If you believed you could never be happy, would you go on living? That’s the question that echoed in Dr. Vivienne Ming’s mind when she contemplated killing herself, before she became a woman, mom, neuroscientist, technologist, and LGBT advocate. Dr. Ming shares more about the wisdom that saved her life, and how it led her to focus on the one superpower that predicts success over and over again.

Show Notes:
- Vivienne’s upbringing, not living up to expectations, and realizing she was “different.” [1:30]
- The lowest point — Suicide, and why she decided not to do it. [4:39]
- On her larger-than-life father and his example of “living a life of substance.” [7:54]
- How intrinsic motivation fueled her shift away from the brink of suicide. [12:02]
- From flunking out of college to getting perfect scores in everything the second time around. [14:59]
- On her year at the Machine Perception Lab and the start of her professional success. [19:08]
- Learning to counter her destructive-perfectionism through perseverance. [21:31]
- On feeling free to follow what she believes to be right. [25:09]
- Women’s tendency to worry about how they are being perceived rather than whether they are being true to themselves. [26:51]
- On meeting her wife in graduate school and opening up about wanting to be a woman. [31:13]
- The immediate effects of Vivienne’s gender transition – losing her position at Stanford, being treated differently by close friends and strangers alike, and observing implicit gender biases. [35:38]
- Vivienne’s work at Socos: Studying the predictors of success and optimizing life outcomes. [42:43]
- Defining a meta-learner and the main categories that predict success. [47:33]
- How to strengthen our meta-learning abilities. [52:49]
- Vivienne’s perspective on how society influences gender roles and the enduring disparities between men and women. [54:55]

References:
Dr. Ming’s organization Socos: www.socoslearning.com

Music:
Lucia Lilikoi at lucia.bandcamp.com

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