If you’ve ever built the kind of life that looks impressive on paper but still feels empty inside, you’ll recognize this story fast.
I sit down with Dr. J.D. Pincus, a social psychologist and author of The Emotionally Agile Brain, to talk about what happens when status becomes your compass and why burnout can become the doorway to real purpose. J.D. shares the pressure of growing up in a high-achievement home, the moment that snapped his perspective, and the long climb from a dark season into a more grounded, spiritual life.
We get practical with a motivation framework built around four domains of life: self, material, social, and spiritual. J.D. explains why mainstream psychology often sidelines spirituality, and why he believes a real spiritual awakening shows up in behavior through justice, ethics, and restrained self-interest, not just good feelings. We also explore the discipline of silence, prayer, and meditation, including how stillness can cut through fear and distraction and reveal what you’ve been missing for years.
Then we turn to the modern battle many families face: phone addiction, algorithm-driven outrage, and anxiety in kids and teens. We talk about boundaries, values education, and how teaching fairness and responsibility gives young people a foundation that outlasts trends. If you’re searching for purpose, emotional health, spiritual growth, and a research-informed way to understand your emotional needs, this conversation offers a clear map and a lot of hope.
Subscribe, share this with a friend who feels stuck, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What part of your life is asking for a deeper purpose right now?
If you want to connect with, work with or purchase Dr. JD Pincus’ book visit his website: https://agilebrain.com/ and J. David Pincus’s Website
To download a free chapter of host Sylvia Worsham’s bestselling book, In Faith, I Thrive: Finding Joy Through God’s Masterplan, purchase any of her products, or book a call with her, visit her website at www.sylviaworsham.com
Transcript:
If you’ve ever struggled with fear, doubt, or worry and wondering what your true purpose was all about, then this podcast is for you. In this show, your host, Sylvia Warsham, will interview elite experts and ordinary people that have created extraordinary lives. So here’s your host, Sylvia Warsham.
Hey light bringers, it’s Sylvia Warsham. Welcome to Release Out Review of Purpose. And today is Dr. J.D. Pincus. And when I read his information on PodMatch, I immediately was drawn to a story of transformation. He’s someone that comes from a background of being status-driven. And how many people out there don’t feel that way? I know as a child myself, I was raised by an immigrant parents that were very status-driven themselves. And the more degrees they got, the more quote-unquote successful they became. But that’s outside of ourselves. That’s not what drives us inwardly. And JD discovered something along the way of being status-driven that led to releasing his newest book, which he will talk about on the podcast. So without further ado, JD, thank you so much for joining us on released out reveal purpose.
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Sylvia. Great to be here.
It’s awesome to have you on board. So do share with us how you came from that dark space to land in to having your doctorate in what was it, psychology, right?
But it’s social psychology.
We know that doesn’t come about just because there’s always a path that we take.
Yeah, exactly. No, I I uh there’s a few different places I could start, but I I’ll start with this. Um, you know, I I was raised in a household that was um my parents were really you know high achieving. Like my dad was a professor of neurology at Yale in the medical school. He ended up becoming the chairman of neurology at Georgetown and then at the VA. Uh he uh you know was the vice president of the American Academy of Neurology, he’s you know internationally known, wrote books, testified to all this stuff. My mom um was not as well known, but I think pretty well known in her circles. She ended up founding the uh Connecticut Center for Psychosynthesis. Uh she you know played in the local orchestra and in the New Haven Symphony. She, you know, was a poet and uh she wrote, I think, three or four books. Uh she, you know, so there was a lot kind of writing in terms of expectations ever since I was a kid. And honestly, that I didn’t respond well to it. You know, both of my brothers, I think, you know, were uh really good students. I I couldn’t bear, you know, to to to do it. You know, I it’s not that I couldn’t do it, I didn’t have the aptitude. I just I just for some reason I wasn’t um willing to play the game. And it was uh that really cost me, you know. Uh and then um over some time, you know, I kind of started to drift into you know not so healthy areas. You know, um at one point I was actually in this this uh hardcore band uh when I was in uh my senior year of high school. So my parents were getting a divorce, and you know, it was kind of a hard time, and I was uh, you know, and uh this this band was was actually doing pretty well. Uh we were at gigs lined up at CBGB in New York and Madame Wong’s in LA, and and it was sort of the height of that whole scene. Um and then I had a decision to make. Like, am I gonna go to college and like do what’s sort of expected of me, or am I going to you know continue to sort of have fun, you know? And uh I I decided to go to college, and um then I felt like there was a a revelation that was given to me in that the guy who took my place in the band, um, the band was at a party in New Haven and um a fight broke out, and this guy who replaced me was stabbed and he died. And uh and right and it was sort of like it was shocking, of course. Um, but it was also I felt like it was like a sign to me that like I had made the right choice, you know, that that you know I wasn’t in that world anymore, um, and I needed to kind of you know make the most of my life. Um so I I you know applied myself, I you know, got into graduate school, I I uh you know, got my PhD, um and I I kind of during that whole time sort of struggled with what was being taught to me, which was emotion had always driven me. You know, uh emotion, emotional problems are what caused me from being a good student, emotional uh, you know, sort of acceptance of a kind of a purpose was driving me forward. Uh, and yet everything I was learning in in grad school was about you know how everything that matters is what we’re consciously thinking about right now. Uh as if you know cognition and rationality is really what makes us do what we do. That didn’t sound right to me at all. And I kind of rebelled against it and found a group of sort of um you know folks who who were like-minded, ended up having to do my research actually in a different building on campus, not in the psychology building, because nobody had the sort of equipment that I was looking for to do sort of emotional measurement. Um, but uh connected with some really interesting good people like Skip Lowe and and uh Ross Buck, who’s a major motivational theorist, and uh kind of uh decided to again not play the game. I didn’t want to go into academia, I wanted to start to apply these things in the real world. So I did that. Um ended up working at an insurance company, I ran research and product development there for a while. I went into consulting, uh and and but the whole time feeling like the pressure from my childhood was still hanging over me, you know, that I needed these major accomplishments. So lo and behold, you know, I ended up getting on the cover of a magazine, a sort of trade or thing, on the name to the power list. And I I uh you know became the marketing researcher of the year, you know, from a trade organization, and I ended up um you know testifying before Congress a couple times and meeting with folks in DC and and going to these meetings of you know, Health and Human Services, and and and you know, I could see that you know this my father in particular, this really you know pleased him. You know, I was sort of becoming you know in his mold, you know, the sort of but I found that the pressure of that really got to me and it it wasn’t satisfying at all. Like I had all these things, you know, the sort of racked up accomplishments, you know, sort of awards and things, and in a way it sort of just became embarrassing, you know. And uh I got to a point where I really like was burnt out and and I had some really horrible things happen to me at that point, which I won’t get into in specifics, but um I ended up in a really dark place, and I was stayed there for a while, and uh I I started to kind of turn to spirituality as a way out, um, and I found that that was really the only thing that that that helped me. Um, you know, uh I didn’t really have a lot of social support, I didn’t really have um a direction, and it was sort of by going, you know, inward and outward, you know, uh into the spiritual that that I kind of found a purpose again. And that’s when I sort of picked up some work I had been doing earlier um and and expanded on it to bring in the spiritual into this model of motivation I’d worked on. And when I did that, all of a sudden it was like uh, you know, light went on, and I could all of a sudden, you know, everything made sense and I could no longer see things the way I had. And that was really transformative. And that’s what led to the book. And I I connected with some guys I had worked with in the past um at Leading Indicator Systems who had all the resources that I needed to kind of bring my vision to life. So uh, you know, we created an app and uh they helped me, you know, uh they supported me while publishing the book. Um they you know continue to kind of um encourage me to uh you know do a lot of writing. I’ve published like 14 peer-reviewed articles in the last three years. It’s like you know, I’ve had this incredibly productive burst. Uh, and and I think it’s all attributable to sort of coming through a very dark period, which was the fall from seeking recognition and status and hitting bottom and then crawling back up again, climbing out of the hole, and like but you needed a purpose, and and this was the purpose that was sort of shown to me.
So you I could relate on so many aspects of this because you said your father was a neurologist, my father was a urologist, um, and it they’re so driven. I mean, it is like and he because of his past was driven, right? But it’s all emotional. It’s like I gotta prove this and I gotta prove that, and and you grow up seeing that, and I was like you, I kind of rejected that to a degree. I mean, I kind of fell into it for a little while, but I wasn’t um the child that went to medical school of the three of us. I was the oldest, I was like the thorn on his side. So I can relate, really, I can relate in so many ways. Um, but I am curious what was the spiritual awakening that you had in that dark space. And when you say I crawled out of there, what were the steps you took to crawl out of there?
Yeah, so it really came down to this, and it sounds sort of rational, but it wasn’t rational. It was very emotional. But the insight I had was that you know, I had been working on this model of motivation that basically takes all the different theories of why we do what we do and organizes them into a framework. And the framework is defined by two questions. One is where in my life do I want to make a change, and what level of change do I want to make? So the four areas of life, and I can’t take credit for this because this is like, you know, I think there’s like 10 or 12 different world systems of philosophy. It’s in all five major world religions, the concept that there’s the world of the self. You know, I can be concerned about myself, my self-protection, my self-expression, becoming all I can be. Uh the the concept of the material, which is I want autonomy, I want to have the skills, the capabilities, and do something and then have success from it. Uh there’s the social world of other people, my relationships, the sense of inclusion, belonging, love, caring, and recognition or respect. Uh, and then the spiritual world. And this was the thing that came to me. I had been working on those other three, and all of a sudden I’m like, why does the material not have a complement? You know, the the self has the social. Where’s the material’s counterpart? And that I started to read, I started to look into it, and it was a lot of the stuff that I had learned and forgotten. You know, that there’s a need for justice, for instance, and that need for justice is inborn. Like we are we are skewed toward goodness, like we are intentionally, we were created to be good. And uh there’s this work that Paul Bloom has done with uh infants really looking at at like four-month-olds and and six-month-olds showing them these puppet shows of like where there’s a puppet character who’s a helper, right, and helps the guy move the boulder up the hill. And there’s another one where it’s one, it’s like uh a bad guy, and he comes and he like pushes it down and knocks the guy down, and and what they find is that the babies look at the good puppet much more than the bad puppet. So there’s sort of an in-base bias even at that age before they can speak, before they know anything. Uh so where does that come from, right? Uh so that’s our instinct. Once we have that goodness and that sort of basic idea that, you know, good should be rewarded, bad should be punished, then we can start to apply that principle to the gray areas of life and kind of you know, uh limiting self-interest, for instance, you know, not exaggerating claims, not uh, you know, withholding things, not being transparent. Uh that’s ethics, right? And then once you have a foundation of justice and ethics, that’s your first opportunity to have that sort of spiritual higher purpose, that sort of transcendence moment where you’re no longer concerned about yourself or your material value, you know, material items or even your personal relationships, or you know, now we’re talking about sort of universal cosmic principles, and now that’s your first opportunity to actually enter that world. And who says that? Basically, every theologian who’s ever lived, you know, Martin Luther King said it, uh, you know, Thomas Aquinas said it, uh Maimonides said it. Uh I mean, all of them, pretty much anyone, if you strip it out, it’s like you, you, and Jonathan Edwards and the first great awakening in the United States was a huge proponent of this. He’s like, How can you tell if a spiritual awakening is real? He’s like, the way you can tell if it’s real is does it produce justice and ethics? Like, if justice and ethics aren’t in place, it’s not a real spiritual awakening. It’s just somebody, you know, getting the high, you know. But if it is doing that, then it is. Then that’s the real thing. So uh that that basically was the insight that I had. So how did I use that to kind of crawl out? Well, uh, it came in many forms. Uh, one was just I became sort of more devout. I started to pray every day. I I spent a lot of time meditating, uh, you know, and and thinking about these concepts. I spent a lot of time getting into mysticism uh and sort of learning about structures. You know, I’m I’m really interested in sort of frameworks and structures, and I was really interested in in all the different frameworks and structures there are in all the different forms of mysticism leading to deep insights about the divine and about sort of transcendent states. And I spent so much time there that you know my family had sort of given up on me as I can not be able to engage in normal conversations anymore, you know. And they would buy me books that are in that genre, and I’ve I’ve sort of moved back toward the mainstream a little bit since that time. Um, but that that was really what it was. I just spent a lot of my focus, you know, in that world, and I found it was it just caused me to make much better decisions, you know, um, in my daily life.
I can once again relate because it usually is when you start getting still that you gain so much insight. It’s when we are so distracted by the outside world. Something happened to me the other day. We were I was en route to an author um holiday party, and I was in a car with someone that was going off on like all these projects, and time was moving so still for me, it was so slow, and I kept looking at the horizon here in Austin, Texas, and it was just gorgeous. I couldn’t stop staring at it. It was like I was in a whole different dimension of time while she’s going off like fast paced on and just stressed out. I was caught in this moment of silence in my own mind and so grateful to be alive, to be staring at such a beautiful and magnificent sky. And as you were speaking, it felt like that. Like that was what it was like for you, that you finally had this realization of where have I been all this time? Like, why have been why have I been so caught up in this achievement versus in the stresses? I almost was looking at life through God’s lens, like the way he would see us, like, what are these humans doing?
Like, well, that’s the thing. That’s why I love you know certain comedians, and and like basically what I love about certain comedians is their ability to say, to kind of shine a light on how ridiculous our preoccupations are. You know, uh it was forget who it was saying, you know, people you know complaining about you know how their flight was, you know, that there was too crowded, or there was, you know, they didn’t like the food, or and it’s like you realize you’re you’re experiencing the miracle of human flight, you know, like this never existed, and and you’re you know being transported safely, like you know, from one place to another through this little tube in the air, and like you’ve completely forgotten, you know, that what that is. Uh and I think that that’s true. And I think that’s I I think about this a lot. Like, why does suffering and tragedy bring about these kinds of awakenings? And it’s I think because you have to strip away all of that noise, all of the sort of daily things, and all of a sudden it’s like you’re alone, you’re with yourself, and you’re you’re forced into sort of deep contemplation. And you that’s when you begin to realize sort of what really matters, and and and you begin to have appreciation for things that you took for granted. And I think that’s the you know, that’s a frustration. If you if you’ve kind of been through that and the people around you a lot of the time don’t haven’t had that experience, they’re still in that sort of distracted uh state, and it’s sometimes hard to connect with them because you don’t you’re sort of not interested in that stuff anymore.
Um, I I agree with that, and then I also think, and this is I had a question for you on this. How easy was it for you to just be in silence? Because I know I know I’ve struggled with that, like the not doing and having to pull back on that just recently. This is a very recent thing for me. And because I asked God to help me pause before I spoke, pause before I acted, pause before so that my mind wouldn’t get ahead and create chaos when there was no chaos to create. So, can you explain some of that for the listeners?
Yeah, absolutely. So I I’m sort of lucky and blessed in this sense that that I naturally am drawn to sort of silence, you know, even though I was in this hardcore band, you know. I I I uh like for I’ve been doing this practice for like the last year where like when I drive, like I just I don’t have the news on, I don’t have music, I just have pure silence. And I find that it’s like those shower moments, like where all of a sudden you have these insights because there’s no there’s nothing to kind of draw your attention away. Uh and and it’s it’s hard at first. At first it felt like a little weird, you know. Um, and I’ve heard other comedians talk about that. Like, why are people constantly on their phones while they’re driving? It’s because they can’t stand the the concept of being alone with themselves. And it it’s true, and uh it takes getting through that. You have to kind of push through that through experience um to kind of finally become comfortable with yourself alone in silence. And once you do, it reminds me of another experience I had. I had this experience where I was I was thinking I was a teenager and I was looking in the mirror and I was sort of staring at myself in the mirror, into my eyes, and all of a sudden I had this deep realization that sort of, you know, that that I am alone in myself, in my body, and that all of those other things that we kind of surround ourselves with, all those distractions are irrelevant, and that you’re just you and you exist in this body, and and you’re trapped there, you know. And like it was very frightening to me. And uh, but I’m glad I went through that, and and now I try to sort of recreate that, and I can’t because it’s not scary anymore. Uh, you know what I’m saying? Like and I think uh and uh back in you know prehistory, people used to say, don’t stare in the mirror because it brings the devil, you know. I think what they were saying was it’s scary to have that realization, and we can’t guarantee how you’re gonna respond to that realization. But it if you respond positively and you get comfortable with yourself and this concept that we’re trapped inside ourselves and we’re ultimately alone and we’re not, you know, all these other things don’t matter, and it’s a miracle that we’re here at all. Uh all of a sudden the fear goes away, and it’s there’s incredible power in that.
Was there something that you you said earlier that you meditated quite a bit uh at the beginning of this journey? What were you meditating on? Can you kind of guide us a little bit on that?
Yeah, yeah. So I would go out in the winter, we have a greenhouse outside, and I would sit in the greenhouse and uh just on this wooden bench, and I would just think about um trying to think about things that that again sort of would freak you out at first, like like think like what would happen if existence never happened? Like we don’t have to, there doesn’t need to be a universe that doesn’t like there could have just simply been nothing. And like, what does that feel like? Like? You know, what does that look like? And when you think about it from a kind of a Kabbalistic perspective, uh, and sort of uh that that that tradition of mysticism, that is the ultimate reality, is the nothingness. Uh, it’s sort of like there’s the light of God, there’s God’s creation, but if you back up further and further and further, there’s a kind of a pure nothingness that precedes all of that, which is the space that God fills. And it’s like, well, what what does that mean? And I would I would really meditate a lot on that and try to picture it, try to visualize it, try to be in that uncomfortable space, you know, um, because we we are beings that you know evolved in this three-dimensional world where we’re not comfortable with nothingness and vacuums, and and uh it’s like they say nature hates a vacuum. Uh, you know, but uh I think again there’s a lot of power in that idea that uh you you need to strip away layer upon layer of of culture and you know tradition and history and get back to sort of the ultimate reality, which is I think accessible to anybody. It’s just it it requires patience and diligence to get there.
Yes, it does. Lots of patience, actually. God’s timing is not always what we as human beings hope for, and sometimes there’s total silence on the other end with like no indication of whether you’re on the right path or not of discovering, you know, what it is that your calling is. And you did talk a lot about coming about your calling by accident. Can you can you give some perspective on yeah, absolutely?
So this was sort of I I was doing this work. I was doing normal market research, again, trying to become the very best I could be. And and you know, uh I took upon myself to organize this massive study for an entire industry. It was all the big insurance companies, like Prudential, State Farm, uh John Hancock, uh, MetLife, um, you know, a bunch of them, like seven companies, something like that, all you know, basically contributing to this one project that I had conceived of and that I was running. And I did the analysis and basically I was looking for, you know, the generally sell planning products. So I was interested in sort of what’s the psychology of people’s reactions to planning. And what I discovered was, first of all, if I just ran the segmentation on the whole population, you would get a very uninteresting result, which was that older people with money are willing to buy these kinds of products, like annuities, you know, and younger people without money were the least likely to. And I’m like, okay, I haven’t learned anything. When I cut the data by segment by by cohorts, by a ten-year bands, and I re-ran the analysis, suddenly something emerged. And it was these same four segments that appeared in every age group. There were people who sort of cared about, had a moral duty to plan ahead for their families, right? Uh, and and people who uh really didn’t. They were sort of living for today, right? And to me, that was really a moral issue. Uh, and then you had whether or not you were concerned about yourself or whether you were concerned about other people. And those two dimensions basically created these four segments, and those four segments existed in every age group. Well, it turns out that was really important for marketing their products, uh, and a lot of them adopted it and used it, and I created, you know, presentations and and websites and everything else for them. Only later, like maybe 20 years later, I looked back at it and realized that I had discovered that dimension that I was missing, which was I had the self and the social, right? That was one of my dimensions. But then I had the material and the spiritual, which was, you know, am I living for today or am I living you know for a higher purpose? And uh it was it had been sitting there all along. You know, I remember presenting this at the Yale Club in New York, uh, you know, uh and I had you know, I mean sort of as the top of my career at that point. And yet I completely was blind to what it was telling me. It took me another 20 years to actually realize what it was.
Why do you think that was? Just to kind of make it real clear for people.
Yeah, because I was I was stuck in that material mindset. Like I I all I knew was I wanted to, you know, sell this project and have it be a success and sell the next project, and and I was so close to it, I was like, okay, yeah, so people plan for the future. Like what I wouldn’t really think about what that means, you know, like what’s the implication of that? And I went back and listened to some of the sort of interviews that we had done and and focus groups and things, and and uh then it came became clear, it was like, okay, it’s it’s it’s a moral you know duty to do this, it’s a responsibility. This is not um people aren’t doing this idly, you know, they’re not making these decisions for their own comfort, they’re doing it because they feel like it’s the right thing to do. And I was like, okay, that’s that’s really meaningful, but I’d completely miss that. You know, I it’s I didn’t understand the implication. Like, I wasn’t ready, you know, I wasn’t ready to hear it.
So I think that does that for us. Like we think, why can’t we move forward on this like quicker? I know I’ve had my husband say, Well, why do you need to learn this a certain way? I said it’s not really up to me. I think there is, I think that’s the what society tells us that we should be able to move forward fast. Like everything should be efficient, everything should be logical and quick fix and an instant gratification, which I know our children are now learning that that’s not real, that’s not the way um God set up set us up to be. We are being revealed certain things at certain times for his purpose. And when we realize that, when we realize just how big that purpose is in our life, how we are part of this bigger plan that um in the moments that we think we should be moving forward, well, we are the solution to someone else that’s like coming up right behind us and that we’re helping, you know, with our message. It happened to me uh months ago on a podcast interview, and I never read the books, like you know, they some people send me books right before I interview them, and I honestly I try to make as much time as I have, but my my plate is full as a full-time mom and podcast host, and just all these roles that I’m playing, but for whatever reason, her title like just was highlighted to me, and that’s the way the Holy Spirit highlights things to me. So it’s like, pick up the book and read it. And I started to read it, and it was as if some as if Alexis Lee, the author, had like opened up my soul and like opened it up and spoke from my soul. It was so intriguing to me, but it was that I gave her purpose because she was questioning at that time whether she had made the right choice or not. And when I interviewed her and I shared with her that that was the piece I had been praying about, and that shit her book had provided me with that piece, she was blown away. It just completely took off the like all those questions she had finally came to like, oh my goodness, here’s the reason for why this happened at this precise moment. Not years ago, like my husband wanted or I wanted, but because I was filling a purpose for her, and I played a role in that. And I know that that’s one of the spheres that you’re talking about, the divine piece versus the uh the social piece, or like the what was it?
It’s it’s in correlation to the material and the spiritual, yeah.
Yeah, so she’s doing all these things to further her career, right? But what’s adding the purpose and the divine purpose to that is me telling her, this is how you’re saving me. Like this is how you are you’re answering my prayer. Um, and it makes sense, right? It makes sense in the long run. But yeah, I mean, there’s so much to touch on, so many deep conversations to have with you on this because it is such a topic, especially now when people are searching for higher purpose. In our age group, it sounds like I’m in my 50s and I started to dive deeper into this in my late 30s. Is that when you started to kind of dive a little bit deeper into this?
I’d say it was um it was pretty much uh like I had a sort of uh interest, although I wasn’t really spending the time, and probably until my 50s, like early 50s, then I started to really dive deep into this. Uh and uh it’s a part of this too, where there’s a certain level of maturity you need to have to even have these thoughts and have these insights and to really understand. And that’s sort of I think what you know, older people, you know, and wisdom, it’s like it’s an accumulation of experience and insight into how things really work, how you know what really matters and what doesn’t, what’s gonna bring you true happiness and fulfillment versus temporary, you know, superficial stuff. Um you know, I don’t think you can do this at a young age. It’s sort of like what Maslow said about self-actualization. It’s like it takes time, you know, it’s like you can’t just will yourself to be self-actualized in your teens. It’s not gonna happen. Like this, it’s just you you can’t force that. It it has to, like, and achieving transcendence is something that’s gonna take a lifetime, you know, if you’re lucky enough to get there at all. Uh and it’s uh, you know, because I think a lot of people think about that, like you know, who you know, it’s there’s so many distractions, uh, and and everyone makes money off of the ability to distract people and and give them concerns that aren’t real, uh that uh you really have to be pretty skilled at being able to shut that stuff down and being able to kind of think about these bigger issues, so it’s not really open to everyone all the time. It’s I think it’s open to everyone if they try.
If they try, but so how do we guide young people, like young parents to just assume she just turned 11 and I have a 20-year-old that is so consumed because he’s always on his phone, and I don’t like I’m trying to show him like you are getting distracted and you’re feeling anxiety over stuff that’s not real, you know, like your mind is taking you down these rabbit holes. So, how do we guide these young minds, being parents of these kids?
It’s tough because what we’re doing is we’re fighting against um algorithms that are optimized to create more engagement, which means to spend more time, and that is it takes the form of outrage. You know, you see things that are outrageous that make you angry, and you want to scroll and see that, or there are things that are really you know destructive, uh, you know, kind of uh sexual stuff that that kind of brings you into this this other path. But all of it is, you know, meaningless, temporary, superficial, um, but very, you know, like our brains are are wired to notice things you know in certain categories. Um and I think that the the fight against that is, I mean, like Jonathan Haidt would say, it we gotta ban phones from school, you know, bell to bell, you don’t have and that’s great. I agree with that. Um I think there’s a bigger thing that needs to happen, which is sort of values education, um, which to me is something that has sort of been mocked, you know, over the years, it’s sort of seen as quaint. But I think if families aren’t gonna do this for their kids, then schools should and society should, in whatever capacity they can’t. It basically take my spiritual domain, start with principles of justice. You know, right uh doing good is rewarded, bad is punished. You there you have an obligation to restrain a self-interest um you know for the common good. You can’t, you know, it’s not fair to do things that if everybody did it, it it would lead to you know chaos and disaster. Uh so you don’t have special permission because you’re you, you know, and and emphasizing those principles every day with kids, I think that is the training they need to come out of this, you know, at some point in their lives, they’re gonna be like, okay, enough of this, you know, um, and then at least have that to fall back on and say, okay, uh, you know, doing right is important. Uh, you know, being a good person is important, um, being open to a higher purpose that is bigger than I can ever understand is also really important. And that’s the doorway, I think, toward these kinds of insights. And and um, I think when kids have that in their background, they’re they raised with that, they’ll they’ll always have that as a resource.
Okay. Well, thank you for that, because that was at the forefront of my mind coming into this interview. I was like, how do we do this? Now you’ve written this book, right? It just published or this year?
One year ago, yesterday.
Oh, congratulations. Thank you.
This week I just announced that it was published in Chinese, so it’s gonna be uh coming to China. So uh Wow, that’s awesome.
So share us more like the cliff notes version of the book, where we can find the book, uh, where we can find you if we want to work with you.
Yeah, absolutely. So the book’s on Amazon, like every other book, um, and Barnes and Noble and all those places. It’s called uh The Emotionally Agile Brain, uh Mastering the Twelve Emotional Needs That Drive Us. And the book basically talks a lot about me and my family and my experiences, uh, me and my kids, uh, my wife, uh, you know, all of that uh as context for these different needs and how these needs get fulfilled. Um I kind of start off kind of doing a review of sort of where society went wrong with when it came to needs, like sort of you know, commercializing them and and exploiting them, and said that if we take this knowledge that we now have largely from the sort of commercial exploitation of needs and apply it to something good with that higher purpose and ethics and justice, we can actually have a transformative effect. And then I kind of lay out this theory of mine with the four domains and the three levels, uh, and then I kind of walk through domain by domain, say, you know, let’s talk about the need for safety. What is it about? Who else has talked about it? How are some what are some ways that you should think about this in your own life? You know, some questions I pose to each person who’s reading it uh to think about and really get into it. Um, you know, what are some of the things that statistically go along with that need? Um, you know, uh and and it’s fascinating how these needs really move with things that you would expect them to move with. So the need for safety, the need for authenticity, the need for uh uh um to achieve your full potential, the need for autonomy, immersion in the moment, and sort of absorption, uh, the the need for success, which is a real need, although people become way too hyper-focused on it. Uh the need for inclusion, the need for caring, the need for recognition, the need for uh justice, ethics, purpose, and that then I kind of take all of that, so it’s 12 chapters, you know, one to each one of those needs, and then I say, so what what can we do? Where is this all going? Like, are we done as a species like with these 12 needs? Or is there going to be evolution that’s gonna take us toward a higher place? And there I begin to speculate a bit about um categories collapsing. You know, it’s sort of a pyramid model because at the apex, once you’ve achieved all these needs, they they basically stop becoming separate needs. They start to collapse in, and that’s sort of my speculation about where we’re going as a species, hopefully. Uh that what I do for one need actually serves all the others. So what I do to make money is also something that helps other people, that’s just, it’s ethical, it serves a higher purpose, it makes me safe, it makes other people safe, it it you know, uh breeds inclusion and exclusion, etc. etc. So it’s basically this concept that if we all kind of worked toward that, the world would just be a much better place and we’d be a much more spiritual place.
I kind of dig that. I kind of love that concept. I might be purchasing your book just to really get into it and read it over Christmas break. Um any last thoughts you want to leave us with on release that reveal purpose?
Yeah, I I guess, you know, um I think one of the things that’s different about my approach is that I start with sort of academic psychology and a lot of really well-known names, you know, Freud and Maslow and and and you know, all these folks, you know, Piaget and Erickson, and and then kind of want to start from an academic mainstream place because I always felt like mainstream academia just rejects the concept of spirituality out of hand. And I think that’s why that wasn’t in my initial thinking about this. Uh and it was really important to me to basically demonstrate this, do the research, you know, do the validated studies, peer review, the whole nine yards. And it slowed down the work, frankly, because a lot of people didn’t want to hear this. They didn’t want me to use the language I was using, they didn’t want me to introduce the concepts I was using. They thought it was a little too, you know, uh out there for them. But that’s why I took the the long road, which is, you know, everything cited. There’s this 40 pages of citations of references in this book. It’s it’s uh you know, uh, it’s something where I wanted it to be not just uh appealing to people who already get it, you know, who already have a spiritual sense. I want it to be something that would be impactful to somebody who completely rejects it and to try to you know open their eyes to this reality by by kind of starting in their world. So I I guess that’s the last thing I’d say about it.
Well, I love how you’re meeting people exactly where they’re at. I’ve been asked to do the same with in my mission, and so I agree with you on that. Um, and I do know that the author of that is God himself. So that’s probably why we’re on the same page. Um except you’re in academia, right? And I’m in a different sector altogether. I’m in the life coaching space, and and God was basically like, listen, I need you to go and get my lost sheep for me. And so that means meeting them exactly where they’re at. If they’re mad at me, great, you sit with them and you and you guide them back to me. And so I’m like, great, so they’re like mad at you, and they’re like, Yeah. Um, and so I mostly work with people with religion trauma, people that initially started off on the right foot and then somewhere along the way felt, you know, judged and turned away completely. And then they turned away from their calling, which, as you and I both know, is essential for this world to move. Um, we’re all interconnected in a way that my life impacts yours and yours impacts mine through our calling. And and we’re all connected to the author, right, of of what we’re doing here on earth. So it’s it’s a very big understanding, but it’s it’s it’s ideal and it’s it’s it’s very similar and yet not the same for a lot of people. So I wanted to thank you, um, JD, for being here, for being vulnerable enough to share some of these not so great parts of your life, you know, but that that will give people the empowerment to say, you know what, if he if he could come out of this dark space and can start rebuilding and and be humble enough to recognize that he had seen this information and missed it entirely because his mindset was completely on the wrong thing, then maybe it maybe I should need I should pause, get still, and see where in my journey I might have already gotten my information and missed it entirely. So I appreciate that vulnerability because I think that’s going to help a great deal of listeners because we’ve all been there. Most of us have been there and not even realized it. Um, so I appreciate it personally myself, and I know some other listeners will as well. And for the rest of the listeners, I do want to remind you, remember Matthew 5.14 to always be the light. You have a beautiful light inside of you. You have a calling. And it’s been there all along. Even when we were when we were young babies, we were we were already programmed a certain way by our creator, and we are created to be good human beings with a calling higher than than what we’re currently possibly doing. So we encourage you both JD and I to get still, to turn inward, and to seek him with all of your heart. And when you do that, you will find him because he’s always been there. We’re the ones that abandon him. He doesn’t abandon us. We’re our car. And he’s there to gently remind us to step into it fully. And he will be with us every step of the way. So for everyone else, we are at I think seven days before Christmas Eve. So Merry Christmas to everyone. And JD, thank you for being on here. It’s been such an honor to have you.
A real pleasure. Thanks, Sylvia.
Bye now.
Bye-bye.
So that’s it for today’s episode of Release Doubt Reveal Purpose. Head on over to iTunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week who posts a review on iTunes will win a chance in the grand prize drawing to win a twenty five thousand dollar private VIP day with Sylvia Worsham herself. Be sure to head on over to sylviaworsham.com and pick up a free copy of Sylvia’s gift and join us on the next episode.