Of the nine causes of depression and anxiety
I learned about for my book Lost Connections,
there were a few that were really challenging
for me because I realized how much I recognized
them in myself.
So one of the hardest – I have to tell you
a story about something else first, but when
I was, in 2009 on Christmas Eve—it makes
it even sadder that this story happened on
Christmas Eve.
So I use to live on junk food.
I used to eat appallingly.
And on Christmas Eve 2009 I went into my local
KFC at lunchtime and I turned up and I gave
my order—which is so disgusting I won’t
even repeat it.
And the guy behind the counter said “Oh
Johann, I’m so glad you’re here!
Wait a minute.”
I was like, “Okay….”
So he walked off and he came back with all
the other staff and they’d bought me a massive
Christmas card.
And they’d written in it “To our best
customer.”
And so I was looking at this and my clogged
heart sank.
I thought, “This isn’t even the fried
chicken shop I come to the most.”
It was a very unfortunate low point.
But we all know, right, junk food has taken
over our diets.
Not admittedly to the extreme that I was,
but junk food is increasingly dominating our
diets and it’s making us physically sick.
One of the things that really shocked me in
the research is that there’s really good
evidence that something similar has happened
with our minds.
Our kind of junk values have taken over our
minds and they’ve made us mentally sick.
So for thousands of years now philosophers
have said, if you think life is about, you
know, money and status and showing off you’re
going to feel terrible, right?
From Confucius on down, people have been warning
us of that.
But weirdly nobody had actually scientifically
investigated it, until an incredible man I
got to know called Professor Tim Kasser who’s
at Knox University in Illinois.
So Professor Kasser knew when it comes to
human motivation there’s basically—to
put it crudely—two kinds of human motivation,
right.
Imagine you play the piano.
If you play the piano in the morning because
you love it and it gives you joy, that’s
an intrinsic motivation.
You’re not doing it to get something out
of it.
You’re just doing it because that thing
gives you joy, right?
Okay, now imagine you play the piano not because
it gives you joy, but in a dive bar to pay
the rent or because your parents are really
pressuring you to be a piano maestro, or to
impress a man, maybe some weird piano fetishist,
right?
That would be an extrinsic reason to play
the piano.
You’re not doing it for the experience itself.
You’re doing it to get something out of
it.
You’re doing it one removed.
You’re doing it to get something out of
the experience.
Now we’re all a mixture of intrinsic and
extrinsic values obviously, and we change
throughout our lives.
But Professor Kasser discovered some really
fascinating things.
The first thing is, the more your life is
dominated by extrinsic values—the more you’re
doing things not because you think they’re
important but because of how you’ll look
to other people, how you’ll seem on the
outside—the more likely you are to become
depressed and anxious.
It’s a quite significant effect that’s
been found in 22 studies with depression and
14 studies with anxiety.
Now there are many reasons.
I’ll give you just one.
One of the things we know is that something
that’s a real source of joy in human life,
things that really necessary are what are
called flow states, right?
They’re moments when you’re doing something
you really love.
For me it’s writing.
For someone else it might be running.
It’s definitely not that for me.
Or, you know, whatever.
When your time seems to collapse you’re
totally in the moment of what you’re doing
and you’re flowing, right?
Extreme extrinsic values massively disrupt
your ability to get into flow states.
If you imagine you’re playing the piano.
Imagine the guy’s playing the piano for
intrinsic reasons, right, because it gives
him joy.
Now imagine suddenly he has to think, “Am
I the best piano player in New York City today?
Who’s better than me?
How are these people listening to me?
How are they judging me?
Am I going to get paid for this?”
You can see how it would jolt you out of the
flow state, right?
When you think extrinsically you get jolted
out of flow state.
There are many reasons why extrinsic values
make us feel bad and they ruin the quality
of your relationships.
They crowd out intrinsic values.
There’s all sorts of things going on.
But Professor Kasser is also showing that
extrinsic values have been taking over our
culture.
We’re becoming more and more dominated by
these extrinsic values.
We are immersed in this way of thinking from
the moment we’re born.
More 18-month-old children recognize the McDonald’s
M than know their own surname.
We are pickled in advertising messages telling
us that life is about living extrinsically,
right?
Imagine an advert that told you, “You know
what?
You’re great.
You look fine.
You smell nice.
You’re amazing.
You don’t need anything more today.”
That would be the worst advert that had ever
been done, right?
Advertising is the ultimate frenemy.
It’s always telling you “Oh babe, I love
you.
It’s just, you know, if only you didn’t
stink,” right?
Now what Professor Kasser showed as he puts
it is at some level we all know this; everyone
watching this knows you’re not going to
lie, on the last day of your life you will
not lie there and think about all the things
you bought, right.
You will not think about all the hours you
put in at the office.
You will think about moments of deep meaning
and connection.
But as Professor Kasser puts it we live in
a machine that’s constantly diverting us
from what is meaningful about life.
There’s a wonderful experiment that was
done before Professor Kasser’s work, but
I think it really illustrates this.
It was done in 1978.
It’s a very simple experiment.
You get a lot of five year olds and you put
them in a sand pit, and you split them into
two groups.
The first group is shown two advertisements
for a specific toy, whatever the 1978 equivalent
of Peppa Pig was, right.
And the second group is shown no adverts.
And at the end of it they give all the kids
a choice.
They say “Okay kids, got a choice now.
You can either play with a nice boy who doesn’t
have the toy from the advert, or you can play
with a nasty boy who’s got the toy.
The kids who didn’t see the ad mostly choose
the nice boy without the toy.
And the kids who saw the ad mostly chose the
nasty boy who’s got the toy.
So just two advertisements—two—primed
those children to choose an inanimate lump
of plastic over kindness and connection.
We are all being driven by way more advertising
than that every day, right?
Anyone watching this—and I would include
myself in that—who stayed late at work doing
something they don’t want to do to buy something
they don’t need rather than… go be home
with their kids maybe?
You’ve fallen prey to that dynamic.
And Professor Kasser has really shown this
way that we’ve got to unpick these junk
values.
These junk values are what we’ve been fed
for so long.
They’re a kind of KFC for the soul, and
they’re making us feel terrible.
