Whitney Goodman | Toxic Positivity: Keeping it Real in a World Obsessed with Being Happy

Srini Rao: Whitney, welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Whitney Goodman: Thank you for having me.

Srini Rao: Yeah, so I found out about your work because I stumbled up on your book in a bookstore, Toxic Positivity, Keeping It Real in a World Obsessed with Being Happy. And as somebody who loves this idea of no bullshit self-improvement and considers the greatest compliment we've ever received in an iTunes review, no feel good fluff, I thought, yeah, I have to talk to you. But before we get into the book, given that I kind of see you as a social scientist, I wanted to start by asking you, what social group were you a part of in high school?

And what impact did that end up having on what you ended up doing with your life and your career?

Whitney Goodman: Oh, gosh, interesting. I, when I think about like social group, I went to a small high school, I think my graduating class had like 120 kids. So it didn't really feel like there were a ton of groups per se. But I was a cheerleader in high school. So I was always at like football games, things like that. I think I was pretty outgoing. I remember

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm.

Whitney Goodman: talking to most people that I went to school with. And I don't know if there were really groups at my high school.

Srini Rao: Yeah. Well, I always find that interesting because I've had a handful of guests who have been in kind of the same situation. And I'm just like, it's funny because in my mind, I just had this image of, wow, somebody who was a high school cheerleader wrote a book called Toxic Positivity. Like the cognitive dissonance of that. I'm like, okay, I can only imagine what people think. But the one thing I wonder about that is when you don't have that sort of typical hierarchical social structure, like what does that teach you about sort of navigating relationships in the world that...

Whitney Goodman: That is funny.

Srini Rao: maybe the typical high school student doesn't experience per se.

Whitney Goodman: Yeah, I mean, you know, what was interesting about my high school is that it was small, it was a private school, it was predominantly, you know, people who came from privileged backgrounds, I would say, and it was, but it was quite diverse, like ethnically and racially, I think. So I think I went out into the world feeling a little bit sheltered.

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm.

Whitney Goodman: I grew up in Clearwater, Florida. It's not really like a big city or anything like that. And I felt a desire to really like get out of my state and explore the world more just because I felt like I hadn't been exposed to that much up to the age of 18.

Srini Rao: Yeah, you know, I think that one of the key words that stood out to me that you've mentioned is privilege, which I think so often, like I think about the conversations I have on this show, and you know, the entire genre of the self-help industry. And I'm like, wow, so much of these, so much of the messaging in almost all of this is targeted towards people who are fairly privileged or come from relatively privileged circumstances. And I feel like that's so glaringly overlooked in the way that we talk about all of this.

Whitney Goodman: It's so true. And I've had this issue when I've gone on, you know, a lot of podcasts that I think are targeted towards that demographic where the advice is good. If you have, you know, a nice house and a job and a roof over your head and all of that, then I think like positive thinking or a lot of this self-improvement rhetoric that we hear, it feels pretty good, right? Because you have all your other needs met.

Um, but for people who have gone through a lot of hardship in life, which is, I think something that I did experience in a different way throughout high school. You know, I had, um, family members who were very ill. I had, you know, I dealt with a lot of setbacks in that way. And that was really my first exposure to like, oh, there, there are a lot of different types of privilege.

Srini Rao: Uh-huh.

Whitney Goodman: right? And they overlap and they coincide, but a lot of the advice that we hear, it doesn't fit most people.

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, we'll get into that. But talk me through the trajectory that has sort of led you to doing the work that you do and led to this perspective. Because like I said, I mean, it was one of the most refreshing perspectives I'd seen. And of course, I've had other guests who kind of have challenged a lot of this. And we'll talk about that. But talk me through the trajectory that led you to this view on all of this.

Whitney Goodman: Yeah, I think I mentioned that a couple of my family members dealt with really significant health challenges throughout my youth and as I got older. And that was when I started to kind of learn the unpredictability of the world and how difficult things can become. And I think within the health field, you hear a lot of this, like everything happens for a reason. You just have to have a positive attitude. And I was.

very frustrated by that. I remember feeling very frustrated by that at a young age. But I decided to become a therapist really like on a whim. I had like a useless degree in college and was like, Oh, I think I'll go to grad school. I always wanted to help people or listen to people in some way. And I went to grad school and then this became my career, you know, right, right out of grad school. And I was very

annoyed by a lot of the stuff I was taught in grad school, how heavy the focus was on thoughts and changing your thinking. All that stuff is important, but there's a lot of other stuff that we have to deal with, I think, before we get to that.

Srini Rao: Yeah. Well, you know, I think that one thing I wonder about as a therapist, like how you see this differ across cultures. And I'll give you a bit more context. So I was 36 when I landed in a therapist's office for the first time after a bad breakup that just kind of made a mess of my head because, you know, I grew up in a culture where anything mental health related is stigmatized. But when it comes to your sort of perspective on sort of this excessive positive thinking, like how have you seen it differ across cultures? Like.

based on sort of the experiences you've had as a therapist with your patients or people that you've talked to.

Whitney Goodman: Yeah, culture plays a huge role. I think just for context, you know, I practice the majority of my career in Miami, Florida. My mom is Cuban and I worked with mainly a Hispanic population in Miami and therapy is still very stigmatized, you know, within that population and in others like you mentioned, you know, being 36, being the first time you're in a therapist's office, that's very different than some people whose parents had them in therapy at like five, you know, and

Srini Rao: Right.

Whitney Goodman: It's interesting. I think this idea of positivity and self-improvement has largely been believed to be like a very American thing. And people say that about therapy too, like, oh, that's like a white people thing. You know, you hear these comments. And I'm noticing that it's starting to spread like around the globe that now I think it's more generational than it is cultural in a lot of ways. Like you see young people in a...

variety of cultures really starting to question and try to uncover their emotions and how they want to be in the world in a much bigger way than their parents or their grandparents did.

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, I know from having read your About page that you are also a parent, so I have two questions for you, and this is something I'm always curious about with people who have either had parents who are therapists or therapists who have kids. Are you immune to all the bullshit that all the other parents have to deal with, like teenagers who are assholes, or kids who are a pain in the ass at various moments? How do you distinguish between being a mom and being a therapist? You have to turn.

Whitney Goodman: Hehehehe

Srini Rao: How do you turn off the therapist? Because I've had people, I've asked people, it's like, do you ever just feel like saying to your mom, stop being my therapist and start being my mom?

Whitney Goodman: You know, it's funny that I actually find that my family members like want me to inhabit the role of therapist maybe more than I want to. You know, I'm the one that's like, Oh, I'm off the clock. I don't want to like I don't have that hat on. Now, my son is too. So he doesn't really have the ability yet to tell me those things.

Srini Rao: Hahaha!

Whitney Goodman: But I do find myself being much more relaxed as a parent than I expected to be, just because I feel like I did so much work on myself before I decided to have a child that I feel pretty secure in the decisions I'm making. And then if my child decides in 10 years, hey, mom, I didn't like that, I feel like I have the skills to be able to be reflective and talk that out with him.

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao: Yeah, well, it's funny because I remember when I had my friend Sara Peck here and I was asking her about parenting because I'm not a parent. I have a one year old nephew and I'm kind of watching how quickly he's evolving and it's really funny to watch. But she said parenting is a giant shit show. She said basically you do whatever you can and your job is to tell this kid, hey kid, we're going to do our best, but we're going to screw you up. And your job is to go to therapy and fix all of it when you grow up.

Whitney Goodman: Exactly. I mean, I think it's good as a parent to be honest, like I'm going to make mistakes. And that's something I talk about a lot in my work is that every parent makes mistakes. The good ones can just own up to it and admit when they've done something wrong.

Srini Rao: Well, based on your research, one of the things that I have found as byproduct of a thousand plus interviews in the show is like, I feel like this show has been the education I should have gotten in school but never did. And I wonder, you know, as a parent, how you think about what aspects of the kind of stuff that you talk about in your work and you write about that we should be integrating into how we educate people from an early age and what that specifically would look like.

Whitney Goodman: Oh my gosh, I think all of this should be being taught to kids from a young age, you know, how to manage your emotions, how to label them, what different feelings feel like, how to express those emotions, whether that's through talking or physical activity or creative outlets. I really strongly believe that we could get rid of a lot of the world's problems if we taught people

from a young age how to manage their feelings. Because if you think about why some of the biggest injustices happen in the world, a lot of it is because we don't know how to talk to each other. We don't know how to say what's going on. We get angry, and we lash out, and there's all these repressed feelings. And I didn't learn about any of that stuff really until I went to grad school and decided to become a therapist. And I could see how if you'd been

didn't become a therapist, you would have never learned about any of this stuff.

Srini Rao: Yeah, I mean, mine, for me, it's primarily been conversations with people like you, over 10 years that have kind of taught me all of this. And it's funny, David Brooks has a new book out. It's on my desk. I've just been reading and he talks about this. It's called How to Know a Person. And one of the things he talks about most in that book over and over is that people need to be seen, feel, you know, feel seen, you know, heard and understood. And he said, and we don't teach that at all in our schools.

Whitney Goodman: Right.

Whitney Goodman: That's so true. We don't at all. If anything, we teach people how to shut down everything they're feeling and almost try to become robots.

Srini Rao: Hmm, yeah. So what was the sort of impetus for writing this book and getting it out into the world? What were the patterns that you were seeing that made you realize that you needed to say this? Like I said, it was one of the most refreshing takes I'd seen, but I wanna hear the backstory.

Whitney Goodman: Thank you. When I was in grad school, I started interning at a cancer support center. And I worked mainly with people who had been diagnosed with cancer or their family members. And I noticed the immense pressure that was put on these people to be happy, to be positive. There was this expectation that if you were negative, you were going to die from cancer. It was really overt.

In every group that we had, there were these discussions about like, well, you have to be positive. You have to look on the bright side. And it always just really bothered me. I was like, what a crazy pressure to put on someone that's going through such a difficult time. And I continued working with this population after I graduated. And that's when I started doing research on positive thinking and especially how it pertained to cancer patients. And I really couldn't find very much efficacy.

of this line of thinking. There were no studies showing that somebody lived longer because they had a positive attitude. There were studies that social supports helped, things like that, but nothing about positive thinking. And so when I went into private practice years later, I saw this phenomenon coming up among all my clients, not just people who had cancer, just regular people that were constantly saying things like, I know I should be grateful,

but I just need to be more positive, blah, blah. And I was like, gosh, everybody feels this way. Around the same time, I was starting an Instagram account and growing that, and I noticed that the phenomenon in, I think it was around 2018, was becoming even more pervasive on social media. And I decided to start writing about it online.

I made an Instagram post and I didn't have a lot of followers at the time, but that post is really like what grew my account, I think, to those first like 10,000 people. And I just kept talking about it from there and it eventually turned into a book several years later.

Srini Rao: Well, on that note, I want to bring back a clip from a conversation I had with Dan Pink, where he talks a bit about this. Take a listen.

Srini Rao: I mean, I feel like you're echoing that sentiment, but that was just one portion of what he was talking about there, but you've kind of expanded on that idea in quite a bit of detail.

And you opened the book early on by saying, positive thinking has been packaged and sold as the cure to all our problems, from good vibes only bumper stickers to scroll after scroll of pretty design Instagram affirmations to life is good t-shirts and gurus promising you're only one positive thought away from happiness, we're consistently told that looking on the bright side will help us avoid difficult experiences and feelings. And obviously, to your point, I think most of us know that that's kind of bullshit.

because like I remember even when we had Annie Duke here, she's like, let's dissect this whole law of attraction thing. And she gave us the most absurd example, which was like, okay, if you think positive about getting stuck in traffic and you decide to get on the 405 in LA at five o'clock in the evening, you're gonna be stuck in traffic. The positive thinking isn't gonna make a damn bit of difference. You're a moron for getting on the road at that time. That doesn't make you a positive thinker, it makes you an idiot in my mind. So talk to me about that. How do we even get here?

Whitney Goodman: Mm-hmm.

Whitney Goodman: Hehehehe Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

Yeah, so I started looking into the history of positive thinking, the law of attraction, all of that. And it's really woven into the fabric of what we believe as Americans, right? It's in our constitution, the right to the pursuit of happiness. And I think when you look back at the history of religion, trying to integrate people into the workforce early on, you see all of these.

recurring examples of God wants you to be happy, God wants you to be happy and rich. You know, we're constantly told that happiness is the highest value that we can achieve, right? You hear these quotes like, happy people are the best people. And I think for so many people that is their goal, right? I hear people come to therapy saying, I just want to be happy. And they have no idea what they're doing.

that even really means that it's become an absolute cultural obsession at this point.

Srini Rao: Yeah. Well, you know, I think the, the sort of core insight that I came to on when I, after I finished reading your book and as I'm going through David Brooks, I was like, after just all these conversations, like, wow, happiness is like a moving target that you're never going to hit.

Whitney Goodman: Yes, 100%. It's fleeting. It's an emotion. We can't sit in any emotion forever, nor should we.

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm. Well, let's talk specifically about what toxic positivity is. You say that toxic positivity is the advice that we might technically want to integrate but are incapable of synthesizing at the moment. Instead, it typically leaves us feeling silenced, judged, and misunderstood. So expand on that for me and give me examples. I mean, I'll share some of my own, but I want to hear your take on this.

Whitney Goodman: Mm-hmm.

Whitney Goodman: I think toxic positivity as a cultural phenomenon is really this overwhelming, unrelenting pressure to be happy all the time, no matter what the circumstances are. Whatever you're feeling, you're trying to get back to happiness. It's the optimal state, right? And it's something that we do to ourselves and we do to other people in a couple of ways. And so some examples of that would really just be trying to encourage someone to look on the bright side no matter what.

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm.

Whitney Goodman: pushing them into positivity and happiness much too quickly. And some of the more obvious ways we do this are through statements like, everything happens for a reason, time heals all wounds, just look on the bright side, you have to be positive if you wanna succeed, things like that.

Srini Rao: Yeah. Well, one tendency I've noticed when I've been going through something difficult, like I very distinctly remember, you know, like this breakup that made a mess of my head, I got on the phone with a friend and it was one of those breakups, you know, where you literally want to tell everybody until they're sick of hearing you talk about it. And then finally you get sick of yourself talking about it. Um, but what I saw that I remember very distinctly stood out to me, like I was with a friend and she was a coach.

Whitney Goodman: Hehehehe

Srini Rao: And I remember telling her, I was like, stop being my fucking coach and just listen to me whine about this breakup. I don't want to coach right now. And like, I realized that when bad things happen to good people, or when bad things happen in general, like one of the cruelest things that we do is actually try to give them advice, like without any understanding of what they're going through. Like we have no sense for the context.

Whitney Goodman: Yeah.

Whitney Goodman: Yes, that is the most important piece here that you're highlighting is that when we give people this like neatly packaged positive advice too quickly, it sets off alarm bells for them. Like you're describing here of like, wait, how are you giving me advice when you don't even understand what I'm going through? You haven't made any attempts to ask me questions or to get to know what I'm feeling. And we do this in really big situations like

someone dies and you'll be like, oh, they're in a better place now. Enjoy the happy memories you had with them, you know, these really well-intentioned things, but it's like, oh my gosh, you want me to just integrate that right now during the most horrible moment of my life when actually all I want is for someone to listen to me.

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean I had a family member go through some difficult I realized I was like there's nothing I can say to this person This is not it's not even my place to say something. My job is to literally just be there. That is it

Whitney Goodman: Yes.

Whitney Goodman: Mm-hmm. Yeah, but we're obsessed with being the ones to be able to fix things for people. And that's something I am very prone to and have had to work on throughout my career a lot is the desire to make it all better. I think that's where this comes from a lot of the time.

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao: Yeah, I mean, I see this particularly with friends who are coaches and even to your point, you said, you know, they're trying to understand and they'll go through the whole coaching stick of like, okay, let me use my model that, you know, I do to with clients. And I'm like, I don't need you to treat me like a client right now. I need you to basically just be a friend who listens to me whine.

Whitney Goodman: Mm-hmm. Yeah, because you want compassion and you want to have your pain be seen by someone else. I mean, sometimes that's all I'm doing in therapy is just looking at someone while they share the darkest thing that has happened to them and showing them through my presence like, I'm not scared of this. I'm not going to run away from it. I'm not going to leave you alone in this. And that's enough without me even saying anything.

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao: Yeah, I think it was Brit Frank. I don't remember the exact quote, but she said, the point of therapy isn't going there to fix yourself, it's to know yourself.

Whitney Goodman: Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao: And I think that what I found to your point was like after six months, my therapist was like, you're like, I think about a month. And he's like, you realize we're having the same conversation every week. Um, and what I came to was this realization that like, no matter how much I ruminate on this event in my life and replay it over and over again, I woke up one day and I was like, holy shit, the outcome is still the same. So talk to you about, you know, sort of why we do that, um, as it relates to what you say here, when you say positive thinking is often abandoned in a bullet

Whitney Goodman: Yeah.

Srini Rao: leads to emotional suppression, which is destructive to our body's, mind's relationships in society. Because like I said, no amount of positive thinking was getting me out of this like rumination trap that I could not escape until I finally woke up one day and realized that, wait a minute, the outcome is exactly the same. So what the hell is going on there?

Whitney Goodman: When you're ruminating and you try to use positive thinking to get yourself out of that loop, really all you're doing is suppressing how you're feeling and stuffing it down. You're telling yourself, I shouldn't feel this way. I need to stop feeling this way. And I need to like get over it, move on and make things better. And I always like to point out here that like too much rumination can always be bad for you as well. You know, you don't wanna stay thinking, circling about a breakup.

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm.

Whitney Goodman: for too long to the point where that starts to bring you down. We have to kind of strike this fine balance where we acknowledge where we're at in this moment and we allow ourselves to fully process it, which means like talking about it, recognizing the feelings, allowing ourselves to cry, to like move through it instead of try to shove it down and like put it away in a box.

Srini Rao: Yeah. Well, this is another thing that really struck me. So that most positive thinking literature provides us with a simple formula. Change your thoughts, change your life. This is so powerful because it taps into our biggest fears, humans' uncertainty when we know we feel safe, and safety is everything. So talk to me about that because I feel like I see book after book, blog post after blog post about just a number and whatever outcome it is, and then change your life.

You know, the seven step formula to make you rich, six figures in six months. Like, I mean, one after another, I mean, I could just rattle them off one after another. And the sort of big realization that I came to over the past year and a half was that almost all of this doesn't account for context. Like we are completely blind to context when we give prescriptive advice and when we take it. Which is why jokingly kept saying, working on a book titled Everybody's Full of Shit Including Me. Because in certain contexts, that's true.

Whitney Goodman: Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I think this is what infuriates me the most about like positivity culture and the law of attraction, all that is this false promise of control over your life and this idea that if it's not working for you, it's because you're doing something wrong. And so, you know, I've seen people argue like people get in car accidents, they get cancer, they get all these things because they weren't

doing the law of attraction right, you know, and it places the all of the responsibility on the individual and leaves out all the context, which we know is just it's insane. It's not possible to do that.

Srini Rao: Yeah, well, probably one of my favorite quotes from the book was when you said, with all these successful programs floating around, proposing easy to follow formulas is a wonder why we don't have more millionaires. And so with that, I actually pulled a clip from my old mentor, Greg, and I wanted to get your take on this because I think that it really echoes some of what you were saying. Take a listen.

Whitney Goodman: Yeah.

Srini Rao: So tell me, how do we get to a point where we seem to be just in complete denial of what he's talking about?

Whitney Goodman: I think a lot of this comes down to dollars and making money. And that's what's behind a lot of this belief that's being pushed forward of like, you can achieve anything that you put your mind to, and I'm going to tell you exactly how to do it. And we see that happening in the business world, in psychology, in health care, where there are people who are playing on that desire in people and saying like,

anybody can achieve this if they put their mind to it and follow these steps. And I talk about this in the book, you know, like the saying of you can do anything you put your mind to. And that's not true for some people, you know, particularly with the people I've worked with who have disabilities or chronic illness. This is a really dangerous form of toxic positivity to tell someone like you are your only limit, you know, and to not take into consideration the real tangible limitations of their health or

their body that they might be working with. And so I agree with his sentiment that we have to consider each person's unique situation, their talents, their flaws and take all of that into consideration. We're not all starting off in the same place.

Srini Rao: Yeah. Well, yeah, that's the big thing. I just like I said, find over and over, you know, as a book after book, like particularly the ones that offer prescriptive advice. And I'm like, there is no accounting for context in any of this. Like this is not relevant to somebody who's getting shot at and working three jobs to put food on the table.

Srini Rao: Well, let's talk a bit about the role of social media in all of this, because I know that you kind of allude to some of this. And I take individual notes for everything that I highlight. And I remember writing a note titled, these popular platitudes perpetuate a culture of toxic positivity. And yet, I mean, our Instagram feeds are just riddled with them every day.

Whitney Goodman: Yeah, I think this is something that I've started to see a shift around over the last year or so it's gone out of fashion, at least as much but between 2018, 2021, there was like a huge, you know, positive thinking culture on social media, especially during the pandemic, you know, encouraging people to like have a good attitude while they went through this crazy thing.

I don't, there was that video of like celebrities like singing in their house, telling everybody just to like smile and enjoy being at home during the pandemic. And that was one of the worst examples of toxic positivity on social media, you know, at this time where it's like people are really suffering and we're being told that we just need to like bootstrap our way and have a good attitude about it. And I think this has been perpetuated, you know, by

influencers only posting the good, perfect things about their life and social media just became this hotbed for like living vicariously through perfect, happy people.

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm, yeah. Yeah, and the way I describe it once is, I say it's kind of like looking through the window of somebody's house as you're walking down the street and thinking that you know everything about them from that one glance.

Whitney Goodman: 100%. Yeah, when you're seeing like 10%.

Srini Rao: Yeah. So let's talk about negativity in the various aspects of it. Because, you know, I mean, to Dan Ping's point earlier, like you want more positive than negative emotions, you don't want to be this like eternal pessimist. Like, I can tell you, like I have one of my best friends and I were like each other's yin and yang, because like, he will check me when I'm, you know, like, too on the side of being skeptical. And I will call him when I think he's being, you know, naively optimistic.

and unrealistic. And so, I mean, in that sense, we're a good balance for each other. But he tends to swing way to the other side. I'm kind of somewhere in the middle, I think. But you talk about complaining as one place where we see quite a bit of negativity. But I realized just from reading your book, I was like, OK, you're right. The complaining does serve a purpose. So somebody sends me an email complaining about something.

Whitney Goodman: Hehehe

Srini Rao: related, it's a customer service issue and I can actually solve it. And I don't think we think about complaining as anything positive necessarily.

Whitney Goodman: Yeah, I actually think most of us are like, Oh, I need to stop complaining. You know, we have like this goal to stop doing it. But complaining has a really big function in our lives. It tells us what we're upset about, what needs to change. It is what creates change in the different areas of our life. If you don't complain, identify the negative thing, nothing.

can happen from there. Nothing will change. And we see that, you know, in customer service, in your relationships, at work, there's all these areas where we have to be able to identify like the negative piece, make it known, and then do something about it. I think where it gets to be tricky is when people don't know how to complain effectively. And so they get stuck in the loop.

Srini Rao: Nah.

Srini Rao: Talk to me about the loop. Like, what is that? And, you know, as I was reading this chapter, I was thinking, how does this apply to family members in particular who are difficult, you know, ones who you're really close to? Like, because I mean, there are things I'm sure I remember joking with my dad. I'm like, I'm, you know, like when we go to my parents' house to visit from Boulder, usually at the end of two weeks, I think they're as ready for us to leave as we are ready to leave.

Whitney Goodman: Yeah. So when you get stuck in a complaint loop, it will feel that way. Like you're trapped, you're going in circles. You just keep talking about the same thing over and over and there's no fixing it. There's no resolution. And you might not even really know where you want to go with that complaint. Now, sometimes we just want to vent. We just want to like get something off our chest. The example you just gave about...

like being with your family, you know, after you leave them, all of you guys might just wanna talk about how annoying so-and-so was for 10 minutes, you know, just to like get it off your chest and then you're done with it. But if you notice that you're complaining about the same thing constantly and you're not doing anything about it, you're not making any changes, that would be a point where if you were my client and I was the therapist, I would be like, okay, you bring this up a lot. Like what is the need?

under this, what would you like to see change? What do you wish was different? What is the feeling behind that complaint? And that's where complaints can be really valuable. They hold a lot of information about our inner world.

Srini Rao: So I'll tell you a story related to that. So my mom is kind of OCD. She wants everything to be immaculate. Our house looks like Buckingham Palace most of the time. And I don't know if you ever saw it. The oatmeal actually did a hilarious cartoon about loading the dishwasher, which apparently is like a big fight between people. And I had no idea. But my mom was very insistent that I load the dishwasher in a particular way. And one morning it just kind of got on my nerves and I had enough. And I remember we went to therapy that day and the therapist literally said,

Whitney Goodman: Heheheheh.

Srini Rao: He's like, we talked about your love a lot. He's like, you can either keep going to battle with her, except that it's not going to change. And when I came back and I, my dad said, I told my dad that he's like, I could have saved you 50 bucks and told you that.

Whitney Goodman: Just learn how to load the dishwasher like she does. Everything will get better.

Srini Rao: Yeah, but I mean, that's like, I think the dishwasher is a metaphor for sort of a greater idea, which is that there are just certain things that are going to drive you crazy about people who are close to you in your life and probably things about you that drive them crazy that aren't going to change. I'm expected to change. Like that's the one ongoing theme here. But my mom is not going to change when it comes to that. I have to learn how to load the dishwasher. Which to me is really not that important because I'm like, they're in the dishwasher. Nobody's sleeping in the dishwasher.

Whitney Goodman: Yeah.

Whitney Goodman: Yep.

Whitney Goodman: Yeah, but these are all these little moments of like, power struggles, you know, over certain things that happen in families. And when we are complaining about the dishwasher, we are complaining about something else, right? Like you said, it's a sign for nobody listens to me, you're trying to control me, whatever it is.

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao: Yeah. Well, so, you know, I decided that I want to have your episode be the first of the new year. So I thought it would be a perfect time to talk about two things, goal setting and affirmations. Uh, like I feel like affirmations for the most part are just mental masturbation. Like vision boards are basically giving people an excuse to sit on their ass and stare at a piece of paper. And I'm like, do you really think that that's going to make money fall from the sky? Like

I can tell you of all the times I've made vision boards, I was like, okay, of all those things, I don't think any of them have materialized. So, yeah, talk to me about what is going on, particularly at New Year's, why do we kind of have this sort of crazy outlook of all these things we think we're gonna be able to do? It's like, yeah, I'll be a millionaire by the end of the year, even when you're making 10 grand a month. What role does toxic positivity play in all of that? And as people are thinking about...

Whitney Goodman: Hehehe

Srini Rao: the start of the year, like how would you want them to think about it differently from the way they typically would based on all the other crap that they've read.

Whitney Goodman: So I think we love as humans the ability to think about like, oh, starting fresh and endless possibilities and different options. Like, that's enticing and exciting. The biggest pitfall that I see people fall into here is that they take on too much at once. They try to make too many changes in a short period of time that they are not set up to make. So I always recommend that people set goals that are.

achievable and realistic and you have to get really honest with yourself about being realistic. The gym is a goal that a lot of people tend to set at the beginning of the year and you'll have someone who has not done any movement maybe in five years saying, I'm going to go to the gym seven days a week. That to me would be very unrealistic and setting yourself up for failure. It might be better to say,

I have a goal of going to the gym one day a week. And once I can go to the gym one day a week for three weeks, I'm gonna add on another day and I'm gonna add on another day and try to really make sure that you're able to create momentum for yourself. Because if you set yourself up to fail and you don't achieve your goal, you'll be like, ah, well, I couldn't do it anyways. And that's usually when the goal fails and goes out the window, you know, by like January 10th.

Srini Rao: Yeah. Well, I remember James clear telling a story about one of his readers, um, using his atomic habits model, just to like build the identity of the guy would drive to the gym, but not go in and he did that for 30 days and then he would go in for five minutes and that guy probably lost a hundred pounds.

Whitney Goodman: Yeah.

Whitney Goodman: Right, right, exactly. That's a perfect example of that.

Srini Rao: Yeah. Well, so let's talk about the industry at large. I mean, this is actually one thing that I've seen over and over. I've asked Steven Kotler about it. Wiley McGraw, who we had here, had a really great term for it. He called it the self-help hell loop, which is you see this pattern. And I've seen this over and over again where I kind of described this as three groups of people when it comes to self-improvement. There are the people who just go from seminar to seminar.

There are people who go to the thing. It ends up being a catalyst for change. And then there are the people who are there, but they would have gotten the result even if they weren't. And I feel like the entire industry is built on the first group of people.

Whitney Goodman: Hmm, that's very interesting. I haven't heard that. What did he call it again? The self help? Yeah, that's I have to look into that. That's such an interesting way of identifying that.

Srini Rao: The self-help hell loop.

Srini Rao: It was a, yeah, I'd never heard a phrase like that. And I was like, that actually is such a good way to describe it, but it's so true. Right. Like, I mean, how many Tony Robbins seminars do you go to before you're like, okay, I need to go actually put this shit into action in my life. Like, you know, that's what blows my mind is that I see this over and over. Like I've seen people literally will have a hundred podcasts that they're listening to. I'm like, wait, how are you retaining anything from a hundred podcasts?

Whitney Goodman: Right.

Yep.

Whitney Goodman: Yeah. And at some point, you know, I talk about this in the book, like I think the industry becomes quite like predatory on those people, you know, the people that are never going to act, that are just going to keep putting money into something. And I think those people are not going to find what they're looking for in self-help. You know, I almost want to be like, I try to tell people, you know, don't buy another book, don't buy another course, whether it's mine or someone else's.

Srini Rao: Oh yeah.

Whitney Goodman: until you figure it out, like, am I sleeping? Am I drinking enough water? Am I, you know, talking to people who support me? Like, there's all these other things in our life that we really have to work on that are mainly, you know, free to work on before I think we can integrate a lot of this other higher level stuff that is being discussed in a lot of the arenas of the self-help industry.

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao: Yeah, I mean, I think that one of the things you talked about was this idea of the difference between fulfillment and happiness. And, you know, you say that finding fulfillment requires living a value driven life. A value driven life is quite different from a happiness driven life. In a happiness driven life, we're focused on maintaining a good mood, seeking out only positive and happy experiences and achieving happiness as the ultimate goal. A value driven life allows you to prioritize what's important.

to you and find a path to get there. And I think you alluded to this idea of, you know something's wrong. Like I don't remember the exact quote, I have so many of them from your book here, but about, oh, here it is. Here are a few key signs that healing or self-improvement is negatively impacting someone, constantly finding new things to improve or fix, thinking there is something wrong with you. And...

Sometimes I kind of feel like, wait a minute, am I reading all these books partially because it's my job or am I partially also doing exactly what you say? Like if all your daily activities are revolved around improving yourself in some way, you know, and I feel like in some way I kind of think I have friends who actually live like that.

Whitney Goodman: Mm-hmm.

Whitney Goodman: Yeah, I think we all know someone like that just it's it kind of feels like it's never going to be enough or never going to be good enough. There's always this next place of improvement to get there. And when I work with people like that, I wonder like how scary it would be for them to stop and to slow down and to just be with themselves. And I think a lot of them, they can't that it sounds terrifying to them.

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao: That sounds terrifying to me, to be honest. Like, yeah, the idea of just sitting and doing nothing is, that's very, very difficult for me. Like, I think that, you know, I've seen that in myself, like what you're talking about, where it's like, okay, and my friend actually called me out on it, and he's kind of in this camp too. Like, he does yoga, he eats healthy. Like, basically we told him, like, we're done accommodating your bullshit dietary needs. We don't wanna eat grass for dinner so you can eat on your own. Like, I'm 45 now, so I'm over accommodating you.

Whitney Goodman: Hehehehehehehehe

Srini Rao: Um, but the funny thing is like, he called me out on this. He said, you know, I know you, when you don't get out of the house, he's like, or you don't go and socialize. He's like, your default is that you'll work. And that was largely a byproduct of the pandemic. Cause before that I was like snowboarding three times a week. And I realized it was like, I got trapped into this basement and one of my friends, one of the other roommate who lived with me, we were about to resign lease. And he was leaving too. He said, Trini, I know you, if you resign this lease, you're going to sit in this basement, like a hermit all summer and read. And fortunately I didn't ended up going to Brazil with him, but

Whitney Goodman: Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao: Like I realized like I think we all have those tendencies, particularly because if you look at our peer group like yours and mine, right? We're both published authors. Think about the people that are our reference group like Seth Godin, Ryan Holiday, especially if you're in a Penguin portfolio where I am. It's like, wow, these are all the people who are in this imprint. What am I doing here?

Whitney Goodman: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I am a therapist who talks about these things and that it happens to me too. Like I am extreme overachiever, workaholic. Like that is what comes naturally to me, you know, just like you're saying. It's something I have to really acknowledge and like focus on and deliberately decide to like not be that way.

Srini Rao: Hmm?

Srini Rao: Yeah. So we'll talk about that more. How do you balance that with ambition? How do you deliberately not decide to be that way, but also not become just a lazy person who sits on your couch eating potato chips? Because I think that's the fear for people like me is that I'll just end up sitting around doing nothing.

Whitney Goodman: For me it's been...

Whitney Goodman: Yeah, which is so funny because that's probably so far away from like who you are at your core. Like, I could be like sick and still be like, oh, I got to do this thing today or, you know, I'm recording a podcast episode when I'm like, should be in bed, you know, whatever it is, that I think it's such like an irrational fear probably for people who feel that way. But for me, it's been all about like scheduling.

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm.

Whitney Goodman: my life in a way that I know this is time for work and this is time to be a mom and this is time to socialize. I have these blocks where nothing is really able to bleed in to the other. That's been one of the benefits of parenthood is I can't work when I'm with my kid. I have to be intentional about that.

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oh, I told you I have a one-year-old nephew, and he's, I mean, you have a son, so you probably know this. Boys like to climb into everything. Boys apparently have a ridiculously high risk tolerance and no concept of what recklessness is, at least from what I've observed in my nephew. You know, it's like any household item is dangerous, and you're just like, and I realized, my sister left him with us for three days because she went to.

Whitney Goodman: Oh yeah.

Whitney Goodman: Hehehehe

Srini Rao: uh... mexico for a wedding and i remember when she came back to pick him up at that night after my parents left i looked at him like is it just me or are you guys completely exhausted uh... because you're right it's a i was like you literally cannot take your eyes off of him for even a minute

Whitney Goodman: Yep.

Whitney Goodman: Mm-hmm. You can't. Or something bad will happen. So it's really like my brain now is like, this is the work time. This is the parenting time. And it helps a lot.

Srini Rao: Yeah. Wow. Well, I feel like I could talk to you about this all day. I mean, there's so much depth to what you've written about. So you know, as you know, you've kind of given people some stuff to think about, like, what are the things that people should sort of have, you know, like be aware of as they get bombarded with, you know, things for New Year's and stuff about changing their life in the New Year? Because I'm guessing they'll

see their inbox just littered with offerings for online courses and new books and all sorts of shit. Like what should they be, you know, sort of like cautiously aware of?

Whitney Goodman: Yeah, there was a question that I believe her name is Sonia Renee Taylor said at a talk that she did that's who is profiting off of my insecurity here. And that's a question I always like to come back to whenever I see any marketing like that is trying to convince me I need to change something about myself, trying to inspire urgency is like, is this something I really need to change about myself? Is somebody going to profit?

Srini Rao: oof

Whitney Goodman: off of me feeling like this is a problem with me. And just investigating like where is that need and that desire coming from and making sure that it's truly genuine to you, you know, and not something you started feeling because of someone else.

Srini Rao: Beautiful. I love it. Well, I have one final question for you, which is how we finish all of our interviews the unmistakable creative What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable?

Whitney Goodman: Oh gosh, I don't know. That's a hard one. I have to think about like, I don't even know if I'm, you can cut this out if you want, but I think I have to get clear on what my definition of unmistakable is. Not able to be mistaken for anything else. So something that is very unique.

Srini Rao: Yeah, that's a good one. I mean, when you write a book called Unmistakable, you have to actually define it, as I learned. So I define it, I mean, you kind of alluded to it, but I define it as something so distinctive that nobody else could do it but you.

Whitney Goodman: Yes.

Whitney Goodman: To me, bringing this back full circle to the book, it would be living authentically to yourself, living in alignment with your values and really being confident in all of your decisions.

Srini Rao: Awesome. Well, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your insights, your stories, and your wisdom with our listeners. Where can people find out more about you, your book, your work, and everything else?

Whitney Goodman: Yes, you can find me on all social media platforms at sit with wit. I also run an online community for adult family members working on their family relationships. It's called calling home and you can find that at calling home.co. Otherwise you can get toxic positivity anywhere books are sold.

Srini Rao: Amazing and for everybody listening we will wrap the show with that