What if the deepest force inside us isn’t aggression or pleasure-seeking, but something far more hopeful? Dr. Paul Conti believes it is, and he thinks leading with it could change everything.
Dr. Conti, psychiatrist and author of Trauma: The Invisible Epidemic, returns with a new book, What’s Going Right: A Powerful New Method for Optimizing Your Mental Health, that takes on one of the biggest gaps in our culture: the way we approach mental health. His message is clear and accessible. We can build good mental health the same way we build good physical health, with understanding, structure, and small steps forward.
For the full interview, listen to our Evolving with Gratitude podcast episode. Also available on YouTube and your favorite podcast platform.
Beyond Aggression and Pleasure
As Dr. Conti sees it, the mental health field has long framed humans as driven by two inborn forces: aggression and pleasure-seeking. He pushes back on that framing.
“It doesn’t explain why we’re still here,” Dr. Conti said. “It doesn’t explain anything that’s best about humans.”
The Generative Drive
So what does? Dr. Conti calls it the generative drive. It’s the part of us that wants to leave the world a little better than we found it. The reason we help when no one’s watching, create art, or speak up for someone who isn’t in the room. It’s not about being selfless. It’s about being human.
“It’s the drive in us to be in the world and make it a better place,” he said.
The key to success is recognizing and nurturing the supremacy of the generative drive.
—Dr. Paul Conti, What’s Going Right
The generative drive sits above the other two. When it leads, they fall into balance. We’re assertive without being overly aggressive. We seek pleasure without sacrificing health or relationships. The goal isn’t to arrive at some final, perfect version of ourselves. It’s to optimize for the present day and continue to evolve.
By being at our best today, we set ourselves up for tomorrow.
—Dr. Paul Conti
That’s how we’re optimizing and living through the generative drive.
One Body, One Mind
We talk about our bodies without flinching. We compare workouts, sleep routines, and what we ate for lunch. But ask someone how their mental health is, and the conversation often stops cold.
“Why should our mental health be different from our physical health?” Dr. Conti asked. “We’re one being. The mind and the body are connected.”
Dr. Conti wants us to bring the same curiosity and care to our minds that we bring to our bodies. That starts with understanding the structure of self (what we think) and function of self (what we do), just as we understand hearts, lungs, and joints. Not as experts, but as people who deserve to know what’s going on inside us.
“We can build good mental health just like we build good physical health,” he said. “There’s a process we can go through, and that gives us understanding, and we use that understanding to make change.”
Agency and Gratitude
When the structure and function of self are healthy, Dr. Conti said, we feel empowered. And empowered people meet the world with two things at once: agency and gratitude.
Agency is knowing our choices matter. “I matter. My decisions matter,” Dr. Conti said. Gratitude is the humility to recognize how much is already going right. One without the other tips us off balance. Together, they keep us grounded.
“If I start with gratitude for that, I will be better in the world for everyone, and I will do the things to make myself healthier.”
It’s an important reframe. We don’t have to earn our way to wellbeing. We can begin from what’s already true.
Notice What’s Salient
So much of how we feel comes down to what we pay attention to. Salience is what wins our attention out of the thousands of things competing for it, and Dr. Conti notes we’re wired to notice the negative first.
He offers a small, relatable example. We have a great day, lose our keys at the end of it, and decide the whole day was terrible and we’re a mess. The lost keys become the entire story.
“It’s so salient, it’s trying to seduce me into thinking my whole day was bad and I’m an idiot,” Dr. Conti said. “But actually, the day was good.”
The shift isn’t about ignoring what went wrong. It’s about refusing to overlook what went right. Nine things worked. One didn’t. As Dr. Conti put it, “We’re not just looking to reframe to something that feels good, or feels better. This is all an exercise of truth.”
Small Steps, Real Change
If there is one thing Dr. Conti wants us to know, it is this:
Small steps can get us where we want to be.
—Dr. Paul Conti
And it takes time to make those small steps.
We give up on ourselves too quickly, he said, often because we’re trying to do too much at once. “We just throw in the towel of self because we can’t bring change the way we want to.” But the path forward asks for a step. And then another.
As Dr. Conti put it, “We all have a generative drive.” The question is whether we’re listening.
So here is the question for all of us: What is our generative drive trying to tell us?
In Bold Gratitude,
Lainie
Photo Credit: BLABACPHOTO
Connect with and learn from Dr. Paul Conti:
- DrPaulConti.com
- What’s Going Right: A Powerful New Method for Optimizing Your Mental Health is available now
