Todd Kashdan on Curiosity and Insubordination

Todd B. Kashdan, Ph.D. is Professor of Psychology at George Mason University, a leading authority on well-being, psychological flexibility, curiosity, courage, and resilience. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles and his work has been cited over 35,000 times. He received the Faculty Member of the Year Award from George Mason University and Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contributions from the American Psychological Association. He is the author of Curious? and The Upside of Your Dark Side, and his latest book is The Art of Insubordination: How to Dissent and Defy Effectively. His writing has appeared in the Harvard Business Review, National Geographic, Fast Company, among other publications, and his research is featured regularly in media outlets such as The Atlantic, The New York Times, NPR, and Time Magazine. He's a twin with twin daughters (plus one more), with plans to rapidly populate the world with great conversationalists.

 

Todd had a number of amazing insights during our conversation. Some of them include:

“If the goal is to keep someone on task for your teachings and your precepts of a religion, a doctrine, whether it’s an anti-racism unit, whether it’s a well-being unit in an organization, as soon as you make something taboo, you’ve just raised the stakes in terms of people exploring, discovering, and finding out that there are lots of holes in the argument” (8:45).

“How can we use all of these tools for positive, healthy causes to move society forwards, to move our personal development forward” (12:20).

“The stronger ideological convictions are, the less space there is to be curious” (12:30).

“Curiosity makes you find flaws in people’s arguments” (14:30).

“The reason we have a 3-pound brain in our head is that we are trying to make a more predictable, less uncertain environment as we walk through the world” (17:20).

“There’s something really valuable about having precise language to describe ourselves to other people” (19:30)

“The best way to effectively communicate if you are in the minority position is to be incredibly consistent with your message” (23:00).

“I really like the term consistency over conviction. The message is the same, but I’m listening to what you have to say” (28:30).

“Fail quick. Fail often. Let’s innovate” (41:40).

“The best way to move away from being called the pejorative term of being called a flip-flopper and to move towards the virtuous act of constantly growing and evolving is to be as objective as possible in doing a problem audit of where you made mistakes before” (48:15).

“That’s what people want. They want predictability. They want to reduce uncertainty” (50:15).

“One of the emotions that I use in my own life that I harness extremely well is envy” (54:05).

“I’m harnessing the negative, uncomfortable experience of envy to actually improve my own strengths and my own skills as a public speaker” (55:25).

“That is psychological flexibility. Harnessing your negative emotions in pursuit of a valued aim” (55:45).

“That’s psychological flexibility as well. Transitions between our different life roles as opposed to letting those life roles merge so tightly together that we feel as if we’re not on top of being a parent, a worker, a lover, a son, or a daughter” (57:30).

“You have to think less about the job and more about what about you made you want to do that job in the first place” (1:03:15).

“Assume that everyone is incredibly intelligent, and that includes young kids” (1:18:15).

“Mental simulations of alternative possibilities are an incredible way to increase curiosity” (1:21:00).

“Just by posing these mental simulations of alternative realities allows us to think with a level of curiosity of there’s not one way to do something. There’s not one answer” (1:22:00).

“Try to create groups where people are able to speak because you are open-minded and curious. They’re willing to speak what they actually think because you’re willing to work with the material” (1:23:30).

 

Make sure to follow Todd on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok @toddkashdan. Additionally, I would encourage you to follow Todd on Facebook and LinkedIn. Also, feel free to email Todd if you’d like to reach out: todd@toddkashdan.com. You can order Todd’s latest book, The Art of Insubordination: How to Dissent and Defy Effectively, here as well! Lastly, you can find Todd’s publications of over 200 articles here!

Thank you so much to Todd for coming on the podcast!

I wrote a book called “Shift Your Mind” that was released in October of 2020, and you can order it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Additionally, I have launched a company called Strong Skills, and I encourage you to check out our new website https://www.strongskills.co/. If you liked this episode and/or any others, please follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers.

Thanks for listening.

-Brian