Tell Me More with Kelly Corrigan

Welcome to "Tell Me More."

I'm Kelly Corrigan.

I'm a writer, a podcaster, and a mom.

This season, number 7, is unlike anything you've seen from us before, because everyone who works on this show is reading the same headlines.

There is so much unsettling news about how people are actually feeling.

So, we have recruited the best scientists and researchers to separate fact from fiction and surface a set of practices we can all live by.

Join us for a 10-part conversation on wellness.

How do you get it and how do you keep it?

It's like swimming in the ocean.

Does the current move you?

I want to argue it does.

Well, then decide where to swim.

Corrigan: This is Dr. Angela Duckworth.

She is most famous for her book "GRIT."

She's also a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a MacArthur fellow.

Woman: As a Black woman with two degrees-- and I've been in a lot of spaces-- people question me a lot.

Corrigan: This is JerDrema Flynt, a Fulbright scholar, the CEO and founder of The Chair, as well as an educator.

Every day, we have this email chain, and it's me and 6 other guys.

We write 300 words minimum.

Corrigan: This is Will McQuiston.

He is the only Ivy League graduate from his hometown of Prattville, Alabama.

He studied computer science at Harvard and this fall will be starting his first job at WalMart.

Corrigan: OK, so if nature and nurture are more or less set for the four of us and most people who are watching, I want to talk about mostly how we live, the choices that we make, and we've gone deep on sleep, movement, connection, spirituality, and nutrition.

And I want to assume that all of us could do a little better on one or more of them.

I wonder if you could start us off by just telling us, like, how does change happen?

There are so many things that we know we should do, and then we keep not doing them.

It's amazing.

I mean, it's astonishing to me how many things I know that I do not adopt.

It's a great question.

I don't think there are any easy answers, but I first want to say that in studies around the world and across the lifespan, when you ask people, you know, what are you good at?

Right?

Like, what are your virtues?

People will say that they have a good sense of humor.

They'll say that they're kind.

They'll even say that they're forgiving before they will say they have self-control.

So, self-control ranks like just about 24 out of 24 on a list of 24 virtues that have been studied around the world.

Corrigan: I feel so much better.

Don't you feel so much better?

I just feel like one of-- I feel like I'm a sisterhood with all of humanity.

Or all of humanity and across time.

So, you know, people say that they wish they had more self- control about sleep, about what they eat, about exercise, about, you know, all the things that you just mentioned.

And I think just to start there, which is to say that it is a perennial, um, uh, challenge for human beings to do things that are in their long-term best interests.

So, let's start there.

Then of course-- Corrigan: Starting with self-forgiveness.

That's what we're-- Exactly.

Corrigan: You just set the table with like-- Self-forgiveness, self-awareness.

Corrigan: Some studies I looked at reminded me of how hard it is to delay gratification.

I wondered, are you good at delaying gratification?

McQuiston: I don't know.

Sometimes I feel like what you were saying, like, if... if I'm in like a really self-aware state of mind, like, this week or this month, you know, and like, I'm really on to my own habits.

And so it's like making myself tick.

I feel like I can kind of, you know, game the system a little bit to delay gratification just depending on, like, if I'm in that state of mind where I'm aware of my own behavior.

Duckworth: When we think to ourselves, "Hmm... Am I good at delaying gratification?"

It turns out that when you think about yourself as self-controlled, you're actually struggling because you know that in exercise you may or may not have self-control.

But when it comes to procrastination, totally different when it comes to getting to bed on time, totally different when it comes to-- and this is a personal confession-- managing your temper.

Not my strength.

Uh, again, totally different.

Corrigan: You seem so nice.

This sort of brings me to context.

So, in the very beginning, 10 weeks ago, we started with Atul Gawande, Lisa Feldman Barrett.

And Atul said, "It's a lot easier to give up smoking when you ban smoking from bars and airplanes and buses."

And that brought us to this big idea, which is that maybe it's easier to change your context than it is to change your person.

I could not agree more.

I kind of want to stand up and shout that that's true.

And the very phrase "self-control" makes, I think, everyone think, "It's my problem.

Do I have the willpower or do I not have the willpower?"

And when we slip up, we blame ourselves.

But when you think about smoking, like why do Americans, in particular, but around the world, you know, why has there been a dramatic drop in smoking?

Has there been a dramatic increase in willpower?

No.

Prices went up for cigarettes.

Places where you could smoke went away, and the social norms of what is and isn't OK, what's cool and what's not cool, those shifted.

So, as a psychologist who's been studying self-control from day one of graduate school, I am coming to the belief that unless we really understand ourselves in context, first of all, we end up blaming the victim and we end up blaming ourselves.

Have you experienced contexts that have been enormously helpful or hard on your well-being?

When I moved to China, I lived in Guangzhou, China for a year.

Uh, I was a 3rd grade teacher to about 40 kids.

I moved to China at a time where my well-being was very tough and very challenging.

I had a student.

Her name was Apple.

Apple was the feistiest 3rd grader I've ever had.

And so Apple was always the one to say, "Hey, this is what all of us are thinking, "and we don't really have a question.

"We just really want to comment the fact that you're different."

And she was like, "Miss, my mom says that people with tattoos are bad."

And I have tattoos, right?

And she was like, "My mom said, people who, um... are a different skin tone are possibly bad, right?"

And I was like, "Hmm, OK, I have a different skin color."

And I was like, "Where are we going with this?"

You know?

But she was like, "Miss Dream, "like, you're not bad, like, I'm learning from you.

I love you," right?

And so I really think about how this 9-year-old was... learning the world in my classroom and at the same time, having to go home and really challenge her context with her mom.

Corrigan: Well, also, like, you're changing their context and they're changing your context, which is to say that I guess all of us are always changing each other's contexts, but that also sort of goes to purpose for me.

Like, you have a deep sense of purpose in your work life, in your career, and I wonder if you see that in the research that people who have like this direction and this aim that is in this case, and many others, bigger than yourself.

I think Viktor Frankl had it right when he said, "We are deeply driven by a search for meaning and purpose."

And if you ask him to define that, it really was some connection to and servitude, really, actually, to something that's larger and more important than your own personal concerns.

I don't know many people who have a sense of purpose who are truly unhappy.

I think for me, when I think about purpose, I spend a lot of time thinking about the word "seen."

I know my purpose is supposed to be in different spheres of education.

I always remember this kid.

He was an 8th grader, very quiet student.

One weekend, he came to school, and he was just so, like, discombobulated, right?

It was unlike him.

And so I was asking classmates like, "Hey, what's wrong with, um, our friend here?"

And they were like, "Oh, he just came out to his parents."

Um, and he grew up very Mexican Catholic.

And so it did not go well.

From that day on, I made it very clear that he was absolutely safe in this classroom.

So lessons had some version of representation.

Um, I made sure that I wore more colors.

Like, he knew that I am here, because I'm like, "That's your family.

You love your family, but you have more family."

Um... Corrigan: And that's like safety, like, basic safety and welcomeness where, like--did you feel welcome when you went from Alabama to Harvard?

Yeah, not quite at first by everybody.

I think that it was definitely a tough journey.

And I think that a lot of that had to do with my mindset going into it.

Um, I came from a really poor area of Alabama.

It was a really terrible school system in terms of, like, state rankings, and Alabama's already pretty bad in national rankings for education and things.

I just always had this, like chip on my shoulder coming into the situation where I was like, "OK, "people are gonna like, look at me different.

People are gonna judge me," intentionally going in and, like, at first creating like a safe space kind of for me in finding, like, a group of guys, a group of girls that, like, I'm comfortable with.

I know that, like, they aren't looking past.

They aren't overanalyzing.

Like, they aren't judging me or my situation or where I come from.

That gave me like a base platform at Harvard.

This year, I've really spent a lot of time looking into myself and, like, who I want to be and like, kind of become, you know, like self-aware, identify patterns, identify, like, contexts that I put myself into.

And like, I'm a big ritual guy.

Like, anytime, like, if I can ritualize something, I'm gonna do it.

That if I can ritualize going to the gym, if I can, you know, take in my pre-workout beforehand, taking my supplements afterwards, you know, like making sure that I'm staying hydrated throughout the day, like getting the buddy to go with me.

Corrigan: Well, this is, like, one of the biggest hacks in behavior change is making rules.

So, I used to have maybe 3 or 4 drinks in a week.

And in October, I decided to have no drinks in a week.

So, from 4 to 0.

And it's huge game changer, because I think it's upstream of 3 of the big 4 drivers of well-being.

Like, I sleep better, I'm less likely to lounge around.

Like, I'm a little more active, and I eat better 'cause I'm not craving, like, you know, a Big Mac.

So, rules, which you just mentioned, and rituals, which you just mentioned and habits, which you mentioned a moment ago, they all have one thing in common, which is that they're all bright lines.

There's no kind of like, "Well, let me think about it."

It's like, "No, it's a rule."

There's just an overwhelming amount of research, some of it very recent, that the most healthy and happy and successful people are people who develop healthy habits, rituals, and rules with intention to kind of get them out of that, you know, that choice in the moment.

So when I started to go to business school, and... like, still towards the beginning of the pandemic.

So, August 2020, I made 3 promises to myself.

I was gonna go back to business school.

I was gonna go to therapy because even though to the outside world-- like I was going for my second master's-- I was doing really well in life, my head still felt very loud, and I didn't know what was causing the loudness.

And I was gonna work on my hair journey.

So, then, when I started going to therapy, she talked a lot about routine.

And so she was like, "You're so good at certain routines in certain areas."

So when it comes to my career and education and where I'm going, right, I'm clear, there's no confusion, right?

But when it came to-- Corrigan: You're Dream Flynt, Fulbright scholar-- Yeah, right!

ladies and gentlemen.

There's no confusion.

Right?

So--but when it came to, like, um, if you took me out of work... Corrigan: Yeah.

What did my life look like?

Right?

It still felt like a little bit like chaos.

And so being like, "OK, what were things that "I loved to do that was outside of school and education and professional development, right?

It became--every morning, so I do this every morning when I'm home is, like, I drink tea.

I love tea just with a little bit of honey.

Right?

Yeah.

Ha ha!

With a little bit of honey.

And I read a poetry book that I'm focusing on that week.

I love poetry, and then I do one little activity.

So the activity I'm focusing on now is I'm hula-hooping 15 minutes every morning, and I tried it-- Corrigan: Tea, poetry, and hooping.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

So that's like my first hour of my day, so before anything else happens.

So that's like a ritual for you, and you're not like, "Oh, gee, what should I do?"

Like, you know.

Yeah, but, like, that's like when it comes to-- like that takes time, right?

It took me 6 months to figure out.

Corrigan: And to give yourself permission, which is part of what I hope this series does for people is to say, "Look, these things are related.

"You're--you are a system.

"And if you need rest and reflection, "if you need movement and connection, "like, you should plan for it because it will make your work minutes--" which somehow we've validated as, like, always worthwhile, which is not true.

Always the most important thing.

Yeah, but it will make them more output per minute.

Like if you can believe that, then you can say, "For sure I'm gonna hoop.

Like, hooping helps my output."

Exactly.

It's thinking about when I was living in China or living in South Africa to complete my Fulbright, the first question was never "What do you do for a living?"

That was never the first question, right?

Simply reading Afrofuturism is a part of who you are.

Hula-hooping, kickboxing, swimming, like, all those things are a part of me.

Corrigan: So, that sort of goes to, like, culture.

We are really prone to conform, we are really prone to imitate, and we are hyper-suggestible.

I mean, the placebo effect alone should stop all of us in our tracks.

And if all that is the case, then, like, putting yourself in context with the kinds of people that you want to be like might also be the other, like, super hack.

I could not agree more.

I think all of us certainly in, I don't know, Western culture have this idea that, you know, the individual, freedom, and I make my own choices and I make my own mind up about everything.

And, you know, I'm gonna march to the beat of my own drum.

But it's very clear from research that all of us and actually from the moment we are born, we're sort of born to actually listen to all the drum beats that are around us and hear the rhythm and then actually go along with it.

And if that is correct, that the context is ever more powerful than one can imagine, then what do you do with that?

If you recognize that, you know, the people around you, the food around you, the cell phone settings, you know, the objects within arm's reach, you know, what you hear, what you see, the country you decide to live in-- you know, if you understand that all those things have a powerful influence, it's like swimming in the ocean.

Does the current move you?

I want to argue it does.

Well, then decide where to swim.

Right?

Because some currents are better for you than others.

And I think being intentional and to the extent you can, being agentic, clearly some people don't have the freedom to make choices that they want to, but where we can and when we can, I think that's exactly what we should do.

We should choose our culture and not just be part of it in a kind of unconscious way.

McQuiston: I think once you figure them out, too, once you figure out what makes you tick, like, I think that you can take advantage of that a lot, and that's a lot of like what I've worked on this year.

Um, I had a point in time this summer where I was living by myself for the first time.

I was in Richmond, Virginia.

I was working for Capital One, and up until then, every break I had just gone home and I lived with my grandparents and worked remotely, and I was just at a really bad mental low.

Um, I was having panic attacks for like the first time in my life-- Corrigan: The worst.

I was just, like, really going through it.

And I texted my buddy, and I was like-- his name's Chuck, and he's on the rugby team with me.

So I texted him.

I was like, "Hey, Chuck, like, you're always so happy."

I was like, "How are you so happy?"

And he was like, "Well, let's talk."

And so we had like a little conversation.

He'd walk me through some of his principles and things and so, like, I've kind of started to like, build out this, like-- I call it, like, "The Gospel of Happiness" to like myself.

And a lot of the things I've really implemented in that are just like, practical, like, ways to change my context or my environment every day.

So, like, for example, if I wake up and it's a bad day or if I'm feeling like in a rough mood, I've got like a list, almost like a checklist where it's like, "OK, if I'm feeling bad, like, what can I do?

Have I opened my window yet?

No?

Well, let me go open it.

You know, have I written my 300 words yet?

Corrigan: What are your 300 words?

It's essentially like, every day we have this email chain, and it's me and 6 other guys, I want to say now, um, and every day we write 300 words minimum.

It's a lower limit.

You can write as much as you want.

And we send it off on an email chain to each other, Sitting down and writing and focusing on something.

And a lot of times, I'll start off and my first sentence will be like, "I have no idea what I'm gonna write about, but we'll figure it out."

And giving permanence to it, like making your head quiet down for a little bit to concentrate on that does wonders for my mental space and being able-- Corrigan: It's also like-- to see what my friends say.

McQuiston: You know?

Corrigan: Seeing and being seen and seeing others, like that's the whole exercise.

It's an exercise in seeing others and being seen.

Flynt: I spend a lot of time thinking about, um, when I was teaching 6th grade in Boyle Heights.

I had a student, um, it was the first day of school, uh, and he didn't have a book bag.

Right?

Everybody else had a book bag.

It was the very first day of school, and I'm like, "Hmm... My kid doesn't have a book bag."

And I didn't ask him why he didn't have a book bag.

I just recognized, "OK, he doesn't have one."

And so, the next day I buy a book bag, pencils, put it on his name rack, and then that was it.

And we didn't have to talk about it.

Right.

I learned later that my student had--came from, like, drug-addict parents and was just really struggling.

It became my job to be able to teach those skills so he can learn that he still has his own person, that it matters to him that he is here in my classroom.

The whole time, I'm like listening to Dream and to Will talk about their, like, super hacks and their journeys.

I am thinking about everything as I always do, and I think many psychologists do in terms of, you know, what is sometimes called the process model of behavior.

And that says that anything that you think or feel, positive or negative, and anything that you do or don't do, that's a response to your situation.

And I think a lot of life is noticing your reactions, noticing which ones you like and which ones you don't, asking yourself, "What came right before that?

What was in my head right before I reacted in that way?"

and then actually going all the way upstream to "What situations are the best for me?

"In what situations do I like what's going through my head and how I'm reacting to it," and where we can, you know, exercising some agency to, even in micro ways, you know, to pick the people who bring out the best in us.

Corrigan: I mean, I think one of my macro takeaways is, "When in doubt, get upstream."

You know what, earlier is better.

And pretty much every religious and philosophical tradition has some version of, you know, "You don't want to wait till the last moment.

If you can, you know, avoid situations."

I mean, Alcoholics Anonymous has a phrase: "If you don't want to slip, don't go where it's slippery."

And I think that's great advice.

Corrigan: I think about it with sleep a lot.

Like, I feel like if I'm well-slept, like I'm just a much more rational, sane, productive, happy person.

Being proactive and not waiting until the moment of, you know, "Oh, gosh, I'm so tired "and I have to do this.

Oh, gosh, I have to control my temper.

OK." And going upstream, as you say, I think is exactly what we need to do.

What context can we create or choose that help us be our best?

That's an upstream solution, that's not waiting for the moment and saying, "I'm gonna will myself to be the kind of person I want to be.

It's doing it in advance.

Flynt: I also think it's really important that we have more words and definitions.

Like, I spend a lot of time thinking about how we have, um...animated movies now to talk about how your brain works, right?

I'm super excited for "Inside Out 2," to come out and like, really talk about what anxiety looks like, so then you have little kids being able to be like, "OK, I know what this feels like."

Like it wasn't until I was 27 where I could say, "OK, I feel nervous in my stomach.

I feel anxious in my heart.

I feel stressed in my shoulders, and I feel angry in my forehead.

Corrigan: If for no other reason than more specific vocabulary allows us to connect more deeply.

So, the thing you're doing with your buddies, when you're naming your emotions and your state of being and your daily experiences, is you have this incredible connective tissue between you now with these 300 words.

I mean, it's amazing!

Right.

It creates an amazing support network.

And I think that that's like what you were saying earlier about what you did for your student in 8th grade, like having educators, coaches.

And now I'm like trying to figure out, you know, working out where like this group of guys I do my 300 with are like part of my support network now.

But having like educators and coaches there as a strong support network for children that might not have a backpack, might not have the mental capacity at the time to make sure that they have a pencil, because they're having to make sure that their little siblings are eating breakfast in the morning, getting on the bus, you know.

And having educators and coaches and other figures, other adult figures in young children's life step in, it's such a big factor for just getting them through.

I think a lot about how people have coping mechanisms that were survival skills at that time.

My 6th grader who didn't have the backpack, right, I think about how he made it all the way to me without any real support.

Right?

That 8th grader who had that support system in the classroom, he's at Stanford now.

Corrigan: All right!

And they have these support systems to get them where they are, but then they have to sometimes go back to understand, like, "OK, did I deal with that trauma?

Am I healthy in this way now?"

McQuiston: What would you say that your armor looks like now?

Uh, for me, my armor now is definitely asking a lot of questions, right?

As, uh, a Black woman with two degrees-- and I've been in a lot of spaces-- people question me a lot, right?

And it could come from a place of ignorance.

It could also come from a space of racism.

So for me, I have to make sure that I'm not intense or angry.

So I'm like, well, tell me more, explain more.

For me, that is what my armor is now.

It's definitely still constantly reading and understanding the world that we live in, right?

Because it changes, and I want to make sure that I'm presenting my best self to anybody in my space.

Right?

Corrigan: I want to end with us prioritizing for each of us how would you prioritize movement, exercise, food, nutrition, sleep, rest... connection, and spirituality.

What's like your number one?

Do you have a clear number one?

McQuiston: I think mine is movement for sure.

For me-- I'm gonna cheat.

I have 2 number ones.

I think a lot about connection and nutrition.

I think we always think about the things that we're working on, right.

And for me, it's spirituality.

Corrigan: Mine is people, and you're people!

I just love connecting, and it's so great to be with you.

I can't thank you enough.

I just learned so much from all of you, loved being with you, and thanks for being a part of "Tell Me More."

Thank you, Kelly.

Flynt: Thank you.

McQuiston: Thanks for having me.

Corrigan: Here are my takeaways from my conversation with Angela, Will, and Dream.

Number 1-- Stop beating yourself up.

Self-control is rare.

Number 2--Willpower varies by domain.

Number 3-- Maybe blame yourself less and your context more.

Number 4--Purpose is key to well-being.

So is service.

Number 5--Habits, rituals, and rules lighten our cognitive load.

Number 6--Successful people can also have very chaotic insides.

Number 7--Hula-hooping is not just for kids.

Number 9--Write your own gospel of happiness and live by it.

And number 9--Sometimes the easier answers are upstream.

If you'd like us to send you this list, we're happy to do it.

Just send an email to [email protected].