Hey there. It's Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson. In this week's vlog, we're going to talk about the standard deviation of life experience. If you don't know what that might mean, I will break it down for you. I think I might call this vlog: Experience More. It's sort of a follow on vlog to one I released not that long ago that was all about meaning making, about becoming someone who learns how to take lemons and make lemonade, who learns how to make meaning out of our biggest life's tragedies. And small ones too. Just anything that comes down the pike, figuring out how to turn it to your advantage in terms of a really powerful lesson or something you've grown from, so that nothing that happens is wasted. Nothing that happens was wrong or bad.
I mean, certainly some things are devastating, and we grieve a lot over them. I'm not saying that that's not the case. But after hitting bottom with drug addiction and prostitution and at the age of 20, finding my life completely off the rails, high school dropout, nothing to show for my life thus far at the ripe old age of 20, I had to learn how to make meaning out of finding yourself utterly in the ditch in life. I've had to do that again and again. I think we all do. We all are given that opportunity. So, the follow on to this notion of make meaning out of things that happen, choose beliefs that serve you, choose the way you talk to yourself and spin the story of what's happened, choose the hero's version of the story where you're the hero who overcame as opposed to the victim who was hard done by, the follow on to that is experience more. Stretch, grow, throw yourself out there.
I love that old adage, I guess it's from a book about the top five regrets of the dying, people on their deathbed regret what they didn't try, what they didn't do, how they held themselves back, how they never really went for it. And I've come to personally believe quite deeply that I would rather live a life where I've had a lot of experiences, but the average sort of positivity of them was a little lower because I went out on the skinny branches quite a bit versus a life where I took not many risks and made sure that I only did the right thing so that the average experience of the things I tried in life was higher, more positive, but there was less variation. Just less experienced overall.
Standard deviation, if you don't know the metric, is a measurement of how much variation, variance, variety there is in a sample. If you think about a sample of human beings that are five foot eight on average, and let's say there's a thousand people in the sample and they're five foot eight, okay, on average, but let's imagine those thousand people are all either five foot seven, five foot eight or five foot nine, all of them. And most of them are five foot eight exactly. And some are five foot seven or five foot nine, but the average is five foot eight and there's a very small standard deviation, not much variety, not much variance. Versus a sample of a thousand human beings that are five foot eight on average, but there's tons of variation. Some are five foot one, some are five foot three, some are six foot five, some are four foot 11, six foot two, five foot one, et cetera. And not very many of them are five foot eight exactly at all, but a couple of them are a few of them are. And on average, the average height in the sample of people is five foot eight.
Now, what I'm saying is I would take a life where the average positivity or maybe happiness, joy, well-being, or whatever, was a little bit lower even if I would get to have more experiences and a greater variety of experiences because I know that I can take those shitty experiences and make incredible meaning out of them and turn them to good account in terms of the lessons that I've learned, the wisdom I've gleaned. I don't even know that it would be possible actually if you're really paying attention and really seeking the lesson to end up with a smaller flourishing life satisfaction quotient at the end of a life where you've experienced more. I don't even know that that would be possible. I think that what I've experienced, because I step out onto skinny branches a lot still in life. I throw myself into the wind of life just to see what'll happen a lot.
I'll never forget this conversation with Sheila Torkelson. Sheila, are you watching? I think she might watch my vlog once in a blue moon. Maybe. I don't know. I think she does Bright Line Eating® in her own way up on the mesa in Sunshine Mesa in Colorado. She's featured in the book, Bright Line Eating when I tell my story. She's the woman who owns the Mesa and runs the farm where I was given those marshmallows when I was four years old. She was such a lovely, beautiful presence in my life. Anyway, after I'd hit bottom on drugs and done my stint with prostitution and all that, I went back to Sunshine Mesa for a summer and I remember we were sitting in a cafe in Paonia, Colorado and I was feeling kind of bad about how I'd driven my life into a ditch and she wasn't feeling bad for me. She said, "Maybe this is what you needed to do, sweetheart." She said, "Some people just need to step out onto the white hot tip of life to the edge and look over just to see what's over there. Some people are like that, sweetheart. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you." That stayed with me so deeply that I often thought if I ever wrote a memoir, I might call it The White Hot Tip because I always seem to be standing there at that white hot tip of the edge, looking over just to see what's over there. I still do it. Yes, I do. Sometimes it's not the best and sometimes it's incredible and often it's just, all right, whatever, so there's a valley over there. Okay.
I just encourage you to try more. Try more things. Don't hold yourself back. The part of us that holds us back, that's afraid of being caught failing or being caught not knowing how to do it or being caught unprepared or overextended or whatever, it's trying to protect us, but it's a young fear-based part that doesn't need to run the show anymore. As a matter of fact, you can get curious and dialogue with that part. The reality is that it probably thinks that we won't respect ourselves anymore if we fail and that others won't respect us either if we fail. If we try and we fail, that that would be a really devastating thing, especially if you try really, really, really, really hard and go all out and then fail. That would be the worst, right? That's what that young part of us tends to think. Actually, we have good data on this and intuitively it makes sense. Nothing could be further from the truth.
When we watch someone go all out and then fail, we respect them because we know what it takes to go all out and that when someone gives it their all, even if they don't grab the brass ring, we think the world of them. You know this is true, right? Imagine you had a neighbor who trained for the Olympics and you watched them every morning be out. Let's say they were a sprinter. You watch them every morning from 4:00 AM to 8:00 AM running up and down your street, sprinting, sprinting their heart out with sweat dripping down their face, sprinting, sprinting, sprinting, sprinting every morning, 365 days a year, sprinting out in your street. Then they made the Olympic team and they didn't metal. They came home empty handed and they were despondent. They felt like a failure. What would you think about them? You would think they're amazing, right? What guts! What bravery! What badassery is that to be out there at 4:00 AM every day sprinting your heart out! And you'd think you're one of the best sprinters in the whole world. You made the Olympic team for sprinting. Like the track and field team. That's not nothing, my friend.
When we watch ourselves risk, try, experiment, go out on the skinny branches, try something new, be a newcomer, be a beginner, be a failure. If we've tried, we respect that. If we've risked, we respect that. It's good to watch yourself be someone who will take a risk. We do not tend to respect people who won't risk anything, who play it safe all the time. We tend not to think the world of someone who's not willing to try. So, why would it be any different for yourself? Why would you be preserving any kind of noble self-concept by not being willing to stretch and try new things. No, my friend, it's not how it works. It's the other way around. It's the other way around, which is good news, which is good news. It means that there's no risk. It's okay to fail. What matters is really trying and experimenting and seeing what happens, seeing what happens and becoming someone who can make meaning out of it when it doesn't go that well. So anyway, I'm a fan of a big standard deviation of life experiences. Experience more. I'm here to say I do it all the time and I recommend it. Be someone who experiences more. You will respect the hell out of yourself. That's the weekly vlog. I'll see you next week.
