The emotions you've felt but never named with John Koenig (transcript)

Please note the following transcript may not exactly match the final audio, as minor edits or adjustments could be made during production.

John Koenig: I wish that intimacy could be the other way. Like I wish I could find out people's deepest, darkest secrets, and then over years as we build up trust, I could learn what their name is.

Adam Grant: Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to ReThinking, my podcast on the science of what makes us tick with the TED Audio Collective. I'm an organizational psychologist, and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking.

My guest today is John Koenig, a writer, graphic designer, video creator, and voice actor. John's the author of the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, where he coined a series of emotion words that brilliantly describe human experiences that had previously escaped the English language. 

John Koenig: If I didn't have little labels to help me remember certain things. It's clouds of in darkness in your head, basically. But if you have a word, you can just put a little handle on it somehow through some mysterious magic process of, of language in the brain, and then you can share it with people.

Adam Grant: I am so excited to have a chance to talk to you. I have read so many words and sentences and paragraphs where my first thought is, I wish I could write like that. 

John Koenig: Oh, well thank you. I appreciate that. 

Adam Grant: I, I think we have to start at the place where I first became aware of your work, which was when an amazing student named Morgan introduced me to the word sonder, which I imagine is how most people come across you these days.

John Koenig: Definitely. That is far and away the most popular definition. It's taken on a life of its own and, you know, become a real word, if anything. 

Adam Grant: Tell me what sonder means in your words. 

John Koenig: So sonder is the awareness that every random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own, and you are just an extra in their epic story that's, that's taking place all around you.

And there are billions of people out there, billions of epic stories, and you'll never get a chance to really only just scrape the surface of that, which is why it's a, it's a sorrow. You're missing out on just so much story out there. So much humanity. 

Adam Grant: It's so fascinating that you think that's a sorrow, because I had the exact opposite reaction to it.

John Koenig: Really? 

Adam Grant: I, I thought it was just -

John Koenig: The, the joy of like, how much is out there? 

Adam Grant: Awe, yes. It's incredible that every single person that you come across has, has encountered a lifetime of loves and fears and hopes and dreams and heartaches that we've only scratched the, the surface of. And it reminded me that I even only have a tiny little bit of that knowledge about the people that I know best.

John Koenig: Right. It's sort of like looking up the night sky or something. Just the enormity of just everyday life is just astonishing to me. 

Adam Grant: How did you come up with this word? 

John Koenig: Uh, strictly the etymology is from French sonde, which is sort of like the English "to sound", it's to plumb or to probe. And also in German it means, uh, special.

So that's how you get sonder Commando in World War II. But how I came up with it is almost always insomnia that gets me really in the, in the mood to write. So in this case, it was three in the morning and I was just thinking of when you're, you're driving on the highway and you see just this little pod of humanity, this alternate universe that just sort of cruises past you slowly, and you notice that maybe the person is sort of lost in thought, or they're talking to themselves, or they're singing a song, or they're arguing with the person next to them and you're just like, god, I would just love to know where they're going, what life they're leading, and you're on parallel courses just by sheer coincidence, by happenstance. And then they're gonna just take their exit and you're gonna take your exit and you're never gonna see them again. But for that one split second, you just have this glimpse into an alternate universe.

And I'm just, I don't know, hungry to, to know what that is.

Adam Grant: How often do you experience sonder? 

John Koenig: Constantly. It's just, it's overwhelming to me. I don't know. It's like the old Get Smart opening credits where there's just doors beyond doors, beyond doors, and it just keeps going. It makes me sad in a way that I know I, I can only step into the, the first or the second door, and then beyond that it's just sort of almost not my business. I, there have been philosophers that have described when you encounter people, it makes you, it doesn't satiate you, it makes you still hungrier somehow for, for more humanity, for more of them. And I, I definitely feel that. 

Adam Grant: Isn't that part of the joy of learning, though? This is one of the reasons I became a psychologist, is the, the endless complexity of human beings is just endlessly fascinating.

And it's also what I have told people in the past when they've asked, well, how could anyone ever commit to a monogamous relationship? Won't you get bored with one person for 50 years? No. Sonder is the reason why. 

John Koenig: Yeah. Yeah, it's like you're exploring a, like a, a house with infinite rooms and you, you don't know what's there.

I think my book, it's kind of a companion piece, if anything to your book Think Again. 'Cause your, your subtitle was The Power of Knowing What you Don't Know. Mine is the cursive, Not Knowing What You Don't Know. You know, it's just like, I, I just constantly, you know, you want to feel at home, uh, in the universe.

You want to feel like I'm an earthling and I belong here. But you know that you're, you're gonna see like a handful of of places in your lifetime and know them really well. You're only gonna meet, I don't know, 10,000 people in any meaningful way at best. Maybe only a hundred. I don't know. It's just a constant feeling of scratching the surface, that if you really dig down deep and try to get at the truth, it's just, it evades you.

Like trying to, you know, capture a photo of an electron or something. 

Adam Grant: It's also like trying to look straight at the Mona Lisa and see the, the smile that you can only catch out of the corner of your eye. 

John Koenig: Yeah. Yeah. I think they say that about the Andromeda Galaxy too. You can see it, but only if you look away from it.

'Cause it's just, it's too faint. 

Adam Grant: I think that so much compassion comes out of an understanding of sonder. I think now more than at any point in, in my lifetime, we're seeing so many people fall victim to binary bias, where they just collapse the, the complexity of other humans into this sort of good versus evil, or smart versus stupid.

Or moral versus amoral or immoral. And that, I think is, is one of the reasons that we're so divided right now is, is people can't see the shades of gray in others. And I think sonder, it's a forcing function to, to recognize that people are complex. When you flatten a three-dimensional human and make them 2D, you lose the ability to, to care about them.

And I, I think we need an antidote to that. And I think sonder might be the best one- word antidote I've come across. Doesn't that give you hope, John? 

John Koenig: It does give me hope. 

Adam Grant: As the creator of that word? 

John Koenig: It does, but at the same time, what's on the other side of that? Like, why do we need to reduce each other in the way we do?

Um, is it possible to, to go through the world and just, uh, have a real sense of the, the depth and humanity of other people? Like is that a practical thing to do or is that just gonna lead to some sort of sclerosis and it closes all of us off? Because I could see the depth of your pain and how what I do affects you and, um, how my words mean something completely different to what the words you are hearing are.

That's just so much to think about. I don't think I could get through the day if like sonder was what I felt every second of the day. 

Adam Grant: I, I think there might be a difference, and this is true for empathy too, between understanding it and feeling it. 

John Koenig: Yeah, that's true. 

Adam Grant: I don't think I wanna feel sonder every minute, to your point.

John Koenig: Right. 

Adam Grant: But I do want it to be there in the background. 

John Koenig: Yeah.

Adam Grant: How did you get into the art of inventing words? 

John Koenig: Kind of something I've always done. I used to make up nonsense words with a couple of friends in high school and just, I don't know, had a lot of fun with that. I think it's because I grew up in Geneva, Switzerland. In an international school. There were almost as many nationalities as there were people, and so there was just tons of different languages flowing all the time.

There was really no one culture that I absorbed into myself. Um, and so I think it just kind of naturally gravitated toward the power of other languages to open experience. Like if you learn about Ubuntu or duende or Schadenfreude even, in, in German. I, I loved finding lists of those, and then I was like, well, if you can do that, and you can have a, a word for almost anything and, and really add some grain to your emotional language, where else could we go with this? And so I think that's where I just sort of, you know, started almost as a joke. I was just, you know, making fun of like how neurotic I am. I'm mysteriously sad watching the end credits of Saturday Night Live, and I can't put my finger on it, but I'm gonna put a name to it, or feeling mysteriously disappointed when I used to live in a rough neighborhood and I would come down to my car in the morning and notice that it hadn't been broken into.

And I felt a little bit like, oh, well, I worry about it all the time and it still hasn't happened. Like, I, I don't know how to unpack that, that, uh, feeling, but. 

Adam Grant: That's supposed to be relief, John. Relief.

John Koenig: I know, I know. 

Adam Grant: I, I think you're extraordinarily talented and skilled at, you know, first, you know, describing human experiences that no one has the vocabulary to, to make sense of. And then coming up with words that capture them. And I, I have so many words that I wanna talk about from reading the dictionary. It is hands down, the most riveting dictionary ever written. 

John Koenig: Thank you. 

Adam Grant: Without question. My favorite moments are, are then when you go off and riff on one of the words and take us beyond the definition.

And, yeah. I, I think that's when you really start to dive into the psychology of where does this emotion come from and, and why do we experience it? And how does it affect us? The only thing that really puzzled me was the title. 

John Koenig: Oh, yeah. 

Adam Grant: Like, like, and I think this is, this is a broader commentary on our, our back and forth about sonder.

I didn't find all or even most of the words to be obscure sorrows. I thought they were obscure emotions. And I, I read in the introduction you said this is not a book about sadness. 

John Koenig: Yeah. 

Adam Grant: That you wanted to be value neutral. And I didn't know, actually, you said the original definition of sadness traces back to meaningfulness.

John Koenig: Yeah. Yeah. It was from satis, that ancient Rome in Latin, which is the, the, you know, originally meant fullness. Your cup was running, running over, you know, and it's the same root that gave us sated and satisfaction. It's just a completely different axis, instead of like emotions that I want to own and ones that I want to just be averse to.

So I think there's something beautiful is, these are things that made my cup fill in some way or another. And that's the definition of sadness that I use. And I think that's my philosophy toward emotions in general, is that, you know, if you feel something, that's a kind of joy. Even if you are weeping, it's a subset of joy.

Adam Grant: Why then call it a dictionary of obscure sorrows as opposed to obscure emotions or obscure joys? 

John Koenig: That communicates empathy for being a human being and how overwhelming and confusing it is. Even when you feel a joy and you're the only one to feel it, that can turn into a kind of sorrow. Or if you feel a joy and it's fleeting and you're trying to hold onto it, that again is, you know, kind of in context, it turns into a sorrow.

The human condition is, is a tough situation to be in, and so that's, I think that's what the title tries to do, is sort of communicates, hey, you know. You are not alone. We've all been there. I think this book in, in some ways just is like a map on a, a napkin or something to make people feel a little less alone in the wilderness.

Adam Grant: I, I never really thought about this, but you're right. I also read to feel less alone. 

John Koenig: Yeah. 

Adam Grant: And so I, I guess what you're conveying is, this is a description of the human condition. 

John Koenig: Yeah. Or, or one, one human's condition at least. 

Adam Grant: But it's not just one human's. Because I, on, on almost every page, there's a word where I had the reaction, I can't believe that somebody else has felt this and named it and characterized it. So one of the ones I loved most was swersa, which you defined as a feeling of quiet amazement that you exist at all. 

John Koenig: Yeah, a sense of gratitude that you were even born in the first place, that you somehow emerged alive and breathing despite all odds, having won an unbroken streak of reproductive lotteries that stretches all the way back to the beginning of life itself. And this is from Spanish "suerte" , which is luck, and "fuerza", which is force. So a luck force that you kind of sense in the air sometimes. 

Adam Grant: Sometimes I, I'll wake up in the morning or you know, I'll just finish a workout even.

John Koenig: Mm-hmm . 

Adam Grant: And think, wow. What are the odds? They're infinitesimally small. 

John Koenig: Yeah.

Adam Grant: That I would exist. 

John Koenig: What are the odds that every single one of your ancestors made it long enough to reproduce? And it stretches like back to the primordial ooze. Like we don't know where we came from, but like there's an unbroken chain connecting us to that.

That's awe for me. 

Adam Grant: Why did you describe it as quiet amazement? 

John Koenig: I think 'cause you just don't see many movies where people are talking about like, oh my God, I'm alive. That's great. I think it has to be a private moment. 'Cause it's faintly embarrassing to just be gazing at your hand and being like, oh Jesus man.

Like it's a dorm floor, like, you know, two joints deep kind of thing. But I feel it all the time. 

Adam Grant: My hypothesis is that there, there might be such a thing as feeling swersa too often. I was thinking about some research by Sonya Lubomirski and her colleagues showing that people get more of a happiness boost from doing a weekly gratitude journal than a daily.

John Koenig: Yeah. That makes sense. 

Adam Grant: This is still an open question, why, but I, I think part of what goes on there is that when, when people do the daily gratitude exercise, they start to run out of meaningful things to be thankful for. And they're like, well, I'm grateful for this pen and I, I appreciate the ability to make a, a list of things I appreciate.

Whereas you do it once a week and you have a bunch of new events in your life that, that you can pause and savor. So what do you make of that? Do you think there's an optimal frequency or is there, there's such a thing as, as swersa too often? 

John Koenig: One of the first definitions I wrote actually is kairos sclerosis, which is when suddenly you are aware that you're happy.

Kairos is an opportune moment an ancient Greece and sclerosis is a hardening, so it's when you feel your hard happiness, you become aware of it, and then it just like dissolves slowly. I think there's something about turning your context into text that weakens it a little bit. It's vivisection, you're trying to unpack something that should be just real and alive and you should just let it be. So I think most of the time we just need to let things be and don't try to analyze them too much or even just notice they're there. Just let it be. 

Adam Grant: You've just, in that sentence, basically decimated my entire existence.

There's nothing I could let be. I can't even listen to a song without asking. But what did that lyric mean and why did the artist write it that way? Which drives some of my friends and family members crazy. 

John Koenig: Yeah, me too. It's definitely my mode. 

Adam Grant: Which is, I guess, why we both need to be reminded that yes, some things are okay to actually just experience without analyzing.

John Koenig: Yep. There will be an answer. Just let it be. Yep. 

Adam Grant: The, the Beatles gave you the answer you needed on that one. This reminds me of another word that I've described many times, and I'm so thrilled now to have a term for which is, uh, what you call loose-left. Most of the time when I love a book, and this is different from a TV show or a movie where it's paced for you.

Like you don't, you don't watch a great movie or you know, an amazing TV show on 2X. You watch it at regular speed. Whereas a book, if you're loving it, I've had the experience countless times of just wanting to race through it 'cause I can't wait to see what happens next. 

John Koenig: Yeah. 

Adam Grant: And then I realize that, like I, I start to feel that there are only 60 or 70 pages left and the end is imminent.

John Koenig: Yeah. 

Adam Grant: And I start to slow down because there's an asymptote approaching. I feel this a lot as an anticipatory emotion that I'm going to be loose left. I don't wanna leave the world and the characters and the, the author's vision of them behind, and so I stay with it as long as possible. 

John Koenig: Yeah. 

Adam Grant: This sense of being loose left can, like does this also apply to parasocial relationships? Do people have it when they listen to a great podcast, for example? 

John Koenig: Oh, I'm sure. For a lot of people out there, that's their primary sort of social energy they're getting is from podcasts and from silly little YouTube shows.

Adam Grant: I think this is part of the appeal of listening to, to co-hosts who have a relationship. There's a weekly experience of rekindling that connection. 

John Koenig: Mm-hmm . 

Adam Grant: As opposed to when the guest rotates, even if you bring them back, the magic might not exist in round two. 

John Koenig: That's, that's fascinating. Yeah. 

Adam Grant: Let me ask you about another one. Is it zielschmertz? 

John Koenig: Zielschmertz, yeah. Gold pain, I think that's, that translates to. 

Adam Grant: Yes.

John Koenig: Yeah. So I definitely felt this when the, uh, dictionary was published. Um, it's the dread of finally pursuing a lifelong dream. You're working up toward it, and then when it finally happens, I don't necessarily even want to get there. You know? 

Adam Grant: You could have zoomed in on a few of these and written an entire book about them and the philosophy or the worldview that they formed together, 'cause the way that you've organized the chapters, there are, there are some overarching themes. 

John Koenig: Yeah. 

Adam Grant: But you also, you could have gone on and on just inventing more emotion words. How did you know when you were done? 

John Koenig: There was this, I don't know, a process of just like, like when you're watching droplets of rain on a window and you notice how when little ones get too close together and they "bloop!" And they join into bigger ones, and that's kind of what happened here, where I have lots of little definitions, but then they're so close that they actually oop, they fold into something, a wider truth or a deeper truth or something about relationships or whatever.

So it, it sort of naturally, it started out pretty shallow and just a high number, like a thousand definitions. But as I went through and I realized, oh, there's actually a parallel here and, and I used a, a water metaphor here and here I wonder what that means. And so it was just sort of a, almost an evolutionary process of some of these ideas taking shape, which is a really exciting thing to have happen for an author working for 10 years on something, is that you can feel the book evolve as you evolve as a person.

Adam Grant: Say it again. The raindrops coming together. Bloop! 

John Koenig: Raindrops on a window. Bloop, bloop.

Adam Grant: Uh, I, I've never, I've never thought about that before. But even that, like, that, that is a word that needs to be coined. Like blooping. Yeah, is, is that feeling, blooping. 

John Koenig: Like, oh. That feeling. I, I remember that from like seven years ago.

And here it is again. There must be something there. 

Adam Grant: Well, this, this is the counterpoint to zielschmertz then, which is, yeah, there's a dread of getting what you want. Because this is why people always remind us like it's the journey, not just the destination. Right? That the, the process of creating something is, is often more enjoyable and meaningful than the, the moment of completing it.

But once it's done, you actually get to share it. 

John Koenig: Yeah. This is true. Come out of my little cave. 

Adam Grant: John, talk to me about liberosis. You defined it as the desire to care less about things. 

John Koenig: Yeah, I definitely feel that, um. 

Adam Grant: This one, I, I feel is amplified now. 

John Koenig: Yes. 

Adam Grant: For a lot of people. Yeah. 

John Koenig: Yeah. I just want to tune out the, the news and I, I wish I could just force my fist to just relax from, from the world or from the model that I have in my head of the world. It's about relaxing your grip on your life and holding it loosely and playfully. You know, keeping it in the air like a volleyball. I wish I could live that way. I feel like a junkyard dog just refusing to let go of some of these questions.

Adam Grant: As soon as I read this description of liberosis, I thought about Viktor Frankl writing about man's search for meaning. And how sometimes you could want something too much and sort of an excess of motivation would, in some circumstances stand in the way of getting the very thing that you were pursuing.

John Koenig: I think that's just how we program people. Just aim directly at happiness and just get that. We are Americans, this is what we do, . Yeah. But you know, obviously a aiming for happiness is the surest way not to get it. 

Adam Grant: It reminds me of, of some research that came out in the early stages of COVID. I had assumed that the optimists would be the people who were thriving the most during those difficult circumstances, but they weren't. The, the people who managed to maintain their wellbeing and, and demonstrate the highest levels of resilience were the people who, who were able to find flow. 

John Koenig: Hmm. 

Adam Grant: Who got into those states of total absorption where they lost track of everything else. And I think for me, liberosis is part of the appeal of a flow state.

John Koenig: I was writing the book for the last 10 years, and so that was my escape is to, to dive into words and get into the flow that way and make YouTube videos. And so I think that's probably another reason I felt the zielschmertz, as you know, getting done with the book, is that I didn't have that flow state left.

Adam Grant: Let me ask you about a few others. One is, is justing.

John Koenig: Oh yeah. 

Adam Grant: Which felt like a great, um, a great rebuttal to a lot of the self-help movement. 

John Koenig: Yeah. Justing is the habit of telling yourself that just one tweak could solve all of your problems. If you bought that backpack, if you had the right haircut, if you found the right group of friends, everything would be, would be better.

I think this is a very American, or at least North American, at least Western point of view, just being an inveterate tweaker of, of lifestyle. 

Adam Grant: I think that's true. It it, it's related to what Tal Ben-Shahar calls the arrival fallacy. 

John Koenig: Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

Adam Grant: Uh, where you imagine that, you know, once I achieve this goal, or once I move to this place, everything will be different. I'll feel like I've arrived. 

John Koenig: Right. 

Adam Grant: And the reality is as, uh, as Adam Sandler put it in that hilarious SNL skit, like when you go to Italy, if you're sad at home, you're still the same sad you on vacation.

John Koenig: At the, at the Coliseum. That was great. I love that. 

Adam Grant: Uh, a few others that I, I just wanted to, to get your comment on, one of which can both pull, I guess pull us out of the present and remind us to focus on it. 

John Koenig: Yeah. 

Adam Grant: Is it de vu? 

John Koenig: Yeah. De vu. It's the awareness that this moment will become a memory. That you're gonna look back on this time, you're gonna remember it and it's gonna mean something very different then. And so you try to like, try to put yourself in that point of view while you're in this memory. I mean, I have two young kids. I feel this constantly. 

Adam Grant: Yes. 

John Koenig: Like I'm taking photos. I know I'm gonna string those photos together into some sort of mythologized idea of what this period of life was. But at the same time, like here I am in the present.

I'm in the golden age now. I can't force myself to have that meaning. I can't give it the meaning, any other meaning than what it is right now. 

Adam Grant: It's helpful for me from a planning perspective to say, if, if all future moments will become past memories, then how do I wanna arrange my life, and what are the moments that I want to make into memories?

What, what about this one? Is it apriese? It's the feeling of loss that you never had a chance to meet a certain person before they died. 

John Koenig: Yeah. 

Adam Grant: I've, I've talked about this one with, with so many people. Never had a term for it. 

John Koenig: Yeah. The, the pivotal figure in my writing life is Robert Bly. He's a, a poet who wrote a bestseller in the early nineties, Iron John, very psychological and Jungian.

I never lived in the right continent and I never got a chance to like, know him deeply. He was my grandfather's brother. 

Adam Grant: Oh, wow. 

John Koenig: And I never knew my grandfather and I never really knew my, my great uncle, but he inspired me to become a writer.

Adam Grant: So John, I wanna, I wanna jump to a lightning round. 

John Koenig: Alright. 

Adam Grant: Of all the words you've invented, which one do you think is the worst one to live your life by? 

John Koenig: There's one, malotype, which is the exact kind of person who you do not want to be.

Adam Grant: Because they remind you of all your flaws. 

John Koenig: Exactly, yes. So I don't think that's a good way to, to, to exist.

So. 

Adam Grant: And also don't hang out with your malotype. 

John Koenig: Yeah, exactly. Like, just ignore this person . 

Adam Grant: If you could choose a word that you think best captures a way of living a good life, which one would you choose? 

John Koenig: One of my favorites is called ambido, which is sort of a, a, a mysterious trance of emotional clarity when your mind is sort of caught in just a period of calm and you're just overcome by this sense of, this is real here, this is happening now. And we try so hard to distract ourselves with the stories we tell ourselves, but reality's happening anyway. And it's very rare that you are just accidentally stumble into this accidental meditation, but I think it's delicious when that happens.

Adam Grant: Is there a word that you've rethought?

John Koenig: I think there's a kind of navel gazing quality to this book, especially like the, the second chapter is about identity and it's about yourself basically, and what you think of yourself. And by the end of that chapter, I feel kind of claustrophobic for some reason.

Like there's just so much me in there. But I think there's so much meaning to be found in community and relationship and ritual and, and a lot of these more collective sources of meaning that just by virtue of me being introverted, I didn't tap as much into that, that wellspring of meaning as I did uh, when I, when I wrote the book.

Adam Grant: I think some of that is inevitable though when writing about emotions, because they do live inside our heads and in our bodies to some extent. A question that Morgan asked me when we were talking about sonder that I, I thought was really interesting, she wondered if there's such a thing as reverse sondering, when you present your complexity to someone else and invite them to see you in 3D as opposed to in 2D.

John Koenig: Yeah. Man, that's, it feels so risky, doesn't it? Wouldn't it be feel great to be known? And to, to feel comfortable just sort of like being who you are, you know, in all your, your glory? That takes so much trust and so much sensitivity. Again, that's, it's sort of an overwhelming thing. 

Adam Grant: When you were talking earlier about sonder, I was thinking about the, the Fast Friends procedure that Art Aaron and colleagues created, which you probably know the, the New York Times article on how to fall in love with anyone.

John Koenig: Yeah. The certain questions that you ask? 

Adam Grant: Yeah, exactly. The 36 questions that are sort of progressively more vulnerable and personal. And that, that seems like a, an sometimes overly structured, but a version of sort of opening the door for somebody else to , like sonder away. 

John Koenig: Yeah. Yeah. I love that.

Adam Grant: What is a question you have for me? 

John Koenig: Again, your book Think Again is a kind of bizarro version of my book. In some small way, I have a problem with overanalyzing and questioning everything and questioning my thought processes. And as you recommend, thinking like a scientist. And how do we know that, you know, uh, rethinking is the name of the podcast, right?

There's a, a footnote on like the last page of that book saying the big unanswered question here is when rethinking should end. I would love to know the answer to that question, and if you had written another chapter answering or another book answering that question, what would be your answer? 

Adam Grant: You caught me because I, I originally had planned a chapter on overthinking.

John Koenig: Oh, yeah. 

Adam Grant: And I didn't feel I had good enough material to write it. 

John Koenig: Interesting. 

Adam Grant: And so , like I, I went back to the drawing board. I rethought that chapter a bunch of times, and then I decided, you know what, like, I'm, I'm not there yet and I'm not gonna have figured this out by the time the book comes out.

John Koenig: Yeah. 

Adam Grant: And maybe I'll take it on in another place one day . 

John Koenig: Well, I hope you do, 'cause it haunts me. 

Adam Grant: I do feel for people who think too much, but I fear for people who think too little. 

John Koenig: This is true. 

Adam Grant: There was a psychologist, Susan Nolan Hoeksema, who wrote a book called Women Who Think Too Much, which was based on her research showing gender differences in, uh, depression that were traceable in part to a tendency among women to ruminate.

Um, which is not surprising given the world we live in that puts pressure on women to present everything perfectly. But I think though the, the insights in that book are applicable to all genders. And I think one of the, like the practical ahas I had after reading the Nolan Hoeksema work was there's a difference between rethinking that leads you to fresh perspectives and new insights and rethinking where you're cycling through the same old thoughts.

And I think the, the former is reflection and the latter is rumination, right? 

John Koenig: Just chewing . 

Adam Grant: Yeah, exactly. So one of, one of my, one of my stopping rules is if you go a 10 minute window without having a novel thought, it's time to either put it away, change the channel, go talk to someone else or read something new, or go for a walk and try to get access to a new frame because you've passed the point of learning.

John Koenig: Yeah. Yeah. That's another one of my definitions is altschmertz, is when you're just tired of your old, same old issues that you keep chewing over. And like a dog, you want to just go to the backyard and just dig up some fresher pain you might have buried long ago. Yeah, definitely feel that. 

Adam Grant: Yes. Well put. If you really wanna understand something, your learning is never complete.

John Koenig: Right. I, I'm just very well aware that, that language is a tool and science is a tool. I have to sort of remind myself that it's okay it's if it's provisional as you say, or it's good enough for now, or good enough to share. 

Adam Grant: I think sometimes people hear the idea that everything is provisional and they say, well, why bother at all? Right? Because we're getting closer to the truth, because we're discovering things that people can use to make their life better. Yeah, that's a worthwhile endeavor, right? Even if we're only approximating the truth or if we're gonna unlearn some of the things we thought we had learned last year.

John Koenig: That's, that's a great perspective. 

Adam Grant: It could be. Alright, John, I gotta ask you about one more word to close on. Is it tiris? 

John Koenig: Tiris. Yeah, that's the, the last definition in the book, and it's the bittersweet awareness that all things must end. The, the metaphor there for me is, you know, honeybees. They, they only live like three months at most, and they do their work without questioning it.

And they, they share their little bits of sweetness that they found out in the world and in the end, their honey is the only thing that, that doesn't go bad. It doesn't expire. It's still always just as sweet. And I think there's just, uh, something, something really beautiful about that. So that's where the book ends.

Adam Grant: Well, John, this, this is, uh, has been every bit as, as poignant as I, I hoped it would be. You're, you're just so full of wisdom and I think, I think the world is a more thoughtful place because your words and ideas and emotional experiences are in it. 

John Koenig: Well, likewise. Thank you so much. I'm a huge fan, and, uh, this has been such a, such a pleasure of a conversation.

Adam Grant: ReThinking is hosted by me, Adam Grant. The show is part of the TED Audio Collective, and this episode was produced and mixed by Cosmic Standard. Our producers are Hannah Kingsley Ma and Aja Simpson. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar. Our fact checker is Paul Durbin. Original music by Hans Dale Sue and Allison Leighton Brown.

Our team includes Eliza Smith, Jacob Winnick, Samaya Adams, Roxanne Hai Lash, Banban Cheng, Julia Dickerson, Tansica Sunkamaneevongse, and Whitney Pennington Rogers.

This is just a fundamental maybe difference between us. 

John Koenig: Bizarro Adam Grant. Yeah, that's, that's me. 

Adam Grant: Yes. Yes, exactly. Yeah. When I say goodbye, you wanna say bad bye.