← 10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Happier with Dan Harris
Why You Say Yes When You Shouldn’t — And How To Say No When It Matters Most | Dr. Sunita Sah
01:10:47
A conversation with a Cornell professor who is attempting to rebrand the concept of defiance. started her career as a physician but then switched over to organizational psychology. At Cornell, she conducts research on influence, authority,...
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- [00:00]
Dan Harris
Foreign. This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, party people. How we doing? Here's a question. How often do you say yes to things only to regret it later? Why do we do that? Social pressure, power dynamics, eagerness to please, Guilt, habit. Today I'm talking to a Cornell professor who is attempting to rebrand the concept of defiance. Many of us think of that term as negative, but my guest argues that the pressure to comply is a pervasive corrosive force in our culture and that we all need to do a better job of learning when and how to say no. Dr. Sunita SA started her career as a physician, but then she switched over to organizational psychology, and at Cornell, she conducts research on influence, authority, compliance, and defiance. She's out with a book now called the Power of no in a World that Demands yes. And in this conversation we talk about how she defines defiance. The costs of compliance. The five stages of Defian, how to make defiance a practice in your life. The upside of tension, even though many of us want to avoid it. The importance of knowing your values. This is a theme that keeps coming up here on the show that I find very interesting. She's going to talk about how to articulate your values and how this relates to your biology, specifically your hormones. And we talk about the gender components of defiance and much more. Just to say before we dive in here, it can be very tricky to figure out whether you should say yes or no in a given situation. It often involves tuning into your body, which is an overused and cliched notion, but a powerful one nonetheless. So if you want to get better at this skill, and it really is a skill, we've got a guided meditation for you which is specifically tailored to this episode, and it comes from our teacher of the month, Kyra Jewel Lingo, who will be crafting bespoke meditations for all of our Monday Wednesday episodes during the month of August. We think of this as the kind of lecture lab model. The pod is the lecture where you're learning interesting stuff, and the lab is where you practice applying it in your own mind. As you may have heard me say before, one of the hardest parts about personal growth or self development or whatever you want to call it, is remembering. You hear really interesting stuff on a podcast or you read it in a book and then you forget. One of the beautiful things about meditation is it can be a remembering machine. In fact, and you may have heard me say this as well, one of the original translations for the word sati, which we now translate as Mindfulness is remembering or recollecting. So anyway, head on over to danharris.com and if you become a paid subscriber, you can get these meditations which we will now be churning out on Monday and Wednesday episodes. If you sign up, you also get regular live video sessions where I do a guided meditation and then take your questions. In fact, I'll be doing one tomorrow at 3:30 Eastern. Okay, we'll get started with Dr. Sunita Sa right after this. I like nice clothes. I wouldn't call myself a fashion plate. My wife is, but I'm more, you know, I'm not like high style. You won't see me on the runways in Paris. But I like nice clothes and I like to look good, which is important because a lot of my work is on camera. However, I don't like to spend a ton of money, which is why I really love Quints because they've got high quality stuff, you know, like high quality fabrics, classic fits, lightweight layers for warm weather, all at prices that make sense. Everything I've ordered from Quince has been totally solid and I order real basics like underwear and socks, but also cashmere sweaters. They've got these really comfy pants that I wear a lot. You may have heard me say this before, but it is not uncommon for me to be head to toe Quince, especially when I'm like in the city having meetings. If I'm at home, I'm in sweatpants. But often I'll be wearing Quint's cozy wear. So I represent at home and out in the world. Quint has closet staples you'll reach for over and over, like cozy cashmere and cotton sweaters for just 50 bucks. Breathable flow knit polos and comfortable lightweight pants that somehow work for both weekend hangs and dressed up dinners. Everything from Quints is half the cost of similar brands. By working directly with top artisans in cutting out the middlemen, Quint gives you luxury pieces without the markup. And Quint only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes. Keep it classic and cool with long lasting staples. From quint Go to quint.comhappier for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Quint.comhappier okay, so I'm doing this thing with Function Health where I'm doing some blood tests and gonna see what's going on for me internally. I chose Function because it's the only health platform that gives you access to the kind of data most people never see. And then the insights to help you actually take action inside function. You can test over 160 biomarkers, from heart and hormones to toxins, inflammation, and stress. It's an enhanced view of what's happening inside your body every year. This season shows up with the same demands. New routines, shifting weather, and a heightened focus on immune health. Most people think preparing means stocking up on vitamins and hand sanitizer. But real preparation starts inside your body long before the first cough or cold. Whether you're sending kids back to school or just stepping into a busier season for yourself, it's time to recalibrate to see what your immune system needs and fill the gaps early. These are the biomarkers worth checking this time of year. Vitamin D. Higher levels are associated with improved immune function and reduced inflammation. Inflammation. Vitamin E, an antioxidant that helps protect immune cells from oxidative stress. Zinc is critical for fighting infections before they take hold. Routine physicals can skip all of this data, so you're left guessing why you feel depleted, why colds linger, or why you're struggling to bounce back after the party you went to, all the parties you went to over the summer. But you don't have to guess. Function includes over 160 lab tests so you can understand what's happening beneath the surface. And again, take action. I'm going in tomorrow morning, actually, for my second test, and I'm excited to see the results soon. I'll keep you posted on how it goes. Learn more and join using my link. The First 1000 get a $100 credit toward their membership. Visit www.functionhealth.com happier or use gift code Happier100 to sign up to own your health. Dr. Sunita Sa. Welcome to the show.
- [07:00]
Dr. Sunita Sa
It's wonderful to be here. Thank you very much for inviting me.
- [07:03]
Dan Harris
Thank you for showing up. I would love to start with a little of your personal story and how you got interested in the. In the subject of defiance. We can define defiance at some point, but let's just start with your personal story. And in particular, I noticed that your name actually has to do with compliance.
- [07:25]
Dr. Sunita Sa
That's right. Yes. I got into this work for both personal and professional reasons. And one of the things I say is that I really, I grew up with a masterclass in compliance, and I did ask my dad when I was quite young, what does my name Sunita mean? And he said in Sanskrit, sunita means good. And the way that I interpreted good and the messages that I received was that to be good really means to be polite, to be nice, to Obey to do as you're told, to not question authority. So I really started equating being compliant with being good and defiance with being bad. And many of us get those messages not just from parents, but also teachers and maybe the community. So we've become socialized to comply almost becomes our default response. And then that becomes really difficult to defy when you actually need to, when you're older. So that aspect is also could be a dynamic that's familiar to sort of children of immigrants. The strict upbringing and the high expectations of that kind of burden of being good and what is being good was very salient to me as a child.
- [08:47]
Dan Harris
I'm not an expert in this, so I'll ask you as an expert. I would imagine there are gender components to this as well.
- [08:55]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Yes. I think some of the messages that I received, probably girls receive them more than boys, you know, to be polite, to think about other people's feelings, put their feelings above yours, to be sort of looking after other people, perhaps even being subservient. So those messages are pretty strong at times. But many people, many parents actually, actually do want their children to be compliant. Like, if you talk about a child being defiant, it's not seen as a good thing. And so we do want that kind of aspect of telling children to do as you're told and for them to do what we want them to do. So I remember when my son was like, he was 4, almost 5 years old. I was in London, my hometown, and I really wanted to see the Olympic torch pass by. And that afternoon was hot, at least hot for London. And I was trying to take my son there, and he just didn't want to go. And I was really hot and frazzled, and he kept asking to be picked up, and I could only pick him up for a few steps. He was too heavy. And I kept telling him, we're going to miss the flame. Come on, let's go. This is a once in a lifetime experience to which he looked utterly unimpressed at that. And he just then sat down on the pavement and said, I don't want to see it, I don't want to go. And kind of jutted his chin out and I ended up missing the flame. And I was walking back with him and I was just like saying, you know, oh, why couldn't you have been good? And then that sentence really came to me, as in everything that I was taught and that moral equation that I have of compliance being good and defiance being bad, I was teaching him the same thing. Just because he wasn't doing what I wanted him to do. And when I told my husband about it, he was like, you know, remember what you used to tell me about our relatives when Samuel was born? And that was that they always used to ask when he was a little baby, a newborn baby, is he good? And by that they meant, does he sleep when you want him to sleep, does he eat? Does he feed when you want him to feed, does he cry? And I was like, well, of course he's good. He's a baby, you know, but this is what it is. Is he compliant? Is he doing what you want him to do? And I always was really puzzled by that fact. Like, is that what we think being good is? And so we make all these associations about what good is? And it is such a strong association with being compliant and living up to other people's expectations that we really need to break that moral equation later on in life. And for many people, especially with that kind of upbringing and being socialized to be compliant, find it very difficult to break that moral equation.
- [11:38]
Dan Harris
We'll get into the. Into the how in a moment, but let's just stay on a high level for a few more minutes. The book is called Defy. As you said before, Defiance does have a bit of a branding issue. So how are you defining defiance?
- [11:53]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Well, because of this aspect of equating compliance with being good and defiance with being bad, I just became so fascinated by that single powerful word defy for such a long time. I was always fascinated by people who could defy and be themselves. And when I started delving into sort of compliance and looking at this in my research as well, I found that one study found that on average, nine out of 10 healthcare workers, most of them nurses, felt too uncomfortable to speak up when they saw a colleague making an error. And also in other industries, in another survey of over 1700 crew members on commercial airlines, about half of them didn't feel comfortable speaking up when they saw someone making a mistake. So you can imagine if you were in that hospital or on that airplane, these are situations you want people to be speaking up and doing something. So I really started to wonder, is it sometimes bad to be so good? And what do we actually sacrifice by being so compliant? Because even if it's not a life and death situation, if you are constantly disregarding your values and not being able to say no and defy, it can be soul destroying in a way. I often felt a lot of tension between what I thought was the right thing to do and what other people expected me to do. And it was that tension that really drove a lot of my research and the work that I do. And that's when I came to this revelation that we've misunderstood what it means to defy. So the Oxford English Dictionary defines defiance as to defy is to challenge the power of someone else boldly and openly. And even though I grew up in the uk, I think that's far too narrow a definition. And my definition of defiance is that to defy is simply to act in accordance with your values, especially when there is pressure to do otherwise. So we've reframed defiance as something positive and proactive that can help not just yourself, but the people around you and society. Because if we think about it, every single act of compliance, of consent, of defiance, that really adds up to the society that we live in. And so it affects our lives, affects our workplaces, affects our communities. And that's why I'm very passionate about understanding this and giving people tools to be actually be able to defy when they need to.
- [14:32]
Dan Harris
My wife and I for many years have, off and on, seen this couples therapist, Michael Vincent Miller. Awesome dude. And he once said that the code of a relationship. So in digital code, it's ones and zeros, but the code of a relationship is yeses and no's.
- [14:54]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Interesting. And that most of it should be yeses.
- [14:59]
Dan Harris
No, no. It's just more that I'm picking up on your concept that our compliance or defiance is what makes a society. And I think yeses and no's are what make up relationships, romantic or otherwise, right?
- [15:14]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Absolutely, yes. I mean, it has an effect in the environment. Every time we say, an interpersonal effect, too. Every time we say yes or we say no. We're creating norms, and those norms create our lives.
- [15:32]
Dan Harris
You write that there are five stages for defiance. Can you walk us through those?
- [15:39]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Sure. I've identified these five stages, and it's a useful framework for what we might experience when we actually defy. So some people can skip stages, you can go back and forth, but a lot of people do progress in this way. And the first stage of defiance is tension. And that is the tension that I spoke about. Like, when you want to defy, you often feel some kind of tension. It manifests in your body in some way. And it could be different for each person. Some people feel some unease in their stomach. Other people get a dry mouth or a constricted throat. Some people get a headache. So it's really useful to learn what that sign is that you get. And that tension is really important because a Lot of people think that is what is doubt or anxiety or their weakness. But actually if you didn't have any tension, you would have given all your power and agency away. If you had done that, you'll just be, yes, of course you wouldn't feel any tension. That tension is actually a signal of your strength that perhaps this is not the right thing to do. So the second stage is really acknowledging that to yourself. It's like really examining, why do I feel this tension, why do I feel uncomfortable? What is it that I think is wrong about this situation? And really examining that. And then stage three is a really critical stage because that involves vocalizing that tension to someone else. So externalizing it. And why that's such a critical stage is because once you do that, a number of things happen. One is that you change the environment a little bit. Two, the research shows that you're more likely to get to the final stage five and to five because you can't go back after you've said this out loud, that you're not comfortable with this, or you're asking questions to clarify the situation. You can't then go back in time and say that you were fine with it because you would have too much cognitive dissonance. So that's why it's critical to be able to just simply say, have you considered this? I'm not comfortable with that. There might be another way. Can you clarify for me this? And in this stage you can still be in a subservient position. You know, you're asking for clarification, not confrontations. Showing some curiosity as to why is it that we should go in this direction or you would like me to do this. So trying to find out a little bit more about the situation, then once you have those answers, stage four is your non compliance communication. So really threatening. I suppose you could call that a threat or just communication of I can't go along with that. So it's a threat of non compliance. And then the final act, stage five is your act of defiance, your final act of defiance. And that's not going along with it. And the really fascinating thing is that if you can get to that final stage of defiance, all that tension that you felt in stage one, that just dissipates, it melts away. And that's actually really fascinating to see because a lot of people when they're in stage one and they just disregard it, or even if they acknowledge it to themselves, they try to sweep it away and they think it's weakness, it doesn't actually go away. If you just swallow your words or just keep it to yourself, it actually grows and can lead to resentment and regret and a whole lot of other negative consequences. So getting to stage five and being able to act in alignment with what you think is the right thing to do is really more authentic. It's more honest, it's more joyful, and that tension just dissipates.
- [19:27]
Dan Harris
I noted with interest that one of the things you recommend, which if you didn't recommend, I would have recommended, is meditation as a way for people to boost self awareness so that they know when there's tension. Not in just like an ambient miasmatic way, but like you actually, you see it for what it is. And specifically body scan meditation, where you kind of sweep your attention starting at your, the top of your head and down through the rest of your body as a practice that gives you improved interoception or ability to perceive the body's signals so that you can know when, when you're at that tension stage. Maybe say a little bit more about that.
- [20:09]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Yeah, that tension is really a powerful signal. It's like the warning sign that something isn't quite right here. And it's a shame that we often think about tension as being something so uncomfortable or something that's weak within us that we just have to get through. To really listen to that tens is going to give you your strength. It's really what I say. It's your values speaking to you, is trying to warn you that something isn't right. And to really look at this in more detail. And I think it's really fascinating if people can get in tune with how it manifests in themselves because it can be different for each person, as I mentioned, and really know what the signs are. Oh, I felt this before. Why is that? You know, and it's the way I learned how to do defy when I needed to. Because I would be in a situation, I would feel this tension and I would often try to disregard it or just go along with what the other person wanted. But the next time you're in that situation and you feel that tension again, it reminds you, oh, this is what I did last time. Maybe this time I can listen to it and do something different and tell you once you get to that stage five and that tension goes away, it's a wonderful feeling, it's a wonderful accomplishment to be able to live in alignment with what you think is the right thing to do.
- [21:36]
Dan Harris
Yes. Easier said than done.
- [21:38]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Absolutely.
- [21:39]
Dan Harris
And we'll get into ways to make it easier to do in A moment. But you've brought up values a lot. Although actually I used a but in that last sentence I probably should have said and because I think this concept of values, which may sound sort of anodyne or like a bromide or something like that, but the way you talk about it, it actually is quite practical and can help you defy more successfully. So can you say more about why it's so important to understand what your values are? And I guess as an add on question like I think many of us may not have even articulated our values.
- [22:14]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Yes, I think that's true. Very few people sort of think about their values even less write down their values unless they're explicitly asked to write down their values. I think it's fascinating that like lots of organizations and institutions, they have like a mission statement or they have company values, but we often don't do that for ourselves. And I have my executive students do this exercise every year. So right at the beginning of their leadership courses I ask them to think about their values and why their values are important to them, how they came to their values. And the reason I asked them to write it down is because the research shows that if you can actually write down your values, first of all, you're more likely to act in alignment with them. And second of all, you have a lower stress response, a lower cortisol level if you know who you are and what you stand for. And so the second important aspect of this is really understanding what do we mean by values in the first place? Place, because it's not about sort of a goal or a belief, a value. What I see time and time again year after year is that they tend to come down to often very simple words that seem quite universal. So they're not moral convictions such as abortion is wrong or homosexuality is right. Because when you look at those things, they can be quite divisive and people have different opinions and beliefs about them. They're not sort of moral convictions in that we sort of see them as fact. But you can have a big debate with someone about them. What I'm talking about are values such as integrity, compassion, benevolence, fairness, justice. These are the types of values that I see and if we can enact them in our behavior on a day to day basis, that is really powerful. But people often have these values. They will say, and I often ask myself, executive students to do this exercise and you know, rate yourself on a scale of 0 to 100 in how honest you think you are relative to other people in the room. So if you think you are the least honest, it should be zero. If you think you are the most honest, it should be a hundred. And if you think you're average, it should be 50. And I see the same results every year. What do you think that would be?
- [24:45]
Dan Harris
75.
- [24:47]
Dr. Sunita Sa
It's always about 85 or over, right?
- [24:49]
Dan Harris
Like Lake Wobegon.
- [24:54]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Like half the people in the class need to be below average and half need to be above for this to work. But Everybody is saying 85 or over. Very few are saying they're average, and nobody is saying they're below average. So we really value this aspect of integrity. But whether we can actually live that value is different. Because what I've seen is what somebody believes their values to be is quite different from how they actually behave. That distance between who we think we are and what we actually do is enormous. So how do we get closer to eliminating that gap, or at least mitigating that gap is? Learning how to defy is an important way, given how much so much of our behavior is influenced by others. And it starts at a very young age. So there was a survey of over 20,000 high school students. And it found in that survey that nearly 2/3 of students have said that they have cheated on a test. Maybe that doesn't surprise people, but it also said nearly one third had stolen something from a store in the past year, which I was surprised about. And then this next one, given that I have a student at high school, was a little bit heartbreaking, was that over 80% had said that they had lied to their parent about something significant. And these figures are likely higher because one in four confessed they'd lied on at least one question in the survey. So it starts at this young age, but it's not unique to high school students because they also say that they're happy with their ethics and their honesty. So what we need to do is really align our behaviors and our actions with the values that we state we have. Because if we can't do that, who we are and what we value actually changes. Because I'm sure you've heard, like people say, like doing something and then sort of saying, this is not me, but if you do it over and over again, then it actually is you. So we really need to be aware of who we are and whether we actually behave in the way that we want to behave, whether we can enact those values on a day to day basis.
- [27:04]
Dan Harris
I want to bring this directly back to Defiance in a big way, in a second. But just as a. I don't Think it's too much of a digression. As a point of interest, you said something about the fact that we have lower stress levels, maybe even lower levels of stress hormones, if we know what we stand for.
- [27:21]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Yes. So there's some research shows that clarifying our values leads to a lower biological stress reaction. So we have lower cortisol levels if we know our values and we can act in alignment with them.
- [27:36]
Dan Harris
You know, I just. I'll abuse my privilege as the host of this show to say a little bit about myself, and I'm doing that a little bit sheepishly because this is something I've said a million times. So I. To my loyal listeners, I apologize. But you may not know, Sunita, that I got two years ago, a tattoo on my left wrist right next to my watch, that has the letters ftboab, which stands for. For. For the benefit of all beings, which is a classical Buddhist expression. And it is a value of mine to be altruistic, to be in service, not in a way in which I'm wearing a hair shirt because the letter A stands for all beings. And of course, I'm part of that. So self interest is not ruled out within this worldview. But I have found that having this on my wrist and reminding myself all the time in the middle of a workout, yeah, I'm working out so that I can be healthier and happier, so that I can make other people healthier and happier. I do everything I do in work, at work, not only to support me and my family, but to, you know, leave this place a little better than it was when I arrived, et cetera, et cetera. And it does reduce my stress because it's very easy for me to get carried away and anxiety around financial stuff or performance stuff, but if I can, whenever I remember to look at it through the lens of my principal value, all that shit melts away, right?
- [29:02]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Yeah, absolutely. And we can do things that are very uncomfortable if we know why we're doing.
- [29:08]
Dan Harris
Yes.
- [29:09]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Right. So a lot of people talk about purpose. I'm talking about, let's drill it down to our values. Like, what would a person like me with these values, with integrity, fairness, compassion, whatever is the most important to you, what would they do in this type of situation? And that is really powerful. That particular sentence that I have as part of a tool that I use has allowed me to step closer to doing the things that I once felt very uncomfortable to do, which is saying no, which is defying when I need to act in a way that would go against somebody else's. Expectations, but would align with the values that are important to me.
- [29:54]
Dan Harris
Yes. So I can imagine a couple mechanisms by which clarifying your values would lower the release of cortisol in your brain. One would be not being a hypocrite. Probably feels pretty good that the delta between kind of vague sense of what a quote unquote moral person does and what you are actually doing probably creates a background static of cognitive dissonance or anxiety or sadness or stress that isn't helpful. Another mechanism would be what you just articulated, that if you're clear about who you are, what you stand for, that it makes it easier to do this otherwise very hard thing of saying, no, I'm not. I'm. I'm not down for that.
- [30:41]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Yeah. I think both play into this because the thing that keeps us silent and compliant is that we often think about the costs of defiance. Oh, I don't want to lose my job or I don't want to lose this relationship, or I just find it very difficult to say no or imply something negative to the person that's standing right in front of me and I forget about the bigger picture and everybody else that might be harmed. And I've identified some psychological processes for why that is. But what we do is we put so much weight on those costs of defying, which could be very real, but we don't think about the costs of compliance, like constantly bowing our head to other people, sacrificing what we think is important. And those costs can be very real. And indeed, stress is one of them. We build up resentment. We build up chronic stress, anxiety, inflammation, burnout, dissatisfaction. Like there's so many negative consequences for being compliant. When you. And saying a yes, that's not really a yes. So we need to think about the cost of compliance, not just the cost of defiance.
- [31:55]
Dan Harris
Coming up, Dr. Sunita Sa talks about some key concepts, including the Defiance compass. We dig deeper on aspects of moral language to help you understand and clarify the decisions you make on a daily basis. And much more. I like nice clothes. I wouldn't call myself a fashion plate. My wife is, but I'm more, you know, I'm not like high style. You won't see me on the runways in Paris. But I like nice clothes and I like to look good, which is important because a lot of my work is on camera. However, I don't like to spend a ton of money, which is why I really love Quint because they've got high quality stuff, you know, like high quality fabrics, classic fits, lightweight layers for warm weather. All at prices that make sense. Everything I've ordered from Quint has been totally solid and I order real basics like underwear and socks but also cashmere sweaters. They've got these really comfy pants that I wear a lot. You may have heard me say this before, but it is not uncommon for me to be head to toe Quince, especially when I'm like in the city having meetings. If I'm at home I'm in sweatpants, but often I'll be wearing Quints cozy wear so I represent at home and out in the world. Quince has closet staples you'll reach for over and over like cozy cashmere and cotton sweaters for just 50 bucks. Breathable flow knit polos and comfortable lightweight pants that somehow work for both weekend hangs and dressed up dinners. Everything from Quints is half the cost of similar brands. By working directly with top artisans and cutting out the middlemen, Quint gives you luxury pieces without the markup and Quint's only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes. Keep it classic and cool with long lasting staples. From Quince Go to quint.comhappier for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Quint.comhappier this is an ad by BetterHelp. I am a total and unremitting fan of therapy. Everybody who lives in my house sees a therapist. It's just a great way to get out of your head. Have somebody really smart help you think about your issues. Many therapists can also give you great tools for navigating life in a more supple and sophisticated way. We live in an era where there's just an avalanche of wellness advice, cold plunges, gratitude journals, screen detoxes. How do you know what's right for you? That's why it's so helpful to talk to a live and experienced therapist who can give you personalized recommendations and cut through all the noise. So maybe the therapist can give you coping skills or tell you how to set boundaries or help you figure out out how to make big decisions when you're at an inflection point. I know I've used my therapist for all of these things. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 5 million people globally. And it works with an App store rating of 4.9 out of 5 based on over 1.7 million client reviews. And it's convenient as well. You can join a session with a therapist at the click of a button, helping you fit therapy into your busy life. Life plus you can switch therapists at any time. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Talk it out with better help our listeners get 10% off their first month@betterhelp.com happier that's better hp.com happier staying with this theme of values, you have a concept called the Defiance Compass. And values play a very important role in that. But I think there's more to the Defiance Compass. Can you describe what the Defiance Compass is?
- [35:43]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Sure. So the Defiance compasses three questions that go around like really? One leads to the other and the last question leads to the first question. So the three main questions, it's starts with the very first one is who am I? And that is really your values. So identifying your values, what is important to you? And as I've said, a lot of those values that I see coming up time and time again in my students when I have them do this exercise tend to be very powerful and very sort of simple words that we want to enact on a day to day basis. And we will say these things are important to us. So integrity, compassion, fairness, all of these things will say this is important. This is how I want to live my life. So that's the very first question that can be done outside of any sort of defiance situation, like it's work that we can do at any time. The second question is looking outwards when you are in a situation to really assess what type of situation is this. So most people decide to either comply or defy by asking an additional two questions here, which is is it safe and is it effective? But I should always add is it safe enough? Will it be effective enough? Because yes, defiance is inherently risky and we can always use the fact that it's never going to be safe to remain compliant. But as I've said, there's also costs of being compliant. And so we want to ask is it safe enough? Will it be effective enough? So that's when we can decide whether we're going to defy in the moment or whether we're going to defer defiance to another day, or whether in this situation we're going to consciously comply, not just slide into it, but we are going to assess the situation. And I'll come to the definition of conscious compliance versus compliance and consent a little bit later on. So we have the two main questions so far is who am I? What type of situation is this? And then the last question is what does a person like me do in a situation like this. And this is where we're tapping into our aspirational selves. So we're reminding ourselves of our values. What does a person like me with these values of fairness, of compassion, of integrity. What does a person like me do in a situation like this? And here we need to connect again with our responsibilities and our values. So we do that with that question and then that leads to our action. We also need the skill set, we need the ability to defy. So we need to learn that otherwise we won't be able to enact in alignment with our values. But here we're thinking, this is what I need to do. And once you act that way, it goes back to and it affects who you are. So however you act in that situation goes back to who am I and what are my values? Am I living my values on a day to day basis or not? Because if you're not, then who you are will change. So that's the Defiance compass. And it's a really useful tool that we can use in those situations to tap into our aspirational selves and perform the actions that we would wish that we could perform. So we actually become the person that we aspire to be.
- [38:59]
Dan Harris
So many more questions to ask you. But you mentioned that you would talk about conscious compliance. Yes, I'd be interested to pick up on that. Are you saying there are times where, you know, if we do the math on it, it might make sense to comply consciously, even though we don't fully agree sometimes.
- [39:20]
Dr. Sunita Sa
So first of all, when I said at the beginning that we've misunderstood what it means to defy, and I gave you a new definition of that, there's so many ways that we've misunderstood defiance, and that's because we don't really understand what these terms, compliance, consent, defiance, conscious compliance, actually are. And I want to give people this moral language really to understand and clarify the decisions that we make on a daily basis. So if we start with what is compliance? Compliance is basically sliding into something. It's imposed on us from something external. So it could be an order, it could be a suggestion, it could be society's expectations. So, yes, that's not quite a yes. It's coming from something outside of ourselves that's asking us to do something. Now, consent is often conflated with compliance, but it's actually fundamentally different. So my first career was as a physician and I take informed consent in medicine and I apply it to other decisions that we make in our lives. And I think this is a really useful framework to use. So to have informed consent, you need five elements. So the first one is capacity. You need the cognitive capacity, the mental capacity to be able to make a decision, so you're not under the influence of drugs or alcohol, you're not too sick. And physicians should always assess their patients to make sure that they have the capacity to make a decision on their medical care. But we can assess that for ourselves when we're making a decision. Then the next one is knowledge that we need information about the decision we're about to make. But it's not enough just to have the information. The third element is a thorough understanding of that information. So a grasp of all the facts, the risks, the benefits and the alternatives. And then the fourth element, once you have the capacity, the knowledge and the understanding, the fourth element is the freedom to say no. Because if you don't have the freedom to say no, then that's merely compliance, it's not consent. So if you have those four elements, then the fifth element is your authorization, your thoroughly considered authorization, that is your active expression of your deeply held values. So that's your consent. It isn't compliance. It's very different. That's what I call consent or your true yes. Now defiance is actually your true no. And you need the same five elements to be able to defy. So I'm not talking about like a knee jerk reaction or emotional reaction. I'm talking again about a thoroughly considered authorization that's an active expression of your deeply held values. So consent and defiance are just two sides of the same coin. It just depends on what the expectation is, is whether you say yes or no. But you need all those factors. There's unconscious compliance is not the kind of default compliance that we are kind of wired for in a way that we've been socialized to do. But it's when all those elements are present so you have the capacity, knowledge, understanding, the freedom to say no. But in this particular situation, the costs are too great or the benefits are too meager that you don't think this is the right time and place to do it. That doesn't mean that you are always going to comply because the costs are only going to increase. But you are going to defer defiance to another day when it could be safer and more effective for you to do so.
- [42:58]
Dan Harris
What about situations where you don't have the freedom to say no? I feel like many people listening may feel not only the costs are too high, or maybe the costs are so high that essentially I don't have the.
- [43:08]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Freedom to say, yes, absolutely. There are situations like that, and I interviewed a lot of my students for this. And there's a defined hierarchy in that some people get to defy with less cost than others. And I write about a couple of situations where the black men in my class will spell out that if they are stopped by the police, perhaps a traffic stop or something like this, they want to get home, so they're going to comply, so they can actually get home at the end of the day. So there's definitely situations where we want to consciously comply because it's too unsafe for us to think about anything else, and we need to be aware of those types of costs. I do say, though, it's important to add the word safe enough and effective enough, because we don't want to use these things as a rationalization to never defy. And if you think about some of the famous nos in history, for example, Rosa Parks, defiance on the bus, and we often think about defiance in this way as being maybe loud, aggressive, violent, or we think about it as being superhuman and heroic, it's actually neither of those things. But Rosa Parks did say no on the bus. It was a really momentous occasion because it made a big social change. But if you think about it, there was a couple of things here. So one is that her famous no was preceded by hundreds of moments of likely compliance, that she didn't defy segregation laws every single day, every single moment. And so we need to remind ourselves that there are times that we need to consciously comply because it's too unsafe for us to defy. Was it safe for Rosa Parks in that particular moment? No, it wasn't safe for her. You know, she received a lot of death threats after saying no that she will not move for a white passenger on the bus. She was unemployed for 10 years. There were certainly a lot of costs for her. But when she was asked whether she would do it again, she said yes without hesitation. Because for her, living up to her values was more important than the costs at that particular moment. But it was also strategic in that she did have support, and this was the right moment for her to do it. So she thought it would be effective. Now, some people will defy, even if you can't predict it's going to be effective, because they want to stand or sit down for what they believe in. So it is a deeply personal decision of whether we defy or not. It comes down to our own personal assessment of this. What are the costs that we're willing to take? But I always say Again, think about the cost of compliance as well as the cost of defiance, because it's not a neutral decision if you just say yes to somebody else.
- [45:55]
Dan Harris
You said before that yes and no are two sides of the same coin. There's this concept of a full body. Yes. You familiar with that?
- [46:04]
Dr. Sunita Sa
I am familiar with a hell yes. If that's. That's the same kind of thing where it feels really good. Right? Like true consent should feel really good.
- [46:15]
Dan Harris
And it does go back to meditation and interoception and the idea of being able to listen to your body's signal. Yes. You should listen for the tension, and you should also listen for the positive resonance with, yeah, hell yes, I. I do want to do. This is a great idea.
- [46:31]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Yes. And that is stage five, you know, which could be a yes, it could be a no. So, as I said, when you do defy that tension that you have at the beginning, it melts away, and you're left with those positive aspects that you're talking about. And so feeling that and remembering those feelings are also really important. Important.
- [46:55]
Dan Harris
Coming up, Dr. Shaw talks about the steps that you can take to make defiance a practice in your life. The concept of psychological safety. And we get to my favorite topic. Anxiety. I like nice clothes. I wouldn't call myself a fashion plate. My wife is, but I'm more, you know, I'm not like high style. You won't see me on the runways in Paris. But I like nice clothes and I like to look good, which is important because a lot of my work is on camera. However, I don't like to spend a ton of money, which is why I really love Quint because they've got high quality stuff, you know, like high quality fabrics, classic fits, lightweight layers for warm weather, all at prices that make sense. Everything I've ordered from quints has been totally solid. And I ordered real basics, like underwear and socks, but also cashmere sweaters. They've got these really comfy pants that I wear a lot. You may have heard me say this before, but it is not uncommon for me to be head to toe quince, especially when I'm, like, in the city having meetings. If I'm at home, I'm in sweatpants. But often I'll be wearing Quint's cozy wear. So I represent at home and out in the world. Quint has closet staples you'll reach for for over and over, like cozy cashmere and cotton sweaters for just 50 bucks. Breathable flow knit polos and comfortable, lightweight pants that somehow work for both weekend hangs and dressed up dinners. Everything from Quints is half the cost of similar brands. By working directly with top artisans and cutting out the middlemen, Quince gives you luxury pieces without the markup and Quints only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finish finishes. Keep it classic and cool with long lasting staples from quince. Go to quince.com happier for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Quince.com happier Imagine you're a business owner who has to rely on a dozen different software programs to run your company, none of which are connected and each one is more expensive and more complicated than the last. This can be pretty stressful and I speak as a business owner who pays for lots of different software programs. So now imagine Odoo. Odoo has all the programs you will ever need and they're all connected on one simple, easy to use platform, giving you peace of mind that your business is always being taken care of from every angle. Odoo has user friendly open source applications for everything. We're talking CRM, accounting, inventory, manufacturing, marketing, HR and everything in between. Between. Basically, if your business needs it, Odoo's got it. Odoo sounds pretty amazing, right? So stop wasting your time and your money on those expensive and disconnected platforms. Let Odoo harmonize your business with simple, efficient software that can handle everything for a fraction of the price. Doesn't get much better than that. What are you waiting for? Discover how Odoo can take your business to the next level by visiting odoo.com that's o-oo.com odoo Modern management made simple throughout this conversation, we've both acknowledged that defiance is not always easy, and you've definitely given us some practical tools as the conversation has progressed. But let's kind of put a fine point on the how to do this aspect of your book. You talk about four steps to make defiance Again understood more capaciously than the Oxford Dictionary might might render it. Steps to make Defiance a Practice they are anticipate, visualize, practice, and repeat or repetition. Can you walk us through these please?
- [50:41]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things I say about defiance is that we need to be prepared long before the moment of crisis. Because if we have been wired to comply from a young age, we can't just do something that feels really unnatural to us. And even though I've redefined defiance, some people have such a strong negative association with it. They find it so difficult to be even saying any defiant words or Acting in a defiant way, because we also have this vision of defiance as being a particular personality trait. And it's not. It's a skill set. It's a practice, not a personality. And so one of the things that we want to start with is perhaps thinking about the situations that we complied and we regretted it, that we wished we could have defied in that situation. And so we start anticipating, because it's likely we're going to experience those situations again. So we can. Even if we think about workplaces, for example, we can start to think about, oh, I was in that meeting and somebody said something that was quite harmful to someone who wasn't there. And I just remained silent. I didn't say anything. And I know that person is going to say something inappropriate, perhaps in the next meeting we have, because they've done it so many times. So we can start anticipating the most common situations that we might face. It could be at work, it could be somewhere else. I was speaking to a rookie police officer who told me that when they joined the police academy and they went into their first role, that they knew that they would be asked to do something unethical or they would be asked to look the other way. They had anticipated that moment beforehand and they had thought about it, they'd visualized it. So let's think about the many situations that are often predictable to us. So we can anticipate, then we can visualize it. We start picturing it, and we start practicing. By scripting out what we would say and saying those words out loud, it really gets our mouths used to saying those words, which could be just as simple as, I'm not comfortable with this. What do you mean by that? That's also a really powerful phrase. What do you mean by that? You know, you're asking for clarification. Just practicing those scripts over and over again gets our mouths used saying it, our ears used to hearing it. And that is what changes the neural pathways and makes it easier for us to say it in that moment of crisis. And there's a wonderful quote that's often attributed to Bruce Lee, which is apt because it is about practice. But it was actually a Greek poet that said, under duress, we don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training. And that's why it's so important to practice before we get into that situation. So I recommend it's not a personality, it's a practice. It's a skill set that we can choose to use. We can nurture it. We can create it and we can choose when to use it. We can be compliant one day, we can be defiant the next day. But it really is a choice. And I don't want people to not defy just because they haven't learned how to defy.
- [53:59]
Dan Harris
This really rhymes with the core contention of the latter half of my career. I used to be a journalist. Now I am whatever the. I am now a happiness person or well being person. But the animating insight of my work is that happiness, which I understand very broadly as, you know, all aspects of human flourishing or doing life better, from sleep to exercise, to meditation, to therapy, to relationships, to beauty, to purpose. It's not a factory setting that's unalterable, it's a set of skills. And so that's what you're saying is true of defiance. And these four steps, you know, anticipate, visualize, practice. The words, which I, I really resonate with that. And I've found that practicing for conversations, whether they're defiance conversations or not, can really help make them more successful. And then repeat ad nauseam, ad infinitum, like that's how you do it. That really lands for me.
- [54:55]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Yeah. It's so powerful. It's so powerful. And it's also quite liberating to know that you don't have to have a self concept or you don't have to think about yourselves as being brave or defiant or compliant, as I'm not that type of person anyone can defy. It's actually, it's not just for the brave or the extraordinary. It is available and necessary for all of us. And so we can all defy in our own unique way with far less angst than we used to have. And it just starts with making defiance a practice. So we have that action plan that starts long before the moment of crisis.
- [55:38]
Dan Harris
I would build on that to say that it's not just the right thing to do, it's also the self interested thing to do. You don't need to develop this muscle just because you want to be a good citizen, which is great, but it's also gonna, as we said before, Lower your stress levels.
- [55:53]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Exactly.
- [55:54]
Dan Harris
Make you happier, make your life more seamless.
- [55:56]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Yeah. And you know, you are more of yourself, but it does transform you to live in alignment with yourself. But it also has a ripple effect in that it changes the environment. So if you are in that meeting and you just say, what do you mean by that? Maybe the person that has said the offensive or harmful comment, maybe they change, maybe they don't, but that's not the point. The point is you've put it out there and that has changed the water in which everybody else is swimming. So now, like, that person might not say it again the next time you are in that room in a meeting, maybe they do, but there's other people in the room as well that saw what you did and maybe they will say something. So whatever happens, something has changed. And that aspect, what really made me think about defiance being a skill set and a practice rather than personality was something that happened to me as a child. Because, as I said, I grew up with a masterclass in compliance. And my mum as well. She got married very young to my dad. She's of Indian origin, she's 4 foot 10 at the most. She's petite. And I saw her as a very compliant. She did all the cooking, the cleaning, the grocery shopping. She looked after everybody's needs. She was what I would call subservient and extremely compliant. So at that moment in time and for many years afterwards, I always thought about compliance and defiance as being binary. And I very neatly put her in the compliant box. And then when I was about seven or eight, something happened that really changed how I viewed her. We were walking back from the grocery store. She was pulling along a shopping cart that was filled with produce. It just looks like, you know, wheeled luggage, so two wheels. We were pulling it along and it was quite a long walk back home. And we decided to go through what in the north of England, in West Yorkshire we call a Snicket, which is just a very narrow alleyway. And I was always told, don't go through the Snicket on your own. As a child, when I would come back home from school, school. But we decided that two of us, you know, we would go together through this alleyway. And in that alleyway, we were stopped by a group of teenage boys and they blocked our path and they started shouting out some racist comments and telling us to go back home. Now, my reaction to the boys was instant. I immediately grabbed my mom's arm and I looked down. I averted my gaze. I did not want to look at these boys at all. I just wanted to maneuver as fast as I possible through them to get home. But my mum, which I thought she would just do that and be compliant, she did something different that day. Now, she was wearing. I just remember it so vividly as if it was yesterday. She was wearing her blue green sari. She had her hair in just one neat plait at the back. And as I said, she's quite Small, she's petite. But she stopped, and she looked at the boys directly in the eyes, and she just asked them that phrase that I've already said. What do you mean by that? Now, at that point, my heart started racing quite fast, and I grabbed her arm even tighter, and I even whispered to her, you know, come on, Ma. And she said no to me. And she put the shopping cart up vertical. She put one hand on her hip, and she looked back at them again, and she said, what do you mean? And they didn't say anything at all. They just started looking at each other. And then she continued to look at them, and when there was just silence, she said, oh, yes, you think you're big, strong boys, big clever boys. And she started telling them off in this broken English until one of the boys looked at the others and said, let's go. And they just dispersed. She grabbed the shopping cart and she started walking really fast through that snicket to get back home. And I was thinking, what just happened? So my mom, my compliant mom, suddenly showed me what it is like to be defiant. It's not a personality. It's the skill set, and we can choose to use it. And she chose to use it that day, maybe because I was present. It became clear to me afterwards that she had experienced that situation before. Like those boys, or people like those boys. She would come home, sort of muttering something, and I always thought she was annoyed with a shopping cart, but it must have been because of these boys. And what I realized is that compliance might be our default, but it's not our destiny. Anyone can be defined. It's not a character trait. And society is actually built on all of these smaller moments. Because what I hope to provide with the research that I've done and this book is that people get the tools and they start thinking about defiance and compliance in this way, and they start teaching their children defiance skills as well as compliance. Because what I would really love is that we build a society where one of the teens would be what I call a moral maverick and speak up against the peers to tell them to stop so my immigrant mother wouldn't have to do that. And this is what I call the defiance domino effect. Like one thing, defiance transforms you, but also the people who observe it. It has this ripple effect. And it really affected me that day, and it seems stayed with me and probably led to the research that I'm doing now.
- [61:20]
Dan Harris
Do you believe that people with who through no innate merit of their own, people with unearned advantages. I don't want to Name any names, but his initials are Dan Harris. People with unearned advantages in society have more obligation to defy than those who have unearned disadvantages, like who have disadvantages through no fault of their own.
- [61:50]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Yeah, I do talk about defiance hierarchy, where some people can defy with far less consequences than other people. And some people are in positions of power where it should be up to them rather than people who are disadvantaged to always speak up. And so there's two things. For example, you mentioned women and girls at the beginning of this. Like, do they receive these messages to comply more often? Well, yes, and we see that there are more costs and backlash for being defiant for certain groups of people than other groups. And not only are there more costs, but some people are expected to be more compliant. So that means that they have to defy more often. But there's also more costs of being defiant. And so we really should be aware of that and not expect the people at the bottom of the defiance hierarchy to be making all the change. And so it's up to the people that are expecting the compliance to really make the culture of it being psychologically safe to defy and actually being defiant and modeling defiance for others.
- [63:04]
Dan Harris
You used a term there that I had written down on my sheet of paper in front of me. My notes for this interview. As the next thing, I wanted to talk to you about psychological safety, which sounds like a kind of bland term, but it really is incredibly important. Just as a brief aside, and this. I'm not telling this to you, Sunita. I'm saying it to the audience because I suspect you already know what I'm about to say. There was this great article written by Charles Duhigg in New York Times magazine many years ago about a research initiative at Google. I think it was Google, anyway, some huge multinational corporation. They were trying to figure out, like, what made for the most successful teams, and they couldn't figure it out for some extended period of time. They couldn't figure out why some teams performed better than others. Finally, they arrived on this bland term of psychological safety. It which means, roughly, the ability or the freedom or the safety. Everybody on the team, no matter where they are in the hierarchy, feels to speak up. And so we've been talking a lot in this conversation, pretty much wholly in this conversation, about individuals and when it's safe and wise to defy. But there's also this other side of the coin, which is those with power who are at the top of a hierarchy and can set the culture, the norms for a culture. So I'm thinking about me within my own company so that people feel safe to defy, which is a kind of enlightened self interest, because I want people to tell me when I'm being a schmuck so that I can stop being a schmuck, which is bad for business. So what can people like me, who have institutional power or power within a family, power at all to do to create psychological safety? In other words, the conditions in which defiance becomes a safe thing to do?
- [64:58]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Yeah, and I think this is a great question is that yes, there is some self interest for leaders to do this. Because if you do have an organization or a group or a team where it isn't psychologically safe, where people don't feel that they can speak up without being penalized, then you are going to stifle creativity, innovation. You're not going to get told if you're heading off a cliff with a certain service or a product. So you want people to be able to defy and create those types of cultures where you are not going to get the type of turnover, you're not going to have your workforce being fearful. And obviously then all the costs that come with that sort of the high overturn, burnout, stress, all of those things. So in my research where I've looked at what I call the voice empathy gap, it's like a difference between how managers and leaders view their organizations versus the employee. So people at the top of the hierarchy will think that they have a more open culture and that is safe to defy. But the people at the bottom of the hierarchy will not feel the same. There's this gap between what people actually perceive and that's really important to actually diminish that gap. First of all, because when I have looked at why nurses don't speak up in organizations, they will say that there's two main reasons. One is that it's not safe. You know, they're worried about their job or what people will think of them. So it's not psychologically safe. And some people will actually say, well, I'm not afraid to speak up. They're not talking about fear here. But I have spoken up many times before and nothing ever changes. So for a manager or a leader of that, not only do you have to show that it's safe for people to speak up, that they won't be penalized, that you will actually even honor, that you will reward that type of behavior, you will talk about it with your teams, that you want to hear those things, that you will actually act on that too. When somebody does speak up, you won't just say, yes, that's great, and then not do anything about it. So those two things are really essentially important. And if you're a middle manager, then you also need to model defiance and show that you're speaking up to your superiors or other stakeholders too. So that modeling aspect is also really powerful for people to see. So make the environment safe by showing that people are not going to be penalised. Latest research is looking into these types of meetings where people welcome mistakes that had been made. And if you look at the aspect of psychological safety, you will see that the really great teams actually report more errors and more mistakes, not because they're making more errors and mistakes, it's because it's safe for them to do so. So when you're choosing like which hospital to get your surgery done, it becomes very difficult because if you're just going by error rates, that might not be the best thing because we don't know the rate at what people are reporting those errors or not. So celebrate when people talk about their errors or mistakes or they actually speak up and prevent those errors and mistakes and then make it effective that you actually act on the information that's given to you, or at least you explain why you are not going to act on it. So there's some procedural justice that they're seeing.
- [68:16]
Dan Harris
This has been for me, like a really humbling process and ongoing. I haven't like arrived at the end state here, but I've realized in the doing, coaching and just growing older, that I grew up in a very hierarchical environment. Not only in junior high and high school, where there was a lot of bullying, but also in the news industry where there was also a lot of bullying. I think it's less true today, but certainly when I was growing up, you had these very famous news anchors, or I guess you would call them news presenters, you know, household names. Back when television news had a much bigger place in, in the popular culture than it does now. Household names and their executives who would, you know, it was really not safe to say no and you would just get told to do a thing and if you didn't do it, you'd be ostracized. You had to do it. Even if it was unsafe or uncomfortable or unhealthy or whatever, you just had to do it. It was just that. And I was carrying that management sty into my life, even as a meditation evangelist, and to have it pointed out to me that I was doing that was really uncomfortable. So I've really tried again I. If any of my employees is listening, I'm. I'm not saying I'm perfect at this. I'm sure I fucked this up all the time, but I really tried to call out in a very positive way. When somebody has either publicly or behind the scenes, called me on my. To then go back to a group meeting and say, hey, Person X did this thing. It was super brave. I really appreciate it. And I. I just want all of you to know that you'll be rewarded for doing this. And I'm sure there's a lot of stuff I'm not catching, so I'm not trying to pat myself on the back, but this has been a really useful and painful learning for me, so I. I said a lot of words there, but I want to stop talking and see if you have anything to add.
- [70:10]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Yeah, well, I think that's wonderful because we learn from what we see and get trained in. And unfortunately, there are still organizations that have that type of culture. So I've worked in two very hierarchical professions in medicine and academia, both very hierarchical. And even though institutions differ, certainly that kind of compliance is also expected. And when I've also worked as a management consultant for a while, and even though the one organization I worked with had that very, very strict culture that you're talking about, like you can't question anything, but another was completely different. So knowing the type of institution that you're in really affects how you can enact defiance. And having a leader that becomes aware of that and welcomes that type of change, that their team speaking up can only have positive effects, I think, because really, creativity, you know, really comes from being defiant. And we need more innovation and creativity in all our organizations. And you don't want this type of ethical fading where the only person you're thinking about is the person that's right in front of you. Because then this is what psychologists called ethical fading, is that if somebody in front of us asks, asks us to do something, and you don't think it's the right thing to do, but you start thinking about just pleasing them, and that becomes the only thing that comes into your decision, like a yes man or a yes person, you know that pleasing your boss becomes the only thing that becomes important to you, you shrink everything down to that, and you can end up doing things that you would say, this is not me. I wouldn't have done that. Oh, this comes back to, I was just following orders. Where we know that if we get into that kind of aspect, aspect is where can it lead us? And history has shown us so many terrible consequences of unexamined compliance that one of the things that really got me into this work as well was when I was at medical school and I took a year to study psychology and I came across Stanley Milgram's obedience to authority experiments where he had people come in, community members, and they were told they were part of a learning experience experiment, but they had to administer what they thought were harmful shocks to another person in another room. No actual shock was administered, but somebody was asking them to inflict harm on someone else. Then he found that 2/3 of people went all the way to the deadly 450 volts. But when you look at it, many of those people showed this sign of tension that we were speaking about. You know, nervous laughter, swearing, sweating. It's just that they wanted to defy but they didn't know how to defy. And giving people the skill set to do that and understand what it like a culture that welcomes defiance can actually bring is the thing that's going to move us forward because we're at danger of our leaders just complying because they're thinking about the cost and we don't know where that's going to lead us.
- [73:26]
Dan Harris
Two questions I usually ask in closing. The first is is there something you were hoping to talk about that we didn't get to.
- [73:32]
Dr. Sunita Sa
I would love to talk about one of the psychological processes that I've discovered that I call insinuation anxiety, because I think it's a distinct type of anxiety that arises when we start worrying that our non compliance with another person's wishes is going to be is interpreted as a signal of distress. It's the fear of implying something negative about someone, especially when they're standing right in front of you. And this can happen in sort of small stake situations. For example, when you find it difficult to speak up to the massage therapist if they're using too much force. You don't want to insinuate that they don't know what they're doing. Or you're in the hairdresser's chair and they trust you with this new haircut or let me try some purple streaks or something. And you find it very difficult to say no to them and maybe almost thank them and give them a tip on the way out to more serious situations. So insinuation anxiety could explain why nurses don't speak up when they see a colleague or a physician making an error. It could be why co pilots remain silent and don't say anything to their superiors when they see a mistake. So we really need to understand that aversive emotional state that we become so concerned with offending someone right in front of us that we forget about everything else. You know, there was one situation that I read about in Michelle Lamont's book called How Professors Behave that she. She got out for me to have a look when I told her about insinuation anxiety. And it was about a woman that had gone into this committee. She was asked to be part of a committee with four senior men and they were assessing grants. And when they were evaluating the grants, there's certain criteria, credentials that need to be sort of met for them to allocate to grant. And this woman said when a particular application came up of a black man, she said the conversation changed and it seemed steer towards more negative gossip than about the criteria or the credentials. And she as a black woman really wanted to speak up and say something, but she didn't. And afterwards she said the one thing she wanted to do was the thing she couldn't do, and that was question their integrity. That is classic insinuation anxiety. We don't want to imply that someone can't be trusted, is biased, are incompetent, but at the same time we then dilute our own integrity to go along with it, even though that's the thing that we say that we value. So it really is a powerful force and it can. It keeps us compliant and silent in many situations of small stakes and high stakes. But understanding it, naming it, getting some physical or psychological distance helps us manage.
- [76:20]
Dan Harris
It so that we can practice anticipating, visualizing, practicing and repeating.
- [76:27]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Absolutely, absolutely. If this particular force can be present, even when all the five elements of consent are present and it still trips us up, what we need to do is be aware of it. This is about the signal that I sent to someone else. And in those situations, if to break that signal is to get some distance from that person. So that's what I also call the power of the pause. It's just taking time out if you can.
- [76:53]
Dan Harris
Right. So there are. The one way to defy actually might be just to not say anything or to do your best to avoid the problematic person in question.
- [77:05]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Well, that is one way to defy, but it's more of a question of if you can get some distance or if you have an opportunity to change your mind, is not saying yes straight away. So you might have to give a decision at some point, but it's much easier to do it when you've taken some time and you can connect with your values and you can understand that you want to say no. So the pressure is greatest when you're there in the moment. And if you can learn some scripts just to get some distance. So if you can get some physical distance, you know, let me get back to you. That that sounds interesting. Let me think about it. That's the best thing. If you can't get physical distance, you can get some psychological distance by speaking to yourself in the third person. So maybe you could close your eyes for a few seconds and just speak to yourself in the third person. That gets psychological distance. Sunita, is this what you really want to do? Or go back to that? Final question on the Defiance Compass. What does a person like me do in a situation like this? So getting that distance, either physical or psychological, is the thing that can help you connect with your values and help you decide whether you want to comply or defy.
- [78:15]
Dan Harris
Final question for me, can you just remind everybody of the name of your book? And also if you have a website or social media handle or anything else you're making that we should know about.
- [78:25]
Dr. Sunita Sa
So the book is called Defy the Power of no in a World that Demands yes. It's available at most places that sell books, but you can also go to my website, which is sunitasar.com that's s u n like the sun in the sky, s u n I-a s-a h.com and on that website there's also a quiz that you can take that will help you find your Defiance style. And you'll also find links to my free newsletter called Defiant by Design, which is on substack, and ways to connect with me on social media. So LinkedIn and Instagram.
- [79:03]
Dan Harris
Excellent. Dr. Sa, thank you very much.
- [79:07]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Thank you very much.
- [79:13]
Dan Harris
Thanks again to Dr. Sunita SA. Check out her book. Also, don't forget to check out danharris.com We've got a guided meditation that is specifically tailored to this episode, all about helping you tune into your body so you can figure out do I want to say yes to this or no? We're now doing guided meditations that come with all of our Monday Wednesday episodes, only available to paying subscribers. Over on danharris.com our Teacher of the Month is Kyra Jewel Lingo. She's amazing. Also, if you become a paid subscriber, you can get our live video conversations where I guided meditation and then take your questions. In fact, I've got one coming up tomorrow, August 5, 2025 at 3:30 Eastern over on substack or danharris.com synonymous really. I'll see you there. Before I let you go, I just want to thank everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer, Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer, DJ Cashmere is our executive producer, and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.
- [80:34]
Dr. Sunita Sa
Foreign this episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates from multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.