# Radical Acceptance  ## Episode metadata - Episode title: Radical Acceptance - Show: Hidden Brain - Owner / Host: Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam - Guests: [Dave Evans](https://share.snipd.com/person/028b5d26-b101-4282-b192-4e75148309c4), [Sarah Schnitker](https://share.snipd.com/person/263d4cd5-acc7-46a5-a5e2-317509a5636b) - Episode publish date: 2026-05-04 - Episode AI description: Dave Evans, design-thinking scholar who applies creative tools to life’s hard choices, and Sarah Schnitker, psychologist studying patience, return to tackle radical acceptance and patience. They explore accepting harsh realities, choosing presence over denial, designing a coherent life, simple flow in daily tasks, and practical strategies to grow patience. - Duration: 01:30:05 - Episode URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/episode/ddd8c061-897f-4c6e-99ba-8fc626a19145) - Show URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/show/c94a26f6-1a03-4020-a574-bec10c59f432) - Export date: 2026-07-08T01:13:38 ## Snips ### [How Blunt Truth Helped A Friend Die Well](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bec6c3ed-4be6-4047-8336-5c39cd129935) 🎧 04:40 - 12:03 (07:23) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/a68e347d-aa9b-4299-9cd2-413202530cef" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Dave Evans told the story of his friend Gary who repeatedly had strokes and sought a meaning-driven cure. - After bluntly suggesting genetic causes and mortality, Gary found peace, lived purposefully, and later died well. #### 💬 Quote > Do you think that might be it? > — Dave Evans Dave Evans recounting his conversation with Gary about the cause of his strokes #### 📚 Transcript **Dave Evans:** what he told you. Well, his problem was he was having strokes. And it turned out he came from a long line of people who have strokes. He was a technical writer in Silicon Valley. We were in Silicon Valley. And he was having a good career. And his problem was, how could he get back to working full time? He'd had to take a stop out the way his stroke had hit him, was getting in the way of his ability to work. And he was wondering if I could help him figure out a way to get his skills back to where he could get back on the job. So **Shankar Vedantam:** his problem was, he said, I have a job that I like. I'm doing what I want to do, but I have this pesky little thing, which is my body is not allowing me to do what I want to do. And I want you to get my body out of the way so I can go back to doing what I want to do. Right. He said, well, you know, this, I **Dave Evans:** mean, the problem is, Dave, I, you know, my father died of a stroke. My brother died of a stroke in his late fifties. He was about 52 at the time, something like that. He said, so I don't want to be that guy. Why is this happening? Everything's got to happen for a reason. So it must be that there's something I'm supposed to learn. So if I were, if I could learn what it is that this malady is trying to teach me, then maybe it can stop and I can get my life back. So what I really need to do is figure out why I need to **Shankar Vedantam:** learn something from this and what is it. Can you help me with that? I'm wondering how you responded to this request of his to help him understand what his body was trying to tell him, the message it was trying to give him. I **Dave Evans:** was stuck a little bit because I thought, oh my God, I don't think that's what's going on. And here's this guy who's a lovely guy. And the truth is, he's dying. The truth is, he's got a severe medical threat and it's not going well. And he's counting on me to help him get someplace I don't think he can go. So what I was really struggling with is, how do I deliver the bad news that, Gary, I think you're asking the wrong question. I'm **Shankar Vedantam:** wondering whether Gary was getting feedback from other people that was trying to answer the question that he wanted answered, even if it wasn't the right question. Well, yes. **Dave Evans:** Unfortunately, he was surrounded with well-meaning, cheerful people who wanted him to feel better. And so there were a group of guys he regularly had lunch with, and they were encouraging, like, you can do this, Gary. And he goes, I'm going to try to get back to work. They go, that's great. You keep going, buddy. So they all were trying to cheerlead. And unfortunately, they were cheerleading him down where I thought it was a dead end that was going to end very, very badly. So there's the old phrase, the road to hell is paved with good intention. There's a lot of good intention surrounding him, but frankly, I think it was going a terrible place. **Shankar Vedantam:** It must have placed you in a very difficult situation, Dave, because a friend is coming to you with this very serious problem. You feel like your friend is not looking at reality for what it is. Other friends are basically encouraging Gary in his delusion. What did you do? Well, keep in mind, I met Gary at church, which means, **Dave Evans:** you know, he was a person of faith. And that was a big part of the story. And so it wasn't just what's the lesson that my body's trying to teach me, but what is God trying to tell me? Because pretty sure this must be a lesson God is giving me, that if I can persevere through and learn the lesson, then I get to get out of jail. And I didn't think that was likely to happen, despite the fact that I, too, happen to believe in God, God doesn't fix every problem. God doesn't instruct himself and miraculously fix everything. That's a whole different understanding. And it's nice to think that's what's coming your way, but you're not in charge of that. You may not be the miracle child. And so I asked him, point black note, Gary, why is it you believe this? And he said, well, what else could it possibly be? There's got to be a reason for this. I said, well, let's look at what the other reasons might be. Could we just do that? I said, well, okay. He said, what do you mean? I said, well, maybe the reason you're having strokes, Gary, isn't because God is going to use you as the demonstration of a miracle, but maybe you're having strokes because you've got really crappy DNA and brain chemistry that breaks down at about 50 to 55 years old. Because, you know, we live in a broken world and some of that brokenness falls on everybody. We're all going to by the way. All we're talking about is timing. And I told him the story of the head of the gerontology department at Harvard Medical School, who I got stuck on the ground during an ice storm in Chicago with years ago, who reminded me almost nobody dies of old age. They die of disease or starvation or an accident. I said, so Gary, you're not going to die of old age. You're going to die of something else, and maybe you're going to die of a stroke. So maybe what's going on is, how do you live well through being a person who comes from a long line of guys with bad stroke DNA? And he just stared at me. He said, do you think that might be it? I said, well, Gary, lots of people die in their 50s. You might be one of them. He said, well, if that's what's going on, what do I do? I said, well, you do this as well as you can. So we had a long conversation about that. It **Shankar Vedantam:** must have been very difficult for you to say what you said to him, Dave, but also very difficult for him to listen to it. This is not the kind of thing **Dave Evans:** that a friend is supposed to tell you. Well, this is where we make the distinction between nice and loving. You know, are you trying to be nice to somebody or are you trying love them? And sometimes that love, I don't mean tough love and you have to beat them up. I wasn't trying to be unkind. But if it's true that he's going to die of a stroke, which he did about four strokes later, then either he's going to do that and be blindsided by it and terrified at the moment of death and leave his family in some despair about his final days, or he's got a little more time to do this well. So what's the kindest thing I can do? The kindest thing I can do is give him a shot at the invitation to actually find the meaning and the joy that is available. I'm not in charge of his fixing his brain, but I might be able to give him an invitation to a little more life-giving experience than he's currently having. **Shankar Vedantam:** I'm wondering how Gary took your advice in what he did with it. **Dave Evans:** Well, we had that conversation, and he received it reasonably well. But, I mean, it was really hard, and it was pretty quiet. And his wife, Kathy, was in the kitchen and over here, you know, and kind of gave us some space. And I didn't really know what was going on. I bumped into his wife in the supermarket about three weeks later, and she walks up to me. She goes, what was it you said to Gary? And I thought, oh, man, this is going to go badly. And I said, well, this is what I said. And she said, well, it made all the difference in the world. He's a changed man. He's finally at peace. It was amazing. Thank you. And she burst into tears. So, phew, you know, dodged that bullet. --- ### [Choosing Presence After A Terminal Diagnosis](https://share.snipd.com/snip/97f213b4-333e-45aa-ac33-ab692f583ee7) 🎧 14:34 - 17:02 (02:28) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/8ef95db3-6a01-4ff0-954a-53dc81959510" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Dave and his wife Claudia received a terminal cancer diagnosis and chose to treat it as sad but not tragic. - They accepted reality quickly, lived nine intense months together, and Dave later said it was one of his most wonderful years. #### 💬 Quote > The one-liner is, I'm dying. It's sad, but not tragic. > — Dave Evans Dave Evans on Claudia's terminal cancer diagnosis and their response #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** Well, **Dave Evans:** at the end of February, we were reeling from the fact that these things might be coming, just the news coming out of China was happening. And then on March 8th, you know, I took my wife Claudia to the local little walk-in clinic because she'd gotten her Christmas cold in New York in late December. We often go to New York between Christmas and New Year's for fun. And she always comes home with a Christmas cold, but it held on and held on and it lasted through January. And was coughing all the time. I honey, this is not okay. So we went in to the clinic and the clinic said, oh, there's more going on here. You need to go to the ER. We went to the ER, and then they pumped out a liter and a half of fluid from her lungs and said, we need to test this. And so we're going to send it over to the lab to test, and we're going to send it back to Stanford. And so then a couple of weeks after the tests were all done, we got to go on March 8th to Stanford to hear the news. And the news was that she had terminal cancer. She was already metastasized four times, and she had six to 24 months to live. I **Shankar Vedantam:** cannot imagine how this news must have struck you, Dave. How **Dave Evans:** did you and Claudia react? Well, we knew things weren't good when they pumped all that junk out of her lungs, but we didn't know it was fatal. And so jumping from you've got a really bad bronchitis to you're dying was quite a leap. It hit us very hard, but it just hit us. And we said, oh, what do we do with this? Well, the first thing we said, we've got to receive this. So we didn't tell anybody. We sat on it privately for about eight days with the idea being let it sink in and then decide what's the story? What are we doing here? We have all these people. And at the end of that week, we if actually Claudia concluded, she says, here it is. The one-liner is, I'm dying. It's sad, but not tragic. She was 69 at the time. Had lived a very full life. There was really nothing left on our bucket list, nothing we needed to do, lots we wanted to do. Hadn't even begun to be retired people. But nonetheless, no regrets. And so she chose to live into her final months saying, sooner than I had in mind. But let's be honest. This is just sad, not tragic. Let's make the most of the time. And that's what we announced to our family and friends. And that begat what turned out to be nine months. She got nine months. She died in December. --- ### [Acceptance Is Step Zero In Designing Your Life](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3c4540d6-356b-40f4-8041-4e82eb0b3f2c) 🎧 20:34 - 23:26 (02:52) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/815e8234-7dc4-41c2-b66a-1fa792d46c74" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Radical acceptance is step zero in design thinking: fully accept current reality before empathy or ideation. - Dave argues resisting 'what I had in mind' blinds people to how their prior choices produced current consequences. #### 💬 Quote > Radical acceptance is literally as best you possibly can to eliminate any vestige of resistance that this is, in fact, exactly the way things currently are. > — Dave Evans Dave Evans defining radical acceptance in the design process #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** Before we can figure out where we want to go, we have to fully accept where we are. Yeah, **Dave Evans:** acceptance is step zero. Before you can even begin, formally the first step in design is empathy, deeply understanding what's going on. But before you even do that deep understanding, you have to be willing to accept, and that is what is in fact true, because reality is the only place things actually work. Radical acceptance is literally as best you possibly can to eliminate any vestige of resistance that this is, in fact, exactly the way things currently are. **Shankar Vedantam:** So as people are designing their lives or asking to design their lives, they're often asking, you know, where I want to go. And they're often upset or angry with their present circumstances in some way. They basically say, it's not fair. You know, I did all the things I should have done, but I'm not where I should be in my career. Or I, you know, I've done everything that I should, but I'm not in a happy relationship, and I should be in a happy relationship. And so they have a sense of fairness, a sense of anger. Talk about how, in some ways, these get in the way of seeing reality accurately. It's **Dave Evans:** all about this what I had in mind thing. Now let's go back to Alison. We talked about in the previous episode, you know, here's, I'm talking to a group of accountants and here's this lovely middle-aged woman and she's reasonably happily married and got two reasonably decent kids and a reasonably paid off car, a small business working with a lot of other small businesses, except she's a little bit bored to tears and mostly just not feeling it. And what did I do wrong? Well, she didn't do anything wrong. I said, look, why did you pick accounting? Well, you know, because it's predictable and I really like having the right answer. I like knowing I've done the right thing well. I go, great. So you're in a very uncreative business because you like stability. And why did you pick small businesses, you know, as your clients? Well, you know, they're cash-operated businesses and they pay in cash, you know, and I don't want to be in debt. And I understand their business because they're kind of like me. So I think I understand that, you know, that's something I can really handle pretty well. said, oh, so you don't want to go outside your comfort zone because you really like being in your comfort zone. That's great, you know. we ended up describing that she got exactly what she wanted, which came with predictability and stability. It looks like stasis and it's not very creative and it's not very exciting and it's not very scary either. So she got exactly what she wanted. There's no surprise here whatsoever. And so what you sort of forgot to accept, Allison, is that that stability is not the same as a high learning curve. And that small business is not going to make you rich because you're operating on a cash basis. You're not, you know, working 80 hours week to try to get founder stock in some venture capital-based firm. So these things are exactly what you wanted all along. They just come with consequences. So can we accept the fact that you got exactly what you wanted? And now how do you make the most of what that is? --- ### [When Noble Aspirations Clash With Harsh Reality](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2f45ed7f-a6b1-49ce-b00d-75b239ead853) 🎧 24:03 - 26:07 (02:03) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/c7a56306-21a6-482d-b29f-007d3b18b956" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Dave told of 'George' who started a fair trade company in West Africa that ultimately failed despite years of investment. - George kept pouring time and money in, struggled to accept reality, and later became bitter before recovering. #### 💬 Quote > How committed to reality are you versus how committed to what you're aspiring towards? > — Dave Evans Dave Evans on George's fair trade venture and the danger of ignoring reality #### 📚 Transcript **Dave Evans:** well, we'll call him George. And he was working at Hitec, and he was doing well, you know, but he was also a caring guy, and he was involved in his local church and in his community, and came along the idea of fair trade and working with organizations, particularly in West Africa, where we're putting villagers to work and trying to help them engage in the capitalistic world by going through fair trade companies. And he got this notion that what he needed to do was start a fair trade company that would create these craft companies in West Africa. And he not only decided that that was something that he thought was really interesting, but that was really what God wanted him to do, that that was going to make the world a better place. He was going to lift people out of poverty and he was going to do this noble thing. And off he went, and he left his home country in Europe, and flew to the, moved his family, went through all this incredible effort, you know, which was a very noble idea, but it didn't work out the way he had in mind. What **Shankar Vedantam:** happened? Why did it not work out? Well, **Dave Evans:** this is one of those situations where, you know, how committed to reality are you versus how committed to what you're aspiring towards? It's lovely to have an aspiration, but is that aspiration getting in the way of reality? And so he starts this company, off it goes. Of course, it's a very slow beginning, you know, and it reaches a certain degree of success. And he then wants to grow to the next stage. And in fact, not only does it not go to the next stage, it starts to falter. And so this thing begins to fail a little bit. And then he tries to shoulder it up again with his own labor and a little bit of his own money. And he keeps putting good money after bad in the year after year. And he does this for a period of about five years and finally had to set the company down. The company so failed, you know, that his investors and supporters said, look, it's too much. You got to give up. But he went bitter because for a couple of years after that, he just couldn't, you know, God's punishing me. And I said, George, look, I mean, you tried real hard. You gave it the old college try, and it didn't work out. --- ### [Accept Facts So You Can Act Effectively](https://share.snipd.com/snip/15533a7b-edad-442f-92e7-3790a3f08eaa) 🎧 27:16 - 28:29 (01:13) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/22da90ba-0d2a-45f2-9f66-093cfccf925f" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Accept without endorsing: recognize immutable facts so you can act effectively rather than stay stuck in protest. - Dave advised accepting a bad boss's true nature to minimize harm and plan an exit strategy. #### 💬 Quote > You can't be effective unless you can accept this... nothing you're going to do is going to change his mind. > — Dave Evans Dave Evans advising a mentee to accept a terrible boss in order to act #### 📚 Transcript **Dave Evans:** really glad you asked the question. It comes up all the time, and it's a crucial question. And it's one that some people really, really struggle with, particularly around, you know, moral issues or social issues. In fact, I'll give a very real example. A lovely young woman I've been mentoring for over 20 years, she's my chosen daughter, you know, found herself once again working for a ridiculously horrible boss. I this is a bona fide bad boss. I said, you've got to accept that this guy is a raging, nasty person, and it's not going to get any better. She goes, but I can't accept that. That means I'm going to be oppressed forever. And I said, wait, wait, wait. You can't be effective unless you can accept this. You've got to accept that nothing you're going to do is going to change his mind. Nothing you're going to do is going to make him happy. He's always going to be unhappy. He's always going to treat you badly. But what you can do is you can minimize the damage. What you can do is you can get the heck out of there eventually, which he did. And the reason that's always empowering is that it gives you the capacity to actually do what can be effectively done rather than find yourself simply standing outside of reality like you're locked outside. Well, standing outside and banging on the door of reality and complaining doesn't change a thing. --- ### [An Artist Who Chose Poverty And Then Flourished](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8f2a6ec3-9850-4d18-b090-149dfe040771) 🎧 29:24 - 31:33 (02:09) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/d54fd981-dbff-4971-ab29-8a2d7fbcc26a" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Arnie, an artist, accepted lifelong poverty early and then fully leaned into his art, later living simply in a warehouse and continuing creative work into old age. - Acceptance let him stop fighting circumstances and savor reading, writing, and presence even while physically frail. #### 💬 Quote > I realize if I'm going to be an artist, I just have to accept that I'm going to be poor for the rest of my life. > — Dave Evans Dave Evans sharing Arnie's lesson about accepting the tradeoffs of an artist's life #### 📚 Transcript **Dave Evans:** In fact, I talked to him just recently. We actually had the privilege of taking him to his 90th birthday dinner about a year ago. He's pushing 91. It turns out the lesson that probably most formatively impacted Arnie Young in his life to become a good acceptor of reality was he was trying to become an artist. He was a fine artist. And he decided he wanted to do that as a living, not on the side. You know, he knew he could be an amateur artist, you know, and make a good living doing other kinds of things. But no, he wanted to walk his talk and do his rather avant-garde kind of art. And he was struggling and having a hard time. And then he said an interesting thing. He said, and suddenly I realized something that made all the difference. I said, well, Arnie, what's that? He said, I realize if I'm going to be an artist, I just have to accept that I'm going to be poor for the rest of my life. He said, and once I accepted that, it was really quite easy. And I said, how old are you? He said, oh, early 30s. I said, whoa. So now, so he's got some precedent there. He made a big realization and it became easy. I mean, you know, hand to mouth and struggling and all kinds of things, but easy in that he's not fighting it. lives in an artist's installation. Many years ago, a group of artists got together with a patron and found an old warehouse and some of the other warehouse into studio apartments. And he's been there for decades, you know, living in very Spartan digs, sitting in his wheelchair, barely able to move. He sleeps about 17 hours a day now because his body is failing. But when you walk into the room and see him and go, Arnie, how's it going? He oh, have you ever read Balzac? He's amazing. Come over here. And he's been reading Balzac. And so he's reading, he's writing his memoir. He's, you know, using a big magnifying glass so that he can see the keyboard. What he's doing is leaning all the way in, being fully available to the life that is in front of him and wasting no energy whatsoever mourning what's been lost. --- ### [A Sunset That Turned Strangers Into A Community](https://share.snipd.com/snip/112eb0f3-1ceb-457d-bcf9-d14a8e833fbf) 🎧 34:48 - 35:48 (00:59) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/5e463b9b-4b2a-4876-bf4a-021e3c82b0c2" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - While driving Highway 1, Dave stopped to watch an extraordinary sunset and saw dozens of strangers gather and share a transcendent moment. - The communal awe led people to exchange names and plan annual remembrance calls. #### 💬 Quote > The sudden... community of sunset appreciators all start looking at each other, hooping and hollering. > — Dave Evans Dave Evans recounting the shared communal reaction to a spectacular sunset #### 📚 Transcript **Dave Evans:** the sun went down. And of course, we think that happens most days, but some days it happens differently. And this was one of those sunsets. I'm along Highway 1, the famous California coastal highway near Half Moon Bay, and the sun was going down, and it was drop dead, knock your eyes out gorgeous in a stunningly cosmic way. I've seen so many gorgeous sunsets. My home in Santa Cruz is actually on the water. I get to see the sunset almost every day, but this one was really blow your brains out amazing, So much so that I had to stop the car. I stopped the car. I got out of the car and then everybody else, the entire highway stopped. All these people lined up on the side of the road, standing there gawking at the sunset for about seven minutes until it slipped below the waves. And then literally a moment after that last little bit of light went below the horizon, you heard this cry, this, whoa! --- ### [Use The Compass Exercise To Find Coherency](https://share.snipd.com/snip/481e1b4e-3d3a-4995-a681-11e348f3aed8) 🎧 42:49 - 44:40 (01:51) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/64db0375-15b5-4167-b5f1-6c9a26561ea3" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Do the compass exercise: write your life view, work view, and current story to reveal core values. - Use those three short narratives to reverse-engineer your compass values and discover coherency. #### 💬 Quote > When you take these three little narratives... you've brought a surprisingly good description of who you currently are. > — Dave Evans Dave Evans explaining the compass exercise for aligning life and work #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** Well, **Dave Evans:** we have you write three short little pieces of work. You know, we look at it real high, pretty high, and down to the ground. We just have three levels of pretty much the same thing. So the life view is a page, a page and a half of your answer to the questions. What are your thoughts? What are your ideas about the most important things? I mean, what is life for? What does it mean to be a person? Is there really love? Is there a God? Whatever you think the most important questions that define reality are, what are your thoughts about that? That's your life view, or what used to be called your worldview. Next, we have your work view. Now, for most people, the overwhelmingly largest expression of their human energy is what we call work, whether it's what you do for money or a living, but your particular engagement, your role in the human adventure, how you're spending spending time during the day. That is the largest single chunk of the lived experience. You spend more time doing that than cooking and eating, more time doing that than raising kids, more time doing that than, you know, making love to your spouse, whatever it is. The work thing is the big dog always has been, probably always will be, AI notwithstanding. So we say, what's your work view? Meaning, what do you believe work is for? Is it to just keep you busy? Is it to make a living? Is it to make your world a better place? Is it the place where community can be experienced as we collaborate? What are your thoughts about what good work really means to you? So what does life mean to you? What does work mean to you? Then the last question is just, what's your current story? You know, if you've just got an elevator ride, you've got a minute or two to tell somebody, what's currently going on with you? What's the current caption, the long caption of your story? So when you take these three little narratives, my view of life, my view of work, my view of my present experience of being me, in those three things, you've brought a surprisingly good description of who you currently are. --- ### [Simple Flow Makes Everyday Tasks Meaningful](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4c7422d8-7175-47a4-9779-8a0afa42a2b4) 🎧 45:11 - 48:31 (03:20) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/68af238c-5656-4dcd-8265-5cf35f7d6e3d" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Flow occurs when task challenge and skill match; Evans distinguishes apex flow from simple flow that anyone can choose. - Simple flow is deliberately engaging mundane tasks (e.g., chopping onions) to be fully present by choice. #### 💬 Quote > I can choose not to let boredom come in. I can really enjoy the sharpness of the knife. > — Dave Evans Dave Evans describing simple flow using chopping onions as an example #### 📚 Transcript **Dave Evans:** flow, the psychology of optimal experience, was the book written over 20 years ago now by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the well-known psychologist of flow, who in collaboration with Martin Seligman from Pennsylvania, started the whole positive psychology movement about 20 years ago. Good people doing good work. And he defines flow as the experience of full and deep engagement where time stands still and so on that can occur when you're operating in the flow channel. And the flow channel is a place of experience where the task you are currently involved in and your skills to perform that task are in approximate balance. You're neither over-talented, so you're bored, nor under-talented, so you're anxious and nervous, you might fail, but you're really right at the edge of your capability, which means this task is demanding your full attention. That's the flow zone, the flow channel. And in that flow channel, you might, not necessarily, you might drop into the flow experience of suddenly finding yourself fully deeply engaged, time stands still, and when it's over, the whole thing seemed very satisfying. It's a really wonderful experience, sometimes called getting in the zone. Now, our thoughts on that, by the way, are that's a great starting place, but unfortunately, the way people think of flow is they think of it at this very high level of engagement, which we refer to as apex flow, which is great. You know, like when you're having that incredible performance or writing that beautiful sonnet, that's an experience of that kind. I was in flow watching that sunset. These are apex experiences. And too many people think that's the minimum requirement for being in flow. And we're going to make a suggestion that simple flow is available much more of the time to many more people, and we all need to access it to have more meaning. **Shankar Vedantam:** What is simple flow, Dave? And how is this contrasted with the world of transactional thinking that **Dave Evans:** we are so often engaged in? Well, one of the things that's true when I'm in flow is I have to be in the present moment. I'm engaged enough. And again, the traditional definition of flow, which you've really done is you've said, I need to find a task that demands so much of me, it will suck all of my attention and in so doing, prevent me from being distracted by other things. And that will allow me to fully engage the present moment. So what I've really done is I've outsourced my attention to the challenge of my task. And that can work. But what we're saying is, look, you're an autonomous being. You've got some free will here. You've got some power. You can actually make some choices to expand the flow channel and make it what we call the simple flow channel. So let's say I'm doing a task that frankly doesn't require everything I can do. I'm just chopping onions to prepare for soup. I'm making soup for dinner. I'm chopping an onion. Not that hard. I'm a little bored doing it. But hey, I can still be fully present to that task. So what I can do is I can choose not to let boredom come in. I can really enjoy the sharpness of the knife. I can feel the crispness of the onion pushing back. I can allow myself by choice to fully engage that experience for five or 10 minutes, and I can drop into flow by choice. I can make it more available. --- ### [Flow Counters Transactional Future Thinking](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1aa042c2-c24a-40e7-8323-914499daa34a) 🎧 47:56 - 50:46 (02:49) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/f40426b5-3162-4d47-bb66-d49305ce2e0c" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Transactional thinking is future-focused and undermines presence; flow is an antidote because it demands present-moment attention. - Evans warns against turning mindfulness into another performance metric—practices should not become transactions. #### 💬 Quote > As soon as I start thinking about the other thing, I fall out of flow. > — Dave Evans Dave Evans on why flow prevents transactional, future-oriented thinking #### 📚 Transcript **Dave Evans:** So let's say I'm doing a task that frankly doesn't require everything I can do. I'm just chopping onions to prepare for soup. I'm making soup for dinner. I'm chopping an onion. Not that hard. I'm a little bored doing it. But hey, I can still be fully present to that task. So what I can do is I can choose not to let boredom come in. I can really enjoy the sharpness of the knife. I can feel the crispness of the onion pushing back. I can allow myself by choice to fully engage that experience for five or 10 minutes, and I can drop into flow by choice. I can make it more available. And anytime I'm in flow, I'm in the present moment, and that's a good place to be. And of course, in contrast with the transactional world, **Shankar Vedantam:** in a flow state, you're not only thinking about the end goal. You're not thinking about this destination disease that you talked about earlier, where you're always asking, what is this going to be in the future? You're actually in the present. **Dave Evans:** Yes. As it turns out, transactional thinking and the transactional world that we spend a lot of our time in almost invariably is future-oriented, about the outcome that is yet to be realized. And so one of the reasons flow is an antidote to transactionality is I have to be— as soon as I start thinking about the other thing, I fall out of flow. In **Shankar Vedantam:** some ways, I'm hearing echoes of this idea in what meditation can be like, Dave. You know, people talk about meditation, of course, you can sit cross-legged and in a quiet room with your eyes closed. But people also talk about how you can have walking meditation or talking meditation, or in your case, chopping and onion meditation, where you bring your full self to the work that you're doing. You're fully present. And in some ways, that's not different than sitting cross-legged in a quiet room your eyes closed. Yes. **Dave Evans:** So when we talk about this reframing of there's really two worlds out there. In fact, we actually know from neurological research, especially the research done by Lisa Miller at Columbia, that these two halves of your brain are fundamentally wired differently. There's what she calls the achieving brain and there's the awakened brain. And they're quite different. The achieving brain is always working in a system, has always got a closed-end outcome, and it's going for those results. And the achieving brain is getting an awful lot of stimulation these days. The awakened brain is present at that present moment. And so the mindfulness movement, you know, these various practices, one of the things we're reminding people is don't turn those into transactions, too. We a lot of people turn their practice into yet another transaction. I had a really good sit this morning. I nailed my yoga practice. I had a personal best in yoga today. Okay, you just turned a practice into a performance. As opposed to realizing while you're walking along, yes, you can have a walking meditation, you can have a chopping meditation, you can have a driving meditation. --- ### [Narrow Goals To Preserve Patience After Loss](https://share.snipd.com/snip/17672200-7c26-4aed-8023-e1cc37dccc58) 🎧 58:52 - 01:05:50 (06:57) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/2a26f6f5-53b6-4411-8846-fb99e23b12d1" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - To grow patience after major setbacks, select a small set of key goals and optimize toward them rather than trying to do everything. - Sarah Schnitker recommends narrowing focus so limited resources preserve patience and progress after diagnoses like MS. #### 💬 Quote > By homing in on what is really critical, it allows you to keep your patience and not to become so dysregulated by all the things that are really challenging. > — Sarah Schnitker Sarah Schnitker advising people with major health setbacks on cultivating patience #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** She recently joined us for a conversation titled The Practice of Patience. Today, she's back to respond to your questions and stories in our popular segment, Your Questions Answered. Sarah Schnitker, welcome to Hidden Brain. **Sarah Schnitker:** Hi, Shankar. Thanks for having me back. **Shankar Vedantam:** Sarah, I'd like to start by asking you to share a story that's set in a place where a lot of people can find their patience is tested. I understand that when you got married, you and your husband bought annual passes to Disneyland. But when you got to the, quote, happiest place on earth, you noticed something quite different than what you expected. Tell me what you saw. Yes, **Sarah Schnitker:** we love Disneyland. And like many do feel it's one of the happiest places you can be in the world. But we got there and quickly noticed lots of people were not happy. Children in particular were often crying and whining. You saw other couples maybe getting frustrated with each other and with the wait. And really, it struck me that Disneyland and other amusement parks are just an exercise in patience. You're waiting a ton of time in line for a very short experience. Maybe that only lasts a couple minutes. I **Shankar Vedantam:** wonder if it's harder to practice patience in Disneyland because our expectations are that a visit is going to be nonstop fun, and it's hard for reality to compete with that vision. Talk for a moment about how our expectations can influence our ability to practice patience, Sarah. **Sarah Schnitker:** Yes, that's a great question. And I think expectations are critical. had anticipated, or even the fact that you have to wait at all or have sore feet toward the end of the day as you're walking around the amusement park, this can start to violate your expectations and you start to feel this impatient emotion that things should be different. And I find this objectionable because it's different than what I hoped. And so we see that in those circumstances, that's when impatience starts to become a struggle and when we really need to practice our patience. You **Shankar Vedantam:** say there are different types of patience. One has to do with patience in our personal relationships. I'd like to share a message we received about that from a listener named Lindsay. I **Sarah Schnitker:** find that in my role in my job as a pediatric physical therapist, I have an exceptional amount of patients. I work with a lot of young children who have developmental disabilities and find it easier or just part of my job to be patient as I work with them on various skills and activities. But when I come home, sometimes I have very, very limited patience when I'm interacting with my husband or my dog when messes have been left out and it seems like it could have been attended to by my husband. But I end up taking on that responsibility. I have very limited patience when it comes to my relationships with other people. This **Shankar Vedantam:** is such an acute observation, Sarah. Lots of us are called to practice patience in our professional lives and we deliver, but then when we come home, we don't extend the same grace to the people in our personal lives. Why do you think this is? **Sarah Schnitker:** Yes, I think Lindsay really picks up such an interesting tension for many of us. I think part of this has to do with the expectations that we have, that when we go to work, we expect it will feel like work and could be difficult. And that, especially if you're working with children, that we have expectations that they won't be able to do everything quickly. But then when it comes to our own families, when we get home, I think there's two things working against us. First, we are tired at the end of the day, right? We've been practicing our patience and are starting to lose our motivation to continue. But then the second thing is that we might have higher expectations for our family members. And when we get home, we also expect it should be time to relax, that now I can stop having to feel like I'm working and instead move into the relaxation portion of my day. But that's often not the case. That can be when maybe the second shift begins and there's a lot of new work to do. **Shankar Vedantam:** So Lindsay's comment also reminds me of a second type of patients that you talk about. And this is the patients required to deal with mundane problems, so chores and traffic jams and lost phones. And I'm wondering whether these moments become especially tedious because of the sheer number of them that we have to deal with on a daily basis? **Sarah Schnitker:** I think that definitely would be the case. I think it's a really interesting question of whether it gets more and more difficult as we encounter more and more of these daily hassles. I think what we know from other research studies on self-regulation and emotion regulation is that when the pressures accumulate, we don't always have the resources available to meet those pressures. And so there might be an optimal level of daily frustrations that will help us build patience, but not fall prey to impatience. And it might be once we get past that optimal level, we start to just kind of deteriorate into impatience and just struggle to get out of it. **Shankar Vedantam:** You also highlight a third type of patience. It has to do with setbacks that we face at work, in our relationships, or with our health. A listener named Vic wrote in with this note, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2019. Since then, I've seen myself become a shadow of what I used to be. I was approaching a black belt in the martial art I loved. I used to bike 20 miles on a whim. I had an extensive vocabulary. These days, I have tremors on my right side, need to think of every step I take. I also have balance issues. Vic has a question for you, Sarah. I consider myself to be a very patient person. Is it possible to become even more patient than you were before? And what recommendations do you have for those who go through a drastic, uninvited change? What would you say, Sarah? Well, **Sarah Schnitker:** I think the first thing I would say is my heart goes out to Vic. It sounds like this has been a really challenging diagnosis and that Vic is just dealing with a lot of changes and losses. I think it is possible to grow more and more patient. --- ### [Make Timed Follow Up Plans To Beat Bureaucracy](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a2edbd96-7f94-4132-85a8-15d5741c63fb) 🎧 01:13:36 - 01:14:24 (00:48) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/3aeed15e-bafe-499f-b626-b9066eeac0ba" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - When facing slow institutions, make specific, timed plans (set alarms) to call and follow up so you regain control and reduce rumination. - Sarah Schnitker set daily call times to check for cancellations and get human contact during bureaucratic waits. #### 💬 Quote > I said, okay, I'm going to set my timer every day for 8:03 a.m. and for 4:55 p.m. and I will just call with a friendly voice. > — Sarah Schnitker Sarah Schnitker describing a tactic to manage waiting for medical scheduling #### 📚 Transcript **Sarah Schnitker:** So I know for myself, I was trying to get a certain procedure to figure out what I was sick with back when I was throwing up all the time in grad school before I got my acyclic vomiting diagnosis. And what I did is I said, okay, I'm going to set my timer every day for 8.03 a.m. and for 4.55 p.m. And I will just call with a friendly voice and see if they can get me in. Because that's when they would know if they had cancellations overnight or throughout the day. And this gave me a sense of control because I had a plan and I would follow through on it. I felt like this also gave me a sense of a human connection because I'd actually talk to someone. And even sometimes they would express empathy, which helped. --- ### [Resist Quick Comebacks To Heal Faster](https://share.snipd.com/snip/12e81566-6fe9-4da2-b7ad-58cd5a70dda2) 🎧 01:15:07 - 01:17:19 (02:11) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/5ae43e19-829b-4e97-9186-140c080d375d" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Slow Is Smooth, Smooth Is Fast: avoid pushing short-cuts that prolong recovery; delayed gratification often yields faster long-term recovery. - Ryder's concussion worsened because he resumed activities too soon, extending recovery fivefold. #### 💬 Quote > Allowing things to take the time they really need and not pushing is just so essential... slow is smooth, smooth is fast. > — Sarah Schnitker Sarah Schnitker discussing Ryder's prolonged concussion recovery and the value of patience #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** Some months ago, he suffered a concussion. **Sarah Schnitker:** What should have taken about a month tops to fully recover from has now been something I've been dealing with for five months because of my lack of patience. There were multiple instances where I was just like, I probably shouldn't do this, like trying to play video games or get work done or just trying to get into the gym and being active. And each time I did so, it would exacerbate my symptoms and set me back further. I **Shankar Vedantam:** feel I can relate to Ryder, Sarah. Talk about this idea that rushing around can sometimes slow us down. Yeah, **Sarah Schnitker:** I resonate with Ryder many times in my life. And still to this day, as I kind of cope with my own health problems of when to push, when to not push. You know, when he was speaking, I was just thinking of, I think it's in the military, they have the phrase, slow is smooth, smooth is fast, that allowing things to take the time they really need and not pushing is just so essential in nature and in our bodies. and that we often lose sight of the big picture goal and get caught up in the moment, which is what I heard coming through from Ryder just a little bit is, I really just want to do this now. But patience does draw on this kind of core capacity for delay of gratification. And that if I can wait, I'll have the benefits in one month of being well, instead of having to wait five months to still not be where I really want to be in my health. And I think it's such a temptation that we humans deal with in so many scenarios. And I think our culture so often likes a quick comeback. And it's good to love comeback stories, but I think the quick comeback is what we really celebrate instead of the slow comeback that takes the time it needs. --- ### [Reframe The Story Before You Lose Patience](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f68d5301-b5b1-4ca0-9578-5ae56edc21c0) 🎧 01:18:43 - 01:19:39 (00:56) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/3d8e6640-a8a8-46e2-b27f-9ca79a95d605" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Before losing patience with someone, reappraise the story you tell yourself and consider kinder explanations. - Sarah recommends cognitive reappraisal: ask a different-story question to shift from a hostile to a curious perspective. #### 💬 Quote > One of the ways that we often train for patience is to engage in cognitive reappraisal or training ourselves to think differently about things. > — Sarah Schnitker Sarah Schnitker on using reappraisal to increase patience with others #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** is such a beautiful story, Sarah. So much of the time when we are impatient with other people, it's because we don't fully understand their situation or their constraints. What **Sarah Schnitker:** an amazing story from Dave. But I think the story just tells us that for true human connection, we often have to practice a bit of patience and that just how much we can miss in the lives of others when we're rushing and going so quickly. And I think it's just profound how Dave was still, even though he started out impatient, when that bid for connection came from this woman who had lost her husband recently, Dave was able to turn around and say, oh, wait a minute. There's much more at stake here than the few minutes it might take me to get this woman sorted and help her out. --- ### [Patience Cultivates Connection And Reduces Violence](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8ef5d7bf-20b3-491f-8458-9a5f2bc9e982) 🎧 01:33:43 - 01:36:19 (02:35) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/38c68d8b-bd0e-4ffd-94cb-d2f9d9cf27a5" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Patience builds human connection and love: being patient with someone often enables us to appreciate and love them more. - Sarah links patience to nonviolence and societal flourishing, using Gandhi's idea that violence stems from impatience. #### 💬 Quote > When each of us can recognize patience is a gift we give, and it's a gift that comes back and benefits us in our relationships and in our society. > — Sarah Schnitker Sarah Schnitker on patience as a societal and relational virtue #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** Mahatma Gandhi said that violence often was a form of impatience. So we see something we don't like, we want to change it quickly. We find we cannot change it quickly, and so we resort to force. What do you think of this idea, Sarah? This **Sarah Schnitker:** is a fantastic idea. I am also a huge fan of Gandhi and his work and all the other amazing work it inspired around the world. think he's right that violence is most often caused by impatience, that we want things to happen in a certain way and in a certain time frame. And human beings can't always be put on a clock, and especially not our own clock in the way we would like things to happen. And as societies over kind of history, when we look back, when they've resorted to violence, it's often begotten more violence. And that instead, the really significant and long lasting movements that lead to peace and prosperity for all members of a society have recognized that impatience is not the answer. And then instead, we need to consider the rights and desires of other human beings as equal to our own. And that we need to take routes of persuasion and nonviolent protest and nonviolent action that this is when we actually see a society that is peaceful, that respects the rights of all people, and that really is typified by love and by justice and is what many of us would want to live in, what we would call a society that allows people to live the good life. And so I know in my own life, I often feel the temptation to push people and to kind of enact my own will, even not with physical violence, but with other forms of kind of pushing. And when each of us can recognize patience is a gift we give, and it's a gift that comes back and benefits us in our relationships and in our society, I think really can lead to the kind of flourishing society, flourishing life all of us desire. What we see is that we are patient with those we love, and we begin to love those to whom we are patient. --- Created with [Snipd](https://www.snipd.com) | Highlight & Take Notes from Podcasts # Snips updated after 2026-04-05T10:16:17 ### [How Blunt Truth Helped A Friend Die Well](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bec6c3ed-4be6-4047-8336-5c39cd129935) 🎧 04:40 - 12:03 (07:23) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/a68e347d-aa9b-4299-9cd2-413202530cef" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Dave Evans told the story of his friend Gary who repeatedly had strokes and sought a meaning-driven cure. - After bluntly suggesting genetic causes and mortality, Gary found peace, lived purposefully, and later died well. #### 💬 Quote > Do you think that might be it? > — Dave Evans Dave Evans recounting his conversation with Gary about the cause of his strokes #### 📚 Transcript **Dave Evans:** what he told you. Well, his problem was he was having strokes. And it turned out he came from a long line of people who have strokes. He was a technical writer in Silicon Valley. We were in Silicon Valley. And he was having a good career. And his problem was, how could he get back to working full time? He'd had to take a stop out the way his stroke had hit him, was getting in the way of his ability to work. And he was wondering if I could help him figure out a way to get his skills back to where he could get back on the job. So **Shankar Vedantam:** his problem was, he said, I have a job that I like. I'm doing what I want to do, but I have this pesky little thing, which is my body is not allowing me to do what I want to do. And I want you to get my body out of the way so I can go back to doing what I want to do. Right. He said, well, you know, this, I **Dave Evans:** mean, the problem is, Dave, I, you know, my father died of a stroke. My brother died of a stroke in his late fifties. He was about 52 at the time, something like that. He said, so I don't want to be that guy. Why is this happening? Everything's got to happen for a reason. So it must be that there's something I'm supposed to learn. So if I were, if I could learn what it is that this malady is trying to teach me, then maybe it can stop and I can get my life back. So what I really need to do is figure out why I need to **Shankar Vedantam:** learn something from this and what is it. Can you help me with that? I'm wondering how you responded to this request of his to help him understand what his body was trying to tell him, the message it was trying to give him. I **Dave Evans:** was stuck a little bit because I thought, oh my God, I don't think that's what's going on. And here's this guy who's a lovely guy. And the truth is, he's dying. The truth is, he's got a severe medical threat and it's not going well. And he's counting on me to help him get someplace I don't think he can go. So what I was really struggling with is, how do I deliver the bad news that, Gary, I think you're asking the wrong question. I'm **Shankar Vedantam:** wondering whether Gary was getting feedback from other people that was trying to answer the question that he wanted answered, even if it wasn't the right question. Well, yes. **Dave Evans:** Unfortunately, he was surrounded with well-meaning, cheerful people who wanted him to feel better. And so there were a group of guys he regularly had lunch with, and they were encouraging, like, you can do this, Gary. And he goes, I'm going to try to get back to work. They go, that's great. You keep going, buddy. So they all were trying to cheerlead. And unfortunately, they were cheerleading him down where I thought it was a dead end that was going to end very, very badly. So there's the old phrase, the road to hell is paved with good intention. There's a lot of good intention surrounding him, but frankly, I think it was going a terrible place. **Shankar Vedantam:** It must have placed you in a very difficult situation, Dave, because a friend is coming to you with this very serious problem. You feel like your friend is not looking at reality for what it is. Other friends are basically encouraging Gary in his delusion. What did you do? Well, keep in mind, I met Gary at church, which means, **Dave Evans:** you know, he was a person of faith. And that was a big part of the story. And so it wasn't just what's the lesson that my body's trying to teach me, but what is God trying to tell me? Because pretty sure this must be a lesson God is giving me, that if I can persevere through and learn the lesson, then I get to get out of jail. And I didn't think that was likely to happen, despite the fact that I, too, happen to believe in God, God doesn't fix every problem. God doesn't instruct himself and miraculously fix everything. That's a whole different understanding. And it's nice to think that's what's coming your way, but you're not in charge of that. You may not be the miracle child. And so I asked him, point black note, Gary, why is it you believe this? And he said, well, what else could it possibly be? There's got to be a reason for this. I said, well, let's look at what the other reasons might be. Could we just do that? I said, well, okay. He said, what do you mean? I said, well, maybe the reason you're having strokes, Gary, isn't because God is going to use you as the demonstration of a miracle, but maybe you're having strokes because you've got really crappy DNA and brain chemistry that breaks down at about 50 to 55 years old. Because, you know, we live in a broken world and some of that brokenness falls on everybody. We're all going to by the way. All we're talking about is timing. And I told him the story of the head of the gerontology department at Harvard Medical School, who I got stuck on the ground during an ice storm in Chicago with years ago, who reminded me almost nobody dies of old age. They die of disease or starvation or an accident. I said, so Gary, you're not going to die of old age. You're going to die of something else, and maybe you're going to die of a stroke. So maybe what's going on is, how do you live well through being a person who comes from a long line of guys with bad stroke DNA? And he just stared at me. He said, do you think that might be it? I said, well, Gary, lots of people die in their 50s. You might be one of them. He said, well, if that's what's going on, what do I do? I said, well, you do this as well as you can. So we had a long conversation about that. It **Shankar Vedantam:** must have been very difficult for you to say what you said to him, Dave, but also very difficult for him to listen to it. This is not the kind of thing **Dave Evans:** that a friend is supposed to tell you. Well, this is where we make the distinction between nice and loving. You know, are you trying to be nice to somebody or are you trying love them? And sometimes that love, I don't mean tough love and you have to beat them up. I wasn't trying to be unkind. But if it's true that he's going to die of a stroke, which he did about four strokes later, then either he's going to do that and be blindsided by it and terrified at the moment of death and leave his family in some despair about his final days, or he's got a little more time to do this well. So what's the kindest thing I can do? The kindest thing I can do is give him a shot at the invitation to actually find the meaning and the joy that is available. I'm not in charge of his fixing his brain, but I might be able to give him an invitation to a little more life-giving experience than he's currently having. **Shankar Vedantam:** I'm wondering how Gary took your advice in what he did with it. **Dave Evans:** Well, we had that conversation, and he received it reasonably well. But, I mean, it was really hard, and it was pretty quiet. And his wife, Kathy, was in the kitchen and over here, you know, and kind of gave us some space. And I didn't really know what was going on. I bumped into his wife in the supermarket about three weeks later, and she walks up to me. She goes, what was it you said to Gary? And I thought, oh, man, this is going to go badly. And I said, well, this is what I said. And she said, well, it made all the difference in the world. He's a changed man. He's finally at peace. It was amazing. Thank you. And she burst into tears. So, phew, you know, dodged that bullet. --- ### [Choosing Presence After A Terminal Diagnosis](https://share.snipd.com/snip/97f213b4-333e-45aa-ac33-ab692f583ee7) 🎧 14:34 - 17:02 (02:28) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/8ef95db3-6a01-4ff0-954a-53dc81959510" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Dave and his wife Claudia received a terminal cancer diagnosis and chose to treat it as sad but not tragic. - They accepted reality quickly, lived nine intense months together, and Dave later said it was one of his most wonderful years. #### 💬 Quote > The one-liner is, I'm dying. It's sad, but not tragic. > — Dave Evans Dave Evans on Claudia's terminal cancer diagnosis and their response #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** Well, **Dave Evans:** at the end of February, we were reeling from the fact that these things might be coming, just the news coming out of China was happening. And then on March 8th, you know, I took my wife Claudia to the local little walk-in clinic because she'd gotten her Christmas cold in New York in late December. We often go to New York between Christmas and New Year's for fun. And she always comes home with a Christmas cold, but it held on and held on and it lasted through January. And was coughing all the time. I honey, this is not okay. So we went in to the clinic and the clinic said, oh, there's more going on here. You need to go to the ER. We went to the ER, and then they pumped out a liter and a half of fluid from her lungs and said, we need to test this. And so we're going to send it over to the lab to test, and we're going to send it back to Stanford. And so then a couple of weeks after the tests were all done, we got to go on March 8th to Stanford to hear the news. And the news was that she had terminal cancer. She was already metastasized four times, and she had six to 24 months to live. I **Shankar Vedantam:** cannot imagine how this news must have struck you, Dave. How **Dave Evans:** did you and Claudia react? Well, we knew things weren't good when they pumped all that junk out of her lungs, but we didn't know it was fatal. And so jumping from you've got a really bad bronchitis to you're dying was quite a leap. It hit us very hard, but it just hit us. And we said, oh, what do we do with this? Well, the first thing we said, we've got to receive this. So we didn't tell anybody. We sat on it privately for about eight days with the idea being let it sink in and then decide what's the story? What are we doing here? We have all these people. And at the end of that week, we if actually Claudia concluded, she says, here it is. The one-liner is, I'm dying. It's sad, but not tragic. She was 69 at the time. Had lived a very full life. There was really nothing left on our bucket list, nothing we needed to do, lots we wanted to do. Hadn't even begun to be retired people. But nonetheless, no regrets. And so she chose to live into her final months saying, sooner than I had in mind. But let's be honest. This is just sad, not tragic. Let's make the most of the time. And that's what we announced to our family and friends. And that begat what turned out to be nine months. She got nine months. She died in December. --- ### [Acceptance Is Step Zero In Designing Your Life](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3c4540d6-356b-40f4-8041-4e82eb0b3f2c) 🎧 20:34 - 23:26 (02:52) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/815e8234-7dc4-41c2-b66a-1fa792d46c74" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Radical acceptance is step zero in design thinking: fully accept current reality before empathy or ideation. - Dave argues resisting 'what I had in mind' blinds people to how their prior choices produced current consequences. #### 💬 Quote > Radical acceptance is literally as best you possibly can to eliminate any vestige of resistance that this is, in fact, exactly the way things currently are. > — Dave Evans Dave Evans defining radical acceptance in the design process #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** Before we can figure out where we want to go, we have to fully accept where we are. Yeah, **Dave Evans:** acceptance is step zero. Before you can even begin, formally the first step in design is empathy, deeply understanding what's going on. But before you even do that deep understanding, you have to be willing to accept, and that is what is in fact true, because reality is the only place things actually work. Radical acceptance is literally as best you possibly can to eliminate any vestige of resistance that this is, in fact, exactly the way things currently are. **Shankar Vedantam:** So as people are designing their lives or asking to design their lives, they're often asking, you know, where I want to go. And they're often upset or angry with their present circumstances in some way. They basically say, it's not fair. You know, I did all the things I should have done, but I'm not where I should be in my career. Or I, you know, I've done everything that I should, but I'm not in a happy relationship, and I should be in a happy relationship. And so they have a sense of fairness, a sense of anger. Talk about how, in some ways, these get in the way of seeing reality accurately. It's **Dave Evans:** all about this what I had in mind thing. Now let's go back to Alison. We talked about in the previous episode, you know, here's, I'm talking to a group of accountants and here's this lovely middle-aged woman and she's reasonably happily married and got two reasonably decent kids and a reasonably paid off car, a small business working with a lot of other small businesses, except she's a little bit bored to tears and mostly just not feeling it. And what did I do wrong? Well, she didn't do anything wrong. I said, look, why did you pick accounting? Well, you know, because it's predictable and I really like having the right answer. I like knowing I've done the right thing well. I go, great. So you're in a very uncreative business because you like stability. And why did you pick small businesses, you know, as your clients? Well, you know, they're cash-operated businesses and they pay in cash, you know, and I don't want to be in debt. And I understand their business because they're kind of like me. So I think I understand that, you know, that's something I can really handle pretty well. said, oh, so you don't want to go outside your comfort zone because you really like being in your comfort zone. That's great, you know. we ended up describing that she got exactly what she wanted, which came with predictability and stability. It looks like stasis and it's not very creative and it's not very exciting and it's not very scary either. So she got exactly what she wanted. There's no surprise here whatsoever. And so what you sort of forgot to accept, Allison, is that that stability is not the same as a high learning curve. And that small business is not going to make you rich because you're operating on a cash basis. You're not, you know, working 80 hours week to try to get founder stock in some venture capital-based firm. So these things are exactly what you wanted all along. They just come with consequences. So can we accept the fact that you got exactly what you wanted? And now how do you make the most of what that is? --- ### [When Noble Aspirations Clash With Harsh Reality](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2f45ed7f-a6b1-49ce-b00d-75b239ead853) 🎧 24:03 - 26:07 (02:03) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/c7a56306-21a6-482d-b29f-007d3b18b956" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Dave told of 'George' who started a fair trade company in West Africa that ultimately failed despite years of investment. - George kept pouring time and money in, struggled to accept reality, and later became bitter before recovering. #### 💬 Quote > How committed to reality are you versus how committed to what you're aspiring towards? > — Dave Evans Dave Evans on George's fair trade venture and the danger of ignoring reality #### 📚 Transcript **Dave Evans:** well, we'll call him George. And he was working at Hitec, and he was doing well, you know, but he was also a caring guy, and he was involved in his local church and in his community, and came along the idea of fair trade and working with organizations, particularly in West Africa, where we're putting villagers to work and trying to help them engage in the capitalistic world by going through fair trade companies. And he got this notion that what he needed to do was start a fair trade company that would create these craft companies in West Africa. And he not only decided that that was something that he thought was really interesting, but that was really what God wanted him to do, that that was going to make the world a better place. He was going to lift people out of poverty and he was going to do this noble thing. And off he went, and he left his home country in Europe, and flew to the, moved his family, went through all this incredible effort, you know, which was a very noble idea, but it didn't work out the way he had in mind. What **Shankar Vedantam:** happened? Why did it not work out? Well, **Dave Evans:** this is one of those situations where, you know, how committed to reality are you versus how committed to what you're aspiring towards? It's lovely to have an aspiration, but is that aspiration getting in the way of reality? And so he starts this company, off it goes. Of course, it's a very slow beginning, you know, and it reaches a certain degree of success. And he then wants to grow to the next stage. And in fact, not only does it not go to the next stage, it starts to falter. And so this thing begins to fail a little bit. And then he tries to shoulder it up again with his own labor and a little bit of his own money. And he keeps putting good money after bad in the year after year. And he does this for a period of about five years and finally had to set the company down. The company so failed, you know, that his investors and supporters said, look, it's too much. You got to give up. But he went bitter because for a couple of years after that, he just couldn't, you know, God's punishing me. And I said, George, look, I mean, you tried real hard. You gave it the old college try, and it didn't work out. --- ### [Accept Facts So You Can Act Effectively](https://share.snipd.com/snip/15533a7b-edad-442f-92e7-3790a3f08eaa) 🎧 27:16 - 28:29 (01:13) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/22da90ba-0d2a-45f2-9f66-093cfccf925f" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Accept without endorsing: recognize immutable facts so you can act effectively rather than stay stuck in protest. - Dave advised accepting a bad boss's true nature to minimize harm and plan an exit strategy. #### 💬 Quote > You can't be effective unless you can accept this... nothing you're going to do is going to change his mind. > — Dave Evans Dave Evans advising a mentee to accept a terrible boss in order to act #### 📚 Transcript **Dave Evans:** really glad you asked the question. It comes up all the time, and it's a crucial question. And it's one that some people really, really struggle with, particularly around, you know, moral issues or social issues. In fact, I'll give a very real example. A lovely young woman I've been mentoring for over 20 years, she's my chosen daughter, you know, found herself once again working for a ridiculously horrible boss. I this is a bona fide bad boss. I said, you've got to accept that this guy is a raging, nasty person, and it's not going to get any better. She goes, but I can't accept that. That means I'm going to be oppressed forever. And I said, wait, wait, wait. You can't be effective unless you can accept this. You've got to accept that nothing you're going to do is going to change his mind. Nothing you're going to do is going to make him happy. He's always going to be unhappy. He's always going to treat you badly. But what you can do is you can minimize the damage. What you can do is you can get the heck out of there eventually, which he did. And the reason that's always empowering is that it gives you the capacity to actually do what can be effectively done rather than find yourself simply standing outside of reality like you're locked outside. Well, standing outside and banging on the door of reality and complaining doesn't change a thing. --- ### [An Artist Who Chose Poverty And Then Flourished](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8f2a6ec3-9850-4d18-b090-149dfe040771) 🎧 29:24 - 31:33 (02:09) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/d54fd981-dbff-4971-ab29-8a2d7fbcc26a" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Arnie, an artist, accepted lifelong poverty early and then fully leaned into his art, later living simply in a warehouse and continuing creative work into old age. - Acceptance let him stop fighting circumstances and savor reading, writing, and presence even while physically frail. #### 💬 Quote > I realize if I'm going to be an artist, I just have to accept that I'm going to be poor for the rest of my life. > — Dave Evans Dave Evans sharing Arnie's lesson about accepting the tradeoffs of an artist's life #### 📚 Transcript **Dave Evans:** In fact, I talked to him just recently. We actually had the privilege of taking him to his 90th birthday dinner about a year ago. He's pushing 91. It turns out the lesson that probably most formatively impacted Arnie Young in his life to become a good acceptor of reality was he was trying to become an artist. He was a fine artist. And he decided he wanted to do that as a living, not on the side. You know, he knew he could be an amateur artist, you know, and make a good living doing other kinds of things. But no, he wanted to walk his talk and do his rather avant-garde kind of art. And he was struggling and having a hard time. And then he said an interesting thing. He said, and suddenly I realized something that made all the difference. I said, well, Arnie, what's that? He said, I realize if I'm going to be an artist, I just have to accept that I'm going to be poor for the rest of my life. He said, and once I accepted that, it was really quite easy. And I said, how old are you? He said, oh, early 30s. I said, whoa. So now, so he's got some precedent there. He made a big realization and it became easy. I mean, you know, hand to mouth and struggling and all kinds of things, but easy in that he's not fighting it. lives in an artist's installation. Many years ago, a group of artists got together with a patron and found an old warehouse and some of the other warehouse into studio apartments. And he's been there for decades, you know, living in very Spartan digs, sitting in his wheelchair, barely able to move. He sleeps about 17 hours a day now because his body is failing. But when you walk into the room and see him and go, Arnie, how's it going? He oh, have you ever read Balzac? He's amazing. Come over here. And he's been reading Balzac. And so he's reading, he's writing his memoir. He's, you know, using a big magnifying glass so that he can see the keyboard. What he's doing is leaning all the way in, being fully available to the life that is in front of him and wasting no energy whatsoever mourning what's been lost. --- ### [A Sunset That Turned Strangers Into A Community](https://share.snipd.com/snip/112eb0f3-1ceb-457d-bcf9-d14a8e833fbf) 🎧 34:48 - 35:48 (00:59) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/5e463b9b-4b2a-4876-bf4a-021e3c82b0c2" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - While driving Highway 1, Dave stopped to watch an extraordinary sunset and saw dozens of strangers gather and share a transcendent moment. - The communal awe led people to exchange names and plan annual remembrance calls. #### 💬 Quote > The sudden... community of sunset appreciators all start looking at each other, hooping and hollering. > — Dave Evans Dave Evans recounting the shared communal reaction to a spectacular sunset #### 📚 Transcript **Dave Evans:** the sun went down. And of course, we think that happens most days, but some days it happens differently. And this was one of those sunsets. I'm along Highway 1, the famous California coastal highway near Half Moon Bay, and the sun was going down, and it was drop dead, knock your eyes out gorgeous in a stunningly cosmic way. I've seen so many gorgeous sunsets. My home in Santa Cruz is actually on the water. I get to see the sunset almost every day, but this one was really blow your brains out amazing, So much so that I had to stop the car. I stopped the car. I got out of the car and then everybody else, the entire highway stopped. All these people lined up on the side of the road, standing there gawking at the sunset for about seven minutes until it slipped below the waves. And then literally a moment after that last little bit of light went below the horizon, you heard this cry, this, whoa! --- ### [Use The Compass Exercise To Find Coherency](https://share.snipd.com/snip/481e1b4e-3d3a-4995-a681-11e348f3aed8) 🎧 42:49 - 44:40 (01:51) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/64db0375-15b5-4167-b5f1-6c9a26561ea3" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Do the compass exercise: write your life view, work view, and current story to reveal core values. - Use those three short narratives to reverse-engineer your compass values and discover coherency. #### 💬 Quote > When you take these three little narratives... you've brought a surprisingly good description of who you currently are. > — Dave Evans Dave Evans explaining the compass exercise for aligning life and work #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** Well, **Dave Evans:** we have you write three short little pieces of work. You know, we look at it real high, pretty high, and down to the ground. We just have three levels of pretty much the same thing. So the life view is a page, a page and a half of your answer to the questions. What are your thoughts? What are your ideas about the most important things? I mean, what is life for? What does it mean to be a person? Is there really love? Is there a God? Whatever you think the most important questions that define reality are, what are your thoughts about that? That's your life view, or what used to be called your worldview. Next, we have your work view. Now, for most people, the overwhelmingly largest expression of their human energy is what we call work, whether it's what you do for money or a living, but your particular engagement, your role in the human adventure, how you're spending spending time during the day. That is the largest single chunk of the lived experience. You spend more time doing that than cooking and eating, more time doing that than raising kids, more time doing that than, you know, making love to your spouse, whatever it is. The work thing is the big dog always has been, probably always will be, AI notwithstanding. So we say, what's your work view? Meaning, what do you believe work is for? Is it to just keep you busy? Is it to make a living? Is it to make your world a better place? Is it the place where community can be experienced as we collaborate? What are your thoughts about what good work really means to you? So what does life mean to you? What does work mean to you? Then the last question is just, what's your current story? You know, if you've just got an elevator ride, you've got a minute or two to tell somebody, what's currently going on with you? What's the current caption, the long caption of your story? So when you take these three little narratives, my view of life, my view of work, my view of my present experience of being me, in those three things, you've brought a surprisingly good description of who you currently are. --- ### [Simple Flow Makes Everyday Tasks Meaningful](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4c7422d8-7175-47a4-9779-8a0afa42a2b4) 🎧 45:11 - 48:31 (03:20) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/68af238c-5656-4dcd-8265-5cf35f7d6e3d" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Flow occurs when task challenge and skill match; Evans distinguishes apex flow from simple flow that anyone can choose. - Simple flow is deliberately engaging mundane tasks (e.g., chopping onions) to be fully present by choice. #### 💬 Quote > I can choose not to let boredom come in. I can really enjoy the sharpness of the knife. > — Dave Evans Dave Evans describing simple flow using chopping onions as an example #### 📚 Transcript **Dave Evans:** flow, the psychology of optimal experience, was the book written over 20 years ago now by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the well-known psychologist of flow, who in collaboration with Martin Seligman from Pennsylvania, started the whole positive psychology movement about 20 years ago. Good people doing good work. And he defines flow as the experience of full and deep engagement where time stands still and so on that can occur when you're operating in the flow channel. And the flow channel is a place of experience where the task you are currently involved in and your skills to perform that task are in approximate balance. You're neither over-talented, so you're bored, nor under-talented, so you're anxious and nervous, you might fail, but you're really right at the edge of your capability, which means this task is demanding your full attention. That's the flow zone, the flow channel. And in that flow channel, you might, not necessarily, you might drop into the flow experience of suddenly finding yourself fully deeply engaged, time stands still, and when it's over, the whole thing seemed very satisfying. It's a really wonderful experience, sometimes called getting in the zone. Now, our thoughts on that, by the way, are that's a great starting place, but unfortunately, the way people think of flow is they think of it at this very high level of engagement, which we refer to as apex flow, which is great. You know, like when you're having that incredible performance or writing that beautiful sonnet, that's an experience of that kind. I was in flow watching that sunset. These are apex experiences. And too many people think that's the minimum requirement for being in flow. And we're going to make a suggestion that simple flow is available much more of the time to many more people, and we all need to access it to have more meaning. **Shankar Vedantam:** What is simple flow, Dave? And how is this contrasted with the world of transactional thinking that **Dave Evans:** we are so often engaged in? Well, one of the things that's true when I'm in flow is I have to be in the present moment. I'm engaged enough. And again, the traditional definition of flow, which you've really done is you've said, I need to find a task that demands so much of me, it will suck all of my attention and in so doing, prevent me from being distracted by other things. And that will allow me to fully engage the present moment. So what I've really done is I've outsourced my attention to the challenge of my task. And that can work. But what we're saying is, look, you're an autonomous being. You've got some free will here. You've got some power. You can actually make some choices to expand the flow channel and make it what we call the simple flow channel. So let's say I'm doing a task that frankly doesn't require everything I can do. I'm just chopping onions to prepare for soup. I'm making soup for dinner. I'm chopping an onion. Not that hard. I'm a little bored doing it. But hey, I can still be fully present to that task. So what I can do is I can choose not to let boredom come in. I can really enjoy the sharpness of the knife. I can feel the crispness of the onion pushing back. I can allow myself by choice to fully engage that experience for five or 10 minutes, and I can drop into flow by choice. I can make it more available. --- ### [Flow Counters Transactional Future Thinking](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1aa042c2-c24a-40e7-8323-914499daa34a) 🎧 47:56 - 50:46 (02:49) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/f40426b5-3162-4d47-bb66-d49305ce2e0c" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Transactional thinking is future-focused and undermines presence; flow is an antidote because it demands present-moment attention. - Evans warns against turning mindfulness into another performance metric—practices should not become transactions. #### 💬 Quote > As soon as I start thinking about the other thing, I fall out of flow. > — Dave Evans Dave Evans on why flow prevents transactional, future-oriented thinking #### 📚 Transcript **Dave Evans:** So let's say I'm doing a task that frankly doesn't require everything I can do. I'm just chopping onions to prepare for soup. I'm making soup for dinner. I'm chopping an onion. Not that hard. I'm a little bored doing it. But hey, I can still be fully present to that task. So what I can do is I can choose not to let boredom come in. I can really enjoy the sharpness of the knife. I can feel the crispness of the onion pushing back. I can allow myself by choice to fully engage that experience for five or 10 minutes, and I can drop into flow by choice. I can make it more available. And anytime I'm in flow, I'm in the present moment, and that's a good place to be. And of course, in contrast with the transactional world, **Shankar Vedantam:** in a flow state, you're not only thinking about the end goal. You're not thinking about this destination disease that you talked about earlier, where you're always asking, what is this going to be in the future? You're actually in the present. **Dave Evans:** Yes. As it turns out, transactional thinking and the transactional world that we spend a lot of our time in almost invariably is future-oriented, about the outcome that is yet to be realized. And so one of the reasons flow is an antidote to transactionality is I have to be— as soon as I start thinking about the other thing, I fall out of flow. In **Shankar Vedantam:** some ways, I'm hearing echoes of this idea in what meditation can be like, Dave. You know, people talk about meditation, of course, you can sit cross-legged and in a quiet room with your eyes closed. But people also talk about how you can have walking meditation or talking meditation, or in your case, chopping and onion meditation, where you bring your full self to the work that you're doing. You're fully present. And in some ways, that's not different than sitting cross-legged in a quiet room your eyes closed. Yes. **Dave Evans:** So when we talk about this reframing of there's really two worlds out there. In fact, we actually know from neurological research, especially the research done by Lisa Miller at Columbia, that these two halves of your brain are fundamentally wired differently. There's what she calls the achieving brain and there's the awakened brain. And they're quite different. The achieving brain is always working in a system, has always got a closed-end outcome, and it's going for those results. And the achieving brain is getting an awful lot of stimulation these days. The awakened brain is present at that present moment. And so the mindfulness movement, you know, these various practices, one of the things we're reminding people is don't turn those into transactions, too. We a lot of people turn their practice into yet another transaction. I had a really good sit this morning. I nailed my yoga practice. I had a personal best in yoga today. Okay, you just turned a practice into a performance. As opposed to realizing while you're walking along, yes, you can have a walking meditation, you can have a chopping meditation, you can have a driving meditation. --- ### [Narrow Goals To Preserve Patience After Loss](https://share.snipd.com/snip/17672200-7c26-4aed-8023-e1cc37dccc58) 🎧 58:52 - 01:05:50 (06:57) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/2a26f6f5-53b6-4411-8846-fb99e23b12d1" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - To grow patience after major setbacks, select a small set of key goals and optimize toward them rather than trying to do everything. - Sarah Schnitker recommends narrowing focus so limited resources preserve patience and progress after diagnoses like MS. #### 💬 Quote > By homing in on what is really critical, it allows you to keep your patience and not to become so dysregulated by all the things that are really challenging. > — Sarah Schnitker Sarah Schnitker advising people with major health setbacks on cultivating patience #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** She recently joined us for a conversation titled The Practice of Patience. Today, she's back to respond to your questions and stories in our popular segment, Your Questions Answered. Sarah Schnitker, welcome to Hidden Brain. **Sarah Schnitker:** Hi, Shankar. Thanks for having me back. **Shankar Vedantam:** Sarah, I'd like to start by asking you to share a story that's set in a place where a lot of people can find their patience is tested. I understand that when you got married, you and your husband bought annual passes to Disneyland. But when you got to the, quote, happiest place on earth, you noticed something quite different than what you expected. Tell me what you saw. Yes, **Sarah Schnitker:** we love Disneyland. And like many do feel it's one of the happiest places you can be in the world. But we got there and quickly noticed lots of people were not happy. Children in particular were often crying and whining. You saw other couples maybe getting frustrated with each other and with the wait. And really, it struck me that Disneyland and other amusement parks are just an exercise in patience. You're waiting a ton of time in line for a very short experience. Maybe that only lasts a couple minutes. I **Shankar Vedantam:** wonder if it's harder to practice patience in Disneyland because our expectations are that a visit is going to be nonstop fun, and it's hard for reality to compete with that vision. Talk for a moment about how our expectations can influence our ability to practice patience, Sarah. **Sarah Schnitker:** Yes, that's a great question. And I think expectations are critical. had anticipated, or even the fact that you have to wait at all or have sore feet toward the end of the day as you're walking around the amusement park, this can start to violate your expectations and you start to feel this impatient emotion that things should be different. And I find this objectionable because it's different than what I hoped. And so we see that in those circumstances, that's when impatience starts to become a struggle and when we really need to practice our patience. You **Shankar Vedantam:** say there are different types of patience. One has to do with patience in our personal relationships. I'd like to share a message we received about that from a listener named Lindsay. I **Sarah Schnitker:** find that in my role in my job as a pediatric physical therapist, I have an exceptional amount of patients. I work with a lot of young children who have developmental disabilities and find it easier or just part of my job to be patient as I work with them on various skills and activities. But when I come home, sometimes I have very, very limited patience when I'm interacting with my husband or my dog when messes have been left out and it seems like it could have been attended to by my husband. But I end up taking on that responsibility. I have very limited patience when it comes to my relationships with other people. This **Shankar Vedantam:** is such an acute observation, Sarah. Lots of us are called to practice patience in our professional lives and we deliver, but then when we come home, we don't extend the same grace to the people in our personal lives. Why do you think this is? **Sarah Schnitker:** Yes, I think Lindsay really picks up such an interesting tension for many of us. I think part of this has to do with the expectations that we have, that when we go to work, we expect it will feel like work and could be difficult. And that, especially if you're working with children, that we have expectations that they won't be able to do everything quickly. But then when it comes to our own families, when we get home, I think there's two things working against us. First, we are tired at the end of the day, right? We've been practicing our patience and are starting to lose our motivation to continue. But then the second thing is that we might have higher expectations for our family members. And when we get home, we also expect it should be time to relax, that now I can stop having to feel like I'm working and instead move into the relaxation portion of my day. But that's often not the case. That can be when maybe the second shift begins and there's a lot of new work to do. **Shankar Vedantam:** So Lindsay's comment also reminds me of a second type of patients that you talk about. And this is the patients required to deal with mundane problems, so chores and traffic jams and lost phones. And I'm wondering whether these moments become especially tedious because of the sheer number of them that we have to deal with on a daily basis? **Sarah Schnitker:** I think that definitely would be the case. I think it's a really interesting question of whether it gets more and more difficult as we encounter more and more of these daily hassles. I think what we know from other research studies on self-regulation and emotion regulation is that when the pressures accumulate, we don't always have the resources available to meet those pressures. And so there might be an optimal level of daily frustrations that will help us build patience, but not fall prey to impatience. And it might be once we get past that optimal level, we start to just kind of deteriorate into impatience and just struggle to get out of it. **Shankar Vedantam:** You also highlight a third type of patience. It has to do with setbacks that we face at work, in our relationships, or with our health. A listener named Vic wrote in with this note, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2019. Since then, I've seen myself become a shadow of what I used to be. I was approaching a black belt in the martial art I loved. I used to bike 20 miles on a whim. I had an extensive vocabulary. These days, I have tremors on my right side, need to think of every step I take. I also have balance issues. Vic has a question for you, Sarah. I consider myself to be a very patient person. Is it possible to become even more patient than you were before? And what recommendations do you have for those who go through a drastic, uninvited change? What would you say, Sarah? Well, **Sarah Schnitker:** I think the first thing I would say is my heart goes out to Vic. It sounds like this has been a really challenging diagnosis and that Vic is just dealing with a lot of changes and losses. I think it is possible to grow more and more patient. --- ### [Make Timed Follow Up Plans To Beat Bureaucracy](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a2edbd96-7f94-4132-85a8-15d5741c63fb) 🎧 01:13:36 - 01:14:24 (00:48) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/3aeed15e-bafe-499f-b626-b9066eeac0ba" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - When facing slow institutions, make specific, timed plans (set alarms) to call and follow up so you regain control and reduce rumination. - Sarah Schnitker set daily call times to check for cancellations and get human contact during bureaucratic waits. #### 💬 Quote > I said, okay, I'm going to set my timer every day for 8:03 a.m. and for 4:55 p.m. and I will just call with a friendly voice. > — Sarah Schnitker Sarah Schnitker describing a tactic to manage waiting for medical scheduling #### 📚 Transcript **Sarah Schnitker:** So I know for myself, I was trying to get a certain procedure to figure out what I was sick with back when I was throwing up all the time in grad school before I got my acyclic vomiting diagnosis. And what I did is I said, okay, I'm going to set my timer every day for 8.03 a.m. and for 4.55 p.m. And I will just call with a friendly voice and see if they can get me in. Because that's when they would know if they had cancellations overnight or throughout the day. And this gave me a sense of control because I had a plan and I would follow through on it. I felt like this also gave me a sense of a human connection because I'd actually talk to someone. And even sometimes they would express empathy, which helped. --- ### [Resist Quick Comebacks To Heal Faster](https://share.snipd.com/snip/12e81566-6fe9-4da2-b7ad-58cd5a70dda2) 🎧 01:15:07 - 01:17:19 (02:11) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/5ae43e19-829b-4e97-9186-140c080d375d" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Slow Is Smooth, Smooth Is Fast: avoid pushing short-cuts that prolong recovery; delayed gratification often yields faster long-term recovery. - Ryder's concussion worsened because he resumed activities too soon, extending recovery fivefold. #### 💬 Quote > Allowing things to take the time they really need and not pushing is just so essential... slow is smooth, smooth is fast. > — Sarah Schnitker Sarah Schnitker discussing Ryder's prolonged concussion recovery and the value of patience #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** Some months ago, he suffered a concussion. **Sarah Schnitker:** What should have taken about a month tops to fully recover from has now been something I've been dealing with for five months because of my lack of patience. There were multiple instances where I was just like, I probably shouldn't do this, like trying to play video games or get work done or just trying to get into the gym and being active. And each time I did so, it would exacerbate my symptoms and set me back further. I **Shankar Vedantam:** feel I can relate to Ryder, Sarah. Talk about this idea that rushing around can sometimes slow us down. Yeah, **Sarah Schnitker:** I resonate with Ryder many times in my life. And still to this day, as I kind of cope with my own health problems of when to push, when to not push. You know, when he was speaking, I was just thinking of, I think it's in the military, they have the phrase, slow is smooth, smooth is fast, that allowing things to take the time they really need and not pushing is just so essential in nature and in our bodies. and that we often lose sight of the big picture goal and get caught up in the moment, which is what I heard coming through from Ryder just a little bit is, I really just want to do this now. But patience does draw on this kind of core capacity for delay of gratification. And that if I can wait, I'll have the benefits in one month of being well, instead of having to wait five months to still not be where I really want to be in my health. And I think it's such a temptation that we humans deal with in so many scenarios. And I think our culture so often likes a quick comeback. And it's good to love comeback stories, but I think the quick comeback is what we really celebrate instead of the slow comeback that takes the time it needs. --- ### [Reframe The Story Before You Lose Patience](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f68d5301-b5b1-4ca0-9578-5ae56edc21c0) 🎧 01:18:43 - 01:19:39 (00:56) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/3d8e6640-a8a8-46e2-b27f-9ca79a95d605" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Before losing patience with someone, reappraise the story you tell yourself and consider kinder explanations. - Sarah recommends cognitive reappraisal: ask a different-story question to shift from a hostile to a curious perspective. #### 💬 Quote > One of the ways that we often train for patience is to engage in cognitive reappraisal or training ourselves to think differently about things. > — Sarah Schnitker Sarah Schnitker on using reappraisal to increase patience with others #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** is such a beautiful story, Sarah. So much of the time when we are impatient with other people, it's because we don't fully understand their situation or their constraints. What **Sarah Schnitker:** an amazing story from Dave. But I think the story just tells us that for true human connection, we often have to practice a bit of patience and that just how much we can miss in the lives of others when we're rushing and going so quickly. And I think it's just profound how Dave was still, even though he started out impatient, when that bid for connection came from this woman who had lost her husband recently, Dave was able to turn around and say, oh, wait a minute. There's much more at stake here than the few minutes it might take me to get this woman sorted and help her out. --- ### [Patience Cultivates Connection And Reduces Violence](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8ef5d7bf-20b3-491f-8458-9a5f2bc9e982) 🎧 01:33:43 - 01:36:19 (02:35) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/38c68d8b-bd0e-4ffd-94cb-d2f9d9cf27a5" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Patience builds human connection and love: being patient with someone often enables us to appreciate and love them more. - Sarah links patience to nonviolence and societal flourishing, using Gandhi's idea that violence stems from impatience. #### 💬 Quote > When each of us can recognize patience is a gift we give, and it's a gift that comes back and benefits us in our relationships and in our society. > — Sarah Schnitker Sarah Schnitker on patience as a societal and relational virtue #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** Mahatma Gandhi said that violence often was a form of impatience. So we see something we don't like, we want to change it quickly. We find we cannot change it quickly, and so we resort to force. What do you think of this idea, Sarah? This **Sarah Schnitker:** is a fantastic idea. I am also a huge fan of Gandhi and his work and all the other amazing work it inspired around the world. think he's right that violence is most often caused by impatience, that we want things to happen in a certain way and in a certain time frame. And human beings can't always be put on a clock, and especially not our own clock in the way we would like things to happen. And as societies over kind of history, when we look back, when they've resorted to violence, it's often begotten more violence. And that instead, the really significant and long lasting movements that lead to peace and prosperity for all members of a society have recognized that impatience is not the answer. And then instead, we need to consider the rights and desires of other human beings as equal to our own. And that we need to take routes of persuasion and nonviolent protest and nonviolent action that this is when we actually see a society that is peaceful, that respects the rights of all people, and that really is typified by love and by justice and is what many of us would want to live in, what we would call a society that allows people to live the good life. And so I know in my own life, I often feel the temptation to push people and to kind of enact my own will, even not with physical violence, but with other forms of kind of pushing. And when each of us can recognize patience is a gift we give, and it's a gift that comes back and benefits us in our relationships and in our society, I think really can lead to the kind of flourishing society, flourishing life all of us desire. What we see is that we are patient with those we love, and we begin to love those to whom we are patient. ---