The 4 Types of Connection and Making the Meaningful with Dr. Adam Dorsay

Are you truly connected—to yourself, to others, and to something greater? 

This week, I’m joined by Dr. Adam Dorsay, a psychologist, executive coach, and author of Super Psyched: The Four Types of Connection, to explore what it really means to form deep, meaningful connections in our fast-paced world.

Dr. Dorsay breaks down the four key areas of connection—self, others, the world, and something greater—and how cultivating these connections enhances our happiness, mental health, and overall well-being. 

From navigating friendships as an adult to understanding when to disconnect, this episode is packed with actionable insights, personal anecdotes, and wisdom to help you strengthen your relationships and lead a more fulfilling life.

🔹 Key Topics Covered:

✅ The 4 types of connection and why they matter

✅ How to make and maintain quality friendships as an adult

✅ The importance of healthy disconnection (goodbye, toxic relationships!)

✅ The science behind awe, joy, and emotional resilience

✅ How social media and the 24-hour news cycle hijack our emotions

✅ Practical ways to build deeper relationships in daily life

✅ Why "JOMO" (Joy of Missing Out) can be a game-changer

Connect with Adam Dorsay:
DrAdamDorsay.com
https://www.instagram.com/superpsychedpodcast
https://www.facebook.com/dradamdorsay
https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-dorsay
Super Psyched is available for sale on Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Overcome the daily grind with transformative techniques from Justin's book, 'Engineered to Love.'

These practices aren't just about finding peace—they're about reconnecting with yourself and the world around you in meaningful ways.

Access your free materials today at engineeredtolove.com/sample and start living a life filled with joy, ease, and love. 

Watch the full video episode at Justin Wenck, Ph.D. YouTube Channel!

Check out my best-selling book "Engineered to Love: Going Beyond Success to Fulfillment" also available on Audiobook on all streaming platforms! Go to https://www.engineeredtolove.com/ to learn more!

Got a question or comment about the show? E-mail me at podcast@justinwenck.com.

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Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended, music and pics belong to the rightful owners.

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Transcript

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When we listen to music, if it's just an intellectual experience, I would say it the music has, at least in my case, it would not have reached me fully. I wanted to hit my emotions as well. I mean, I can look at the technician and say, Wow, technically, what a great musician, but I really want the emotional experience of like, wow, that music really does something to mean the title super psyched does not mean super happy all the time. It means super connected to our psyches. When we are feeling happy, we own the happiness and the joy when we're feeling grief stricken, and we are able to leverage that as well. Are you ready to live a life with enough time, money and energy have relationships and connections that delight you. Are you ready for the extraordinary life you know you've been missing? If so, then this is the place for you. I'm a best selling author, coach, consultant and speaker who's worked in technology for over two decades. I'm a leader at transforming people and organizations, from operating in fear, obligation and guilt to running off joy, ease and love. It's time for engineering emotions and energy with me. Justin Wenck PhD today, we are talking about connecting, and I'm super psyched to have Dr Adam Dorsey, the author of super psyched, the four types of connection. He is an executive coach in Silicon Valley. He's a licensed psychologist. He works with crazy high achieving adults at some of the highest and, you know, our companies and, yeah. And he's got an award winning podcast, also called super psyched. And he's delivered a couple of really highly regarded TED talks, one on men and their emotions. I didn't I thought there was only two numbness and anger that I'm I'm curious about, and then also friendship and adulthood. So Adam's book, you can find it basically anywhere you can find a book, so Amazon, all the places. So, Adam, welcome to the show. So good. Justin, connect with you. So happy to be with you. Man, yeah, like you're I, I really enjoyed reading your book because connection has been something that, like, it's, it's always been a theme in my life, and it's just even and it's like, almost the right book and like, the right interview at the the right time. And what I loved about the book was, you know, your personal stories for yourself. I always like somebody's personal stories about themselves. You have so many great anecdotes, but it was just, it was like, I'm like, I feel so similar and also so different from you. I think that's just part of the human experience. Is like, we're so similar with our differences. And one of those was, you were talking, I think about you were really young, and at some point you went to try to, like, play with like, 12 different kids, and they all shot you down, yes, and I'm just like, I don't, I think I was just like, I wouldn't even go up to one kid, because it's like, I could just feel that. I'm like, this is not going to go well, or at least that's my earliest memory. And it's like that you you went through the 12 to get the shot, and I'm like, we are so different, but yet we both were longing for that, that connection, that like, I want someone to play with and like. And I just thought that was a beautiful, beautiful anecdote as part of the book. Of like, you know, this is not a new thing. Like, what is it in your work and what you found that has drawn you to, you know, writing a book about connection, and being this one of the focal points and, and, you know, your your many years in this, in this area. Well, Justin, I'm so glad you asked. I knew that I would write a book when it bit me so hard. To borrow from Irv yall at Stanford. He said every book he ever wrote bit him in the ass, and this topic bit me in the ass, in the sense that it took hold of me. I had been practicing as a psychotherapist for over 20,000 hours, and it just this word kept coming up this word connection in my podcast with all these thought leaders, the word connection just kept showing up. And I realized that there hadn't really been a book dedicated to this topic that seems to be the precursor of everything we want. It's certainly present in everything we don't want, I should say absent in everything we don't want. If you look through the DSM, which is what mental health practitioners use to diagnose people, yeah, with, for example, depression, it a big part of depression is a disconnection from the present, because oftentimes we're thinking about the past when we're anxious, we're often disconnected from the present, thinking about the future and worried about that. Oftentimes, with trauma, a big hallmark of it can be dissociation, which is a disconnection, as well as in psychosis, of course, which is severe mental illness, it's characterized with a break from reality itself. So there's a disconnection there too. So at the heart of almost everything we don't want is. Connection, and it seems logical, and it's been, certainly, my experience as a clinician, that at the heart of everything we do want is connection. Doesn't mean we want to be connected all the time. Sometimes we want a pleasant Association. Sometimes we want to watch Netflix and just dissociate and just let go. For sure, if I'm giving blood and they're going to be jamming a needle up my arm, which I hate. I would prefer to not be there, so to speak. So I dissociate during those moments. So I'm not saying we want to be connected all the time, but yeah, moderation, right? And it's, it's all, it's in healthy doses. And I'm with you with the needles. I'm like, the other way, like, why chance it? Why? You know, why do I don't want to look at that? And, yeah, so totally. But to your point, Justin there are similarities and differences, and that's why I say that each person has a different formula to find their versions of connecting. And I came up with a definition of connection because in the Webster's Dictionary, it's a rather lackluster definition. It's like two train cars connecting with each other. And that's clearly not what people are talking about when they say, I really long for connection. Yeah, not what they're longing Yeah. And this is something I definitely want to get into a little bit. Is this a concept of maybe healthy disconnection, or disconnecting so that you can have the connections that that you really want to long for? Because I think you kind of mentioned a little bit in your book, a little bit little bit in your book, a little bit about this idea of, like, enmeshment, and there's probably some other stuff. And I know for myself, I've been going through like, a period of disconnecting from stuff I was uncon that I unconsciously connected to that was not for me. And then now it's sort of like getting into this period of like, okay, now I'm going to, now I'm what, what do I really want to connect to like from choice and as an adult and things like that. And yes, I'd love to get a little bit into that of like that, that like that, it's, yeah, it's not just any connection, right? It's not just like, okay, as long as I'm hooked up to something, I'm good, like, I think we we feel it, but I don't, yeah, I think that's been missing in our culture, that like it's we want more than that. You got it. This book is all about intention, using what we know we like from history and also from experimentation, for what leaves us feeling connected. Now the definition for connection that we came up with for this book, and I say we because I consulted about 10 other licensed mental health professionals to create a working definition for connection. But it's what brings us alive. It's life force, and you and I both know it when we feel it. I heard a song in a movie the other day. It didn't take multiple playings of the song to know that this is a song that brings me alive. You've had that happen to you. It might be your kind of every batter in the MLB when they're playing at home, they have a walk up song to get them energized. That is something they connect with. And everybody has a different walk up song. So we all have different formulas for what connects us. There are certain similarities you and I share. There's certain things that you and I would talk about and say, oh my god, yeah, that brings me so much connection. And I looked at it through the lens of four ways that we connect, because there are really only four we connect with ourselves, and that's the primary connection. It's not selfish to need to connect with ourselves first to know who we are, what it is that we want, and then it ripples outwards. And if you can imagine almost like rippling out. Circles are like a target. The second circle is connecting to others that could include connecting your significant other or your friends, your family, your clients, co workers, whatever co workers, any. And I included pets, because for many of us, pet people, they are significant others in our lives. And then the third is how we connect to the world that could include work, that could include travel, that could include art or nature or ancestry, and in the fourth circle, is how we connect to something greater. For some people, for religious people, it could mean connecting to God. But for the most unreligious, perhaps even profoundly atheist people. If they go to, let's say, Joshua Tree, or they go to, who knows, Yellowstone or Grand Canyon, they say, wow. Wow is an indicator that they're experiencing something greater. They're experiencing, in all likelihood, they're experiencing awe. And one of the things that we know about awe is it's very good for our mental health. It's like gratitude on steroids, and if you put someone's into a neuroimaging situation, the receptors that become activated in our brain when we're experiencing awe are the same as those that are hit on when we take in psilocybin, the psychoactive chemical for magic mushrooms, but with awe, We can do it without needing to take in external agent, we can just get it ourselves, and we can get it anytime. So I looked at those four ways that we connect, and what I know for sure is, and there are very few things I can say I know for sure is that we need to have quota. We need to meet quota around connection in the. Four areas. And I don't tell them where to find it, but I basically tell them, these are the things that you're going to be looking for as you go on the quest to figure out your own connection formula. Yeah, when I was like reading it, I was kind of, I was, there's a lot of me thinking about the order of them, of like connection to self, like spirits, like in there, or under the hood, or it's like the self kind of comes out of, out of spirit, or spiritual, and it, as you were describing, just came to me that it's, it's really like, I'd rather put these, I'd put these in a circle where it's like, you know, self leads, you know, spirit can lead to self, can lead to others, can lead to the world, can lead to spirit can lead to this. Like they're all They're all interconnected. Like, there really isn't like, one more important than the other. I will say I do think that, like the spirit and the self, I think actually are the are the most important to actually know if these, if these, the world and the other people are working for us. Otherwise, again, it's like things kind of get inverted. And it's like maybe it's become an attachment, not a connection by your by your healthy definition, yeah, so I might see it just a little differently. Oh, it's almost like we're two blind men touching an elephant each of us, you know, grasping at different parts. But the way I see it is connection to ourself is primary. And one of the things I know for sure is that people do need people so others are very important. The question is, Who are the others that we should allow in our lives, and who are the others that maybe we should minimize or actually block? And how do we connect with others? How do we do it in a meaningful way? One of the things that we were not taught in school, very sadly, is how to connect well with another person, there's a great quote that was conveyed to me by a colleague of mine, and apparently is attributed to a great British psychoanalyst, Donald wenckott, who apparently said something akin to true psychological health can be exhibited by one's willingness to share their own experience with another and the ability to take in The experience of another. So a good upload and download, and that's not something we're taught in school. And yeah, connecting with the world. I mean, when we're thinking about our jobs, I mean one of the two things that people talk about most in my office, if it was Family Feud, our number one answer would be love. The next one would be the job. Those are the two things that take up most of our time. In fact, who we marry, if we get married, or who's our significant other, and who we report to at work are our most significant others in terms of the amount of time that we spend with people, and we better choose wisely and find good ways, good strategies, to connect with those folks. I can tell you're a very spiritual person because you gravitated immediately toward the fourth realm. And it doesn't necessarily mean that they have to be in any particular sequence, but that's just how I imagine them. And most many people have validated it. But what you're saying isn't is equally valid. You grab, gravitate towards self and spiritual and less towards others in the world. The world. But that really speaks to, really the way you look at this Rorschach, so to speak, and this, this basically tells me, hey, yeah, this is what, this is what Justin's into we talk in a couple years. And maybe it's, maybe it's shit Exactly, exactly, because I am, actually, I am at, I am very interested in and other people at this. Like, it's because it is one of those, like, there's been a big period of me sort of, like, disc disconnecting from people that were not, like, a good match. And I really try to see it as, like, it's not like that. They're they're bad people. It's just they're not, they're not the best, they're not nourishing for me, what, you know, where I'm at or where I'm going, but it's like, you know, it's like, I'm now divorced, you know, it's like I've had, well, my mother's now passed, but it's like, with both of my parents, there were times where I was like, Okay, I can't talk to you, and now I can't talk to you, and I'm like, Okay, it's time for me to make some friends. It's time to make some friends. That's been a focus of, like, a couple weeks, and it's already started to, like shift, or just people are starting to come in. And I think a little bit, I think helping your book, but I know that's one of your TED talks, is making friends as an adult. And I really would kind of love to hear, you know, maybe some of the things of like, just, yeah, what are some ways to make it more productive or useful? Because I, you know, it's like, I look back and it's like a lot of friend making is just based on, like, convenience, or you're just thrust together, and just kind of happens in some ways, especially in, like, a larger city, where it's like we almost have so much choice. Sometimes, I know there's some something of that, or more choice actually doesn't make you happier. Sometimes it's like diminishing returns of it's like, okay, I don't need 8000 types of yogurt. I just, I just want to choose between three and sometimes, like, well, then I just want to have yogurt if there's too many choices. But yeah, I'd love to hear your your thoughts of, you know, of what you've what you've learned on adults making quality friendships. Yeah. So the way this TEDx talk. Hit me in the ass, so to speak. To borrow from what I said earlier, is I had been working with so many incredibly friendable People who said to me, my gosh, you know, I was born in Ohio, I went to school in New York, then I went my first job in Texas, and now I'm living here in Silicon Valley. And in each of those places, I had friends, and I swore I would stay in touch with them, but I didn't. Now I've got kids, and I've kind of become friends with the parents of my kids friends, and they're not necessarily the people I would choose as my friends, but we have some type of relationship. They're the closer friends or acquaintance more of circumstance than of exactly nourishing you on all the levels you would like to get checked in a Yeah. And one of the things that Esther Perel talks about, she's one of the great couple therapists, is that back in the day, not very long ago, in the history of time, we used to live in villages where we had multiple people serving different roles. We had somebody, we'd hunt with somebody. We'd fish with somebody. We'd build things with somebody, we'd knit with somebody fill in the blank, and now we rely on our spouses, our significant others, to fill all of the roles of all of the people in the village. And that's way too much weight. Yeah, like they're not even just the perfect, the perfect lover partners. They're also, they're also the best friend too, right? Like that. It's like, it's everything, it's it's, right? And I see dune over your shoulder. If I I've watched dune with my son, I love the movie, and I know for a fact my wife would not enjoy that movie. And if I needed to lean on her to be the person to watch that movie with me, we would both be miserable. She would be unhappy, and I would feel her, you notice that, and I will not watch the Golden State Warriors with her. That's just not her that's just not her jam. She fills so many great roles. She's the greatest human being I've ever known, and yet she cannot be all of the things no one can. So we do need friends for different things, and I like thinking of friends as being superheroes with superpowers and limitations. I love that spider man can spin the hell out of a web, but he's not going to be able to fly like Superman. And I may have a friend that I watch sports with with, but I wouldn't rely on him for my emotional needs. And there might be a friend with whom I talk about really high level, brainy stuff, but would definitely not be the guy I would call on when I'm going to be moving to a new place in the Hey dude, could you help me move? So each friend has different superpowers and limitations. We need to appreciate them for who they are. And as you said earlier, sometimes it's not a match. They might be great people, but the chemical combination isn't there, and it's a reflection on them being bad people. It's just a question of, how do our chemicals really interact? Is it? Is it? Is it alive? And I have a thing that I call the drive away test, and that is, after sitting with a person, how do you feel as you're driving away or leaving the interaction? Do you feel taller? Do you feel happier, or do you feel smaller? Do you feel exhausted? And these are important things to listen to in terms of ascertaining how we will allocate our time. Our time is our one non renewable resource. We can lose our health and get it back. We can lose our money and get it back. We can't lose our time and get it back. And so how we allocate time for friends is very important, and how we choose friends is very important. And as you said earlier, your ideas of things may change in the next few years, as might your priorities for friendship. I remember when I was a little boy, all that I needed was, you know, a heartbeat and somebody with a ball who lived next door and knock on the door and say, Let's go throw a ball. I have a friend. As I got older, it was a question of, do they have social interests that are similar to me, or academic interests that are similar to and then, over time, I really cared about, truly about integrity and reliability and the, you know, somebody who made me a better person and who I felt made me a better person, these are not things I want to think about when I was eight years old. Oh, yeah. Or, let alone in high school. In high school, you know, I just wanted cool people to hang with, and that's fairly normal. And as we get older, our needs for friendship, the filters, so to speak, that we're looking for, do tend to change. And the problem is we all are so busy. I mean, who has time to find friends or make friends? And I would say we all need to do that. And the way we can do it is we can couple it with something we already like doing. We can go to a meetup and go to on a hike. Worst case scenario, we drive home after having had a great hike. Bestse scenario, you meet somebody really cool who also likes hiking, and you have an incredible conversation and the start of a beautiful friendship. So there are many ways to make friends. I personally have found having a dog to be one of the best things you can have. As soon as you walk through the neighborhood, people will engage you. People will not engage you if you don't have a dog. Very, very unlikely. There are actual psychological studies, sociological studies, that show that some of. Who's walking a dog is far more likely to be engaged in person who's not walking a dog. And after my first dog died, one of the things I did in my own grieving process was I made a list of all of the people my dog introduced me to, many of whom are dear friends, one of whom got me my first TED Talk. So all I can tell you is, there are, there are ways to make friends. We need them. Even the most introverted amongst us needs to have a friend. There's so many great things. One cool thing is, like, do something that you're you're gonna enjoy doing. You know, whether you make a friend there or not, right? You know, it's like, I'm thinking back to some bad advice, I think, especially like earlier on, my late 20s, early 30s and single I was like, oh, you know, go meet, go meet women at these, you know, social kickball, like sports, sports ball stuff. I don't, I don't really like sports. And I'm just like, No thank you. And they're like, and somebody's like, and I told the person this, and like, oh, well, a lot of women go there and they don't like sports either. And I'm like, this does not sound like the good baby, that's not your recipe. But, yeah, I love that. Just Just go where you're going to enjoy the activity, but there's other people there too, because it's like, if there's if you're not leaving the house and you're not being around other people, there's close to zero chance. And then I think the other thing that I really, really picked up on from you is it sounds like, when you find something that like, you like about a person like, let that one thing be enough to just keep interacting with them and drop any expectation of getting the whole, you know, having your whole 100 point list of what makes my best friend thing. Just like, if you just enjoy dancing, just go do more dancing with them. If you're just like, you know, talking about sports, just talk sports. And maybe there'll be more. Maybe not. Is that? Is that something I'm picking up that? I mean, there are no hard and fast rules. The probably, if there were a hard and fast rule, make sure you're not with somebody who diminishes you. Wants you to be smaller. We want people. I mean, there's this great, well, that's, that's your, your driveway test part, right? Part of the driveway test. The other thing is, I love that scene in Good Will Hunting where the Ben Affleck character, who is from Southie, Boston, looks at the Matt Damon character and says, I don't want to see you back here in Southie. I love you too much for you to have a diminished life. Many friends, when they hear that their friend will be doing something big and bold are afraid of abandonment, and you want somebody who's going to cheer for you to become the best person you can be. You want somebody who's going to cheer you to be in the best relationship you can be in and find the best career, or whatever is true for your life. You want somebody who's a cheerleader, so irrespective of their superpowers, you want somebody who doesn't diminish you, but you want somebody who grows you and who you also grow. You want it to be a beautiful back and forth in that way, regardless of the shared bond. I agree with you on this, and I'll take it a step further, and you might disagree with this, but I kind of believe that the only thing worse than having, you know, no friends or no connections, is having like, these sort of like bullshit friends, bullshit that are diminishing, keeping you small. You know, even they might say that, but less like draining you, killing you. And I had these friends like, you know, it's often in school and early on in work where, and it's just like, well, I guess it could be worse. I could be here alone, or I could be sitting with with these other people that are even, even worse, but it's like I'm getting older, but am I Am I growing? Am I learning? Am I vibrant? So it's like I've kind of gone through a process of, like, clearing the deck in a lot of ways. And just like, it's got to be of a certain level, otherwise, I'm I'd rather just connect with myself absolutely. You don't want to be extorted into hanging out with people because you're lonely and hanging out with people who diminish you. Jim Rohn, a great thinker years ago, once said he was amazing, and he said, you become the average of the five people with whom you spend the most time. And I think that's true. We do become the average. So choosing them carefully. Do I want to be like this person? Are they? Are they people who bring out my best? Are they people who I bring out their best? Is it? Is their mutuality is their reciprocity here. And if there isn't, I would say getting comfortable with solo activities is really, really important, so that you are not solely, you know, at the behest of being with people who aren't good for you. Yeah, and as someone who does it a lot, and I think it sounds like you've, you did it a lot in the past. Like, it's like, I love going to a movie by myself myself, or traveling by myself, and I love doing those with people. When it's people, like, I that want to do that activity with me, and we want to share in it. But sometimes just, like, I just, I just want to watch this movie, and I just want to watch it, and yeah, and I don't have to debate with somebody, and it can be very empowering, just like, I'm gonna do what I want when I want, for a little chunk of time. I don't have you ever heard of the book The artists way, for sure, was it, yeah, very informative for so many people. Yeah. One of the things she talks about is having this artist date, and it's all just like, do one activity a week. That's just all by yourself, so that your inner artist can just play, do whatever it wants, but having to worry about what somebody else is going to do, I couldn't agree more. I think it's genius. And yeah, I mean, it's not the quantity of friends, it's the quality of friends that really matter. That sounds almost corny at this point, but it's really true. I remember meeting somebody, and she said, Oh, and I had a party, and I invited 100 of my closest friends. And I was thinking, Yeah, I don't know that you can be super, super close with 100 people, but fantastic. That's your experience way back in college. I remember I but for some reason that left an impression on me, and it seemed like a bit far fetched. I think that if we're going to have close friends, we want to have want to have, you know, I think that paring down and having a reasonable number and people who show up and people who are truly reliable and kind, these are, these are qualities we're looking for. Yeah, and I'll, maybe, I'll give it to this person that maybe, maybe their capacity of depth of relating. Maybe those were genuinely the 100 closest, because there's, you know, not much capacity to get too deep. I like, I like your take on that, Justin again, not someone I would want to be, you know, a friend probably at this point in my life. But you know, again, I don't have to be friends with everyone. I love that. I love that. I love that, and you've caused me to see it differently just now, and you've actually changed my mind, and now I've actually seen it as maybe that's her superpower, maybe that's her neural difference. Why not? But that certainly didn't, it didn't, I can say it didn't resonate with me, but maybe it was entirely true. Who knows? Because, like, I'm sure, I'm sure you've probably run into some of these people here in the Bay Area, the Silicon Valley, with all the tech stuff. Like, maybe even heard like, there was this event. Was it just last Friday called, like, the the quarter century Giga party. It was insane. And it was like, you know, a bunch of the top VCs were sponsoring it, and it was like 1000s of people at the San Francisco nightclub. And it's like, I kind of know the woman who, you know, hosted it and coordinated it, because I think I sort of met her when she first started, like, doing event organization and stuff like that. And it's like, so to get an event where she has 3000 people showing up, it's like she must have a list of 20, 50,000 people, or whatever, and, you know? And I was just like, this is not this is not me. This is not like a but she's incredible at it. And it's like, you know, glad there's some people that can do that stuff, because it's not me. And, yeah, it was a spectacle to attend and see this thing. And that's interesting, as you say, that Justin, it calls to mind a title of a great book from Milan Kundera. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, it feels like it just wouldn't be, for me, substantial enough. I want to have some really, really deep conversations, deep relationships. So for me, less is more. But perhaps for this individual, that's what feeds them, and that's what's so interesting about the whole idea of the whole idea of the connection formula, perhaps for this individual, that's as much closeness as she needs. So who am I to say? All I can say is, we will be born and we will die, and what we do in the middle matters. And if that is her truth, and it might be that her truth changes in five years, just as you and I are talking about, we don't know, yeah, so maybe that she does it like a 180 and says, You know what, I just want to hang out with my five closest friends. So who knows what happens? Yeah, because in some ways I feel like life, you know, this middle, you know, between birth and death. It's just, it's a series of games, and we get to choose what we want to play. And there's really no game better or worse than the other. You know, the game of like, Can I have a party of 3000 people, or can I have the most in depth with one soul, you know, for my entire lifetime, you know, which would I guess would be, you know, a really good, you know, monogamous marriage to whatever that person would be, you know, and then everything in between. And it's like, that's right? And then you're also talking about the idea of social comparison in Jomo. One of the things that I know for sure is that when we compare ourselves to others, it tends to go badly. We need to compare ourselves to ourselves, get in touch with who we are and what we want. And I also know that FOMO is, you know, it's something that's part of our the human condition. Patrick McGinnis, the guy who actually coined the term, has been on my podcast. He wrote a book called FOMO Sapiens, which I found hilarious, and it's just really brilliant. But yeah, on on Sunday night, I was supposed to go see a comedian I really liked, and I My sister just told me it was epic. And I on Sunday night, I realized, will you share who it was that you wanted to see? It was Alex Moffat from Saturday Night Live. And I love him. He's just, I think he's brilliant. And he was playing at a relatively small venue. I bought the tickets, and on Sunday night, I really got clear a I was. Exhausted and be I just wanted to be with my wife and son. Yeah, I was willing to forego the money. It was a loss financially, but I experienced what one of my friends refers to as Jomo, the joy of missing out. Yeah, well, because I started doing this a few times the past past year or two as well. And my most recent was, like, was a was for, like, a guar concert. Do you ever? Do you remember guar? They would dress up as, like, aliens, and it's like hardcore metal, but it's like satirical, and that, like, they'll, you know, it's like, they'll mock, you know, chop a guy's head off, and, like, fake blood will spread out all over the it's ridiculous and nonsense. And like, I saw them in high school, yeah? And apparently they're still around. I think it's because they wear costumes. They kind of, I think some of the guys have died, but they replaced them, yeah, which they can because the costumes, yeah? But it was like, I wasn't feeling well, and I'm just like, I'm not gonna go because I'm not feeling I'm not feeling well, and that it's like a feeling of wealth, like, kind of came up in me. I was just like, oh, I can really do what feels best for me now. Yeah, that right, there was connection with self from where I sit. That's amazing. And you said, You know what? Yeah, I'm gonna listen. So one of things I know for sure is that when we're not connected to ourselves, it's as if we have a massive head cold, or we have a bunch of rocks in our shoe. How well do we connect with somebody if we have a massive head cold, how well do we connect with ourselves when we I mean, all we can think about is this massive head cold, and they just can't wait for it to go away. Insert whatever physiological, physical thing that is super uncomfortable for you. It might not be a kid Ed cold. It might, you know, being poked with with it, with a thumbtack. I don't know what it is, but all I can tell you is, when we are in pain, it's a kid not being connected to ourselves, because oftentimes we become what's called Alexa thymic. We're out of touch with our emotions. We don't know what our emotions are. They become estranged from us, and we need if I was to say to you, I mean, some people would say emotions are useless, whatever. They're not for me. And I'd say, fantastic. Hey, you know what can I have the keys to your car? And they'd say, why? And I say, I'm just doing an experiment. Just Just trust me. So I go to their car and I put a whole bunch of black electrical tape all over their dashboard, and I say, fantastic. All right now go ahead and drive around, and they'll say, Are you high? Like, what? What did you do to my dashboard? And I said, Well, that's basically what you're doing with your emotions. Your emotions are meant to be data. Not all of them are meaningful, and feelings are not facts, yeah, but we do need to lean into them and figure out a better way to relate to our emotions, because sometimes they're directives. Sometimes they're directives to say, You know what, I'm not going to go see guar I'm not going to go see this comedian, or I need to, in spite of the fact that this is terrifying, sometimes we become smart enough and say, and the emotion is there, I'm still going to do the thing, because it's a target behavior. But I face the fear, and I do it anyway. And the fear, if we also know that having fear is a precursor for courage, if we're doing the target thing, of course not, if we're doing something reckless or like, you know what, I'm scared? Yeah, there's appropriate there's appropriate fear. Like, all of a sudden, if there's a bangle Tiger. It's like, I is some fears. That's how that's that's healthy. It's like, what is a bangle Tiger doing, doing in San Jose? This is, this is something not this is out of the normal, but anything else, it's like, we're probably going to be fine for the most part, and yet. And to your point, yeah. And with the 24 hour news cycle and social media, everything seems urgent, everything seems terrifying. Everything has massive implications, or so we think, because what they're doing is they're hoping to get eyeball eyeballs, if it bleeds, it leads, and we need to get better at doing is deciphering, huh? Is this truly a crisis, or are they blowing things out of proportion? To get my attention? That's just about, it's like, what's like, what's, what's the product, oh, it's, it's advertising, and I'm the product, and it's like, it's 100% they're trying to hijack your eyeballs to just, yeah, and I think that's one of the I would call that as like, healthy disconnection, is how to cultivate or cut off your feed on social media and or the news totally. And the word hijack is perfect Justin, because the part of our brain that's responsible for fear and anger resides in our emotional centers of the limbic system, which is known as the amygdala. The amygdala is this almond shaped piece that's in our brain on both sides, and it's there ostensibly to protect us, but these days, it can hijack our our prefrontal cortex, the place where we do planning and really good decision making and analysis, and it can hijack our abilities to really think. So if we are bombarding ourselves with fearful stuff on social media, we might not be thinking at our best. We might get angry and scared, say something that we can't take back, do something that we can't undo. So. So in many cases, this fear, also known as the can be related to the negativity bias, which means that if we hear a rustling in the leaves, we imagine it's a Bengal tiger. When in Pacifica or in Silicon Valley, where I am, it's probably a squirrel. Oh, yeah, yeah. I love that analogy of ignoring your emotions is like ignoring, you know, everything going on in the instrument panel. I am curious how many people have many people have died because of your experiment, but I think, so far, nobody's done it, and I've not done it with anybody. It's merely a thought experiment. It's all in the day. It's all in the name of self improvement. And I'm sure, I'm sure this might be something that you comes up a lot, because then, you know, working with Silicon Valley Tech people, there's and, you know, I worked at a company that was really big on we're a data driven company, and it's that's just like, the biggest, the biggest lie, because, because humans are emotion driven period in the story, because we're always choosing what data we're going to allow in and to entertain. I saw it so many times where it's like, wait, you have a better relationship with this person. So you, you you weigh their data more than the other, even though the other is actually, from an objective standpoint, has higher quality, did more in depth and all these other things. But there's a little bit of like, Yeah, So Justin, you're talking about cognitive biases. And there's, there are about 200 of them, and we can, for example, newscasters who are really attractive, we tend to believe they're smarter and more credible because they're good looking than somebody who would be less good looking and who actually may be more credible and more intelligent. And that's called, you know, the halo effect. There's so many suggestin Anderson Cooper isn't true. He's got all of he's got all, he's got all, he's got all of the things. He's amazing. He's good looking, okay? He tends to be accurate. I'm not saying he throws a strike every time, but I would say he's one of the more credible people, although I'm leaving my lane, but what? But I'm not, yeah, I love, I love you some. Anderson Cooper, he's great, yeah, what I'm driving at here is, to your point, we are emotional beings, and emotions are coursing through us all day, every day, all the time, whether aware of them are not. And Anthony Damasio, out of MIT actually has found that if you remove the emotional centers of the brain, that brain cannot make decisions, because emotions are always a factor in our decision making processes, for better or for worse. But the more we become in relationship with those emotions and are able to figure out, hey, is this, is this real, or is this, is this just my fear limiting me? I think it's like, clearly just from that you can't it's like emotions are a point, are an important part. And I think I might almost argue that that the emotional experience is, is the point of the human experience. It is like, what is the emotional journey like you get to go on like it's, you know, and the connection is part of that, you know, it's the it's the anticipation, the excitement, the joy, the love, and then even the the loss like that. You know, some people can go a long time without experience with that experience with people, but it's like you get in the world of of pets, and it's like it's likely going to happen a lot sooner. And that was one of the stories I really did love from your book, was the story of how you got your first first cat. Because I had, like, a very similar experience to having a cat foisted upon me when I was living with the woman that she was a girlfriend at the time, and we eventually got married, but it was one day I was like, we're getting a cat. You're either coming along or not. And you know, this orange, orange fluff ball Julius gets put in my lap, and it's just like, god damn it, I guess fine. And that's, yeah, and you're actually looking at the box over my right shoulder is are the remains of my very first cat. He's always in my office. I he's been so instructed. His name was Yoda. It was appropriate for he was a Yoda. He was actually a teacher that cat, right? He was and he was treated by a Veterinary Oncologist right there in Pacifica. But, yeah, we're chasing feelings, is what we're chasing in this lifetime. To your point, you got it right. I believe that's what we're running after. Is an experience, a felt experience when we listen to music, if it's just an intellectual experience, I would say it the music has, at least in my case, it would not have reached me fully. I wanted to hit my emotions as well. I can look at the technician and say, wow, they technically, what a great musician, but I really want the emotional experience of like, wow, that music really does something to me. And the title super psyched does not mean super happy all the time. It means super connected to our psyches that we are when we are feeling happy, we own the happiness and the joy when we're feeling grief stricken we are, we are able to leverage that as well. So irrespective of the thing that we are able to embody it and be connected. Yeah, I love that, because it's like one of these things I've been, you know, learning more and more through practices like the the joy of living. Isn't that you feel joy, happy all the time, it's that even in the you know, the depressed, the sad, the grief, the anger, the whatever, there's a part recognizing this is part of the human experience, and then when you're conscious of it, of like and this is part of me, learning depth and getting clear on maybe what's the next emotional experience I want to go through, that there becomes an aspect of joy to that even in those you know, what we would usually consider shitty moments? Well, we do need those so called shitty moments, yeah, because they happen no matter how well things go in life. And they do become a basis of comparison as well. Like, part of the joy is, wow. I have a basis of comparison. I know what I know joy because I also know. I know I know loss. My losses have allowed so much more joys in my life that it's like, when I was at, you know, before and in the middle of it, I never would have thought. And you always hear of people like, Oh, I'm so but it's, it's true. It's like, oh, these, these grieving moments, have been the greatest, the greatest gifts of my entire lifetime. And it really is. It's like, how do you go through it? And it's like, it doesn't necessarily have to be, it doesn't have to be as hard, especially when you're connected. The more connection, the easier it is for all of these things. And so that's why, you know, working with someone like you, or having the book, or having friends, or having, you know, pets or nature or connection to spirit. That's what makes all of these, you know, downs actually don't have to feel like as down when we're when we really feel alone or with people diminishing us. Then, then it's just, it's, can be almost unbearable at times. And it's when I've had times when it's like, Oh, I get. I get some people that, you know, when they when they do take their lives, like, I get, I get the the drive. For me, it's always just been like, I don't know, I'm still, there's a little bit of I'm hopeful that there's something's going to happen. There's a little bit of like, why should I have to do more work than I've already done? But Well, I mean, I can't comment on all of that, but one thing I can say is that when we think about depression, it is basically hopelessness times three, according to Aaron Beck, who's one of the founding fathers of cognitive behavioral therapy, and what he found is that it's hopelessness about self future in the world. And one of the things that can possibly attend to a sense of hopelessness is finding a way to healthfully connect, and that's really what I'm hoping to help people do with this book, is to find what is true for them, how they can connect to something that is empowering and allow them to feel more vitality throughout life, rather than That hopelessness. And many of us were born with genes that are more likely to render us depressed or anxious. But one thing I know from Sonia lugar mercies work is that we have a lot more and in our control through intentional behaviors, about 50% of our happiness, according to her replicable studies, are attributable to genes. About 10% are about our current situations, and 40% are within our control through intentional actions. And the 40% is actually a nice, a nice chunk of the pie, if you think about it, and that's what this book is aiming to attend to, the 40% that we have control of, yeah, which is huge, especially kind of considering that, I think a lot of times we think that, like, oh, you only get, like, one flip of the coin or one spin of the wheel, but really we're spinning that wheel non stop. So if you get to own 40% of the roulette wheel, you're going to be a winner a lot more often, right? Well, Justin, it's been amazing to be with you. Oh yeah. I was going to say, like, it's time to write, like, any last words, last words are that? Yeah. I hope you check out the book. I hope it speaks to you in some way. And that, what I found is that if we can attend to one area at a time, I do love the axiom, chase two rabbits. Get neither. So maybe do one thing at a time from the book, and I use it as a guide. And if you want to hit me up, As Justin mentioned, I'm I've got a fairly large web presence. I'm here in San Jose, dr, Adam dorsey.com, and love to hear from you. Yeah. Thanks so much, Adam. And yeah, I already I got motivated from reading your book to go back to to Toastmasters. I did my first suite right on, you know, in like six years last week, and it was so much fun and great people. And so it really does have a lot of good resources, ideas to get the connection, the connections going in the healthy, fulfilling way that we all want. So definitely go check out super psyched at Amazon and all the other places you buy your books. And also, Adam's got the super psyched podcast. And then Dr Adam Dorsey. Dot com, where you can get all the amazing stuff, kind of TED Talks and all that. So thanks so much. Adam, good chatting and good day everybody. Thanks for tuning in to engineering emotions and energy with Justin Wenck PhD. Today's episode resonated with you. 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