Against Nonchalance: How to Embrace Caring in 2026

Hello and welcome to Being Well, I'm Forest Hanson. If you're new to the show, thanks for joining us today and if you've listened before, welcome back. It's New Year's week, and this is a time of year that many of us try to pick a few resolutions and set ourselves up for the year ahead. That's hard to do without finding something we want to invest in and care about. But not caring, or to use another word that's become a bit popular recently, nonchalance, is having something of a cultural moment. The world feels incredibly chaotic, nihilism is in, trying to hard is kind of cringe. The elevator pitch is understandable. If you don't care, you can't be disappointed. And most of us have had our fill of disappointment. It's true. Caring carries some risks. But almost any meaningful and enjoyable life includes the right kind of caring. So today we're going to be offering a defense of healthy caring, which means finding ways to work with the common problems that tend to come with it. So to help me do that, I'm joined by clinical psychologist, Dr. Rick Hanson, so Dad, how are you doing today? I really care about being here. I admit it, and I'm not nonchalant about it. You are not a particularly nonchalant guy, and I think it's one of the things I like most about you, Dad. You are deeply engaged and you care a lot about whatever it is that you do. Thank you. I think also, I certainly, from the inside, feel a lot of equanimity and the intersection of caring and not caring, compassion and equanimity, let's say, is a real sweet spot. And a person can be both. They can be at ease with feeling vulnerable, passionate and invested while at the same time rest of the day in an underlying emotional balance and, you know, spacious peacefulness. Yeah. I think that the difference between equanimity and, you know, nonchalance or nihilism or just kind of not giving a [bleep] generally is going to be something that we're exploring a lot throughout this episode. But before we get into it, I did want to give you a quick reminder about two different offerings from Rick that are actually kind of relevant to this topic. The first is his foundations of wellbeing course. It's his big flagship year-long course. You've probably already heard a lot about it, but also Rick has a brand new course this year titled Sticking to Your Goals. If you've had a tough time doing some of that because of a lack of clarity or self criticism or fear or, hey, maybe even some of the issues with caring that we're going to get into during this episode, then I think that you'll like it. It's a self-paced online course. You can learn more about it at rickhansen.com/goals and use coupon code beingwell25 to receive a 25% off discount on top of whatever discounts we also have running for these courses right now on either of them, on either the Sticking to Your Goals course or foundations of wellbeing. So if you want to learn more about that, you can check it out. I've probably also put a link to those in the description of today's podcast episode. So we're going to get into a whole bunch of explanations for why not caring is a bad thing. But to start with the kind of bottom line summary here, yes, if you care about something and you try it really hard and you still don't get it, it sucks. It's not fun. But the bottom line is also that you've been kind of sold a style of being by some of these cultural hadwens that I alluded to in the introduction that just doesn't work for most people. The reality is that for 99% of people, 99% of the time, you kind of got to care to get where you want to go. That doesn't mean you will get where you want to go, but it's kind of a necessary condition to live a good, healthy, meaningful life. But yeah, there's a lot of risk associated with caring and at least for very common problems. So the structure of today's episode is we're going to be exploring each of these four common problems. One at a time. I'll get some commentary from Rick on them. We'll go back and forth about them and hopefully have a pretty good time. So what do you think, Dad? Is there anywhere that you want to kind of start here just from the rip? You know, as a huge overview, maybe I'm jumping in too soon. I just am struck by this line from T.S. Eliot of all people, teach us to care and not to care. And, moving back and forth, in a sense, those are the two banks of the river of our life. Teach us to care and teach us not to care. And through those two banks, the river of our life can flow. Another big theme that I think we're going to be coming back to a lot throughout this episode. So the four problems, maybe we can kind of start there. What are these things? First, nonchalance, not caring, is kind of cool. Or something about it that just aligns with how we think of cool figures, like historically, at least in American culture. Second big problem with caring exposes you to painful experiences. This is often the big one for people. Disappointment on the one hand and then what I'm calling ego, threat on the other, which we'll get into in a little bit. Third big problem, lack of natural desire or much motivation. Somebody who says, you know what? I just don't really care about anything. Like I just don't feel that strongly or telling me to care about stuff. I just don't care what can I do. And then the fourth one is really interesting, I think, particularly for people these days. And it's what I'll call protective defeatism. Sure. If I don't care, I'm probably not going to get what I want. But I'm not going to get what I want anyways. So why would I expose myself to those risks? You know, we're in a late stage capitalistic hellscape and I can't climb the ladder and nobody wants to date somebody like me and I never get what I want anyways. That's kind of my personal history. There's no upside to effort and it all comes with pain. So why the heck would I do it? And I do want to say that each of these problems are a real problem, at least to some extent. What we're going to find throughout the episode is that there's some truth to each of these. But as with almost everything that we talk about, that doesn't mean that we just don't do the good thing because the good thing comes with some downsides. The trick is figuring out how can we deal with these risks, de-condition ourselves from the kind of like nonchalance vibes that are out there and caring away that brings more good stuff into our lives without putting excess pressure on ourselves and all of those things that we know actually make it harder to perform at a high level and get the things that we want. I think that one of the things that sort of cuts through a lot of this is intrinsic motivation to that. I wonder how you think about it. Is there stuff that you like and can you find the likable parts of an activity almost regardless of what the activity is and hey, if that activity comes with some pretty good outcomes for you, even more so. So that finding the reward I think is going to be another thing that we talk about a lot today. Yeah. There's an interesting question like I kind of wonder for us. How do you feel your way into this, the sort of top-down aspect of caring that involves sort of deliberate choice for better or worse? And then how do you balance that with more bottom-up, kind of more automatic, less conscious, less deliberative, forms of caring for better or worse as well? And in terms of the for better aspect, the idea of people giving themselves over to fundamental purposes, fundamental values, fundamental qualities moving through. So it's, they're not even deciding to care. Like for us, you know, first day I met you, you were one breath old and I loved you immediately and became completely committed to you and I don't think about that. I don't think, gosh, how much do I actually care about calculus in terms of that? Yeah, I just, it's living through me and I'm sure there are other kinds of purposes too for people. Yeah, I think that a lot of people do not have much of a sense of that in their lives. For some of the reasons that I kind of went into and in each of those problems that are sort of implicit in them, particularly maybe that fourth one of just kind of like, ugh, the world's a mess, my life feels kind of like a mess. Yeah, I just don't have a lot that's flowing through me in that way. Yeah. I think that for parents, the calculus here can really change because you do have something. I mean, for the overwhelming majority of parents at the very least that you do care about in this kind of deep and if it's conditional, it's very softly conditional way, you know what I mean? So that can put something more in touch with that feeling for a person who just doesn't have a lot of examples of like, what even that kind of deep caring really feels like for them. Then I think there are people where the deep caring comes up, but then all of these defensive structures come in, you know, the protection of, oh, wait, if you do that or if you go after that, you're exposing yourself to a lot of disappointment or a lot of risk. And then that kind of cuts off that natural impulse. So I think it can come from either way, maybe. Yeah, you're reminding me, you know, the terms empathy fatigue or it's a misstatement, compassion fatigue because compassion itself doesn't have fatigue because it's rewarding. No, given the loving aspects of it, but in any case, I'm thinking here of caring fatigue. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Top down. I mean caregiver fatigue is a major thing to talk about, yeah. I think there is caring fatigue more top down, but to the extent that, for example, if intrinsic motivation, like you're saying, let's suppose that someone feels that there's a kind of wellspring of, you know, inherent lovingness. They're inherently a warm-hearted, loving kind of person that are sort of lived by love increasingly as that arises from their depths and flows upward and outward in their life intrinsically. That would not feel like fatigue. You would feel lived by it. You would feel fed. So I wonder what you've experienced in that regard and what you think about that. I think that when you can connect with the intrinsically rewarding aspects of an experience, it's a lot easier to keep on going with whatever it is that you're doing. And when we're more externally referenced, which I think kind of gets to the first big problem that like not caring signals various forms of social status, which is an external power game. That's about how other people are viewing us and how we're viewing other people. There's nothing intrinsic in that. There are very few people who are intrinsically rewarded by looking cool. The whole point of looking cool is that other people are kind of witnessing you in it, right? And so if you are somebody who, for whatever reason, personal history, life experience, you're just kind of prone that way. You've had a sort of lack of intrinsic motivation generally in your life. Maybe because when you went after stuff, it just didn't seem like it went very well most of the time. So like, why bother? Because there's a lot of really interesting research about reward and childhood. When you start rewarding kids for things that they do naturally early on, like you give them a gold star for drawing when they just like drawing naturally, you actually start to reduce intrinsic motivation in that kit, which is really, really interesting stuff and has some implications for certain layout. How I would approach raising my kids at the event that I have children. So can you tell me more about, you know, you're more tapped into the cultural zeitgeist, especially younger people? Well, you're 73 dad. I think that if you were typed into the social, cultural social zeitgeist, we'd be really having some questions. I think it's appropriate for you not to be. I think it's healthy for you not to be. That's right. That's right. Although for the record, I've been watching a lot of M&M videos and I'm watching a lot of people talking about M&M and that's a guy. And of course, you've seen the film eight mile. If you have any questions about the importance of care in life. Speak popularity was like 20 years ago, by the way, but go ahead, please. M&M is still very popular in a little bit. You're right. You're right. Yeah. Come on, man. Come on. So anyway. That dude cares. You know? Sure. There's a place for care. And I think this is you. No, you're getting to one of the big arguments against this tape where on the one hand, we're saying, okay, the way that particularly in like the dating world. The way that you achieve success is by appearing kind of like disinterested and like you're holding all the cards. You're playing a power game essentially. But the irony is that the people that we admire are rarely disinterested. Almost every incredibly popular is successful. Whatever person like cares a lot about something. So there's this kind of funny thing that's happening where an argument is being made that nonchalance is desirable, but none of the desirable people are nonchalant. The people we like are publicly committed to their thing. They've got like a clear identity and we can locate them. And there was this picture that went viral not too long ago of Timothy Chalamet, a next game just like losing his mind. That's like, yeah, that's a dude who cares, you know, like that's, that's what he loses mind over. Well, because he's a huge next fan. And so he was like sitting next to him and asking people to go in that next basketball team. And so he was just like totally going crazy. And the photo went viral because it was like, wow, it's a dude caring about something. Like how nice. Yeah. You know, it's like, well, there you go. That's the whole thing. So anyways, I just, I also think there's this certain like, do you want to be cool or do you want to be a successful question? Like cool falls away pretty quickly in real life. And eventually in adult spaces, you've got to bring some substance to the table. And it's very difficult to develop that substance if you don't care about what it is that you're going after. Yeah. You can be stoic. You can be admirable in your steadfastness. So you're not rocked by stuff, which is so different from not giving a **** like totally and dating also gets to a difference between like results. And process, which again, I think is going to be a big thing we talk about today. Yeah. Why would you ever want to have a friend, let alone a lover, let alone, let alone a life partner who didn't care? It was just like too cool. Like, I mean, that might be fun when you're dating for a minute. I don't know. Maybe if you're like, yeah, maybe some people are into that, but that's not what I want my life to look like to your point for that. Yeah. That's right. Well, maybe there is, let's look for a little like baby in the bath water for each of these. Something that we could kind of take from this in a positive way. For me, the obvious one is like, yes, being hyper needy is generally speaking, not very socially desirable. And there's some kind of healthy middle path here between being totally disengaged and being completely over the top about what it is that you're into. Sure. So maybe the takeaway is like care deeply and also regulate your emotions in like a healthy way. Like as you were saying earlier, dad, equanimity is different from apathy. You can care a lot and still be kind of at peace about what happens, particularly if what you're being at peace about is your own effort. Yeah. And what helps us be at peace often is to know that we give it our all within the constraints, you know, of what our all would be called to be in that certain situation. You know, boom, you went for it. You better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. So let me ask you a question about this, dad. So it's easy for us to say to some extent. And there's a person listening to this who's saying, well, okay, that sounds nice. But in the past, the stuff that I've been interested in or the stuff that I've cared about, when I've kind of been open about it in some way, enthusiastic about it, maybe even in a public sense, I've kind of gotten teased by it. Like people have sort of pushed, they've been, they've been like, wow, you're really into that is. I've just received a lot of messaging from other people that like that is essentially uncool for lack of a better way of putting it. What would you say to that person? Damn. I mean, there were a lot of responses I was expecting. That was not one of them, but I'm glad you went there. But in part, like what's going on over there with them that they are adopting a sort of snotty, superior smug stance, that somehow your open-heartedness, your fullness, your full-throatedness, is somehow offensive to them. Now, if you're getting annoying about it, if you're telling them way too long how you beat the boss in some video game you just did or some fascination you have with hot-rod car racing, all right. But if it's not that, what's with them? And I just think, if you've got someone over there who basically is uncomfortable by your caring, because they don't want to let themselves care, to me, I would tend to shrink that relationship because I would think, you know, that's someone who's just not prepared to live in a very full, passionate way in this life. And yeah, I'm not that interested in that person. It's interesting for us, you know, as you know, I've hung out with some young people who are into high-level rock climbing and spend some real time with them and kind of, they let me into their world. And a little detail, in my professional world of, you know, probably thousands of people, I'm toward the high end of wilderness badass. In these world of these young people, the actual wilderness badass circles, you're like headed into the wild. The bottom. The bottom is still. I still, I still. I'm like, you're, you know, 65 plus academia crowd, you know, and get after it, though, totally. That's right. That's right. So, point being, what's one of the wonderful things about them is, and they like it in each other. They are lit up by what they're doing. They love what they're doing. And it's a beautiful thing to be around them. And it makes them more trustworthy. And these are amazing that way. Yeah. So, into the thing that they're into. Yeah. If you could love your sport or your art, well, that means maybe you've got the capacity to love me fully from the depths of your own being. Right. You're like, you just want to be with that kind of person. So. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that enthusiasm is a hugely desirable trade inside of a relationship. But I also agree that if you're, if you're receiving a lot of messages that way from other people, there's a place for some self-awareness here to your point. Yeah. Like, maybe you, if you receive this over and over and over again, at a certain point in the conversation, maybe you learn to yourself, like, okay, we'll take it up to that point and from there, we'll kind of back off a little bit. But I think 90% of the learning here is about like other people being a pain. Yeah. And I'm thinking also about, let's be clear. If in relationships, let's say dating, you know, if coming across really needy, that's a problem. That's not so good. And being sticky or weird or having some weird vibe, okay, that's a problem. None of that is healthy caring. Healthy caring has a certain non-attachment in it, and it's about the other person. It's more about what you're naturally moved to give in your regard for them, your, your, your fondness of them, your respect to them. This is a great distinction, particularly in relationships. And what you're trying to do talking about this, yeah, yeah, totally, yeah, yeah. Caring involves valuing and appreciating and it involves conscientiousness. What you really care about is what you're trying to pull from them, that maybe we're in the, in the dangerous zone here, totally. Yeah. To me, when I think about, you know, it's been a while since I was on a dating, but I still think it's really true, that if you're rested in what you find of value in another person, you meet someone in a bar or some kind of dating environment or whatever, or just casual conversation, if you're rested in interest in them and a natural kind of friendliness toward them, a natural good wishes toward them. Maybe on the basis of which, yeah, you'd kind of like to take it further. But the heart of it all is that you're rested in a, in benevolence toward them. If they're not interested in your friendly interest, your respect to them, your appreciation of them, that's on them, but flip it around. Wow. There are a few things more appealing and attractive than someone who isn't sticky, isn't weird. They're a giver, not a taker, and what they're giving is a lot of positive warmth in regard. Yeah. You're going to like that person. And then if they say, hey, you want to get dinner, you're going to be much more likely to say yes. So maybe let's move on here to the second of these big problems, and I think you're right on about all that data. At least that's my personal experience. Like, what are the traits that I look for in a partner, kindness, smart, enthusiastic, but one of them on the list, for sure, really, really, really likes me. You want to be with somebody who really, really, really likes you. Bottom line. And if you've got any question about that, that's a tough one to get around. But anyways, okay. So moving on to the next of these, which I think for most of the people listening is going to be the big one. We'll be back to the show in just a minute, but first a word from our sponsors. Now back to the show. Lying, exposes you to risk. It raises the stakes. Less caring means less risk, particularly two kinds of risk. First disappointment. If it doesn't go your way, you feel bad. Ah, I wanted that thing and I didn't get it. That sucks. Second, and I think probably actually more of a big one for people, even if they're not totally aware that it's happening in the background, ego threat. This outcome says something about me. I cared and I didn't succeed whatever that means for you. And that means that I'm not good enough. And my kind of functional theory of nonchalance is that the second one is the big pain point for most people because nonchalance dodges both of those risks. You can't lose if you never play. And if you never really try, you retain a kind of plausible deniability about what happened. You know, making this really personal for a second. I've never done a West Coast Swing routine, I've danced West Coast Swing for like 15 years, I've always engaged with it as like a hobbyist. So there's a part of me that can go, oh, maybe if I did do a West Coast Swing routine, I'd be really good at it or something like that. And if I actually go and do it, then I have to find out what my results were. Now in this case, I would be fine with that because I'm not deeply invested in this thing. It's like a deeply meaningful way, right? I would just do a routine to have fun and whatever happened would be fine. So you could imagine for somebody who's really serious about something or who really cares deeply about something that there's a kind of protection in that sort of avoidance. I don't know if that's something you've seen a lot dad, but when I was thinking about it as a part of this, it just seemed really, really real for me. I think that's true. It's a big one. Anticipatory defeat. And it's a preemptive strike. You know, you and I have talked a lot about the way people organize a lot of neurotic material using the term broadly is around avoiding risking the dreaded experience. So it would be the dreaded experience of trying hard and flopping. So if somebody brings this to you, what are some of the, where are you going with it? What are some of the arguments you would give against it? Well, would you want to talk with them about? In a therapeutic context, I'd be really interested in the history. And how much of that history was actually experienced in which they went for some big goal. They've flopped and had a very painful, even traumatic experience about it. Or how much of it was that they watched other people try hard and flop and be derided, let's say, or the imagined it could. And that distinction between, and I invite people into it who are listening here, what has actually happened for you versus what have you been afraid might happen? That's a hugely, hugely different thing. So if it actually has happened for you, there's a place to just bring compassion to it. Can you be sweet to yourself? Can you have a kind of kindness like, oh, yeah, it does hurt a course. It is embarrassing. All right. That's natural. And to be warm with yourself about it so that you can actually increasingly accept the risk of the dreaded experience so that if it happened again, you know that you would bring that kindness and support to yourself. And also a sense of proportion, how long will you feel bad? And in my experience, people are going to feel bad longer if they did not give it their all because then you're kind of mad at yourself. Yeah. I think one way to think about this whole thing is do I want to risk disappointment or guarantee regret? Oh, what a line. Yeah. I like that one. That was off the door. Oh, that was dope. That way to go. Thanks, buddy. Yeah, do I want to risk disappointment or guarantee regret? And are you willing to do the courageous thing for your future self to some extent? This I think goes back to your point about intrinsic motivation and process goals. It's actually weirdly helpful to appreciate that we are incredibly helpless about so many things. And I think maybe modern times, because we have so much control, you know, you push a button and 20 seconds later, your dinner's warm, like, whoa, that's pretty amazing. You know, control, control, control. The truth is we're mostly out of control, you know, we're mostly just twigs and leaves in the river of time swept along, flotsam and jetsam. And when you realize that, then you realize, well, the big focus here isn't so much about results. It's about effort along the way. Virtuous effort along. Totally. Yeah. I think there's a lot of stoic philosophy that relates really closely to this. Like detach from outcomes, not your efforts, learning to care about the right things is also a piece of this. Caring is valuable, like you're saying, it's in a sense, a bit of a scarce resource because there are costs that come with it that we're talking about here today. So even though like the flow of caring that you're describing in terms of being a parent caring about a child might be kind of endless because it feels good. It's rewarding along the way. For most things in life, you've got limited focus, limited time. If you're going to raise the stakes on something, the way that we raise them when we start to care about them, pick wisely, select your two, three things and be like, okay, everything else, I'm going to kind of, I do because it's enjoyable or I stay reasonably engaged with it. But I'm not going to raise the stakes, I'm not going to make my self worth really dependent on how much effort I'm putting into that particular thing. And then yeah, focusing on process, focusing on process and alongside that, frankly, developing good emotional regulation scales that help you stay in focusing on process and not being so, so concerned about the specific outcomes or that let you bear a little bit of the disappointment that comes along when you put something out, I mean, you know, making a podcast like this, we put episodes out there that get like 2000 views on YouTube or whatever. It would have got like 160,000 subscribers, but we'll just have a video, it just takes, just like, okay, well, there goes. Like, so be it. It is what it is. 2000 people, come on as well. Sure, yeah. You didn't think about it that way. I totally. But yeah, no, and you just got to be like, okay, out, and then onto the next one. You can't let that, that okay, out, stop you from doing what it is that you want to do. And frankly, some of those videos get a lot of great comments from people who were like, wow, this really helped me. And that's what I then have to move my attention toward. Yeah. It's good practice. Also, you're getting at how big is your bank account of self-worth because you're kind of bare that totally. Yeah. Let's say you try. And it fits. A lot of other examples of success. Failure. And you're going to make a withdrawal from the bank account. So looking for ways to build up that bank account in general, I think, is really good. And part of it, gosh, I've been thinking a lot lately for us about absolution. Oh, well, that's a, that's an SAT word. Yeah. It's a kind of deep forgiveness, very deep. And I of course like it because it both has the word solution in it in that it's a solvent. We are dissolving, you love a root word situation, dad. It's just, it's your favorite thing to be like, this word has that word in it. So I remember when that God, this is total tension, but we were doing the, um, the expansion of the episode that we did on psychoanalysis. And I was talking about one of the neo-unions, uh, Hillman, and how Hillman loved to be like, this word has that word in it, which means that this thing is that thing. And I was like, I don't know if that's how language works, but like, okay, bro, we'll go with it for the moment. That's deep. So yeah. So in other words, we're, we're going to move through life. There will be, if you, what great suffering is friction. Life is what it is. And sometimes it's unpleasant, but that itself is not, uh, suffering. That's when we had to add friction to life. Okay. Absolution where we absolve ourselves in healthy ways, having taken moral responsibility. And done what we could, having learned from the experiences, you know, whatever we did, maybe putting a correction for the future, and then bringing a kind of release to us. So absolution like a solvent is sort of dissolving, no, things that attach us, because then you become more prepared to give it your all. Yeah. Totally. I give her you go in here. I have another thing to say about this, if you will, where am I? I will, I will absolve you of any, of any future wrongdoing here, dad, go ahead. There's this fantastic quote from Teddy Roosevelt about it's gendered, but it's the man in the arena. Oh, that's the classic. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. And it's true. And you got to admire people on the field. Yeah. Maybe they drop a pass here and there. You know, they don't pick up a defender and football terms, but they're bum, out there on the field. And that deserves a special kind of respect. And I think it's a categorical difference to your point, dad, between people who are doing the doing and people who are not like you got to get on the game board to a certain extent. With the ego threat aspect of this whole thing, I think that part of the question is, do you want to develop a strong ego is kind of a piece of this. You know, our identity is shaped by reinforcement. And if we reinforce the belief or the identity that you can't risk disappointment because if you do, you'll just dissolve into a million pieces. Well, that's going to be what you become over time. So do you want to be somebody who can bear that, who can deal with that, who can cope with that effectively? Do you want to learn the skills, do you care about learning the skills that would support you in doing that? Got a million episodes in the 400, 500 episode catalog that focuses on the how of that. You can take a look at them if you would like to. But I think the want to is at least as important as the how to with this particular topic. So do you want to protect that vulnerable self or do you want to develop a more resilient self? It's kind of up to you to a certain extent. But I think that that's a piece of that question. And I want to also name the fact that the arenas of our life are very often everyday life. When you walk down the street and someone is walking towards you, do you care enough to rest in a kind of basic goodwill toward them? Great. In the doingness of your everyday life, do you care enough to do your dishes? To flush your toilet, you know, to pick up after yourself. So much in life, so many of the harms in life are done by what's called externalizing costs, by basically dumping our junk on others or in the street in various kinds of ways. Do you pick up after yourself? I mean, these are the arenas of everyday life and you can feel really proud about yourself, really good about yourself, that you're the kind of person who shows up and is virtuous as you move through your ordinary day. And I think that maybe the baby in the bathwater here gets to problems with outcome goals in general. To a certain extent, like if we're just focused on the final line in the ledger, and that line doesn't look the way that we want it to look, yeah, it's hard to feel great. But what if we're not just focused on that line, we're focused on everything else that came before it, that led up to that final result. And then everything else that comes after that final result, because very few results are actually final in life. That's great. Almost always a next game that we're playing. So we don't want to get too captured by this one singular moment in time. We want to let all of the moments that happened before and all of the moments that happened after also count. So practically for people, I think that folks sing on process, you know, we can almost always succeed if our target is maintaining our own effort or having good effort in general, like you were saying, Dad, if our goal is caring to some extent, then we can normally succeed at that. And maybe a question for people to kind of leave this section with. If you don't reach specific outcome goals, let's say you've got these targets in mind, you don't reach them. Will you still have a lot of self-respect for how you approached that process and maybe how you keep on approaching that process in the future? I think that this is a probably a good moment to move on to our third big problem for about time, which is, well, I think that's the second one's a real big one. So we definitely, we definitely spent some time with it. I just don't really care that much about it, you know, I just don't feel that strongly. I'm not feeling that natural wellspring of like caring love that you were talking about at the front end of the episode here, Dad. I think that for starters, begin by acknowledging that this is a big one for people. This is very, very common experience. And I think that a lot of people get stuck on the wrong side of an equation where they think to themselves, once I find something to care about, I'll give effort toward it. But the funny thing is that we have a ton of research that shows that at least an adulthood, that's really not how it works. It's the opposite. Caring tends to follow our effort. You start caring about the things that you give a lot of effort to. And the whole idea of like finding your passion in this kind of mysterious way is mostly wrong. Just don't really find their passions, they build them over time through effort. Your brain learns to care about the stuff that you give effort to. And this is really really reinforced by something that I bumped into when I was doing prep for this episode called the effort paradox. We're built to conserve energy so we don't like expending effort, right? We don't want to burn those calories. And your brain doesn't want to do that kind of work. But kind of strangely, we value the things that we work toward much more highly than the things that we don't. And this is actually a pretty well known thing called the IKEA effect where people will pay more for something if they assemble with themselves. Then if it comes pre-assembled, very strange, there's also some really interesting brain research on this where when you get some kind of a reward for something, after you expend a lot of effort, the reward circuits in the brain light up a lot brighter and harder and stronger than they would if you had just been given the reward without any corresponding effort. So reward actually matters a lot more to us after we work on stuff. So if you're feeling a lack of reward in your life, it's possible that there's also a lack of effort in that way, which is a wild thing to think about. That's genius for us. Isn't that kind of crazy? I just bumped into this thing. It's called the effort paradox. Effort is both costly and valued. That's the name of the paper. It was published in 2018. It's a cool one. Really great. What are you thinking about with this dad? I just don't care that much. Part of it is depression. Part of it is, people are fried. Research shows in a way that typical hunter-gatherer group would take care of all their daily needs in about four hours of focused effort a day and the rest of the time they kind of hung out. Mending their work. Yeah. We're not really built for 16-hour days. That's not a big deal. No. No. So people are fried. And I think also there's a lot of learned helplessness. There's a certain aspect of modern culture, we're sure bombarded by a stimuli that we can't do anything about. We acquire a kind of sense of anticipatory futility. We're already starting to slide into the fourth one, too. These two kind of play together with that learned helplessness aspect. Oh, okay. Totally. Yeah. That pairing of reward and effort is essentially the core of your work in a kind of funny subtle way. The whole idea of taking in the good is finding the things that you enjoy, finding the things that are rewarding along the way. And so, there's this other idea that is a little bit helpful here, I think, called learned industriousness. So, this is a really, really important idea for this. When our effort is reliably rewarded, turns out effort as a whole across domains becomes something that the brain learns to enjoy more. In other words, we start to condition ourselves to like effort. A lot of people in their life have the experience of their effort coming with no reward. They are sycephus, pushing the boulder up the hill. And this is a sad reality for a lot of people. So what we got to do is we really got to go out of our way to find the rewarding aspects of experience, to reward ourselves, to find something enjoyable about what it is that we're doing. I think this also gets to the fourth one a lot. I'm going to talk a little bit about absurdism for the fourth one. It's a big one for me, as you know, dad. And I think that this idea of really focusing on the rewards that we get from a given activity can be a huge breakthrough for people, and deliberately building in rewards to how they set up even something like a New Year's goal, where it's not just about the goal, particularly not just a goal 12 months from now, because that's kind of a bad way to set a goal. It's about what are we going to do along the way, and then how are my rewarding that behavior? Not just at the end of it when I finally cross the finish line. But as I run, you know, 10 feet, 20 feet, 100 feet, a thousand feet on the way to running a mile. I've been in this field for a long time, and there are things you are telling me here for us that are revelatory. Oh, really? Cool. Yeah. Yeah. And this is also like established research, good studies on this for sure. Yeah. It's awesome. And this is the whole thing about learned industriousness. I think that's actually true. I was, well, you're a good example of this, I think. The learning of it, because, you know, in school, I wasn't that super industrious. You know, I've just kind of this one little detail I looked at the grades I've gotten over the years. You know, my GPA is gradually risen over the years. I've just become more industrious. And I love being industrious. I like getting stuff done. It makes me happy. And I wonder if you could help me with some terminology here. I mean, starting to think about the value in this life of kind of consistent with your work on the 90, 10, you know, what's the 10 that gives you the 90? Sure. Yeah. All in general. Yeah. What we could call turbochargers, a short list, like two or three or four things that if you start to value them, they turbocharge everything else. I would totally put a pairing reward with effort, which is like this is the obvious ancient behavioral stuff, right? People kind of know this as a general concept, but it's funny how there are some things where people understand that like they've heard this term, they know that this is a thing you should do, and they just don't do it. It doesn't, you know, they know it, but they just don't do it. And so maybe the piece of this here that we can kind of like help some people out with is just really reinforcing the importance of this. Absolutely. There's a lot of different things, like reward, it doesn't have to just be, you know, I'm trying to think of something like you, you ran on the treadmill, so you watch here, the show you like while you're running on the treadmill, to use like a very classic example. Like that's that's a way you can do it. That's a way to make that experience more rewarding, but there are a lot of different ways into this. Yeah. Totally. I think like for one turbocharger, obviously, is to put yourself in wisdom streams. Yeah. Being a part of communities that care about personal development. Yeah. It's a stream of expertise, you're, you're acquiring expertise over time, like put yourself in wisdom streams, you know, listen to a podcast like this one, who's to say. Definitely. Yeah. I just think what a great thing that I've chosen a career and you've chosen a similar career in which we're dropped into wisdom streams, you know, and the, yeah, learnings part of the job. The wisdom of wisdom streams. Okay. Another turbocharger is helping yourself to value what's good for you that you don't currently value. How can you help yourself want the things that you don't currently want that would be good for you now? Yeah. Connects directly to this. The idea like, well, I just don't care that much. Yeah. Learned industrious. You know, at a meta level, in general, that's one of the great turbochargers because then you can apply it to everything else and it starts generating everything else. Taking in the good, great turbocharger, you know, learning as the superpower of superpowers grows the rest of them. They're just a handful of these turbochargers that if you focus on them, they jack up everything. I think you're totally right. And so maybe some takeaways here for people kind of big pictures. So what's the, what's the baby in the bathwater here? First of all, this is incredibly common experience for people. This is totally real. It can feel very difficult to find things to, to commit to. And also, caring in general is costly. It's part of what we're kind of saying here, caring cost calories, a cost energy, a cost effort. Don't just care about anything. Don't, don't get talked into caring about the things that you don't actually care about, you know? Like, don't be exploitable in that way. Sure. That's all, all totally great. From there, if you want to start caring about something, start putting effort into it. Then deliberately reward that effort. That's the big takeaway here. One way to maybe think about this is you could commit to, to use your man of the arena thing down. You could commit to an arena in your life for a given period of time, a couple of weeks, month, keep it kind of short. And if you don't care about anything, also maybe a takeaway here, you might as well care about anything. It doesn't matter, right? Pick anything. Pick something. Just start somewhere. I try to pick something that you think you could be into, I guess. But like, if you don't really care in general, you might as well just pick something. Then we're applying all of the best practices that we talk about on this podcast a lot. You create a minimal commitment, five minutes a day, every day, make it too easy to fail, make it something where you can do a lot of reps of it throughout the week. Then we're emphasizing the reward, ideally while doing it, if we can, but certainly after doing it, you get a reward because you did the five minutes, not because you did the five minutes perfectly. That's another big one for people. And then we're going to try to scale it up over time. We're going to go from five to six to seven. And then after that period of time, those couple of weeks that month, check in with yourself. Do I care about this more now than I did when I started? If people, most of the time, are going to find that magically, they do care about it more now than they did when they started. But if you still don't, two possibilities. First one, I just wasn't for you. A lot of things in life you try on is like a shirt that doesn't quite fit. Not for you. Go to the next one. Second one, if you try this particularly with multiple things over a period of time, then I think we're in the world of what you were talking about, dad, depression, dysthemia, and hedonia. This is something to really pay attention to. This is like a clinical level issue. Yep. And if you can get some support around it, then maybe that support is helpful for you. Back to the show after a quick break. Now, back to the show. This feeds into the final fourth topic of sort of defeatism, nihilism that's global. It's not about a specific sort of anticipation of disappointment or ridicule. If you fall short. It's like, ah, why play the game? Yeah. It's just more just general. And I wonder how you would fit this in for us. If you've got to care about one thing, care about yourself. That's the pilot light. Oh, yeah. Right. And take it on. Like, are you worthy of care? Now, that's a big question for people sometimes. Are you worth caring about? Is this life, this precious life every day? You know, the days are dripping through your fingers. We each get 30,000 or so days ballpark. When each day is gone, it's gone. And when you cross the midline of your lifespan, which I've certainly crossed and you're approaching, you start looking at the end of the runway and how many days are left. And each one of them is really pretty precious. I mean, how much you care? How much you care about living a life that's so benefit to others, as well as, you know, to yourself. Like, right there. You know, if you're going to care about one thing, care about your innermost being and helping yourself heal and grow and awaken. Love it. Totally agree. I think that getting there for people is sometimes quite difficult for whatever reason. And maybe we can explore some of the reasons that getting there, getting to that stage, if even just like caring about yourself, let alone all the other stuff that's going on out in the world. Can be really tough for people. And part, I think there is, like you were saying earlier, a huge learned helplessness as mountainous. This is often a person who has not experienced a lot of agency and success in their life. They feel like the deck is stacked against them. Nobody wants somebody who is like them or looks like them. I'm just not good enough to get where I want to go. Why bother with any of this stuff? I think that that pilot life that you're talking about, dad, at the very least, can you care about yourself a little bit, is a place to start for people. But if that is also blocked, then we're in kind of difficult territory. I don't know if there is something here that you would want to say for just even a minute or two that you think can be helpful with this. Let's take caring to a really simple level of just wishing well. Wishing well rather than ill, you know, goodwill rather than ill will, right? Do you wish yourself well? When you imagine yourself maybe sitting in a chair five feet away from you or kind of the innermost being, do you have good wishes? Do you have good intentions toward yourself? Intentions again are a form of caring, right? What do we value? What do we intend? Just right there. And then do you have any feeling of a kind of givingness in you toward yourself? Do you want to support yourself so that these are places to start? Given that, I think part of it has to do with choice. You just choose. Now maybe that choice comes from a certain, surly, irritated, hack with all them, at least I'm going to stick up for myself. Maybe that's where, I mean, definitely has come from that place in part for me, right? I felt let down by a lot of people, I'm not going to let myself down, screw that, you know. You know, whatever your motives, you can find some motivation that's fiery, maybe even angry, maybe moral. Like, hey, I've gotten a raw deal. I've been mistreated. Part of it, I think, for us is for people to name the injustices that have been visited upon them, that have been drivers of their sense of nihilism and defeatism and depression and despair. You know, when you kind of name, wow, like you've pointed out, my generation had very rapid upward mobility of wealth and income compared to your generation. That's a tough thing to deal with, you know, it's not so much that fair unfair or whatever, but it's different. My generation had that privilege. You have not had that privilege of that upwind, you know, that tailwind that's lifting you up. And there are other kinds of structural mistreatment and so forth. Just naming those things can actually help you move into a place of, all right? Yeah. You know, I've gotten a raw deal, yeah, I've been kicked in the teeth, yeah, I've been pushed around. They have not treated me right. In the range of where I have power, I'm going to stand up for myself, if only inside our own mind, my own mind, if only in the little bits of learning and industriousness, you know, and reward that I'm going to bring to myself, at least I'm going to do what I can for me. And I think that's a big baby in the bathwater of all of this. There's a lot that's real here. Luck matters, inequality bias, bad time in, where you were born, who you were born to. It is insane to not recognize the fact that for almost everyone, their outcomes in life are constrained in some way. And skepticism in general protects us from playing unfair games, right? Like I don't want you to endlessly grind for the brass ring that you're never actually going to reach. I don't want you to get caught up in chasing a goal post that is constantly pushed further and further down the field. You protect yourself, actually, by having that kind of skepticism. And then some realism over our influence over outcomes, which then moves us away from a focus on them, right? Not everything that's changeable in life. If you play the lottery a thousand times, that doesn't mean you're going to win it. So if we're just focused on whether or not we won the lottery or not, we're not going to have a very good time playing the lottery. Also for a lot of people, the idea of just try harder is just not that helpful. This is also part of what annoys me about manifestation culture and self-help. There's a kind of waving the hand at all of the structures because the problem is your dirty thoughts, essentially, and if you just made your thoughts better, then all of a sudden your problems would go away. And I have big problems with that, as I've talked about in detail. I actually think that philosophy is a helpful thing here. And one of my personal philosophical band, as we've argued about in the past on the podcast add, is I'm a bit of an existentialist by nature, particularly a bit of an absurdist. And I think that Kamu's essay, where it outlines absurdism, the myth of Sisyphus, is actually like a great explanation of why the heck should I care about any of these unfair games. And it ends with a line, one must imagine Sisyphus happy. And this is part of the general philosophy of absurdism, which is that it's all made up. There's no inherent meaning. The points don't matter. Why should I bother? And Kamu sort of details Sisyphus as a pretty good metaphor for many people's experience of life. Many of us are kind of pushing a boulder up the hill only to feel like at the end of the day, it just rolls right back down. And then we got to do it all again tomorrow, right? A lot of the time our efforts don't have the kinds of results that we would like to see from them. And this is our confrontation with the absurd. You know, there's a lot in life that feels like the boulder constantly rolling down the hill. What are we doing here? When Sisyphus is walking down the mountain and he's recognizing the pointlessness of this task in a weird way, he kind of becomes free because he's free to find contentment, regardless of what it is that's happening. And if you go to the very end of the essay, because everybody or not everyone, but many people have heard one must imagine Sisyphus happy. But I think that the whole end of the essay is actually really beautiful and helpful for people. So I just love to read it here. I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe, henceforth without a master, seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain in itself forms a world. And then this is the important line, the second last line. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. That's just fantastic. What a beautiful piece of writing. Yeah. It's wonderful to use my teacher more often than not, actually. Yeah. It's a great, great piece. And so it's this idea of the struggle itself. Earlier in this piece of writing, Camille writes, "If the descent is sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also be performed in joy." What a great way to put it, right? Yeah. If you're wrapped up in the futility of the endeavor, then you're not going to feel very good. If that's what you're focusing on, of course, you're going to feel bad. But if you can do it that way, you can do it another way too. So if the universe doesn't care either way, then why not enjoy the small things in life? Why not try to expand as a person for its own sake? And hey, maybe the sake of others, if that's meaningful to you. Why not have a pretty good time? Why not laugh at the whirlwind to some extent? And I think that another major theme here for people is this kind of tension between, am I going to avoid it? Or am I going to confront it? Am I going to come face to face with these truths in different kinds of ways and try to live a good life anyway? Am I going to try to do different things that protect me against disappointment? And take me off the playing field. Take me out of the arena. And that for me is a lot what I have taken from absurdism in particular and philosophy in general. As a, you know, one of the big differences between this dad is that I'm not a particularly religious person by my mind. So I kind of live in a universe that doesn't necessarily have that kind of underlying deep ground of meaning that you talk about a lot. That's my experience of it. And so I need to find something else. And so some of the philosophical stuff has helped out a lot. Absolutely. For me, it's a source of comfort and refuge and wisdom, if you will, a kind of peacefulness, this fundamental and alongside that. Wow. I'm just really knocked out by your wisdom here. And for me, it's both end. In other words, regardless of whatever, whether there's, you know, unconditioned, absolute ground that is always just, you know, et cetera. What you've said about that's so relevant in the Big Bang universe is just fantastic. And we're kind of moving toward what does healthy caring look like and consistent with, I think, the story of Sisyphus is this translation from Stephen Bachelor of the last words of the Buddha. And as best we know, goes like this, you know, the Buddha looks at people as his body is getting ready to die and says, things fall apart. Tread the path with care. I love that. It's a path. It's ongoing. Bring care to it. And I think of care as a combination of heart and conscientiousness. I think it's a fantastic encapsulation, a little bit of shorter and sweeter than the five-minute monologue or whatever it was. No, no, no. But no, I think it's beautifully said. Yeah. Sisyphus, going up, tread the path with care. Bring your heart to it. And be conscientious. Be careful. Means. And then tread your inner path as the boulder rolls down. Manage your second darts. You know, your secondary reactions to the first dart of disappointment, ah, there goes down again. And then as you tread back down the hill to the boulder, tread that path with care as well. Well, we've been a little in the clouds here in a good way and a way that I really enjoy and like to kind of bring this down to earth a little bit about this particular problem that that people might have. There's a practical question of like, well, I've had, you know, failure just one long string of what's the line from some Zen master was like, I asked to look back over his life and he just went, oh, you know, one mistake after another. And this is this like totally exalted like guy at such a high level of practice and he's just like man, so many mistakes. So dealing with this, you know, you've got this feeling of, okay, the deck stacked against me, why bother? Well, for starters, if you reduce the number of games you're playing into zero, you guarantee failure. You know, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. It is what it is. So do you want a guarantee failure? Do you want to risk failure? I think that those are the questions for people. And there's a real numbers game aspect to this. Even in unfair systems, which I would describe our system as an unfair system, you have a range of plausible outcomes in life. And we widen the range of plausible outcomes by playing the game, unfortunately. And then there's kind of a, there's this great meme that got very popular online. It's the minor in the diamonds, you know, you've got a minor that is like right up next to the wall of diamonds and just pulls back, you know, with a second to go and then you've got another minor at the top who's just plucking away trying to get to the diamonds. Takes a long time sometimes to see results from your effort. This is another argument for moving away from outcome goals. Can we be interested in the process? Can we enjoy the process? Can we be specific walking back down the hill, treading that path with care? Or are we really fixated on a specific outcome? And then bigger picture for people, I think there's a real place for asking yourself, what does success really look like for you? What does being successful mean? I think that it's tougher to apply the kind of defeatism that we're talking about here to just the enjoyable aspects of effort itself. You know, if you move the focus from getting that specific outcome to, I just kind of enjoyed doing this because I found a way to, you know, tread that path with care. I found a way to like, okay, this dish isn't so bad, washing this dish, taking some of this coffee is pretty nice, you know, type in a way, do an email, so that's not the worst. You know, whatever it is that we're finding that enjoyment and I think that that nihilism gets a lot harder to access. Also bringing it down really concretely, to what extent can people expand the envelope of the expression of their genuine caring for other people? I find people throw out kinds of reasons. So they want to look cool, they're kind of afraid of wearing their heart on the sleeve. I think you and I have a shared love of the movie, almost famous and the great line in it. So long, something like the only real currency in this world is what people say to each other when they're not trying to be cool, which is to say uncaring. And I just see routinely, there are so many opportunities for people to express more of the genuine appreciation, the genuine respect, the genuine liking, if not love even, that they feel in themselves for another person. They just don't say it. It's not that I'm pushing someone here to fake it or something, no, I'm pushing to actually express that caring. And you know, and then when people express it to you, can you be brave enough and strong enough to tolerate the vulnerability of being visibly moved by it and actually receiving what they have to say to you? It's their gift. It would be churlish and rude to not receive the gift, you know, to take it into yourself. So that's another part of this that's really concrete too. Is there anything else that you would like to kind of add at the end here, Dad, as we've moved through this whole thing? Is there anything that you're thinking about that comes up for you that you just want to make sure we kind of get on tape here? For the Buddhist-y types, the Buddha never said that desire per se is a problem. It's the distinction between healthy desires and unhealthy desires and the distinction between unhealthy relationships to our desires and healthy relationships to our desires. And so there's a place, of course, for as you put it, healthy caring. And then the question becomes, can you know, in terms of being healthy about it, we be relatively peaceful about outcomes, can we focus on process? Can we choose the objects of our caring wisely and all the rest of that? But there's nothing wrong with caring per se. And if I could, I would just add this notion of being carefree in a healthy way, where you let go. Yeah. No, that's good. Yeah. You're letting go of contractions and considerations. It's sort of you're living in the sweet spot of being virtuous. Like a virtuous effort is rising up within you and flowing through you. From the deeper bottom up purposes of your life, while having a kind of, to quote the title of a book by Soapnir Rinpoche, a carefree dignity about you, while being lived by good purpose. That's really what we're feeling our way into here. And as you feel your way into it, dig it, track it, know what it feels like and let it become increasingly anchored in you. Right on. And it is so incredibly on brand for the podcast that we're ending with the way that you cares by being carefree. That's like unbelievably hilariously us to bring the dichotomy like together at the end there. But I think you're right on that. And I think it's so true. It's so true that it's in a funny way when you kind of lighten up in some ways that you're able to really give yourself to the things that matter. Yeah. I had a great time recording with Rick today, I had so much fun talking with him about healthy caring. This is a topic that we both care a lot about because there are a lot of reasons to not care. The structure of the episode was talking about four big problems that most people experience with caring. The first one is that nonchalance can come across as kind of cool, like you've got a lot of options, you're detached, you're really going to regulate in your emotions, and it's kind of a power play. The second is that caring can lead to disappointment and even more than that, what we call ego threat, the sense that you're just not good enough to succeed. Third, we talked about people who just don't care that much. They aren't very in touch with the feeling of caring inside of them. And fourth, we talked a bit about nihilism and protective disenchantment. The feeling that the deck is stacked against you, you're not going to get where you want to go in life anyway, so you know why bother? All of those arguments have aspects to them that are pretty compelling, even unquestionably true. The deck is stacked against a lot of people, our outcomes are constrained in life. Yes, caring does come with risks. Yeah, there are some people out there who are not going to respond really well when you share the thing that you care about with them. That's reality, that's life. But that doesn't mean that we want to just abandon caring because the reality is to get good at just about anything, to lead a successful and enjoyable, meaningful, fun life, it's really hard to do that without caring. To kind of skip to the end here, healthy caring focuses on our effort and related process goals rather than getting captured by outcome goals, which tend to be more performative and not as authentic in nature anyways. In part because outcome goals include a lot more luck and uncontrollable factors for us. We can't always guarantee success, but we can typically guarantee our own effort. Of course there are exceptions to this, life happens, things come up, we get sick, it is what it is, right? But most of the time we can really spend 20 minutes doing the thing. Healthy caring also understands that caring tends to follow effort, not the other way around and an example of this is what's called the effort paradox we are built to conserve energy. Effort feels bad, animals don't want to give an effort, your brain doesn't want to work. But your brain also invests the things that we work toward with more meaning than the things that we don't work toward. We tend to enjoy rewards more when they come after we've given a meaningful effort. And over time as we associate effort with reward we can develop something called learned industriousness. When our effort reliably comes before we get rewarded, effort itself in general for us becomes more enjoyable. In other words we're kind of conditioning ourselves to like effort. Healthy caring also involves some equanimity, that was some of the content that we talked about toward the very end of the episode. How do we not care and care at the same time in a way that we're each kind of supports the other, right? Where the not caring supports our ability to really go after the things that we enjoy and we invest in. Because we're not getting so captured by the stuff that doesn't matter as much. This can also include a lot of emotional regulation and distress tolerance skills that help us risk disappointment. We don't get too wrapped up in our outcomes because equanimity is different from apathy. They are not the same thing and healthy caring recognizes that as well. And as I just mentioned, reward is a big part of this process. We need to find ways to reward ourselves for the caring that we're doing. While we're doing it, after we're doing it, we're constantly reinforcing that. It is a huge lever to focus on. And then healthy caring supports a stronger sense of who we are. This means that it's typically connected to values in some way and allows us to develop that stronger sense of self. For me, some of the most meaningful content in the episode was what we talked about in the last section, that last problem of why should I bother the world is unfair? Things never work out for me anyways. In part because this is a feeling that I've had at moments in my life, right, which might be funny for people to hear, but it's totally true. This is something that's been very real for me, and finding the meaning in a universe that can feel kind of bereft of that from time to time is a real project for people. I've been supported by some philosophical ideas that I've connected with that I found personally meaningful. And there's something in the combination of the philosophical stuff that we talked about toward the back half of the episode and that idea that caring tends to follow effort that's been really helpful for me personally. This helped me commit enough effort to things to begin to care about them and then to care about them kind of the right way inside of that broader philosophical context where I'm enjoying the thing I'm doing for the act of doing it as opposed to the specific outcomes that I'm going to get from it. And that process feels very workman-like in a way. It feels very deliberately effortful and then that deliberate effortfulness itself becomes enjoyable, which then reinforces it in this really great way. And you get more in the habit of having a good time with whatever it is that you're doing. You get more in the habit of investing things with meaning, even if that meaning is frankly totally arbitrary, even if there is no kind of objective meaning and it's meaningful because it's meaningful to you. It's meaningful because you're the person who decided that this is what you were going to go after, that this is what you were going to care about. Yeah, it is kind of arbitrary at the end of the day, but that doesn't mean that it's meaningless and those are two different things. I hope you found this episode helpful. I hope that it supports you in your New Year's resolution process. If that's something that you're into, if you're not, that's totally fine, too. That doesn't work for everyone. If you'd like a little bit of extra support related to those topics, you can check out two of Rick's courses that I talked about at the beginning of today's episode that was his sticking to your goals course and then also the foundations of well-being, which is his big flagship year-long program this year's cohort is just about to start. Starting very soon, you can check it out through the link that I included and you can use the coupon code being well 25 to receive 25% off either of those programs. Until next time, thanks for listening, I'll talk to you soon and I'll see you next year. [BLANK_AUDIO]