago with the birth of the Enlightenment, the rise of market capitalism, the rise of liberalism and liberal democracy where we prioritize individual rights And liberties, that this modern notion of self, this individualized, autonomous, seeking one's own purpose in life self, really came to displace that old meaning of know thyself. ([Time 0:14:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4db6c993-fa58-470d-9ede-5694186fdec6)) - **The Self Is A Multispecies Process** - Human identity is a multiplicity: cellular symbionts, microbiome, and neural subsystems form competing self-processes. - Eric frames the self as a 'we'—an orchestration of biological and psychological processes, not a unitary I. Transcript: Shankar Vedantam You've done a lot of thinking about the different ways in which we can understand how the self is divided. You've thought a lot about Charles Darwin, who introduced the radical notion that humans are animals driven by survival-based instincts. Why would Darwin's idea challenge the notion of a single unitary self, Eric? Eric Oliver Well, once we start looking at our evolutionary lineage, we come to some kind of disturbing qualities about ourselves. For one, everything that is alive on this planet traces back to one common ancestor that lived about 3.7 billion years ago. And scientists have playfully named this creature Luca. And Luca had the seeds of genes that are in every little living thing today. And so one thing that means is that in a lot of ways, everything that we see that's around us are cousins to us. We're all part of the same underlying life force that started burning in this creature that lived 3.7 billion years ago. And everything that we are is in a lot of ways an elaboration on these self-processes that started with LUCA. And it gets even more complicated because once you start looking at your cellular structure, you begin to realize there is no single being there. For example, each of our cells contain mitochondria. And mitochondria are interesting because they have an entirely different DNA than the DNA that programs for us. And so in a lot of ways, we're an amalgamation of two different species at the cellular level. And then of course, we're multicellular. So we're all of these cells coming together and carrying around also a microbiome with thousands of other species kind of living in and amongst us. And even this sense of perception and consciousness that we have is really the orchestration of all of these cells coming together. And once you begin to appreciate that that's your physical reality, that that's what's behind this experience of being, you realize there's not really a single solitary I there. ([Time 0:16:54](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3938384f-1176-4fcd-b428-04059a4c29b7)) - **Inner Conflicts Come From Competing Self Processes** - Different self-processes (animal instincts, linguistic culture, ego) often conflict, producing the sense of inner division. - These processes evolved for prediction, social negotiation, and survival, so clashes (desire vs. morality) are expected. Transcript: Shankar Vedantam It's also the case that I think when we think about ourselves, all of us have had the experience of, you know, wanting to be kind and good people, but then suddenly finding ourselves acting Selfishly. We might want to be patient people, but then we find ourselves losing our temper. So it's almost as if we have, you know, these different cells inside us that have their own agendas. That's exactly right. Eric Oliver And one way to think about that is that your self is not a solitary thing. It's a process or more accurately, a set of processes. And these processes sometimes work together, but sometimes they work at cross purposes. Is your cells metabolizing energy. You have an animal self that's there making maps of reality and making predictions about what it thinks is going to happen next. Of course, we humans have language. So we have this linguistic self where we've created culture and laws and morals and identities. And those are a big part of our self processes as well. And so a lot of these oftentimes are in conflict with one another. Like what our animal self is either predicting or wanting or desiring may be very, very strongly at odds with what our linguistic self tells us we need to be doing at that moment. ([Time 0:19:16](https://share.snipd.com/snip/30efac70-8941-4521-9861-9d97597dcb64)) - **Ice Cream Shows Evolutionary Hijacking** - Eric describes nightly ice cream cravings as an example of ancient reward systems hijacked by modern refined sugar. - He notes sugar signals high calories to an animal brain, so consumer culture exploits those cues. Transcript: Eric Oliver So I have a real weakness i feel uh about ice cream the way that frederick the great felt about tall prussian soldiers uh and i just sugar in particular just has me wrapped around its little Crystalline finger and i know sugar's bad for me i want to be healthy. I see how it jangles my mood, but boy, I just crave it all the time. I just love it, especially late at night. And that's when the ice cream cravings really hit like a freight train. I'm torn between this just deep craving for ice cream and a mind that knows that, you know, slim waste and chubby hubby just are not things that go together. And so the big part of a lot of our self-processes are about negotiating these conflicts. And that craving for ice cream is situated in some deep biological signals in our brains about what sugar rewards for us. When we consume sugar, it's signaling to our brain, hey, this is a lot of calories. This is a great thing for us to eat. And if we were in the wild, we would just be all over it. So in a way, refined sugar hijacks our brains. And then we live in a consumeristic culture where we're just flooded in all of these things that hijack our neural systems. We can see this in our food. We can see this with the internet, which triggers all of these dopamine releases and keeps us coming back for more and more and more. We can see it in just all the consumeristic pleasures that are offered to us in our modern capitalist society. ([Time 0:20:59](https://share.snipd.com/snip/55d5611c-33c2-4a92-a66a-17f96cbf11f5)) - **Free Will Is System Two Interruption** - Much of our behavior runs on System 1 autopilot; System 2 is the reflective controller and corresponds to free will. - Awareness requires decompressing ego processes so system two can intervene. Transcript: Shankar Vedantam Another reason we find ourselves divided against ourselves is that most of us tend to identify with our conscious minds as if that is the whole of who we are, when in fact we are powerfully Driven by forces that are outside of our conscious awareness. Talk about this idea that even at a psychological level, it's not like there's one of us. Eric Oliver Right. And we could see this in what I would describe as sort of this fourth layer of self, which I would call the egoistic self. So all of us have these egos and egos are really just these suite of neural processes that are there to help us get what we want from other people. And our egos, you know, defend our entitlements and our rights, but they also are there to keep us from saying awkward things or things that might later get us in trouble. So we have these suite of ego mechanisms and they get wrapped up in our identities and our aspirations. We can see this oftentimes when we're just daydreaming and oftentimes we drift into thinking, oh, I shouldn't have done that before. That was such a terrible mistake. Or, oh, I can't wait for this to happen and dreaming about the future. And our egos always pull us oftentimes in these very uncomfortable directions here. And we typically then think that that's the totality of ourselves. We oftentimes just get so compressed by these ego processes. They typically dominate our field of consciousness, that we get cut off from all the other things that are going on that are animating us. So, you know, we're so busy thinking about ourselves, we don't really taste the food that we're shoveling into our mouths, or we don't notice the beauty of nature around us, or just the Smaller ways of connecting with another person. And these are really the challenges of self-knowledge because a big part of wanting to know ourselves is getting to decompress from these ego processes so they don't loom so large and Just dominate our conscious attention the way they typically do. Shankar Vedantam Talk a moment about this idea that even as we are going about our lives, you know, trying to shape our lives and doing things consciously, we're often influenced by a host of things that Lie outside of our conscious awareness. I mean, in some ways, this is at the heart of, you know, everything that we have done at Hidden Brain these last many years, which is this idea that there are biases inside us that are operating Outside of our awareness. Eric Oliver Yes, psychologists have a really eloquent way of describing this, and they call this system one and system two thinking. So system one thinking is our fast, intuitive, reflexive types of thinking. It's the kind of information processing that our brains do without really thinking at all. It's much more reflexive and habitual. It's how I know just to walk to work without even thinking about where I'm going, for example. And that typically orients us through a lot of the day and we're not even aware of it. It's just kind of on autopilot. What we're typically aware of is what psychologists call system two thinking. And this is when we encounter something that requires a decision, where we encounter some anomalous information or something that's in conflict. ([Time 0:23:23](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9529ec0a-3cf5-409c-b979-fb36a0466c92)) - **Describe Yourself As A Process Not A Noun** - Expand the vocabulary for your experiences and treat yourself as a changing process rather than a fixed noun. - Eric's course prompts students to map roles, imbalances, and where flow is blocked so processes can be adjusted. Transcript: Eric Oliver Aim is to help my students expand the vocabulary of their own lived experience. And a lot of us, myself included, especially when we were young, go through living according to stories that we probably didn't write for ourselves. So in order to get my parents' love and approval, I need to be a good boy. If I want to have a happy life, I need to have this high status job. If I want to feel fulfilled, I've got to find this sort of perfect love. And these are stories that are oftentimes, you know, fed to us by our parents or culture or other people. And they're not really the stories that we have figured out for ourselves because we don't necessarily know who we are. And if we want to know who we are, we need to begin to have a richer set of concepts that are available to kind of apprehend what's going on behind this experience of being me. Shankar Vedantam I understand that one of the first precepts in this course is to help students understand not to expect a single unified self. Right. Eric Oliver And one of the things I do with the class is I give them a questionnaire and I ask them things like, you know, who are you or what are you? And they typically give me kind of pat answers. You know, I am a sister. I am a daughter. I am a student. And I try to say, well, let's start with that because you're not a sister to me. I'm your professor or you're not a student to your parents. And we begin to see that a lot of the ways that we commonly think of as the singular parts of the self are really just conveniences. Or as I like to describe to them, you know, we are not nouns, we are verbs. There's no part of us, you know, down to the molecular level, up to the cellular level, up to the psychological level, that's static. We are beings of constant change and flow. And so a big part of beginning to apprehend what's going on behind this feeling of being me is seeing what is it that's channeling this flow? How is it arising? Where is it out of balance? Where are blockages? ([Time 0:38:36](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0da530cb-8cec-4806-8d8a-6f14a99e7081)) - **Use Breath Practice To Decompress Ego** - Use contemplative practices to notice effervescence beneath discursive thought; anchor on breath to loosen ego dominance. - Eric meditates ~15–20 minutes daily and uses breath focus to let unhelpful thoughts go. Transcript: Shankar Vedantam One of the philosophers you cite is your own cat. Tell me what your cat has to teach the rest of us, Eric. Eric Oliver Well, one of the things I always notice is that my cat seems to live so much better than I do. She just seems perfectly content in herself. She's happy to stay curled up in a cute little ball. And I've always wondered, like, why is it that my cat, who's a far simpler creature than I am, is so much happier than I am? And more importantly, what is it that I could do to maybe live a little bit more like my cat? And one of the things that I'm burdened with that my cat doesn't have is this discursive mind. The fact that I'm a creature of language and that language dominates my ordinary consciousness. And so a lot of the times I'm there and I'm ruminating and my thoughts are twirling around on one subject or another. And I had this mental dialogue going in my head. And it's kind of the byproduct of being this linguistic being. And so a lot of what I try to do to go throughout my day to live in a less encumbered way is to try to be deliberative, yet not so caught up in my own thoughts. Like this morning, for example, I was getting really nervous about this interview. And I was like, oh, I'm going on Hidden Brain. This is going to be a great thing. But oh, this is a lot of pressure. And I was just thinking like, okay, is this thought helping anything? Is my obsessing over about how well I'm going to perform in this conversation really making my life any better? And the answer, like with a lot of my thoughts was no. And so what can we do in those moments? Well, we can let go of the thought. And to say, okay, that thought's not really working for us. Let's let it go. And maybe just focus on the breath. Because one of the wonderful things about our existence is that the breath is this one kind of neutral constant. It's this remarkably peaceful place of refuge for us. When our minds are in so much storm, the breath is a place that we can always come back to that has no judgment, that has no criticism, that is just the breath. ([Time 0:43:47](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3aaf0f9f-6436-4b94-aa2b-0bdbef79f7ae)) - **Backpacking Reframe Created Cosmic Connection** - On solo backpacking nights, Eric reframed rustles as friendly cousins to feel connected to the tree of life. - That mystical reframe reduced loneliness though he acknowledges it's partly illusory and risky in wilderness. Transcript: Eric Oliver They are. I have one experience in particular that stands out. So when I was younger, I used to go backpacking in the wilderness by myself. And for anyone who's done this, backpacking by yourself in the wilderness is both exhilarating and horrifying. It's really scary, especially at night when you're there and you feel very, very vulnerable. And then there are all the sounds of the wilderness kind of coming up and it's in the dark. And I would often find myself having a hard time falling asleep because I was just convinced that there was some bear or cougar or axe-wielding maniac who was about to come and get me. And one night I said, okay, I'm going to flip the script on this. And I started thinking instead of hearing every rustle in the bushes as an imminent threat, I would think of them as friendly hellos because all of these other creatures are my cousins In the life force. We are all part of the same fire of life that has been going on this planet for at least 3.7 billion years. We're all different expressions of this. To use another metaphor, it's like we're all, there's one big tree of life and we're all just very, very different leaves. And once I was able to sort of tap into that, this really deep feeling of kind of continuity and connection really just enveloped me. That kind of lonely vulnerability that I oftentimes feel and carry around really went away. Now, that was also a bit of an illusion because, yeah, sure, a lot of those animals probably would have happily made a meal out of me, given the opportunity. And it's both kind of a wonderful thing and a mixed blessing for us because on the one hand, it means we're never truly alone. Like I said earlier, we are an amalgamation of different beings coming together that are underneath this experience of an I, a singular I. And part of, I think, knowing ourselves and opening up our minds to ourselves is getting more in touch with a more collective sense of being that, you know, I am just not an I. ([Time 0:50:12](https://share.snipd.com/snip/46747441-18a9-45f4-af85-a74fd8876509)) - **Smartness Is Domain Specific Not Singular** - Intelligence appears fragmented: people can excel at tests yet struggle in everyday tasks, showing multiple cognitive selves. - Scott reframes intelligence as domain-specific abilities rather than a single global trait. Transcript: Shankar Vedantam A listener named Darby. She says she excelled at school. Speaker 4 I did very well on IQ tests as a kid and was told I was very smart by the test results and by my parents and by my grades. I'm good at language and math and seeing patterns. It seems like that's what is tested. Shankar Vedantam But outside of school, Darby didn't feel particularly smart. Speaker 4 Just really like not very aware of my surroundings or the names of things don't stick. I could go on a trip and like really tell you where I was, stuff like that. So it produced a lot of confusion for me. I didn't understand why if I was so smart, why did I not actually seem that smart in the world in a lot of ways? Shankar Vedantam It was almost like Darby had multiple selves, the one who could ace a tricky math test and the one who struggled to navigate an unfamiliar neighborhood. Many people feel this way when it comes to intelligence. We feel smart in some domains, but not in others. We shine on a science test, but cannot figure out how to form a proper thesis for an English paper. We can invent a daring new recipe, but forget to bring our shopping list to the grocery store. Our society tends to hold up highly intelligent people as heroes. Leonardo da Vinci, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein. And for good reason. Their insights have led to countless breakthroughs and innovations. But when we use words like intelligent or smart or gifted, what exactly do we mean? And are we prioritizing a certain kind of intelligence and ignoring the people who don't fit that definition? Are we thinking of intelligence as a noun and not as a verb? ([Time 0:53:49](https://share.snipd.com/snip/df0735c8-0094-46d3-92cb-c0300a9d7ee6)) - **IQ Tests Capture A Narrow Cognitive Slice** - IQ tests measure cognitive slices like vocabulary and working memory but don't capture creativity, character, or many life-relevant talents. - Scott urges caution labeling those slices as the whole of intelligence. Transcript: Scott Barry Kaufman And Alfred Bernet, a Frenchman, was tasked by the Department of Education there to come up with a test that would differentiate those who needed help in school versus those that didn't Need help in school. And it was never thought of by Bernet as an intelligence test. But that was a couple Americans, including Louis Terman at Stanford, who discovered those tests and saw opportunities to measure genius with them. And basically, an individually administered test, like a one-on very intimate test that was created by Alfred Bernays was converted into a multiple-choice mass-produced test that Was used for all sorts of purposes that didn't have its original intent. And sadly, you know, Alfred Bernay died quite angry at Americans and frustrated because the purpose of the test was never used in France, and he saw how it was being used in America. Shankar Vedantam What do IQ tests purport to measure, Scott, and what aspects of intelligence might they be overlooking? Scott Barry Kaufman IQ tests measure a bunch of different cognitive abilities, vocabulary, spatial rotation, working memory. ([Time 0:58:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cc7f479b-97e8-425c-b740-01f4e5695491)) - **Testing Trauma Shaped Scott's Early Identity** - Scott recounts stressful IQ testing as a child with an auditory processing problem that biased results and self-perception. - Early testing left him fearing others thought he was stupid until later re-evaluation. Transcript: Scott Barry Kaufman I had two major IQ testing sessions. One, I could barely hear the test instructor because I had this auditory processing disability at that time. And I remember leaving that feeling like, oh, my gosh, they're going to think I'm really stupid. The second one was to decide what special school I should be sent to in fifth grade. And so just having that in my mind already, that they're giving me a test to figure out, you know, which school for the learning disabled they should send me to. It didn't really set it off on a good foot there. So, yeah, I mean, it's just, there's so much intense, you feel this pressure on you. You feel like some deep part of you is being evaluated. ([Time 1:00:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b65ae9aa-19d9-4cf5-8528-1a3b40f20d41)) - **Tests Can Empower Or Entrap Depending On Use** - Tests can boost confidence for some (Carla) but also create limiting labels; they should expand opportunity, not fix destiny. - Scott supports gifted education while warning against using tests to limit potential. Transcript: Scott Barry Kaufman I think that there's really important nuance here, which is that these tests can be very useful tools, and they shouldn't be used to limit possibility or limit potential. Both things can be true at the same time. It's not a contradiction to say that the tests are reliable and valid in the sense they're measuring a certain slice of human cognition, which some people score very high in those things. And it can actually tap into some people's hidden potential for sure. For sure. I i imagine that's a lot if not most uh physics professors you know did well in an iq test when they're younger or you know certain fields um it can kind of uh test maybe your promise for certain Things um but i think that that's the nuance we need is to simultaneously acknowledge that there are people who are intellectually gifted in a certain way that deserve just as much appreciation And acceleration as any other student. I'm an advocate of gifted education. My whole thing is expanding the pie and doing universal screening and a lot of other nuanced stuff that we could talk about. ([Time 1:02:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/afe9e2dc-7e13-43f4-a657-4a45e3ff1d8f)) - **Shift Funding From Tests To Programs** - Reallocate assessment funding toward programming and universal screening so resources follow need, not arbitrary cutoffs. - Scott would redistribute money from testing to enrichment to expand access and reduce Matthew effects. Transcript: Scott Barry Kaufman Yeah, you know, if more humbly, if I was Secretary of Education, then what I would do. And I used to dream of being Secretary of Education when I was younger. But what I would definitely emphasize is the fact that policies matter. And we put so much of our funding and money into assessment that there's very little left over for programming. And I would absolutely redistribute that and acknowledge that programming will enhance all students. ([Time 1:05:34](https://share.snipd.com/snip/28ee7c14-d2c6-4aea-991b-21ccb9786ff3)) - **Resilience Often Hides Behind Test Underperformance** - Resilience and adaptability often go unmeasured, yet they reveal hidden potential hindered by working memory overload and unstable environments. - Scott notes Chi's frequent moves taxed memory, obscuring her real abilities on tests. Transcript: Scott Barry Kaufman Scott? Yeah, I'm really touched by Chi's comments. I got chills listening to it, and I'm a little bit emotional. What kind of stinks a little bit is that, yes, Chi showed so much resiliency, but none of that counts. There are so many things that just don't count. They're, you know, they're not like being valued. They're not being, because they're not being measured, you know, and there's so much that she is showing the school system she's actually able to withstand and the ways that she's able To draw connections between different cultures. And there's so much, there's so much, she's brimming with so much potential, but because of her situation, her working memory is being overloaded. And so she's not able to demonstrate in testing situations that make huge demands on memory, what she's really capable of. ([Time 1:14:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c458d445-24a9-4292-98bc-89e6891868fd)) - **Build Strength Based Plans For Neurodivergent Students** - Create individualized, strength-based educational plans for neurodivergent students instead of forcing uniform curricula. - Scott recommends leveraging ADHD creativity, dyslexic business skills, and autistic special interests to design custom learning paths. Transcript: Scott Barry Kaufman It illustrates is that while the idea of learning styles has been discredited in the field of educational psychology, if you think of in terms of visual learning or auditory learning, Kinesthetic learning, that the research actually does show that learning styles is not very predictive. Just focusing on a singular way of learning doesn't seem to be the magic ticket to learning. I think this illustrates the fact that giving more avenues and more opportunities to learn something through multiple ways of getting at it, can be hugely beneficial to a student who May be limited in a particular way of learning something. You know, for all students, increasing the opportunities for different ways of encoding the same stimuli, whether it's note-taking, whether it's asking questions, seeing the teacher After class and getting that kind of reinforcement. The more reinforcement, the better. So we should be giving those enrichment opportunities across as many modalities as possible to all students. It's going to benefit learning for all students. Shankar Vedantam We heard from many listeners who are diagnosed with dyslexia or ADHD or other learning differences at various points in their education. You mentioned to me that you had an auditory processing issue as a young student. What do you think our educational system should do to support students with these sorts of challenges who may be labeled not gifted? Scott Barry Kaufman That's the question, because school systems are not designed to support neurodivergent individuals. And that is like my life's mission is to figure out ways in which not just the school system, but organizational structure, society can be more welcoming and de-stigmatized and in a Way normalize the fact that we're all freaking weird, you know, like we're all are. And yet we're all expected to be the same. And you go down the line, there are very specific needs that all these different forms of neurodivergency take, where there could be custom tailored, individualized self-actualization Plans that really build on the strengths that a lot of these kids have, as opposed to just focusing on their weaknesses. That would be the big one. You take ADHD, you know, there's rich imagination there. There's rich creativity that is being just squelched because you're forcing them to focus on a boring lecture, which drives them, you know, their executive functioning crazy. You know, it's really difficult. It's difficult. If you want to take dyslexia, for instance, a lot of kids with dyslexia are going to be great at business. You know, if you give them opportunities to sell things to other students or to create a business, figure out a business plan to go out there and act and move and not be forced to just read, You know, you'll see that they have amazing capacities there. Autism, you know, if you want to look at autism, you can say, well, wow, if you listen to their special interest area, if you listen, if you really ask them, you know, what are you passionate About? ([Time 1:33:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6c951f4e-64f2-43e7-82a6-6395a564df8a)) - **Choose Yourself To Build Inner Anchor** - Practice self-anchoring: lead with your passions and values rather than seeking constant external validation. - Scott left special education by choosing himself and asking for opportunities that matched his strengths. Transcript: Scott Barry Kaufman Yeah, well, first I want to say relatable. You know, Jennifer's not alone, and it's such a pervasive, common feeling and question. But I think for a lot of people who feel things very deeply and are really caring, compassionate humans, they have a lot of trouble with something I call self-anchoring. So they'll constantly be scanning others for approval and they won't ever feel like they can feel confident in themselves or feel worthy unless someone else deems that they're allowed To feel worthy. And I think that self-anchoring is a process that takes a lot of work, but it's a skill set. I have come such a long way and I still have a long way to go, my friend. But when I think about how I used to be and how I would never have any sense of my own self, I was always just looking at how other people were judging me and I would internalize that. I realized that life doesn't have to be that way. I realized that you can lead with yourself. You don't have to wait for the world to tell you who you are to act or be a certain way. You can learn self-anchoring and self-leadership skills. Shankar Vedantam Can you give me a couple of aspects of the self-anchoring process, Scott, things that you did yourself to help you anchor yourself rather than look to others to give you a sense of your Self-worth? Scott Barry Kaufman Yeah, it's all about leading with your passions, with your values, with the things that you know are true and valid about yourself. The earliest example of that is when I took myself out of special education. I chose myself. At that moment, I was in a position where the school system was telling me I was a certain way. And I was like, you know what, I'm going to change the script. I'm going to tell the school system that I can handle it. ([Time 1:38:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3f35831f-c5d0-4114-ab5b-e7fb2ffd98d1))