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Growth Mindset Psychology: The Science of Self-Improvement

Growth Mindset Psychology: The Science of Self-Improvement

Sam Webster Harris | Growth Mindset Psychology 518 episodes Latest May 26, 2026

Most self-help advice is guesswork dressed up as wisdom. This podcast digs into psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral science to find what actually changes lives. It covers topics like mental strength, motivation, habit formation, and emotional intelligence, offering frameworks backed by studies rather than Instagram quotes. The show is for curious skeptics who want practical insights on self-improvement without pseudoscience or hustle culture.

Episodes

Overlooked Rules on Being a Useful Human - Essential Behavioural Psychology Jun 9, 2026 1300 You've read the productivity books. You've optimised your mornings. But what if the whole thing is backwards? Self-improvement content is everywhere, yet it almost universally focuses on extracting more value from yourself. This episode flips that. Drawing on behavioural psychology and a surprisingly useful analogy about cells and organs, Sam makes the case that the most effective thing you can d
Lessons on Starting Before You Feel Ready w/ Graham Hobson (Founder Photobox + Moonpig) Jun 5, 2026 2082 Most startups don’t fail from lack of ideas. They fail because people quit too early—or play it too safe. Graham Hobson built a €100M business starting with a simple frustration: printing photos of his kids. What followed wasn’t a smooth growth curve—it was years of uncertainty, near failure, and painfully slow progress. In this conversation, we unpack the real psychology behind building somethin
How to Spend Money to Buy Happiness: The psychology of what actually works Jun 2, 2026 2370 Money is not the goal. It’s a tool. Most people were never taught how to use it. Core:We inherit scripts about money. Save more. Earn more. Want more. But those scripts were built for survival, not fulfilment. The shift is subtle but powerful: from accumulation to allocation. This episode is about choosing where your money goes—and what that choice turns you into. When you spend on time, you crea
The Psychology of Slowing Down Time - How to live a full life May 26, 2026 1266 Ever look up and realise a whole month has vanished? This episode is about why that happens — and how to get more life out of the same amount of time. Most people think time speeds up because they’re busy. Not quite. Time speeds up when your brain stops noticing. When your days are repetitive, distracted, and half-lived, your memory writes almost nothing down. That’s why a week of scrolling disap
How to Create Your Own Opportunities and Stop Waiting for Your One Big Chance May 19, 2026 2431 If you’ve been treating your next decision like THE decision, well... A lot of anxiety comes from believing your future hinges on getting the next move exactly right. However, there’s a particular kind of pressure that shows up when you want your work to mean something, but you also don’t want to blow up your finances, your nervous system, or your sense of self in the process. Today we explor
Three Psychology Experiments That Changed How I Live May 12, 2026 1285 Most self-improvement assumes the problem lives inside you. But what if you've been looking in the wrong place? There's something worth sitting with in the idea that your physical surroundings are already making decisions about how you think — before you've consciously made any. The shape of a room. Whether your body is moving or still. How many open tabs are silently competing for your attention
Dr. Stephen Porges: Where Free Will Lives in Your Body, and Why You Keep Ignoring It May 8, 2026 1440 Free will might be smaller than you hoped, but more useful than you imagined. This conversation with Stephen Porges is about the quiet shift in perspective he learnt from 50 years studying the nervous system. We are taught to believe that emotional strength means overriding fear, suppressing anger, and forcing calm. But a different story is available. One where stress is not weakness, pain is no
How to Finally Commit to One Thing When Everything Feels Important May 5, 2026 2061 The better you get at seeing opportunity, the worse you get at finishing anything. It turns out the same brain wiring that makes curious, growth-oriented people so interesting to talk to also makes them spectacularly bad at committing to one thing. In this episode, we explore the surprisingly rich psychology of focus — from what Taylor Swift's 16 dress changes per concert reveal about sequencing
How to Be Genuinely Interesting - Without performing, pretending, or people-pleasing Apr 28, 2026 1208 There's a story we tell ourselves about interesting people. That they were born that way. That charisma is a trait, not a choice. That fitting in is safe and standing out is risky. None of it is true. Interesting isn't a personality type. It's a decision about how far you're willing to go — into a topic, into yourself, into the slightly terrifying territory of being exactly who you are in a room
Your Nervous System Has Been Running Your Life - How to finally take control with Stephen Porges (Inventor of Polyvagal Theory) Apr 24, 2026 3447 How the science of the vagus nerve explains anxiety, ambition, burnout, and the art of becoming who you actually are. Humans, might be the most sophisticated organism on Earth (capable of writing symphonies, landing on the moon, and inventing artisanal sourdough). Yet at our core, we are running threat-detection software that predates the dinosaurs. Stephen Porges, the scientist who mapped the v
The Illusion of Panic: How to Master Your Nervous System When It Invents Danger Apr 21, 2026 3735 A Deep Dive into the Vagus Nerve, Neuroception, and Overcoming Burnout Ever walked into a room and instantly felt like something was completely off? That is not your intuition being magical; that is your nervous system running the show. We spend all day trying to "think" our way out of stress, but it rarely works. Your body has a built-in threat radar called neuroception that operates entirely b
The Psychology of Risk: How Near Death Experiences Help you Quit a Good Life to Pursue a Great One - w. Talia Lazarus Apr 17, 2026 2784 We are all waiting for permission that is never going to come. We cling to the illusion of a safe life, pretending that incremental improvements are the same thing as actual growth. Talia Lazarus didn’t plan on changing her life; the universe intervened in the form of a devastating bus accident. In the agonizing space of her recovery, she confronted a profound truth: she was living a script writt

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