Why Trying Too Hard Can Backfire On You

Speaker 1 is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

Speaker 1 You've heard the old joke. A pedestrian in New York is looking for directions to the city's most famous musical performance venue.

Speaker 1 He sees a musician get out of a cab and asks, how do you get to Carnegie Hall?

Speaker 1 The musician answers, practice, practice, practice.

Speaker 1 I'm guessing you didn't even crack a smile. That joke stopped being being funny a long time ago, and not just because it's familiar.
It's become something of a truism.

Speaker 1 We all know that practice, grit, and determination are keys to success.

Speaker 1 If you want to be better than everyone else at something, you have to outwork everyone else.

Speaker 1 There is much truth to the story of grit and drive. We've explored research on the show that says that conscientiousness is one of the best predictors of academic and professional success.

Speaker 1 But today, in this episode and in a companion story on our subscription feed, Hidden Brain Plus, we explore a paradox.

Speaker 1 There are many domains in life where practice and effort fail to work their usual magic. In these areas, It's effortlessness that triumphs over effort.

Speaker 1 Trying Trying your best or trying too hard can produce worse results.

Speaker 1 Understanding why effort and grit can sometimes backfire and the underappreciated skill of letting go.

Speaker 1 This week on Hidden Brain.

Speaker 1 Support for Hidden Brain comes from ADT. You're ready for the holidays.
The turkey is cooking, the sides are perfectly seasoned. All that's left to take care of is your peace of mind.

Speaker 1 That's why ADT is here. With their professionally installed home security systems, you get protection that helps you feel safe.
So you can focus on that pie you forgot to bake.

Speaker 1 When every second counts, count on ADT. Visit adt.com to find out more.

Speaker 1 Support for HiddenBrain comes from Dell. It's time for Black Friday, Dell Technologies' biggest sale of the year.

Speaker 1 Enjoy huge savings on select PCs like the Dell 16 Plus, featuring Intel Core Ultra processors.

Speaker 1 Plus, earn Dell rewards and enjoy many other benefits like free shipping, price match guarantee, and expert support. They also have huge deals on accessories that pair perfectly with your Dell PC.

Speaker 1 Shop now at dell.com/slash deals.

Speaker 1 Support for hidden brain comes from ATT. There's nothing better than feeling like someone has your back.
That kind of reliability is rare, but ATT is making it the norm with the ATT guarantee.

Speaker 1 Staying connected matters. Get connectivity you can depend on.
That's the ATT guarantee. ATT.
Connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply.

Speaker 1 Visit ATT.com/slash slash guarantee for details.

Speaker 1 There are times in our lives when we find ourselves beset with challenges. We toss and turn at night, thinking of ways we can extricate ourselves from our problems.

Speaker 1 But no matter what we do, nothing seems to work. At the University of British Columbia, the philosopher Edward Slingerland has explored the counterintuitive benefits of just letting go.

Speaker 1 Edward Slingerland, welcome to Hidden Brain.

Speaker 2 Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 Ted, I want to take you back to the time in your life when you were in your early 20s and you lived in San Francisco. You were interested in meeting women and you tried hard to make romance happen.

Speaker 1 Tell me what you did.

Speaker 2 I remember vividly going through this dry spell

Speaker 2 where I was really actively making an effort to meet people.

Speaker 2 And I would do things like go to a cafe and leave my Chinese philosophy books very prominently displayed on the table I was working at and my motorcycle helmet next to me on the chair,

Speaker 2 you know, thinking, okay, this is how it's going to work. So I'll walk by and think, wow, that guy reads Chinese or he rides a motorcycle and they'll start talking to me.

Speaker 2 And that in fact never happened.

Speaker 2 And looking back at it now, it's pretty clear trying to get a date is not a good way to get a date. So that was not very successful.

Speaker 2 I remember being at one party and wandering to the edge of a conversation where people were talking about what they studied.

Speaker 2 And they were all people who worked in the restaurant industry, but were going to school part-time.

Speaker 2 And I wasn't really listening to the conversation. for conversation's sake.
I was looking for a chance to insert myself.

Speaker 2 And someone mentioned philosophy, and I said, Oh, you know, I study Chinese philosophy at Stanford.

Speaker 2 And everyone in the conversation kind of looked at me and they were like, Yeah, it's really, it's fascinating. Thanks.
And they turned back to their conversation.

Speaker 2 It was just this clumsy attempt to insert myself into a social situation, and that was annoying.

Speaker 1 You know, I understand that at one point, this was back in the day when we all rented movies at a store, you tried to catch the interest of a woman who worked at the video rental store.

Speaker 1 Paint me a picture of what you did, Ted.

Speaker 2 I was trying to figure out some way to start talking to her. So I was renting, I went through a Vim vendors phase.

Speaker 2 When I'd return my movie, I would kind of linger as if I was kind of looking at the latest new arrivals.

Speaker 2 And one time she picked up the video, I turned in and

Speaker 2 I said, hey, you know,

Speaker 2 are you into Vim Venters? And she just looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language and was an idiot and went back to her work.

Speaker 1 Ted was working at the time in a restaurant. One day, he happened to have an extra busy shift.

Speaker 2 And I got into a really good state of just, you know, flowing. When you're working in a restaurant, when you get hit really hard, it's a wonderful feeling.

Speaker 2 You're part of a team, you know, you're working together, the kitchen and the people out on the floor are all working together to make things happen as quickly as possible.

Speaker 2 There's no time to think, you know, five hours go by and you don't even notice it. And so I had this really intense, satisfying shift.

Speaker 2 And at the end of it, I went to the bar, bartender knew I needed a drink and handed me one. And there just happened to be this really attractive woman sitting at the bar.

Speaker 2 And without thinking, I just said, I don't know what I, I don't even remember what I said, but I just started talking to this person from a place of calm

Speaker 2 and genuine kind of curiosity about the world. So she was an exchange student.
She was German, French, Lebanese,

Speaker 2 very interesting background.

Speaker 2 And I just wanted to hear about her. What are you doing in San Francisco? What do you study back home?

Speaker 2 I was just studying, starting to study German. So it organically came up that I was studying German philosophy.

Speaker 2 Oh, that turned into a very long date that evening.

Speaker 2 And it's interesting,

Speaker 2 the shift in my life that happened after that, this kind of break in the drought. I don't know if anyone's experienced this as a single person of it.
Never rains, but it pours.

Speaker 2 So you go through this long period. nothing, nothing, nothing.
You finally meet someone and have great connection, great experience.

Speaker 2 And then suddenly people just come out of of the woodwork. So I remember dropping this woman off at the train.
She was living down the peninsula and going to return a video. So

Speaker 2 we had watched a Vim Venders movie because that was my thing and she was German.

Speaker 2 I walked out of my apartment to go to the video store and within a half block, these two young women walking past me kind of smiled at me and then about 10 paces on they turned around and one of them said hey my friend wants to date you you i was like oh okay

Speaker 2 out of out of the blue out of the blue is the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me possibly um

Speaker 2 and i just kind of smiled and waved and and went on my way um

Speaker 2 i got to the video store and dropped my video through the slot as one does and just turned around to leave And it was that woman who I kept trying to strike up a conversation with.

Speaker 2 And this time she said, hey, you know, I say you're watching another Vim Fender's movie.

Speaker 2 What do you like so much about him? And she started talking to me, and we made a plan to watch a Vim Vender movie together. So it was just, it was insane.

Speaker 2 It was like, I actually remember going home and thinking, maybe I shouldn't shower. Like, maybe something happened to me pheromone-wise that is, you know, I don't want to mess with.

Speaker 2 I should keep this shirt on for the next month.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 it wasn't pheromones. It was just that I was relaxed and not trying anymore.

Speaker 1 I want to ask you about something similar that's happened to you more recently, Ted. In this case, it isn't about romance, but tennis.

Speaker 1 Tell me about your experience of learning to play tennis and your interactions with the tennis pro who sometimes gives you lessons.

Speaker 2 So I learned tennis as an adult, and learning a skill like tennis as an adult is like trying to to learn a language as an adult. It's painful and takes a lot of time.

Speaker 2 And so I would take lessons and learn the proper form.

Speaker 2 And then my coach would say, well, now do all that, but in a relaxed way.

Speaker 2 So do all the things I've consciously told you, but now stop thinking consciously about it. And it was really hard to do.

Speaker 2 And it was only typically when we'd kind of stopped the official lesson and just be hitting around at the end that I would suddenly feel what it feels like to not try and to just hit the ball.

Speaker 2 And I've experienced this as well more recently. I started playing tennis with a colleague of mine here at UBC, who's a psychologist, Liz Dunn.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 so Liz coined this term that I still use, and I think that is now a meme going through the Vancouver tennis community.

Speaker 2 But we would play and we both knew we weren't being relaxed and hitting the right way. And after we finished our match, I remember when she said, let's do danger tennis.

Speaker 2 And I was like, what's danger tennis? And she said, we're just going to hit the ball as hard as we can. And we don't care if it goes in.
Let's just hit the ball. And suddenly we were killing it.

Speaker 2 And it was going in and we were hitting really well. And so I've done this where, you know, I've played matches with guys and we're both kind of a little tense and we're not hitting right.

Speaker 2 And then I say, let's play danger tennis. And suddenly we're killing it.
And everyone I do this with says, okay, I'm going to just play danger tennis all the time.

Speaker 2 But as soon as there are stakes, you know, as soon as we're keeping score, our conscious mind pops up and interferes with our performance.

Speaker 1 You tell a story about visiting a local science museum that features a game called Mindball. What is Mindball, Ted?

Speaker 2 So it's a very cleverly set up game. You've got two people at either side of a long table, and there's a metal ball in the middle.
And the goal goal is to push that ball to the other end of the table.

Speaker 2 And if you do, it falls into a little hole and an alarm goes off and you win. It's very exciting.
The trick is that you're not pushing the ball with your hand. You're using your mind.

Speaker 2 So both players have a net on their heads, an EEG monitor.

Speaker 2 And this EEG monitor is picking up alpha and theta waves.

Speaker 2 So this is the kind of signature of brain activity that you kick off when you're relaxed, when you're not trying, when you're not thinking too much, when you're not exerting effort, you kick off more alpha and theta waves.

Speaker 2 The way the game is set up is the more alpha and theta waves you produce, the more force you exert on the ball.

Speaker 2 So the way to win at mind ball is to not try to win.

Speaker 2 And it's fiendishly difficult to do. So the first time I played, I put on the net, I closed my eyes, I relaxed, and you could hear the ball moving around, but I couldn't see where it was.

Speaker 2 And finally, I opened my eyes and I was winning. The ball was most of the way toward the other end of the table.
And I thought, oh, I'm winning. I'm good at this.

Speaker 2 And as soon as I thought that, the ball stopped. It was like it could read my mind and started rolling back toward me.
And then I started panicking. I was like, relax, relax.

Speaker 2 And that, of course, just made it worse. And I lost terribly.
So I was playing with a neuroscientist who runs this exhibit and she completely crushed me.

Speaker 2 And she said afterwards, her strategy, she just knows that you can't look, you can't care.

Speaker 2 She would just go into this zone where she would think about a vacation that she had on a beach that she really enjoyed once.

Speaker 2 And, but what I love about Mindball is it compresses into the smallest possible space this tension. You know that the only way to win is to relax, but consciously trying to relax is impossible.

Speaker 1 Ted had discovered something that many of us have also found. Sometimes the best way to get something is to stop trying to get it.

Speaker 1 When we come back, the science of why effort can sometimes backfire.

Speaker 1 You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

Speaker 1 Support for Hidden Brain comes from WaterAid, changing the world through water. Imagine walking miles every day to collect water because your home has no taps, no toilets, no clean water.

Speaker 1 That's the reality for one in four people worldwide. Your support can help change everything for them because everything starts with water.

Speaker 1 Donate to WaterAid and your gift will be matched going twice as far. Donate at wateraid.org slash podcast

Speaker 1 Support for Hidden Brain comes from Wealthfront. It's time your hard-earned money works harder for you.

Speaker 1 With Wealthfront's cash account, earn a 3.5% APY on your uninvested cash from program banks with no minimum balance or account fees.

Speaker 1 Plus, you get free instant withdrawals to eligible accounts every day, so your money is always accessible when you need need it. No matter your goals, Wealthfront gives you flexibility and security.

Speaker 1 Right now, open your first cash account with a $500 deposit and get a $50 bonus at wealthfront.com slash brain.

Speaker 1 Bonus terms and conditions apply. Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC, member FINRA, SIPC, not a bank.

Speaker 1 The annual percentage yield on deposits as of November 7th, 2025 is representative, subject to change, and requires no minimum. Funds are swept to program banks where they earn the variable APY.

Speaker 1 This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

Speaker 1 Edward Slingelin is a professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia. He's the author of Trying Not to Try, Ancient China, Modern Science, and the Power of Spontaneity.

Speaker 1 Ted, social scientists often say the human mind operates in two two modes, system one or system two. What are these two systems? How do they work?

Speaker 2 So system one is sometimes called hot cognition. These are all the automatic processes that we are running all the time.
And the vast majority of human cognition is hot.

Speaker 2 You know, when we are walking down the street, when we're picking up a glass, we're not consciously thinking about how to do this. So those are the hot systems.

Speaker 2 System two or cold cognition, it's conscious, it's effortful, effortful, it takes time, it's slow.

Speaker 2 And this is when we're consciously thinking about something or we're trying to stop a hot process that we don't want to do, we want to turn it into something else.

Speaker 2 So these two systems work together, but most of what's going on is that hot system one cognition.

Speaker 1 So psychologists like Daniel Kahneman, who wrote the book Thinking Fast and Slow, they've argued that the cool-headed system two with its careful cognition can save us from the errors and biases of the hot-headed system one.

Speaker 1 Would you agree with that thesis, Ted?

Speaker 2 In certain contexts, it's certainly the case that the hot system leads us astray.

Speaker 2 And so Kahneman-Tversky did a lot of work on how we need our cold cognition to fix our hot systems or just override them completely.

Speaker 2 And so the early work on this, I think, tended to overlook why we have hot cognition in the first place. In other words,

Speaker 2 I think didn't give adequate attention to the power and the importance of hot cognition.

Speaker 1 As a general rule, society constantly tells us we should tamp down our intuitive automatic thinking, our hidden brain, if you will, and prioritize effortful, deliberate, analytical thinking.

Speaker 1 Schools teach us to think before we act. Workplaces encourage us to filter what we say.
The rules of social interaction highlight the importance of courtesy, politeness, and social norms.

Speaker 1 Over time, many of us get very good at these skills. So good, in fact, that we find it difficult to turn off logical, deliberate, effortful thinking.

Speaker 1 That's useful in a boardroom, but turns out to be a liability when you're trying, say, to put yourself to sleep.

Speaker 2 So you are tossing and turning, you have a big meeting tomorrow, or you're just worried about something, and you need to shut your conscious mind down. And so you tell yourself, relax, relax.

Speaker 2 The problem is the part of your brain that you're trying to shut down is in fact the part you're activating when you're trying.

Speaker 2 And this is why insomnia is very difficult to get around, especially when the thing preventing you from sleeping is your mind that you need to shut down.

Speaker 2 And people come up with various strategies to get around this, counting sheep or paying attention to your breath. But if there was a really easy solution to this, we would all know about it.

Speaker 2 Same thing with tennis. I mean, I know that I'm most effective at tennis when I'm relaxed and just not caring.
And yet, if I double fault, I get all tense and annoyed at myself.

Speaker 2 And part of my brain, the scholarly part of my brain is like, hey, dude, this is a try not to try situation, relax. And yet you can know that consciously and it doesn't really help you.

Speaker 1 So you're a fan of the great tennis player, Roger Federer. And you've asked yourself what would happen in a game if an athlete like Federer started thinking too much.

Speaker 1 Do you think that even at the elite level, when players start to think about what they're doing, it can get in the way of their game?

Speaker 2 Especially at the elite level. So there's a huge literature on this.
I mean, at high-level tennis, these are people who've been playing since they were kids. They've completely mastered these skills.

Speaker 2 And it's entirely a mind game at that level of tennis. It's all about really who can out-relax the other person.
And supposedly, I don't know if this is a myth, but John McEnroe was kind of a...

Speaker 2 not the nicest tennis player in the world and he apparently took advantage of this so the rumor is that if he was playing someone and their serve was really great when they changed sides and he was walking by them he'd say, hey, hey, your serve's really great today.

Speaker 2 Are you doing something different? And he'd get in their heads and they'd start thinking about it. They'd be like, am I doing something different? Wait a minute.
And then they couldn't serve anymore.

Speaker 1 So the great jazz musician Charlie Parker was a believer in going with the flow.

Speaker 1 And I'm wondering if music, especially music that is improvised, might be another domain where overthinking can lead to problems.

Speaker 2 People in sports and music and performance, they're obsessed with this because they know that the only way to do certain things well is to relax into them.

Speaker 2 So if it works well, it's only because everyone's kind of given up really trying to drive it themselves.

Speaker 2 They're just listening intensely and they kind of know. like the piano knows when it's time to take over and when it's time to give it up.

Speaker 2 And it's this very delicate dance that only works if everyone's relaxed, everyone's genuinely involved,

Speaker 2 and no one's interposing their ego into the process.

Speaker 1 You know, Charlie Parker is supposed to have once said, don't play the saxophone, let it play you, which is, of course, probably easier said than done.

Speaker 1 But I can easily imagine the same thing being true in stand-up comedy or acting if you're in the theater.

Speaker 1 If you're too conscious about what it is that you're doing, presumably it's going to get in the way of your interpretation of the character.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. So people in improv are obsessed with this problem, right? Because improv, you're out there without a net and you don't know necessarily what you're doing.

Speaker 2 The only way to do it well is to really

Speaker 2 get absorbed, to really let your partners drive it, to not try to be funny. let funniness happen.
So it's going to let the saxophone play you. You have to let the jokes play you.

Speaker 2 You have to let the situation dictate what your next step is.

Speaker 1 I understand that you encountered this tension in your early 30s when you were trying to learn to dance the salsa. Tell me about that, Ted.
What happened?

Speaker 2 Oh, God.

Speaker 2 That was terrible. I just couldn't do it.
And I was taking these lessons with this instructor who got really annoyed with me. And she kept saying, just relax.
You're thinking too much.

Speaker 2 And the more she told me to relax, the tenser I got. It just was this terrible, vicious circle.

Speaker 2 So, you know, dancing, anything, anything where you're

Speaker 2 anything where to be successful, you have to surrender to some extent. And to dance well,

Speaker 2 you can't be thinking about the steps. You can't be thinking about what you look like.

Speaker 2 You can't be thinking about anything at all, really. You need to just let the music move your body and you have to surrender.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 this instructor constantly telling me to relax made it impossible for me to do that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, I think the challenge here is that there are situations where we care so much about the outcome that it's really difficult to, in effect, not care about the outcome.

Speaker 1 You know, I'm thinking about, you know, job interviews or first dates. You know, these are situations that carry enormous weight.
People care about the outcomes of what happens.

Speaker 1 And of course, trying too hard in these situations can convey an unappealing feeling of desperation.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, it's like trying to get a date. It's like the difference between match play and danger tennis.

Speaker 2 When you care about the outcome, when you're attached to the to use the language of the Bhagavad Gita, when you're attached to the fruits, you're not going to be in a state of effortless action because you're just trying, you care too much about

Speaker 2 the goal instead of allowing yourself to be absorbed in the process.

Speaker 2 And how you turn that off is really at the center of this tension of how you can try not to try.

Speaker 1 You know, one domain I think we all are in some ways familiar with, where we see people sometimes trying too hard, is in the domain of politics.

Speaker 1 You know, politicians need to come across as spontaneous, they need to come across as authentic, but sometimes when they come across as controlled or effortful, they can come across as being untrustworthy or unappealing.

Speaker 1 I want to play you a clip here of someone who ran for President of the United States a few years ago.

Speaker 3 I think the next president needs to be a lot quieter, but send a signal that we're prepared to act in the national security interests of this country to get back in the business of creating a more peaceful world.

Speaker 3 Please clap.

Speaker 1 So that's a clip of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. What do you hear in that clip, Ted?

Speaker 2 I hear a stand-up comic asking his audience to please laugh at that joke. And so in politics, you really see this tension.

Speaker 2 where you could have someone who's incredibly qualified.

Speaker 2 They actually probably would be a great leader but they have problems relaxing and conveying that to ordinary people yeah i think this was this was the problem with hillary clinton is that she did not come off as relaxed and authentic and i think it's a real danger in politics right now i mean donald trump the guy just whatever kind of pops into his head comes out of his mouth and i think that's a that's a real part of his appeal is people have the sense that he is authentic and there's a kind of charisma that comes with not having a filter with really just being who you are that that people seem to find appealing

Speaker 1 so modern psychology has begun to explore the idea that in some domains our thinking can trip us up and get in the way of what we actually want to accomplish the late great psychologist daniel wegner studied how difficult it was to think our way to spontaneity tell me about his ideas Ted

Speaker 2 Well, he has this great experiment where he asked people to not, he said, don't think of a white bear.

Speaker 2 And if you say that to someone, they will think of a white bear. His point was there's this paradoxical situation where you're activating the very concept you're trying to shut down.

Speaker 2 And I learned about his work when I was writing Try Not to Try because it's basically around, it's about the same problem.

Speaker 2 This paradoxical fact that

Speaker 2 when it comes to spontaneity,

Speaker 2 if you are trying to achieve it, it's not going to work. And there's this paradoxical relationship between effort and the goal that you're trying to achieve.

Speaker 1 I understand that in another experiment, he asked people to putt a golf ball. And he found that if you told people, try to get it in the hole, but whatever you do, don't overshoot the hole.

Speaker 1 people systematically began to overshoot the hole a lot more than if you didn't give them that instruction. Again, in some ways, it's sort of the paradox of trying to put yourself to sleep.

Speaker 1 And the more you try, the less you're able to sleep. The more you try and do something perfectly, the less well it sometimes turns out.

Speaker 2 Yeah, his work was an important corrective, I think, to this idea that more effort is always good. If you're not being successful in something, just put some more effort into it.
Try harder.

Speaker 2 And that does work in some domains where just cranking it out is going to get you results. But there are a lot of domains where that's not the case.

Speaker 2 And I think Dan Wegner did a great job of showing how there are certain types of human goals that just can't be directly attacked. It's like the butterfly of happiness.

Speaker 2 If you try to capture it, it flutters away. You need to just let it come and sit in your hand.

Speaker 2 And I don't think as a culture, we pay enough attention to the fact that there are really important goals in life

Speaker 2 that we're going to ruin if we try to attack them directly.

Speaker 1 Thinking is a human superpower. It has helped us become the dominant species on the planet.
On a daily basis, thinking and planning and effort bring us innumerable benefits.

Speaker 1 But like all aspects of human behavior, you can sometimes get too much of a good thing.

Speaker 1 When we come back, techniques to stop overthinking. You're listening to Hidden Brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantam.

Speaker 1 Support Support for hidden brain comes from Viz.

Speaker 1 Struggling to see up close? Make it visible with Viz.

Speaker 1 Viz is a once-daily prescription eye drop to treat blurry near vision for up to 10 hours.

Speaker 1 The most common side effects that may be experienced while using Viz include eye irritation, temporary dim or dark vision, headaches, and eye redness.

Speaker 1 Talk to an eye doctor to learn if Viz is right for you. Learn more at viz.com.

Speaker 4 You're cut from a different cloth.

Speaker 4 And with Bank of America Private Bank, you have an entire team tailored to your needs with wealth and business strategies built for the biggest ambitions, like yours.

Speaker 4 Whatever your passion, unlock more powerful possibilities at privatebank.bankofamerica.com. What would you like the power to do? Bank of America, official bank of the FIFA World Cup 2026.

Speaker 4 Bank of America Private Bank is a division of Bank of America NA member FDIC and a wholly owned subsidiary of Bank of America Corporation.

Speaker 1 This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

Speaker 1 We often believe the key to success is to relentlessly pursue our goals.

Speaker 1 Grit, determination and drive are indeed powerful tools to achieving success. But there are many domains in life where these tools are not just ineffective, but actually counterproductive.

Speaker 1 Edward Slingelin is a professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia. He's the author of Trying Not to Try, Ancient China, Modern Science, and the Power of Spontaneity.

Speaker 1 Ted, early on in your study of philosophy, you encountered a passage written by the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant that made you think that Western philosophy had taken a wrong turn somewhere.

Speaker 1 Tell me what you read and how it struck you.

Speaker 2 There's a passage in the groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals where Kant is talking about what he he calls, I think, the amiable person who is just good natured and warm, and they help other people just out of the goodness of their heart.

Speaker 2 They don't really think about it. They see someone in need.
They help them out.

Speaker 2 Kant says, this person's okay,

Speaker 2 but their behavior is not properly moral.

Speaker 2 Because for Kant, for an action, to really be moral, it has to be consciously chosen. You have to stop and you have to think, what does the categorical imperative say I should do?

Speaker 2 And then you need to do it because the categorical imperative says you should do it. So if we want to use that language of hot and cold, Kant believed that hot cognition had no moral qualities to it.

Speaker 2 And true morality had to spring solely from cold cognition, through conscious choice.

Speaker 2 And I remember reading that and just thinking it was nuts. Like

Speaker 2 If I had, there are two people and one of them helps me because they're amiable, they see that I'm in need and they want to help me.

Speaker 2 And the other person looks at me and says, okay, does a categorical imperative say that I should help this person? Yes, I'll go help them. I want the first person as my neighbor.

Speaker 2 I don't want to deal with the second person. So, I mean, I understand his motivations.
He was very worried about.

Speaker 2 the variability of hot cognition and how it can lead us astray, you know, all the kind of things that people like Kahneman Kahneman and Tversky were worried about.

Speaker 2 But I think he missed the fact that we need warmth, we need hot cognition and morality. And so that kind of turned me off on Western philosophy and sent me down a different path.

Speaker 1 You know, I'm reminded of something that the Lebanese American poet Khalil Jibran once said.

Speaker 1 In one of his poems, he wrote, There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward, and there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism.

Speaker 1 And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue. They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.

Speaker 1 Through the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes, he smiles upon the earth.

Speaker 1 Now, of course, that's poetry, Ted, not science, but it does get at the same idea that unthinking generosity is in fact the best form of generosity, precisely because it's spontaneous and unthinking.

Speaker 2 That's beautiful. Yeah, so that's very much why I got into Chinese philosophy.
So the early Chinese thinkers that I came to study in graduate school

Speaker 2 have actually the opposite ranking of Kant. So there's actually a very interesting passage in one of these thinkers named named Shunzi, an early Confucian, where he ranks moral people.

Speaker 2 And the lowest level of being moral is the Kantian stage.

Speaker 2 It's when you kind of know what ritual demands and you don't really feel like doing it, but you force yourself to do it because ritual says so.

Speaker 2 And Shunzi says the true sage is someone who acts in a moral fashion in the way you surrender to the music of a dance when you're really dancing properly or or you just are spontaneously relaxing into your environment.

Speaker 2 That's true morality and that's a true Confucian sage.

Speaker 2 So they have really the opposite valuation that we see in Western Enlightenment thinking that we should be striving for.

Speaker 1 So you say that many early Chinese philosophers were preoccupied with the question of effort versus spontaneity, and many of these thinkers used a term called

Speaker 1 What is uwei? What does it mean, Ted?

Speaker 2 It literally means no doing or no striving. I translate it as effortless action.
And it's a state, something like being in the zone as an athlete.

Speaker 2 It's a state where you lose a sense of yourself as an agent.

Speaker 2 You lose a sense of the passage of time.

Speaker 2 You get absorbed into what you're doing. You're not thinking about the results.

Speaker 2 That's effortless action. It's action that springs in a kind of spontaneous, natural way.

Speaker 2 And in modern terms, we would say it's a state where your system two, your cold cognition is not really involved.

Speaker 1 Now, this sounds a lot like the modern concept of flow, which was introduced by the psychologist Mihai Chixen Mihai, which is that you lose yourself in the thing that you're doing.

Speaker 1 And as you extend effort, as you're doing this difficult thing, you sort of forget, you know, the passage of time, hours go by, and you feel like only minutes have gone by.

Speaker 1 Is there a connection here between those two ideas?

Speaker 2 Very much so. But the concept of Uwe

Speaker 2 is more expansive and helpful than the concept of flow in the sense that Chixmi Hai had a problem where he wanted to distinguish flow states

Speaker 2 from just sitting in front of the TV, veging out or scrolling through Twitter or whatever.

Speaker 2 We have these experiences that on the surface seem like flow states. So they have some of the hallmarks.
We lose a sense of the passage of time. We kind of lose a sense of ourself.
We get absorbed.

Speaker 2 But we come out of it feeling crummy, like we feel dirty or like we wasted our time.

Speaker 2 So he doesn't want to call those states flow.

Speaker 2 And what he settled on was this idea of complexity and challenge. So he argues that what distinguishes flow states is that they're just the right level of complexity to challenge your skill level.

Speaker 2 This fits certain flow states. So it fits rock climbing, it fits sports, but I think that his definition is too narrow.
And so this is where I find the early Chinese concept more helpful.

Speaker 2 So the early Chinese would argue that's what is distinctive of an Uwei experience is two parts. You've become absorbed into something that's bigger than you.

Speaker 2 So you're absorbed into something larger than the narrow ego. It's something that you care about.

Speaker 2 And this then explains playing with kids. You know, you love being with kids and you get absorbed in the game.

Speaker 2 So I think it's a better definition because it captures the full spectrum of where we get into these away flow states.

Speaker 1 So many of these early Chinese thinkers believed that a person in an Uwe state radiated a certain quality. What was this quality, Ted?

Speaker 2 So unfortunately, in modern Mandarin, it's pronounced d,

Speaker 2 which students sometimes giggle about. If I have to translate it, I would do it as charismatic power.

Speaker 2 And if you're a Confucian and you have d,

Speaker 2 people want to follow you. They want to obey obey you.

Speaker 2 They want to be part of your government. And you don't have to force them to do it.

Speaker 2 If you're a Taoist, it's the power that allows you to relax everyone and get them to be natural instead of being unnatural as they are now. So it's this power you have to affect other people.

Speaker 2 And in the early Chinese context, if you're in the state of Wu Wei, you're in harmony with heaven.

Speaker 2 From a modern perspective, we can give a naturalistic interpretation of this connection between spontaneity and charisma.

Speaker 2 And the connection is everything we just talked about in the first segment, why you can't get a date when you're trying hard, why politicians who seem to be trying too hard are unappealing to people.

Speaker 2 Human beings are

Speaker 2 superbly attuned bull detectors. We're constantly evaluating the sincerity and authenticity of the people we're interacting with.

Speaker 2 And we're built in such a way that we're attracted to people who are relaxed, people who seem confident, people who don't seem to have ulterior motives.

Speaker 2 When I'm trying to insert myself in a conversation at a party,

Speaker 2 I don't have duh. No one wants to talk to me.
When I'm just relaxed and tired out after a long shift at work that went well,

Speaker 2 I'm in a state of way and I have this power of duh. So I think we could tell a very compelling cognitive scientific story that humans associate spontaneity with trustworthiness.

Speaker 1 So besides the value of understanding how the ancient Chinese thinkers thought, that's interesting and valuable for its own sake, you argue that thinking about these terms in everyday life can also be useful, that in some ways, knowing the terms and understanding what they mean actually transforms many of the things that we do.

Speaker 1 And you, in fact, use these terms in your daily life. You and your friends and colleagues actually deploy these terms.

Speaker 1 And when you deploy them, you find that it changes your relationship to the things that you're doing.

Speaker 2 Words are very helpful in pointing out gaps in our knowledge. So

Speaker 2 everyone experiences Schadenfreude at some point.

Speaker 2 But we needed the Germans to give us a word for it. So we borrow that term because it's pointing out something useful in our environment.
And I feel the same way about uwei and

Speaker 2 there's no good translation for either term into English.

Speaker 2 And I think this is one powerful way in which Chinese philosophy helps us is it gives us a language for talking about this relationship between spontaneity and charisma or spontaneity and authenticity that is a bit of a blind spot.

Speaker 2 in modern Western cultures.

Speaker 1 There's a brain imaging study involving jazz musicians that tells us what's happening in the brains of people when they are in an uwe state. Tell me about the study, Ted.

Speaker 2 What they found is that when the musicians were playing a set piece, so when they gave them particular music to play, or when they were playing scales,

Speaker 2 everything's firing. Their prefrontal cortex is firing.
They're obviously exerting. effort.

Speaker 2 When they're invited to to improvise, so stop playing a particular piece, just do whatever you want, there's this interesting pattern where the prefrontal cortex, so the center of cognitive control, executive function, doing things consciously, that part shuts down.

Speaker 2 But what's interesting is the ACC, the anterior cingulate cortex, is very active.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 this seems to be the neural correlate of Uwe,

Speaker 2 where

Speaker 2 the PFC is shut off so we don't have the experience of effort or action and yet we're alert and we're engaged and we're paying attention to what we're doing and so it seems to be this state of kind of engagement attention

Speaker 2 but a feeling of no no effort and no cognitive control

Speaker 1 So much of the story that you're telling me here, Ted, is about being less focused on ourselves and more focused on the things that we are engaged with, focused on the outside world.

Speaker 1 You argue that, in fact,

Speaker 1 a strategy for entering Uwe is to focus on the outside world rather than on ourselves.

Speaker 1 Talk about how you can do this.

Speaker 2 You need to find something that that you care about that's bigger than you. And that's going to be different things for different people.

Speaker 2 So for me, it's, you know, it's the Northern California landscape, the colors of it, the shape of the hills.

Speaker 2 It's gardening if I'm weeding, chopping wood is great for that. Playing tennis, if it's danger tennis, if it's actually, I'm not worrying about it too much, it'll get me into that state.

Speaker 2 Kayaking, I'm an ocean kayaker. I do kind of adventure kayaking.
So I go out in the ocean and essentially do whitewater kayaking in the ocean. So I ride waves over rocks and through channels and surf.

Speaker 2 And so I'm surrounded by this natural beauty.

Speaker 2 I have to be just completely focused on outside of me. I have to be looking at the ocean and not at me.
But everyone can find some activity that will get them into Huwe.

Speaker 1 I'm wondering if physical exertion is also valuable, Ted, because it's taking us out of our minds and into our bodies.

Speaker 1 I mean, when I'm doing push-ups or running or playing hard at a sport, it becomes harder to think.

Speaker 1 Can you talk about this idea that one of the benefits of intense exercise is that it can actually lead us to uwei by essentially shutting down, if you will, some portion of the brain?

Speaker 2 Yeah, so the neuroscientist Arne Dietrich did a lot of work on what he calls hypofrontality that was looking at this phenomenon.

Speaker 2 So when you're stressing your body, our body says, okay, we need to really send some blood to the muscles and to the heart.

Speaker 2 And so this accounts for this experience, you know, long-distance runners have of just euphoria. You know, I get it through weightlifting, where it's just at a certain point,

Speaker 2 the blood flow is not going to my neocortex anymore. And I feel great.
I feel exhilarated and absorbed in what I'm doing.

Speaker 2 And this is a kind of tricky way to get into Uwe.

Speaker 2 What you're doing is using your body as a tool for indirectly shutting your mind down.

Speaker 1 So a lot of people use alcohol as a way to shut their mind down. Is that a way of getting to Uwe, Ted?

Speaker 2 There's a story in the Zhuangzi, this early Taoist text, that talks about a drunken man on a cart getting carried home from a party. When he falls out of the cart, but he's not hurt.

Speaker 2 He didn't know that he was riding and he doesn't know that he's fallen out. So

Speaker 2 he's protected because his spirit is whole.

Speaker 2 And I remember reading that and thinking, oh, that reminds me of this thing that happened in college where coming back from a party and a friend of mine took a tumble down a slope and kind of popped up.

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 bowed to us all and was like, ta-da,

Speaker 2 because he was so, he was relaxed he wasn't he didn't tense up right you get hurt when you fall when you tense up

Speaker 2 the zhuangzi story concludes by saying if you can make your spirit whole in this way through alcohol how much more so can you do it if you're drunk on heaven

Speaker 2 so in the zhuangzi it's very clearly just a metaphor that's kind of sacred power

Speaker 2 And, you know, that's fine, but thinking about it more, I was like, but still, alcohol is pretty good. It does the job in a lot of situations.

Speaker 2 You have to just drink this substance that will go into your bloodstream, go up to your brain, and shut down your PFC for you.

Speaker 2 And so I got interested in alcohol and other chemical intoxicants as cultural technologies that we've developed. to essentially get around the paradox of trying not to try.

Speaker 1 Ted credits alcohol with once helping him finish writing a book proposal. He had been stuck a long time, but something changed after he had a couple of stiff drinks.

Speaker 2 I really felt like I was taking dictation.

Speaker 2 But what it really is, is you're letting your subconscious, your hot cognition, which is really clever, which can see new possibilities, you're letting it drive for a little while and not trying to do top-down control.

Speaker 2 And that's what sold the book. It became the first few pages of the book.
It's what everyone loves. And I don't think I ever could have gotten there pounding coffee and staring at my computer screen.

Speaker 1 Edward Slingelin is a professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Trying Not to Try, Ancient China, Modern Science, and the Power of Spontaneity.

Speaker 1 Ted, thank you for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

Speaker 2 Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 There is a powerful form of effortlessness that we have not yet explored. Think about all the people who spend years trying to learn a new language.

Speaker 1 They take classes, spend time working with professors, pour over books in the library. Some go on lengthy foreign trips to immerse themselves in the new language.
It's all very effortful.

Speaker 1 Sadly, most people who try to learn a new language fail to do so.

Speaker 1 But notice how nearly all of us, in the first year or two of our lives, miraculously pick up the language or languages spoken by the people around us.

Speaker 1 Remember, this is at a time when we can barely stand, we might not know how to walk, we can't feed ourselves, but we effortlessly master something that adults take years and years to do?

Speaker 1 How does this happen and what can it teach us about the science of effortless action? That and more are in our accompanying episode on Hidden Brain Plus. It's titled, Letting Go.

Speaker 1 If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to it right now. If you're not a subscriber, there are two ways you can join Hidden Brain Plus.

Speaker 1 If you listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, you can sign up for a free seven-day subscription by searching for Hidden Brain and clicking the Try Free button or by going to apple.co slash hiddenbrain.

Speaker 1 Another option, especially if you are using an Android device, is to sign up for Hidden Brain Plus via our Patreon page. To do so, just go to support.hiddenbrain.org.

Speaker 1 That site again is support.hiddenbrain.org. No matter which option you choose, your subscription helps us make many more episodes of the show.
We're truly grateful.

Speaker 1 Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Quirrell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury.

Speaker 1 Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor.

Speaker 1 We end today with a story from our sister show, My Unsung Hero. It's brought to you by T-Mobile for Business.

Speaker 1 Our story comes from Joy Diaz.

Speaker 1 Joy grew up in Mexico City. Although her parents were anything but wealthy, they devoted themselves to humanitarian work.

Speaker 1 By collaborating with a network of people from around the world, they were able to support a community living in extreme poverty.

Speaker 5 And when I talk about extreme poverty, what I mean is these people lived inside the municipal garbage dump.

Speaker 5 And my parents had no money, but what they had was a lot of faith, and they worked tirelessly to bring teachers and doctors to work into the garbage dump and help the people who live there.

Speaker 5 And eventually, as time went by, my parents were able to build a clinic, they built a school, they built public showers, they built a dining hall, all of that in the middle of the garbage dump.

Speaker 5 But while that was happening, we did not have a home. We were renters.

Speaker 5 And I remember one day, one of those doctor missionaries flew into Mexico City, hopped on a taxi, came to the house,

Speaker 5 saw my mom, and just gave her this paper bag full of money, full of cash. I don't know how much money was in that bag.
I am thinking about $50,000.

Speaker 5 And he said,

Speaker 5 for many years, I've been wanting to buy a house for you all. So here's the money.
Buy a house.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 because of his gift,

Speaker 5 we were able to move into a middle-class neighborhood. And because of his gift, you know, the money that was spent in rent was now saved, and I was able to go to college.

Speaker 5 And that changed not only the trajectory of my life, but I believe wholeheartedly that it changed the trajectory of generations. Because

Speaker 5 today, my children live in a middle-class neighborhood because I am college-educated, because I am able to have

Speaker 5 a better job than I could have had before.

Speaker 5 You know, like it

Speaker 5 changed the trajectory of generations.

Speaker 5 I want to say his name. My unsung hero is Jack Bloxom from Richmond, Virginia.
I am forever grateful, Jack. Thank you.

Speaker 1 Joy Diaz now lives in Austin, Texas.

Speaker 1 Today's My Unsung Hero story was brought to you by T-Mobile for Business. If you enjoy Hidden Brain, please take a moment and share your favorite episode with two or three people in your life.

Speaker 1 Word-of-mouth recommendations really make a huge difference in introducing new listeners to our work. We truly appreciate your support.

Speaker 1 I'm Shankar Vedantam.

Speaker 1 See you soon.

Speaker 7 There are millions of podcasts out there, and you've chosen this one. Whether you're a regular or just here on a whim, it's what you have chosen to listen to.

Speaker 7 With Yoto, your kids can have the same choice. Yoto is a screen-free, ad-free audio player.
With hundreds of Yoto cards, there are stories, music, and podcasts like this one, but for kids.

Speaker 7 Just slot a card into the player and let the adventure begin. Check out YotoPlay.com.

Speaker 8 What can 160 years of experience teach you about the future?

Speaker 8 When it comes to protecting what matters, Pacific Life provides life insurance, retirement income, and employee benefits for people and businesses building a more confident tomorrow.

Speaker 8 Strategies rooted in strength and backed by experience. Ask a financial professional how Pacific Life can help you today.

Speaker 8 Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York, Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.

Speaker 6 Now's the time to start your next adventure behind the wheel of an exciting new Toyota hybrid.

Speaker 6 With the largest lineup of hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and electrified vehicles to choose from, Toyota has the one for you.

Speaker 6 Every new Toyota hybrid comes with Toyota Care, two-year complementary scheduled maintenance, an exclusive hybrid battery warranty, and Toyota's legendary quality and reliability.

Speaker 6 Visit your local Toyota dealer today, Toyota. Let's go places.
See your local Toyota dealer for hybrid battery warranty details.

Speaker 3 Extra-value meals are back. That means 10 tender juicy McNuggets and medium fries and a drink are just $8.

Speaker 6 Only at McDonald's. For limited time only, prices and participation may vary.

Speaker 1 Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska, and California, and for delivery.