The Four Plateaus to a Life You Can Breathe In

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0:52 Anthony Welcome. Hey, thank you, Doug. It's good to be here with you. I appreciate you inviting me on your show. Well, I'm looking forward to it. You know, it's really funny. Initially, when I was living in the US and doing these most most of the people I've talked to are from the US, and now I'm talking to people from all over the world and where you living at this point in time. Well, I'm originally from Washington, d C. I'm from the US and we are living in Rome, Italy. Wow, that's fantastic. I imagine you love that there. Yeah, we do, we do. We live in in an area called Costelli Romani. It's about half an hour outside of Rome, and I take the train into work and uh and and then the bus. It's uh. You know, it's a good it's a it's a it's a good lifestyle being in a in a small town here in Italy.

1:40 That's wonderful. Well, what I'd love for you to do. I find it always fascinating to hear the story behind where you're you know, what you're doing, and so if you can share with you audience kind of the background of who you are, what brought you to doing what you're doing, and talk a little bit about what you're doing, talk about the book that you just written, and so on and so forth. Okay, thanks Doug. So well, So originally from from d C. I grew up there. I went to Berkeley to go to college, and you know, a lot of the family dysfunction happening in my life. I probably would have gone further, if I was a better swimmer, then then I Then I came back to to Washington and I ended up joining the Peace Corps, and so I went to Kenya.

2:27 I was there for two years in a small region and about three hours inland from Mombasa, as a teacher. And then I went and did a lot of community development work there. I came back to the States did my masters at Harvard at their Public Policy School, focusing on leadership, and it was between the Public Policy School and Harvard Business School and yeah, and then I actually three weeks after the graduation, I was back in Kenya. I had started my first nonprofit organization, which I grew to over fifteen million dollars in revenues. We had about forty staff and built set up divisions in Kenya, Tanzania, Guatemala, Indonesia, Oakland, California, Washington, d c. Teaching disadvantaged youth how to start businesses and how to find employment and linking them with each other.

3:22 So this was really the early early days of the Internet where these young people that for example, in rural Kenya could connect with young people in rural Indonesia and in inner city Oakland, California, and Washington, d C. And that. So I was running that organization for about nine years. Then I moved on to the board, found someone else to run it. And what I started to realize is that is that I really had a passion for writing. And at the same time, I also realized that the point of starting the organization was not to run it myself forever. I guess you could say I'm kind of a serial social entrepreneur, like I really wanted to create it, but then I found that running it was not was not my passion. You know, A lot of my time was was was fundraising, managing people. And I was really curious more about how to run an organization than actually running one. Which may sound strange, but I felt like as as a nonprofit leader, no one really showed me what to do, and there were and I didn't really you know, reading the books on it. It's kind of like playing basketball or tennis. You can't just just study about it. You got to go out and do it.

4:37 And and so I learned on the fly, and I just became very curious about that. I also became very curious about personal development. I think based on some of the really challenging circumstances I had had growing up in Washington, and and so I started writing books. I started doing leadership development programs for other nonprofit leaders. It's funny. I went to the head of the Management Center in San Francisco, a guy named Bob Walker, and I went to him like, Hey, I'm thinking of transitioning out of this organization, you know, after being there for the nine years, and I have this idea, like, what if we were to develop a leadership development program for nonprofit leaders based on the same experiential education principles. So instead of you know, you know, you can't really dictate to leaders. You know, leaders don't like to be led, So what if it was really like, instead of bringing them certain abilities and ideas, bringing out the abilities within them through a very interactive experiential model.

5:41 And he says, well, that sounds good. Why why don't you go ahead and do it in October. We'll recruit everyone for you. And I just just blew my mind, like really, So that was my first opportunity, and then that led to I did these programs and from there to India, Mexico, actually done them in over twenty countries since then, and so I've been a leadership trainer for the last thirty years, and then I decided somewhere around let's see, somewhere around my mid forties. I'm fifty eight now, some are my mid forties. I well really made realize that like I just couldn't keep doing these keynotes and leadership you know, leadership speeches anymore, because I felt like like I was just regurgitating the same information over and over again, and I really I felt like I wasn't backing up what I shared with credible research. So it was really at that point it was either going to be a midlife crisis or a PhD. And I ended up with both. So I went and I went to Barcelona, did my doctorate at ESA Business School, focusing on emotion and leadership, and I continued doing leadership trainings for Fortune five hundred companies like you know, like Google, Apple, Toyota, Boeing, most of the world's largest nonprofits like Save the Children Care and so forth. A lot of political leaders like government government ministers of G twenty, governments, mayors, they would

7:13 come to Washing and DC for a few days of you know, personalized executive coaching, and so at that point really like that's around the time that I married my wife, who's from Mexico, and that decision and doing the PhD really the two best decisions I've ever made because they led to a really huge inflection point. And now we've got We've got two children and their trilingual in Italian, Spanish, English, and and I'm teaching at Luis Business School in Rome. I'm running their Center for Sustainable Leadership. I do now about four pro bono nonprofit leadership conferences every year. They are like two to three conferences in Africa and Latin America, also in Europe, done them in Rome and Amsterdam. Usually we have about one hundred and fifty to two hundred nonprofit leaders in Europe. It's more like around sixty or seventy.

8:12 And I bring in a lot of other professors, which is actually turns out to be not so hard to do to get them to volunteer, because I start off with, hey, I'm volunteering. I do this pro bono. I'd love for these nonprofit leaders to be exposed to the really cutting edge research you're doing. And so we get these wonderful people to come in and we fly them all over the world. They come with me to Africa and a lot of America. In Mexico. Last August, we had nineteen thought leaders, half of them from Mexico, half from the US and Europe, and we did a three day leadership conference for about two hundred and twenty five Mexican nonprofits.

8:52 So yeah, I really I got to say, I mean, I really love it. It's on the one hand, On the one hand, I love to write. I guess the only words about writing that have really, you know, cut so close to my heart more than any other would be glorious Steinem She once said, writing is the only thing that when I'm doing it, I don't feel like doing anything else. And that's how it feels for me. And yeah, let me ask you. Let me ask you a question about that, because it's interesting you've done all of this leadership training and you know, nonprofits and so on and so forth, and yet you've written this book Love and Suffering, which maybe that's leadership training, but it sounds to me and hopefully it's a little bit more on a personal level for generalized population.

9:38 Well that's that's that's exactly right. So I kind of walked this tight rope between between personal development and leadership development. And at the end of the day, if you think about any leader you've ever met where you thought, oh, really, I'd really like to join this person, I really like to work with this person, it's it's probably because you found them to be a person of really good character, a person with really good values, person you like to hang out with, regardless of whether you're working together. And so I would say, all of all of the leadership principles I teach and that I research, they're really about a confluence between personal character and the and and our socio emotional abilities how we interact with others. So love and suffering is I go. Really So, you know, I teach leadership, I also teach organizational psychology at Louis Business School, and I've lectured on these topics at you know, Harvard, Stanford, Georgetown.

10:35 And it's they're they're they're really to be a good leader. Say the saying I really like is that to be a good leader on the outside, you first have to be become a good leader on the inside. So it's really about how we approach our relationships, starting with our relationship with our with ourselves. So love and suffering is really about that, Like I I I have what I call the the the four plateaus to each a state of love, and I integrate psychological research, the latest psychological research on these plateaus, which are acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, and love, and each plateau has an obstacle that has to be overcome. So to reach a state of acceptance, we have to overcome suffering. To reach to reach forgiveness, we overcome resentment.

11:21 To reach gratitude, we overcome judgment. And to reach a state of love, we overcome what I call incarceration, which we can get to later if you like. But it's really about you know, I think a lot of people and myself included, sometimes we kind of walk around with our eyes covered by our hands and we cry about how dark it is. And so I think when with love and suffering, my attempt is to help people to remove their hands from in front of their eyes see the light, the love that's in front of them, but that we often overlook. Well, and you know, I kind of smile when you talk about the first step that is overcoming suffering, because that is definitely a Buddhist concept. Yeah.

12:07 Buddhis is that there's there suffering and there's the cessation of suffering. Yeah. So yeah, So I'm not like one specific religion. I believe in God, but I don't. I don't. I'm more spiritual than religious. But I think a lot of our world's most you know, most attended and popular religions have this construct of of suffering and then and then love or passion emerging from it. So, for example, in in African cultures you have the phoenix rises, So not just religious but cultural context, you have the phoenix rising from the ashes you have in In fact, if you look at the word suffering, a lot of people don't know this, but the etymology of the word suffering suffering comes from p a t I patti in Latin or patire, which means to suffer. So for example, in Christianity we have the crucifixion, the suffering, the passion of Christ's I think about, you know, in the leadership coaching I've done, I think about this woman who came to me once. She's a marketing director of a fortune one hundred pharmaceutical company, and she told me, she said, you know, I have trouble tony waking up and just going to my job. That's how much I dislike it. I just don't feel authentic there. I don't enjoy it. And so I asked her to share, kind of from a psychoanalytical perspective, share about how she grew up, like what's important to her and why. And so she, over the next forty five minutes or so, shared with me a a long

13:39 story about her childhood and how it really wasn't much of a childhood for her because most of it was spent nurturing her father before he passed away from cancer when she was twelve, like her and her mother taking care of her dad. And so I worked with her on making a career change. And I would say to your listeners, I could see if you can guess what she's doing now, what kind of career change she made? Well, probably a nurse, right. She's actually now the director of a major hospital, leading a team of researchers doing research on cancer and other diseases and illnesses. So fewer families suffer the way her hurst did. And you know, okay, so now I'll share this a little bit about you know, my own story. So, I grew up with a stepfather who is physically abusive and when a man, you know, I was ten eleven and he would, you know, throw me down on a radiator and almost broke my back one time. It wasn't I'd walk funny coming to school and it was not a good time. And you know when a man comes into your home who's not your father, sleeps with your mother and beats you up, you don't feel like much of a person. Well, that that's how I grew up.

14:47 And so that that's suffering. Which it's interesting because our first instinct is is for me, for example, beats to resent him. And I resented him for decades, and I realized that that that was preventing me from going anywhere in my life. So resentment actually comes from re which is again and sentiare, which is to feel to feel anger again and again and again until we become paralyzed. And I didn't want to live that way anymore. So I realized I had to forgive him, less for him than for myself, just so that I could I could move forward in my life. One thing I write about in Love and Suffering is that the difference between forgiveness and trust is that forgiveness is necessary for personal development, is necessary so we can move forward in our own lives.

15:32 Trust is necessary for relationship development. In order we don't trust someone, the relationship cannot continue. But I wasn't continuing. Sorry, I wasn't choosing to continue a relationship with him. Is I wasn't going to resent him anymore. But I wasn't exactly going to go look him up and say, hey, let's go grab a beer. It was more that I want I needed to forgive him for my own sake. There's you know, it's interesting because we have all these myths that we're exposed to in our lives, like, for example, you know, forgiven forget that's some of the worst advice I've ever heard. I would say, forgive and remember, now, don't remember. Don't make it like the core thing in your prefuntal cortex that you're thinking about every day. But it's kind of like if you if you're walking home at night and you fall into a ditch. I don't know what advice you'd want from a personal development author, but I would certainly say it might be a good idea to remember where that ditch is.

16:26 Well, yeah, yeah, go ahead. Yeah. What I find fascinating is as you talk about forgiveness and how important that is, it reminds me that if we've not forgiven someone, we almost position in ourselves in that victim mode. And you know, when you get into the behavioral analysis and you get into this whole concept of emotions, you recognize that victim is way down there on that scale. And if we tend to find that, often in our lives we never rise to the level where we can really experience that joy, that love, that type of thing. So I find that fascinating. So as you go through the suffering and you say, how to overcome the youth suffering to some degree is to move into forgiveness. And then once you've learned to move into forgiveness and start to experience a different beingness than what's the next step in the book beyond forgiveness.

17:24 Well, I'm glad you said that about being in this sort of victim position, because that is what I was really thinking about. And I was thinking, when we move from resentment to forgiveness, it's really taking ourselves out of the victim role. It's it's being able to say what I write about in Love and Suffering around forgiveness. One of the strategies is that to forgive is to give for So my stepfather could not give me what I needed from him as a young boy. Of course it's the opposite. But I finally chose to give for him to myself, like, Okay, he couldn't give that to me. I started to look into what what was his life like? He was unemployed, He felt like society he was a journalist who had become unemployed, felt like society had kind of chewed him up and spit him out. And so the only semblance of power he could access in his life was to feel like he was acting in a dominant role with an eleven year old boy. Okay, so that's that's that's that's where he was. And and the thing though about forgiveness is that a lot of us think there's even uh, there's even quotes by very famous thinkers like Nabor about like that forgiveness is the highest form of love. And I disagree with that because forgiveness also has his challenges. So if we go from resentment to forgiveness, that's a good space to be in, right to forgive someone, but we also have to recognize that forgiveness is impossible without judgment. You cannot forgive someone unless

18:57 you have first judged them. If you don't judge them in the first place, there's no need for forgiveness. So this is this is so, this is the irony? Is that? And let's think about forgiveness language. Okay, so let's suppose you you have a friend, or let's say you're in an intimate relationship and the other person says to you, Doug, you know what, my life was really horrible because of what you've done. You really made me miserable. It's never been the same. I just haven't had a I just this has been horrible for me. But I want you to know that I forgive you. You know, do you want someone to say that to you, because I certainly don't now. And that's the thing is that is that there is a more exalted state than forgiveness, which is really one of the core messages I love and suffering, which is we can go from forgiveness and move toward and move up into gratitude. So if we take away the judgment, so for example, okay, look, I had a physically abusive stepfather. That was no fun right for those years.

20:00 But hey, I'm here talking with you. I'm not like working on Wall Street having my fourth affair on my third wife, not even really knowing who my children are. That's not my life because of that suffering that I went through, because of that feeling of not being safe as a young boy. My passion it emanates from that, like so feeling powerless as a child. My personal vision is to help others to feel powerful, to access the power that's rightfully theirs. Again, as long as they remove their hands from their eyes and see what's possible right in front of them. That wakes me up every day gives that's my motivation to come and do podcasts, to write books, to write articles, to do research, to teach.

20:50 And I'm grateful for it, so believe it or not, I can honestly tell you I'm grateful for my stepfather, my ex step father. Fortunately they actually he's not alive anymore, would they, but they have. My mother divorced him decades ago, and fortunately she's now been been very happily married for over three decades. So uh so, But it's that is that is that so so so moving to gratitude. I guess one visualization I would recommend for your for your listeners or viewers is think back to when you were in grade school or high school or university and think back to what the person you would consider the greatest teacher you've ever had. Right, and imagine that you're going back to that classroom or that or that dance dance hall or that sports field, and you're you have one more chance before you continue on with your life, before you're leaving. You get up from your desk or the bleachers wherever you're sitting, you and you you have a chance to turn around and look at that teacher. What would you want to say to your greatest teacher if you have the chance. And and when I do this visualization in my conferences, would people say time and time again?

22:04 Is well? I would say thank you? And this is the thing, is that some people come in our lives to help us, to help us enjoy our vision, enjoy our life vision and the values that we have. Other people come in our lives to help us refine that life vision and those values. And my ex stepfather came into my life to help me refine that vision I had for my life and make a huge change. But I couldn't do it until I stopped resenting him and was willing to forgive him. So that forgiveness became a step critical step on moving forward in my life toward gratitude and being grateful that I had this experience. Think think about how many people you know that have really troubled relationships and when they finally get out of the relationship, you know, they just resent this person for wasting those years of their lives. And I think it's actually the opposite that should take place, like, be grateful that you had this other person to step in the ring with you of how relationships work and learn what you're not looking for and if you're lucky, a few things you are looking for.

23:08 Well, you know, it's interesting. I mean, I've interviewed hundreds of people, and I can guarantee you anyone that is out there really making a difference in people's lives similar to your story. They have all experienced some type of trauma in their lives, and yet they were the ones that went from victimhood to forgiveness to gratitude. And I can't tell you how many times as we've talked about that, it is that whole point that when they can look back at those experiences and realize that that's what led them to this purpose of being able to make a difference in other people's lives. Then that gratitude sets in.

23:52 And it's amazing to me that you you know, well not you hit it right on the head, but it's amazing that people don't understand that. You know, once they can get rid of that resentment, forgive and be grateful, it makes all the difference in the world in their lives. You're right on target there, Doug, And I'll share with you as a leadership coach, every CEO or senior leader that comes comes to see me is because they're stuck in one way or another. And the only way I've ever found to get them unstuck is to realize that they're stuck because there's someone in their life that they need to forgive. There's always someone that they've never been able to forgive, and they so For example, a CEO of actually a multinational in Europe who came and spent some time with me and the challenge he faces that he was always really hard on his employees and always held them to standards that he couldn't even really really achieve himself, and so he really had trouble keeping people.

24:57 Those attrition rates were extremely high. Came see me and and what he realized after we did some coaching. Is that that's how his father had been with him. That's that's all he knew for how to how to be in in a leadership role, how to guide others, was to be extremely exacting. And it wasn't until he could forgive his own father for uh, for holding to unreasonable expectations, unrealistic expectations, that he could actually let go of it and move toward feeling gratitude for his father and ultimately love for his father, who he had resented his whole life. And and so this is this is the thing You're you hit hit the nail on the head, Doug when you talked about that the people that you know that have really been able to sustainably engender positive change in their lives for others, it's it's it's because first of all, they've experienced some trauma which led them down this path in the first place, as opposed to that other path again of like not knowing your family and having all these affairs and just and just basically being narcissistic, which probably my life would have gone down that path otherwise because I had that kind of strategic way of thinking.

26:10 I still do. I just channel it towards personal and social change then for you know, just trying to exploit people and so taking that trauma and transforming it into post traumatic growth and so in Love and Suffering, I go deep into the research of Richard Calhoun Lawrence Tedesky, who really the two psychologists at the University of North Carolina who created the concept of post traumatic growth and post traumatic growth is really when you experience trauma, well, one of three things tends to happen. So first thing is nothing. Some people experience trauma and just doesn't make much change in them. For some reason. They have this superhuman capacity to just kind of deflect it, although that's really rare. What they to do instead is they numb themselves to any kind of negative feeling, but that also cuts out any positive feelings, and so they just kind of go through life a little bit robotic, just kind of a sterile, antiseptic life approach where they don't really experience the ups and downs so much, which I wouldn't recommend for anyone. The other two more common outcomes when someone goes through trauma. The first is that they get taken under they are traumatized and they can't get out of it. And I would say, I mean, I do a lot of research on trauma. I've interviewed hundreds of police officers and counselors, psychologists, and people that experiencing tremendous trauma.

27:43 And a lot of people they are traumatized but at kind of moderate levels where it ends up manifesting and like spousal abuse, alcohol, drug abuse, a lot of dysfunctional behaviors, but they're still able to function on some level with their jobs and society. Yet they really they really could be. They're surviving, but they're not thriving. And then there's those people who are able to grow from trauma, and so post traumatic growth is for those people. It's about those people and what they what they do is based on the trauma they they they have a psychological way of transforming the way they see the world, the way they see themselves, spirituality, relationships, their priorities, everything changes because they've been able not only to experience the trauma, not only to acknowledge they've experienced, but to process it so that that all begins with acceptance. Like there's a I've got the the the story in Love and Suffering of of a of a pilot who goes to uh, to Vietnam, and he's any and he's you know, he gets caught.

28:59 He's you know, he gets caught and he's a POW and literally goes from like living in a midwestern town, just got married two years earlier, He's got a few, he's got a couple of kids. He's uh, you know, at home in his suburban home, watching television. And a few weeks later, he's drafted. He's in Vietnam and he's caught, and he's in this like rat and insect and mosquito mosquito ridden cell. He's emaciated, and he just can't accept it. He's a you know, he's he's really gonna die. And somewhere he ends up hearing this voice, and this voice says to him, this is your life. It's inescapable, this is your life. And that stays with him, and he starts to accept that this is his situation. And from there it's an inflection point and and everything starts to change for him. He starts to exercise, he starts to check in with the other POWs and and you know, talk talks with them, how are they doing? Uh? As much as they can connect in that in that situation and he and he and he ends up outliving the end of the war and you know, and having of course a much better life once he's once he's freed and reunited with his family. But I think it's a it's a it's a wonderful story. This this is your life.

30:19 Like what if I would I would challenge your viewers, your listeners, what is the writing on the wall that you haven't been able to accept? What? And what what? What? In what dimension of your life? Would it be useful for you now to pretend that you're hearing this voice that says this is your life and just accepting this is a situation you're dealing with. I'll give you example. I'm Doug. A lot of people, a lot of people don't like the direction the world is moving in right now, and this is very this is this is very ubiquitous globally. And the when I tell people, well, the first step is to accept it. This is what's happening. Well, what people say to me is like, well, wait, but if I accept it, isn't that doesn't that mean I'm condoning it? And I'm like, no, it's doesn't mean that at all. Acceptance is not passivity.

31:10 Acceptance is the foundation for self change by accepting your saying, Okay, this is the this is the writing on the wall, this is the real information I have right now, this is what's happening outside my door. And from there you can then say, okay, well, now that you're armed with this real information instead of the sort of fabrications we tell ourselves that we won't get upset. Then with that real information, now you can envision. You can develop your vision of how you want to move forward in your life, and you can put it into action. Well, and you know you talk about that, and I think that from that goes the next step, which is love.

31:50 And you know, I'm thinking from a Christian standpoint, you have the same love God and then love your neighbor as yourself, and everyone forgets that you can't love someone else unless you love yourself first bottom line. But I guess the question, I think that is the hardest thing for people to do. I mean, as you say, we see the terminial is going on right now. When I'm when I'm on social media and see the comments that are made and the anger that's expressed on both sides. It's amazing to me that somewhere along the line, we've lost the ability to love our neighbors. And I suspect they don't love ourselves in order to not love your neighbors.

32:35 So how does someone learn to develop love for themselves, love for a higher power, love for God and for this earth and all the beauty that's here and the nature, and then how to love our neighbors. Well, let's go to the father of Joey, who Joey was one of the was was was the guy or one of the one of the guy who tried to apprehend the shooter who came into a bowling alley and I think killed like twenty people, one of the mass shootings over the last year and a half or two. And he it was in the United States and Joey's father, Joey, was killed by the shooter he went while he tried to apprehend him, and Joey's father he did an interview on CNN I think it was, and he said, like, I'm not going to hate this person. So I'm not going to hate this man. I'm not going to let him ruin my life like he ruined my son's life.

33:34 Is that he he must have coming from a Christian perspective. He shared, I was taught to love my neighbor and to love others, and that's what we grew up with. And I see that this man was ill and he didn't get exposed to what I had been exposed to, and I just thought that was beautiful. And we think about loving our neighbors. One thing we have to realize is that it's not just the failings of human names nature that are leading to our inability to love our neighbors. There's other there's other other effects that are that are being wrought on society right now. So, uh, even if we just look at at at at how we use technology.

34:16 So there was one study at University of Cambridge where they, uh, they looked at which which comments by politicians are are forwarded or liked and in on social media you know Facebook and Twitter, slash x or LinkedIn and so forth and Instagram. And what they found was that when a politician was was was sharing a message that was negative and attacking the out group, those messages were liked or forwarded at two point seven times the rate of messages where the politician was being not expressing any kind of negative emotion either. Neutra or positive emotion toward toward their in group, toward their followers, so two point seven times the rate. So that means when we go on social media, we're essentially we're essentially seeing a virtual environment that skewed negative when also Chris Chris Byron's research at Georgia State University where she found that what's called the negative effective bias not effective but effective, like emotional the negative effective bias of email, texting, electronic communication. What Chris found is that when a sender sends a positive message on email or text, it's an emotionally positive message, it's usually received

35:47 by the recipient as being emotionally neutral. And when the sender sends an emotionally neutral message, it's usually received by the recipient as being emotionally negative. So there's this downward negative paul and slant and lens over our everything we're seeing in virtually, whether it's social media, whether it's electronic email, texting, and unfortunately this is the way most of us are have become used to communicating. But it's not I always say that email is for you know, email is efficiency email, it's not emotional mail. When we have like a real a message that may get some pushback that we may need to discuss. We got to do that in person, or at least by phone. There's other research showing that phone contact is about the same. It's not quite the same, but it's pretty close to face to face communication. But as soon as you go textual it all falls apart.

36:45 In fact, there's a study on how we dehumanize each other, and when you ask someone to listen to a speech from someone of the opposition party, not the party they belong to, but the opposition political party, well they tend to dehue humanize that person if they read the message textually. But if they hear the message, just hearing the voice of another human being kind of disarms them and they don't dehumanize nearly as much, if at all. So I think if part of it is like we have to relearn how to love, which I think is true in this new current environment that we're that we're living in, which has change, which has changed a lot. So it's technology, there's other factors too. I mean, we're look at the disparities between haves and have nots. So you know, twenty five years ago, the average CEO in the US was earning about sixty times. The average employee in their own company or organization is now over two hundred and eighty times hire the CEO salary based on versus the average employee in their company. So we're seeing a lot of disparities and a lot of reasons where people are saying, well, others don't care about me, so I'm just going to do the same thing. But you know, if you look look at this, there's a lot of research too on what's called the norm of self interest. Stanford professor Dale Miller did this study where he found that most people believe that others are self interested, and so if they're self interested, I'm going to be self interested too. But

38:15 it's actually false. In fact, if you look, for example, if you give if you give different people twenty dollars and you say, hey, go buy something for yourself or to another group of a few hundred people, you give them twenty dollars and you say, hey, go buy something for someone else. Later that evening, you ask them, you know, you ask them how they're feeling, and you also put some electrodes up to their brain. Well, what you find is that they're happier if they gave something to someone else than if they kept if they bought something for themselves. And the prefrontal cortex of the brain, the part that experiences reward from a dopamine surge. We actually release more dopamine neurotransmitters into our bloodstream when we're hell helping someone else than when we're doing something for ourselves. So I think human nature is actually kinder than than we believe.

39:07 We just have to kind of re re tap into it, like like become reacquainted with it. And I think that as you start to do things for other people, as you say, we feel better. But I think I would assume that that leads to greater ability to love and and I think that's so important. So as we're closing, what what would be a thought that you'd like to share with the audience kind of as a final thought. Okay, sure? And is it okay if I if I first offer two free books to your to your viewers. Now we're going to do that afterwards, but lets. That yeah, sure, sure, okay. So my final thought, then, Doug would be suffering and love are inextricably intertwined. They're they're they're connected with each other profoundly. So when you suffer.

39:58 It actually teaches you who and what you love is because of our suffering that we even have values at all. For most of us, some of that comes through the passion that emerges from suffering, some from the compassion, which is like passion suffering and calm is with in Latin. So it's like, it's not to suffer with which reduces our capacity to help someone else, but to be with others and their suffering. So I would say to your listeners, go out and consider think about what's caused you suffering in your life, because that's a key to helping you find your passion and helping you find who and what you love. Great, fantastic, So all right, let's talk about the two free books, and let's talk about how people can find you.

40:43 Okay, sure, thanks Doug. So the two free books I'd like to offer to your viewers listeners, well, they're called The Myth of Happiness, How your definition of happiness creates your unhappiness. And the second is called the is called the Myth of Friendship, How your misunderstandings about friendship keep you lonely. And I'm actually one of the two top researchers in the world now on loneliness and organizations, so integrates a lot of that research and as well as stories. And the way you can get these two free books is very easy. You go to the Art of Livingfree dot org. So it's the Art of Livingfree dot org slash Free Happiness and Friendship Books. So the way you can reach me is the Art of Livingfree dot org.

41:32 And then if you go to the Art Oflivingfree dot org slash Free Happiness and Friendship Books, you're going to get it. You put in your email, you get an email to confirm it, and then you get the download links and if you like, you can stick around on the Art of Living Free. You'll by putting in your email, you'll receive an article from me every couple weeks about love, forgiveness, relationships, leadership. And if you don't like, you know, if it's not your thing, you can unsubscribe at any time and you still have the books, which you can read on any eReader or kindle, or you can print them out. And they are great books. I downloaded them and you know, I just went through them briefly and it's amazing the thoughts and the ideas and the concepts you have there. So that's wonderful. And you know what I have to say, it's amazing how people use their life experiences and become that individual that's making a difference in other people's lives.

42:23 And obviously what you're doing with your nonprofits and the extent that you're doing it has got to be making such a difference in people's lives. So kudo to you for that. Tony. Well, well, thank you, thank you, Doug, and thank you for having me on your shows. It's an honor to be here. And I think you're doing that also with you know, in so many ways, with the work you're doing. And I know we focused on me, but we could have turned this around and all the good things you're doing Doug, so appreciate you well. And there's all these other topics I'd love to talk to you about. I think this topic of loneliness and loneliness versus aloneeness would be an incredible topic to talk about, but maybe another time. So anyway, again, Tony, thanks so much for being on the show.

43:09 Thank you, Doug. I appreciate it, and. Folks, thanks for listening. I hope you've enjoyed it. Look forward to having you join us again soon. So This is doctor Doug saying no mistay