Shownotes:
What if defiance wasn’t about rebellion—but about staying true to yourself when the pressure to comply is real? In this episode, Dr. Sunita Sah challenges everything we’ve been taught about obedience and reframes defiance as a skill—one we can practice, refine, and use to show up with integrity. This conversation will shift how you think about discomfort, doubt, and that gut feeling you’ve been trained to ignore. Because sometimes the boldest move isn’t saying yes—it’s knowing when (and how) to say no.
Thrive Global Article:
About Our Guest:
Dr. Sunita Sah investigates what makes us comply. She is an award-winning, tenured professor and organizational psychologist at Cornell University who has conducted groundbreaking research on defiance, advice, and influence.
A trained physician, she practiced medicine in the United Kingdom and worked as a management consultant for the pharmaceutical industry. She currently teaches executives, leaders, and students in healthcare and business. Dr. Sah is a sought-after international speaker and consultant, advisor to government agencies, and former Commissioner of the National Commission on Forensic Science. Her multidisciplinary research and analyses have been widely published in leading academic journals and media entities including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Harvard Business Review, and Scientific American.
About Lainie:
Lainie Rowell is a bestselling author, award-winning educator, and TEDx speaker. She is dedicated to human flourishing, focusing on community building, emotional intelligence, and honoring what makes each of us unique and dynamic through learner-driven design. She earned her degree in psychology and went on to earn both a post-graduate credential and a master's degree in education. An international keynote speaker, Lainie has presented in 41 states as well as in dozens of countries across 4 continents. As a consultant, Lainie’s client list ranges from Fortune 100 companies like Apple and Google to school districts and independent schools. Learn more at linktr.ee/lainierowell.
Website - LainieRowell.com
Instagram - @LainieRowell
LinkedIn - @LainieRowell
X/Twitter - @LainieRowell
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Transcript:
Lainie Rowell: Dr. Sunita Sah, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.
Sunita Sah: It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Lainie Rowell: I first came across your work when you were a guest on one of my favorite podcasts. And I'm going to be completely transparent that when I saw defiance in the title of this podcast, I almost skipped this episode because I had like a visceral reaction to the word defiance, but I challenged myself and I said, you're not going to grow unless you explore a topic that maybe doesn't resonate with you.
But when I heard you talk and when I went on to read your book, defy. I so strongly connected with your definition that is part of why I wanted to have this conversation with you today and share it with other people. So could you share with us how you define defiance and kind of what inspired you to reframe this concept.
Sunita Sah: Yeah, absolutely. It really came from my personal experience growing up and then also my professional research in this area. And when I was growing up, I remember asking my dad at some point, what does my name Sunita mean? And he told me Sunita in Sanskrit means good. And. What does that actually mean?
So to me, I mostly lived up to this idea of being good, which really meant being polite, being nice, doing as I'm told, obeying. It meant all these aspects of compliance. And a lot of us receive these types of messages, not just from parents, but from teachers and the community, is to be good, don't question authority, comply, do as you're told.
We start equating being compliant with being good, and being defiant with being bad. And when I delved into this a little bit more especially in my research, I found that there's some real serious problems of being so compliant, and we need to really rethink this. I really started to wonder, is it sometimes bad to be so good?
What do we sacrifice by being so compliant? And The Oxford English Dictionary definition of defiance is to challenge the power of somebody else boldly and openly. And I'm not one to normally disagree with the Oxford English Dictionary. I grew up in England after all, but I do think that definition is too narrow and it doesn't really honor our agency.
And my definition of defiance is that to defy is simply to act in accordance with your true values when there is pressure to do otherwise. And in this way, defiance becomes a proactive positive force in society. Because if you think about it, all our individual acts of compliance, of consent, of descent of defiance, they create the society that we live in.
So it really does affect our lives, our communities, our workplaces. And that's why I'm very passionate about understanding defiance and what it really means to live a life in alignment with our values.
Lainie Rowell: Well, yes. And I appreciate not wanting to challenge the Oxford English Dictionary. But I think for me and my kind of visceral reaction to that traditional definition is that it's very sharp.
It's kind of against others. And when I hear you talking about act in accordance with your values, to me, that could actually be on the other end of the spectrum and almost leading to pro social action. And I think that's kind of something that was a big takeaway for me in your book is recognizing that automatic compliance.
is not a good thing, necessarily.
Sunita Sah: Right, right, and we do. Because we're so trained to comply, we get all this training and compliance, and we don't get trained for defiance, we end up going along with things that we shouldn't. We end up being silent when we should be speaking up. And those serious problems that I was talking about, when you look at it, one survey found that nine out of 10 healthcare workers, most of them nurses, don't speak up when they see a colleague or a physician making a mistake.
And it's similar in other industries as well, like if you look at crew members on commercial airlines, only half of them spoke up when they noticed an error. And these are the situations we want people to be speaking up. We don't want them to just be so compliant and not say anything. And even if it's not life and death situations like the ones that I've described, if you're silent when you feel something is wrong, it can really be quite soul destroying, and yeah, I felt often drained and muted by going along with everybody else's expectations rather than following my own path and living by my own values, and that's why after studying this for so many years and finding that what is really crucial and really substantially changed how I think is that we have misunderstood what it means to defy.
And that's why we need this new definition of defiance. One that does really honor our agency and does talk about defiance as a proactive positive force.
Lainie Rowell: I appreciate that. You give so many beautiful examples in the book, and I'll ask you to share a couple stories. You mentioned healthcare. You trained to be a doctor, you became a medical doctor, and then you shifted gears. And I'd love for you to share any of that. One of the things from my background that I was thinking about, having been a classroom teacher, and you said there's life or death examples, but there's everyday examples.
And one everyday example was I was giving my second graders a test. One of my students walks up and she says, this question is wrong. There's not a correct answer for this. And I'm so embarrassed to say this. I kind of quickly dismissed her and sent her back to her seat and said, No, no, no, it's right. I hadn't created the test, but I was so, so confident this test was right.
And then she walked away and then I kind of quickly looked at and I go, Oh my gosh, she's totally right. There is an error in this test. So I called her back apologize profusely, but I was so proud of her for standing up because that's a really hard thing to do. She's a second grader. She's like eight years old, Davanna.
I mean, she's probably married with kids now, but she was so, so strong to come up and be like, this is not right. And I was just really impressed with that.
Sunita Sah: Yeah, that is very impressive that she could do that because so often we're told not to and so that tension that I spoke about a little bit, I call, you know, it's the first stage of defiance when we think that we might have to defy, so many of us disregard it and we sweep it away thinking it's not worth our doubt, not worth our anxiety, that somebody else probably knows better, but really listening to that tension is very important, so that is very impressive that a second grader could do that.
Lainie Rowell: And every second grader in that school was taking that test. No one else said anything, not the like 20 some odd, you know, almost 30 other kids in my class, not my next door teacher's class. So yeah, it's super impressive. What is something in your life where you felt you either trusted that tension or maybe you didn't trust that tension and you wish you had?
Sunita Sah: Oh, yeah. So many things that, I mean, this is what led me to the research that, that tension was there quite a lot of the time when I didn't speak up or when I did speak up or when I went along with something or I didn't go along with something. So every kind of act of compliance or defiance I would say defiance starts with this element of tension.
Because if we comply, sometimes we just go along with it without thinking. We just slide into it because it is our default response, that is, that our brains have become wired to comply. And you were asking, like, in terms of my career, well, one of those aspects of, of doing medicine was because of expectations.
There was this strong sort of message that in my community, medicine is the best thing that you can do, why wouldn't you want to do it? And I had the grades. So I, I went along and I did medicine until I realized the career that I really wanted was to analyze some of these aspects in more detail.
And so it took a few steps to get to where I want to be and doing the research that I want. But that element of tension sort of stayed with me, even being trained as a doctor. I remember when I moved from the UK to the US, I had this central chest pain one day and I'd never felt any pain like it. And so of course, I was worried about something sort of cardiovascular.
And I went to the emergency room and immediately I was whisked through triage and they started conducting lots of tests on me including an electrocardiogram and luckily everything was fine and the pain was going away so I was relieved and I thought I was going to be discharged, but the doctor said oh before you go I want you to have a CT scan and I asked why because I thought my heart is fine, that's what I was worried about, I'm just going to go now.
And she said, no, I just want to check that you don't have a pulmonary embolism. Now, a pulmonary embolism is a blood clot in the lungs. And having worked in respiratory medicine in the UK, I know that it produces a particular type of pain that we call pleuritic chest pain. So, it catches like the pleura of the lungs, of the lining of the lungs, and it catches your breath, a sharp pain when you breathe in and you breathe out.
That wasn't the type of pain that I was experiencing, so I was pretty sure I did not have a pulmonary embolism and I wanted to go back home and just be discharged, and yet I couldn't say no. I found it very difficult. I knew that the CT scan as well gives you about 70 times more on average radiation than an x ray, and that can cause problems down the line.
It's still a small amount, but why take ionizing radiation if you don't need to? And so, I should have said no, and yet, just because the doctor told me to, I found it very difficult to do that. And so I ended up having the CT scan, even though I felt that tension, I just thought, you know what, I'm just gonna go along with it.
And I thought the tension would go away, but it didn't. It actually made me feel worse and it grew and I experienced a lot of regret from it. But we often do that. Like our moments of defiance of saying no really come after many times when we've complied before. And that's okay. You know, we should have less shame and judgment over that and just learn how we can defy because it would have been safe for me to defy in that situation.
Medicine is all about informed consent. After all, I had the knowledge and the understanding. And yet, even in that situation with the knowledge and understanding, I found it very difficult and I realized I need to train myself for defiance.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, I think that's. One of the things that really kind of stuck with me reading your book is that even when we know the right thing, we just sometimes don't stick up for ourselves or stick up for what the right thing to do is.
You give a really compelling and tragic example in the book. You talk about the Challenger disaster, and I wondered if you'd be comfortable sharing what happened there. I very much remember when the Challenger exploded. I did not know the backstory.
Sunita Sah: Yes. So with the Challenger disaster, it's one of the cases that I actually teach my executive students now.
And this was way back in, I think, 1985.
NASA had contracted Morton Thiokol, an aerospace firm, that were hired to build the rocket boosters for the space shuttle program. And five of the engineers, around five, had concerns about the O rings, or the rubber seals, that in cold weather, that they might deteriorate. And so they had officially recommended not to launch the Challenger space shuttle that day.
Even though they had some data at that particular point in time, they didn't present all the data that they could have. And so it wasn't convincing to NASA and because of the massive publicity of that launch, the first teacher in space, the pressure to launch and not wait again and cancel it they ended up going along with the launch, like the management team basically told the engineers put on your management hat, not your engineering hat, whatever that means. But there was a lot of pressure for Morton Thiokol to reverse their decision, which they ended up doing, even though some of the engineers still really were against it. And I remember one of the engineers was driving on the day and telling them and shouting that, and there's going to be a disaster.
Sunita Sah: And of course there was. And yet even then, things were difficult for them after the Challenger rocket blew up. So in these situations, it's really hard to say no, or something is wrong. And there's a lot of pressure to go along with things, often from management, because they don't want to hear about problems.
They had to basically give evidence that something was going to go wrong, rather than just saying that there's a risk, you know, that all might not be right. And because of that, we often say silent is usually just one person or a handful of people as it was in Morton Thiokol that speak up, which makes it even more difficult because you're kind of isolated in those situations.
And none of the engineers regret speaking up. In fact, the only thing they regret is that if they could have done more. And so these situations stay with us. And it's really important to learn how to speak up and say something. It might not be effective as in this situation, but it's important that we do register those concerns.
Lainie Rowell: It's almost a little bit of a step back, but I do want to talk about Milgram's experiment. Because we could not do this experiment today. It is not considered an ethical experiment, I think, because of some of the fallout afterwards. But I would love to hear how this resonated with you.
Sunita Sah: Yes, absolutely. So during my medical training, which at the time was a five year combined undergraduate and graduate degree in the UK, I took a year out to do what they call an intercalated degree in psychology.
So they basically throw you in the fourth year of psychology and ask you to catch up four years. But I loved that year, I was really fascinated by the research. And it's the first time I came across some Milgrams obedience to authority studies or what we call the electric shock experiments. Now Milgram conducted these in the early 1960s at Yale, and he was really fascinated to examine whether this reframe after World War II from the Nazis, I was just following orders, was really a psychological reality for a lot of people or not. And he thought it was something unique about the German culture, so he did not think that he would find people obeying authority in America.
And he called people in, members of the community, to take part in something that was delivered to be a memory experiment? Does giving people electric shocks and harming them actually improve memory and help them learn better? Now there wasn't an actual shock being administered, but the participants thought that they were, they were sat in front of a big machine complicated looking machines that started with sort of 15 volts and then went up in 15 volt increments all the way up to 450 volts, which was labeled XXX, sort of danger, severe shock.
And every time the person that they were paired with that they called the learner who was in another room that was just an actor, but they thought it was somebody else from the community. Every time that learner got something wrong in this experiment, so if they read out some word pairs and they got something wrong, then they would have to give them an electric shock.
And if the teacher, the person administering the shocks, the participant, if they protested, the experimenter in the room would give them some prompts, such as, please go on, the experiment requires you to continue, it's absolutely essential that you continue, and you have no choice, you must go on. And even though the prediction from psychiatrists was that most would not continue after 150 volts, when the learner started protesting and saying that they didn't want to do it, they said even less would continue after 300 volts, and only about one in a hundred would go up to 450 volts.
What they found was that every single person pulled the lever at 150 volts. Every single person pulled the lever at 300 volts and 65% pulled the lever for 450 volts. The deadly top halt. Milgram himself caused, called the people that obeyed the obedient subjects and the people that didn't obey and refused to go on the defiant subjects.
So now we're also seeing defiance as a positive act, a pro social act for other people. And I found that fascinating for several reasons because Milgram conducted many different variations of this experiment. But, he did neatly put people in this obedient and defiant box. However, when I looked at the people that were obedient, I found that they had many signs of nervous laughter they were sweating, they were stuttering.
They displayed these signs of tension that I spoke about. That is the first stage of defiance. It wasn't that they were happy to go up to 450 volts. They were really trying to resist. They just didn't know how to resist. And that's the important aspect. It was like I have often found myself in those situations where I have that tension, I have that throat constricting, I have the dry mouth, I even have the nervous laughter and what I call my crocodile smile, that I will just smile and go along with it.
But that doesn't mean that I want to. And it's just that I hadn't really practiced. My skill set to defy and I didn't know how to. What was also fascinating is looking at the people that could defy and what enabled them to defy. So there's a lot that we can get out of those experiments and we don't need to say that the obedient subjects were moral imbeciles the way that Milgram had described them.
They were people that probably wanted to defy but just didn't have either the confidence, the knowledge or the ability to be able to defy.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, and one of the cases, they said that the man had a heart disease or like a heart condition.
Sunita Sah: That's right. So knowing that the man had a heart condition, that he was pounding on the wall, that he was saying that he didn't want to continue anymore and asking to be released from the experiment.
And then after one point, I think the 300 volts, there was just silence. And so they had no idea what had happened in the other room. And yet they, some of them continued to pull that lever.
Lainie Rowell: It's a fascinating study. And one of the things that is quite unusual, especially I think we've gotten better about getting more diversity in our experiments, but for a long time, and in a lot of cases, the subjects were psychology students.
So to get a cross section where it's people from all different aspects of community, I thought was really interesting. So how do you get to a point where you feel that agency that you have the power to say no. So what are some ways that we can practice saying no so that we become, you know, firm and values driven?
Sunita Sah: Yeah, so two of the biggest things that you need to be able to say no is first of all, taking responsibility for your actions. And then how do we develop the skill set? Because the skill set really does drive our confidence and our ability to say no, and the responsibility aspect is really important because one of the reasons that Milgram explained many people complied with the experimenter's instructions is because they didn't feel responsible, or they were trying to displace their responsibility to the experimenter. So a few participants did that. They were like, who's responsible? And if it's the experimenter, that's okay. But it's the people that actually feel responsible. And there were people in the experiment that said, I don't want to be responsible for harming the other person.
You shouldn't just give your responsibility away, or give away your agency and power to someone else. And some of my recent research on what I call the kicking yourself syndrome is that even if somebody else tells you to do something, even if you predict that you're going to feel less responsible, less regret, you're going to blame yourself less if somebody else is telling you to do something, I actually find that people will feel more responsible, more regret, and they blame themselves more if they go along with something against their better judgment. It's because you have these what psychologists called counterfactual thoughts, which is really like, what if I hadn't done that? If only I hadn't done that, because I knew better.
And so you can't actually get rid of that responsibility in the end, even if you predict that you will. So it's best not to run away from it and really think about, I'm the one that's causing harm. Yeah. And so what can we do to practice? There's many things that we can do to practice and it really is about starting small.
If you are not used to being defiant, if you've never been trained for defiant, we want to find some small situations where we can start practicing our defiance. So it could just be in small situations like telling the taxi driver I think you're going the wrong way, you know, let's go this way.
Because often when we're in that back of that taxi and they're taking the long route. You don't want to say anything and that's that's due to a psychological process I call insinuation anxiety, which is also a very powerful force that keeps us silent and compliant.
Lainie Rowell: So we got to start by practicing small so we kind of build up that like defiance muscle, if you will, is that fair to say, and on things that are maybe not so significant that it's going to feel really, really hard to do so that when we do get in those moments where we're finding something that doesn't align with our values, we have built up that muscle and we've got the strength to be like, I'm taking responsibility for this and I can say no to this.
Sunita Sah: Exactly. And one of the ways that we can really build that muscle it is starting small, but it's also anticipating. It's making defiance a practice because we find it very difficult to behave the way that we want in a certain situation if we haven't practiced for it. And so we can start anticipating it.
A lot of the common situations, especially at work, for example, can be anticipated because you can imagine me tell you about, cause I mentioned insinuation anxiety as well. So there was one scenario that always resonates with me, perhaps because I'm a faculty member, but there was a junior faculty member a woman who joined this committee with four senior men, and the committee was put together to assess grant applications.
And in that committee at one point with one particular applicant who was a black man, the conversation turned, she said, and instead of discussing the quality of the application and the credentials of the applicant, it turned to some negative gossip, and she thought she should say something. But she ended up not saying anything and after the meeting, she said the one thing that she wanted to say was the one thing that she couldn't because she said meeting these people for the first time, she didn't want to imply or question their integrity or imply that they were corrupt or unethical or lacking integrity in any way.
That is classic insinuation anxiety. We don't want to imply that somebody else is untrustworthy or incompetent. And that's what keeps us silent. It's why I don't speak up at the back of a taxi cab to tell them, aren't you taking the long route? You know, it's very, very hard. But what we can start to do, first of all, is First recognize that feeling, that tension that we have when we feel insinuation anxiety, name it, because just naming it helps us able to, to manage it.
And then start thinking about these situations that we might encounter. And as I said, most of the things that we encounter at work often can be predicted because we've been in those situations before and we've complied and that's okay. Because now we have some regret, we can start thinking about that and thinking about what we wish we had said.
So if we anticipate it, we visualize it, and then we practice by scripting it out and role playing, that's the thing that changes our neural pathways, that changes our default response. And we're practicing before the moment of crisis, because we can't just will ourselves to act in that particular situation.
So if you're in Milgram's experiment, this is a weird kind of place to be. We're surprised we haven't been in the situation before, but if we practiced for defiance and we can connect with our values, there were two people that stood out for me as defiant subjects in that experiment. So one was a professor of the Old Testament that was very much connected with his values for humanity and not harming someone else.
And that allowed him to defy and question the experimenter. And even when it went to the the fourth prompt where they're saying you have no choice, you must go on. And the professor actually responded with "maybe in Russia, but not here." And so he was able to defy. And he was very well connected with his values.
The other was an engineer and he knew how harmful these electric shocks could be. And so he stopped complying as well. He had actually grown up in world war two and here, he thought this was a really important point as to how people might harm other people. And so he felt bad that he had gone on as long as he could, and that he should have taken responsibility much, much earlier, so taking responsibility and then practicing so we can change our neural pathways are the two elements to learn how to defy.
Lainie Rowell: That's so helpful. So actionable, so practical. And I'm thinking about how we can help other people with this too. I clearly was so proud of Devana, but it took me a minute to catch up to where she was. And I wonder how can we, as educators, as parents, and leaders in organizations, how do we help other people where we don't want it to be like where someone's combative all the time and never cooperative, but we do want them to speak up when there's a real problem. And we do want them to take that responsibility and then speak up. What do we do in those situations where we're trying to kind of give that, well, everyone has the agency, but having people actually own their agency, that sounds redundant, but you know what I mean?
Sunita Sah: Yeah, absolutely. I know what you mean. Yes. In work situations, people don't speak up due to two main reasons that I've found in my research. And one is that they don't feel safe.
They feel that there's going to be some repercussions or consequences for speaking up. The other reason that I found and this was from interviewing nurses as to why they don't speak up is that it's not that they feel unsafe, but that they've spoken up many times before and nothing changes. So it's not effective.
So the two questions that people are asking when they're thinking about speaking up at work is, is it safe? And is it effective? So what leaders can do and what managers can do is create the type of environment where it becomes very apparent that it's safe. That they're also displaying this to their own bosses.
You know, it is safe to speak up. You're not going to be penalized if you say something. And that they're going to act on it. Not just ignore it, but they're going to do something about what you're telling them. So they're really important aspects of changing the culture. And you can start with your immediate team, right?
Because that is what you can influence. And also display defiance yourself in a positive way. And when you mention as well with children, we do, we often slip back again to thinking about defiance as something negative. And, you know, some, someone's a defiant child. That's not viewed as a positive thing.
Yes. They might be oppositional, but I can talk more about that. And what I think about what we call false defiance, which is really someone doing the opposite of what you tell them, which you might see in children. You might see in teenagers, if you've got a teenager and really what I found in that situation I have a teenager and, you know, a few years ago, he would do the exact opposite of what I asked him.
And if you really think about that, is that defiance? The way that I define it, which is acting in accordance with your values when there's pressure to do otherwise. No, if you're doing the exact opposite of what I want, you're actually still being influenced by an external source. You're still almost complying, but you're doing the opposite.
So you're listening very intently to what I want and then doing the opposite of that. So it's still externally imposed. Right? It's not coming from within. And both consent and defiance come from our own values and what we want. That's what is a true yes and a true no. And for children, what we need to remember is that we train them so much for compliance and obedience, we don't give them the same training in defiance.
And we can, we can start to encourage them that if they see something unfair. Like children, especially those with siblings, know a lot about fairness. If they see something unfair at school, they should say something. Like, you know, this person's being excluded from the group. They should speak up and they can start training for defiance in those aspects.
That's why it's so impressive when that second grader came to you. And was able to say that and great that you went back to her and praised her for doing so and calling it out because as you see, the rest of the class did not, because we either assume that they know better, or maybe they didn't know the answer to the question, but even if we do, and we think something is wrong, we often stay quiet because we think surely the other person knows better or I'm going to get into trouble, or somebody's going to get mad at me if I say something, and so they don't say anything.
Lainie Rowell: Well, so I do have a teenager. I've got a 14 year old and an 11 year old, so false defiance all day long. But sweet, sweet human. But yes, still the false defiance there. And I've got an 11 year old, and he's coming in strong with it as well.
He actually will probably end up being an attorney. So he makes some really compelling cases. But. I wanted to say that one of the things that I have seen in schools more recently over the years is they promote being an upstander, someone who stands up for others who are being bullied and so I do see it getting into schools more and I think there's even more opportunities to really empower that agency through responsibility and skill set. And I'm even imagining, like, you've given me an idea as you were talking about, like, anticipating and practicing. It's like, I can see myself, like, in the car on the way to a meeting where I know there might be some, some friction.
Like, what can I anticipate saying? I can even practice it in the car before I get, so that I feel more confident in speaking up.
Sunita Sah: Yeah, absolutely. And there's this wonderful quote that really brings home the importance of that practice, which is often attributed to Bruce Lee, but was actually from a Greek poet that said, under duress, we don't rise to the level of our expectations, but we fall to the level of our training.
And that really goes like, sometimes we can just sit back and say, Oh, I wouldn't have done that. I would have spoken up. I would have said something. And yet it's fine to say that from afar, but when you're actually in that situation, unless you practice for it, you don't that might be our aspirational selves.
It might be our expectations, but we can't get there unless we have practiced and changed our default wiring.
Lainie Rowell: Beautiful. Okay, is there something that you can't share enough, or maybe you haven't even had a chance to share before?
Like, you shout it from the rooftops.
Sunita Sah: Yes. One thing, if we're thinking about what you need to do next to find your own power of defiance. Yes, we need to practice, but the first, it starts with this mindset shift, because we often think about defiance as being really loud, bold, violent, aggressive, or we think about it as being heroic or superhuman or out of reach.
And I say you don't have to be brave, right? You don't have to have a self concept of being a superhero or having a strong personality or being larger than life. It isn't just for the brave or the extraordinary. Defiance is available and necessary for all of us. It's simply a skill set that we can choose to utilize.
So you can do it in your own unique way. You don't need to do it in the same way as anyone else. You can do it in your own unique way with far less stress and anxiety and angst that we used to have. So, that mindset shift of thinking about defiance as a particular thing, a negative thing, a loud thing, an aggressive thing, we want to dispel with that myth.
Defiance can be quiet, it can be subtle, it can be done in a way that's more natural for us.
Lainie Rowell: Oh my goodness, mic drop. And, oh, there's so much more. I really hope people will check out your book because it really stretched my thinking and I'm going to just give myself a little pat on the back that I listened to the podcast episode, I got past that word defiance and learned a much better, in my opinion, definition for the word defiance.
And I really do think that it is a great way to be more pro social and to do the right thing that's in alignment with our values. We didn't even get to quiet defiance. You you've mentioned it, but there's so much more. Check out the book. And then Sunita, you are a delight. Would you please tell people how they can stay connected with you?
Cause if they're like me, they're a big fan and they just want to be able to get more of your wisdom.
Sunita Sah: Oh, absolutely. Thank you so much. This was such a pleasure to be on your podcast. People can connect with me. You can go to my website, which is SunitaSah.Com. That's S U N I T A S A H dot com. And I also have a free newsletter.
So if people want to stay up to date with the latest research on this, and we have stories of defiance from the readers of the newsletter, it's called Defiant by Design. And it's on Substack. You'll also find that on my website as well as connecting with me on LinkedIn and Instagram.
Lainie Rowell: Sunita, it has really been, like I said, a pleasure, you're a delight and I can't wait to get this out there.
So thank you for being here and thank you all for listening.
Sunita Sah: Thank you so much.
