Podcast: Download
This week we talk to Robert Biswas-Diener about the upside of your dark side
Robert Biswas-Diener is a psychologist, author and instructor at Portland State University. Biswas-Diener’s research focuses on income and happiness, culture and happiness, and positive psychology. Robert has written a number of books including Happiness: Unlocking The mysteries of Psychological Wealth and The Courage Quotient, and his latest book is called The Upside of Your Darkside:Why Being Your Whole Self, Not Just Your “good”Self -Drives Success and Fulfilment which was co-written with Todd Kashdan.
In This Interview Robert and I Discuss…
- The One You Feed parable.
- Embracing both sides of our nature.
- The benefits of anger, guilt and other “negative” emotions.
- Thinking of emotions as a thermometer.
- How only having positive emotions is like breaking a thermometer.
- How we may not get as stuck in negative emotions as we think we do.
- The benefits of being emotionally agile or flexible.
- How avoidance and suppression is a bad approach.
- That suppression is a very blunt tool and you can’t selectively suppress certain emotions.
- How avoidance is “the tectonic issue of our times”
- Comfort addiction- we have the ability to be more comfortable than any time in history.
- How comfort is not the same as happiness.
- Finding the middle ground between comfort and effort.
- Knowing is not the same as doing.
- “Avoiding problems also means avoiding finding the solution to them”.
- Emotional Time Travel Errors.
- Allowing ourselves to experience disappointment.
- How the ability to tolerate some degree of psychological discomfort is one of the key attributes to successful living.
Robert Biswas Diener Links
Robert Biswas -Diener Coaching Training Program
Robert Biswas Diener on Twitter
Some of our most popular interviews that you might also enjoy:
Todd Henry- author of Die Empty
Marj Matzky says
I really enjoyed this podcast. I recently found The One You Feed on tlook forward to reading your tweets daily.
Eric Zimmer says
Thanks! I’m glad you enjoyed it!