← Something You Should Know
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- [00:00]
Mike Carruthers
Bingo Blitz rules. If your bingo has ads in it.
- [00:05]
Daniel Pink
That'S not a bingo.
- [00:06]
Mike Carruthers
If it doesn't have the coolest tournaments, mini games, and the most breathtaking design, nope, not a bingo. If your bingo moment makes you feel.
- [00:13]
Anthony Fredericks
So excited that you just want to burst in joy and scream out loud, bingo.
- [00:17]
Mike Carruthers
Sorry.
- [00:18]
Anthony Fredericks
So you're playing Bingo Blitz.
- [00:20]
Mike Carruthers
Now that's a bingo step for a world of excitement.
- [00:23]
Sponsor Voice
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- [00:29]
Mike Carruthers
Now that's a bingo. Today on something you should know. Why does your refrigerator have a light inside but not your freezer? Then we all have regrets. Often painful regrets. And regrets can teach us a lot.
- [00:48]
Anthony Fredericks
One of the biggest categories of regrets are these boldness regrets where people say, if only I'd taken the chance. If only I'd asked that person out. If only I'd spoken up. If only I'd taken that trip over and over again. People regret playing it safe.
- [01:03]
Mike Carruthers
Also, when it comes to chicken, you probably like white meat best. Why is that? And what makes some people creative and some people not? There have been studies.
- [01:14]
Daniel Pink
They concluded that one factor clearly separated the two groups. The creative people thought they were creative and the less creative people didn't think they were.
- [01:27]
Mike Carruthers
All this today on something you should know.
- [01:33]
Sponsor Voice
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- [02:58]
Mike Carruthers
Something you should.
- [02:59]
Anthony Fredericks
Know Fascinating intel, the world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life today.
- [03:07]
Mike Carruthers
Something you should Know with Mike Carruthers Hi, welcome to what I think is a really interesting episode of Something you should know because I know what's in it. But you listen and you be the judge. We start today with your refrigerator and freezer. Chances are when you open the refrigerator, a light comes on so you can see what you're doing. But open the freezer and no light comes on. So why is there a light in the fridge and not the freezer? According to a website called todayifoundout.com it saves the manufacturer money to not have to put a light in the freezer. And studies show that people don't open the freezer nearly as much as they open the fridge. And certainly people don't browse in the freezer the way they browse in the fridge. Generally, people go to the freezer to get something out. That's going to take some further preparation and the kitchen light is probably on anyway. However, the refrigerator often gets raided at night where a light is really handy while you're looking around for something to eat. There are other theories. One is that it used to be impractical to have a light in the freezer. In the old models that built up frost on the inside, the frost would have built up on the light too, making it pretty useless. Then when frost free freezers came along, they simply carried on the tradition. Whatever the reason, in most cases most people don't have a light in their freezer. And that is something you should know. I'm sure you've heard people say that they have no regrets in their life. Is that possible? Is that even a realistic goal to live a regret free life? Regret is an emotion everyone feels, even those people who claim to have no regrets. Best selling author Daniel Pink has thoroughly explored the topic and emotion of regret and found that your regrets can serve a valuable purpose in your life. And he is about to explain regret and break regrets down in a way that you've likely never heard before and will find fascinating. His latest book is called the Power of How Looking Backwards Moves Us Forward. Hi Daniel, Welcome. Thanks for coming on. Something you should know.
- [05:28]
Anthony Fredericks
Thanks for having me. It's good to be with you.
- [05:30]
Mike Carruthers
So I am always skeptical when I hear someone say I have no regrets in life. I think to myself, really? Come on, you've done nothing in your life that you wish you had done differently or hadn't done at all. Or taken another path or asked that person out that you never did and always wish you had. Doesn't everybody have regret?
- [05:56]
Anthony Fredericks
Well, that's a great insight. And the truth is that everybody does have regrets. It's part of the human condition. In fact, the only people without regrets are five year olds whose brains haven't developed. People with certain kinds of brain damage and neurodegenerative disorders and sociopaths. And the reason for that is that regrets are part of our cognitive machinery. They exist for a reason. And if we treat them right, rather than ignoring them, we can use them as a force for forward progress.
- [06:27]
Mike Carruthers
Right? Well, that seems to be the point, right, that you feel regretful for something, as a course correction. It's a way to course correct because you did something wrong or something went wrong and you regret that.
- [06:41]
Anthony Fredericks
Absolutely right. Regret is one of our most common emotions. Everybody has it as we were talking about just a moment ago, but it's also our most instructive and transformative emotion. And the problem is that if we say, I never look backward, I don't have any regrets. We're not going to learn anything now. At the same time, if we say, oh my God, I have regrets, I'm completely debilitated. And you try to exonerate yourself from any responsibility to do anything, that's also bad. What we need to do is we need to take a systematic approach to our regrets. And none of us have really been taught to do that.
- [07:17]
Mike Carruthers
So what does that mean, a systematic approach to regret? I mean, regret seems to come, and there it is. And there it is. But what's the systematic approach to handling it?
- [07:28]
Anthony Fredericks
Yeah, well that's it. You got it exactly right. So what we need to do is we need to use regrets as a signal, as the universe telling us something. And if we think about our regrets, if we recognize that these feelings are for thinking, we can use them to. I mean, the evidence is overwhelming. In 50 years of research, we can use them to make better decisions. We can use them to become better negotiators. We can use them to become better problem solvers, better strategists, find greater meaning in our lives. And you know, in looking at this 50 years of science, I do think there is a relatively simple three step process that we can all enlist to use our regrets. Not to hobble us and not to, you know, for us to ignore them, but to actually enlist them to lead a better life.
- [08:16]
Mike Carruthers
And that three step process briefly explained is.
- [08:19]
Anthony Fredericks
It is. First of all, let's re gotta reframe the we Gotta, number one, reframe your view of yourself. In our regrets, a lot of times we beat up on ourselves for making mistakes or having regrets. Instead, what you should do is show yourself what's called self compassion, which is to treat yourself with the same kindness you would treat everybody else, and to show and to realize that your regrets are part of the human condition. Step two, you want to disclose your regret. This is a huge thing when we disclosing our regrets relieves the burden. But even more than that, when we take this amorphous negative feeling and convert it into words, those words are less fearsome. We begin to make sense of it. So you want to reframe it, you want to disclose it, and then you want to extract a lesson from it. And a good way to do that is to take a step back, think about how you're going to feel about this situation in 10 years, or even better, you know, ask yourself, what would you tell your best friend to do with this regret? And so this systematic process of reframing it through self, through self compassion, disclosing it because we know the benefits of disclosure and sense making are vast, and then also taking a step back and extracting a lesson from it gives us a way to take this spear of negativity and turn it into something positive.
- [09:42]
Mike Carruthers
So I have a couple of thoughts about regret that I'd like to get you to comment on. And that is I sort of distinguish, and maybe you do or don't, but between regret over something that happened and regret that you got caught because of something that happened.
- [10:01]
Anthony Fredericks
Oh, interesting. That's very interesting. Okay, so there are distinctions here, and I'll tell you how I got some insight into this, is that I went out and collected about 16,000 regrets from people in 105 countries. This incredible trove of human longing and aspiration. And one of the things that people regret, it turns out around the world, people regretted the same four things over and over again. And one of those categories was sort of what you're hinting at, which is moral regrets, where you're at a juncture, you could do the right thing, you could do the wrong thing, and you do the wrong thing and you regret it. Now, what I found is that while there's some people who kind of sort of regret getting caught, there are more people who regret the act itself. I have literally hundreds of people in my database who regret bullying kids when they were young, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago. I have one that really sticks in my head, is a 71 year old woman in New Jersey who regretted stealing candy from a store when she was a kid 60 years ago. I have huge numbers of regrets about infidelity. And in many cases, these are people who actually didn't get caught. What they really regret is the act itself. And I find that this category of moral regrets is powerful and revealing because it suggests to me that most people actually want to be good. And that's the other thing about regret that I find so fascinating in looking at this incredible trove of regrets. That is, if we understand what people regret the most, we actually understand what they value the most. And so this negative emotion actually points the way to what people think makes life worth living. And one of the things that people want out of life, not every single person, but what a lot of people want out of life, is actually to be good.
- [12:04]
Mike Carruthers
I buy that. Yeah, and that's a very optimistic message and nice to hold onto that. People want to be good for the most part.
- [12:12]
Anthony Fredericks
It's a really, really important and interesting question because there's a difference between regret and disappointment. With regret, you have agency over it. Okay? So in this case, for these moral regrets, people had agency over the act. You don't necessarily have control over whether you get caught or not. You know, it could be that you're disappointed that you got caught rather than you're regretful. The best example of the difference between disappointment and regret, Rhett, comes from Janet Landman at the University of Michigan, who has this brilliant, I think brilliant example where she says, imagine a scenario where a three year old girl loses her tooth and she goes to sleep and she puts the tooth under her pillow, you know, hoping the tooth fairy, you know, waiting for the tooth fairy to give her a buck. And she wakes up in the morning, open, lifts up her pillow and the tooth is still there. She's disappointed, but her parents regret not replacing the tooth with a dollar. And so regret depends on our control over things. I mean, just like I'm a basketball fan and I Live in Washington, D.C. i'm disappointed that the Washington Wizards haven't won an NBA championship for 40 years. But I can't regret it because I don't have any control over it.
- [13:27]
Mike Carruthers
Is part of the definition of regret that it's over, it's done, something's wrong, something happened, it's over and you can't undo it. And that's why it feels so bad, because you can't fix it.
- [13:41]
Anthony Fredericks
Some of our regrets we can undo. So, for instance, there's a guy who I write about who got a no Regrets tattoo. And then he regretted it, and he had his tattoo removed. Okay, so you can undo your regrets. Another thing that you can do for regrets that are harder to undo is that you can find the silver lining in them. That's a much more common adaptation that people have. So, once again, in this collection of 16,000 regrets, I have hundreds. I think they're all from women that go basically like this. I regret marrying that idiot, but at least I have these two great kids. So you find a silver lining in it. Finding the silver lining in a regret makes it hurt a little bit less. It doesn't really help you draw a lesson from it necessarily.
- [14:32]
Mike Carruthers
So far, we've been discussing these moral regrets, but I know there's a lot of other kinds of regrets, so let's talk about them. For example, what are the other big regrets that people have over and over.
- [14:45]
Anthony Fredericks
Again in the world? We see these same four regrets. One of them is what I call boldness regrets. So I'll give you an example of it. So among Americans who went to college, huge numbers of people regret. I was surprised not studying abroad. At the same time, I have hundreds of people around the world who have a regret like this. X years ago, there was a man or woman who I really liked. I wanted to ask him her out on a date, but I was too chicken to, and I never got around to it. And I've regretted it ever since. Okay, that's a romance regret. We got an education regret. A romance regret. And then again, around the world, people say, ugh, I wish I had started a business rather than stayed in this lackluster job career regret. But all of those regrets, to me, are the same core regret. It's a regret that says, if only I taken the chance. And a lot of these regrets come at a juncture of decision making in our lives. In this particular case, you can play it safe or you can take the risk. And over again, over and over again, people regret playing it safe. Some people regret taking a risk, but not nearly as many people as you expect. Even if it doesn't work out, what people regret is not taking the chance. And to me, what that reveals is that you and I and the folks listening to your podcast, we want, like a good life involves doing something and learning and growing and trying and leading a psychologically rich life. And so one of the biggest categories of regrets are these boldness regrets, where people say, if only I'd taken the chance, if only I'd asked that person out, if only I'd spoken up, if only I'D taken that trip. If only I'd started that business.
- [16:29]
Mike Carruthers
I'm speaking with bestselling author Daniel Pink and his latest book is called the Power of Regret. How Looking Backwards Moves Us Forward.
- [16:39]
Anthony Fredericks
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- [16:41]
Mike Carruthers
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Anthony Fredericks
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Mike Carruthers
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- [17:12]
Anthony Fredericks
Only a Jack in the Box Order.
- [17:14]
Mike Carruthers
One on the Jack app today. So Daniel, the type of regrets that you're talking about, those road not taken regrets, don't you think they get wrapped up into a fantasy of what might have happened, which is probably way off anyway?
- [17:32]
Anthony Fredericks
Possibly. But I think the bigger issue is that people don't know. Let's take starting a business. All right, I have people who regret starting a business and having it fail, but very few. In fact, I have people who say I started a business, it failed, but I don't regret doing it because I wanted to take the chance. And I know how that particular thing turned out. And so I do think that, of course, that we don't. There are gazillion counterfactuals to any decision that we make. But when the regrets that people express keep coming back to the same thing, to me it suggests what we actually want out of life. That is, I really believe that if we understand what people regret the most, we actually understand what they value the most. And what people value is, you know, they realize they're not here on this planet forever. They want to do something, and when they feel timid and when they don't take that chance, they often regret it. Much more so than taking a chance and failing.
- [18:32]
Mike Carruthers
I would imagine that because it seems like that regret has often shame attached to it, that things didn't work out, that people keep their regrets to themselves. Is that a good idea?
- [18:46]
Anthony Fredericks
There's ample research showing that disclosing our regrets helps us make sense of them. What's more is that when we're skittish about disclosing our regrets or negative things about ourselves, we're skittish in part because we think that people will like us less, when in fact the preponderance of evidence says people like us more for doing that so you want to reframe it and you want to disclose it. But the most important thing is not to stay mired in it, but to draw a lesson from it. So the lesson from, say, not asking somebody out on a date is, next time I have a chance to speak up, I have a chance to take a risk, whether it's at a meeting at work, whether it is maybe starting a side hustle along with my regular job, or whether I'm back on the dating market and I see someone I'm interested in then actually using that lesson to apply next time. And when people act, they are less likely to regret it than when people don't act. And this comes up again and again in the research. Regrets of inaction easily outnumber regrets of action, particularly as people get older.
- [19:49]
Mike Carruthers
I wonder why it is, if regret is so universal, that people try to take some pride in the fact that they have none, when, because it hurts.
- [20:02]
Anthony Fredericks
They want to avoid it. Here's the thing. Regret hurts, and it's instructive, but you can't have one without the other. And so what happens is when people try to avoid regret because it hurts, regret stinks. All right? Regret is not fun. It's an awful feeling. It makes our stomach churn. But the reason it makes our stomach churn is because it instructs and clarifies us about how to make subsequent decisions. But you're not going to get that instruction unless you get a little bit of that pain. The question is, how do you deal with that pain? And so by denying the pain, by sort of brushing it away, you lose all of the instruction.
- [20:39]
Mike Carruthers
I imagine that a big source of regret for a lot of people is family members and friends, which are regrets.
- [20:48]
Anthony Fredericks
About having a relationship that should have been intact, that was intact, or should have been intact, that ends up drifting apart. And people want to reach out, but they feel awkward about reaching out. They think it's not going to be well received, and so they drift further apart. So, you know, one of the huge regrets that people have are these connection regrets with family and friends and colleagues that say, if only I'd reached out. And to me, one of the big lessons from this research on regret is that if you're at a juncture in your life and you're wondering, should I reach out or should I not reach out? You've answered the question. To me personally, the big takeaway from this huge amount of research is that one should always reach out.
- [21:29]
Mike Carruthers
What's a foundation? Regret.
- [21:31]
Anthony Fredericks
Foundation regret is a regret about not building a stable Platform for your life. So if only I hadn't smoked, if only I'd save more money, if only I'd worked harder in school, if only I'd taken care of my health. And again, these four core regrets tell us what makes a good life. And one of the things that makes a good life is some amount of stability. It's hard to have a good life without some amount of stability. Stability gives us a chance to explore. Stability gives us a chance to be a good person. Stability gives us a chance to connect with others.
- [22:03]
Mike Carruthers
There is kind of this, if I knew then what I know now, I would have done things differently. But based on the research, based on your research, young people can take a lesson from this, is these are the things you're likely going to regret later in life. So you might want to try to do something about them now. And just to reiterate, those things are what?
- [22:28]
Anthony Fredericks
Did I build a stable platform for my life? Did I take a smart risk? Did I do the right thing? Did I connect with people who I care about and who care about me? Those are the things that. Those are the kinds of regrets that we should anticipate. But what color sweater we're going to wear, what we're going to have for dinner, what kind of car we're going to buy, ultimately doesn't matter. And so I think that what's interesting about regret, this negative emotion, is how clarifying it is. It instructs us for what makes a good life.
- [22:58]
Mike Carruthers
Well, there really is comfort in hearing how it is so universal and that people are basically riddled with regret.
- [23:09]
Anthony Fredericks
Yeah, you don't want to be riddled. You want to be poked a little bit. You don't want it to be a heavy blanket. But here's the thing. I mean, truly, there's a famous study from 40 years ago where a social scientist named Susan Shimonoff looked at recorded conversations with lots and lots of people. So she recorded all these conversations that people were having organically in their world, so college students and married couples. And then she got transcripts of all these conversations, and then she started counting the emotions that people regret, the emotions that people expressed in these everyday, ordinary conversations. The most common negative emotion that people expressed was regret. It was the second most common emotion of any kind. The only emotion mentioned more often than regret was love. And so why do we experience love? Because it helps us survive and get through the day. Why do we experience regret? Because it instructs and it clarifies. And if we get past this stupid idea that I should have no regrets. We can actually use this transformative emotion to find the path to a life well lived.
- [24:16]
Mike Carruthers
So as somebody who has really examined regret and found that there is a usefulness to it, when you talk to somebody who says, oh, I have no regrets, what do you say to them?
- [24:29]
Anthony Fredericks
Well, it's a great question. I'll give you two examples of this. In this database where I collected all these regrets, I had people who would fill out this thing called the World Regret Survey and then say, I don't have any regrets, and then proceed to tell me some regret that they had. What's more, I did a piece of quantitative research here where we surveyed 4,489Americans in this big public opinion poll where I asked people the question without using the R word. And this is the key. We asked 4,489Americans, a representative sample of the US population, how often do you look back on your life and wish you had done something differently? Okay, so we don't say the regret word. 1% said never, 12% said rarely. 83% said they do it occasionally. So sometimes, you know, this word regret for some people is so charged that they have this instinctive view that, ah, I don't have any regrets. But when you actually peel it back and ask them to file, ask. So to answer your question more directly, it's like, oh, really? You don't have any regrets? So do you ever look back on anything and wish you hadn't done it? Oh, yeah, I wish I hadn't majored in blahbady blah in college. Oh, I wish I hadn't dated that person. Oh, well, that's a regret. Well, no, it's not. Well, yeah, it is.
- [25:51]
Mike Carruthers
By definition.
- [25:52]
Anthony Fredericks
Yes.
- [25:54]
Mike Carruthers
Well, isn't it? I wonder why people feel that need to put on that fake badge of honor that they have no regrets when, I mean, what's the point of that? What are they trying to say?
- [26:06]
Anthony Fredericks
I don't know. I mean, I think part of it is that they're trying to put forward a life performance that seems to be flawless to other people, even though none of our lives are flawless. I think part of it is that they have been indoctrinated to think that we should have only positive thoughts and positive emotions. And the truth of the matter is that we should have lots of positive thoughts and lots of positive emotions, but our portfolio of emotions has to be at least somewhat diversified. So if you have only positive emotions, you're not going to do very well. You have to have some negative emotions because not that many of them and not an overwhelming number of them. But negative emotions are instructive. Imagine somebody who couldn't experience fear. That person is not going to escape a burning building. And so negative emotions serve a function. And so we've been seduced into thinking the only emotions that we should have are positive emotions. And while it's true that we should have a lot of positive emotions, that is not a diversified emotional portfolio. We would never have all of our stocks in our financial portfolio in one industry or in one sector. We would want a little bit of diversification and that's what we want with our emotions. And the blue chip emotional stock for negative emotions is regret.
- [27:22]
Mike Carruthers
And I think, as you said, there's such an emphasis on positive emotions. I've never heard anybody talk about regret this way. Most of the talk about regret is to how to avoid it. But clearly you have a different and I think more interesting take on the topic. My guest has been Daniel Pink and the book is called the Power of How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward. You'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks Daniel. I really enjoyed this. Thanks a lot.
- [27:52]
Anthony Fredericks
Rock and roll. Thanks for having me. I enjoyed it.
- [27:55]
Sponsor Voice
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- [28:53]
Mike Carruthers
It'S interesting to think that every man made, product, object, invention, business, piece of art, everything started as an idea that popped into somebody's head somehow. How does that happen? What is the process that allows people to generate great ideas? We sometimes call that process creativity. But creativity tends to have a kind of a magical who knows where it came from, who knows when it will strike again kind of quality. Yet if you look at great ideas and then reverse engineer them and how they came to be. There must be something we can learn from that process so that we can all apply it and have more great ideas. That's what Anthony Fredericks is here to discuss. Anthony is a nationally recognized educator and an award winning and best selling author of more than 150 books. His latest is titled from fizzle to the hidden forces crushing your creativity and how you can overcome them. Hey Anthony, welcome to something you should know.
- [30:03]
Daniel Pink
Thank you, Mike. Looking forward to it.
- [30:05]
Mike Carruthers
I think a lot of times when people hear a discussion that has to do with creativity, they think, oh well, that's just a discussion for creative types, you know, artists and writers and musicians. But you have a more practical view of this topic. So what is creativity to you?
- [30:24]
Daniel Pink
Let me use a quote by Albert Einstein. Creativity is intelligence. Having fun. Throughout our school lives, we have been trained, if you will, to look for right answers. If you consider the fact that most students between kindergarten and 12th grade have been asked, have taken about 2,500 test quizzes and exams, and they've been asked over one and a half million questions. What the research is showing is that about 80% of those questions on the test and 80% of the verbal questions tend to be factual questions. In other words, we have been trained throughout our education career to look for the right answer. Creativity moves beyond that right answer. It plays with that knowledge. It experiments with that knowledge. It has fun with that knowledge. As Einstein was alluding to, creativity is letting our minds roam with no barriers, no restrictions whatsoever.
- [31:29]
Mike Carruthers
And I would want to do that why? I mean, I can understand if you're a creative type or you're a child, but in the grownup world, why is this important?
- [31:39]
Daniel Pink
Because there are many times in our daily schedules when we need something new, mentally speaking, that is, when we need a different way of doing things or times when we would benefit from a new idea. We all need creative approaches that not only increase our productivity, but also give us an opportunity to search for new answers, give us a new way of seeing the world. And what we've discovered is that creative acts done every day keeps us mentally agile and professionally competent, able to deal with some of the challenges that we may face in both our personal and professional lives.
- [32:23]
Mike Carruthers
And so when you say creative acts, what does that mean? Give me some examples of daily creative activities.
- [32:32]
Daniel Pink
I'm going to step back a little bit and say one of the big myths that we have in the area of creativity is that creativity is something that we only use about three or four times during the year when our boss says we need A new marketing plan or our supervisor says we need to develop a new product. And we think creativity is big events. Creativity is actually small events, little things that we do every day. The myth that creativity is a big event sort of holds us in check, if you will. It prevents us from taking a look at creativity as small things. Here are some examples of some small things. Going to a Peruvian restaurant because you've never been to a Peruvian restaurant. Driving on a new route home instead of taking the freeway, Taking a rural road to get home. Talking with your child about some ways of building structures with wooden blocks. It's the little things that we do every day that makes us creative. Creativity is not the big events. It's how we prepare for those big events. With a series of daily events in our lives trying a new recipe, for example. These are the things that sort of prepare the mind for the big event and also lets us know internally that we are all creative creatures.
- [33:59]
Mike Carruthers
Do you think though that there are some people who are more creative than others or are we all equally creative?
- [34:07]
Daniel Pink
If we apply it, we are all equally creative. One of the things that tends to hold a lot of people back in terms of their creativity is that we tend to compare ourselves with so called creative giants. If we're an artist, we might compare ourselves to Picasso and say, well, you know what? I'll never be a Picasso. If we're a writer, we may compare ourselves to Stephen King and say, well, I'll never measure up to Stephen King. Those comparisons are very, very dangerous because we tend to think of creativity as big events and big people, and that's a mistake. We all have creative possibilities. We all have the intelligence and the capabilities of becoming more creative in our daily life, no matter what our age may be.
- [34:58]
Mike Carruthers
Do you think that creative people, people who practice creativity, think of themselves as creative? In other words, are the creative people aware that they are and the not so creative people aware that they are?
- [35:13]
Daniel Pink
Let me answer that with a little bit of most compelling book. Back in 2006, Carol Dwight, who is a researcher at Stanford, wrote a very compelling book called Mindsets. And in it she says we either accept one of two mindsets, either we're in a fixed mindset, that is, we've determined that we are not creative. And so we're not going to work to change that. And the other mindset is the growth mindset. That's those of us who say, you know what? Creativity is doing something, a little bit of something every day. I can grow, I can improve, I can achieve, I can do Things that I have not done before. And I can think things that I have not thought of before. So depending on what mindset we accept, that will determine how creative we believe ourselves to be.
- [36:09]
Mike Carruthers
I think there's a tendency to believe, and I've thought this from time to time too, that creativity is great, but creativity means coming up with new ideas. New ideas aren't necessarily good ideas, they're just new ideas. And that you waste a lot of time. Well, maybe waste is the wrong word, but you can spend a lot of time being creative and not getting anywhere. You're just being creative.
- [36:35]
Daniel Pink
Exactly. And another one of the things that tends to hold us back in terms of creativity is a fear of failure. I'll use an example. A number of years ago there was an Englishman who had come up with, had tried and tried and tried to create a new invention, something that every housewife uses, and he failed 5,762 times. On the 5,763rd time, he succeeded. His name, James Dyson, who invented the Tornado vacuum cleaner. He failed over 5,700 times in creating that. But he was of the growth mindset and said, you know what, let's give it another try. And the latest figures that I have are from 2019 and 2019 his company had profits in excess of 6 billion. That's with a B dollars. This is from somebody who had 5,700 failures on his resume. So yes, we create a lot of ideas. Not every one of those ideas is going to be a world shaking or earth shattering event. And that's okay. The creation of the ideas, whether good or bad, is what is important, not determining ahead of time. Well, this is not going to be a very, these aren't going to be very good ideas. We need to have the belief in ourselves that if we can generate sufficient ideas and are comfortable with that generative process, then we can make creativity a regular, normal part of our lives.
- [38:19]
Mike Carruthers
Sometimes it seems that the word creativity or that's very creative is another word for this really sucks. And I don't get it.
- [38:33]
Daniel Pink
Yeah, we tend to, I guess, downplay it. You know, a little sucking here and there is good for the soul. I'm reminded of another anecdote, Thomas Thomas Edison, when he was trying to improve on the light bulb, he kept trying and trying for months and months. A reporter from a local newspaper was sent to interview him and he said, Mr. Edison, it seems like you're trying and trying and you keep failing. And Thomas Edison looked the reporter in the eye and said, you know, What? I haven't failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that don't work. So it's our concept of failure. Failure is a normal part of the creative process. If we're willing to understand and accept the fact that there will be lots and lots of failures, and Thomas Edison's case, 10,000 failures, then we give ourselves permission to be more creative, to think outside the box, to use a very hackneyed phrase.
- [39:31]
Mike Carruthers
It also seems that creativity is also like an excuse, like, well, you know, you take an art class, let's say, and everybody in the class is doing well except Bob. Bob's picture really is not up to par. It's very creative, but it sucks. It's terrible. It's nowhere close to what the other students are doing. And people have a tendency, I think, that being an example, of saying, oh, he's so creative. You know, it's like kids finger paint things. I mean, yeah, I guess they're creative, but they're just fingers in paint. I mean, there's nothing really spectacular about it other than it's different. It's not crayons, it's finger paint, but it's nothing great.
- [40:11]
Daniel Pink
Yeah, and you used a key word. It's different. We may think that Bob's painting sucks, but it's Bob's expression. It's his way of looking at the world. If we apply arbitrary criteria, assessment tools to it, everyone says, bob's painting sucks. Bob may say, you know, I'm okay with this. I've expressed myself on a piece of paper. I've done what I've set out to do, and I'm okay with that. And he gives himself permission to venture out and try things. There is another wonderful study where a presenter, and I think it was part of a TED Talk, invited an audience to each. Take a sheet of paper and a pencil, turn to the person next to you, and in the next 30 seconds, draw a portrait of that individual. The people were working and very hard, diligent. 30 seconds. He said, how many of you, when you were sharing that portrait with your partner, said, oh, I'm not a very good artist, or I can't paint very well, or I'm sorry for all of this. And every hand in the audience went up. He did that with a group of kindergarten kids and asked that question, and no hands went up. What's interesting is kids have this very. Imagine a view of the world. And as we grow older and we get into paying income taxes and mortgages and job responsibilities, et cetera, et cetera, we narrow our focus and then we become more critical of our own creativity and a little bit more critical of the creativity of others.
- [42:00]
Mike Carruthers
Well, there also seems to be, as I listen to you tell that story, I've never thought of myself as much of an artist. I don't. You know, if you ask me to draw a picture of somebody, it's going to be more stick figure. It's not going to be very good. Consequently, art is not a direction I've ever gone in. I don't have much interest in becoming an artist because I kind of have convinced myself I'm not very good at it. And that kind of feeds on itself. It's a cycle of, if you're not interested, you don't do it. If you don't do it, you're not very good. If you're not very good, you're not interested. And there it goes.
- [42:38]
Daniel Pink
Art is simply a creative expression. Art is simply a way of allowing the pictures in our mind to be expressed, say, for example, on a sheet of paper. And that's okay. Your art may be different from my art, from Picasso's art, but it's art nonetheless. Is it going to be great art? I don't know. I can't. I'm not in a position to evaluate it. But what I can say is, let's give everyone an opportunity or let's give ourselves an opportunity to be creatively expressive. And that may be through art, that may be through music, that may be through sports, that may be through writing. Whatever. We need those opportunities, and we can give ourselves those opportunities as adults in our daily lives, as I mentioned before, by doing one little creative thing every day. New recipe, new way home, a new kind of food, a new coat and a color that you've never worn before. A little bit of expression each day turns us into creative individuals.
- [43:45]
Mike Carruthers
Let's go back, because you said at the beginning, you know, one example of being creative is to go to a Peruvian restaurant, because you've never been to one. Well, how is that creative? What is that? That's just your idea of creativity. But how does eating Peruvian food make me more creative?
- [44:04]
Daniel Pink
Well, if all we do is eat steak and potatoes, we have no idea of what else is out there. If we aren't willing to do a little bit of imagining, then we do ourselves a disservice. Let me take a. Take a side road off of that. Oftentimes, when I was a classroom teacher, parents would ask, what are some things I can do to help my child become more creative? And I said, one of the things that you don't want to do is you don't want to go to a toy store and buy a product that says educational on the. On the package, because that's just a marketing technique to sell more toys. I told them the three best creative things that parents can give their kids is an old sheet, a box of crayons, and some cardboard boxes, and let them create their own universes, their own. Their own castles, their own spaceships, their own pirate ships, whatever it may be. When kids realize that there are unlimited ways of thinking, we are not looking for the right answer, as might be the case in a computer game. We're looking for a multiplicity of answers.
- [45:22]
Mike Carruthers
But don't you think that when you're playing a computer game, because I watch my boys play computer games and I'm not particularly good at it, that trying to find that right way out or up the wall or into the castle or to get to the bad guy seems like it's a pretty creative way because there aren't a lot of, you know, there aren't a lot of signs that say, this way. You've got to figure it out.
- [45:46]
Daniel Pink
I'm going to disagree with you slightly there, Mike, because what we're trying to figure out is what the game creators have determined to be the right way. Sure, there's some mental gymnastics in there, but ultimately, to win the game or to score the most points, we have to find the answer, so to speak, that somebody else developed. Give kids an old sheet and some cardboard boxes. There's no right way to put those together. If we step back and watch the kids turn that sheet and those boxes into a spaceship or pirate ship, there's no right way, or actually no wrong way to do that. They are letting their imaginations go. And as Albert Einstein said, imagination is more important than knowledge.
- [46:41]
Mike Carruthers
I suspect that one of the things that kind of beats the creativity out of us is I imagine almost everybody can remember sometime when they had an idea that was criticized. Oh, that. That's.
- [46:55]
Daniel Pink
That.
- [46:56]
Mike Carruthers
That's not very good, Bobby. That's. Yeah, no, that's like. And those. You take those punches and they hurt, and you think, oh, well, better not do that again.
- [47:07]
Daniel Pink
Yeah, exactly. And that carries forward into our work environments as well. I recall one study that found that the average worker in this country had something like 300 negative comments in the course of a week. Now imagine trying to get around working through 300 negative comments in a week. Kids get even more than that. Times that kids hear the word, no, don't go there. Don't do that. Don't touch that. Those kinds of things, those have a significant psychological effect on the development of our creativity, whether we are children or whether we are adults. Those negative comments significantly affect our personal creativity.
- [47:56]
Mike Carruthers
Yeah, well, but if little Johnny's about to set his sister on fire, he's going to need to hear no. I'm sorry, I hate to interrupt your creativity here, but you can't do that.
- [48:08]
Daniel Pink
No. Point well taken. Mike, There are times when we do need to say no for safety reasons, obviously. But to say no, you can't walk in a puddle, for example, or you can't play in the mud. Those are very creative kinds of activities for kids. There's very little safety involved in those activities. And kids tend to hear a lot of that. The no. In the potential creative activities that they participate in.
- [48:39]
Mike Carruthers
What are some of the other research about creativity? Because you seem to have quite a bit of that knowledge that people might be surprised to hear about how it works or how it doesn't work or whatever.
- [48:52]
Daniel Pink
Here's one of the things, one of the creative studies that really stood out for me and it was a couple of years ago and they were, they were taking a look at a major corporation taking a look at the creative productivity of engineers. And this was happened to be at a major oil company. And the executives of the company were concerned about the lack of creativity on the part of some of their employees. And they decided to bring in a team of psychologists to see if they could determine any significant differences between those who were deemed to be creative and those who were essentially categorized as non creative. And over the course of three months, the team of psychologists asked tons and tons of questions focused on childhood experiences, family influences, academic performance, and even favorite colors. And after they analyzed all the data, they concluded that one factor clearly separated the two groups. And here's that factor. The creative people thought they were creative and the less creative people didn't think they were.
- [50:07]
Mike Carruthers
Yeah, I believe that. And I think everybody, even people who don't consider themselves creative types, have had moments several times in their life where things have clicked, where ideas have come. So this idea that some people aren't creative just doesn't ring true. And clearly you've pointed out that it doesn't. My guest has been Anthony Fredericks. He is a nationally recognized educator and author of the book From Fizzle to Sizzle, the hidden forces crushing your creativity and how you can overcome them. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Hey, thanks, Anthony. Thanks for coming on.
- [50:44]
Daniel Pink
Okay, thank you. So much. Mike, appreciate the opportunity.
- [50:50]
Mike Carruthers
Do you like white meat? Most of us do. In fact, the American chicken industry ends up with a big surplus of dark meat because Americans prefer white meat. And it's not just the taste. It seems that a lot of us are a little squeamish about dark meat because, well, when you're faced with a chicken leg, there's no hiding the fact that that's the leg of an animal. Up until 50 years ago, chickens were sold almost exclusively as whole chickens. But now we prefer the nondescript, neatly packaged products that don't really resemble what it used to be standing, running, or swimming around. It turns out that other countries aren't quite so squeamish as we are. Most Europeans actually prefer the taste of the gamier dark meat, which is nutrient rich with higher levels of iron and zinc. And that is something you should know. I love getting those emails that start out with something to the effect of My friend listens to your podcast all the time and suggested I give it a try and I really like it. If you know someone who might enjoy this podcast, please share it with him. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know.
- [52:07]
Anthony Fredericks
Merry Christmas, everybody. My name is Eric Peterson.
- [52:10]
Mike Carruthers
I'm here with my good buddy Danny Jordan, and we are the co hosts.
- [52:13]
Anthony Fredericks
Of the Christmas Let me try that again. Merry Christmas, everybody. My name is Eric Peterson. I'm here with my good buddy Danny.
- [52:20]
Mike Carruthers
Jordan, and we are the hosts of Christmas Countdown show. We're so thrilled to be bringing the merriment to you all this holiday season.
- [52:27]
Anthony Fredericks
It's going to be awesome.
- [52:27]
Mike Carruthers
It's going to be massively merry, gigantically jolly, fantastically festive as some people might say. Eric, we are all about alliterations and we are all about Christmas spirit. On Christmas Countdown, we love to count down Our top 10 favorite things related to the holiday season that could be food, movies, music, everything that we all love about this massively merry good time. So wherever you get your podcasts, make sure you click that subscribe button. Eric, are you ready?
- [52:50]
Anthony Fredericks
I am ready and we hope that you are too. Merry Christmas, everybody.
- [52:54]
Mike Carruthers
Let's go. It should be like, let's go. Ho ho ho.
- [52:58]
Anthony Fredericks
Should be.
- [52:58]
Mike Carruthers
Yeah.
- [52:59]
Sponsor Voice
Do you love Disney? Do you love top 10 lists? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Meagan the magical millennial.
- [53:08]
Anthony Fredericks
And I'm the Dapper Danielle.
- [53:09]
Sponsor Voice
On every episode of our fun and family friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore. There is nothing we don't cover on our show. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney.
- [53:23]
Anthony Fredericks
Themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed. I had Danielle and Megan record some answers to seemingly meaningless questions. I asked Danielle what insect song is typically higher pitched and hotter temperatures. In lower pitched and cooler temperatures, you got this. No, I didn't.
- [53:40]
Mike Carruthers
Don't believe that about a wish coming true.
- [53:43]
Daniel Pink
Well, I didn't either.
- [53:45]
Sponsor Voice
Of course, I'm just a cicada.
- [53:48]
Mike Carruthers
I'm crying.
- [53:49]
Daniel Pink
I'm suicidal.
- [53:51]
Mike Carruthers
You win that one.
- [53:52]
Sponsor Voice
So if you're looking for a healthy.
- [53:53]
Daniel Pink
Dose of Disney magic, check out Disney.
- [53:56]
Sponsor Voice
Countdown wherever you get your podcasts.