You 2.0: The Practice of Patience

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Shankar Vedantam: Hidden Brain visited 16 cities with our Perceptions Tour in 2025, and we're excited to visit even more communities across the US this year. We'll have more announcements about tour stops in the months to come. For now, I want to make sure you know about two live shows that are coming up soon. I'll be in Philadelphia at the Miller Theater on March 21st, and at the Town Hall in New York City on March 25th. For tickets to either show, go to hiddenbrain.org/tour. That's hiddenbrain.org/tour. I hope to see you there. Okay, here's today's show. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. In a famous Chinese parable, a man frustrated with all of his failures exiles himself to the woods. There, he meets a hermit with whom he shares his frustrations. Give me one good reason not to quit, the man tells the hermit. The hermit points to a tall patch of foliage. You see this bamboo? He asks. I nurtured it for a year, and it did not grow as much as an inch. But the hermit did not give up. The second year, he waters and nurtures the plot again. Nothing. A third year goes by. Again nothing. Year four, the same. By the fifth year, the hermit says, a tiny sprout emerged from the earth. And within six months, the tree grew a hundred feet tall. During all those years when it appeared that nothing was happening, the bamboo was growing, underground. Hidden from view, it had been rapidly spreading roots. All the time you had been struggling, the hermit told the man, you were growing strong roots. In the parable, the man learns his lesson and the value of persistence. He goes back to his life and continues his pursuits. It's beautiful, isn't it? This idea that we think we're getting nowhere, but our efforts might be paying off in ways we cannot see. Yet, it also raises an uncomfortable problem. How can you tell the difference between growing roots underground and when you're simply watering and nurturing a dead plot of land? Today on the show, we explore the conundrum of patience, when it makes sense to persist, even when you can't see what's happening below the surface, and when we should be impatient. Also, practical ways we can learn to be more patient, even in trying circumstances. Learning to wait, this week on Hidden Brain.

Shankar Vedantam: From a young age, we are taught to be patient. Sit still, wait quietly, hold off eating one marshmallow in order to enjoy two later on. When we become adults, with more power over how many marshmallows we can have, patience often falls by the wayside. At Baylor University, psychologist Sarah Schnitker studies the science of patience. She says that being patient may be a lost skill for many of us, but it's also one that's frequently misunderstood. Sarah Schnitker, welcome to Hidden Brain.

Sarah Schnitker: Thank you so much for having me today. Sarah, in 2012, a quarterback for the Washington, DC football team was injured during a game against the Baltimore Ravens. What happened to Robert Griffin III, or RG3 as he was called? Yes, RG3, Baylor's hometown hero. What happened in that game is that he was tackled, and they took him off the field, said, no, we're not going to play the rest of the game. They brought in Kirk Cousins, able to actually win the game. But RG3 really sustained this tough injury.

Game Tape: RG3, now it looks like he's hurt his right leg, and this would be devastating. You can watch his right leg. He's going to get... Oh, that didn't look good.

Shankar Vedantam: So the next day it was confirmed that he had a sprain, and RG3 was asked to sit out the next game to heal. But the team's head coach reported that the star quarterback had been medically cleared to play, so he came back in that game to success. But all was not well with his knee, was it?

Sarah Schnitker: No, all was not well. And the team doctor who had supposedly medically cleared him has since then said, no, I did not clear him. He should not have been playing. And I think there was just this immense pressure for RG3 to move back in. He was the superstar. He was this rookie sensation, the Heisman Trophy winner. He was all this energy behind him. And the coach and team just wanted him out there.

Shankar Vedantam: The fans wanted him out there as well. And I remember reading the newspapers in Washington, DC at the time, and there was incredible excitement about RG3 coming to town. The Washington football team had not been a good team for a long time. And the belief was that he was going to turn everything around. And, you know, everywhere he went, he was treated like the, you know, like the second coming of the Messiah.

Sarah Schnitker: Indeed, indeed he was. And I think in the United States and especially in our sports stories, we love a recovery story that someone gets injured and they show this amazing grit and push through and come out of it. And so I think this narrative of this superstar, almost superhuman, who can instantly recover, was pushing RG3 to come back.

Shankar Vedantam: So he came back that same season to some success, but later on this season, during a wild card game in January of the following year, things took a turn for the worse. What happened, Sarah?

Sarah Schnitker: Yes, things took a turn for the worst indeed. And he was tackled again, and he re-injured his LCL. And he also tore a reconstructed ACL. And this is pretty devastating. I actually remember the fans at the time just being so sad that this rookie quarterback who is seen kind of as the messiah of the team was injured again and had to sit out that season.

Shankar Vedantam: So he ended up getting reconstructive surgery in the off season, but of course, a few months later, the new season began. RG3 was encouraged to rush back into his starting role, even though he had not played a single game in the preseason. Adidas even got behind his return with a campaign, all in for week one.

Sarah Schnitker: It's wild to me how intense this became. And I mean, I think in many ways it's unheard of to have your first game back be on week one and not do any preseason. And what you saw on that game was exactly what you'd expect, that this person was not ready, they were getting tackled a lot, that there was not that speed and agility. RG3 needed more time to recover and needed more time to practice before going out into a real live game. And you saw them throughout that year, never really got back to his condition that he was in when he began as a rookie the year before.

Shankar Vedantam: And in many ways, this is a tragic story, Sarah, because again, RG3 entered the football league with just such incredible promise and hype. What became of his career?

Sarah Schnitker: Well, you know, he never really performed the way that was hoped, and on social media, said he regrets his decision to go back so quickly and wishes he had taken the time, because he might have had a different career.

RG3: I know I shouldn't have played that year, but when you're a player and you're in fight or flight mode, you're always going to choose to fight. Sometimes we want something so bad that we're willing to hurt ourselves for it, but there's a difference between doing something because you love it and doing the smart thing.

Shankar Vedantam: Let's go from the world of sports to politics. In 2003, Howard Dean, a former governor of Vermont, announced his bid to become the Democratic presidential nominee for the 2004 election. He was an early critic of the US war in Iraq at a time when the war was still popular. Talk about how he rode a wave of anti-war sentiment among Democratic Party voters, especially younger voters, Sarah.

Sarah Schnitker: He got this huge, incredible early lead from this energy and really had such a grass roots upswelling that people were excited, they were eager. He just went into Iowa with all this energy and excitement.

Shankar Vedantam: There was a US. Senator who called Dean the Harry Truman of our time, the kind of plain-spoken Democrat that we need. He had a lot of enthusiasm behind him. What happened in that Iowa caucus?

Sarah Schnitker: Oh, the Iowa caucus, it did not go so well for him. His main rivals, John Kerry, John Edwards, they really outperformed him. He came out third and he might have been able to recover from that. But there is this infamous speech she gave that night after coming in third that many say may have doomed him.

Shankar Vedantam: So this was on January 19th, 2004. Dean and his supporters gathered at the Valair Ballroom in West Des Moines, Iowa. And what he was looking to do was not just to concede Iowa but to quickly reignite the enthusiasm of his supporters. What happened, Sarah?

Sarah Schnitker: Well, his supporters were really enthusiastic at this speech. So he started yelling louder and louder. Now, unfortunately, the TV viewers who are watching this could not actually hear just how loud the crowd was. And so as he begins to shout over these cheers and get louder and louder, he starts to sound a little bit unhinged. And he ends with this full-throated kind of scream.

Supporters: We're going to Washington, DC to take back the White House!

Sarah Schnitker: To me, it sounds like a dying goat. And this final, yeah, became known as the Dean Scream or the I Have a Scream speech. But this was just replayed over and over on the news and really undermined kind of the seriousness of his candidacy.

Shankar Vedantam: I think he was trying very quickly to get his supporters turned around after this defeat. And I think part of the problem was a mismatch between how urgent he felt the situation was and how urgent the situation actually was.

Sarah Schnitker: Indeed, and you know, sometimes when you have a loss or defeat, it's actually okay to take a few moments and lick your wounds, to just take the time, heal a little bit. But you see when you watch this video that he just wanted everyone to be pumped up and have that same energy that he had a week before Iowa. And instead of kind of letting that loss take its course and then come back, he just wanted instantly to push back into that energy and excitement and that kind of winning celebration mode. But he wasn't there. And so the scream just encapsulates that.

Shankar Vedantam: I want to talk about one other case of impatience that had serious consequences, Sarah. We've all heard the phrase fail fast. Companies are often encouraged to rush their products to market and to fix problems later on. In 2016, Samsung rushed to release their new phone, the Galaxy Note 7. They wanted to beat Apple's release of the iPhone 7. Here's a clip from a news report about what happened next.

It shows a Galaxy Note 7 apparently smoking on fire, it would appear, at a fast food restaurant. One store employee, as you can see there, actually used her oven mittens to grab the device. That is not a good thing when one is trying to sell those devices to consumers.

Shankar Vedantam: What happened to the Apple Samsung race, Sarah?

Sarah Schnitker: So, Samsung had seen that they might have an opportunity. Apple iPhone 7 was going to be coming out that year, and everyone had heard, oh, it's going to be kind of a dull update. And Samsung thought this could be a great opportunity to deliver their new splashy product with the Galaxy Note 7. And so, they were rushing to this deadline. However, as we heard in that clip, things did not go well. In their rush, they had some fatal flaws to those batteries. And this was creating all kinds of issues worldwide. And I think most ominously on airplanes, that the devices were overheating, and there was serious fear that this could cause a fire on a plane, that would be really catastrophic. And so people were afraid to travel with their devices. There were warnings that came out. It was not good.

Shankar Vedantam: I mean, I understand that Samsung eventually had to issue a recall. You know, regulators started banning the phone from various locations. This is not what you want when you're trying to sell a device to consumers.

Sarah Schnitker: This is not what you want. And I was actually a Samsung owner at the time. And I remember like, oh, no, should I still be having this Samsung? I hadn't upgraded it. It led to some serious loss of confidence in the brand. And so instead of doing the thing of actually capturing this new market by releasing before Apple, they actually were losing customers and losing profits because of that rush.

Shankar Vedantam: In a world where we are encouraged to fail fast and make overnight recoveries from illness, injury and setbacks, patients can seem like a lost art. When we come back, the psychology of patients and techniques to master the art of waiting. You're listening to Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam.

Shankar Vedantam: This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam. As a rule, human beings are not inclined toward patients. It's hard to sit quietly in traffic, to deal with a small, screaming child in the seat behind you on a plane, to go through a global pandemic where many sources of avocation and entertainment are cut off. At Baylor University, Sarah Schnitker studies the psychology of patients. Sarah, let's go back to the height of the COVID pandemic. The world was scrambling to find answers to so many questions, including how to treat this rapidly spreading virus. In our fear and in our panic and our desire to get this behind us as quickly as possible, people reached for all manner of outlandish interventions. Here's one news clip that described the moment.

News Clip: The Poison Center is again warning you, drinking bleach will not prevent catching COVID-19. The Poison Center says 46 North Texans drank bleach since the start of August.

Shankar Vedantam: Sarah, you say that our brains are wired for certainty. What do you mean by this?

Sarah Schnitker: Yes. Human beings want to have answers. We want to have a predictable world where we know when I do X, I get Y. So we really struggle in situations like the global pandemic, when we don't know what's going on, we don't know what to do, and you see people resorting to really dangerous behaviors like drinking bleach because someone told them this is a way to fix it, said it was certainty, and so we rush forward toward that certainty, even though it might actually harm us.

Shankar Vedantam: And in some ways, when you see a story like this, with a compassionate lens, the people who are doing this are doing this because they're afraid. They're doing this because they're worried. They're doing this because they're scared. They don't know what's going to happen, and they're trying to protect themselves.

Sarah Schnitker: Exactly, and I think this is not just kind of a minor fear. It's a global pandemic, and I'm afraid I'm going to die, or my loved ones are going to die. And our minds just latch on to something that sounds certain and take action, and that feels better and helps reduce that uncertainty.

Shankar Vedantam: I'm wondering if you can talk a moment about why our brains despise uncertainty as much as they do, Sarah. What is the origin for this, do you think?

Sarah Schnitker: Well, if you think about kind of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, uncertainty often means a threat, that when things are certain, even if there's something bad happening, you know at least what to expect and what to do. But when things are uncertain, it's just such an aversive state for people. And we have to not only prepare for threat, but we don't know what the solution is. And it really is tough. It takes a lot of effort to persist in that uncertainty. And it just doesn't feel good.

Shankar Vedantam: I understand that you had a moment when you were a kid, when you had to decide whether to invest in basketball, and in some ways, this was an example of your capacity to sit with uncertainty. Tell me that story. What were you like as a kid, and what was your basketball story?

Sarah Schnitker: I grew up very tall, very quickly. So by the age of 12, I was at my current height, which is five foot 11, which is quite tall for a woman in the United States. So everyone when I was young was telling me, oh, you must be so great at sports. You must be an athlete. You must play basketball or volleyball. And so when I joined the basketball team in fourth grade, I could not meet these expectations that I wasn't actually that great. I was new to it. The work arts were hard. I ended up crying at every single game we had. I know, it was so sad. And I remember my mother who played basketball in college was just like, what, why can't my daughter figure this out? What's wrong with her? At the end of that fourth grade season, I said, you know what, I'm not athletic. That felt much safer and more certain and secure rather than saying, oh, maybe I stick with this for a couple of years and try it out. And maybe, maybe I actually can be good. I just need more practice. And, you know, it's kind of one of those things. When I got to college, I started working out just because my friends were. And I actually realized I'm not bad at this. I can actually be somewhat athletic and strong and good at things related to sports. And so it's one of those things you look back on and say, oh, maybe I missed out from all the benefits of kind of a team sport that we see for female athletes in particular, just because it didn't come quickly. And I was afraid maybe I couldn't be good.

Shankar Vedantam: So we've talked about how aversive it is to feel uncertainty, how miserable it can feel to wait. Can you talk about the role of boredom in driving impatience, Sarah?

Sarah Schnitker: Yes, especially in the United States, but I think in plenty of cultures around the world, we really hate to be bored. I just think of myself as a child, and now my own child when you go on a road trip. It's just the constant, are we there yet? Are we there yet? You asked me five minutes ago, no, we are not there. We just, we hate to be bored, and part of that boredom too is that I want the situation to be different, and yet I'm stuck in it and it's uncertain when it will end. That's why kids are constantly asking, are we there yet? But we're just stuck in it.

Shankar Vedantam: We talked earlier about RG3, the football player who was rushed back to the sport after a set of serious injuries. You say that athletes are often discouraged from taking time off to heal because we want them back quickly. And I understand this played out with the Olympic gymnast Simone Biles?

Sarah Schnitker: So Simone Biles, she had been at the Olympics in Tokyo and was finding herself on her twists and turns losing kind of that sense of equilibrium in the air and decided that she was not going to finish the competition, was going to take a break, take care of her mental health. She withdrew from the all around and several finals and said, I've got to prioritize my well-being. I'm afraid I'm going to injure myself. I don't feel safe. I'm stopping. And took that step back. People did not like this at the time. Some people applauded her, but others said she was letting down her teammates. Piers Morgan, I remember said, she's letting down her teammates, her fans, and even her country that how dare she do this? And she should have pushed through and had that story of grit like RG3. But what we actually see is that Simone Biles took all the time she needed and comes back to Paris in 2024 and absolutely killed it at the next Olympics, became really the most decorated Olympic gymnast ever. So you see that she was able to actually be patient and wait and instead of pushing to come back to competition too early, really listened to herself and prioritized her body and her mind and what it needed instead of pushing forward.

Shankar Vedantam: You know, I recall when she withdrew from the Tokyo Olympics because she actually was with her teammates in Tokyo, and she had been selected, she was representing the country. And there was a sense, I think, among some commentators that she was being selfish, that she had taken a spot on the national team and now was pulling out, and in fact had deprived somebody else of the opportunity of competing in the Olympics. And of course, there was this trope of, Simone Biles is a selfish person for not putting herself out there no matter the cost. But of course, in the long run, it was not just the right decision for Simone Biles, it was the right decision for gymnastics in general, and certainly for the United States in particular.

Sarah Schnitker: Yes, she needed that time. And she just dominated later in 2024. And so I think it's a short-sighted perspective in general in our culture, instead of saying things take time and we have to be patient, we want instant results. I mean, I'm truly amazed that Simone Biles had the strength to not cave into that pressure. I just thought it was incredibly courageous and patient what she did.

Shankar Vedantam: I'm curious, Sarah, about the potential limits of patience. In his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. expressed his frustration with hearing the word wait time and time again when it came to civil rights. In another speech he made on the subject, he actually makes a case for the virtues of impatience. Here he is.

MLK Jr.: We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.

Shankar Vedantam: Is patience always a virtue, Sarah?

Sarah Schnitker: I think what we might say is that virtuous patience, good patience, is always a virtue. But there is a vice of what might be called too much patience. So you can be reckless and move forward with violence and recklessness to your goal, which we often think about as impatience. But you can also fall prey to passivity or inaction or in waiting too long. And so to truly be doing patience well, we have to find that real sweet spot, that golden mean between recklessness and passivity. And so you see that MLK is calling out in this speech that, no, we should not be waiting any longer. We demand rights and equality. And MLK is just a really interesting example for patience because it takes immense patience to practice civil disobedience. And yet he knew that patience had its limits and that just waiting around is not going to get you there towards a just and good society. And so you see this real tension of patience and action that people have to work out in their daily lives and in these historic events as well.

Shankar Vedantam: How do we tell when we are at that sweet spot of patience where we're not waiting too much, but we're not being reckless either?

Sarah Schnitker: You know, one of the things that we've shown in our research is that a great indicator is that we should see that we're acting both with courage and patience. If you're only practicing patience and you don't see instances of courage, you might be coming too passive. So really, instead of thinking about patience just by itself and as the only thing you should be trying to do, also thinking about, am I being courageous? And am I pursuing things even when I might be afraid or feel under threat? And balancing those two really seems to help to ensure that you're not becoming too patient and passive.

Shankar Vedantam: And of course, we see that certainly in MLK's life. We see abundant patience, but also abundant courage.

Sarah Schnitker: Exactly. In one of our studies, we tracked participants over four weeks and we're looking at the goals they were pursuing and asked them about how much patience they were using in each goal and how much courage. And what we found is that when people had both patience and courage like MLK, they did not show passivity or recklessness, but when they had one and not the other, that's when you see them starting not to pursue their goals really well and either becoming passive or reckless. So those two together are really key.

Shankar Vedantam: When we come back, how we can all learn to be more patient, and why we should.

Shankar Vedantam: You're listening to Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam.

Shankar Vedantam: This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Do you have questions about today's episode? Maybe you are someone who is known as exceptionally patient. What helps you to keep your cool? Have you ever lost your patience and paid a huge price for it? If you have a personal story you would be willing to share with a Hidden Brain audience, or a question or comment about this episode, please find a very quiet room and record a voice memo on your phone. Two or three minutes is plenty. Email the file to us at feedback at hiddenbrain.org. Use the subject line patience. That email address again is feedback at hiddenbrain.org. In a world that thrives on instant gratification, it's easy to believe that patience is passive, something that involves sacrifice and clenched teeth. At Baylor University, psychologist Sarah Schnitker challenges this idea. She says there are ways to learn the art of patience and to make it less painful. Sarah, you say that there are three types of patience. You call the first interpersonal patience?

Sarah Schnitker: Yes. The first type is really about being patient with other people. Being patient with your relationship partners, with your spouse, your children, your coworkers, with the person in front of you in line who can't seem to find the coins to make change because why are they paying in cash, right? This is all the people in our lives who require patience from us.

Shankar Vedantam: Have you found that to be true in your life, Sarah, that when you have been patient with the relationships, in fact, they transform and become quite different than what you might have imagined at first?

Sarah Schnitker: Yes, I have. There's lots of things that can be disruptive to a relationship and things that annoy us about others. But as I got older, I've learned, like, you know what, maybe this friend and I aren't on the same page right now. Let's still keep in touch. I might try to talk to them. But even if we can't resolve that specific conflict, we can come back around and that there's something really lost when you give up on a new friendship or even an old one when the person's having a hard time too soon. And that continuing just to be patient with others allows for the richness of deep relationships to really be a part of your life and it just takes a lot of patience in waiting.

Shankar Vedantam: So we've talked about interpersonal patients, but there is also the patients involved in dealing with setbacks at work and in life. Can you talk about the role of this challenge in your own life, Sarah? I understand that in the third year of grad school, you became very sick with a mysterious illness. What were the symptoms of this illness?

Sarah Schnitker: Oh, it was a really rough time. I started throwing up one night in the middle of the night, and I proceeded to kind of have chronic vomiting for months on end. I came to find out later after I got a diagnosis, I have what's called cyclic vomiting syndrome, which is a pretty rare disorder. It's kind of like abdominal migraines, so it's in the brain, similar to migraines, but instead of getting a headache, I just would start throwing up, and it was really, really hard. It took me six months to find out a diagnosis, and I was studying patients, and then given this life hardship, where I had to actually practice my patients, and deal with this chronic illness now for my entire life, it became apparent that this is not something that would go away, it was something that I would have to learn to manage.

Shankar Vedantam: I'm wondering, Sarah, if there were times when you felt so frustrated that you wanted to give up, but also felt somewhat hypocritical because you were studying patients.

Sarah Schnitker: So, I definitely felt that. But then there were other times when I also found that my research on patients encouraged me to take the time my body needed. I think I was learning, you know what? Pushing through is not always the answer. And I would actually make little rules for myself of like, okay, if you feel nauseous or are feeling ill, maybe go lay down for 20 minutes and see if that rest and kind of practicing mindfulness or kind of taking time, instead of just trying to push through on my work and write, taking the time and coming back and being a little bit more gentle with myself. I found when I did that, I could be much more successful across the course of a month than actually getting my work done. And so, trying to learn, instead of being like RG3 with just always pushing forward, I don't care about my body, my nausea doesn't matter, I'm just going to push forward, it would lead to like getting so sick that I would have to be hospitalized for fluids and dehydration. So just learning the lesson of Simone Biles of listening to my own mental health, listening to my own physical health, prioritizing those because without my body and my mind, in a good place, I couldn't achieve my other goals. And so, it was a really useful lesson to learn earlier in life because I think a lot of us don't learn that till later in life.

Shankar Vedantam: So besides the challenges that come with our interactions with other people and the challenges that come with these life hardships, there's also the impatience we feel with daily hassles. Now, these don't rise to the level of crisis and catastrophe, but they're still a pain, right, Sarah?

Sarah Schnitker: I think for a lot of people, when they hear the term patience, they think of being stuck in traffic and stuck in line, and what is it, the six months of life, you'll probably stand in line. Like, this is a huge amount of our time. You know, when we practice our patience in these daily hassles, not only does it improve that moment, but I also like to think of it as good practice for the bigger life hardships and for our relationships, that the daily hassles might be a nice lower stakes game to practice patience so that you're ready when you have that illness come up or your child frustrates you in a new way, that you're prepared for those things that might actually be more monumental.

Shankar Vedantam: I want to go over some of your ideas on how we can build our patience. You say that one way to do this is that when we're feeling impatient, we should stop and reflect on the experience. Now, I think most people want to do exactly the opposite. They don't want to focus on the fact that they're feeling impatient. In fact, they want to get rid of that feeling as quickly as possible. What's the point of dwelling on it, Sarah?

Sarah Schnitker: Yes, I think it's somewhat counterintuitive, right? We often think of patience like, don't be upset, don't be upset. But we actually find that does not work. People who are patient don't actually try to suppress their feelings. Instead, they acknowledge them and that it's okay to take that moment and say, oh, I'm really frustrated with this person in the workplace who is asking me the same question for the 15th time this week, or my partner who is making that funny noise that they always make, or my child who's throwing a temper tantrum. If we actually stop and pause and say, oh, this is what I'm feeling, and just let that feeling be there for a moment, that actually removes some of the power of that feeling. What you also see is if you can almost try to observe that feeling as a third person, instead of just feeling it, to say, okay, this is what I'm feeling. I can understand why. That really is the first step to actually being patient.

Shankar Vedantam: You also talk about the value of something you call reappraisal. What is reappraisal, Sarah?

Sarah Schnitker: Yeah, so reappraisal is really just this trick of learning to think about a situation differently. So one common reappraisal strategy is benefit finding. So what is the good thing that I can notice in this scenario? I know for myself sometimes it's just, oh great, this is an opportunity to practice my patience waiting in this line. Reappraisal could also include thinking about it from someone else's perspective. So why is this three-year-old screaming on the ground and kicking? Oh, because they don't have the words or the capacities to tell me what they want. So this is all they've got and I'm going to feel for them and how they're feeling. So that reappraisal is just shown across many, many studies just to be a highly effective way of regulating and helping yourself become more patient.

Shankar Vedantam: The researcher Kate Sweeney ran a study that looked at how people spent their time during the COVID-19 pandemic. She found that some people were better able to deal with their impatience than others. Can you describe for me what the study found?

Sarah Schnitker: Yes, what Kate and her colleagues found is that when people were able to immerse themselves in activities and experience what we call flow, that state really helped people to cope well with COVID-19 and all the stressors of the pandemic in China, in particular during the most intense lockdowns. And so, engaging in these flow experiences really helped people across time, not just in the moment, but even later when the researchers followed up with them. People who were able to do that were able to be patient, whether it was cooking homemade meals or playing video games even, which we often think of as a negative thing. They found that that can actually induce a flow state. And this was important in that time of really heightened uncertainty.

Shankar Vedantam: You know, I find sometimes when I'm waiting in line or waiting on hold, I'll pull out my phone and I'll start playing a game of chess. And within about five or six minutes, I'm so absorbed in the game that when someone finally comes on the phone, I'm like, why are you interrupting my game? This is far more important than anything I need to talk to you about.

Sarah Schnitker: Exactly, how dare you come back so quickly? Yes, I feel the same way. I love to do my writing when I travel. And so it makes that wait in the airport or on the plane just so much faster when I'm like, oh no, the flight's almost over. I want longer. Yes, it's a good strategy.

Shankar Vedantam: We've talked previously on the show, Sarah, about how purpose can give us patience when it comes to achieving difficult goals. When we know why we are doing something, it becomes easier to bear the setbacks along the way. Talk about the role of purpose in helping us deal with our impatience.

Sarah Schnitker: It can really motivate us to do better when it comes to patience, when we have a reason for that waiting and for that suffering, that we need a higher order purpose, a why. Why do I continue to suffer in this way? Why should I wait for this thing patiently? When you have that big why, it becomes much easier to practice the how, to actually practice your reappraisal, to practice your naming of the emotion, to get into that flow state. And what we find is that when that purpose is bigger than yourself, it's not just about me and my pleasure and my positive emotions. Instead, it's something bigger than me. We find in our research that when people have that, they're actually able to be more patient and they actually grow more in patience over time.

Shankar Vedantam: You ran a study involving Muslim adolescents during the month of Ramadan. What were these adolescents doing during Ramadan and what did you find, Sarah?

Sarah Schnitker: Yes. Ramadan in Islam actually is called the month of patience. During the month of Ramadan, devout Muslims will dry fast from sunrise to sunset. That means no food or drink, not even water across all of daylight. This is an incredibly challenging time, but it's also a time of great spirituality, and that the Islamic community, you see there are all kinds of special rituals and prayers and meals to break the fast or to begin it. What we found in our research is that when teenagers were engaged in this Ramadan sacred time that they actually grew in their patience. And then what was really cool is that a month after Ramadan was over, so back to just kind of normal daily life, they actually sustained some gains in patience. So they were still more patient than before Ramadan had began. So what we interpret is going on here is that they are doing this really difficult training in patience, and it feels like suffering in the moment, and you really want to be able to get that drink, and having to wait for that sun to set is difficult. So when they practice their patience, but do it for a bigger reason, to bring glory to Allah, and to be a part of their community, and do this together with others, it really seems to be a powerful intervention that, I'm not doing this for myself or my physical fitness, I'm doing this because this is what good Muslims do, and we are doing this for the sake of this higher power, and that is an incredibly potent experience, and our data show that it indeed has these benefits for patients long term.

Shankar Vedantam: I understand that this work has been echoed by other research you did that looked at young adults who were training for marathons?

Sarah Schnitker: Yes, we also looked at adolescents and young adults who were running half or full marathons with a philanthropic training team. And what we found is that they didn't necessarily grow in patients if they were just doing the training for health and fitness reasons. The philanthropic purpose of the training team was to raise money for clean water efforts in about eight African countries when they were running for the sake of helping those other people or running to grow spiritually to get closer to God. When they ran for those motives that were bigger than themselves, that's when you see them also grow in their patients through this training activity.

Shankar Vedantam: I'm wondering, Sarah, if we can take a moment and talk about what scientists like yourself are finding about the costs of impatience.

Sarah Schnitker: Yes. We see that impatience leads to not just irritability or negative emotions, but higher risk of heart problems, difficulty handling stressors. Stress starts to actually become anxiety. We see it can lead to a lack of self-control. We also see that impatience is associated with loneliness. So I think this makes a lot of sense. If you are unable to be patient with other people and you are impatient toward them, that's going to be a strain on the relationship. It's going to be harder to have those deep connections. Then we also see one of the most robust associations we found in my research is that impatience is associated with greater depressive symptoms. And conversely, that patience helps to ameliorate depression symptoms over time.

Shankar Vedantam: There's one form of patience that I think we have not discussed, Sarah, and that is patience with ourselves. We've talked about how we need to be patient with others, with the illnesses that afflict us, with hardships, with the hassles of daily life. But as we look at ourselves, and especially if we look at ourselves honestly and critically, we will find flaws and we will find limitations. And that is a source of frustration as well. Can you talk a moment about the value of being patient with ourselves?

Sarah Schnitker: Patience with ourselves is quite critical. Oftentimes, people have expectations for themselves that might even be higher than the expectations they have for others. And so, patience with ourselves is partly recognizing our own limitations as humans. That we are not superhuman. That we are just human beings and flawed like everyone else. Just like we have to have self-compassion, we also have to have patience with ourselves and realize that growth, and whether that's growth in our character, our morals, our abilities, our relationships, that we're not going to be where we want to be right now. And that it's a long game. There was a famous quote, I think it was Stanislaw Leck said, you have to have a lot of patience to become more patient. And someone might listen to a session like this and say, okay, I'm going to become more patient and really try to do it quickly and then become discouraged and just give up and say, I'm just an impatient person. I can't be good at this. So I think learning to have patience is a slow go, and it's going to take a lot to practice. And I don't think anyone gets it done very quickly.

Shankar Vedantam: Sarah Schnitker is a psychologist at Baylor University. Sarah, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

Sarah Schnitker: Thank you for having me.

Shankar Vedantam: Do you have a story to share with a Hidden Brain audience on the subject of patience? Maybe you're someone who's known as exceptionally patient. What helps you to keep your cool? Have you ever lost your patience and paid a huge price for it? If you have a personal story you would be willing to share with a Hidden Brain audience, or a question or comment about this episode, please find a very quiet room and record a voice memo on your phone. Two or three minutes is plenty. Email the file to us at feedback at hiddenbrain.org. Use the subject line patience. That email address again is feedback at hiddenbrain.org. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

Shankar Vedantam: This is Hidden Brain I'm Shankar Vedantam In his final semester in college, a young Harrison Ford took an acting class A self-described loner, he used acting to get over his shyness In the process, he became obsessed with learning how to tell a story Harrison Ford pursued acting as a career and secured a weekly contract with the Hollywood studio as a small-time TV actor It was a decent start, but he craved more He wanted to be a star At the same time, the struggling actor had a wife and two young sons He had purchased a run-down home in the Hollywood Hills, and spent his free time teaching himself to fix it up Eventually, to pay the bills, he decided to quit his TV contract and become a full-time carpenter But Harrison Ford never quite gave up the dream of landing a major film role One day, he ran into an old acquaintance as he was working on a carpentry project for the director Francis Ford Coppola The acquaintance A young director named George Lucas The director asked the wannabe movie star to read lines with actors auditioning for his new film It was a little project called Star Wars The rest, as they say, is history Harrison Ford landed a starring role in one of the most significant movie franchises of the 20th century He hasn't done many carpentry gigs since then We hear success stories like this all the time The actress waiting tables, the musician ghostwriting songs, the writer toiling at an advertising agency They labor in obscurity until one fine day, they catch a break and become famous There's something irresistible about these stories They give us hope that we too will catch a break, that we too will get to pursue meaningful work that we love At Babson College, Jennifer Tosti-Kharas studies the benefits and the costs of having a calling She joined us for a recent episode It was titled Passion vs Paycheck Today, we welcome Jennifer back to answer listener questions in our popular segment, Your Questions Answered Jennifer Tosti-Kharas, welcome back to Hidden Brain.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas: Thank you so much, Shankar. I am beyond thrilled to be back.

Shankar Vedantam: Your graduate school advisor, Amy Rysniewski, came up with a framework to help us understand how people think about their relationships to work. She suggested that people think of their work in one of three ways, as a job, as a career, or as a calling. Talk about these three categories and what Amy found when she asked people to talk about their work.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas: So just to break them down, a job orientation is when you work primarily for the extrinsic rewards from that work. So work is a means to an end, and it's typically a financial end. So working primarily for the money it provides and maybe then you pursue a passion outside of work, that's a job. A career is when you similarly work as a means to an end, but this time it is the means to advancing within either an organizational hierarchy, picture climbing the typical career ladder, or gaining respect and centrality in an occupational community. So picture like coders who like to gain the respect of others, like, whoa, you wrote that code. That would be a career orientation toward the work. Then finally, we have a calling. And when work is a calling, it is not a means to an end, but a meaningful end in and of itself. It is a source of fulfillment, of passion. You often feel consumed by the work. And often, but not always, you would say, your work makes the world a better place. It's just a major, major part of who you are, pretty much inseparable from life, compared to the other two.

Shankar Vedantam: One of the things that I find intriguing is that Amy found that people who fell into all three categories, regardless of what their jobs were, so you could ask the same questions of three surgeons or three accountants or three journalists and find that the same job did not hold the same meaning for different people. What do we make from that, Jen?

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas: Yeah, absolutely. So the meaning of the work in this framework is really in the eye of the beholder. So, just as you said, you can have two people, same job, same organization, you know, same occupation, and one feels it's a job and one feels it's a calling. And that means I could be working right alongside you or even with you on a work team. And we feel very differently about the meaning that that work has within our lives. I think another interesting thing that Amy found is that this distribution of jobs, careers and callings, which was about a third, a third and a third across people in a given population, really held regardless of the type of work. So it was as common in professionals as it was in, for example, administrative assistance. So this notion that, oh, you know, everybody who works or more people who work as a, you know, lower level in the organization feel their work is a job and people with, you know, very immersive or important occupations might feel their work is a calling, that didn't really hold either. So really, I think what we make of this is that it's less about what you're doing and even maybe less about you and this interaction of you and the job that creates the meaning.

Shankar Vedantam: We discussed this during our last conversation, but can you remind us of some of the benefits of having passion in your work or finding a calling?

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas: Yeah, a lot of the benefits of calling are really driven by an extra engagement in and motivation to do that work. So these are the employees who go above and beyond. They put in the effort. They, you know, show up to work even, you know, they don't miss as much work. The work they do is potentially very good and very high quality. They're very diligent about it. They just, they care about doing that work a lot. And then similarly, there are benefits for the worker themself. So research, including my own, has found that experiencing a calling toward your work spills over to benefit your life as a whole. So we might say it gives your life meaning, it gives you a purpose. That's really good for us in general. It can lead us to feel our lives are good. Thinking about life as a whole and not just life at work.

Shankar Vedantam: One of the things that I really enjoyed about our last conversation is that you not only talked about the benefits of having a calling, but some of the potential downsides of having a calling. What are some of them?

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas: Yeah, so this is sort of that other side of the coin, that as good as callings can be, there's also this side of it where that extra passion, that extra effort, that willingness to go above and beyond can turn into an over commitment, where you're almost doing too much. You're putting in too much of yourself and then not leaving room for other areas of your life and potentially opening yourself up to exploitation. So along with my co-author on my book Is Your Work Worth It, Christopher Michelson, we've started exploring in some more recent work, this notion that maybe callings are best experienced, not as an extreme high or an extreme low, but really in this sort of middle space. And when we push to those extremes is when we see some of the downsides, either we're not at all committed or we're over committed.

Shankar Vedantam: Let's turn now to questions from the audience. We heard from a listener named Elizabeth who says she and her husband have very different expectations about what they will get out of work.

Elizabeth: I grew up in a family focused on each of us kids finding our calling. Fast forward to me as an adult, and I've tried all different kinds of helping professions in my 15 years post college in the work field. And I'm still trying to figure it out. And my husband is tired of me complaining about work not being the perfect fit for me. My husband grew up in a blue collar community, and to him, work is work. You just find something that pays the bills. And the idea of a calling was kind of a foreign concept. And so this has been this tension that I've been examining more and more as I continue to seek and not find my calling.

Shankar Vedantam: In some ways, Jen, what Elizabeth is saying is that people who think of their work as a job and people who think of their work as a calling might look at one another with mutual incomprehension.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas: So Elizabeth, thank you for sharing that perspective. That is actually such a common occurrence for couples to have what we might call incongruent work orientations. One feels it's a job, the other feels it's a calling, that it can make it hard to know, what do I really want in work, and you almost question, just as Elizabeth is doing, is this really what I want, and sort of what am I looking for and what do I value? And greater incongruence not only leads to uncertainty and a longer job search, but ultimately a lower probability of re-employment. The more incongruence of your work orientation with your partner, the less satisfied you are with your job. There's an interesting caveat to that, unless you are the one with the higher calling, and then you are more satisfied with your job. So it's almost this like social comparison. Now, Elizabeth's example, I think, speaks more to the seeker nature of this, but it suggests that if she were to be employed and feel that that work was her calling, she might actually experience more satisfaction as a function of her husband viewing his work as just a job.

Shankar Vedantam: Is there any research that explains why it is different people might look at work as a job versus look at it as a calling? Does it have to do with our upbringing and what we've been taught as children?

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas: Yeah, so there, I mean, definitely needs to be significantly more work done on this, but there are a few studies, and I want to point to one by Catherine Degas and Wayne Baker, that looked at exactly what happens in adolescence through socialization with parents. So no surprise, we start thinking about work early in our lives through interaction with, you know, significant others, but a huge influence on us is our parents. What our parents, you know, feel about their work, the meaning they make of their work influences us, and it does so in some pretty interesting ways. So kids develop stronger calling orientations when both parents possess strong calling orientations. Other work has looked at the journey toward when we feel our work is a calling and finds that just having role models and influences, seeing people kind of model the way of experiencing their work as a calling can be inspiring to us. Now, of course, the other side of that is pressure, but it can be inspiring to us. And so parents might be our earliest form of those role models.

Shankar Vedantam: There are many professions that people enter into as a calling, but once in the profession, they find that there are significant portions of that profession that involve boring activities or mundane activities. I'm thinking about someone who decides to become a firefighter. And so they have this very glamorous vision of running into burning buildings and rescuing people. But if you're a firefighter, much of your time actually is just spent sitting around waiting for someone to call. And a lot of the job might actually be quite boring. I'm wondering what happens, Jen, when people who expect that their work is going to be unendingly interesting and glamorous encounter the boring parts that come with every profession.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas: Yeah, I try to really give my students a realistic preview of that. Like even the most meaningful work does not feel meaningful all the time. So I think just even having this realistic preview of like, you're a firefighter, but it's not all glamour and excitement and how it seems on TV shows and movies. Now, of course, when we're talking about firefighters, I do think about work by Mike Pratt and colleagues that looked specifically at callings and firefighters and found that a lot of what really drives them is the camaraderie with the other firefighters. So it's funny, like I could be bored sitting around the firehouse, but I'm with my buddies, and that's really that's who I show up for. And even in the glamorous role of putting out a five alarm blaze, I'm thinking about them and keeping them safe. And it sort of translates over. But I want to entertain your idea of, you know, I have lofty goals, and then I get in my job, and it is just, you know, there is not a lot to remind me about that bigger picture. Sometimes what I would recommend is just trying to see the way that the work, though boring, is still helping. And that could be helping you. It could be helping, you know, you and your pursuits or your family or what happens outside of work. It could be helping society, just you don't feel you're as, you know, personally responsible for it. But I think it's sort of this, there needs to be some kind of a balance between having a realistic expectation that even the most lovable work is not lovable every single minute of every single day and also thinking about, you know, how much there does become a point at which I think if you are unable to sustain a meaningful connection to the work you're actually doing, you do need to listen to that and think about when is it time to change things up?

Shankar Vedantam: When we come back, how our passions change over time, and ways to find a new calling when your old one no longer satisfies you. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

Shankar Vedantam: This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life. It's a phrase we've all heard and many of us have internalized the idea that if you experience a deep passion for what you do, your work won't feel like a burden. In fact, the word work itself comes from the ancient Greek term ergon, which means the outcome of someone who achieves an inner desire, a purpose. At Babson College, Jennifer Tosti-Kharas studies how we find meaning in our work, and the benefits and the costs of pursuing a calling. Jen, one interesting sentiment we heard from listeners is that one's passion for work can evolve over time, perhaps because of the work itself or changing life circumstances. A listener named Christina is in her mid-30s and has been able to make ends meet as a part-time singer in New York City. But she recently decided to take a full-time day job.

Christina: Things changed for me in the past few years.

Christina: I just realized that I needed more structure, more stability, and there are other things I want in life. Like, I've wanted a cat for a long time. I'd like to travel a little bit more, see my family without having to worry about every single cent I spend on plane tickets to go see them, you know, own a home someday. And those things just wouldn't be possible if I continued on the trajectory I was on. And so starting this new day job has been interesting because rather than making me feel like I've lost something, I feel like I've gained something.

Shankar Vedantam: What I find striking about Christina's story, Jen, is that she doesn't seem to feel what many others feel. She doesn't feel like she has sold out or traded down or given up on what matters to her. In some ways, she has expanded her definition of what matters to her.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas: Yeah, so I love Christina's story, and I think that this is very emblematic that the only way for work to have meaning is not just to feel that work has to be a calling. So work can be meaningful and add, in fact, a lot to one's life if it's a job that fuels our passion or our meaningful life outside of work. And I think Christina's story is an example of this. And we tend to, we venerate callings in our society, but they're not the end-all be-all. We talked earlier about the problems that they can cause for people and actually directly for having a more balanced life. And so I think that, you know, a typical life change that might affect how we view our work is partnering, maybe having kids or other dependents, and suddenly feeling like the best use of my time is to not only provide for those other people in our lives, but be able to spend time with them. So shifting away from sort of what I always thought I wanted to do in an ideal world where money didn't matter or, you know, other things in life didn't matter and sort of this, you know, ideal bumps up against the reality of how we actually want to live our lives.

Shankar Vedantam: Many of us do struggle when our passion is no longer within reach. Perhaps we lose a job or we fall out of love with our current one. A listener named Wendy was a federal worker who recently got fired as part of the Trump administration's mass layoffs. Here she is.

Wendy: All of my stuff went into storage yesterday. I'm moving out of my place to go stay with my little sister while I try to figure out a new career, but there's a lot of emotional processing that I'll need to do as well. As I come to understand what the loss of this job, this work means for me.

Shankar Vedantam: What does this process look like for most people, Jen? As I hear Wendy, I'm hearing grief, someone who's dealing with a loss.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas: Absolutely. I'm so glad and honored to hear Wendy's story, and I think I'm also really holding some very deep sympathy for her, because these layoffs affected government workers who, many of them chose government work specifically to help in a broader way, help our society, help our country. They weren't necessarily thinking about more extrinsic reasons for working. I mean, again, this is a prototypical kind of area. We would expect to see some strong callings. And so, I think, regardless of your orientation toward your work, losing a job is really hard. It can lead to everything from just a more fundamental question about, will I be able to put food on the table, maintain my rent, keep my lifestyle, what else will have to change in my life, to these really higher order questions of who am I? What is my identity now that I'm not working? I miss my friends who were part of that workplace. I mean, it's a loss on sort of every level. So I think to equate it to loss and to have a grieving process, I mean, that is borne out in research on job loss. There is absolutely, if you will, more lost than just the job. There's sort of everything that goes with it, and including, and especially for someone for whom the work was a strong calling, this idea that it's part of my identity, it gives meaning to my life, so there's really a lot that's lost there. And I think this notion that we can just easily, you know, plug and play and replace that loss becomes even harder the more attached we were to that job.

Shankar Vedantam: We heard from a journalist named David who's struggling with the state of his industry.He finds himself questioning the stories he was told about his supposed calling.

If your original belief in a calling was predicated on something that you subsequently learned was wrong, you start to question whether the work is your calling. So what do you do then? What happens if you realize your work might not be your calling or no longer is your calling? I know that people pivot in life. Can people have multiple callings within their careers and lifespans?

Shankar Vedantam: In some ways here, Jen, I'm hearing an echo of what Wendy said. David is also saying in some ways that he was given a promise and the promise didn't hold up. And I'm hearing almost a sense that he feels betrayed by the promise not working out. What do you make of his question? Can people in fact have multiple callings within one lifetime?

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas: Let me start by saying I think David's story will resonate with a fair number of people. The world is changing so much, technology is coming online, all the endless discussions about AI and what will be left of a lot of our jobs once we fully realize sentient AI. And I think there's a lot of concern that the callings that we imagined might not be the callings that were living out. And that's a real concern and I think a real problem. So, you know, beyond journalism or government work, sort of, I think a lot of people can really identify with that. When it comes to multiple callings, there's interesting research by Justin Berg, Adam Grant and Victoria Johnson. And they find that even if we have on the one hand fulfilled one of our callings, we're still very acutely aware that there's something else out there that we're not doing. And that every time we're sort of reminded of that unfulfilled calling, we are really motivated to go seek it out. So absolutely the notion that this metaphor of calling is like a romantic partner, and there's just one out there for you and you just have to find it. And once you find it, it's smooth sailing. I mean, just the same way that we are unpacking this notion about romantic partners or life partners. It's a very similar thing for work and for callings. For most of us, there's not just one calling out there, and we have to venture to find it, but rather that there can be multiple things that would fulfill us, and that I always say when in doubt, just have experiences, try to learn from trial and error and reflect on what's working and what's not. Because odds are, it's out there if you are attentive to it and looking for it.

Shankar Vedantam: We got a lot of listener questions about your research, Jen. It was a really popular topic with our audience, and I think the reason is because, especially in the US, our work lives play such a central role in our identities. A listener named Midian called in. She's worked in the film industry for more than 20 years as a makeup effects artist, but recently she became jaded, so she's transitioned into a role that involves teaching and training other makeup artists. But she says it's been a tricky change to navigate.

Midian: This transition has been so painful, mostly because I am makeup effects. And what am I without that has been quite a process. And I've had to just go again, get rid of everything. I'm moving to Albania. I'm going to just let it all go. And the more I let go, the better I'm feeling.

Shankar Vedantam: I'm wondering, Jen, if you can talk about the link between who we are and what we do for work, because one thing I'm hearing in Midian's question is that for her, her job was not just a calling. Her job was who she was.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas: Yeah, I actually wrote down Midian's quote, I am makeup effects. What am I without that? That's such a powerful way of stating, I think, the emotional experience of callings for many people, that it's not just what I do, it's who I am. And I think part of that is it's very American. I think it's a very like culturally situated view. But I also think it's something that is is definitional to a strong calling. It's certainly the way I think about it. It is not just the fact that I understand why I'm doing my work in a broader picture, but it really says something about me and my values and then transmits it to others. Often when we measure callings, one of the scale items that we use that we ask people to agree or disagree with is one of the first things that I tell people about myself is what I do for work. I just think that really says it all. It's a point of pride, it's a point of identity. Then, of course, as Midian is saying, to go without it feels especially challenging. We almost can't imagine it. I do wonder, can that give you the sense that I found it once before, I can find it again? I think that's what I would like to be the optimistic view of this for those who have experienced a calling and then maybe fallen, whether it was taken away from them or they chose something different, fallen out from their calling. I would like to think there's some hope.

Shankar Vedantam: You know, hearing these notes from listeners really shows me how much of a hunger there is for callings out there. So many people really want to feel inspired by what they're doing. We heard from many listeners wondering about finding a calling in retirement. Has there been research looking specifically at finding a passion later in life, Jen?

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas: I mean, there is research on how to think about retirement and actually embracing retirement, sort of not as an endpoint when life is over. I mean, I think a lot of people view it like that. So I can't imagine what I would do if I wasn't working. And again, this is part of this cultural message that we're often fed that says, who you are is what you do. And if you're no longer doing work, do you even have value? But I think that retirement is an opportunity for people to, I think, pursue passions or do meaningful, I mean, work or do meaningful volunteer activities or hobbies that maybe work got in the way of. So the people that I, and again, this isn't research but more anecdotal, but the people I know who are happiest in retirement really see the benefits. They're not sort of focusing on the fact that work went away, but they're focusing on the benefits that retirement opens up for them in terms of, wow, I could never hike all the high peaks in my area when I had a day job. I could never learn a new skill that now I, you know, practice every day when I was working. What does retirement open up time and other resources to do that you couldn't do before? So it's really not an ending of anything or sort of an ending of certainly life, but a chance to live in a new and hopefully more meaningful way.

Shankar Vedantam: When we come back, Jen shares her advice to people still searching for their calling. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. At Babson College, Jennifer Tosti-Kharas says, finding a calling in work can lead to a range of benefits for our physical and mental health. But the pursuit of a calling can also come at a cost. Jen, let's talk a moment about some of those drawbacks. Here's a listener named Katherine, who had a question about it.

Catherine: I just turned 40 yesterday, and what I really wanted to do for my birthday was work. I run a company that makes artwork, and it's a luxury brand, and it looks very successful on the outside. But when I was recently featured in the Wall Street Journal, I couldn't even afford more than two copies of the paper. Most weeks, I end up with just a few dollars in my own account, and more than that, the sacrifices you talked about really resonated. The work is exhausting and sometimes even dangerous. I will probably die from the work. I have to get heavy metal blood testing every month and will probably develop silicosis, or have already. But it feels meaningful to support artists and create something lasting. Thank you for reminding me that I'm not alone in trying to balance passion with paycheck.

Shankar Vedantam: So if I'm hearing Katherine right, Jen, she's really driven and she feels passionately about her work, but she's also struggling economically and sacrificing her health to do what she loves. How can a person think about balancing those competing priorities in their life?

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas: So what I think is so telling and powerful about what Katherine said just now, is that, I mean, to me, this is such a prototypical downside of a strong calling story, in that it's almost like you can't help but not do it. You know it's probably too much. You know that probably it's not great for your health or not great for your relationships, but you've got to do it almost at all costs. I mean, to me, this is that strong calling verging on a too strong calling. And so in terms of how to balance this better, I do think, I mean, Catherine seems nothing if not self-aware about the situation. That would be the first step is just, are you even sort of aware of the toll that it's taking on you? She seems to be, and then at the same time saying, but she still continues to choose it. I think it's very important to pay attention to if this is a long game, and if you are, your, you know, psychological health, your physical health, your relationships with others who enable your life or keep you grounded are compromised, but it actually can affect the longevity and sustainability of your ability to do that work. So I think if things get too out of whack, that in and of itself can keep you from doing the work that is so meaningful to you. So if that really is a priority in a big picture longer-term way, are these actions sustained? Can I sustain these actions over time?

Shankar Vedantam: In some ways, we're talking about callings that are spilling over into obsessions. We talked in our last episode about the very word calling. Originally, it started in a religious context. You were called by God. That was what a calling was. God was basically telling you, set down your work and come and do the things that I have set out for you. You can easily see if God is actually calling you to do something. Maybe you don't have time to have a shower. Maybe you don't have time to meet a friend for a cup of coffee because God's on the other line.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas: So you're absolutely right. And in fact, the moralization of callings is something that is happening increasingly and I think is one of the primary drivers of these effects is the fact Stuart Bunderson and Jeff Thompson in their study of Zookeepers described it as a moral duty. I have to do it, the animals need me. Some beneficiary needs me. It's my drive to do this, but it feels morally significant that if I were to choose something else, that would be a problem. And we see this showing up. So we do see a cultural, you know, veneration of callings that it's sort of, we believe it's better to have a calling than a career or a job. Certainly we sometimes refer to jobs as just a job. And there's increasing evidence that in the workplace, callings are venerated that, for example, those with stronger callings are perceived to be the better performers, putting in more effort, deserving of more pay and promotions. And interestingly, even when that's not objectively the case, that's the subjective sense we have of them, is that they're the good employees. There's another study about believing that those who are intrinsically motivated by and passionate for the job are deserving of more help than others. So all of this kind of combines to create this both, I think, pressure to feel like work is a calling and also, if you've found it, this moral imperative to just do the work at any cost, that it's that much more important.

Shankar Vedantam: We heard from a number of listeners who pointed out that not everyone has the ability to pursue a calling.Here's a listener who is also named Jen.

Jen (listener): I listened to your episode about calling and I think that I would push back against it because many of us don't have the privilege to do something that we would love because we would have no way to pay to live while we did that. So when I graduated college, I had a degree, wanted to work in documentary film, that did not work out, and my degree is pretty worthless. So I had to go back to school and did something extremely practical, which is nursing. And I very much dislike it, but it allows me to pay the mortgage and pay for hobbies. So I think it's actually safe to detach yourself from what you do for work because it can be a pretty sad road. And I was depressed for several years because I had been raised thinking that you identify yourself based on your so-called calling because ever since I can remember in the 80s, it was, what do you want to be when you grow up? But what you want to be when you grow up isn't necessarily what you can be when you grow up, unless you're independently wealthy or extremely talented or just very, very lucky.

Shankar Vedantam: So we heard earlier from Christina Jen. She has chosen to do more practical things because they allow her to do things that she now wants. She wants to travel, spend time with her family, get a cat. We're hearing in some ways a mirror image of that story here. Listener Jen is telling us she made similar tradeoffs but takes no pleasure in the work that she's doing. I don't hear relief. I hear sadness, regret, maybe even some resentment.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas: Yeah, I think those themes absolutely came out loud and clear in Jen's story. And I really appreciate the honesty. And I think that's absolutely, we ask people to trade off between money and meaning all the time. I think we don't even as a society always question the fact that we do that. So I think that is a trade off that a lot of people face. And I think actually to Jen's original point, you know, is it a privilege to do what you love? I think that's absolutely true. I mean, there are so many people, if we think about our world and how many people really don't even have freedom to choose whether to work, what they do for work, how much control and autonomy they have over their own, what their own workday looks like. Absolutely, these are questions of privilege. And I don't wanna pretend otherwise. I think first of all, it's important that we think about a society in which no one has to do work that is truly meaningless or denigrated or what David Graeber once referred to as bull**** jobs that just sort of exists to perpetuate a hierarchy with no intrinsic value or purpose. So within a subset of the people who do have some choice over what they do for their work, I think the decision to prioritize, well, as Jen says, paying the mortgage and what's safe, I think that's a defensible position. You shouldn't feel less than because you prioritized stability, security, even a certain lifestyle over work that maybe was more lovable or more likeable. However, it would be nice if that work didn't make you feel sad or make you feel that you actively dislike it. If you have the privilege to be able to change what you do or who you do it with, is there a way you can, as we call it, job craft to turn that work of patient care into something that seems, you know, less like a dredgery and more like a source of what you find meaningful about work? And I think this is one of the mechanisms that gets to one person's job being another person's calling. What are you making of the work? And in some regards, what are you doing and who are you doing it with?

Shankar Vedantam: We heard from one listener who spoke very explicitly about the role of social comparisons in how he is thinking about whether he has a calling. Here is Jesse.

Jesse: I think the idea of work as a calling is one of the most harmful ideologies in our culture today. If you look at the research about job satisfaction, the predictors are pretty straightforward. You should have good relationships with the people that you work with, fair compensation, a sense of appreciation and respect from those above you and those beside you, a positive work-life balance, opportunities for growth. And in my life, I have all these things, but I still feel unfulfilled because I compare my job with other people who seem to have that sense of calling. And I crave that. I earned a PhD in research psychology because I found the discipline interesting, and I just I loved learning. It wasn't a calling, but it was a lot of fun. And the work I do now is based on the skills that I learned in my PhD program. It's not really fun or interesting, but it is a really good job. I have all those predictors of job satisfaction, but I don't have that sense of calling. And that one thing seems to undermine all the other positive things in my life. I try to ignore it, but I wonder every day what I should be doing instead of this.

Shankar Vedantam: That is so powerful, Jen. What do you make of it?

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas: Jesse's story is really such a powerful and vivid illustration of the downside of this cultural pressure to find our callings, that anything less really makes us feel like a failure. I mean, if we look at the things that Jesse talked about, he said it very succinctly. It's a really good job. It feels like he would like what he's doing, comes to terms with it, knows why he chose it, sort of went in with eyes wide open. And it's just the fact that he feels that others are more fulfilled or have, you know, this bigger sense of a calling, and he doesn't. That's like the one thing that's standing in the way. And the fact that it's sort of swamping all these other things that are really positive for him. I mean, that's powerful. And I think Jesse is really acknowledging this is coming through social comparison, and this is coming through cultural pressure. And that doesn't make it any easier to dismiss these feelings. These feelings are clearly very real for him.

Shankar Vedantam: We received a flood of messages from listeners sharing their frustrations over not finding a calling in their professional lives. I'd like to play a few of those messages for you, Jen.

Listener: I feel that arriving at one's calling is somewhat a function of luck in life.

Listener: I'm 37 and I still don't know what I want to do with my career.

Listener: When I think about a calling, I don't feel like I've had that experience.

Listener: I'm wondering what advice you all would give to someone who deeply desires to find that calling in life, but so far for whatever reason has not figured that out.

Shankar Vedantam: So those were listeners Dave, Katerina, Alex and Stacey. I'm wondering about Stacey's last question there, Jen. What are two or three specific steps that people can take if they haven't yet found their calling but hope to do so?

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas: Yeah. So I want to take the pressure off people, that it's not a better calling if you knew it from childhood, or it's not a more pure calling if you feel that it's the only one thing you've ever imagined yourself doing. It's a more A to B kind of journey and it's a little simpler, cleaner than the alternative, but it doesn't make it better or it doesn't make it any more, more or less a calling. So there are people who have studied the pathways to finding a calling. So Matt Bloom, Amy Colbert, and Jordan Nielsen looked into this and they found two types of pathways. The one I just described, I know my one true calling and I sort of venture toward it. And then this other path called discerning a calling, which is really what I see for for your your callers. It's more about having experiences but not just at random, not just randomly trying things, you know, throw the spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks, but really thoughtfully learning through trial and error. It has to be an iterative, reflective learning process. So you try something, you learn what you liked about it, you learn what you didn't like about it, you try, you know, adjust it accordingly and try again. And that that in and of itself is a pathway toward people ultimately at the end of this, feeling like they're in work that was a calling. And also paying attention to, you know, what kind of signals are you getting from outside? So are there people who are exemplars and have a sort of career that you might want? What can you learn from them? Talking to them, talking about their journey, talking about how they knew. I mean, really, just talking about callings, getting people's stories and finding inspiration from it. And when all else fails, or not even when all else fails, but just let's not forget, there are also resources, you know, for the number of times that people have said, they took, talked to a coach or they took a class on, you know, how to change careers or how to make a pivot or how to get to meaningful work. I mean, I do think, and humbly as someone who wrote a book about this, I do think reading books, taking courses, talking to a coach, you know, just putting some time and attention to this question of how can I find a calling, it can help. It certainly beats the alternative of just trying random things and then being, you know, upset when it doesn't work out.

Shankar Vedantam: Jennifer Tosti-Kharas is a psychologist at Babson College. With Christopher Wong-Michelson, she's author of the book Is Your Work Worth It? How to Think About Meaningful Work. Jen, thank you so much for joining me again today on Hidden Brain.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas: Shankar, thank you so much. It was great.

Shankar Vedantam: Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristin Wong, Laura Kwerel, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. If you've listened all the way through the end of the show, we're guessing you may love the topics we cover on Hidden Brain. If that's the case, please consider joining Hidden Brain Plus. It's our podcast subscription where we bring you ideas and interviews you won't hear anywhere else. You can join Hidden Brain Plus with a free 7-day trial by going to support.hiddenbrain.org. If you use an Apple device, you can subscribe at apple.co. slash hiddenbrain. Those sites again are support.hiddenbrain.org and apple.co. slash hiddenbrain. If you like this episode, please be sure to share it with one or two friends. Many people tell us that they discovered Hidden Brain because a friend or a co-worker suggested it to them. Please think of two or three people who might enjoy today's show and tell them about Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.