Dr. Gena Gorlin: The Builder’s Mindset and the Psychology of Ambition

00:00 — Introspection and rumination

Pranab · 00:00

Hey, Gena, how's it going?

Gena Gorlin · 00:01

It's going great. Thanks for having me.

Pranab · 00:03

Thanks for coming. So we'll start off on why Marc Andreessen is wrong.

Gena Gorlin · 00:09

Always a good place to start.

Pranab · 00:11

Here's a David Senra–Marc Andreessen exchange. And here's your reference. I'll just read it out: “As one of your biggest fans, I beg you to stop trolling introspection by conflating it with pathological wheel-spinning.”

Gena Gorlin · 00:27

Oh, that's me.

Pranab · 00:28

That's you. So I got yours here.

Gena Gorlin · 00:29

Oh, okay, okay. I'm following.

Pranab · 00:31

So why are Marc Andreessen and David Senra wrong about introspection?

Gena Gorlin · 00:36

I mean, so I want to frame this discussion within an awareness that I don't think they're being entirely serious. At least speaking for Marc, he's been trolling. He's been having fun with this. I think David has also been somewhat deferential to Marc. I mean, I don't want to start, interpreting, analyzing psychologies, but the simple error that I think we witnessed in that initial dialogue was a conflation of the pathological forms of rumination and intrusive thought and navel gazing, self-analysis that can be pernicious and can cause a lot of problems. And to the extent that someone is prone to it, it's something that will slow them down and make them less decisive and make it harder to build.

I spent my whole dissertation studying that kind of perseverative negative thought and all of the impacts that can have. But I think by calling it introspection, by kind of painting with this broad brushstroke any act of looking inward. I think they're gesturing at this annoying trend that they've noticed, which I agree is annoying and can be problematic, this kind of over-obsession with navel-gazing and self-analysis at the cost of action.

They've conflated it with precisely the kind of self-reflection that David Senra has put on display for us beautifully in, now hundreds of episodes of stories of great entrepreneurs, builders, leaders, who ask themselves hard questions about, what do I really want and what is really driving me and who am I and what is important to me and being able to amplify their own inner voice over the noise of their investors and the public and the mainstream consensus. And I think it's particularly ironic given that Andreessen has co-founded his firm with Ben Horowitz, who wrote The Hard Thing About Hard Things, which is one of the most inspiring self-reflections that you could ask for.

That book is extremely self-reflective and kind of discusses the trials and tribulations of having to manage your own psychology as an entrepreneur. So by conflating them, I think they're having a kind of joke of it. But I think the unintended, I hope unintended cost, is that this is a real conceptual confusion that I've seen a lot of builders, a lot of tech founders be prone to, that actually really leads them astray. There's a tendency toward repression and dismissal of the self of the contemplative arts as irrelevant to building, often to the detriment of actually knowing what you're doing and why you're doing it.

Pranab · 03:57

Yeah. I'm excited to get into those nuances with you. From reading the preprint of your book, it's clear you've really thought about this and got into the actual details of when it matters, when it doesn't matter. And I think you do a great job of categorizing that form of unhealthy introspection as Zen mindset or Zen monk in one thing.

Gena Gorlin · 04:20

It does loosely map. That's true. Although I would say actually there are different ways that both failure modes are prone to it, but we can get into that.

04:28 — The Builder’s Mindset and a life of your own

Pranab · 04:28

I'd love to get into builder's mindset, maybe a bridge from introspection into builder mindset. And maybe if you talk about the book coming up and just how that, yeah, how you see it as, yeah. Connecting.

Gena Gorlin · 04:42

Okay, big question. So you can stop me at any point. We'll try to chunk that. But let's see. So, sure. So, segwaying to these mindsets and how do they show up in our self-reflections, in our internal dialogue. And we all have an internal dialogue.

There's the rare person who claims that they don't, but I don't really know how literally to take that.

Pranab · 05:04

Yeah, and I think even if it's not a true dialogue, you still have some form of image or thought or inner.

Gena Gorlin · 05:10

There's information that is passing through our consciousness that we are processing in some way, whether, we literally kind of see it as written text in our minds or more in images or whatever. But in any case, so, what appears on our internal monitor, so to speak, is a reflection of habits that we have formed, of our worldview, of the expectations that we bring to our experience, right, of the habitual ways of thinking about ourselves, about other people, about goals, right, that we bring to any given problem, any given obstacle, the lens through which we interpret the events of our lives. And what we find as psychologists when we really inspect somebody's self-talk, somebody's internal dialogue, is that they tend to cluster into certain schemas.

Schemata, my ancient Greek fluent husband would correct me. But in any case, they reflect certain mindsets, certain ways of kind of seeing oneself, the world and everything and imposing meaning on our lives. And you can analyze them in terms of how they answer certain questions. We all have an implicit answer to the question, am I worthy and by what standard? And it's common for psychologists, for mental health pundits, for commentators online to kind of talk about, worth and self-worth and accepting yourself, et cetera, et cetera. But we don't so often get explicit about the standard. Well, worthy of what? According to whom? By what? What is it? By what bar? And who set that bar? But that's always an implicit part of the premise.

And I have come to really view it as an essential part of the problem. Most of us have never really asked that question consciously and most of us have some standard that we've internalized that isn't serving us that well or that sometimes serves us really well and so that's reinforced that we really rely on it, but then sort of derails us from what would actually fulfill our needs or make our life work as a whole and make our life fulfilling. And so one of the major premises of this mindset that I've been shilling, that I've been championing called the builder's mindset, is that we have agency over the standards that we set for ourselves.

And fundamentally, that the standard, the kind of organizing principle that each of us would do well to start with is, well, what kind of life do I want? And what would make my life the best possible for me? Because our life is the ultimate project that we're in charge of, that we don't get to live another life. We have this one to live and to do what we will with. And it's this incredible shot at an existence, at inventing in the universe, at making our mark, at feeling the joy of connection. And we have a lot more agency over that project, over what we make of that life than I think almost anybody realizes in a day to day.

It's the famous Steve Jobs quote, which I think comes closest of the popular discourse on agency and on self-determination. I think his quote around like poking at life and seeing what comes out the other side kind of really captures emotionally, connotatively the sense of the kind of builder's mindset premise that we really are the builders of our lives, the architects, right? Not just the hired contractors. And then a lot flows from that in terms of how do we think about our goals and how do we choose our goals and how do we motivate ourselves and manage ourselves toward our goals? How do we deal with everything from procrastination to hard conversations and interpersonal conflicts? How do we view our relationships to other people?

What standards do we hold ourselves and other people to within the context of the particular projects we've chosen? And on and on and on. So many, many downstream implications that we can talk about.

Pranab · 09:40

Yeah, what I loved about the book and just your approach to it in general is the specificity, nuance and contextualization you have in someone's individual life. Because I think a lot of people have talked about like, oh, sort of the broad strokes or generalities of it, which are great. And I think it's but you get specific on what is the actual target. But then also, how is it implemented? How does someone actually get into their life? And the way I would sort of the word I often have is views, what are the views we implicitly have in our things? Right. And it's like the mindsets, the ways of looking, the approaches we have.

Gena Gorlin · 10:13

I like view. It's like, yeah, vantage point, lens, a lot of that language perspective.

Pranab · 10:19

View is a simple way to capture. And I think especially how much of that, as you say, is driven by stuff around us, scripts, maybe childhood stuff. In your book, you get into attachment. You mentioned some stuff around parts. And we can go into, where part stuff is maybe good, but also wrong, or sort of the over, Maybe the shadow sides of all the shadow work.

Gena Gorlin · 10:41

As it were. As it were. The shadow sides of shadow work. I just can't help with that. I might steal it.

Pranab · 10:47

All yours. It started here. And I think there's a lot there, but I would love to. And I think even going back to the point of a podcast like David Senra's is to sort of absorb views that you like and to like kind of get closer to the type of thing you like.

Gena Gorlin · 11:02

Yeah, and ground them in the examples of actual lives and actual choices that contextualize what this idea really means in practice, right? Because it can look so many different ways and so many different applications. But I think you need examples in order to then be able to kind of synthesize the idea for yourself in a way that allows you to build your own example rather than just copying some existing mold.

Pranab · 11:31

Yep, for sure. And I want to get into sort of the three of the sort of common or, two of the common views and then sort of the view you advocate for. Before that, what causes someone or in your experience, how would you how would you talk about when someone does have a stated view of what they do want for their life and then falling short of it, as we all inevitably do at times? So procrastination, sort of not showing up as well in hard conversations. Yeah. What do you what do you make of that?

Gena Gorlin · 11:55

Yeah. Well, a few different things. Let's see how I would approach the conversation if somebody, let's say, came in. Just that's the problem. And now we're trying to understand it. Yeah. So there are a few things I would want to know first and lots of questions I would ask, including why are you doing this? It's a pretty basic question. What do you want out of this? How does this actually serve you? Right. So I would be sort of assessing for a clarity of goal value, clarity of like, do you actually have your own authentic reasons for doing this?

Are those reasons real to you in the day to day, which is its own huge challenge just to kind of keep salient like I want to change how AI functions in our lives. And I see this specific product that I'm building today as like a tiny little, increment toward that exciting long term future. But there are so many unknowns in how I thread that needle from here to there. And I'm trying to like project forward to decades when I'm 20 years older and when the world looks different. And somehow I'm supposed to keep that like desired future real to myself in the moments of like, why does this customer, why did the customer get bored of this? Why do they keep churning?

And like, why do these bills keep racking up? And how do we finally monetize this thing? And my girlfriend keeps complaining that I cancel all of our dates. How do you actually keep that like vision, that motivation real, especially when it is long term or when it's really complex or abstract or has many parts? So that's one big thing I'd be assessing where it's just like how real, A, do you actually have a plausible reason that isn't just I'm afraid to fail and I'm trying to prove something to someone inside or outside my head? B, if so, how, how much is that reason alive for you in these moments where you procrastinate or where you're having these struggles?

And then C, what are the specific roadblocks you're kind of putting up for yourself in terms of your inner self-talk, in terms of the habits that you're bringing to, let's say you have a great reason for doing it. But as soon as you've like, you have it calendared and you have it as a to-do, the drill sergeant like takes over. Now it becomes another imposed chore, another duty, another like obligation, another way that you are going to prove whether you're worthy or not. Which it didn't start out. It started out like you had a really good reason for this that was personal and exciting and, meaningful to you. But now you've switched on this other mode where now you're just beating yourself up if you don't make enough progress.

And what is enough? There's never, can never really be enough. And it's defined by some arbitrary set of status signals that you absorbed from, Silicon Valley or from whatever milieu, has presented its generic kind of metrics to you. And so I would be assessing for the extent of that kind of drill sergeant takeover that maybe is happening. And then on the flip side, how are you coping with the pain and anxiety and guilt and distress of that kind of drill sergeant mode? And to what extent are you putting up walls, mentally or interpersonally or otherwise, between yourself and the outcome? Where, are you rationalizing? Ah, whatever. This is either, it's out of our hands. We can't control what other customers like us at the end of the day.

And so, the important thing is just to put in our day's work, to show up. But, what we're doing during those hours, nobody's perfect. If I am scrolling Twitter half the time, look, like I need to be able to go easy on myself. I need to have self-compassion because like…

Pranab · 15:50

Self-care.

Gena Gorlin · 15:51

Yeah, because otherwise I'll just burn out. And, like if I fail, at least I'll know I've tried. To what extent are those actually serving as copes for you?

Pranab · 16:00

And what would you call that again?

Gena Gorlin · 16:02

That's the Zen guru kind of mindset. Kicking in, in my lingo, in my kind of taxonomy. Oh, yeah. So I mean, and these are loose organizing frameworks. These are, archetypes that I'm using to gesture at patterns that I noticed tend to kind of cluster together. It doesn't mean that everybody has this exact archetype living in their heads. Yeah. [Unclear: a brief exchange about whether the types are exhaustive.] Yeah. Yeah.

Pranab · 16:28

What I love is how much like just their archetypes, they sort of get at inner critic sort of going too harsh on oneself. And then sort of the, in one way of looking at it, like you could say spiritual bypassing or just sort of using self-care or just the sort of too loose on oneself. Interesting. What came up to me as I was reading it was there's sort of in more gendered terms, but not necessarily sort of like toxic masculinity, toxic femininity or something.

Gena Gorlin · 16:57

It maps to all of those things. Yeah, but that's why I'm giving these names to these archetypes, because we see them show up in so many guises culturally. And you suddenly start to see them everywhere. At least I've certainly been seeing them everywhere. In the years I've been working on this, it's like there's hustle culture and there's self-care culture. There's like permissive parenting and there's authoritarian parenting. There's progressive education, and there's traditional or classical education. And it's like, huh, there's the drill sergeant, there's the Zen guru. And there they are oscillating and there they are debating each other. But like, in my view, as I've really come to see it, they're just versions of the same fundamental error of the same.

17:39 — Drill Sergeant, Zen Guru, and Builder

Pranab · 17:39

And what is that fundamental error? I think you sort of I love some of the phrases you had in the book on how they actually are coming from the same assumptions about the world or same assumptions about people in life. So, yeah, it could be cool to see how like they're how are they actually more the same than different?

Gena Gorlin · 17:54

Thank you for asking me, because that's a really key and easily missed component of this whole framework, and I think it's really important. I mentioned in the beginning that the builder's mindset is premised on this view of our radical agency, our radical authorship that's available to us, where we get to decide what our life's going to be about. We get to choose the projects, and we get to design the intersections between those. How does my family life go together with my work life? What kind of mom or dad do I want to be, if I even want to be one? And how does that fit with what I'm building?

In my family, my husband is building schools largely to solve the problem of our children's education. That's his work. For him, the lines are so blurred that you can't even clearly answer: is he working right now, or is he doing life? Where does the one end and the other begin? Anyway, this idea that we have radical self-authorship at our disposal. I haven't mentioned this yet, but it's a really crucial piece of it: it's not the default. By default, we fall in line with whatever inertial template is available to us. Entropy reigns. The universe is entropic, right? Second law of thermodynamics. There's no escaping from it.

And so there's always going to be some inertial local minimum to follow. There's going to be some readily available template. There's going to be some standard or set of expectations we've internalized from our upbringing, from school, from TV, from the culture at large that pushes us to make a lot of money or to be a good parent, but in some generic sense of good. Both the Zen guru and the drill sergeant are still operating within this framework where there's a bunch of ladders. This is the universe: the universe comes with a bunch of obstacle courses or a bunch of ladders. It just comes baked in with these.

It's like, either you could be a lawyer or a doctor or, or a monk maybe or, in the military. But like, this is your set of options. The world is just kind of baked in with these options. Or you could be a loser, And the question is, which one are you going to be? And so it's like, that's the starting point. And with any of these default kind of paths, they're not that well thought out. They're generic. They certainly haven't been custom tailored to you.

And so inevitably there will be these tradeoffs of like the harder you try, the higher up the ladder you go, the less like happy and content you'll be because you'll have to kind of push yourself against your own better judgment sometimes or against, your own needs.

And you'll have to give up other things you want and you like won't be that bought in anyway because you kind of just accepted it with your mother's milk. So, drink it in. And so you've got to decide either you're going to give up happiness for success, to get up higher on the ladder, or you're going to need to be OK with just not getting up that high on the ladder. But at least you can be content and you can be at peace and accept the trials and tribulations that are just inevitable because this is the world. The world is a place where, you either care and suffer or you disengage and don't suffer.

Pranab · 21:26

Which is, it's the same view.

Gena Gorlin · 21:27

But it's the same view, literally. It's the same universe that the two are responding, right? It's like a universe where there's pretty limited options, right? And you either suffer the ladder or you don't suffer the ladder. [Brief aside about a paper.] Anyway, whereas the builder's mindset just, pulls the, the veil off of that whole, picture of reality. And it's like, what ladder? We made up these ladders. These ladders are human built. And they weren't even around 50 years ago or 100 years ago. And if you look at other cultures, like those aren't even the ladders. And there are totally different ladders.

And, I tell the story of Sahil Lavingia, who, failed to build a billion dollar company with Gumroad, at the time, like fast growing VC backed startup that then stopped growing, plateaued. And he felt like a total failure because by the standard of the Silicon Valley fast growing startup, template, he fell short. He failed to get up to the top of the ladder. And then he kind of peaced out to Utah to just like clear his head, maybe a little bit of a Zen escape going on. He was coping with the failure. And he noticed he was surrounded by like Mormons. And the Mormons were like really worried about him because he wasn't married yet.

And he was like 23 or something, and that he didn't have a family yet and like had zero concern for his entrepreneurial ventures and this and this. But they're just like, but when are you going to get married? And they were like super anxious about that, And when he took a creative writing class, which is the main pretext on which he went was to take a class with, is it Brandon Sanderson? He noticed like the students in the class are like obsessed with getting a good grade. This is their ladder, and they're really worried that they're not going to get a good grade. They're freaking out.

They're as worried about this as I am about that. I could care less, because I've never been this studious academic guy. I'm just taking this for fun. But huh, that's interesting. They're obsessed with getting their A's; I've been obsessed with getting my billion-dollar valuation; these guys are obsessed with when they're married. And I think on some level, he told me the story on a walk, and I'm having my drill sergeant–Zen framework, like, brilliant. Okay, so this set you free in a certain way. And he was reflecting on it, and like, yeah, it kind of did. Because these are all equally arbitrary.

I might as well be obsessing about when I'm going to get married or about whether I get the A, and I'm not obsessing about those things. Why am I obsessing about this thing? It kind of set him free to just reinvent the standard to just figure out for himself, what do I actually want out of a business, out of a life? And I think, got on a much more authentic, fulfilling path at that point.

Pranab · 24:25

Yeah, that's awesome. And what I like about that is it's, so you mentioned default path, our mutual friend, Paul Millerd has some stuff around, looking at the scripts you have and what influences you. And I think it is really useful to sort of change your scripts and shift things and, adopt new scripts. I feel like in the 2000s, 2010s era, we had Tim Ferriss and 4-Hour Workweek and there's all these various scripts and new scripts. Yeah.

Gena Gorlin · 24:47

And I mean, all of CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy is just premised on that idea of fundamentally changing your scripts.

Pranab · 24:53

And what I like you going more into is you can, it's like, it's sort of a fractal thing where you can change your script and play a new game, play a new story, but there are still ladders. I think the drill sergeant–Zen guru dichotomy shows up in every script you play, maybe to different extents. I like how you really get into that, where fundamentally it's about seeing the act of script construction itself to some extent, and how one even forms these in the first place, and continually getting closer to what is more genuine, more authentic.

25:23 — Choosing a ladder and making work meaningful

Gena Gorlin · 25:23

But I think even there, it's like, oh, anything that looks like a ladder is now kind of non grata, is dangerous and scary and threatening, versus just build your ladder. A ladder to what? What are you trying to get to? For some people, it's good.

Thank God that there are surgeons and there are some surgeons who are extremely fulfilled and love their work and approach it, with care and discipline and with, excellence that they're joyfully bringing to it Because they've actually like built a life that really, A, fits together where like where they're not burning out, where there is some kind of way to sustain the love of the work while also getting, the rest and attending to their, whatever it is, their family, their students that write to like to design a kind of mix of activities that all sort of feed and fuel each other where they're not constantly, in the operating room. But like sometimes they're teaching or mentoring and that feels. But in any case, like and then there are really miserable surgeons.

But by the way, there are really fulfilled founders and miserable founders are really fulfilled plumbers and miserable plumbers. And the difference is not like, oh, they picked it like it's too structured or it's like it's too ambitious or, it's too like too grindy. The difference is like, have they actually chosen it wholeheartedly with a kind of clear view to like, what is what does a life look like that has this as the central load bearing pillar of it? And they've built it for themselves.

I write about my friend Anne, who's a lawyer, who's like, if you read the one line or she's she does insurance law at like where she defends insurance companies against, like wrongful claims or, she defends them like, no, no, no, they shouldn't have to pay out this claim. Which you would think like, oh, like soulless, like evil lawyer. And she's one of the happiest, most fulfilled, most like unconflictedly kind, benevolent, joyful people I know. And her story really showcases how she came to be that way because like she thought through, OK, so I want to live in this type of city and I want to live this kind of lifestyle.

And I don't like, she actually grew up in a kind of bohemian, like very Zen-ish family where her parents like did not put pressure on her. If anything, they were like, why are you so, stop like being such a bookworm. Just, it's OK to just let loose, be creative, whatever. That's why you guys don't actually have nice things. I want nice things. And but she like decided for herself she wanted nice things and which nice things. And she also knew she was, like good at like reading and understanding, like text. And she got encouragement from a teacher of like a Latin class early on that really kind of helped her see that. Oh, wow.

Like I can really solve cool, meaningful problems by like, reading a bunch of stuff people have written and sort of seeing patterns in it and putting it together. And like, how do I make money doing that? Oh, well, there's this, this, and there's, I could like be an English major, this, and like, I could be pre-law. And if I'm pre-law, then I can get to a place where I'm like, reading, the legal precedents and like interpreting it in a way that then, I can get good money to help somebody make their best case for, what's fair. And I like fairness. Fairness is good. And she kind of progressed through her legal career, approach law.

She loved law school. She'd like read every paper twice, And just to really make sure she understood it, like she just really enjoyed the challenge where most of her peers were like miserable and complaining all the time about, it's so hard to be in law school. She's just like, well, why did you sign up for it then? Yeah, I think it's really interesting. And then worked at actually a firm she hated because the culture was very much the stereotypical, you just sort of sit there to, accrue billable hours and where the partners, peace out on Friday afternoon and just make you do their grunt work so that they can get billable hours.

But, it's not really about the work. It's about kind of going through the motions. The posturing and the culture.

So she found a new job at a new law firm that had a much better culture. And she actually embraced being an insurance attorney in a context where she got to defend the businesses of the city she loved. And she's found ways to sort of grow in that career in all the decades since. And so this is an example where, yeah, she works a standard corporate job. By any sort of external measure. It's like, oh, she's just if you look at her LinkedIn, it's like, OK, whatever, But like the actual experience of it. Totally. And not just the experience, but also like how she approaches the work. Right. She she actually cares about the truth. She actually wants to get it right.

She actually, she doesn't represent a client who she thinks is dishonest and bad. Right. She has integrity. She has standards and she sees her work as deeply meaningful. And I think therefore actually imbues it with meaning. Yeah. There's a way to be a really good lawyer. Yeah. Yeah.

Pranab · 30:44

Which I think like really gets at for decades, people talk about meaningful work as sort of an external thing of like what you do. Are you? Oh, and it's like, are you in charity or are you like? Exactly. Yeah. It's a social worker versus like, oh, you're a businessman, or. And then there's like the next generation, which is like the Tim, I say Tim Ferriss in a caricature way, but like the sort of like, oh, but are you a solopreneur? Do you have an internet business? And then we have startups. And it's like, are you doing startups this way? Are you doing it that way? There's all the focus on like down to the intricate details of, are you bootstrapping? Are you fundraising?

We get this all the time of like one scene is more virtuous than the other or scene is more. And they really do map to drill sergeants and guru. Funny enough, like my best friend, he's lived at a Zen temple. And sort of…

Gena Gorlin · 31:30

My official position is pro-Zen. There's a sense of Zen that I have absolutely no objections to.

Pranab · 31:38

Of course, of course.

Gena Gorlin · 31:39

To be clear, this is an archetype that I'm...

Pranab · 31:42

Yeah, I think that's like, if anyone has an objection to it, that's like the dumbest objection. Because like what you're pointing to is obviously a real thing.

Gena Gorlin · 31:48

I think so. Yeah, I think so. But yes, also like, I think I have a footnote somewhere early on, and maybe it should be in the main text.

Like with apologies to any literal drill sergeants, because I think they're doing a really important job that's legitimate that I have no criticisms of. And to any actual Zen practitioners from whom I've learned a lot who do really valuable work. I am. This is not about the literal professions. This is about a mindset that, it's like when you have shorthand for like nervous Nelly with apologies to any real life Nellies who may not be nervous at all. That's. Yeah, exactly.

Pranab · 32:23

Because it's like the actual, in some ways, both drill sergeant and in my familiarity with Zen, Zen is like at its deepest, if you're actually doing it in a more builder mindset way, is about the way you do things, how you do things, how you show up, living life.

Gena Gorlin · 32:36

And when you say at its deepest, I think that's interesting because it depends on where you're getting the foundation. Because if you look at its historical origins and if you look at some of the philosophical roots of the tradition, I would say you find something very, very different from a builder's mindset. Really is about kind of approaching the nirvana that is total detachment. Right, where like it doesn't, you needn't do anything at all in the outside world. And you realize that it fundamentally doesn't matter because there's no you, right? And so that's a very different perspective. But I actually think that there's also a completely alternative foundation from which you can re-derive the same practices, so to speak.

Or, that you can work backwards from the practices to kind of point them in the direction of that foundation that makes the practices extremely valuable and empowering.

Pranab · 33:35

A part of me almost wants to be like, hmm, how can I convert you to Buddhism? Because I actually...

Gena Gorlin · 33:41

Please, by all means, give it your best shot.

Pranab · 33:42

Because basically, because I actually...

Gena Gorlin · 33:44

You won't be the first.

Pranab · 33:45

Yeah, totally, totally. Because I think, in my view, I think that is actually a really common interpretation of that. I think many practitioners do believe is true. I know it's also not the only instantiation. I've had enough of this conversation.

There are actually way different variants of Buddhist and Zen philosophy that actually disagree with each other and that are more wholehearted, more heart-centered versus more detachment, kind of oriented, et cetera. But I think that's probably going to get too into the details. But it sort of is like, I think like, yeah, I think if people stop there, and that is a really deep way it goes. And if people stop there, it really easily can get into nihilism or relativism or just like stuff doesn't matter.

I think David, are you familiar with David Chapman?

Gena Gorlin · 34:40

I mean, very casually.

Pranab · 34:42

So I think like he advocates for this thing called meaningness, which in some ways is very similar to builder mindset of co-constructed meaning.

Gena Gorlin · 34:49

Which is great. I think what I've, yeah, I don't remember and I haven't read that much, so I can't say anything definitive. But my vague connotations with stuff I've seen online by David Chapman is positive.

Pranab · 35:01

For sure. [Unclear.] I think we're pretty, Super aligned. And I would probably say like most people who think they're studying Buddhism or meditation stuff probably should read more David Chapman or stuff in that vein. I'm just like, I think a lot of people do end up, yeah.

Gena Gorlin · 35:17

And to the extent, and does he like, does he get criticism or does he respond to criticism of like, oh, this is a westernized interpretation of Buddhism or no? Because I would actually embrace that. I'm all for westernizing Buddhism.

I think that makes it better.

Pranab · 35:30

Yeah, yeah. It's interesting because in some ways it is both Western. In some ways he also, yeah, I'm not, I also am no expert in David Chapman, but I think like he really gets, it's both Western. He would also probably say it's more traditional in sort of a later Buddhist sense. Which is probably the one that is more in some ways aligned. Yeah, Vajrayana are like from Tibetan Buddhism. In some ways it's actually like there's like weird analogs to like Catholicism in some ways around sort of like nobility and virtue and power. And in some ways it's just fundamentally different than sort of a lot of early Buddhists or even Zen.

Gena Gorlin · 36:06

Yeah, I mean, there's really multiple philosophical strains and kind of sub, I don't want to say, denominations. Right? Kind of like in Christianity.

Pranab · 36:17

But I think what's more interesting is within builder mindset, what I really like to bring it back to the point you had in the book is people can actually have builder mindset, but from the outside look super different. Amongst themselves. There's not one look. Yep. And even like many aspects of builder mindset can look like one or two. Zen or drill sergeant.

Gena Gorlin · 36:37

Because it's not, the mindset is not a set of discrete behaviors that you can like write out as a checklist, right? That, if you're trying to do that, you're already in kind of drill sergeant territory. But rather it's an orientation to life and the world and oneself. And so how that orientation manifests, and especially it's an orientation that centers on radical self-authorship, right?

Of individuation of like, I am the architect of my life, which is singular, which is not going to be a copy of any other life. And so of course, it's going to look super different from one builder to the next.

Pranab · 37:13

Yeah. And I think there's a bunch of threads. One I would like to go into, which you met like maybe 20 minutes ago, we talked about around sort of that lack of connection to that self-authorship. So I imagine like, I imagine it's an iterative process in the story of Anne. I imagine she over time iteratively got closer and closer to that sense and practiced and tried different things. She was in school for three years or she was at a firm for three years and then she changed.

Gena Gorlin · 37:41

Yeah, for sure. Definitely a lot of iteration. That's inherent. And I would say she was basically from what she's at least told me. I mean, I'm sure she's dealt with stuff and whatnot like we all have. But like she's been pretty builder oriented all along. For as long as I know her story anyway, like dating back to high school, dating back to like whenever she kind of really started to consciously think about what kind of life do I want and who do I want to be and what are the different options and how do I kind of, yeah, gather more data to understand better like, humanities versus STEM. You can be a builder throughout that process while your actual mental model of the particulars is constantly changing and evolving, obviously.

38:22 — Are we naturally builders?

Pranab · 38:22

So it does seem like some builders are not exactly born, but practically born, like maybe from their childhood experiences or something.

Gena Gorlin · 38:30

I mean, I don't think we're born with a mindset. So it's not literally born.

Pranab · 38:35

Maybe like once you exit childhood or once you're 18.

Gena Gorlin · 38:37

But I would say like babies are little builders. So in a certain sense, yeah, I would say we naturally start out as builders. And it's much, much easier to the point of being basically automatic to be a builder in the context of the tasks of a toddler, and the tasks of an infant, like who has a bunch of tasks. They're building. They're like building their hand-eye coordination. They're building a sense of balance. They're building an ability to walk around and to, first just to grasp.

I mean, like having a baby, one of the many, many delights, at least as someone who loves children and being a parent is just the staggering amount of learning. I mean, sure, we know we all know that like we learn a lot, but like this is like, oh, you don't know how to stretch out your fingers yet. You don't know how to do that. You have to learn to do that. Oh, like you don't know how to grab a thing. You have to like really work at that. And you have to like kind of like wiggle a bunch. And then at some point in your wiggling, you kind of realize, wait, I can wiggle in this direction.

And then you do that 700 times and you get really good at it. And then you're like, what if I wiggle and can like use my grasping reflex like that thing I had from the beginning, but only when I'm like when something touches my hand. But what if I just do that myself? And like maybe I could make this thing bop, like maybe I like the whole it's like effortful and focused. And, admirable, once you start to really see how busy babies are, building themselves. And they're just learning and building all the time. Constantly, yeah. But, at that point, there's no real conflict of, well, am I being an ambitious enough baby?

Am I living up to my, baby? It's like there's not even that meta awareness yet of, The ability to ruminate in that way. Yeah, it's not online yet. And more power to them, babies that they don't need to like worry about, judging themselves and whatnot. They're just doing the thing. And the things they're doing are extremely like concrete and largely just like perceptual, right? Sensory motor bound. And then as our projects get more complex, more abstract, farther out in time, as we go from like, I wanted to put these two blocks together to make a tower and I did it. And now I've got my outcome and I'm really happy.

Now I can put these two other, where like the path from the vision to the enactment of your vision is pretty short and pretty straightforward.

Pretty, to where, OK, I want to like have a summer job where I make enough money to buy myself this like cool, toy or machine or whatever. So that then I can do this other cool project that I saw my friends doing that I really want to figure out how to do, but there are like three other skills I might need first. And how do I convince my parents and how do I get to work and, not get like lost, right? There's so much now to kind of coordinate already and to put together. And so, and you're more self-aware of like, am I doing this right, right?

That's where you're also able to kind of ask yourself those questions. And so it becomes less and less automatic in the sense of like, at any point now, You're like, I mean, we see in three-year-olds that there's a wide range of anxiety levels that are largely innate in the sense that you're going to be naturally prone to more or less anxiety, all else being equal. And so it's easier or harder to stay focused on a goal versus kind of letting your mind get hijacked by like worries about what if I do it wrong or what if my parents disapprove or what if the teacher doesn't like it, right?

Where these neurotic kind of thoughts start to flood our minds, but also like questions of what is the right way? And like out of all the different things I could be doing, what do I want to do and why?

And what is a good reason? And what is a bad reason? And what makes a good kid and a bad kid? There's no way to avoid, grappling with those questions. And so anyway, this is a very long tangent to your one offhand remark about is it inborn? Which is great.

Pranab · 42:55

No, no, because I think there's a lot here we could go into and unpack. I want to. And I think the thing that all brought up is near the end of your book, you mention hallmarks of a builder mindset, self-love, self-confidence, self-trust, humanism.

Gena Gorlin · 43:10

Yeah, basically. Yeah, that's right.

Pranab · 43:12

I think I just got the quote.

Gena Gorlin · 43:13

So that sounds, Yeah. Sounds plausible. Sounds like something I might have written. Because I've changed the wording so many times from self-confidence is the latest iteration of what has been like a sense of agency, sense of efficacy, sense of competence, where like they're all related, but slightly, have different shades of meaning. But yes.

Pranab · 43:33

It's totally. And I think I totally want to bring in the part of me I want to bring in that actually there's a Buddhist way of talking about this too.

Gena Gorlin · 43:41

That'd be fun.

Pranab · 43:42

But that's neither here nor there. But I think that the self-trust bit really, I think it's like in some ways I've been, because I think about this stuff a lot as well.

And for my own life, the way I've been thinking about is, self-trust and goal-directedness at larger and larger timescales. Because it feels like that feels like, that's like, that's like it. If you can kind of, you mentioned stories in your book of like people who are able to have visions for 10 years, 20 years, like long-term time horizons.

Gena Gorlin · 44:11

Which people typically think of as, oh, to do that, you have to beat yourself up and force yourself and coerce yourself.

Pranab · 44:16

Or self-delude, right?

Gena Gorlin · 44:17

Or self-delude. And I'm saying, nope, you don't need to do either of those things. And actually getting more in touch with reality is good from this point of view. Much, much better. Much, much better. Necessary, I would even say.

Pranab · 44:28

I guess, oh, man, I think, so what if someone, so, okay, so where does, so how does someone fall from builder's mindset? So it's maybe in some ways innate.

Gena Gorlin · 44:40

It's like original sin.

Pranab · 44:41

No. Right, right. In some ways it is. Or maybe.

Gena Gorlin · 44:45

I mean, but so this is really important. I know I was just saying like, look, you're just naturally a builder. You're an infant. And then it gets harder and harder. That's true. But that doesn't mean it's the default. And so we exactly.

Pranab · 44:57

So maybe the question I'm really asking is what makes it not the default for most people? And there's a friend who maybe had it a bit easier or whatever reason had it earlier on in life. How can someone, regardless of where they start, move towards a builder mindset?

What does that look like? How is that? And that's sort of the point of the book.

45:13 — Death is the default; default is not destiny

Gena Gorlin · 45:13

It's a great question. So I know I mentioned the default thing in passing, but I want to actually elaborate it a bit because it's so core to the whole worldview and to kind of the whole foundation for this idea of the builder's mindset. Just, I repeat in the book often, death is the default. That probably came across as like a major theme. And it might sound like, oh, my gosh, it's so dark. But like really like death, entropy, sickness, like all this stuff. It's just the default. And default does not mean destiny. That by default, everything sucks. And by default, we misunderstand each other. By default, we fall into, habits. Nothing exists. There is no society. And by default, things fall apart.

By default, there's famine and war and death. But like that doesn't mean that it's destiny. That doesn't mean it has to. It just means like it doesn't require vice. It doesn't require any sort of special fall from grace to like go hungry or to be incompetent. That's just the default. Of course, by default, you don't know how to do anything. And by default, you don't read people's minds. And so you're going to miscommunicate and you're going to misunderstand what they're trying to say to you and what you're saying to them. And that'll snowball. Yeah, by default, you die. A kind of uninspired death? But like and so there's no reason to beat ourselves up over that.

There's no reason to, we should expect things to be breaking all the time. We should expect, if we're going especially to build something new, we should expect that like we're going to get it wrong like a thousand times in unexpected ways that there will be unknown unknowns. And that sometimes that's going to be really painful. And sometimes we'll screw up in ways that hurt us and our stakeholders. And, yeah, you've got to price all that in. Entropy, like this is what you're up against if you want to go and make something orderly.

Pranab · 47:05

In some ways, it's like what you sign up for for life. It's like that is just sort of the state of things.

Gena Gorlin · 47:10

Exactly. That is the default condition. It is not the metaphysically necessary condition. It's not fate. It's not destiny. I think the Zen guru perspective, as I think it manifests in all these different places, is like a resignation to a life of suffering. The way that I put it in the book, on the Zen mindset, you see life as a storm to be ridden out. You're a passenger on a raft in a stormy sea, and the more equanimity you can achieve, the more acceptance of this unfortunate situation.

It doesn't even have to be unfortunate if you just accept that, yeah, I am a helpless this little speck of dust in a hostile universe or in a universe that is in constant flux where nothing can really be pinned down and where nothing can be, yeah. People are going to drop dead around me and I won't be able to actually achieve any of my goals. But like, as long as I can be okay with that, because that's just, that's the world. No, it's not the world. In fact, we can see all around, look at a skyline. Yeah, great. Somehow that all was built and it stands.

And we expect it to continue to stand as long as we maintain it. And we're not just like waiting for it to fall on our heads any day because we figured out physics. There can still be progress.

There can still be like things getting better. We have eradicated many diseases and suffering. [Unclear.] Or like, yeah. I mean, smallpox is gone. All the things. All the things. Right? You can just kind of point to the progress studies canon. As just one way of describing how things get better over time. Anyway, and so this is like a major backdrop for, now I want to get back to your original question that sent me down this rabbit hole because I do think.

Pranab · 49:14

Yeah, of how people lose.

Gena Gorlin · 49:16

So thank you. That's right. So like how it is and it isn't. How do you build it if you don't already have it? And why do some people seem to already have it? So by default, past toddlerhood, get like past the point where like our goals are kind of like immediate and perceptually evident, even in toddler. I mean, toddler's tantrum, right? Because they're constantly being thwarted in their goals. It's really hard to figure out how do I actually get the toy that I want when I want it? And why did my sister take it? And how do I get her to give it back to me?

And how do I get my parents to actually feed me when I want to be fed, especially before I have words, right? It's already really hard, right? To like actually get our needs met and figure out what our needs even are and, what are the moves available to us, right? So by default, we don't know what we're doing. By default, we don't already have a goal or a standard that's like pre-programmed in us, right? And so we sort of absorb from our environment by osmosis, in effect, by, inertia, by, like entropic drift, goals that are suggested to us or that are nearby. Culture and media parents.

And like, it's sort of inevitable that some of that will happen as we're growing up. I mean, especially as a function of our education, our upbringing, just why obviously this is a major part of my kind of life's work, largely through my husband and through parenting to also figure out like, what are the optimal conditions for really cultivating the builder's mindset from the ground up?

But even in the ideal conditions, which almost none of us had anything close to, there's still a bunch of ways to go wrong. And it's still really hard to like construct for yourself a plausible set of interests and goals that hang together. And to continually kind of like build and nurture what I call that builder's love over increasingly kind of complex, choices and tradeoffs and affordances where there's more and more ways you could spend your time. And there are farther and farther, removed consequences of how you spend your time.

And you're trying to like mentally model all of that and figure out what are all the different configurations of like I could, be this kind of person who like works on their schoolwork and their evenings but doesn't take it too seriously but has this sport. And that's the thing that will be more of like an organizing priority for me and source of identity. But like and then how do friends fit into that and like. And there's a way of doing it sort of in a slightly more drill sergeant vibe of like I need to get it all figured out right. [Unclear.] And there's a way of doing it in a more zen vibe of, ah, and just let go of the concept. Just whatever.

Just push it away. It doesn't matter. Just take a step at a time and just be in the moment.

Pranab · 52:01

In some ways, and those are the way I relate to that, those are both reactions to overwhelm. And those are sort of like, do we go in or do we go out?

Gena Gorlin · 52:08

But again, it's all avoidance. They're both avoiding. And I would even, it's like their reactions to entropy. And interpretations of entropy as bad, as a failure, as a problem, right? Which if you like then trace back, like what would you have to assume in order to interpret the fact of entropy as like a failure? It's like somehow by default, I should have just been able to do it right the first time. I should have just known.

It should have just been intrinsically obvious to me what the right course is, right? So it's like if you have a view of the universe where it's either like you have it or you don't. Right. Kind of fixed mindset style where either you're just born with a calling and like you're one of the chosen ones and one of the smart ones or sorry, game over. Right. Then you're really screwed the moment you encounter an obstacle because you don't think of it as built. You think of it as innate. Right. As like you have it or you don't.

Pranab · 53:05

Yeah. And I think that process is I'm going on a bunch of changes in my head. It's very interesting.

Gena Gorlin · 53:12

Yeah, this is great.

53:14 — From repairing yourself to building your life

Pranab · 53:14

I think one thread is, so let's just take one slice of this. One way of that, let's say the modern trauma therapy tends to talk about how to get better and how to work through the stuff. There are these patterns. These patterns come from childhood, attachment wounding, all this sort of stuff, which I think you agree with and you talk about in your book, a lot of it. And I think there's a way in which one can sort of and uncondition those and move through healthy stuff. And that's one view. And let's get into that. And there's other views around like, just, yeah, there's other views. But like, so let's take that view, for example, of how to sort of move in what, maybe they don't articulate, but how does that process fit into a builder's mindset and where does it go wrong?

Gena Gorlin · 54:01

That's a great question. And, I keep putting off, even though like I most want to answer the, well, how do you build one if you don't already? Because none of us fully have one. Even Anne, again, has had her struggles. That's just not the focal point of that story. But most of my work has been around how to help first myself, and then also my clients.…

Pranab · 54:20

What I like too is the emphasis of, I think so much of life is about floor raising. And you talk in your book about ceiling raising. How do we raise the ceiling? And to do that, you do have to raise the floor. But at some point, it feels like there's a bit flip or there's some shift into how one views it. And maybe it's a continuous function, but still, there's sort of a different.

Gena Gorlin · 54:38

There's definitely a difference in how one views it. I like how you put that. Because, yeah, I mean, sure, there's a bunch of deficits that we might need to address. There are skills that are missing, right? We have skill gaps. Or, we're really anxiety prone. Or we've had really bad trauma. And, it's haunting us. And it's creating real, intrusion in our lives that needs to get dealt with, that needs to get repaired. So there's all kinds of repair to do, even if, whether you're on a builder's mindset or this. But like if you're viewing all that from a lens of like what is the fully lived life you want to build? And then how do all these different things fit into it?

Some of which are going to be like, yeah, look, if you want to fully live life, you got to nix this like alcoholism problem. Because that's going to really interfere with your efforts to build a fully lived life because you're going to constantly be at the mercy of this thing.

Pranab · 55:29

And there's sort of the, and taking that in particular, there's sort of the drill sergeant mindset of like, and I need to cut it and I need to stop it right now. But you sort of suppress and there's all these binge cycles.

Gena Gorlin · 55:39

That's right. Which just like don't actually solve the problem. Yep. And also entreat and the whole motivation for trying to solve the problem isn't even about the problem. It's about like what you think it symbolizes about your worth. And so you're trying to still like perform for your inner critics, right, for those inner drill sergeants rather than actually like build something different, right? Actually change both the inner and outer world to suit your purposes, to suit your needs.

Okay, like I actually just don't want this to keep haunting me because it's really in my way. And like it gets me down and it saps my energy and my motivation. So like, Gena, help me. How do I not be constantly ruminating on these things that have happened? How do I not constantly get like defensive whenever somebody criticizes me? Because like that whole, traumatic schema of like feeling not enough or feeling like I'm fragile and like people are going to abandon me. It just gets activated. How do I move past that?

I can tell you how. I can show you. I mean, obviously it takes work, like anything. And yeah, a lot of the work you'll find resonances with tools from existing therapeutic interventions like CBT, IFS, ACT. Yeah, exactly. But I have kind of reintegrated a lot of that tooling through this builder's lens, which often will look very similar in a glance.

Pranab · 57:10

And I think like save some of the failure modes or sort of like fixes some of the failure modes.

Gena Gorlin · 57:14

Yeah, that's right. Including some of the failure modes that I think like therapists are prone to when helping people through these different kind of differences. I've written recently about IFS as a case study. Yeah…

Pranab · 57:28

Which I 95% agree with. It's super useful because I think a lot of times, and I'll just give my take on it. And I'd love to get your elaborate take there. But like I think with IFS, which is sort of in our milieu, just becoming really popular within tech circles and stuff, which I think is great. It is really useful to, I think at best, it's this whole thing that we have parts and perspectives of ourselves that are separate from. Mindsets.

Gena Gorlin · 57:52

It's mindsets, views. Some of what I write, you might almost find interchangeable. Oh, right, there's this voice and this voice and this voice. And how do they talk to each other? And what are they trying to do? What are their functions? They're trying to protect you from something. They're trying to keep you motivated. So lots and lots of overlaps. And I mean, so IFS is an example of a school of thought that kind of reifies some of these parts. Again, I said by default, there's just entropy. And so much of what we take as given, as default, is an artifact of human invention, of human design, for better or for worse.

And so, the fact that, we have these protector parts and that we have these firefighter parts and these, in a certain sense, it's not surprising that lots and lots of people end up with those kinds of voices in their heads because the world is, hard to navigate. And we get a lot of messaging from our culture and our, upbringing. That's really adaptive. Maybe you need to have those. And you and yeah, like you actually do need to be vigilant against real threats. That's an actual like fact of human life that like sometimes, like a car is coming at you and you need to jump out of the way or, you are going to run out of money if you don't do something about your finances.

And then that's going to really create big problems for you. And so, there are lots of natural reasons having to do with the architecture of human life and, the human condition that make it predictable that, yeah, sometimes we might have an overdeveloped sense of, threat detection, right? Or an overdeveloped, error monitor or whatever the case may be. But where IFS and a number of other similar kind of schools of thought then take that is to this kind of neo-Jungian assumption of like there's this whole implicit like inherited collective unconscious in effect.

Like we come baked in with mindsets and with like hopes and with like whole narratives that are kind of a priori, or evolved or, whatever the narrative of the kind of cause, like the ideology of these little doppelgangers in our heads. That in effect, yeah, you're kind of stuck with these in a certain way. And I know even within, I guess, like if you dig into any given theory, like there are going to be lots of different. Yeah, there's going to be a whole dialectic within. That's not at all, and then, well, it depends on which scholar you read and how they respond to it. And, are there unburdened ones and burdened ones?

Or are there who are, the secret poltergeists of, sometimes they actually are hostile, but we're not supposed to talk about that.

Pranab · 01:00:39

So, yeah, I think it's, unburdened. What do you think? Unattached. Unattached burdens. Is that what they are? Robert Falconer is the guy who sort of talks about that. Yeah, where basically, you, inherited them intergenerationally.

Gena Gorlin · 01:00:52

Which like, or sometimes we have bad motivations and we need to catch that in ourselves. Sometimes we're petty. These are, we don't need to invent an like invisible intergenerational knowledge transmission mechanism by which we're haunted in effect by cognitive ghosts. In order to explain why sometimes we go really wrong and we actually, wish people ill. And like like that's a real thing that happens and that we have agency over our motivations.

Pranab · 01:01:27

They're sort of like, you could take a more functionalist approach. You can go into the causal chain, and maybe there's different metaphysics or whatever, but functionally, do you want to be this or not? What is the way you want to live your life? Which I think is what builder mindset advocates. How do you want to live? You can go as deep as you want, but it's more simple.

01:01:44 — How beliefs change through action

Gena Gorlin · 01:01:44

And I feel like we haven't actually said the basic set of things that now we're riffing on, that I should probably put in place. To change your mindset, you reprogram yourself over time by first really consciously forming your own independent judgment. First, by realizing that you even have it: oh wow, I have this implicit assumption that people will abandon me when they give me critical feedback. There's this view that lives in my head.

First, being able to articulate and notice and catch that view, and notice the bodily sensations that signal, oh, I might be in the throes of this view. Really get to know your inner landscape, including who are the characters, who are the players? Parts, whatever we want to call them. And then really take ownership, really exercise the agency of, okay, so I can assert: A, I don't actually believe this anymore.

Or do I believe this? What is this actually based on? It's probably based on when I was 10 and actually had very little power over, the like sometimes mean spirited grownups in my life who would like, punish me for having a feeling or, or worse. Or like who would abuse me or neglect me or whatever the case may be. Or, like I actually couldn't find anybody in the whole world around me that was like-minded because I had a world of like 50 kids in this random neighborhood who, yeah, none of them were actually that interesting. And then I interpreted, I extrapolated from that this is the world.

But like I live in a world where I have, where I'm at the mercy of mean people and or where I have to like walk on eggshells and be on my best behavior by the standards of the authorities around me or else I'm grounded or, or hit. And so like now I still am basically walking around with that assumption. Hmm. But it's just, wait, but like now I choose the people I hang around with.

Now I am like an independent adult who has like built myself a house or, who like quits a job that, I don't like and goes and gets a new one or like, or I'm a founder who's like actually completely, like I'm literally my own boss. There's literally nobody who can tell me what to do here and like has any real authority over me other than just the consequences of my actions, right? And so I actually don't need to fear this. But I'm still going to, because that feeling is deeply rehearsed, and that view is deeply rehearsed. So what I'm going to do is act on what I know in the face of that feeling.

I'm going to take that feeling by the hand, over and over again. I'm going to get the critical feedback, and I'm going to ask for the critical feedback rather than avoid it. Normally I avoid it because I'm acting from that feeling of, it's threatening and scary. But instead I'm going to go seek it out in every opportunity, and I'm going to feel the anxiety and feel the, ah, this means that it's game over and they're going to abandon me. And I'm still going to stay conscious and focused and present and mindful and process the feedback.

I'm going to stay long enough in that situation for that little ten-year-old part of me to see that it's actually fine. I'm going to do that over and over and over again. I think of it as a PR campaign for ourselves.

Pranab · 01:05:04

Yeah, I 100% agree. This is the approach that I take in my own coaching and the work I do. And I think what a lot of people miss, that you're rightfully getting, is it also has to come from doing things.

100%. I think a lot of times that's where the navel-gazing we started with is a real failure mode. If you just try to think your way out of it, and this is where I think Joe Hudson, a lot of the current approaches that are more somatic, more experiential, or feel your way out of it. But you actually have to go do the things.

Gena Gorlin · 01:05:33

You actually have to expose yourself to the evidence in the world.

Pranab · 01:05:39

Which is like, the work I do with Attention Copilot, it's like, great, you have this big opening and feeling, which is great. That actually is really important. But then bring up the thing, or do the thing that tends to cause the trigger in the first place, and see if it still comes up. And then be with it then.

Even in the moment, I think there's a lot here with social anxiety, disordered eating, any place or situation where we tend to get triggered and fall into smaller versions of ourselves.

Gena Gorlin · 01:06:07

It's like any habit we want, right? It doesn't have to be a psychiatric disorder. It's like, I'm going to stop biting my nails, and I do it automatically in certain contexts. What triggers me to do it? And can I become more aware of those triggers?

And like, am I usually kind of stressed? And is it a cope in some way? And to that extent, what can I remind myself of? Or like, what healthier and more enduring form of safety or whatever need fulfillment, can I give myself instead? It's like, this is how we build ourselves and rebuild. And like, it's a constant project of building and rebuilding.

Pranab · 01:06:47

I'm curious on, and this is some ways, I guess, yeah, so there's a bunch of archetypes. But I'm curious about what your take is on the person who sort of has a really high delta between their best self and their worst self. Maybe like really, that's like one archetype. Yeah, yeah.

There's someone else who sort of is maybe like in a smaller band and they just have to kind of raise up. But maybe there are people that have like a big delta. Yeah, this may be kind of a specific question.

Gena Gorlin · 01:07:12

No, I mean, it's super. I mean, I guess, let me see if I can clarify. Yeah, sure. Best fit because I actually could see that being a few different types depending on like do you mean like a person who is compartmentalized in the sense of like they're like amazing at work or like they're amazing when they're like yeah managing their team I mean this is right or like they're amazing with their friends yeah but they turn into like jerks or they're super avoidant at work with their friends, I mean, with their team?

Pranab · 01:07:35

Yeah. I imagine there is both a horizontal, which is like, in various different areas of your life you can be one way, and you're a worse version in other ways. I think there's also a temporal thing, like maybe in the morning, depending on the day or the time.

Gena Gorlin · 01:07:49

Exactly, for sure. So there's the swings, the mercuriality of your mindset and your mental condition. That's a thing for sure, where it's not necessarily compartmentalized across domains of your life or across specific situational contexts. Just like, yeah, I'm up and down.

01:08:17 — Noisy minds, intrusive thoughts, and OCD

Gena Gorlin · 01:08:17

There's a bunch of different factors. It could literally be like hormonal. It could be, and this is, I don't know if this is sort of the end of the book as it's currently drafted at least. But I have one paragraph on like how do we apply that death is the default insight to our own minds. And just like the value of realizing that our minds are noisy and that like sometimes that we will just be in a funk and like it will go away. And just knowing that, yeah, sometimes I get into a funk.

And look, I could devote my life to researching the 700 variables: the weather and what I ate and my sleep rhythms the night before and my exact levels of pH and whatever that have all added up to me being in this funk for a few hours. Somebody should do that. It's super interesting. Again, I'm not saying we'll never know. We've learned a lot, and we know a lot more than we used to. There are people who are specialists in balancing your hormonal [levels], or in whatever. But we could also just accept that sometimes our moods will fluctuate a bit, and we can get on with our life and not let it become a way bigger problem than it needs to be because we then start to analyze it and regard it as a problem to solve.

Pranab · 01:09:34

Yeah, and hit it into like a rumination loop around it.

Gena Gorlin · 01:09:36

Right, and judge yourselves for it and like imbue it with like deep significance that it needn't have. Same with, intrusive thoughts that it turns out everybody, like literally everyone has sometimes had the thought pop up, like what if I just drove off this bridge or hit this pedestrian? And most people are just like, that's weird and move on.

Pranab · 01:09:52

And then I think a downside of interest, like of self-growth culture is sort of like, ah, that's a part of me, I need to fully see it out. And that's toxic.

Gena Gorlin · 01:10:00

That is a dangerous road. And there are cases of OCD. Most cases of OCD, it takes some real relearning and reconditioning through practice, through exposure and response prevention. We can talk about that if we want. But, I actually learned this from a specialist in OCD who's treated, many hundreds of patients with OCD and does research on it. Adam Radomsky, I think is the name, a Canadian, OCD researcher, who mentioned to me that, one in a hundred cases of patients. So he'll start every treatment with a psychoeducation piece where he'll show the list of a bunch of intrusive thoughts to the patient and say, check off which of these you have. And they check off, a bunch of them.

Okay, check off the ones that you think like more than 90 percent of them, that like a healthy person. And they're like, no, no, no, they don't. This isn't. And then he tells them, actually, no, 90 percent of people endorse like 20 of these, whatever. Maybe I drive off the bridge or kill somebody or whatever. Or like, what if I have, what if I'm gay? What if I'm like, what if I sexually abuse my baby? Things that are just like, oh my gosh. Terrible things. But like brains are noisy and they're looking out for possible things, that might go. And so like sometimes they'll just throw up these crazy things. And one in a hundred patients is cured. Who comes in with diagnosed OCD.

It's like clinically seems like they're spending an hour or more a day on compulsions related to their obsessions. And it's really significantly impairing. Their life and has been for at least, six months, whatever the diagnostic. And they learn this piece of information and they're fine. Well, at least like one percent. One in a hundred. So like obviously for most patients, that's not literally the whole care. But it's cool that for some people you can just get the white pill and you're like, oh, whoa, OK, cool. This whole time, I've just been assuming that like something's deeply wrong with me, which is a very common thing in OCD. So, most patients, it's like that's not all it takes to just completely unhook them from that belief forever.

But they have that belief and that's a big part of what's causing them suffering.

Pranab · 01:11:58

What I'm getting, it's interesting how like a lot of this is about unhooking certain beliefs but not removing the beliefs necessarily. It's like the unhooking part is what matters the most. It's like you don't have to. And then it sounds like a lot of it is also about updating or sort of installing more healthy beliefs.

Gena Gorlin · 01:12:17

Even more so. And with the emphasis on: but what do you want your life to be about? And what goal do you want? And what are your actual values? Let's really anchor to those. And yeah, this other stuff will still be in the background, chattering away and creating some noise. But the peanut gallery can do its thing. It needn't control your life.

And that very much is an ACT-inspired insight.

Pranab · 01:12:43

That has been extremely helpful to me with. Yeah, a few months ago I reread some of the ACT books and I was just like, this is great. This just gets at exactly.

Gena Gorlin · 01:12:52

Yeah, and they're so good with their metaphors. That's one of the things that ACT does really. I mean, and that kind of goes back to Steve Hayes, who's the founder of it.

Pranab · 01:13:00

For anyone who doesn't know, acceptance and commitment therapy.

Gena Gorlin · 01:13:03

We're throwing acronyms around. I'm the worst offender. And IFS, internal family systems. Internal family systems, cognitive behavioral therapy. What other acronyms have we thrown around?

Pranab · 01:13:12

I'm sort of like, it's 2026. Either or you don't care. But, actually, I should know. Nice. Makes sense. Yeah, we don't have enough time to really get into another topic, but a bunch of stuff that's floating around my mind that you sort of do mention at the end of the book, oh, these could be separate books, Builder's Mindset for Kids, which I think you and your husband could easily—

Gena Gorlin · 01:13:35

That's a whole other. Yeah, you should interview him at some point.

Pranab · 01:13:39

I saw that he had a talk with the Sovereign Child guy. But I missed it. It was in Austin. I missed it, sadly. But there's a really cool.

Gena Gorlin · 01:13:48

Online, right?

Pranab · 01:13:48

Oh, is it?

Gena Gorlin · 01:13:49

Sorry, that is not online. No. Oh, but they did actually afterward, they did a podcast.

Pranab · 01:13:53

They did a podcast? Oh, awesome.

Gena Gorlin · 01:13:54

That's online.

Pranab · 01:13:55

Yeah, I really want to check that out because I think there's a lot of interesting stuff there on like, yeah, permissive. One of my sort of conjectures is like therapy culture is now mainstream. I think like seven years ago, it wasn't mainstream. And there's a whole like pre-COVID, there's like a, still about the stigmatization thing. And I think we have now hit, it is mainstream. Everyone knows about therapy.

And it's, not, it's, if anything, now a status badge. It's status and it's sort of overly refined. And it's doing a thing that it wasn't.

Gena Gorlin · 01:14:24

There's political polarization there, too.

01:14:27 — The Builder’s Mindset in relationships

Pranab · 01:14:27

Yep. And I think it's also doing a thing that it wasn't meant not to do. A lot of therapy was, floor raising. And now I think we're sort of treating therapy in a ceiling raising thing in a way that it kind of can do. If it does it in a builder mindset way. But, easily can kind of get into like, I need to fix all my parts. I need to, so that's a whole thread. There's another thread. It's a fun thread. It's a fun thread. Another thread on relationships and builder mindset, especially when two people are individuated and having their own builder mindset. I think there's a really common thread where there's a whole thing of, well, how, what does compatibility look like if you are both doing your own separate things? And like, what if you were.

Gena Gorlin · 01:15:07

That I don't address enough in the book and want to. Yeah, I mean, it's like a huge... You can tempt me easily. I mean…

Pranab · 01:15:12

I looked at you and Matt as sort of like, you guys are like some of the cutest couples on Twitter, with the kids. It's just awesome.

Gena Gorlin · 01:15:20

We're pretty cute. I'm not going to lie. I mean, that's a hard-won, to be clear. Matt is not my first romantic relationship, and I'm certainly not his. He was divorced previously. He's tweeted about it. It's not like—

Pranab · 01:15:37

Yeah. And it's interesting because, not putting too much on your guys' relationship, but just in general, it does seem like what a relationship is and what it's for has changed a lot in the last couple of decades, from what I can see. And I imagine it's still very much a moving target, from what I can sort of get, vibes I pick up on Twitter.

Gena Gorlin · 01:15:55

Yeah, there's so much to say, and I could easily geek out on this for seven more podcasts. But I do want to say, because this is pretty critical to the builder's mindset, that it very directly affects our view. The way that we view ourselves in the world very much redounds upon how we view humanity and humans. Humanism is a really core component of the builder's mindset. And specifically, what is my definition of that? Because you see it thrown around a lot. According to the builder's mindset, our lives are positive-sum in the sense of, there's entropy and there's what we add to it, right?

We create and build, and imagine and invent new forms of value that just didn't exist before. We add meaning where there was no meaning, etc. And that really shapes how we view other human beings and our relationships with them. Human beings are fundamentally this profound source of that. A builder loves humans, really fundamentally. Humans are builders. Humans are these incredible living sources of creation and of connection and of creativity and of love. So fundamentally, we look out into the world: okay, where are the other builders that I can connect with, that I can build with, that I can exchange value for value with, talents for talents? How do we pool our efforts?

How do we compound our creative energy and our intelligence? An implication of that perspective is that relationships are fundamentally win-win or they're lose-lose. In all the different contexts where we assume, okay, either you're going to have to sacrifice some of your well-being and happiness, or they're going to have to sacrifice some of theirs. That's just an inherent trait, if you want to be in a real [relationship]. Just like, well, if you want to be ambitious in your work, you're going to have to settle for a less like fulfilling personal life or if you have, or vice versa. Same error actually extends to like, well, if he's winning, then, she's going to have to be losing.

Or like when you fire somebody like, yeah, it's a bummer for them, but like at least, it's good for you. And so you just want to at least try to mitigate the damage. It's like, no, keeping somebody in a job where they're not actually contributing, or where they're actually causing resentment for those around them, where they're actually languishing because their talents are not getting well utilized is not a win condition for them any more than it is for you right and all of us have been on the receiving end of, we're the ones who somebody's not breaking up with because they feel bad for us.

They don't want to screw us over, they don't want to hurt us, and so they're taking a hit for the team and wishing they could be free and go date somebody else, but they just don't want to [hurt us]. Who wants to be that partner? None of us want to be on the receiving end of that. It's awful. Please just tell me. Break up with me so I can go and live my life and find somebody who's as excited by me as I am by them, right?

That's not a winning condition. And so being able to really see in every particular context: am I actually doing this person any favors by turning them into a parasite on me? By creating a relationship not of builders but of a giver and a taker, or an exploiter and an exploitee? It's not good for us to be on either end of that kind of zero-sum [relationship].

Pranab · 01:19:53

It reminds me of the drama triangle in some way, or even just like when you have that frame and actions will feed into that frame and you actually can just be in a different frame, like win-win or be in a different situation if it's not, if other person doesn't see it that way. That's cool. Is there anything else you would like to say? I know that was great. I appreciate you.

Gena Gorlin · 01:20:12

I mean, I'm all over the place. Thanks for the opportunity to just be all over the place.

Pranab · 01:20:17

No, and I'm just sort of like, oh man, there's like, clearly you have thought about this a lot. It's grounded in like actual...

Gena Gorlin · 01:20:24

Almost maybe too much. Right, right. I'm inside the complexity and I'm still emerging into the simplicity on the other side of complexity. So you're getting the brunt of that.

Pranab · 01:20:35

So let's talk about that. So how can people learn more about your work? Tell us more about the details of the book, the logistics of it and all that stuff.

Gena Gorlin · 01:20:44

The immediate way to learn more about my work is go to my Substack, The Psychology of Ambition, Builders.genagorlin.com can subscribe for free. Or if you want to support me even more, be a paid subscriber.

Pranab · 01:20:57

The paid articles are great.

Gena Gorlin · 01:20:58

Oh, thank you. You also get a free 30-minute chat with me as a paid subscriber.

Pranab · 01:21:05

I didn't know that.

Gena Gorlin · 01:21:06

But you're getting that. Yeah, exactly. So I don't know how much that's worth to any given person, but I enjoy it a lot. Anyway, the book is forthcoming from Penguin. Expected fall 2027. I can at least now say that. It's a slow process getting a book published with a traditional publisher, which I knew. It's one of these things where it's like it in the abstract, but that's another thing to like know it in the particulars of like this project that you're, laboring over. But anyways, so stay tuned. Fall 2027 is the projected pub date. That's not like, there's not an official launch date yet, but it seems like that's what we're on track for.

Pranab · 01:21:46

Do you have a sense of when the pre-order process will start?

Gena Gorlin · 01:21:49

Like some months before that. I'm learning. This is my first book. So I'm learning right along with, the rest of us. But my sense is that it's some standard, set of time that they open up the pre-orders at probably three months. I don't know. I'm making that up. So don't take my word for it. But I'll be, starting to do more of these podcasts and be kind of more out in the world discussing the book. And if you're a founder or ambitious builder person who wants to raise their psychological ceiling, then I also have a very small, limited number of spaces in my practice at any point in time.

But genagorlin.com/coaching .php, or just Google ‘Gena Gorlin founder coach,’ and you would find your way to that page. And also on X or Twitter. Oh, and I'm also a faculty member at UT Austin. Yeah. But that is also an important part of my role. I'm, yeah, three-fourths time. So I view it as like, oh yeah, it's another side thing I do, but very important. I teach and supervise students, PhD students on therapy. So.

Pranab · 01:22:59

Very cool. Awesome. Well, thank you, Dr. Gena Gorlin.

Gena Gorlin · 01:23:05

My great pleasure. This was really fun. Thanks. Thanks for having me.