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Love 2.0: How to Fix Your Marriage, Part 1 - Hidden Brain | Wave AI Podcast Notes

Love 2.0: How to Fix Your Marriage, Part 1

Mon Sep 29 2025

Many love stories end when the characters are still in the heady, euphoric early stages of a relationship. But what comes after that intoxicating first phase of love is over? Today, we kick off a new series on the challenges specific to long-term relationships. We'll talk with psychologist James Cordova about some of the common difficulties many couples face. We'll also look at a solution that scientific research suggests might actually work. Then, we'll bring you the latest installment of our segment Your Questions Answered. Researcher Jon Jachimowicz returns to respond to listeners' thoughts about the pursuit of passions.

Summary

Hidden Brain: "Love 2.0: How to Fix Your Marriage, Part 1"

Host: Shankar Vedantam
Guest: Dr. James Cordova (Clark University, psychologist, couples therapist)
Date: September 29, 2025

Overview

This episode kicks off Hidden Brain’s four-part “Love 2.0” series, exploring the realities of romantic relationships versus our cultural ideals. Shankar Vedantam and guest James Cordova, an expert in couples therapy, examine the pitfalls of trying to change our partners—and reveal why the path to happier, healthier relationships may lie in acceptance rather than coercion. Drawing on science, clinical wisdom, and emotional stories, the episode equips listeners with actionable insights for mending troubled relationships.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Persistence of Individuality in Relationships (05:06)

Romantic Myths vs. Real Life:
Vedantam highlights how love songs and poetry promote the idea of “becoming one,” but in actuality, we remain “stubbornly ourselves,” often clashing over differences.
Classic Dilemma:
Referencing the musical "I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change," Vedantam encapsulates the all-too-common hope that a partner will transform into the ideal mate.

When Good Intentions Backfire: Personal Anecdotes (06:06 — 10:05)

Teasing Gone Wrong:
Cordova shares a story where his loving, joking nature clashed with his wife’s more sensitive temperament, leading to unintentional hurt feelings.
Quote:
“It took years for me to…develop a sensitivity in that spot.” – James Cordova (06:38)
Unsuccessful Persuasion:
Cordova describes years of gently nudging his wife to lighten up, which “just went over like a lead balloon.” (09:23)

Common Relationship Patterns: The Porcupine-Turtle Conundrum (11:22)

Fight or Flight in Conflict:
Cordova explains how couples tend toward a “porcupine” (aggressive, pursuit) or “turtle” (withdrawal) style during arguments, often leading to escalating cycles. Quote:
“We can engage that kind of porcupine turtle pattern until we’re exhausted.” – James Cordova (12:56)

The Futility of Trying to Force Change (13:43 — 19:04)

Case Studies:
- Husband Pressuring Wife to be Fitter: Caused hurt and frustration.
- Wife Pressuring Husband to Express Emotions: Led to withdrawal.
Double-Edged Attempts:
Both partners usually end up trying, and failing, to change each other.

When Change-Oriented Therapy Falls Short (18:35 — 20:13)

Traditional Approaches:
Cordova recounts being trained in “behavioral marital therapy,” which focused on skill-building and direct behavior change, but found changes rarely lasted at home. Quote:
“None of those skills would follow couples home.” – James Cordova (20:02)

Different Levels of Problems in Relationships (20:13 — 24:36)

Simple, Mezzanine, and Perpetual Issues:
- Simple: Quick fixes (e.g., which side of the bed to sleep on).
- Mezzanine: Require struggle and compromise.
  - Example: Cordova’s love of cycling versus his wife’s safety concerns, resolved by buying her an e-bike so they could ride together.
- Perpetual: Unsolvable, rooted in inherent differences (e.g., introversion vs. extroversion). Quote:
  “There are definitely problems that…for all of us, in all of our relationships, will stubbornly refuse to be solved.” – James Cordova (24:36)

The Toxic Cycle of Mutual Rejection (26:49 — 28:42)

Why Skills Aren’t the Problem:
In conflict, couples become unwilling to use communication skills they show outside the relationship; negativity poisons cooperation. Metaphor:
Like a "Chinese finger trap": “The harder they try to make things better…the tighter the trap becomes.” – James Cordova (28:02)

A Paradigm Shift: Moving from Change to Acceptance (30:16 — 35:31)

The Research Epiphany:
The real problem isn’t unsolvable differences themselves, but how couples treat them.
Quote:
“We began to shift towards what does it look like to accept these naturally occurring differences between partners?” – James Cordova (31:47)
Benefits of Acceptance:
- Defuses the sense of rejection.
- Softens the emotional climate; enables empathy and collaboration.
Key Practice:
“Seek to understand more than to be understood”—especially when you most want to be heard.

Agency & Self-Compassion (35:31 — 38:06)

Regaining Agency:
Letting your happiness depend solely on your partner’s change traps you in passivity.
- Cordova’s “soft front, strong back”: Hold on to your own needs compassionately while empathizing with your partner.

Boundaries of Acceptance (37:53)

Important Exception:
Acceptance is not the prescription for truly harmful behaviors (“the things that actually diminish us as a person,” e.g., abuse).

Practical Tools for Acceptance & Relationship Growth

Naming & Labeling Patterns (40:54 — 45:21)

Metaphors for Dynamics:
- Cactus vs. Fern: Some need more connection (ferns), others more independence (cactuses).
- Spender vs. Saver: Differing attitudes toward money.
Impact of Naming:
“Being able to name it actually makes it really hard to continue doing it.” – James Cordova (44:33)
Making Problems "It" Not "You":
By externalizing patterns ("It’s the spender-saver thing, not your fault/my fault"), couples deflect blame and collaborate.

Compassion for Your Partner’s Quirks (48:30 — 50:10)

Analogy:
Treat quirks like physical limitations—a partner with a “fractured foot” can’t dance; don’t blame, just adapt.
Deepening Intimacy:
Intimate safety comes when a partner sees your flaws and loves you “almost because” of those things.

Reframing What Attracted You (50:10 — 52:35)

Rediscovering Appreciation:
Cordova shares how his wife’s emotional sensitivity is challenging but also the trait he finds most beautiful. Quote:
“The very thing I find so beautiful about her soul is also the thing that can sometimes be challenging for me.” – James Cordova (51:41)

Acceptance Takes Effort and Practice (52:48)

Learning Curve:
“It’s like learning how to play the guitar…if you want deep, sustaining intimacy…you have to practice.” – James Cordova (52:48)

Preview of Next Episode & Additional Content (53:22)

Relationship Health = Physical Health:
Routine check-ins and early intervention prevent intractable problems.
Companion Content:
Paid subscribers can access exercises for evaluating relationship strength.

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

“It took years for me to…develop a sensitivity in that spot.”
—James Cordova (06:38)
“We can engage that kind of porcupine turtle pattern until we’re exhausted.”
—James Cordova (12:56)
“None of those skills would follow couples home.”
—James Cordova (20:02)
“There are definitely problems that…for all of us, in all of our relationships, will stubbornly refuse to be solved.”
—James Cordova (24:36)
“The harder they try to make things better…the tighter the trap becomes.”
—James Cordova (28:02)
“We began to shift towards what does it look like to accept these naturally occurring differences between partners?”
—James Cordova (31:47)
“Seek to understand more than to seek to be understood.”
—James Cordova (34:05)
“You have to practice.”
—James Cordova (52:48)

Timestamps for Major Segments

Intro & Series Framing: 00:00 – 05:06
Teasing & Sensitivity Story: 06:06 – 10:05
Porcupine–Turtle Dynamic: 11:22 – 13:32
Case Studies: Pressuring Change: 13:43 – 15:46
Therapy, Behavior Change, and Its Limits: 18:35 – 24:36
Levels of Relationship Problems: 20:13 – 24:36
Intractable Differences (Perpetual Issues): 24:56 – 27:08
Toxic Patterns & The 'Chinese Finger Trap': 27:08 – 28:42
Case Study: Feeling Excluded in Family Conversations: 28:42 – 30:16
The Shift to Acceptance: 30:28 – 35:31
Strengthening Agency & Setting Limits: 35:31 – 38:06
Naming Patterns, Shifting Blame: 40:54 – 45:21
Metaphors for Acceptance: 45:21 – 50:10
Redefining Appreciation for Quirks: 50:10 – 52:35
Practice, Not Perfection: 52:48
Preview & Outro: 53:22

Memorable Moments

Metaphors that 'Click': When couples see themselves as “a cactus and a fern” and find humor and relief instead of judgment. (44:19)
Emotional Vulnerability: Cordova’s story about shielding his wife from seeing roadkill—tenderness and shared humanity are celebrated, not “fixed.” (50:35)
Reassurance on Acceptance: Acceptance does not cover destructive behavior or abuse; boundaries matter. (37:53)

Takeaways

Every couple faces some unsolvable, “perpetual” issues; trying harder to change your partner rarely works and often poisons the relationship.
Lasting change and deeper intimacy come not from winning arguments but from curiosity, compassion, and accepting differences.
Naming the recurring patterns helps transform 'me versus you' into 'us versus it.'
Love is less about fixing your partner and more about learning to love well—daily, imperfectly, and with practice.

Next Week:
Part two with James Cordova, exploring the toughest challenges in acceptance—and the transformative power of practicing this skill in your relationship.

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Transcript

Shankar Vedantam (0:00)

Hidden brain turns 10 this year, and to celebrate, we're bringing the show to cities across the United States and Canada in a live performance. Our next stops are in Baltimore on October 11, Washington D.C. on October 12, and Los Angeles on November 22. Join me as I share seven key psychological insights from the show's first decade. For more information and tickets go to hiddenbrain.org that's hiddenbrain.org tour. I hope to see you there. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. There comes a time in most relationships when people look at the partner sitting across the table from them and think, who is this person? Maybe you don't like the way your partner eats with his mouth open. Maybe you don't like the way she's always working. Maybe you don't like. Well, lots of things. At moments like this, a thought crosses our minds. Perhaps we can get our partners to close their mouths while they eat. Perhaps we can get them to have more work life balance. Perhaps we can change them into a better version of themselves. We know exactly what needs to be done and we know exactly how to do it. We'll first explain, very politely of course, how our partners are doing things wrong. We'll show them how they can be better. If they fail to listen, we'll go back and try again. Maybe add a wagging finger, a slightly raised voice. With patience, persistence and a little punishment, we can get our partners to change their ways. All our troubles will disappear. The Flutes of Heaven will play sweet music and we will get to live in the romantic paradise we deserve. Or not. Maybe instead of changing your partner, you. You end up in mutual recrimination. Instead of the Flutes of Heaven, you get fights. Instead of change, you get obstinacy. This week on Hidden Brain and in a companion story on Hidden Brain plus, we're going to bring you the first episode in a month long series All About Love. We'll explore the expectations we put on our relationships and and how our society's views on romance and marriage have changed over time. We'll also look at the anatomy of a breakup and ways to soften the blow when love comes to an end. That's all to come over the next few weeks as part of our Love 2.0 series. Today we kick things off with a deep dive into the art and science of mending troubled relationships. We'll explore a radically different path from the one we usually choose, a path that scientific research shows might actually work. Support for Hidden brain comes from at&t. There's nothing better than Feeling like someone has your back. That kind of reliability is rare, but AT and T is making it the norm. With the ATT guarantee, staying connected matters. Get connectivity you can depend on. That's the AT&T guarantee. AT&T connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.comguarantee for details.

James Cordova (4:04)

A massage chair might seem a bit extravagant, but especially these days. Eight different settings, adjustable intensity, plus it's heated and it just feels so good.

James Cordova (40:54)

There seems to be oftentimes a fundamental difference between partners in terms of our need for interdependence, interconnection, and our need for independence. And we all need a little bit of both. And the botany metaphor that we use is some people are more like cactuses and some people are more like ferns. So some people are more like desert plants and some people are more like rainforest plants. And in this metaphor, humidity, water, rainfall is attention, time together, and all those things that are dimensions of of interconnectedness. And so for some of us who are more like ferns, and this was what's true in the couple that you're asking about. So in that relationship, the wife was more of a fern and really thrived on lots of time together, lots of verbal and physical affection, and the Husband was into a lot of independent activities, really into his work, really into independent hobbies like carpentry and cycling, that, you know, sort of exercise kinds of things. And they would have, you know, terrible fights about her calling him selfish and him calling her clingy. And this was the. The tight knot that they came into therapy with. As we discover this in our work together. Oh, what's happening here is you've got a cactus and fern pattern happening in your relationship. You're more like a cactus. You're more like a fern. And when you try to make the cactus happy, the fern just. Just drying up and dying. And when you're trying to make the fern happy, the cactus is feeling, like, overwhelmed and rotting. But when you can recognize that you're just different types of plants, then you can actually collaborate on being good and loving each other skillfully. And what I find over and over again, and this couple in particular is like, oh, I think you guys might be like, you're more like a cactus and you're more like a fern. Their eyes just lit up and they started laughing, right, because they recognized themselves in the metaphor, like, that, that is us. You are like, she's like, slapping his shoulder. You are like a cactus. And he's like, you are like a fern. And. And there was a delight in the recognition of that pattern in their relationship. And you could just feel the release from the conflict. Oh, like, I'm never going to win a battle to turn my fern partner into a cactus, and I'm never going to win the battle to turn my cactus into a fern, but I can learn how to love a cactus. And I can learn how to love a fern. And we just didn't see it before, but once we saw it, the solution seemed so obvious.

Jan Yakimovic (67:07)

Yeah, that's a great question. So one component of burnout is a lack of self efficacy. A lack of self efficacy means I don't really feel like what I'm doing today makes a difference anymore. I don't think I have the skills necessary to do that. I don't feel like I have any sense of control over what I'm doing. And so it can feel really defeating when what I'm working on doesn't really seem like it's moving the needle anymore. The prescription there is not really taking any time off, but trying to figure out, can I work on other things where I could make a difference, or do I need to figure out how I can develop a better skill set that would actually allow me to make a difference? That's one of the components of burnout. The second component of burnout is what I think people often think about when they think about burnout, which is emotional exhaustion. That is when people feel like their emotional tank is empty. They don't really have a lot in them anymore to feel a lot of emotions anymore. And that can be both positive and negative effects. So we might find it harder to feel joy, excitement, enthusiasm. But it can also be really difficult for us to feel a lot of the negative emotions that are important for us to experience because they are helpful signals of how we react to the external environment. And typically, the prescribed solutions for emotional exhaustion in the short term is something like a vacation, a break, Having psychological detachment from your work, and in the long term, a more sustainable relationship to your work. Making sure that in between work days you have adequate time to recover, or that if you have a particularly emotionally intense workday that you take Some more time to recover and so on. But there's a third source of burnout that I think often goes missing. And that component is called cynicism. That is when you no longer believe in what it is that you are doing. And when you are feeling cynical, no vacation is going to fix that. No amount of upskilling is going to fix that. When you're feeling cynical, what you need is to feel inspired again. You need to remind yourself, why am I doing this to begin with? But it's really difficult to continue giving more of yourself when you're feeling cynical. It's one of the hardest things to come back from. And it's something that can creep in because we don't really recognize it until it can be too late. And so when it comes to diagnosing ourselves, I think it's just really helpful to think about what am I experiencing right now? Am I feeling emotionally exhausted? Is my tank empty? Do I need a break? Or perhaps do I need to renegotiate a different relationship to my work so that it's more sustainable? Am I experiencing a lack of self efficacy? Are the tasks that I'm working on not controllable enough for me? I can't really accomplish the outcomes that I want? Do I need to upskill so that I can actually do the work that I want to be doing? Or am I feeling cynical? Do I no longer believe in what it is that I'm trying to accomplish here? And that's a very different kind of break and a very different way of addressing.

Jan Yakimovic (71:22)

The truth is that many professions that allow someone to pursue their passion do not pay well. Well, if we think about the canonical example, the artists, the chefs, the musicians, a lot of these professions don't pay well. There's some evidence also that seems to suggest that people can be exploited for their passion. Meaning that if you ask somebody, oh, there's this additional task that needs to be done at the office, who do you give that task to that you're more likely to give that to the passionate person because you think, oh, they'll do it for free. And there's also research showing that when people care very deeply about something that they are less likely to want to bring up money in a salary negotiation because they worry that if they bring up money, other people might doubt how deeply they care about that. So all these things seem to suggest it can be really challenging to bring money into the mix. The broader evidence, however, is inconclusive. When you look at broad, large scale correlational studies, the relationship between people who pursue work that they're deeply passionate about and their salary is sometimes flat. It's sometimes positive, sometimes negative. There's one paper by Yuna Cho and Winnie Zhang who suggest that one of the reasons why the relationship might actually be positive is that other people respond so positively to people who are passionate for what they're doing. I mentioned earlier research showing that people want to exploit others who are passionate. But in the same breath, I should mention that there's a lot of work that has shown that when we see someone who's really passionate for what they do, we also admire them more, we want to help and support them more. So there's this underlying conundrum. What does it actually mean and look like? There is one more thing I want to add to Nancy, and I'm really glad, Nancy, that you went back to grad school after 25 years of banking. More often than not, I think that's a very rare story for the following reason. People often underestimate how much they change in the future. There's this really wonderful work by Daniel Gilbert and others, and they call it the end of history illusion. We think that we are the most complete version of ourselves at this point in time and that we have changed more in the past than we will change in the future. Whereas when you look at the actual data, that's not true. We actually change a lot more in the future than we might think. And so I Have a lot of students who come to my office and who report the very same thing that Nancy was telling me. I am 25 years old, I have student debt. I need to go into finance consulting, I need to make money, I need to save for retirement. And I'm very sympathetic to those arguments. And I say, I understand you have those constraints. That makes a lot of sense. But the students then are very quick to add, and later on, when I'm in my 40s, in my 50s or 60s, then I'm going to change and then I'm going to pursue work that's really meaningful to me. What they underestimate is that when they are in their 40s, 50s, or 60s, who they are has fundamentally changed. The people that they have surrounded themselves with for the last 20, 30 years of their career will be very different to who they were. Perhaps at that moment in time, their values will be impacted by that. Their lifestyle has changed. And then switching back actually becomes a lot more difficult and challenging. So many of the conversations I've had with alums who are in their 50s and 60s who are telling me, oh, I remember when I was in my 20s and I wanted to pursue what I was passionate about and I put it off. What they tell me now is, I wish I had started earlier. I wish I had found a way, even if I couldn't do it in my work. I wish I had found a way to continue developing that sense, to find ways to experiment and explore so that when I had finally had the time to actually make that the main attention that I could focus on, that I knew what to do and how to do it.

Jan Yakimovic (77:09)

I think that we have elevated the pursuit of passion to such a high moral level where we are a good person for pursuing our passion and vice versa. We're seen as a morally bad person if we don't pursue our passion. And I think that that is a wrong expectation to have. At best, I think it's unhelpful. And at worst, I think it actively makes the pursuit of passion more challenging for the people who enter that. Let me explain why. I think that when we tell people you should pursue your passion, it becomes an imperative and a source of pressure that can make it difficult for people to actually explore how they want to go about pursuing their passion when they might want to explore their passion. And it implicitly denigrates other ways of finding meaning in their life. Amy Zhevniewski has this really wonderful distinction between meaning and meaningful. Work can have a meaning without in and of itself being meaningful. I can think of my work as having a really important role in my life. It can empower me to do other things. It might allow me to support my family. But in and of itself, that work might not necessarily be meaningful. And we need to be careful, in my mind, not to denigrate people who find that their work has meaningful, but who in and of itself do not find their work to be meaningful. Because the reality is that for many people, pursuing work that is meaningful is a luxury or something that they feel like they are not able to do at that point in time. And I think we as a society need to embrace that. That is a perfectly great justification to do what it is that we're doing. I think we would do better by highlighting that that for some people, given their life circumstances at some time points, it might actually be more meaningful if they focused on work that isn't in of itself something that they're passionate about, but that might empower them either to pursue their passion later on in life or to pursue their passion outside of work, which is an equally noble, or in my mind, at least an equally noble way of doing something that we deeply care about. Hmm.

Jan Yakimovic (83:16)

Yeah, that's a great question. And it sounds to me like what Rima's paying attention to here is how people talk about their work and how they talk about what they're passionate about. I think what I really appreciate about what Rheem is highlighting here is that what is okay to conceal and what is important to reveal can vary from one cultural context to the next. So in the uk it is more acceptable and perhaps even expected to be a little more self deprecating. And that is a more acceptable way to talk about one's work and perhaps even a more acceptable way to talk about oneself, to disclose some weaknesses or some challenges to round out one's narrative. You don't want to be too full of yourself and come across as perhaps too arrogant in that context. Whereas in Germany, the way that Reem is describing it, people are more hesitant in disclosing some weaknesses and challenges that they've experienced. And instead it sounds to me like that's a more like a genius narrative or like a naturalness narrative, meaning that this comes very easy to me. I've been passionate about this all along. There is no struggle here. Everything is great, which is a very different way of Thinking about how much of myself I want to disclose and what I am worried about other people might think. And so that can be really challenging in how we think about how we communicate our passion. What I have found personally is that when I express my passion, I have to be a little bit more reserved in Germany. I have to be a bit more thoughtful than that. I cannot wave my hands as intensely. I cannot speak quite as loudly and quite as quickly in German, because that is not how other people expect passion should be expressed. Instead, it seems like passion in a German cultural context is more about deterministic focus, being really clear and articulate and having a vision that you can articulate. Versus in the US it sounds like there is no passion. That can be too much. I can wave my hands, I can go absolutely nuts and crazy. And people might say, look at this person. They're so passionate about what they're doing. I think there's a second component to what Reem was mentioning that I wanted to highlight, and that's the extent to which we value passion or the extent to which we believe that passion is something that people should pursue. There's some work that Paul o' Keefe has done and Hazel Rose Marcus have done where they survey people across different countries around the world. And perhaps unsurprisingly, what those two papers find is that in cultures that are less individualistic, so where it's less about what you yourself want to accomplish and more about what is beneficial for the group, that in those cultures, passion still matters, but it matters less as an important career goal. Instead, other career goals take higher prominence. Being able to support your family, being able to contribute to your community, and so on. Whereas in cultures that are more individualistic, and the US ranks really highly there, so does the UK and many other Western countries, you see that passion floats a lot more to the top as one of the most important things to consider in your career.

Jan Yakimovic (87:21)

I think that's a great question and I'm really grateful to hang for bringing that up. I can assure Heng that is a very common narrative. Teresa Amabile and some of her colleagues have written a book about that, in part because they are academics who themselves retired and then realized how difficult it is to retire and no longer do what it is that is really meaningful to you. So I think that what Hank is doing in and of itself I think is really helpful, which is to starting to think about what will I do after retirement. What Theresa Moguli and others find in their book is that a lot of people under plan what retirement will look like. Retirement is often seen as the end goal. This is what I'm retiring from. You know, I'm no longer doing work and instead they reframe it in a way that I think is really helpful. What are you retiring to? Not seeing retirement as something that is the end of a journey, but it's just a stop along the journey and what's the next destination that you're going to go to. And that in that process you can start thinking about what are the things, even while I'm still working, that I might want to do to prepare myself? Perhaps that means I need to explore more of the things that I might want to do after retirement. Perhaps that means that I need to engage in a little bit of a self focus, exploring my identity. Who am I? What do I want out of life? What is something that I've always wanted to accomplish? Then perhaps even experimenting, dipping my toes on a number of different things. Is this really something feasible for me? Is this something that I could see myself doing? Is this something that I can do while I still live where I live? Is it available where I am? Or would it require a very different way of living? But being more thoughtful and intentional, I think is really helpful. One of the a great comparison, at least in my mind, are athletes. Athletes retire when they're very young. Many athletes retire when they're in their 30s. And so retirement is a shock that we can observe and then actually look at for a lot longer time periods. And there's this recent story that I love by Andrew Lund, who was a quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts for six years, retired. I think he was 29 or 30 when he retired, which is quite young for a football player. And in the months and years that followed, or the way that he talks about it now, fell into a deep crisis of meaning. He was completely unprepared for what he wanted to do next they were really difficult days and in large parts because he asked himself, if I'm not a quarterback, then who am I? And then to start thinking about what am I drawn to? What else could I do? That really opened the door for him. He now ultimately went back to grad school. He is now, I believe, the general manager of the Stanford football program. So a very different role than he had before, but still somewhat related to the sport of football that he cared very deeply about. But I think using that as an excuse to say, what if we thought more intentionally about what we might want to do after retirement and started experimenting now before we actually make that transition so that when retirement happens, we have something that we can retire to and we can start experimenting with.

Jan Yakimovic (94:29)

Absolutely. I love Phil Hansen's story because to me, it exemplifies that we often have very narrow beliefs about how we want to go about pursuing our passion and that we're not attentive enough to the many different ways in which we could actually pursue our passion. So for Phil, he wanted to make pointillism art. That was what he had defined for himself as being his dream. And so when it didn't work out for him, he fell into a deep, dark hole because he said, this is the goal that I had. This is the path that it would require for me to reach this goal. That path is no longer available for me, and therefore I cannot reach this goal. When his neurologist said, wait, but you can still make art, like, why don't you just do it? But in a different way, what Phil started experimenting with was to realize maybe there are other things that I could do, and maybe it'll take me to a different goal, but perhaps that goal is still meaningful to me. Perhaps that is still something that I could be passionate about. So I think the initial step here that he talks about is that he had to let go of the conceptions that he had about himself. The second step was to then embrace, okay, what else could I do? What other things can I pursue? Even with an uncertain outcome, I don't know what I'm ultimately working towards. And the way that I think about this is to be open to experimenting and in this way developing what it is that you are passionate about. It sounds to me like what Phil is doing is finding out why he cares about art so much, what it is that through art he wants to accomplish. But I think more broadly it highlights this distinction between the outcome that I think we become very fixated on. I want to become X person, I want to do Y thing versus the process. Here is how I'm going to go about developing and experimenting. This is a way in which I'm going to figure out who I am and what I care about. And it might ultimately lead me toward a different journey, toward a different end. But perhaps that can also be something that I could be, meaning that I could be passionate about. Hmm.

Jan Yakimovic (100:49)

I really like this way that Lynn did it by highlighting here's the things I love and importantly, here are the red flags, here's the things that I don't want. I think we often neglect those red flags. And so I really like that exercise. I think there are a couple of things that. That I have found can be helpful, and it's not just things that I've developed. This is trying on a lot of different research that people have done that I'm really grateful for, that I can draw these tips on. I think one of the ways to think about this, and this is based on research by Kira Shabram and colleagues who focused on people who have taken sabbaticals in their life and how they have used those sabbaticals to different ends, is to not only think of sabbaticals as places to recover, but to also think of them as places to discover more about oneself and importantly to then also practice. And I think it's this practice component that we often underestimate. I think a lot of people are very happy to do the kind of self exploration that Lynn talked about. But the second step is then to apply that and to experiment, to practice. What would it actually look like to then act on that information and what sort of feedback do I then get? Armenia Ibarra calls that a provisional self. It's kind of like putting on a jacket. And you get two sources of feedback when you put on a jacket. The first is you get to wear it and you get to look in the mirror and you get to ask yourself, do I like how I look in this jacket? Do I like what it says about me? But you can then also go to a dinner party or you can go to the office and you can see how other people respond to you. And you can say, do I like how other people see me? Is this how I want to be seen by other people? And it's this experimentation that I think people don't do quite enough of, in part because it's really scary. But it's a really helpful source of information that can tell us a lot about ourselves, both about who we are and what we care about, but perhaps also about how we want to pursue that, that we're passionate about.

Jan Yakimovic (103:46)

I felt that question. Thank you, Richard, for sharing that. I think that on its surface I can hear a lot of fear in that question. What happens if one thing that I deeply care about is no longer there for me and I don't know what comes next? Or I. I don't think that there is something that comes next that is really scary because in part it means that we don't necessarily know who we are anymore. In many ways it reminds me of the football player Andrew Luck, who had to give up on football because of an injury and then was forced to confront himself with the question, if I'm not a quarterback, then who am I? Sally Maitlis similarly has focused on dancers who had a career ending injury. And those are the very same thoughts that they ask themselves. If I'm not a dancer, then who am I? So I think recognizing that when a person goes through something like that, it is normal and perhaps it should be expected, that that's a very painful time period and that perhaps there is no easy answer or easy solution, that's fine, and that's part of the journey. I think what we do next is then what determines the rest of that journey, what we do with that pain. We can say, I'm going to do what I can to modify that pain, to treat that pain, but not the underlying symptom. And I'm going to spread myself very thin. I'm going to do a lot of different things. They might unnecessarily be meaningful, but they provide me with enough positive feedback that I can keep going. And that's one approach, but probably not an approach that will allow you to have long term positive outcomes and will make you feel like your life is particularly meaningful. I think the more challenging set of questions is, well then who are you to begin with? Like, why did you care so deeply about this one thing and how else could you pursue that? How else could you use that as a jumping point to continue expanding. So I think it speaks to, on the one hand, the possibility. Perhaps there is more we can do to prepare ourselves for what comes next if we notice that the flame of our passion is dying. But I would even say, if the flame of our passion is dying in this one thing, is there something I can do to rekindle it? Just because a passion is dying, I wouldn't necessarily use the inference that means that it's gone forever. Perhaps there's something I can do to reinvigorate that. Perhaps I can go back and understand why did I care about this to begin with? What has changed in the last few years? When I think back to a time period when I was really fired up, what were the circumstances then? Who was I working with? What was I working on? What was going on in my life? I think we often make the inference that there must be something wrong. But perhaps I'm under duress. Maybe I'm really stressed. Maybe something is happening in my life that makes it really difficult for me to experience passion. So I think using that as an opportunity to diagnose, perhaps even to experiment. And if none of that works and really you give up on a passion and you don't know what comes next, to give yourself the space to understand it is okay if it's really painful because what has happened is a big loss. And after their loss, something else could happen and it provides space and opportunity for the next thing.