85. Susan Cain Says Sadness is a Superpower

We Can Do Hard Things

Treat Media and Glennon Doyle

Society & Culture, Relationships, Education, Self-improvement

4.8 • 41.1K Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2022

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

1. How to know if you are a “Bittersweet” type. 2. On “stabs of joy”—and why our joy is often accompanied by dread. 3. How to complete the cycle of sadness, in order to live with more joy. 4. Susan and Sister’s best relationship advice: That our longing for the perfect partner is not really about our partner. 5. Why Glennon thinks those who feel the ache are often those who fall into addiction. About Susan: Susan Cain is the author of the bestsellers Quiet Journal, Quiet Power: The Secret Strengths of Introverts, and Quiet: The Power of Introverts in A World That Can’t Stop Talking, which has been translated into 40 languages, spent seven years on the New York Times best seller list, and was named the #1 best book of the year by Fast Company magazine, which also named Cain one of its Most Creative People in Business. Her new masterpiece, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, was published by Crown on April 5, 2022. LinkedIn named Susan the 6th Top Influencer in the world. Susan partners with Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant and Dan Pink to curate the Next Big Idea Book Club. They donate all their proceeds to children’s literacy programs. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. Her record-smashing TED talk has been viewed over 40 million times, and was named by Bill Gates one of his all-time favorite talks. Cain has also spoken at Google, PIXAR, the U.S. Treasury, P&G, Harvard, and West Point. She received Harvard Law School’s Celebration Award for Thought Leadership, the Toastmasters International Golden Gavel Award for Communication and Leadership, and was named one of the world’s top 50 Leadership and Management Experts by Inc. Magazine. She is an honors graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School. Visit Susan at susancain.net. TW: @susancain IG: @susancainauthor To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Okay, welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. I have been waiting for this day. This is my day
0:16.6	to shine. This is the day. I don't know if it's your day to shine. Right, right. We do
0:23.2	have a very, very special guest who I actually believe is a beautiful genius. But before
0:29.4	we bring her on, I want to tell you that the reason I'm so happy today is because we're
0:35.9	talking about being sad. And sad is my people's happy. Okay, so I have been sad my entire
0:45.2	life. Okay, no, not want, want, want. Okay, it's not the kind of sad that needs to be
0:53.4	cheered up. Okay, it's the kind of sadness that I have always seen as an appropriate and
1:00.2	respectful and honoring response to living this beautiful life alongside all of these stunningly
1:06.9	beautiful human beings on this harrowing, beautiful planet. Can you please tell people
1:13.0	what, Brutal means because you're kind of just so beautiful is the word that's entamed
1:18.9	and I think I figured out when I was first getting sober, which meant that everything
1:23.0	that is beautiful is also brutal. Life is brutal and beautiful at the same time. If you
1:29.0	don't accept the beauty, you don't get the brutal. If you don't, but if you don't accept
1:32.7	the brutal, you don't get the beauty. So it's just life is beautiful all at once and
1:36.3	you just have to take it all. And if there is no word, Glennon will create. Right, I like
1:40.6	to make words. The deal is that I've always been sad and I have always felt like happy
1:47.0	people were just sort of deleted and irresponsible and woefully uninformed. So we're the married
1:52.0	one. I know. Now I feel a little bit differently. I don't think that all happy people are sociopaths
1:56.1	anymore. But when I was a tween and then a teenager, I used to sit in front of therapists
2:02.4	over and over again for years and years who were trying to figure out why I was sad.
2:08.0	But we were like Jedi mind tricking each other because I was trying to figure out why they were
2:12.2	not sad. Okay, so like when they tell me that I was depressed or anxious, I would think,
	...

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