Super Psyched: The 4 Types of Connection We All Need with Dr. Adam Dorsay

Have you ever stopped to think about what connection actually IS? How do you define the multi-faceted thing that we talk about all the time on this podcast? 

That’s what our guest, Dr. Adam Dorsay, is tasked with in this episode. 

Dr. Dorsay is a licensed psychologist, executive coach to high-achieving adults in Silicon Valley, host of the award-winning podcast, Super Psyched, and presenter of two amazing TEDx Talks. Today he discusses his new book, Super Psyched: Unleash The Power of the Four Types of Connection and Live the Life You Love (which I highly recommend).

This interview was so inspiring to me; I think the two of us could have talked for days. One of my biggest personal takeaways is to pay attention to not just my connection with others, but also my connection to the world and to something greater.

Listen in as we discuss the four types of connection and how to find the right combination for ourselves. Spoiler alert – it’s not a one-size-fits-all.

In this episode you’ll hear about:

• What connection is – Dr. Dorsay defines it as an emotional internal response – and the four different types
• Anecdotes and practical tips to enhance connection, such as using a "driveway test" to evaluate interactions and employing a "walk-on song" to boost confidence
• The importance of self-connection – including self-awareness and self-love – which is the foundation of all other connections
• Societal pressure to appear cool and how it can hinder genuine connection (and why we should allow ourselves to experience awe and excitement instead)
• Alexithymia, the spotlight effect, plus, how we psyche ourselves up for small talk

Resources & Links

Read Super Psyched by Adam Dorsay, listen to his TEDx Talks, and listen to his podcast, Super Psyched.

Check out Dr. Adam Dorsey's book "Super Psyched" and his TEDx talks for further insights on connection.

Like what you hear? Visit my website, leave me a voicemail, and follow me on Instagram and TikTok!

Want to take this conversation a step further? Send this episode to a friend. Tell them you found it interesting and use what we just talked about as a conversation starter the next time you and your friend hang out!

This episode is sponsored by Slowly, a digital pen pal app used by over 10 million people worldwide. If you’ve been looking for a low-pressure way to connect with someone completely outside your normal friendship circle, this is it. Exchange letters at your own pace, no small talk panic required.

Download Slowly free and get 30% off Slowly Plus using my link: https://open.slowly.app/miXL/l8ei5iw6

WANT MORE?

My book, Are We Friends Yet? hits shelves June 16. Get on the waitlist for pre-order bonuses + a first look.

Dive into The Connection Reset. A 10-day private podcast to help you see the abundance of connection that already exists in your day-to-day (Yes. Really. I promise you have more than you realize). Start today. 

Transcript

Podcast Intro/Outro: 1:28

All right, gang. Here's to nights that turn into mornings and friends that turn into family. Cheers. Hello, hello, and welcome to the Friendship IRL podcast. I'm your host, Alex Alexander. Each week we talk about what is working(and what is not) in our friendships, community and connections. Have you ever wished you could sit down and have a conversation about what is really going on in your friendships? Well, you found your people. Join us as we dive into real life stories and explore new ways to approach these connections. Together, we're reimagining the rules of friendship

Alex Alexander [Narration]: 2:24

what connection actually is? Like, really thought about it? Because we talk about connection all the time. We know that we need it, we feel its absence, we chase after it. But do we actually understand what connection is. Today's guest, Dr. Adam Dorsey, is about to break this down for us in a way that completely shifted my perspective on connection. And trust me, we all know I talk about connection all the time, but I'll be the first to admit I've never really thought about what it really is. Dr Dorsey is a licensed psychologist and an executive coach in Silicon Valley, where he works with high achieving adults. We're talking executives, entrepreneurs and even professional athletes. He's also the host of the award winning podcast, Super Psyched, and he's given not one but two. TEDx talks, and I absolutely love both. Highly suggest one is about men and their emotions, and the other is about friendship in adulthood. Now he's here today to talk about his new book, Super Psyched: Unleash the Power of the Four Types of Connection and Live the Life You Love. And his book tackles something I find fascinating, this seemingly unshakable unhappiness so many people experience. But here's what's interesting, Dr Dorsey suggests that the solution isn't what we might think. It's about restoring or creating deep bonds of connection to what truly matters in our lives. And when I say connection, I'm not just talking about friendships or relationships. Dr Dorsey breaks connection down into four distinct types, connecting to yourself, connecting to others, connecting to the world and connecting to something greater. Each type plays its own unique role in giving us more energy, higher performance, better relationships, and ultimately, a more meaningful life. In this conversation, we're diving into what connection actually means exploring the four types of connection. And then this is the part I love. We're figuring out how to find our own unique mix of connection. Because, spoiler alert, it's not a one size fits all. So whether you're feeling that unexplainable disconnect or you're just curious about how to deepen your existing connections. This conversation is going to give you a whole new framework for thinking about connection. Let's dive in.

Alex Alexander: 5:18

Hi Adam, welcome to the Friendship IRL Podcast.

Adam Dorsay: 5:22

Alex, great to meet you. I feel like we are IRL, even if we are not just because the connection that we're having, no pun intended, is quite awesome. So so great to be with you.

Alex Alexander: 5:33

Well, thank you. I couldn't agree more, and I feel like I have spent the last few days just hanging out with you, as I have been sitting in coffee shops and on my couch and all these places reading your new book. Super Psyched. Congratulations, by the way, on having it out in the world. It must feel so good.

Adam Dorsay: 5:57

Boy, it feels incredible. It feels a lot of things. I always say that feelings are social creatures. They tend to hang out. So I have a lot of feelings, but one of them is it feels good. One of them, it feels like relief to borrow from Brene Brown. It also is, you know, there's a vulnerability that accompanies it, like, What will people think about it and all the things, but the biggest ones are gratitude and excitement.

Alex Alexander: 6:20

Well, I'm grateful for your vulnerability to put it out in the world, because I really connected with this book. I. Really enjoyed it, and I'm excited for others to read it. But to start off this episode, I just always love to know, I mean, I've written 300 pages. It is a labor of love. Write a book. It is such a mental game. So you really, there has to be a drive, like there has to be a reason. What drove you to write? Super Psyched,

Adam Dorsay: 6:50

Alex, I love that question. One of my heroes is a guy named Irv yalem. He's a professor emeritus at Stanford, one of the MVPs of modern psychology, and he said every book he ever wrote bit him in the ass. And I love that visual because not necessarily looking at his ass, but I'm the idea, that metaphor, that simile, whatever you call it, I have difficulty between my similes and metaphors. But regardless, this was an idea that took hold of me. And I had started a few other books and I didn't finish them, but this one I knew I had to take to the finish line. There was no if ands or buts. This had to be finished. The reason I wrote it was, and the reason I was so had so much conviction around it was, I had been providing therapy for about 20,000 hours to individuals and couples, and this word connection kept showing up. I had had well over 200 episodes on my podcast. The word connection just kept showing up. There was one small problem. If you look up the word connection in the dictionary, it says, like connecting to things, to ideas, to people, that's that's not what people are talking about when they're talking about connection that they're seeking. And if you go to the American Psychological Associations definitions of words, there is no definition for connection. And yet, in our diagnostic and statistical manual, which is our big, big Bible of diagnoses and mental health, virtually everything we don't want, whether it's depression, anxiety, trauma, serious mental illness, they all have components of disconnection within them as symptoms, a hallmark of depression is not Being present because we're ruminating about the past, and oftentimes, if we're anxious, we are catastrophizing about the future and not really present, and we're not really connected with trauma, we got dissociation to personalization, and with serious mental illness, we may even have a break from reality itself. So it seems super logical that if at the heart of everything we don't want is disconnection. That at the very heart of everything we do want is connection. And I'm so grateful that we live in a time that positive psychology has been showing us what happiness and fulfillment looks like. I would go so far as saying the precursor to everything we want is connection. It is before all of the other stuff. And that's why I chose the term super psyched. It wasn't to be happy all the time. It was to be super connected to our psyches, to be connected to our thoughts, feelings and behaviors. So whether we are excited, sure, let's be really excited, but if we're grieving, let's be super connected to that as well.

Alex Alexander: 9:22

I I'm at a lost words a little bit because you are so right. Something I talk about a lot is how this word right, community is thrown around, like community is the solution for all these major societal problems. But then nobody talks about how we actually do that, which is what so much of my work is, you're right. I use the word connection. I throw that word around all the time, but I've never even looked up the definition. To be quite honest with you, I think we just all have this idea that we, you know, like, oh yeah, connection. I'm just like, I know what that is.

Adam Dorsay: 10:04

We do. It's funny, though, you're right, we do. And yet, if you ask somebody on the street, yeah, find what you mean by that, they'd be like,

Alex Alexander: 10:12

yeah, they wouldn't. They'd be like, Well, I feel connected to it. Yeah, it's one of those words you use it to define it, I think because what is the definition? And I I've told you this offline when we haven't been recording, so I'm going to tell it again now. So it's recorded. I have your entire definition of connection. The book is in front of me. It's open to that page. I have it highlighted. I have it starred. It is an amazing definition, and I know you're probably not going to read this full definition, but can you give everybody an idea of what your definition is like, a paraphrased version?

Adam Dorsay: 10:52

Sure, and that was a really important part of the book was to come up with a definition. I actually enlisted about 10 other licensed mental health practitioners to help me with a working definition. And I want to be clear, it's a working definition, and it may be changed at some point, but we all agreed that it was about aliveness, vitality, life force, and you know it when you feel it. And I'm just going to for the listener. Do you remember that time when you heard that song and you heard it for the very first time and you knew your life had changed? Or do you remember taking a bite? To something, and all of your senses came alive. Or you remember meeting that person, and nobody needed to explain to you that this was like your person, like you knew it. It's like the second you the two of you met, it was just like, Oh, back and forth George and Jerry from Seinfeld. It was, it was awesome. Or when you went to that place and all of your senses came alive, like when I went to Japan for the very first time, here I am like a nearly six foot nearly six foot two, hairy, you know, Mediterranean male. Nothing about me is Japanese. Yet when I got there, I was like, Oh, this is where I'm gonna be for a while. I need this place so it's vitality. And what I'm thinking about as I write this is we have this dash between our birth date and our death date. We want to be alive while we're living.

Alex Alexander: 12:10

And that's that's also in the book, by the way, and that was also like, triple underlined in my comment on, yeah, it's such a great line. It's such an important question to be asking ourselves.

Alex Alexander [Narration]: 12:23

The definition of connection in Super Psyched is so good, and Adam worked so hard on this definition that I want to just read it to you. So I am holding in my hand my copy of Super Psyched. I'm open to page 10, and I'm going to read this definition Adam writes, connection is an internal emotional response. It is a life force. It can be the quality of a relationship between two or more people or groups, but it also includes how a person relates to themselves in an authentic sense. Connection is often physical, but it can also be conceptual or symbolic, describing it as magnetic or electric captures this range of sensibilities. It can also include how we relate to art or work or some form of activity. True connection enables vitality and or safety. It can be what we refer to as love in its many forms. It can include how we relate to nature, and for some, it can be an expression of a relationship with a higher power. It is central to human life and the natural world. Now he goes on to give some examples. Says, you know when you are talking about something or someone you love and your face lights up, or when you make a statement that you know deep down is true, perhaps when you are engaged in an activity that energizes you, even when you are exerting mental or physical energy, that experience of being in a place that just feels so beautiful, like the Grand Canyon, and the amazement we feel that opens up our bodies and minds to the fact that there might be something far greater than ourselves. You know, Adam opens up this section of the book talking about how most people think of connection as being like a conversation with a friend or a family member or a dinner date, a phone call, a video chat before I read, Super Psyched. If you had asked me, What is connection, that is where my mind would have gone, right, the conversation, the phone call, the text messages, the dinner date, the experience deep down, I think I know that there's multiple types of connection, but I've just never really thought about it that way. But the reason I want to read you that definition is because I think it's so important that we do broaden our definition, that we absorb the fact that there are these four types of connection that we are experiencing and how that's playing out in our life as we do or do not experience them all.

Adam Dorsay: 15:18

So having a definition, having like I was listening to two of my very favorite humans on the planet in an interview, Amy Fuller was being interviewed by Conan O'Brien, and the only thing I didn't like about it is I just don't want it to end because I wish that it was like a, like a 40 hour interview. I could listen to those two go on forever, but Amy was talking about connection, and Conan was talking about connection. And you know that they're talking about what we're talking about, and yet, I don't think that if we ask them in the middle of the interview, like, Hey, hang a second. You know, Record scratch. Like, scratch. Like, what do you mean by connection? I think they first they'd say, rude, why are you interacting me? And the second thing they'd say is, as well educated and smart as they are, they too would stammer. So we need to have a definition of things. I believe that. I mean a very, very wise man told me that Confucius said that wisdom starts with the accuracy of naming things. I love that wisdom starts with the accuracy of naming things. You gotta name it to tame it. You gotta name it to understand it a problem. Well stated as a problem have solved. These things are truths, in my opinion, and knowing what we're looking for when we're looking for connection fits into that model as well.

Alex Alexander: 16:36

You have to say like you gotta be able to name it, to impact it, to impact it. Right to change this area of your life. If you don't feel like you have connection and you want to change that area of your life. Like I often think that especially when it comes to connection with others, a lot of people haven't spent much time thinking about these relationships, how they work, how they show up in their lives, what feels good to them and what doesn't. And if you haven't done that, it's so hard to impact this area of your life.

Adam Dorsay: 17:10

Exactly, what do we you know when you're looking for something, you need to know what you're looking for. Joe Jackson had a song, you can't get what you want until you know what you want. As dumb as that sounds. I work with really, really smart people, and I often ask them, What do you want? He's like, don't know what I want. And I remember when I hit a particular birthday, and I decided the next woman I date has to be somebody I can marry. And I want to start with my brain for the first time, because I'd used other organs to, you know, ascertain whether or not I'd be dating somebody. And, you know, hardened down, let's just say. And I wanted green lights from everything, and I wanted to lead with my head. And so I literally wrote out, and I talk about it quite explicitly in the book, all of the features that I kind of like, if you've ever seen that great movie, high fidelity, where John Cusack is trying to figure out, like, what went wrong with all my relationships? Well, I decided that history and intelligence should lead me to my wife and like, what worked and what didn't work in the past. And I just wrote out a list of who I was looking for based on that. And I'm 23 years and since we remet, she and I actually knew each other previously very young. Yeah, you know about that wild, Yeah, crazy story, leading with my head and defining the characteristics I was looking for in the characteristics I wasn't looking for, and what had to be there and what had to not be there as well as the you know would be nice and you know would be important and negotiable. It worked. So I can tell you, and I can tell you also that so many of the people I see their frustrations are the byproduct of not having defined things, not having really, really asked the right questions to themselves and to others. So it's my hope that this book will help people in those areas as well.

Alex Alexander: 20:21

Well. That leads me to the next thing I want to talk about for people, which is the four types of connection, because I can see I have not done was it 200,000 hours? 20,000 hours, however many hours you've been

Adam Dorsay: 20:37

it was 20,000 hours,

Alex Alexander: 20:38

20,000 hours,

Adam Dorsay: 20:39

20,000 you mean? For in my work,

Alex Alexander: 20:40

yeah, I have not done that. But what I can imagine is that some people are maybe very connected in one way or another. And even myself reading your book, I was thinking like, Wow, am I balanced in this I'm gonna have to reflect on that. I don't know have an answer, but you gave me a whole new framework to think about connection. So can you talk a little bit about the four types?

Adam Dorsay: 21:11

Imagine an archery target with four concentric circles, starting with, of course, the bullseye. There are four ways that we humans Connect. I've consulted many people. No one can find a fifth. So the four include the bullseye, which is self it is the connection that informs all other connections. If you and I were wearing shoes that were like half the size that we should be wearing, and we tied them really tight, and we were trying to have, you know, a meaningful work day while our feet weren't just excruciating pain. And let's put some sounds awful, yeah, yeah. A lot of us go through life like that, oh, with all kinds of situations, whether it's depression, anxiety, not feeling like the job that we're doing is right for us in a relationship, that sucks, but we don't want to be alone, so we feel in some ways, extorted to be in the relationship because we don't want to be alone. Except being in the relationship also sucks how we connect to ourselves really dictates all of the other connections. So you can think of it as a shoe fitting right or not fitting right. You can think of it as you and me bumping into each other at a conference, and both of us having to pee really badly, but wanting to talk and not really being able to grasp what the other person is saying, because you're so happy, taking care of yourself and connecting with yourself is not a selfish or self absorbed or narcissistic act, unless it is. If, I mean, I'm not talking about like all day, all the time, extremes everywhere. Yeah, there are streams everywhere, but knowing who you are attending and delivering to yourself in a way that goes well. If who you are is so crucial. Each of us has different needs as it relates to sleep, eating, socialization and just figuring out all of those things, exercise, meditation, quiet versus noise, we want both probably and really knowing when and how much all of these things matter. And then the second circle is connecting to others. And other might be my wife. It could be you. I'm connecting with you right now. It could be my pets. I have very conscientiously included pets, because pets are significant others. I used to run, I used to volunteer, I should say more likely at the more not more likely. More accurately, at the Humane Society, I was the pet loss guy, and so when people you know, for about four years, I would hear the stories of real, real sadness and buckets of tears. So pets are included. For people like my father, they are not. My dad could go through five lifetimes without needing a to touch an animal of any kind. I'm an animal person. I get well, I'm an animal person 1,000,000% as well, and I've turned into a switch header. I used to only be dogs, and now I've found out that cats, especially if they are social, are awesome. The third is connecting with the world. The world includes nature, art, our work, even our ancestry. As Dr Maya Angelou once said, you don't know where you're going unless you know where you're from. And so I wanted ancestry in there as well. And the fourth is connecting with something greater. Something greater for some people might mean going to church if they're religious in that way. For the Orthodox atheist, of which there are many in Silicon Valley, going to, let's say Grand Canyon, or lying under the stars on a camping trip and feeling just how grand the universe is. For the most scientific mind, they may experience something called awe, and we all know that word, but science has actually put awe under the microscope, and you're smiling because you've read the book and you know, awe is so so cool. It's basically has the same effect on our brain as psilocybin, which is the psychoactive chemical and magic mushrooms, and except without needing to take something that might be dangerous to some, certainly illegal in most places. But what's so nice about awe, in this case is we become more pro social, less self absorbed, just a little down south from you, back in 2017 and Oregon, during the you know, solar eclipse, strangers were hugging each other. What was going on? They were in a state of awe. And I just gotta throw one last little love piece to somebody. And if you've seen this video, you'll know what I'm talking about. Do you remember the double rainbow dude on he was one of the early YouTube guys like, oh my gosh, I'm seeing a double rainbow, a double even South Park clowned on it. Well, that guy was experiencing awe. I feel nothing but love for that guy. I understand that it seems kind of corny and funny, and I understand why people were kind of clowning on him, but I don't clown on him. I say, Dude, fantastic. You were experiencing awe, and you were not socially conscious. You were just in the moment, and you were so excited to be alive. You were tripping hard on a double rainbow. That's That's really cool. Yeah, he's having and one of the things that can happen, also my nickname is enthusiasm. So I know about this, people sometimes don't like seeing great joy or enthusiasm or awe. They say, you know, come on, man, be cool. Well, yeah, there are times to be cool and there's time to be extremely warm and maybe even excited hot if you're a super fan of a group. And I remember seeing Lil NAS x a few years ago, and I just couldn't help it. I was just jumping around. I'd never seen him before. I knew, I knew a little bit of his music, but I was I couldn't help it. I was jumping all over the place, like a kid in a battle connected. Yeah, he was hitting hard. And I was like, This guy is like the reincarnation of Prince. Like, this guy's awesome. I mean, I know it's a stretch. No, I love it, but that's just how it felt to me. I felt like I was, you know, it was one of the great experiences in my life. And thankfully, my wife is along for the ride, and she's down, and she knows that, you know, when her honey gets a little bit excited about something, he's not too scared to show it.

Alex Alexander: 27:07

I mean, I would think that just shows that you're connected, right? You are tapped in, you know, in the book you say, like, connection is an internal emotional response, like you're just shining that out. It's so big, it's moving through your body,

Adam Dorsay: 27:21

glad you brought that up. It is an internal emotional response, and it's there, or it's not there. And here's the sad thing, I'm sure you and I have both also done this. Have you ever just because you wanted to be like, your friend said, Yeah, I'm totally into that as well. Like they told you, like they were into a particular musician or a thing. You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm so into it, and you had to fake it. Yeah? Oh, your body doesn't like it when we lie.

Alex Alexander: 27:48

I mean, especially when I was younger, I definitely have moments I could look back on. And I think that the most interesting thing, if I look back on that, is that sometimes, like, let's say we were at a concert growing up, I was never actually a really big concert person, but in recent years, I have really become a concert person. I don't know I'm finding my connection there, but I remember going to concerts and watching my friends have this like response that I could see and I could feel the energy of it, and I would try and fake it, but it was probably very evident to them that I was not experiencing the same thing.

Adam Dorsay: 28:37

Totally, yeah, totally, exactly. So they may have been able to see or tell but, and let's contrast it with the time. Let's just just a for a palette cleanser for you describe a time when you were 1,000,000% connected.

Alex Alexander: 28:51

So this is, I mean, I'm going to use a concert. Everybody who listens to the podcast has already heard this, but I had a very last minute experience where I got to go with a friend on a 12 day road trip. We went to two Taylor Swift concerts, that's awesome, and part of it was probably the music. I don't know how much you've heard about the Taylor Swift concerts, but they're just, like, a very the environment is very positive. Like, everybody's yelling compliments at each other and, like, dancing randomly, like, talk about connection, moving through a body of people, but the first concert, I found myself really emotional, like I started crying, but it was happiness. I was like, Where the heck is this coming from? And I think a little bit was the music, but I actually think a lot of it was just the environment. And I think part of it was, like, as silly as this is to say, well, it's not silly, but I'm gonna admit it feels a little vulnerable. That's why I'm saying it's silly. But it's not I think it was me. I'm always been a person where if I really love something, I maybe won't show it as intensely, and I was allowing myself to feel that connection. And so I was kind of like overcome with allowing myself to feel that connected. That was a lot there for you, but yeah, so stark contrast.

Adam Dorsay: 30:25

Yeah, you know the terms that we used, like, you know, grinning like a stupid person, or, you know, like we somehow have kind of, I don't even know what this means, a shit eating grin. I still don't understand that expression. But suffice it to say, the idea of smiling and being excited gets conflated with stupidity oftentimes. And one of the things that we know for sure is that we tend to be smarter when we are happier. We tend to perform our jobs better when we are happier, happier doctors tend to be more accurate in their diagnoses than less happy doctors. So this idea of trying to be cool, like I'm down with cool. I mean, Bowie's cool. I get it early. Van Halen, particularly with David Lee Roth, I should say for my case, exclusively with David Lee Roth, so cool. But what about experiencing with just no restraint and saying, You know what? I'm only gonna live this one. Yeah, I don't know if I'm ever gonna see this concert again. Certainly I will never have this evening exactly as it is again. What if I was just to double down and commit and say, I'm just going for it. I'm just gonna feel one things I actually do with people who have some suppression around this, as I say, laugh 10% harder than you actually intend. It's just a little experiment see if you can. Yeah. And sometimes they end up crying because, I mean, I can see that, yeah, there's so many, yeah, you can, you can imagine that it's a good experiment. Personally, all I need to do is watch, Will Ferrell do cowbell? And I probably have seen it. I'm not joking about 100 times. And I try to look for something new every time I watch that thing, but I always fall over. I cannot handle how hilarious that is, and I don't ever want to stop. I hope I never stop laughing super hard, and I don't want people to pretend too much, not not more than 10% I'm not saying, you know, change your personalities, but I am saying, challenge it. Maybe you can stretch it a little. And as much as we stretch our hamstrings, maybe you can stretch your laughter just a little bit and find authenticity within that laughter, and by laughing, you're just a little harder. Last idea is, I don't know if you've ever been like eating something that was so unbelievably delicious and that you look to the person next year, like, can you believe we are actually eating this? Yes, and the person is like, yeah, it's good. You're like, are we doing the same thing? Are we having this you know, of course, you're not knowing the same thing. Of course you're not having the same experience. There are different molecules. But I don't want people to live life like a limp handshake. You and I have both experienced what a limp handshake is like. I have a feeling that the person who says, yeah, it's okay. That may be their truth and it may not. It may be that over time, they were socialized not to feel more fully, and that can be very depressing. It can be very numbing, and it also could, of course, be the byproduct of depression itself. But one of the things I'm hoping for, and I do believe will help assist people, whether they're anxious or depressed, is feeling more connected. One thing we know for sure is that we somaticize our body starts doing things when we're depressed. People who have back pain often have anxiety or depression, people who have GI distress often have anxiety or depression. And I was working with a guy, my gosh, it was just so interesting. He was talking about his testicular pain. He'd been having it for weeks, and he had a full medical workup. There was nothing urologically or physically wrong with him. So the medical term is idiopathic. When we don't know the medical cause. It's idiopathic. And I looked at him, I said, dude, four weeks ago, just before your testicular pain started, your girlfriend made out with one of your friends. I believe you felt kicked in the nuts. He's like, That's crazy. That's crazy. It's not crazy. Yeah, the next week he comes back in he says, No more testicular pain. I don't know what to say. And I said, Yeah, well, the body does respond in metaphors too many times when there's a big life event or a major situation, the body responds in just so many ways. Starting a new job suddenly you get back pain because you feel the burden of taking on the new back. I mean, people who are in their earning years, who have far less pathological backs than, let's say, people who are much older, let's say and retired, their backs are often, if you look at them on an MRI, they're terrible, but they don't complain, because they don't feel the burden of work to catch Howard Schumann are talking about that on my podcast. And you know, just that's a reality. The brain does respond in metaphors, and sometimes physiologically, there will be these manifestations of what's really going on, up to and including feeling kicked in the nuts.

Alex Alexander: 35:29

This is the joy of not being a psychologist or a doctor. Adam is that I can talk about my own personal life on here, so listeners are going to know when I say, like firsthand, I believe you, because I have experienced this, and it is very real. So I have no disbelief for what you're saying. And it shows up in all the ways, right? I mean, in whatever way. Again, everything comes back to connection, whatever way you are not feeling connected, and whatever you are carrying that is not that is weighing you down. It's leading to that pain.

Alex Alexander [Narration]: 36:12

Adam and I just ran through the four types of connection super quickly, and I will just say I am in awe of his ability to just pull pop culture references and give examples. Seriously, something for me to work up to, but neither here nor there. What I came on here to say is that we ran through the four types of connection so quickly, if you can already tell in this episode, I think they are important for us all to know, so I just want to recap them one more time. So first we have connecting to yourself, and this is about knowing who you are, your feelings, what lights you up, what drains you, what gets you out of bed in the morning. It's kind of like having a deep friendship with yourself, and it's the foundation for the other connections. The second is connecting to others, which just goes beyond like having people in your life. It's about those genuine exchanges of energy with your partner, your family, your friends, your pet, your neighbors, your community as a whole, like, yes, the very deep, long standing relationships you have matter, but so do those daily interactions with the people you see as you move through your day. The third is connecting to the world, and I love this one because it's bigger than just the people. It's about how you engage with. Your work, or with nature, with art, it's the causes you care about, your cultural heritage, all those things that make you feel part of something bigger than just yourself, and finally, connecting to something greater. Now this one's deeply personal, and will be different for everyone, whether it is that you are connecting to something greater through spirituality, perhaps it's finding meaning in community or political action, or maybe that you experience awe in nature, it's all about those moments that make you feel connected to something beyond what you can physically experience

Alex Alexander: 38:28

when we're talking about these four types of connections. Now that you've offered us each one, let's talk a little bit about the idea of, like, our own unique connection needs. I mean, honestly, this could tie into what you were just saying. Like, some patients want to be a little more connected. Some people want more distance. Some people are more connected to water. Some people are more connected, right, to one person, to their partner. Can you talk a little bit about how somebody would figure out their own connection? Needs like, where are we tuning in to figure out our own mix?

Adam Dorsay: 39:02

Well, very often, it's so sad that so often we become rather distant, even estranged from our emotions. I actually gave a TEDx talk called emotions, the data men miss. And there's a term in psychology called alexithymia. It's a very fancy word, you can trust me, I'm going to explain it to the listeners. Alexithymia means the inability to articulate one's emotions and throughout life, particularly men, but certainly for women as well, we are told that our emotions are stupid and we should listen to them and throw in some type of either misogynistic or homophobic term around them. You know, act like a man is one of the things that a lot of boys hear when they grow up. It's particularly tragic, because, believe it or not, boys are born more emotionally, more emotionally expressive, than their female counterparts, on average, and that is really amazing to think about, and how we have it socialized out. But when we don't know what we want, when we don't know what we're feeling, that is really troubling, because we can't use the data from those emotions. It's as if we've put a whole bunch of black tape on our cars dashboard, we would never, ever do that. And yet we do that with our relationship with emotions. So one of the things we need to do is ask ourselves, you know, like, what am I feeling? Just from the most rudimentary space of saying, you know, am I feeling the primary emotions, kind of the happy, sad, mad, you know, scared, those are kind of the primaries. And in building out, there are feeling charts. There are various ways, but we need to know what we're feeling about a thing. And sometimes, if not knowing is okay. I don't know yet. I like the word yet because it implies that there is a directive that I will figure this out at some point. It's a puzzle at the moment, so the next stage basically is just saying, okay, yeah, does this bring me alive, or does this not bring me alive? It's a fairly quick sifting mechanism, and what we want to do is consciously and intentionally bring as much aliveness into our lives when we're at work, when we're not at work, and oftentimes that requires a particular focus, sometimes a reframe I'll kind of get into both in our personal lives. Let's say we've just crushed it at work. We left it all in the field. Saturday rolls around, we wake up, Pat our dog, feed our dog, brew some coffee. I mean, I know this is certainly me, but I know this is definitely happening. But a lot of people, yeah, but a lot of people brewing some coffee, open a little snail mail, checking in on the email as well, turning on Netflix. It's streaming in the background. I'm folding some laundry and responding to some social media stuff, and a text comes in, okay, I better respond to that. And Monday rolls around, and I've been doing this all weekend, and I'm wondering where my weekend was. Do I return to work with Vitality? Probably not. A lot of the things that we want to do have a bit of a barrier to entry. Could be visiting a friend. It might mean a drive. Could be a bike ride. Might mean pumping up the tires, getting the bike ready, putting it on the bike rack, which we still need to put on the car, and figure out where we're biking and with whom, and getting our Hydra Sack so we've got proper hydration. A lot of the things that we really, really want that bring us alive have barriers to entry. So what do we do? We go with what is easy. The sad thing is, you know, and I. Not saying all the time. There are many weekends that I enjoy just streaming and chilling and just being like, you know what? No, it's fuzzy slippers and sweats for me, and a long watching of something like Game of Thrones.

Alex Alexander: 42:58

Where did that happen? Yeah, a whole season past. My god, yeah, okay, for sure.

Adam Dorsay: 43:03

And yet, I also know that if we do that exclusively, at the exclusion of doing the other things, like I've got a buddy named Bob. I love Bob. He's got one big problem. He lives two hours away from me, so we have a halfway meeting spot, and I will drive to the city, and sometimes I'll be like, Dude, why do you live so damn far? Now I'm gonna have to park my car and bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And then I get on my car and I see Bob, and the next four or five hours go by, like in five minutes, and I'm just like, this was a great use of time. And while I'm not doing that every weekend, and by all means, if that's what floats your boat, do it every weekend, for sure. I have this thing called in since this friendship IRL, I have this thing called the driveway test. How do you feel when you leave a connection with your friend? Do you feel more alive? Or do you feel perhaps deflated? Do you feel taller because you felt so much richness, or do you feel somehow smaller because you feel just like, oh my god, there was no room for me. We've all been with friends who are truly interested. We've also probably been with people who bring everything back to themselves. Like, oh yeah. Like, imagine Alex that you wanted to share about your trip to Japan, and your friend just completely intercepts the ball and says, Well, let me tell you about Japan for the next 20 minutes, and you're just like,

Alex Alexander: 44:27

yeah. And you left the hangout and you realize you never even told them the one thing, yeah, we've all been there,

Adam Dorsay: 44:33

yeah. And, you know, I was talking with somebody about, you know, the importance of questions. Like, we want our friends to ask us questions. That's one of the ways they feed us. But if they just take over, like a massive percentage of the interaction. And many people do this very unconsciously, because they want to be interesting. They forget to be interested. They end up kind of bleeding you, rather than feeding you. And what we want is a nice upload and download energy of, you know, reciprocity. A colleague of mine, Hugh Grubb once told me that a great psychoanalyst, Donald Winnicott, said that true mental health can be experienced when you have the willingness to share of yourself and take in the experience of another so kind of that beautiful like you know, back and forth, having the ability to share Who you are, and actually take in who the other person is. A fancy term for that would be inter subjectivity, like realizing that there is your subjective experience in mine, and there is room for both of ours. And so when we have that, we have great connection. One last thought instance, it relates to friendship, my friend and colleague, Britt Frank, who I just think the world of. She's written a couple great books, one of which is the science of stuck so fun. She said that some people have traits around friendship, like the feeding styles of a Hummingbird. Hummingbird needs to feed multiple times an hour, and so imagine Joey from Friends like Joey was in every like, every scene it felt like. And you know, he damn well should be because he was so funny. Ross, who actually was my favorite of the friends, believe it or not, because I just loved his physical comedy, and he was so great. But he wasn't just in so many scenes as Joey, yeah, he had more of a feeding schedule of what they would call a scorpion. A scorpion needs to feed less often, not not the evil traits of a scorpion, like the scorpion of frog story, who just takes the frog down the river? Because, you know, Scorpion can't help. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the feeding schedule of a scorpion, according to Britain, I believe her, is about once a month, or something like that, but far less frequent than, say, a hummingbird. And the important thing is to know thyself. Like, how often do you need to hang and some people you there may be friends that you want to hang out with every day, and other friends that you need to meet with quarterly. Last thought on friendship, over the summer, I hung out with my buddy Jed, another great human being, one of the other true greats. Such a legend. He lives in New Jersey. I don't get to see him very often. In fact, far for you, it's really far from California. I hadn't seen him in nine years, and I realized, if he and I continue at this rate, I will see him five more times before I die. That sucks. So I have been willing to say, You know what I'm going to do. I will be happy to talk with you on the phone. I'll be happy to just call. I say it. Just say I love you like Stevie Wonder, I will meet with you via zoom. And some people say, oh my god, zoom, I'm on zoom all week. Yeah. But when you're on zoom with a friend, yeah, with beverage of choice, anything from coffee on up, it's a different vibe than when you're at work. Trust me, when you can see their face, you will thank the creators of zoom and say this is the great. This technology ever. Because even though he lives all the way in New Jersey, when I see that guy's face and we are laughing together, tremendous amount of our time is spent just in belly laughter, because that's what we do. It's so awesome. So don't hate on Zoom. Use it. It's a great technology.

Alex Alexander: 48:04

It exists, use it. I love that advice, man, you've given so many great friendship nuggets, great connection nuggets, something that just kept popping up for me that I was thinking about while we were talking about connection. Is earlier you talked about, you know, like, how do you feel doing that driveway, check in, things like that, you know the comfort of watching an entire season of Game of Thrones versus doing the thing that maybe ultimately will make you feel connected. And something that I was thinking about is like, let's use my work as an example. Sure, I love what I do? Love it so much. I love recording these podcast episodes. I totally get into flow, which is a concept you talk about in pretty much any conversation I have around this subject with someone like time disappears. I could talk with somebody for a really long time, but in order to get there, sometimes, yeah, I have to go through some pretty unpleasant emotions, right? I have to go through the feeling of posting something, right, the vulnerability. In fact, I have a podcast episode coming out that I had to really talk myself into now, when I recorded the episode, time like stood still, but now I have to put it out in the world. It's a little vulnerable. I'm a little panicked about it, but I also know that those are some of the best episodes, because they're the things that probably need to be out in the world. What would you say if there's something you know brings you connection, but also brings some of those, maybe, I don't know, harder feelings, like some people might say, those are negative feelings. Is there anything to like think about when we get to that?

Adam Dorsay: 50:03

Thoughts run through me as you share this. Alex, so first of all, Susan Jeffers wrote a book called feel the fear and do it anyway. I love that. And Brene Brown talks about fear being a precursor to courage, like when somebody says, Oh, man, that guy's so courageous. He's fearless, it's like, no, he's not courageous. If he's fearless, he'd be courageous if he persisted in spite of the fear. So if I'm gonna go skydiving with a grizzled, you know, skydiver who's done it 10,000 times, we're going to be having very different experiences, and one of us will need courage, and that would be me, not the seasoned skydiver. We're doing the same thing. One of us is having a vastly different Well, we're having vastly different experiences for each other, one of which involves courage. So you and I both know that to pay to play means that you have to do all the things. Generally, I don't enjoy cold therapy,

Alex Alexander: 50:58

like cold plunges, yeah? Oh, I mean, maybe I love the pain, but

Adam Dorsay: 51:02

I'm with you.

Alex Alexander: 51:03

I do that. I love it so,

Adam Dorsay: 51:05

but I love the after effect, yeah, and whenever I do one, oh, my God, you know. And the amount of psyching myself up to get into that cold thing versus somebody who's like a seasoned plunger, they're down with it. So it's a very different experience. So sometimes those feelings are saying, Hey, before I hit send on this thing, let's think it through. Will I be cool on the other side? At other times, it's just like, You know what? I gotta hit it. This is true for me. And these are just obviously the feels that I get when I do something quite major that is necessary. I also think about going for a bike ride for the you know, the weekend warrior, the first few minutes as you're riding, don't feel all that great. You're kind of working through the cobwebs. And similarly, when you're at a party and you don't really know people too well, and you're pushing yourself to go meet people, and you might get rejected a few times, and then you finally meet someone, it's like, oh, the meet someone who's like, oh, there's something here. But by pushing on and being willing to do the thing, do the target behavior, many of us are socially anxious. That's a really, really big thing. I say, don't start with giving a presentation to 1000 people. Maybe instead, just engage the person as you're checking out at Trader Joe's and ask a very simple, innocuous question, and like to the checkout person, you know, like, hey, what's the product here at Trader Joe's that I might have missed, that you love? And the checkout counter person, yeah, low stakes. Low stakes. Right? And then guess what? You've got a buddy. Trader Joe's every time you come in. And you've also learned that you can ask and you can engage a conversation is just continuing that. So if people who are socially anxious often have difficulty with that type of thing, we start with the low stakes to your point, and we ask ourselves, what are the target behaviors for who I want to become? The kind of fake it till I become it type of thing. Yeah, it's not. We're pretending that we have a little bit of Riz when we're asking that person at Trader Joe's, even as low stakes as that is, you know, like, Hey, tell me about a product you really like. And what I also ask people to do is consider a person who can execute this behavior perfectly in the way you wish you could think about them when you're doing it. I remember when I used to run large meetings, and Jon Stewart was just coming out as 1999 I was working for a corporation, and I said, I want to bring Jon Stewart's intelligence and humor to these meetings. I will never be as funny and smart as Jon Stewart? That guy's funny and smart, but I wanted to bring that energy with me, and I kept him as kind of a paragon in my consciousness. And I will say Jon Stewart, whom I've met once, although he would not remember it, he has taught me, from afar, how to do this thing. And we all have people, I guess, last but not least, it's kind of a Dwight Schrute thing from from the office, but I would ask people when they want to hit a target behavior. One thing that can also inspire courage is a walk on song the Major League Baseball all the teams use it when you have an at home person coming to bat. Each player has a different walk on song. Some people use country western. Some people use hip hop. Some people use Fill in the blank. Use a walk on song before you're about to do that thing, so that you have the ringing in your ears of the rhythm and the vibe and that you're trying to bring forth. There are certain songs that I use when I really need to get that energy going, like I know for sure. Tony Robbins, before, when he's about to get up on stage, he jumps on a trampoline to, like, get himself in that state. I'm guessing there's probably a song that he uses, although I don't know that for sure, but I can tell you having a walk on song. Dwight Schrute, as funny as it was, if you've seen the office, you know that he would be in his muscle car blasting, you know, like hair metal. That was his jam, not my jam. That was his although I wouldn't mind a little GNR. I'll do some guns and roses. But whatever that was that he was listening to was not my scene. But, uh, yeah. So have a walk on song. Have someone in mind who can kind of allow you to somebody who can be the North Star of the behavior you're trying to help emerge. You're not going to be them, but you will be your version of that

Alex Alexander: 55:36

that feels like an insider tip like that feels like we've had an amazing conversation this whole episode. But I can tell you right now, I feel like some people are gonna hear that and be like, Wow, that's how everyone's doing it, like they just play a song and dance around silly in their car before they walk in to talk to someone, and that's it. You know, sometimes it's not that everybody's super skilled or better. We're all just playing hype up songs or trying to impersonate someone my way to walk into a room. I'll just share this because we're here is I forgive whatever my first interaction is. That's so good. So I went to a networking event last week. I was kind of having a low energy day. I, like, my brain was a little foggy. I knew I was not coming in to be my normal self, like I talk to people all the time. I still have to psych myself up for small talk sometimes. So I'm walking in, and I was like, Okay, here's the rule. You walk in, you talk to someone as quickly as possible, like pull the band aid off, less time for my brain to spin, and whatever that first interaction is is forgiven, because it's probably going to be really bad. I'm probably going to stumble through it. I'm probably it's going to be awkward. Get it over with, right? Get the the brain flowing, the small talk going. My favorite thing about this is then often I'll end up maybe talking to this person later. You know, two hours in once I'm a little better. And I swear you can watch this person be like, is this the same person I talk to when I walk in, you know, like they're trying to figure out what changed about me exactly, because this time I'm actually asking questions and having a nice conversation, so I just give myself a freebie.

Adam Dorsay: 57:35

It's gonna be bad love that so much, and you're talking about self compassion as well, which we know is correlated with all kinds of great outcomes. So here you are saying, You know what? I'm gonna give myself a freebie, and this is just the cost of doing business. Let's just tear off the bandage.

Alex Alexander: 57:52

One person in this room. Brilliant strategy, people I don't even know, is gonna think I don't know how to ask a question, and then they're gonna be utterly shocked by the end. And like, that's just, yeah, the cost of being here tonight. Get it over with.

Adam Dorsay: 58:08

I could not agree more. I'm remembering in high school, there was a teacher named Mr. Bear. He was just like the most beloved and smart man, and I was with the linbrook epic staff. That was name of our of our newspaper, okay? And I needed to ask him a question. Now, remember, I'm with the linbrook epic staff. I walk in, I say, Hello, Mr. Bear. I'm here with the lynbrooks depict half and it was just like and he was so sweet and so gentle, and I was so socially anxious. And, you know, he was such a big figure in my own mind. I mean, I'm sure I was even taller than he was at that time, but it didn't matter. He was a giant to me. And we all do that. We all stumble and fumble, and what we need to do is yes and ourselves as if we're an improv and one of the great improv trips I learned is when you belly flop, you say, ta, da, you just say, Okay, and next and get full on. Amy Fuller, Tina Fey, Bill Hader, about the whole thing. Just make it. Just relax into it. Don't take yourself so seriously. I'm sure Mr. Bear never thought again about the doofus who have said I'm with the linbrook stepic half. But to me, here I am. All these years, I'm still telling the goofy story. But there's this cognitive bias known as the spotlight effect, and that is basically that people are not paying attention to us to the degree that we believe they are. In fact, they don't even care. You can wear a goofy t shirt and people will not notice it as much as you think they will. I remember growing a beard, and you know, in graduate school, nobody really noticed that was part of my own testing of the spotlight effect. Like, how much do people really invest of their own attention on me? And turns out, not a lot. You know, you have to be an US magazine figure in order to get that kind of, that kind of spotlight on you. So we don't, people don't care. So just know the good news is you're allowed to screw up, and you may be carrying it, but just have some self compassion, a little bit of levity, say Ta da, realize that if you want to do things, you're going to have to belly flop a lot. If you ain't belly flopping, you probably aren't trying hard enough, because we need to belly flop. Failure is just data. It's tuition, it's mistakes or just missed takes try again, and as Sean Hayes so brilliantly that from Will and Grace and smart lists, will say, our failures eventually create the best stories. So just realize that they make great stories.

Alex Alexander: 1:00:44

The failures data was one of my favorite another favorite line from the book. Oh,

Adam Dorsay: 1:00:48

thank you. And I want to quote her, because it was Dory Clark. It was top notch, top shelf to her. She Great. Dory is one of my favorites.

Alex Alexander: 1:00:55

We have brought up, Super Psyched. I have brought it up a dozen times, if not more. And I know we're getting you on here to talk about the book and whatnot, but it's just so applicable to anybody. I think. I mean, to close this episode out, I would ask, like, is there anybody you specifically thought you were writing this book for?

Adam Dorsay: 1:01:18

Oh, my God, what a great you don't has ever asked me that?

Alex Alexander: 1:01:22

Because I think it really is one of those books that is applicable, even if somebody doesn't take everything from it, right? I was telling you that the I talk about connection a lot, I think about connection a lot, and the fact that you had the connection to the world and something greater, really had me thinking. So now I'm wondering, to close out this episode, is there any particular person that you thought you were writing this book for?

Adam Dorsay: 1:01:50

First of all, I'm totally blown away by the question, and I'm going to give you a few answers. Okay, first of course, I was writing it for me as a form of expression of like this would be my contribution to the world of literature as it relates to psychology and self improvement, because it's something I believe in so much. My mom said that I came out of the womb, you know, practically connecting with people, like she would push me in the stroller. And she said she'd never seen a baby who was so hungry to connect with people.

Alex Alexander: 1:02:21

We've all seen that baby. I know exactly. I can think of one of my nieces, and like, I get it, yeah,

Adam Dorsay: 1:02:28

it was certainly me. And as a fledgling connector, I was awkward, and I, you know, as a neurodivergent kid, you know, I just didn't know how to connect. So in some ways, I'm writing it for him. I'm certainly writing it for my children who. Really want to love the dash of their life. I'm writing it for my clients who have entrusted me as their Sherpa to walk on Rocky territories who I believe would benefit from just hearing reading my thoughts in one kind of between two covers, so to speak. To some extent, I was writing it to my parents as a thank you for giving me life and as an attempt to pass the baton. And for sure, I was writing it to my wife, who is the love of my life as a love letter, who she's the person who jumped me into the gang of psychology in the final way, I always wanted to be a psychologist. I was convinced I would never get to be a psychologist. She is the one, if you read the book and you'll see that she's definitely the hero on this story, who was convinced that my childhood dream of becoming a psychologist needed to come to fruition. She was already a psychologist, and so it was just really, wow, you know serendipity. And she said, Honey, you can definitely do this. You'll read about my own, my own musings about how I couldn't. So I was writing it in part for her as well. I'm sure the second you and I hang up, there will be so many other people, like my mentor, Alan Greenberger and my other mentor, Martin Dorner, who've meant everything to me in this lifetime. My grandpa Ben, who thought I was smart, even when no one else did. My father in law, Alvin Joseph Jacobs, brilliant metallurgist, who, when I asked him for his blessing to marry his daughter, and I was showing no signs of, you know, a real career in the future. He told me he knew I would figure it out. And so there are a lot of people who I was writing it for. I would even say there was an animal or two who I was writing it for too strangely, like Yoda, my cat who jumped me into the cat gang when I was a legitimate felineophobe, I hated cats, but Yoda showed me that cats were awesome if they were, like, relational and not skittish. So yeah, Alex, I knew this was gonna be a really, really dope experience. Just your questions are great, as evidenced by that last one. My God, what a great question. Now I'm gonna be thinking about that and asking my wife, honey, who do you think I've been writing it for?

Alex Alexander: 1:05:08

You know, it just, what I will say is writing a book is such a labor of love. So it's not shocking to me that you have a long list of people you're writing it for. Because, you know, cycling through those different people as you were writing, is probably what kept you going

Adam Dorsay: 1:05:26

100% Yeah, yeah. They were all they were all wind at my back and sunshine and inspiration, you know. And these people would check in with me. There were several friends who I neglected to mention, but some of whom I mentioned already, like the Bob and the jet and my buddy David Gartner, like, there are certain people who have been with me the entire time. You know the old African proverb of, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. It's just so true. And this idea that none of us is an island, people who need people aren't the luckiest people in the world. They are the ones who know that they need people.

Alex Alexander: 1:06:00

They're being honest. Yeah, yeah. Well, Adam, I'm just so grateful for you for writing this book. I have no doubt that it's gonna become, you know, I hope you become synonymous with the word connection,

Adam Dorsay: 1:06:12

wow. I hope that for you so stoked to have the letter C emblazoned on my shirt, not only will it remind me of the grades I got, mostly in high school, but it will also stand for connection, wow, or cookie.

Alex Alexander: 1:06:25

I mean, these are all good things. They can all be together in one room, but I just so appreciate you being here. Thanks so much.

Adam Dorsay: 1:06:31

Oh, this has been a blast. Alex, thanks so much.

Alex Alexander [Narration]: 1:06:34

That episode was jam packed. It was so full of information and tidbits and examples. I'm gonna need to go back and listen to it multiple times. It definitely goes beyond the book. Like, that's the fun of the podcast conversations, right? Is this is more than just what's in the book. The book has so many things in there. I wanted to cover, but we didn't cover, I think Adam and I could have recorded an entire summit. We could have sat you down for a week, truly, I'm not even kidding. We really enjoyed this conversation, and we kind of kept going. But to close out today's episode, I want to share with you two of my takeaways, because maybe they will resonate with you, and I would love to hear your takeaways. But the first one, I think I've already made this abundantly clear, one of my biggest takeaways from this episode is to pay attention to more than just my connection to others. I think I was doing okay in that category. I think I'm doing pretty alright in my connection to myself, but when it comes to. My connection to the world and my connection to something greater. I think I often let those kind of fall to the wayside. I don't think about those ones as much, and I'm really gonna make a conscious effort to pay more attention to those. Which brings me to my second takeaway, and this one is not anything I saw in Adam's book. This is just like, truly my takeaway from this episode, and that is that I think I need to pay more attention to the feelings. Maybe we all do. I can get really caught up in the logical brain of my connections, but in thinking about this, it's kind of noticing, like, how do I feel in certain spaces? How do I feel after that interaction? Did I feel connected? Did I feel inspired? Did I feel energized? But also just in my experiences, you know, as I'm traveling or moving through my day, when I get that feeling of like, Wow. I can't believe I get to live here or be here or experience this moment, right? That's connection. I think it's easy to sometimes, maybe I notice those feelings. Sometimes I definitely don't, but when I do, I think it can just be like, Oh, wow. But I don't really take it any further than that. I don't think to myself, you know, like, Wow, I feel so connected to this. And that's where I left this episode. I want to pay more attention to the feelings. I want to acknowledge them, and then I want to kind of affirm them in my brain. I want to remind my brain, that I feel connected to this experience, this person, this moment, myself, whatever greater energy you believe in the universe, the goodness of people. I'm going to give that some more awareness. Now my final things I want to say in this episode. Adam's book, Super Psyched, is linked in the show notes. Go grab yourself a copy. It really is impactful. I read a lot of books for this work. Go buy this one. The second thing is that we put a link to both of Dr. Adam Dorsey's TEDx talks in the show notes as well. Check them out. They're both amazing with that. I'll see you next week.

Alex Alexander: 1:10:10

Thank you for listening to this episode of Friendship IRL. I am so honored to have these conversations with you. But don't let the chat die here. Send me a voice message. I created a special website just to chat with you. You can find it at alexalex.chat. You can also find me on Instagram. My handle, @itsalexalexander. Or go ahead and leave a review wherever you prefer to listen to podcasts. Now if you want to take this conversation a step further, send this episode to a friend. Tell them you found it interesting. And use what we just talked about as a conversation starter the next time you and your friend hang out. No need for a teary goodbye. I'll be back with a new episode next week.