#108: The Upside of Your Dark Side With Dr. Todd Kashdan

The Art of Manliness

Society & Culture, Education, Philosophy

4.7 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2015

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You can't go anywhere these days without running into an article or a book on how to be more positive and upbeat. Pessimism and anger are seen as traits we should do all we can to avoid. But my guest today says that view might be a little too short-sighted. His name is Dr. Todd Kashdan and he's the co-author fo the book, The Upside of Your Darkside. Today on the podcast we talk about the benefits of getting in touch with your pessimism and anger and the potential downsides of too much positivity. And we also discuss what Teddy Roosevelt can teach about the benefits of narcisssim and pychopathy. A fascinating discussion.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Brut McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness Podcast. Anywhere
0:20.6	you go today that seems like there's a book or a magazine article or blog post on, you
0:25.6	know, 10 ways to be happy, the benefits of happiness, why you need to be mindful, why you
0:29.9	shouldn't get angry, yada yada yada. I mean, it's basically an article of faith in 21st
0:34.8	century America that you need to be happy all the time or something's wrong with you. Well,
0:39.0	our guest today wrote a book along with a few other guys who say that's not necessarily
0:43.6	true that there are, there could be some downsides to positivity all the time and there's
0:48.1	downsides to not getting angry. His name is Todd Cashton, he is the author of the book,
0:52.4	the upside of your dark side, why being your whole self and not just your good self drive,
0:56.8	success and fulfillment in the book, him and his co-authors highlight psychological research
1:01.5	that shows the benefits of getting depressed, the benefits of getting angry and the downsides
1:06.2	have seen things with rose colored glasses all the time and being positive and upbeat
1:10.1	all the time. Anyways, a fascinating discussion. Dovetails nicely with the series we've
1:14.3	been doing on depression on the site these past few weeks. A lot of great insights and research
1:19.2	that we highlight, we also talk about Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt comes up and Todd
1:23.4	calls something that Teddy had the Teddy effect and it's psychological traits that we often
1:29.0	associate with bad guys, but Teddy had them in spades, but he's able to use those to do
1:33.5	a lot of good. Anyways, fascinating discussions. So let's do this. Todd Cashton, welcome to the
1:43.1	show. Thank you. Alright, so your book is the upside of your dark side, why being your
1:49.1	whole self and not just your good self drive, success and fulfillment. So the reason I
1:55.2	love this book and it stuck out to me is that it's a contrarian book. Because like right
1:59.0	now it seems like we're having this sort of positivity renaissance or I don't know. There's
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