SuperPsyched with Dr. Adam Dorsay

I think most of us have, at some point, wished we had certain information years ago that is available today. That’s certainly how I felt after I read the book my guest and I will discuss on this episode. But, according to a brilliant Chinese proverb says, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago; the second best time is now. I find comfort in that idea, and I, for one, am very excited to pla...

What if I told you that there was an exercise that anyone can do in just 15 seconds three times a day that, when researched, showed a decrease depression by as much as 35%, a decrease anxiety by up to 20%, and a substantial decrease physical pain? You might ask about side effects of the exercise, and I would too. It seems that the major side effect is this: a significant increase your quality of l...

As you might imagine, the most talked about topic in my office is relationships. To paraphrase a great quote, relationships are one of life’s biggest predictors of our happiness… or misery. Yet, as we all know, relationships can be super challenging, and they tend to require practice, humility, resilience, and learning. Worse still, we can easily get in our own way and sabotage our love connection...

Quick question—when you do math, what’s easier for you: addition or subtraction? For most of us, I’m guessing the answer is addition. While you may think it’s because we learn addition before subtraction, another part of the answer is less apparent. For our survival, we have evolved to seek more and we have an aversion to the idea of less. Yet, all of us know that less truly can be more. When is t...

I have the pleasure of working with many leaders in Silicon Valley. And among the things that are discussed in my office, the quality of leadership shows up a lot. Stories emerge when leaders are kind and inspirational. And, of course, stories emerge in toxic ways when leaders are unkind, unconscious, or even bullies. I have taken great interest in how leaders step into their roles. Not only does...

If you could have the magical power to read people, what they were thinking and feeling, would you want that ability? I imagine it’d be a mixed blessing. There are times when we really want to be able to read people better. And… there may be times when ignorance is bliss! Regardless, it is important to improve our skills at following cues, reading nonverbal behavioral patterns, and finding relevan...

There are no two ways about it. Parenting is hard. Add a full-time job to the mix and the pressures of modern life and, wow! It’s a miracle we can do it at all. How can we balance all of life’s pressures, and be the best parents for our most precious beings, our children? And how can we do it and remain kind to ourselves? To answer these and many other related questions, I’m calling on one of my n...

All right, dear listeners, New Year’s is upon us and, if you’re like me, you may be thinking about your resolutions! And, if you’re like me, at some point you may have written out too many resolutions—or created too high a bar to reach within those resolutions—and found that few of them were actually carried out. I decided to take a look at those resolutions and consider a potentially more effecti...

To be human is to experience anxiety. To some extent, our survival requires it. Unfortunately, anxiety can more frequently impede our living more than it helps. Many times, we try to stuff it away, hoping to deny its existence, which doesn’t really work. As one of the biggest contributors to psychology, Carl Jung, once said, “What we resist persists" …and tends to get worse.” So, my friends, it’s...

Even if you’re not an athlete, sport psychology can positively change your life. Years ago, when I came upon a textbook on sport psychology, my first thought was “Hey, this could be used in every area of life.” The fact is, living has an abundance overlapping principles with sports and achieving your dreams—inside or outside sports. As you might imagine, when I was introduced to Dr. Jonathan Fader...

It will come as no surprise to my regular listeners that I love exploring the bond between pets and people. My life has been vastly improved by pets and I’ve seen the same effect of pets on countless people. Recently, I watched a deeply engrossing Netflix original documentary called The Mind of a Cat . When I watched it (and went nuts for it like a teenager at a rock concert) I knew I needed to co...

Have you ever been given incredibly good advice, but didn’t follow it? I’m guessing that, for most of us, the answer is a big yes! It may have been because we weren’t ready to implement that advice. It may have also been because the advice came from someone else. The fact is, we listen to ourselves more than we listen to others. With that in mind, how can someone from the outside be most helpful?...

Well, dear listeners, Thanksgiving is upon us, and what better topic to dive into, than gratitude! Not so long ago, gratitude was kind of considered a “woo-woo” topic but, these days, hard, science and brain imaging shows otherwise. We now have hard evidence that it is good for our minds, our bodies, our moods, and its effects can boost the moods of significant people in our lives (whether or not...

Many of us grew up with the idea that we’ve got to spend a lot of time improving on our areas of weakness. While that may be true, and certainly important at times, research indicates that we can get an even greater return on our investment of energy when we improve in areas where we are already strong. Yet, have you ever noticed it’s easier to get from absolute beginner to 80% mastery than it is...

Among the most painful of human experiences is feeling rejected. In fact, the brain can't tell the difference between social rejection and physical pain: MRI images show that rejection hits the same parts of our brains that physical pain hits. The fact is, we are social animals, and we feel the impact of social interactions quite deeply. And for those who are stigmatized, ostracized, shunned, or r...

There's a great quote from James Joyce: “Mr. Smith lived a short distance from his body.” As you'll hear in this interview, we have evolved over the centuries to distance ourselves from our bodies. That makes us very different from the other animals who reside on this planet. In so doing, we have become estranged from a lot of data that could serve us: when we are tired, we might not listen and en...

Regardless of who you are or where you live, one thing all 7+ billion of us on earth have in common is the restriction of time. None of us has more than 168 hours a week. And yet, how we use that time can be the difference maker in the quality of our lives. Do we ever take time to reflect and ask ourselves, “How am I allocating my time?” Or, “Might there be a better way of doing some of my daily t...

The Beastie Boys made a huge splash nearly 36 years ago with their breakthrough album, Licensed to Ill. It was a moment in time that served as something of a dividing point in music history; they showed the world what could be done with drive, creativity, levity, and a skilled DJ. At the time, they were wild, loud, rude, and obnoxious. Had I been told that one day I would think of the trio as an e...

We literally cannot survive without food. And yet, until 1996, Food Studies as an academic discipline wasn’t even a thing until my guest, Dr. Marion Nestle (https://www.foodpolitics.com/), founded the department and program at New York University where she remains professor emerita. Dr. Nestle has been a pioneer in studying nutrition, public health, and she has been a courageous advocate for human...

Many of us can make our friends and family laugh. But as comedian Billy Eichner recently noted, it is really hard to make a group of strangers laugh. And that is the task of every working comedian. They get up on stage in a strange city in a strange venue with strangers in the audience. Sometimes they hit. Sometimes they bomb. But regardless of the result, the successful ones get back up and do it...

Among the least pleasant experiences in life is feeling stuck. That stuck feeling comes in multiple forms and we've all felt themes and variations of it. Even Dr. Seuss wrote about it in his book that is often given as a graduation gift, Oh the Places You'll Go. If you've read it, you might remember the part about being in the stuck place he called the “in between place” which he also describes as...

In my last episode, I explored the topic of how minds change. In this episode, we take that theme from the abstract and academic to the real and extreme. Recently I learned about a modern hero. When I first heard about him, my jaw dropped. The story of this man was one of the greatest things I had ever heard and I'm so grateful that he agreed to meet. Daryl Davis ( https://www.daryldavis.com/ ) is...

We humans like to be right about things. As you’ll hear in this episode, our self-image and our perception of being trustworthy to others can feel threatened when our thinking is questioned. After all, within our own brains, our thought processes make perfect sense—at least to us—so how could we be wrong? And, outside of our own brains, we’ve all had the painful experience of failing to sway someo...

A struggle for any parent is seeing their child in pain. Even when the pain is small, we have an impulse to fix that pain. And when the child’s pain is extreme, that impulse can skyrocket. Yet, as any parent can attest, there’s only so much help can provide which can leave us feeling helpless. How can we be most helpful even when we can’t fix things? How can we differentiate between adverse experi...

We all know the cliché that laughter is the best medicine. In addition to laughter, research suggests that levity and empathy are also great medicines. One of the best testing grounds I can imagine for considering the value of levity and empathy would have to be the pediatric oncology department. For the children and for the parents, the challenges faced there can be simply overwhelming. What's it...