What if your greatest creative strength is the part of you that never quite fit in?
In this episode, I talk with Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, psychology professor at Columbia University and host of The Psychology Podcast, to explore why creativity isn’t a rare talent but a way of being—one that thrives when we embrace what makes us different. We discuss how to reframe “disabilities” as strengths and how owning your uniqueness can unlock your creative superpowers. If you’ve struggled to share your work or felt like you don’t belong, this conversation might shift how you see yourself—and your creative potential.
Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman is a psychologist, coach, professor, keynote speaker, and best-selling author who is passionate about helping all kinds of minds live a creative, fulfilling, and self-actualized life. He is a professor of psychology at Columbia University and director of the Center for Human Potential. He hosts The Psychology Podcast which has received over 30 million downloads and is widely considered among the top psychology podcasts in the world.
Dr. Scott’s Website, Podcast, Substack, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter
Zack Arnold: All right, so before we officially begin, Scott, I have to I have to admit something, which is that I feel woefully underprepared for this podcast. And I'm going to tell you why I discovered your book, Wired to Create a couple of years ago, and I would say that it is as close to being an operating manual for the creative mind and how we work and how we can best achieve our creative potential in this world. And I thought this book is awesome. I want to talk to this guy, right? So that's where the journey started. Then as I started to do my podcast preparation, I realized I'm not talking to Scott Barry Kaufman. I'm talking to the Scott Barry Kaufman, who has the number one psychology podcast in the world. You've been the author of 10 other books, and unfortunately, haven't read every word of all of them up until today, but I probably will in the 1% top most cited scientists in the world. You've taught a course with Oprah. You've got a PhD in cognitive psychology from Yale, a master's in experimental psychology from Cambridge, a BS in both psychology and human computer interaction, from Carnegie Mellon, where you also graduated Phi, beta, kappa. So you might literally be the best person on the planet to help me and my audience better understand our messy minds. But despite all of the value that that brings, the thing I'm the most excited to talk about is the value that I think you bring with your origin story. So how did all of this happen from a guy that was stuck in special education all the way up until ninth grade? And as a side note, how does wearing tights and singing opera fit into this origin story?
Scott Barry Kaufman: Well, you really did do a deep dive into my life. And thank you for the kind words. Great to be here. I mean, first, I would say first nine grades of my life until high school. I don't think I really had a sense of self. I don't think I really, I didn't feel like I really existed at all in this world. I was placed in special education for an auditory wording disability that I had, and it really, there was a really powerful question that a special ed teacher asked me after class in ninth grade. She said, What are you still doing here? And it was just like, blew my mind that question, because I really had been asking myself that question for a while, and yeah, it quickly turned into like, yeah, what am I doing here? And I decided, in a surge of inspiration to take myself out of special education and see what I was capable of in life. And I signed up for just so many things and all different kinds of classes that were challenging, and I realized I had a love of learning. Realized I had a love of the world. I didn't, I didn't realize I could be I was allowed, I had permission, to be alive. And, you know, psychologically alive, Zack, you know, it's one thing to be alive and it's another thing to be psychologically alive. They're two different things. And so it was a really wonderful experience just discovering who I was. Applied to Carnegie Mellon University for college, and applied to the Psychology Department and the opera department. I actually got rejected from the psychology department, so I went in and auditioned for the opera program and sang my heart out, got accepted on a partial scholarship, and then once I was there at Carnegie Mellon. I transferred in through the back door to psychology, and haven't looked back since the tights. Thing is you obviously read or listened to the story when I went to the psychology secretary in the end of my first year of college, and asked if I could be a minor in psychology. She's like, Yeah, just sign this piece of paper. And it was one of the most joyful, joyful days of my life to I feel like I hacked, I feel like I hacked the system or something, you know, because I had been rejected from the I had been rejected by that department and and here I was already there at the school, and they don't ask any questions. They assume that you're smart enough. So she just gave me a piece of paper to sign, and I had dance class earlier that day, so I remember skipping home to my dorm room in tight in my tights, with that paper in my hand. It was a really joyous day for me.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and one of the things that you said in the story that was so profound for me was the the realization of, I can't believe that everything that I wanted was on the other side of somebody signing a single piece of paper, right? And I always talk about, especially for and especially for people that are more systems thinkers like myself, I always say that you're just a few check boxes away from being able to change everything. It's just whatever the setting is in your software, or even in your life. It's not a matter of, you got to scrap it all and start over. You can create your own path. But sometimes when you get stuck, there's a hidden check box somewhere, and you're like, you thought, Well, I'm never going to be able to get into school. I've got the special ed label people are saying. I'm disabled, and by the way, we're going to get more. To that from your latest book a little bit later in today's conversation, but you realize that everything you ever wanted was like, Yeah, sure, whatever sign the piece of paper you can have, the major you want, you're like, What? What just happened? So what? One of the the biggest questions that I've been debating for years, and I have my own personal version of an answer, but given the you're one of the the world's experts on really understanding creativity, maybe you can help me answer this question. What do you believe is the difference between somebody, between somebody that's creative versus somebody that identifies as a creative?
Scott Barry Kaufman: Oh, wow. What a great question. How many people identify as a creative? Does that? Do you hear that a lot?
Zack Arnold: Oh, yeah, my entire audience, and I've talked to my students, and I've said, like, we're all creative people. We all work in Creative Industries. We all like making stuff. But how many of you identify as a creative and at first they're like, Well, what do you mean? I don't understand. And then I give some of the the criteria that I believe differentiates and like, oh my god,
Scott Barry Kaufman: maybe I need to get criteria. All right,
Zack Arnold: great. So I'm very welcoming to whatever your criteria might be, but I feel like those that are everybody is creative. You have to be creative to be human being and function in this world. So everybody has some level of creativity, right? But I believe somebody that identifies as a creative it's this incessant need to create things, to just identify as being valuable in the world. Having to have that work make an impact, versus your work is just a means to an end, like the sense that my soul isn't fulfilled unless I've created something that exists because I made it not only that, but other people are seeing and they're impacted by it in some way. And then, by and large, those that see themselves as a creative their livelihood depends on their creativity and their creative choices. So I see that as my criteria. But I would love to know what you would consider your criteria and how we differ. Differentiate somebody that's literally, as you say, wired to create.
Scott Barry Kaufman: It's interesting because I really view creativity as a way of being, not a way of doing. There are a lot of people. There's some, there's some people who do, who do creativity at work, because they have to, you know, because they're, they're forced to generate new ideas, but it's not really their way of being. So I think that there, there, there could be an interesting differentiation between those two things for sure, being a being a creative, being in a creative field. Maybe someone thinks of it that way, but in a lot of ways, I think that whatever field you're in, you can be a creative now maybe we don't want you to be a creative in every field. We don't I don't really want my pilots to be terribly
Zack Arnold: creative. Good point. Yeah, although it
Scott Barry Kaufman: is good to be able to have workarounds and to have multiple strategies and options when in the case of emergency. But yeah, I guess I don't want my accountant to be creative. I don't really want a creative accountant. I think we can bring our creative spirit into anything. It's the creative spirit that is really what I talk about in wired to create. We it that is something that humans are wired for, is this need for exploration, which I think is a basic human need that is right there with the need for connection and the need for safety and the need for self esteem, I would add a fourth one, the need for exploration as as an irreducible fundamental human need probably tied to the need for autonomy. The two are probably related in terms of if you if you follow the psychological literature and and follow self determination theory. They talk about need for autonomy, but I think that that's really linked more irreducibly to the need for exploration. So yeah, I do think that there is a fundamental way of being, and then when you say a creative, I am a creative, that sounds like it's like an identity. It's like you've chosen to make that part of your identity. But I don't think that. I think anyone can choose to make that part of their identity. I taught a course at Columbia, a seminar class called creativity in the good life, which was a popular class because of the title. And I had, you know, a football player on the first day who's like, I'm not a creative and by the last class, he was, like, convinced he was the most creative person on the football team. I think that, you know, I've seen, I've seen up close transformations in people's identity. Well,
Zack Arnold: I love the way that you put all of that. And I think that without even you realizing it, I think you answered my question perfectly, which is, it's the difference between creativity is doing versus creativity as being that's a really, really helpful, simplified differentiation. So if you don't mind, I'm probably going to be using some portions of that going forwards, because that's immensely helpful for me. So I appreciate that. So what I wanted to dig into a little bit deeper is this idea of having some basic operating manual, because I've been saying. For years, and I realized that you say the exact same thing is that I characterize myself as being creative and having a really messy mind, right? And for years, I would say to people, like, I want to really learn more about creativity, how it works. And like, Oh, it's just, it's kind of this esoteric thing that people don't really understand. It's really ephemeral. And then I found Scott, and Scott said, Hold my beer, right? So here's where I want to start. This is kind of the most basic level. I want to talk about the different brain networks. And I love the way that you've taken what I believe to be the most important one for creativity, the default mode network, and said, No, it's the imagination network. So just at a basic level, help us understand the differences between this imagination network, the executive network, and kind of how our brains function between those two and how it leads to creativity.
Scott Barry Kaufman: Yeah, and I would add a third one into the ring. I throw a third network into the ring, the salience network, which is a little which is pretty underrated, because the salience networks really the middle, the middleman, you know, between the executive network and the the default mode network or the imagination brain network. So the default mode or imagination brain network, is a series of is a network of brain areas that seem to function for our social imagination, for retrieving deeply personal memories, projecting ourselves in our mind into the future, thinking through different scenarios and mental simulation is a big part of it. Compassion for others, imagining what someone else is thinking or feeling, it seems to be a big part of it. The executive attention network is important for lots of things, and those who have been diagnosed with ADHD, such as yourself, tend to have executive functioning difficulties which make it hard for them to concentrate on a single stream of thought, to have hold multiple things in their working memory at one time. How are you doing with that? Zack, oh,
Zack Arnold: this is great so far, and it did. The immediate image that I brought up where I said, Yep, you're spot on is I literally had two different chapters of both of your books open at the exact same time, going back and forth, because I usually read at least two to three books at once, because the thought of sitting down from page one to page 200 on one book is just like shoving hot pokers through my eyes. I constantly love being involved in multiple different things. And yeah, my my salience network, or as you call it, the switchboard, and as I'm sure you can talk about more when you have ADHD, sometimes that switchboard isn't operating the way it should, to transition between the creativity network and All right, now I'm in task mode network, right? Yes,
Scott Barry Kaufman: yes, no, that's That's right,
yeah. And then the sale, let me talk about the salience network. You're saying, because it doesn't get a lot of love, and it deserves love. It really it passes the baton, depending on what is most salient, whether or not the external environment is more salient or your internal environment is more salient. Perhaps there's a stream of consciousness that is better served for your imagination, network to ponder and to daydream on, and it kind of shifts to that, but there are some things where our salience network automatic. If we didn't have a salience network, we would be in trouble, because we would not be able to sort out anything relevant from irrelevant. We would have such a reduced lead and inhibition cognitive function that we would see everything as equally meaningful. So it really helps us, at a subconscious level, decide what is meaningful and what is meaningful. But it's good for creative. For creativity, it's good to have flexibility in all these brain networks. It's good to sometime to consider things that might seem irrelevant at first, and to think that through and see how it might be relevant. Because you never know. Some of the best ideas and some like connecting the dots, only comes when you consider things that other people will say are irrelevant.
Zack Arnold: I'm so glad that you brought that up, because I wanted to just not help my audience understand that there are these different networks. But how important knowing how to activate the imagination network is because I think that with the way that our society is now designed with 24/7 stimulation from smartphones, from social media, from endless tasks to do lists. We're always in this executive network, and we don't allow ourselves the space for boredom. We don't allow ourselves to stare out a window or take a walk without listening to a podcast or look at a pot of boiling water while we're cooking. And whenever I talk to my students to say they're just stuck they can't solve a problem, I say you need to. Be bored. You need to schedule boredom, because that's how you activate this imagination network. So help us better understand how we can actually cultivate creativity given the madness of the way that our society is now constructed.
Scott Barry Kaufman: Well, you gave an idea there. Schedule boredom. What are you? What is it really? You're scheduling incubation, you know, there's, there's, there's a research literature connecting boredom proneness to creativity, and the two are positively correlated with one another, there for most people, and they did this study at Harvard, if you give people an option to sit in a room alone with their own thoughts for an hour or receive a series of electrical shocks. They prefer the electrical shocks. I was
Zack Arnold: gonna say, sitting alone for an hour without anybody bothering me with my thoughts, sounds like bliss. Oh, my God, that sounds amazing. Sounds so nice. It's
Scott Barry Kaufman: pretty awesome. I love it. I love it, but, um, but most people are scared of their own thoughts. And they're scared, you know, and I don't know if they're maybe that's too extreme to say most people are scared of their own thoughts, but they find it boring, you know, they kind of constantly stimulation, you know, like, oh, gotta get on, gotta get on X, X or whatever it's called today. Gotta get on Instagram and see how people are doing, who are doing better than me, so I can ruminate the whole day about how I'm not as good as other people, what a waste of life, what a waste of life. Get into your own default mode, network or imagination network, and just project your own future. You know, get in touch with your own self. Actualization. Too many people spend too much of their lives trying to actualize someone else's self, which is impossible to do. You can't actualize someone else's self, only they can do it.
Zack Arnold: That was one of the things that I realized in doing the prep work for this, is that not only are you an expert on creativity, you're also one of the world's experts on understanding self actualization, and literally wrote the book on it. So again, there's just, there's so many resources that we could dig into that I'm going to share with my audience. But that's another one that I feel like, you know, again, woefully underprepared, even though I have pages and pages of notes, and, you know, did a deep dive, like there are just so many areas that you cover that I'm so interested in. One of them that I definitely want to get to in a little bit is basically your lifelong passion for redefining human intelligence. But I want to put a pin in that for a second, because I want to stick with creativity for a little bit longer now that we have at least a basic understanding of there is actually, or there are different areas of the brain between creativity, task doing, getting things done, and kind of the switchboard in between them, there are a few character traits and intersections of personality traits. And again, you go deep into personality that are highly correlative when you are somebody that is highly creative, examples of those being, you know, instances of both high mental health coupled with mental illness, the paradox of introversion, but a lot of creative expression and passion. There's being highly, highly sensitive. There are those that are mindful, daydreamers. There are so many things that are highly corded with being creative. Being creative, the first one that I want to start with that's really near and dear to my heart is understanding the correlation between high levels of creativity and mental health, or lack thereof.
Scott Barry Kaufman: Yeah, I see I've spent quite a lot of research time looking at the relationship between creativity and mental illness, because I think there's a positive link there. I think that we don't want to call it full blown mental illness, but you tend to find that a watered down version of mental illness is very productive for creativity. It's not the parents who have schizophrenia, but the children who have some of the genes of schizophrenia like schizotypy, where that does not make it debilitating, but still gives them the the fantastical thinking abilities that can be quite conducive to creativity. So I don't know if this is an answer you were expecting, but it's the answer you're getting. Oh,
Zack Arnold: and that's a wonderful answer. I think that's a great place to start. But one of the things that you really kind of opened my eyes to was all of these paradoxes where I've just assumed for years, and there's so much literature where you think about, you know, the the tortured poet, like you have to be really dark in a state of depression to be able to summon your greatest amounts of creativity. But you found that on the other end of the spectrum, that those with high levels of creativity actually have much healthier levels of their mental health. So how does that work? That's true
Scott Barry Kaufman: too. Yeah, all these things are true at the same time. I think that. Creative Expression boosts well being and happiness in life, and not as much happiness, but meaning, meaning. And there is research on that, showing that it really is the meaning dimension of human existence that creativity is intimately connected to. And wherever you are in the mental you know, well, I'll say, and having different neurodivergent ways of of thinking about things in life can be do some of the creativity, and then the creativity can be conducive to, well being it. So all these things are true at the same time.
Zack Arnold: And what I wanted to go into a little bit deeper that I think is so important for people to understand that, again, not only do creative work for a living, but might identify as, like you say, creativity as a way of being, not just doing, is this idea that it's not about it's not this search for happiness, right? It's not like my pursuit of happiness. It's more when you find meaning and purpose in your creative work, especially when you get your stuff into a state of flow, that's actually what leads to feeling happier, and you've actually seen this on the neural level. So can you tell us a little bit more about actually seeing scans and understanding how being in a state of flow and being creative can increase the sense of bliss or well being or purpose?
Scott Barry Kaufman: I love the flow state. You can you can be in the full state with your work, but you can also be in the full state with your with us, with another person. Social flow is really underrated these days, in such a climate we live in where all the ways that were fractionated politically across many different lines and many different demographics, all these ways that we are fractured calls us to inhibit our social flow possibility or our social flow potential. So I think that's really important. But yeah, being in the flow state with your work and feeling a sense of oneness with whatever you're doing. I mean, I like to think of it as a oneness continuum. There are lots of self, transcendent experiences in our lives that get us outside of ourselves. And if you ever do have the time to read my book transcend, that's what that whole book was about, or what a lot of that book was about. Where the science of transcendent experiences, from the love experience to the all the way up to the mystical experience, which only a few people every generation have. Have you ever had a mystical experience? Zack Arnold,
Zack Arnold: if I have, I wouldn't know how to define it as one. Actually, you know what? I wouldn't. I don't know if that's necessarily true. I did have kind of not necessarily an out of body experience, but I definitely had one moment where it was just like time stopped and like my brain just opened up and it was like, Holy shit, everything suddenly makes sense to me. I had that had an experience like that once, many, many years
Scott Barry Kaufman: ago. Okay, I have that sometimes when I drink a lot of coffee, but yeah, no, all jokes is that was a joke, but all jokes aside, that was half a joke, half and half,
Zack Arnold: right? There's always a little bit of truth in every joke, yeah, but it was also half a
Scott Barry Kaufman: joke. It wasn't a full joke. But anyway, anyway, Zack, it's just we really can. We can increase the extent to which we are connected to the world, and get outside ourself is connected to the world and vice versa. We really, we really get out of flow when we get more and more self focused and we start to ruminate and think, get self conscious about what people are thinking of us. What if I fail? What if I do this thing and, you know, and people laugh at me, I think we should change that and be excited for for people to laugh at us, because some of the most creative ideas are those that that everyone else thinks is ridiculous, and that's by definition creativity, you know.
Zack Arnold: So I I actually want to go even deeper into this, because without you knowing it, this is exactly where I wanted to go next, talking about another one of these highly correlative traits of being creative that I know you very much relate to, and it's something that I really struggle with. High Sensitivity. Being a very highly sensitive person, it's great to say, I'm just going to fail with my creativity. I'm going to put it out there. But when you're so highly sensitive, and literally, it's a like the biological level, like you've written about, really sensitive to caffeine, hypersensitive to medications, certain foods, that also invades the the what you know, the way that I put myself out into the world. Anybody that listens to this podcast would say, Oh, my God, he's so outgoing and so extroverted. No, I'm not ask my wife. I'm the most introverted person I know. So talk about. Being such a highly sensitive person, and how you balance that with being willing to fail creatively and putting your work out there?
Scott Barry Kaufman: Yeah, I think that we can view the highly sensitive personality as an independent dimension from the extroversion, introversion dimension. So I think you could be a highly sensitive extrovert. You know just as much as you can be a highly sensitive introvert, highly sensitivity has to is a blend of two personality traits, neuroticism and openness to experience. Another way of putting that is that highly sensitive people simultaneously embrace life and all the subtleties and complexities of it, and also get easily overwhelmed because of that fact. So they get they let everything in, and then they need to desperately recharge. That's actually a little bit different than than being an introvert or an extrovert. A lot of that stuff has more to do with with primarily the social world or or social attention.
Zack Arnold: Well, I can tell you for certain that the just the constant feeling of overwhelm of all the information coming at me, like, I'll give you this is a really stupid example, like, even when I know I shouldn't be spending the extra expense. I use Instacart. It's convenient, but it's because I don't really want to have to park my car. I don't want to have to interact with people. It's not that I hate people. I just the amount of energy that it drains for me just to go to the grocery store, not to mention a networking event like it just drains so much of my energy because it's hard to turn off all the stimuli. Right? Coming back to this idea of the salience network, like all these inputs are coming in. And it's hard to just say, Nope, let's shut it off and focus on this one thing. Yeah.
Scott Barry Kaufman: Do you see an association there with your ADHD?
Zack Arnold: I would say the association is probably the amount of ideas and stimulus that are coming at me, like you'd mentioned earlier. And this is something that's very common with neuro divergence. Is constantly connecting the dots, right? I'm really good at connecting the dots and finding pattern recognition, but the simplest way to explain it, there are just way too many Dan dots, way too many dots coming at me, and I don't have the time or the energy to connect all of them, and I just, I need to literally get away from all stimuli and just say, no more inputs, no more inputs. I just need to recharge. And I'm really sensitive to when I'm around lots of dots.
Scott Barry Kaufman: Well, that's really good, good insight, yeah, and I'm sure it's conducive to your creativity. I'm sure it's very conducive. It's
Zack Arnold: very conducive to my creativity. However, it's also conducive to the flip side, which is that it leads to a lot of burnout. I've said many times that I am one of the world's experts on burnout, not as an academic or a scholar or a researcher, but in experiencing it, it's just it's an endless cycle. It's almost like I can set my watch to the burnout at this point where I get so deep into a creative project, this interview literally being the perfect example where I said, Oh, I've got Scott on the calendar on Friday. Let's do some research. Oh, look, he's got all these books. Now I have to go through the books. Now I have to watch all the TED Talks. Now I gotta watch all the videos. Oh, my God, he's a mentalist too. Look at him impressing Sam Harris and Mark Manson like I there's just so many inputs. I want to talk to you for seven hours. Oh, right, so that that's the the sense of overwhelming, the anxiety that that creates, because there's no version of this 60 minute interview that when we're done, I'm going to say that's exactly what I wanted.
Scott Barry Kaufman: Really perfect. Is there perfect perfectionism there too? Oh, there's a lot of perfectionism
Zack Arnold: that very much is correlated with my high level of creativity and very common with the students that are in my community. That are in my community as
Scott Barry Kaufman: well. Well, what are the what are three things that are most central to your identity?
Zack Arnold: I would say that one of them would be my and you can see that this core part of my brand and my values is really being present as a father and as a husband. First, that's core to my identity. I think another core to my identity is I really believe, and it took me years to figure this out, but I really believe that the purpose of my work is to help creatives find meaning and purpose in their work. Yeah, right, because I was very successful as a creative myself for years. Worked at very high levels in Hollywood on, you know, the top TV shows on the planet, but that was really empty, because I felt like they can put somebody else in my chair and they'd still get similar work. Maybe I can do it 2% better than the person that would be in my chair. But it was one of my favorite quotes. Is a Jim Carrey quote where he said, I really hope that everybody gets everything they've always wanted to see, that it's not the answer. And I said, this, this isn't it for me. And that's when I made a massive career transition to doing what I'm doing now, because even though I work just as many and sometimes more hours, there's so much more purpose behind the work, and that's a core part of my identity, that how I'm spending my time. I want to create something again, creativity being it's a. Date of being rather than doing. I want to know that whatever I'm doing is going to have a positive impact on somebody else. This interview included, Wait,
Scott Barry Kaufman: was that? Was that? That was the second thing? Was there? Did you give me a third thing? I
Zack Arnold: guess I didn't give you a third thing. Hmm, I'm actually not sure I know what that third core thing might be. That's a really good question. I'm sure that it's in there, but it doesn't come to me as quickly as the first two as a core part of my identity, being a father, being a husband, doing creative work. I don't know what the third thing is. That's
Scott Barry Kaufman: okay. You don't need a third thing the first two are keep you will keep you busy for a lifetime.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, no, no kidding, yeah. Just integrating those two is more than enough for a 24 hour day,
Scott Barry Kaufman: for sure, but when you talk about those things, and you get outside yourself thinking about it, do you find yourself less self conscious?
Zack Arnold: Oh, very much. So yes, that's that's one of the things that's really helped me do all of the work that I do, is when I realize that it's not about me. If it were about me, I'd be on Tiktok, right? But because it's not about me, I want to put work out there that's authentic, right? Any of you, it's a matter of, I'm going to be really vulnerable and I'm going to be open, and I basically have been saying the quiet parts out loud about our industry for 10 years now. That doesn't bother me nearly as much, because I don't have the imposter syndrome. If it's about me, this is really about for others. So I think that's, that's what helps me get through all the imposter syndrome and the perfectionism. Awesome.
Scott Barry Kaufman: Okay, cool, yeah, okay, you can return to your regular, rescheduled programming now. No, this,
Zack Arnold: this is great. Like I said, You You challenge my assumptions. You ask me the hard questions. I know that you're a podcaster too, so don't feel like you know this is just you with the spotlight on you, like you and I could just go back and forth. So at any time you want this to be your show instead of mine, you totally have my permission. Awesome. So the the next area that I wanted to go, which, again, I know is absolutely central to all of the work that you do, is the correlation between creativity and neuro divergence. Well, I talked a little bit about it, but obviously I'm coming at this being very vulnerable about ADHD, which is one form of neuro divergence. But have you seen in all of your research that there is a higher correlation between somebody that's highly, highly creative and also neuro divergent?
Scott Barry Kaufman: Oh, for sure. And it also depends on what kind of creativity we're talking about. There's all sorts. You know, I think artistic creativity is a bit different than scientific creativity, and more research has shown that to be the case as well. And I think that you tend to see maybe schizotypical type of thinking more tied to artistic creativity, whereas you see autistic like thinking more more tied to scientific thinking, scientific creativity, but you still see lots of crossover. You still see a lot of people on the autism spectrum in the arts doing amazing, amazing work, especially in visual arts, you know? So that's certainly the case. And then with neurodiversity, I mean, we can talk about being extreme on any trait we can do, we can talk about being extreme dyslexia. I view inter extreme introversion as a as being neurodivergent. You know, anything kind of puts you in the top 1% of a trait that makes you stand out like a sore thumb, makes you feel alienated from the general population. I think we can call that a form of neurodivergency. But maybe every human on this planet is neurodivergent in some way. That's possible too. I'm open to that idea.
Zack Arnold: I'm very open to that idea as well. And as a side note, speaking of ADHD and connecting a bunch of dots, I just connected the third.so I might as well share it. So I think the other core part of my identity is the fact that I'm very well known for but it's really a part of who I am that I choose the really hard things, and I love bringing adversity into my life, because it helps me grow, and so I can inspire other people to bring adversity into their lives as well, which I actually think is a really good transition to talking about your latest book, because I know that you're very passionate, especially with all the things going on in the world right now, of saying I am the victim of my circumstances. So let's talk a little bit more about what you share in your brand new book. I'm going to bring it up here rise above talking all about how we overcome the victim mindset and start to empower ourselves. So why write this book? Is of all the other books. Why did you decide to have to talk about the victim mindset?
Scott Barry Kaufman: Well, first of all, it's really in the cultural mile. We live in a culture of victimhood, where everyone is competing in the victimhood Olympics, and we're not listening to each other's pain. We're not acknowledging that other people are suffering too. And so, yeah, I felt like it was culturally relevant. But also I had, I had been doing quite a lot of research on vulnerable narcissism and how it inhibits your self actualization. And so I thought there was, there would be a book there. But it because, it turns out this, this mindset, this victim mindset, really is one of the biggest inhibitors, if not the biggest, be inhibitor of your own self actualization in the world. The more you can in terms of internal, cognitive things, there's obviously systems that hold us back in all sorts of ways, but I'm talking about cognitively, your mindset and how much you empower yourself versus you disempower yourself. People, I think, by default, constantly, are disempowering themselves, and that broke my damn heart. So I wanted to write a book about it, book for everyone you I've never seen a book on on overcome your narcissism, everything, it's always someone else's fault. The best selling books usually are called things like, it's not you or it's your ex husband's fault. Usually, those books will do very well. Those books will do very well. I had a very prominent guest on my podcast who wrote the book, it's not you it was a book written for women on why, you know, it's always the ex husband's fault. And that was a runaway bestseller. And I asked her, you know, is it? Is there ever any, never anything you could take responsibility with, you know, in a relationship that maybe and I got pounced on by her audience for saying such a thing, but I, you know, without the victim blaming, get the victim blaming out of there and get the victim shaming out of there. But how can you have be more empowered to take control of your life? Because I feel like if all you're doing is blaming all your problems in your life on external factors, you're actually minimizing the real agency you actually have within you and the resilience you have within you that you can build on.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I agree with all of that, and I wanted to go even a little bit deeper, because the reason I bring this up and why I think it ties so perfectly to your other work. If we go back to thinking about what are some of these highly core to correlative criteria of, I'm a creative person, and those can easily become excuses. Oh well, I don't want to go out to the networking event because I'm so introverted, or, well, I'm never going to be organized because I'm just so scatter brained and I didn't show up on time, sorry. Well, that's just my ADHD, right? And I really believe that we first have to accept whatever the and I'm going to say this very carefully and in giant air quotes, the disabilities that we have, right? Like we didn't choose them, and it's not our fault, but there's a difference between fault and responsibility. And I really want people that are listening to this that have always used it as a label. Well, I'm just so ADHD, I'm such a mess. Or, Oh, I'm so intro, oh my god, I'm so highly sensitive. Like, yeah, those are real challenges. I struggle with all of them. So do a lot of creatives, but I do my best. And I'm not saying I'm 100% successful. I do my best to not use them excuses for not doing the things that I need to do. And this was a, this was a mind blower for me in your book, when you said that the way that we are wired as humans, that our default response is helplessness, we have to actually learn hopefulness. So talk to me a little bit more about this discovery, because this really kind of blew my mind.
Scott Barry Kaufman: Yeah, our default state is helplessness. We want to get attention for our suffering. We want people to acknowledge it. We want people to run in and help us. We want people to save us. The truth is, no one's come to save you. Zack, as much as you are deluded and thinking that that is the case you and only you can walk the path of your own self actualization and make the decisions that are right for you and that are best for your own growth and potential. There are plenty of people, including gurus, best selling authors, people on Instagram who over and over again, they love the sound of their own voice. And you know it, you can tell they love their sound of their own voice. They can't stop talking and telling you how you should live your life or what protocols you should do. Zack, you're the only one that can figure that out what's best for you. And and really being, getting, getting deeply in touch with that, and and owning that, I think is a better route to to flourishing in the world. I actually forgot the question you asked me, but I hope I'm answering it.
Zack Arnold: You're answering it, and you're like I said, this is just all about the conversation and digging deeper into these ideas. And there's a topic that, again, very near and dear to my heart, is not just ADHD and neuro divergence and creativity, but it's the idea of how we view and treat people with disabilities. So about 10 years ago, I released a documentary feature film that was about the first quadriplegic to become a licensed scuba diver, and it took me 10 years to make it. So this has essentially been an almost 20 year journey between having made the film now for the last. Last 10 years, I've been using it as a platform to help people better understand disabilities. And the subject of this film, one of his core messages was that everyone has a disability, right? So it's about accepting that disability, but it's also about disability in certain contexts. And you always talk about context, I love the um message. You say that, well, yeah, in a certain context, autism, that's ADHD. It can be a disability, but it can also be a tremendous gift, right? Well, there you
Scott Barry Kaufman: go. You nailed it. You nailed it, my friend, my new my new friend, you nailed it. It's, it's like, there's, I don't think there's anything such thing as an objective disability. I don't believe in that. I think it's like the word trauma. It's like trauma is in the eye of the beholder. You know, some people choose to not be traumatized by things that other people are traumatized by, and we should give people the the freedom to to choose what they want to label a trauma and what they want to label as a disability. I mean, I have a friend, Tom Nash, who from Australia, who has no arms or legs. He has a hook. He hooks for hands. He's the coolest motherfucker in the world. Like, he just, like, you know, he was at my party on Tuesday night. He just rolled up. He's, he's happy with who he is. He's so he has complete self acceptance. And he likes it. He likes having hooks, you know, and like, core other people to just be like, yeah, like, Oh, you poor thing. Or like, you know, oh, you have a disability. It's like, go fuck yourself. Like he doesn't have a disability, you know, like he's, he's a badass. And so, you know, obviously, I'm very passionate about this, where it brings out cross words, and I apologize. If you are, if your
Zack Arnold: apology whatsoever, I have the explicit label. So we're all good. Be yourself.
Scott Barry Kaufman: Yeah, you know, I just think that don't let other people define what your disabilities are. That's all I want to say. That's, that's the only point I want to make there, you know. And maybe you've had a lot of hardships in your life, and you've come to the realization that you are not traumatized by them, even though everyone else hearing about them might be traumatized.
Zack Arnold: I can't remember the exact number, and you probably will, but you had mentioned doing a search for the word trauma in podcast names, and you said that there were, like, um, tea, there is, like, an astonishingly high number of podcasts that were literally about trauma, right? And one of the things that you said in your book, that I thought was so helpful for me, is there's usually two sides of the coin. Everything is trauma, or, you know, if we're gonna, you know, talk colloquially about the way that people respond to Well, fuck your trauma, right? And you're like, No. Trauma is real. It's a real experience. You're not taking away from what somebody has gone through, which I think is so important, it's recognizing it. But it's like you said, again, not just saying, Well, this is the reason for everything, and this is, you know, I can blame everything on this.
Scott Barry Kaufman: Yeah, I nailed it. You nailed it.
Zack Arnold: So having said that, there's something that you mentioned that I want to dig a little bit deeper into which I love, which is this mindset shift, which is what you call a strength based approach for disabilities. What does that mean to take a strength basically?
Scott Barry Kaufman: Oh yeah, Zack, that's what I'm talking about, right? There is taking a strength based approach disability. My My colleagues over at Bridges Academy really take that approach with their whole school that they have, and which I was, the scientific director of their research wing, and dealing with a lot of these kids, these kids are twice exceptional. So twice exceptional means you have a learning disability, or people have told you that it's what you have is a learning disability and and you have gifts. You're gifted in lots of ways. You're maybe creatively gifted or cognitive, intellectually gifted or artistically gifted, maybe entrepreneurially gifted, whatever the form of giftedness is. These things can coexist in the same package of human and I just think we really forget how these things can coexist and form. You know, I don't like how we put special ed over here and separate that from gifted education like the like never the two Twain should meet and strengths based approach disability recognizes that a lot of seemingly dis discipline, seeming disabilities, seemingly disabilities, I don't know the right way of saying that same right way of saying that is, but a lot of disabilities that that's the pure like disabilities in certain contexts can be a. Um, absolutely gifts, absolutely, you know, there are so many our gene pool, the human gene pool, really set us up, evolutionarily speaking, for multiple pathways to for evolutionary success. There's no there was no one pathway. There are reasons why variation in traits exist in our gene pool, or else there wouldn't be variation.
Zack Arnold: I feel like we could easily do a part two or a part three, just on this thing alone. What it may be never in a million years that I think that this was going to come up in today's conversation, but the kind of dinner table talk that I heard growing up because both my parents were educators. My father was intensely passionate about helping children learn to read that had both types of dyslexia and he was, I mean, you want to talk about him getting on a soapbox whenever you talked about inclusion, he would always say, like you have to, you can't just separate people into these categories. Here are the special ed kids. Here are the dumb kids. Here are the smart kids. Here are the average kids. He would say, you blend all of them together, because they have all these unique gifts. And that was 35 years ago. And what I it's another one of these things that I'm just realizing I'm learning so much about myself today and actualizing because we're having this conversation. Another core part of that identity that I think that I have is what I learned through osmosis at the dinner table is that all of us have these amazing gifts, and if we reframe whatever the quote, unquote disability or challenge or obstacle might be and turn it into that gift instead, now I just realized that's where it came from, because he always would scream from the rooftops about inclusion, inclusion, inclusion. So it sounds like you're clearly I mean that, like you said, your your life's work and the the book gifted was all about redefining what human intelligence is outside of SAT scores and A, C, T scores and IQ tests, right? So let's just go a little bit more into helping those that are creative, that might think they had these disabilities or these setbacks, let's help them redefine what it actually means to be intelligent. Well,
Scott Barry Kaufman: boy, in the last eight minutes,
Zack Arnold: I realized that I just pulled a thread.
Scott Barry Kaufman: It will intelligence, you know, means something intelligence is not. What is intelligence not? I don't know. I don't know. I now I can't think of what isn't. Isn't.
Zack Arnold: I would say intelligence is not just an SAT score. First of all,
Scott Barry Kaufman: it's good way of putting it. But, you know, scoring, but, but also scoring, well in our cities, is, is an indicator of intelligence. Though there's no that's undeniable. It's not like people who score 100,000 on an IQ test are are not intelligent. That's certainly an indicator of something. I just think there are multiple, I don't want to say, ways of being intelligent, but there are multiple indicators of intelligence and that they go that can go beyond an IQ test or an essay T or whatever sort of timed, standardized metric. I think a lot of people show their ability if we just view intelligence as the ability to adapt, ability to be flexible and to learn and to grow. I think just like creativity, we're all wired for intelligence. I've never quite put it that way before, but it's true. I mean intelligent. We're all wired to be intellectually curious, to to to learn from our mistakes. I think that stupidity exists. I think intelligence exists. And I think stupidity exists. I mean, I do think that there are a lot of stupid people in this world who, over and over and over and over again, they don't learn from their mistakes. They are ignorant. They are, you know, I think, like racist, discriminative people are stupid. I don't care what their IQ score is. I call them stupid, you know. And so there, I think intelligence means something, but I think there are lots of different ways we can indicate it that can go beyond standardized testing, is what I would say, Yeah,
Zack Arnold: on the same page as you and I think another area here that is really important as far as intelligence is the idea of emotional intelligence. Because SAT score is not going to talk about emotional intelligence, but this is where, again, you being a highly sensitive person, I've learned that, rather than it being this thing that was really holding me back, like the amount of times that I just hear the voices in my head from my childhood, Oh, stop being so sensitive. Why are you so sensitive? Like I still hear those voices, and I think it's part of the reason that I become very physically fit. I've got a black belt in martial arts. It's the reason I do Spartan Races in American Ninja Warrior because I'm trying to prove to the world, see, I'm not sensitive, right? But underneath, I'm that super highly sensitive kid. But also that's probably what makes me really great at what I do creatively, is that high level of empathy and emotional intelligence that, to me, is another form of intelligence. And I would assume that you agree,
Scott Barry Kaufman: yeah, for sure. We. Like Mark brackets research, who's a professor of emotional intelligence at Yale. It was just on his podcast. We're talking about linkages between rise above and emotional intelligence. Because I think there's a lot of linkages there. I have a whole chapter in my book on on don't be a victim to your emotions. You know, I think there are lots of ways we can think about being a victim to the outside world, but there's also lots of ways we can think about that we are a victim to our own inner life and and we forget that we can be evicted our emotions. We also be a victim to our thoughts. You know, when we're have cognitive distortions or we don't see things clearly. But yeah, the emotional intelligence part is, is not being a big is, in a lot of ways, not being, not taking your your emotions at face value, not you train them, not treating them as facts, but sign posts, um, you know, creating a separation between your emotions, um, still acting in line with your values, even if you're not feeling like it. Yeah, I wasn't in the mood to go to the gym this morning, I'll be honest, Zack, but I told my emotions to fuck off, and I went to the gym. I feel so much better. I feel so much better. I mean, tell your emotions to fuck off sometimes, like they're you're allowed to do that. You're allowed I give you permission listener to tell your emotions, if your emotions are telling you, Oh, I'm scared or No, I don't want to do that, but you're cognitively saying I know that if I go in that direction, I'll have growth, I'll have connection. I'll learn something at the very least. You know, like, I want to give you permission to tell those emotions to fuck off. I'm going
Zack Arnold: to second that. I'm also going to give my listeners permission to do that, and just to add one little extra thing that you mentioned in your book as well. It's such a small thing, but I think it's such a profound thing. The language that we use in our own minds. There's such a difference between I am depressed and I feel depressed. I am sad or I feel sad, right? And from the conversations I've had, for example, with author and psychologist Ethan cross, that actually makes a big difference in the way that we process our emotions and can actually get ourselves to take action. Yeah,
Scott Barry Kaufman: I've been meaning to talk to Ethan cross. I'm glad you brought him up. I hope to have him on my podcast soon. Yeah, it's absolutely true. And there are lots of really fun ways. I'm really into humor. I'm really into improv, and you know, like, if you're feeling anxious, like getting get outside of your head saying I'm anxious, and then play around with the way you're saying it like I am anxious, I am anxious. I'm anxious. Say it differently. Change your relationship to those words, because they're just words that you're in your head, but get them out of your head and create a separation between the words and you. You don't have to identify with these things. You know you are not anxious. I hate to say it. I hate to say it. You might be feeling some sensations that you've labeled anxiety, but you could change that reframing. I mean, I about to give a talk, I try to reframe, I'm not anxious. I'm excited, you know? I'm anxious excited. We need a word that's the combination of anxious and excited. I don't know what that word would be,
Zack Arnold: yeah, I totally agree. It's something that I talk about with my students all the time. Is when I always ask them, Do you feel excited and nervous or do you feel anxious? And they always say, What's the difference? And I will say that anxiety just it kind of feels like this black pit in your stomach, like there's some form of dread, right? As opposed to the nervous and the excitement is, oh man, like this is scary. I'm not sure I can do it, but on the other side of this, there's going to be some really cool things, but I don't know, can I do it? Am I going to fail like that? At least for me. I can't speak for anybody else. I feel the excitement and the nervousness and the butterflies here. I feel the pit down here, right? So I do agree that, like having a word that blends those two, we definitely need to add that to the lexicon, for sure. So yeah,
Scott Barry Kaufman: we're on the same Well, actually, I nailed it, but you agree
Zack Arnold: we're on a lot of the same pages. The only challenges that I feel like we barely, barely got started, but I also need to wrap it up, because I need to be tremendously respectful of your time. So having said that, I want to make sure that anybody that is just now discovering you. There's so many places that we could send them, so many books, so many videos, so many resources, but I want to say, where did they go?
Scott Barry Kaufman: theamazingdrscott.show and book me for your events.
Zack Arnold: Oh, by the way, we didn't even talk about the fact that you're a mentalist. And just the videos I saw, they're like, what is happening? Like, that whole pick a card and then call a random phone number and they tell you the card, like, what the hell? Like, I just sat there. Like, you got to be kidding me, like that kind
Scott Barry Kaufman: I'm a professional I'm a professional mentalist now, and I love it. It allows me to really get my creativity vibe on and figure out all sorts of ways to show people impossible things. But if that's not your bag, just check out scottbarrykaufman.com I have a whole buffet. Of free resources, courses, the center for human potential, but all the podcast books, all things are linked to from scottbarrykaufman.com
Zack Arnold: I'm going to send everybody there. And if you're ever going to be doing anything in person with your, you know, doing your mentalist show, put me on that list, because, dear Lord, do I wear when I live to see that in person? I live in Tarzana. I live right outside of Los Angeles. You're in Santa Monica, right?
Scott Barry Kaufman: I used to be now back in New York.
Zack Arnold: Oh, bummer. Well, maybe I just need to hitch a flight over to New York then. But yeah, just to see some of that in person would be amazing. So, yeah, well, I can't thank you enough for today, for taking the time like I said. I didn't realize that I was going to be interviewing the Scott Barry Kaufman, but I am beyond privilege that you, that you gave me an hour of your time and shared all this with you, and you know, just wanted to thank you for everything you've done for me, the creative community, the neuro divergent community, and otherwise.
Scott Barry Kaufman: Well, thank you. I got to spend an hour with Zack Arnold, so I'll take that fair trade off.
Edited by: Curtis Fritsch
Produced by: Debby Germino
Shownotes and published by: Vim Pangantihon
Music by: Thomas Cepeda
Learn from bestselling author and founder of the University of Michigan “Emotion and Self-Control Laboratory” Ethan Kross how we can harness the voices in our heads to overcome limiting beliefs and imposter syndrome.
