Psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman on Authenticity, Creativity, and Confidence

Scott Barry Kaufman (0:00)

What kind of life do you want to live? A lot of people strive for happiness, right? They spend their whole life striving for happiness. You could spend your whole life striving for medals.

But if you do live, if you commit yourself to being, like if you just literally, you're like, you know what, I'm gonna commit my life to becoming who I actually am, then that actually brings along with it a whole set of ways of living, including responsibility, taking responsibility for your actions, but owning your actions, right? Because you're owning it because it's you, you know? There's nothing wrong with owning it, even if someone doesn't like it.

Michael Gervais (0:35)

All right, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais. And the idea behind these conversations is to learn from people who are on the path of mastery, to better understand what they're searching for, their unique psychological framework, which is how they see the world, how they see their craft, how they see themselves in the world. And we also want to dig to understand the mental skills that they've used to build and refine their craft.

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Scott is primarily interested in using solid psychological science to help people in all walks of life to live a more creative, fulfilling, and meaningful life. Sounds phenomenal to me. And he's earned his research chops. He received his Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Yale, and he received a Master's in Philosophy in Experimental Psychology from Cambridge. And he's the Scientific Director of the Imagination Institute and conducts research in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Scott is also an author. In 2013, he published Ungifted, Intelligence Refined, which reviewed the latest science in intelligence and also detailed his experience as a child growing up with a learning disability. And in his book, he introduced and outlined a new theory of personal intelligence, which goes beyond traditional metrics of intelligence and some of the standards that we're used to. So it's a phenomenal read if you're into intelligence, if you're into unlocking the gifts that you have within. I think you would enjoy this book. And Scott also was on a similar path about learning and wanting to discover what's on the leading edge. He's also the host of The Psychology Podcast, which can be found on iTunes and other players as well.