135. The Powerful Value of Melancholy with Susan Cain

Here's Where It Gets Interesting

Sharon McMahon

Government, History, Storytelling, Education

4.9 • 15.1K Ratings

🗓️ 27 May 2022

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, Sharon has a conversation with Susan Cain, the best-selling author of the international phenomenon Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. Susan’s new book, Bittersweet, is about the undervalued power of a melancholic view of the world. Susan talks about how melancholy and bittersweet emotions are connected to our sensitivity and our sense of transcendence, and this view of the world is often overlooked. Instead, we can be bound by the tyranny of positivity: the cultural expectation that we should present a positive outlook at all times, regardless of what we may be experiencing or feeling. When we’re willing to take in the truth and complexity of human experience–the this and that of emotions–we leave ourselves open to a deeper sense of meaning, more gratitude, and forge more connected relationships.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello friends welcome. I'm so excited you're here. Today I am joined by legendary
0:07.6	author Susan Kane. Many of you read her first book Quiet and she's a new book
0:14.7	out called Bittersweet how sorrow and longing make us whole. So I think you're
0:21.4	gonna get a lot out of this conversation. I absolutely loved chatting with Susan.
0:25.4	Let's dive in. I'm Sharon Nickman and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast.
0:32.2	I am very excited to be able to chat with Susan Kane today. Thank you so
0:36.8	much for doing this. Thank you so much for having me Sharon. I'm excited to be here.
0:41.0	Oh, that's truly my pleasure because I have been a fan of your work for a very
0:45.8	long time. And I would love for you to just give everybody who's listening. They
0:50.0	have never read Quiet or they have not yet ordered Bittersweet. Give everybody
0:55.1	just a little overview of the work you do as an author. Oh sure. So I write
1:00.2	about psychology and culture but I write about it from the perspective of letting
1:04.7	people know about what their hidden superpowers are that tend to be
1:08.8	undervalued in our culture. So in Quiet, which is the power of introverts in a
1:14.4	world that can't stop talking, I guess the title kind of says it all and it
1:18.0	talked about how we live in a society that's really biased in favor of a very
1:22.5	extroverted self-presentation but the power that reflective cerebral introverts
1:28.4	have that we haven't been paying enough attention to. So that was Quiet. And then
1:32.4	my recent book which just came out a few weeks ago, it's called Bittersweet,
1:36.7	How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole. And that book is about again the undervalued
1:43.3	power of a more melancholic bittersweet outlook on the world and why our
1:49.1	culture has been so blind to its value. Fascinating. And your writing is so
	...

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