Speaker 1: Nick Wignoll, Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: You are the first.
Speaker 3: Individual from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and that's so New Mexico
Speaker 3: south southwest.
Speaker 2: We're kind of sandwiched in between Texas and Arizona.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been around that area.
Speaker 4: G thirty years ago, I was traveling and working in
Speaker 4: the States and we had an RV and.
Speaker 1: Went all the way round that.
Speaker 4: Man, just this scenery is unbelievable, isn't it wild?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it can be so diverse, it can change
Speaker 2: so quickly. You know, you're you think you're in the desert,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden you're up in the mountains
Speaker 2: and there's aspen trees.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's wild. Yeah, it's pretty fantastic stuff.
Speaker 4: So, mate, you are a clinical psychologist by back, I'm true,
Speaker 4: but also the founder of loom, where you do high
Speaker 4: performance stuff for businesses, for leadership teams and that sort
Speaker 4: of thing. But today we are we're going to poke
Speaker 4: the burr a little bit, right because I've had quite
Speaker 4: a few clinical psychologists on all talking about the positive stuff.
Speaker 4: And you've got a really cool newsletter and you take
Speaker 4: a different slant on things and So first of all,
Speaker 4: let's talk about emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is everywhere, right,
Speaker 4: and people talking about how we need to increase our
Speaker 4: EQ and all of that, and there's businesses that do
Speaker 4: EQ training, and now you have a bit of an
Speaker 4: approach that it's a bit overrated, so they can tell
Speaker 4: us what you mean by that.
Speaker 1: Let's dive into that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, part of it is maybe I'm just sick of
Speaker 2: seeing it everywhere and hearing everyone talk about it and
Speaker 2: kind of what I would consider slightly sloppy terms, like
Speaker 2: it's kind of vague in general what people meeting by
Speaker 2: EQ or by emotional intelligence. So I think what And
Speaker 2: the first thing I'll say is like, overrated doesn't mean important, right,
Speaker 2: And that's really is. It is important, But I think
Speaker 2: the question is important relative to what else because we
Speaker 2: all have limited time and energy to put into things
Speaker 2: and to focus on things, especially to try and work
Speaker 2: on ourselves and improve ourselves and our teams. Right, we
Speaker 2: have limited amounts of energy and time and resources, so
Speaker 2: that this really matters. And the place I like to
Speaker 2: start is very few people outside of academics actually care
Speaker 2: about emotional intelligence itself as an outcome. They want the
Speaker 2: things that come from emotional intelligence. Ostensibly, they want better relationships.
Speaker 2: They want more intimacy or trust in their relationships at
Speaker 2: home or at work. Right, they want to they want
Speaker 2: to be more resilient in the face of big, difficult
Speaker 2: emotions they get super angry, they don't want to lose
Speaker 2: it and get really defensive in a conversation, or they
Speaker 2: don't want to get lost in spirals of worry and anxiety.
Speaker 2: So I think this is where I usually start with
Speaker 2: emotional intelligence, is most people what they want is emotional resilience.
Speaker 2: We want to be able to experience big emotions because
Speaker 2: that's inevitable. Like we're especially if we're doing ambitious, difficult things,
Speaker 2: We're going to have difficult emotions like fear and anxiety
Speaker 2: or anger or regret, all that kind of stuff. But
Speaker 2: we don't want to get knocked over by it, right,
Speaker 2: So I think, yeah, emotional resilience is kind of the
Speaker 2: big overarching category. Emotional intelligence is an important component in that,
Speaker 2: but it's not the only component. The other, really biggest
Speaker 2: component is what I call emotional fitness, and those two
Speaker 2: things together like that I think lead us to be resilience.
Speaker 2: So emotional intelligence in my opinion. It's what you know
Speaker 2: intellectually about your emotions and how to work with them
Speaker 2: and work them well. So an example I always like
Speaker 2: to give is like, worry is different than anxiety. A
Speaker 2: worry is a type of thinking and it's something you
Speaker 2: largely have control over. Anxiety is an emotion you can't.
Speaker 2: There's no switch for like turning down anxiety. So if
Speaker 2: you struggle with anxiety, the trick is actually to focus
Speaker 2: on the habit that's perpetuating it, which is worry. But
Speaker 2: a lot of people have never even heard of that distinction.
Speaker 2: So that's an instance of understanding something about how our
Speaker 2: emotions work. But if you think about it, in any
Speaker 2: skill in life, whether it's you know, learning to play
Speaker 2: the piano or running marathons or negotiating or whatever, any
Speaker 2: kind of skill, insight or learning book learning is important,
Speaker 2: but it's far far from sufficient. So if you wanted
Speaker 2: to play the guitar, and you said, great, I read
Speaker 2: this great book on guitar, but like, how come I
Speaker 2: can't play the guitar anymore? Well, if you expect that
Speaker 2: reading a book on guitar is going to make you
Speaker 2: a good guitar player, like you're out to lunch. But weirdly,
Speaker 2: when it comes to emotional health and resilience, we think, oh,
Speaker 2: if I just heard this great idea, I was listening
Speaker 2: to this podcast, or I read this great self help book,
Speaker 2: that should be enough, Right, Not at all. That's the
Speaker 2: very first step, most of the effect. If you really
Speaker 2: want to be have kind of emotional strength and be
Speaker 2: resilient in difficult situations, that's a muscle, right, and you've
Speaker 2: got to exercise that muscle. You got to develop it,
Speaker 2: you got to practice. That's the emotional fitness part. So
Speaker 2: the reason I say emotional intelligence is overrated is to
Speaker 2: kind of, you know, provoke people a little bit into
Speaker 2: realizing you're putting all your time into trying to understand
Speaker 2: stuff intellectually at the expense of actually practicing, putting in
Speaker 2: the reps to do the work that's going to actually
Speaker 2: lead to that resilience in the long.
Speaker 4: I really like the term emotional fitness for a couple
Speaker 4: of reasons. I often talk about stress fitness and talk
Speaker 4: about the analogy with physical fitness, right, and I think
Speaker 4: we can do the same with emotional fitness. Is that
Speaker 4: there's a continuum, right, It's not just an on or
Speaker 4: an off it is a continuum. There are low fit people,
Speaker 4: there are medium fit people, and there are high fit people.
Speaker 4: And then you ask anybody a massive audience, what is
Speaker 4: the thing that distinguishes high fit physically fit people from
Speaker 4: low physically fit people, And they will all tell you
Speaker 4: it is that they do the work, and they do
Speaker 4: the work consistently, right, And I think it's the same
Speaker 4: with stress fitness. And what I'm hearing from you is
Speaker 4: it's the same with emotional fitness.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: It's not just something that's a gift. Yes, there's a
Speaker 4: little bit of genetics involved in all of this stuff, right,
Speaker 4: but a lot of it is about doing the work.
Speaker 4: And if you want to be high fit, you have
Speaker 4: to constantly do the work. And if you stop at
Speaker 4: any point doing the work, you're going to go down
Speaker 4: and continuum, whereas if you just sit there and do nothing,
Speaker 4: you're obviously going to be low fitness.
Speaker 2: Really yeah, and you know, I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 2: But I get a little frustrated with my own field
Speaker 2: of clinical psychology and counseling and therapy because I think
Speaker 2: we perpetuate this myth that like, well, you can just
Speaker 2: come in and like talk about your stuff or like
Speaker 2: read stuff and somehow proof magically that'll make everything better.
Speaker 2: There's nothing wrong with therapy. Like I was a therapist
Speaker 2: for a long time. I think I think it could
Speaker 2: be really powerful. But it's just it's just the first step, right,
Speaker 2: It's what are you doing in between your weekly sessions
Speaker 2: every single day to get better, to get more resilient
Speaker 2: at dealing with anxiety or you know, figuring out how
Speaker 2: to understand and work through your tendency toward depression or
Speaker 2: that's just that one hour in a day, one hour
Speaker 2: week when you're talking to me. That's great, but that's
Speaker 2: that's just the tip of the iceberg. Most of the
Speaker 2: effects is going to happen in between. It's all those
Speaker 2: practice sessions you are or aren't doing in the meantime.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, And and there are a lot of people, I
Speaker 4: think who go to talk therapies just so that they
Speaker 4: can unload and be heard, and then they walk out
Speaker 4: and they do nothing, and they expect a different outcome.
Speaker 4: I'm I'm not such a big fan of talk therapies
Speaker 4: that that don't have an action associated with.
Speaker 1: Them, you know.
Speaker 4: And I'm I'm poking the bar a little bit when
Speaker 4: it comes to psychology on.
Speaker 1: This, what what's your what is your view on that?
Speaker 4: You know, people, I think that that there's a little
Speaker 4: bit of a risk that in Western psychology we have
Speaker 4: become too much about may may may may me and
Speaker 4: who's doing what to me?
Speaker 1: And woe is me?
Speaker 4: And that can be sometimes reinforced if there's no self
Speaker 4: reflection and action, particularly what's your thoughts around.
Speaker 2: I think it's a huge risk that almost nobody talks
Speaker 2: about with psychotherapy or counseling, or coaching or or a
Speaker 2: lot of these self development programs, is they can unintentionally
Speaker 2: I don't think anyone is deliberately doing this, but they
Speaker 2: can unintentionally reinforce patterns of dependence and sort of low agency.
Speaker 2: So you go in in part because you know the
Speaker 2: we we approach something like therapy like we approach medicine,
Speaker 2: which is where right or wrong. I think there's a
Speaker 2: good indication, not a very helpful way anything about physical
Speaker 2: health either. But we think like something hurts, so I'm
Speaker 2: gonna go and im and talk to doctor. They're gonna
Speaker 2: figure out what's wrong. They're gonna be a bunch of tests.
Speaker 2: I don't know what's happening they're just gonna like test me.
Speaker 2: Then they're gonna give you, give me a pill, maybe
Speaker 2: maybe put me under and do some surgery, and then
Speaker 2: like poof, I'm gonna be better. And we expect that
Speaker 2: the same thing that that's how you know emotional health
Speaker 2: should work too. I'm depressed or I'm anxious, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: go in some super smart therapist is going to like
Speaker 2: analyze what's wrong, and then we're gonna talk about things
Speaker 2: dot dot dot and then somehow everything's gonna be better
Speaker 2: and it just does. And again, talking can be helpful, right,
Speaker 2: and there are a lot of very smart, insightful therapists.
Speaker 2: But if your model is that I'm just gonna go in,
Speaker 2: I'm going to kind of vent or talk about things
Speaker 2: and then I don't know, somehow like everything's gonna get better,
Speaker 2: Like it's just it does it. I've never seen it
Speaker 2: work that way. It always requires a substantial amount of work,
Speaker 2: like not maybe not literally sweating sometimes sweating, but like
Speaker 2: real work on the part of the person who wants
Speaker 2: to grow and improve and get better. And it's just
Speaker 2: we don't do people any favors reinforcing this model that
Speaker 2: you can just come in and like chat for sixty
Speaker 2: minutes every week and like then you'll get better.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, And I think that every not in every therapy session,
Speaker 4: but every school should be teaching kids life is hard.
Speaker 1: You know. Life is not easy.
Speaker 4: It was never supposed to be easy. And anybody who's
Speaker 4: told you that life is easy and you deserve to
Speaker 4: be happy has sorry, but they've lied to you. Life
Speaker 4: has always been hard and always will be hard, and
Speaker 4: in different ways. And it's like when we try to
Speaker 4: make life not hard, that's when I think we get
Speaker 4: in when we get into trouble, when we try to
Speaker 4: get rid of negative emotions and negative excs experiences and go,
Speaker 4: this is uncomfortable, so I just want to get rid
Speaker 4: of it. And I don't think that's the right answer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I used to see this and I
Speaker 2: still see it so often. This this counterintuitive problem where
Speaker 2: again I think it's because we have this medical model
Speaker 2: where when we're suffering emotionally, we equate pain or suffering
Speaker 2: with pathology, like that something's broken or wrong because I'm
Speaker 2: in pain.
Speaker 4: And we've been fed that though as well by largely
Speaker 4: by the pharmaceutical industry, that you know, this is something
Speaker 4: that can just be fixed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's all. I think there's a lot
Speaker 2: to it, and I think there's a spectrum of nefariousness here.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of medical providers and mental health
Speaker 2: providers are against super well intentioned and trying to do
Speaker 2: the right thing by their clients. But the idea, if
Speaker 2: you think, if you really stop and think about it,
Speaker 2: the idea that it that if I'm feeling anxious, there
Speaker 2: is something wrong with me, something broken inside of me
Speaker 2: that needs to be fixed. This is help you go
Speaker 2: into a lot of therapy or self help books or
Speaker 2: whatever it is. The problem is, even though it feels
Speaker 2: like that, we all know that while pain is sometimes
Speaker 2: an indicator of a problem something's wrong, it's very often
Speaker 2: not that at all. In many cases, pain is a
Speaker 2: sign of growth. When your muscle's hurt after a new workout,
Speaker 2: that's literally because your muscles are growing, right, So I
Speaker 2: think to assume that pain means something is literally broken
Speaker 2: or wrong is really it's tempting, but it's so detrimental
Speaker 2: because here's what happens. There's this process that's a little nerdy,
Speaker 2: but I'll explain it because I think I think it
Speaker 2: really matters. There's this process called emotional fear learning.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: Emotional fear learning is when there's a part of your
Speaker 2: brain the amigdala, primarily which it's responsible for threats, for
Speaker 2: tracking and helping you deal with threats. So if you're
Speaker 2: walking around you see a bear jump out in front
Speaker 2: of you, it's the thing that's going to shoot you
Speaker 2: into fight or flight modes that you can run get
Speaker 2: out of there. It's really helpful if you're encountering a
Speaker 2: true threat to your something literally dangerous. But the wild
Speaker 2: thing about the amignal is, depending on your behavior, you
Speaker 2: can train it to believe that anything is dangerous. And
Speaker 2: here's this idea of emotional fear learning. If in response
Speaker 2: to a difficult emotion like anxiety or shame or sadness
Speaker 2: or or fear or anything like this, if you immediately
Speaker 2: either try to run away and avoid it or get
Speaker 2: rid of it, that's teaching your brain that this thing,
Speaker 2: your own emotions are dangerous, are threats, so that even
Speaker 2: if you feel a little bit better in the short term,
Speaker 2: you're gonna feel worse long term because the next time
Speaker 2: that emotion comes up, you're not just gonna be anxious,
Speaker 2: You're gonna be anxious about being anxious, and when your
Speaker 2: emotions come pound like this, they get way bigger and
Speaker 2: way harder to deal with. So so much well intentioned
Speaker 2: mental health advice I think is actually completely counterproductive. Like
Speaker 2: a great example of this is coping skills. You hear
Speaker 2: about this all the time, like, oh, you need more
Speaker 2: coping skills. You gotta like fill out your tool belt
Speaker 2: of coping skills so that when you get anxious, you
Speaker 2: just like whip out a little exercise and cope with
Speaker 2: your anxiety. No, this is a terrible, terrible idea, because
Speaker 2: even if you get a little bit of relief in
Speaker 2: the short term by coping with your anxiety, what your
Speaker 2: brain is learning is that anxiety is dangerous, it's bad.
Speaker 2: You're essentially trying to get rid of it. So again,
Speaker 2: you're going to be even more on the lookout. Your
Speaker 2: brain's going to be even more sensitive to anxiety, and
Speaker 2: you're going to feel anxious about being anxious increasingly. This
Speaker 2: is where people get into real problems with their emotional health.
Speaker 2: They get self critical about being sad. That's what leads
Speaker 2: to depression, right or can anyway. They get anxious about
Speaker 2: being anxious, that's what leads to panic attacks, but feeling sad,
Speaker 2: feeling anxious, feeling angry, feeling feeling guilty. These are all
Speaker 2: incredibly normal human experiences, which, however painful, aren't. They're natural,
Speaker 2: they're normal, They're not a sign that something is wrong.
Speaker 4: So sorry, it's no note. I love it and I'm
Speaker 4: completely aligned with and in a couple of comments just
Speaker 4: just on that. One is that we know that when
Speaker 4: people are just like you described, what they can actually
Speaker 4: do or what happens over time is there amigdala can
Speaker 4: actually enlarge and become more sensitive. And we see that
Speaker 4: with people who are either chronically stressed or or and
Speaker 4: stress could.
Speaker 1: Be real or imaginary.
Speaker 4: Right, And as you say, when you get worried about
Speaker 4: being worried the amygdala in functional MRI studies, when they
Speaker 4: follow people, the amygdala grows bigger. That means they become
Speaker 4: hyper vigilant, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: So the brilling is.
Speaker 4: Then non consciously scanning the environment for bad shit. And
Speaker 4: you can find that these days you just need to
Speaker 4: turn on the bloody news and then you linger on
Speaker 4: that longer than other people, and then it compounds, which
Speaker 4: is when we think about it is in a dative
Speaker 4: response if you're a key of man being in a
Speaker 4: dangerous warst right, but now it's maladaptive.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, it's it's But again, I think the key
Speaker 2: idea here is that even in that case where you
Speaker 2: have habitually trained your amigola to be hyper sensitive and
Speaker 2: hypervigilant to things, it's your brain is still trying to
Speaker 2: do the right thing. It's still trying to help you.
Speaker 2: Your brain is always trying to help you. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: if you treat it like an enemy, it's going to
Speaker 2: increasingly start to feel like an enemy. That's the problem.
Speaker 1: Like that.
Speaker 2: It's so I think so many of us, unintentionally and
Speaker 2: on the bad advice of supposed professionals, we get more
Speaker 2: and more stuck and overwhelmed by difficult emotions because we're
Speaker 2: constantly trying to either run away from them or get
Speaker 2: rid of them cope with them, right, which unintentionally just
Speaker 2: makes it harder and harder in the long run.
Speaker 4: So, so, what is a more productive strategy then, for
Speaker 4: if somebody is listening to this and going, oh, this
Speaker 4: stage just nailed me either currently are are in the past,
Speaker 4: But what is a more productive adaptive strategy? I mean,
Speaker 4: we know with anxiety exposure therapy created exposure is one
Speaker 4: of the key things, and it's it's the same as
Speaker 4: the principle with exercise training. You know, you need to
Speaker 4: progressively overload the system in order to stimulate adaptation. So
Speaker 4: what would your advice be to someone who's kind of
Speaker 4: stuck in that loop of wanting to get away from
Speaker 4: their emotions or make them disappear or cope with them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, the first thing I would just say
Speaker 2: is like, as unproductive as that can end up being
Speaker 2: if you end up backing on it, as we've been
Speaker 2: talking about it, it's very natural, So like, give yourself.
Speaker 2: Don't immediately go to start criticizing yourself now because you're
Speaker 2: doing this, it's very instinctive to want to avoid pain,
Speaker 2: and just getting critical with yourself about that is not
Speaker 2: gonna help. That's just gonna make things worse. So be careful.
Speaker 2: That's the worst thing I'll say. Yeah, in gen I mean,
Speaker 2: emotional resilience is a huge kind of topic. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of ways we could go here. I'll share with
Speaker 2: you one small but really powerful technique that I teach
Speaker 2: people in my work, especially I I have a whole
Speaker 2: course on emotional resilience called mood mastery, and the kind
Speaker 2: of the cornerstone practice in that in that program is
Speaker 2: something I'll call the AVA method. AVA like a v A.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a memory device, but it stands for
Speaker 2: these like three little simple steps that you can apply
Speaker 2: in any emotionally difficult situation. These will be you can
Speaker 2: guarantee these will be teaching your brain the right thing,
Speaker 2: not the wrong thing. And so I'll walk you through
Speaker 2: really quick. AVA stands for a acknowledge, So just very
Speaker 2: briefly label how you're feeling. I'm feeling angry, I'm feeling sad,
Speaker 2: I'm feeling you know, mad. And the key here though,
Speaker 2: is don't intellectualize we adults. When was the last time
Speaker 2: you hear an adult say I'm sad? It sounds childish, right,
Speaker 2: It sounds like the kind of thing a six year
Speaker 2: old would say. But the reason we do that is
Speaker 2: it's a subtle avoidance strategy. Saying oh, I'm so overwhelmed
Speaker 2: doesn't feel quite as bad as saying I feel really
Speaker 2: sad right now, that's prickler. It's more emotionally evocative. So
Speaker 2: we get in the habit of using vague overly intellectual
Speaker 2: language to describe how we feel. Knock it off, Like,
Speaker 2: that's the first step. Use very simple words. I tell
Speaker 2: my students, say it like a six year old when
Speaker 2: you're struggling, right, how would a little kid described this feeling.
Speaker 2: So that's the first one. Just acknowledge your emotions. And
Speaker 2: this is really fast. This is like five seconds. I
Speaker 2: feel sad and a little bit frustrated right now.
Speaker 1: And it's been shown neck.
Speaker 4: I think to reduce the emotional intensity whenever you name
Speaker 4: it right, name it to tamate. I've heard other people
Speaker 4: talk about it does.
Speaker 2: But this next step is like intensity reduction on steroids.
Speaker 2: It's this is the one that really will help you
Speaker 2: alleviate some of that intensity. The V stands for validate
Speaker 2: and validate means once you've acknowledged, okay, I'm feeling anxious,
Speaker 2: validate means it's valid It's okay to feel whatever I'm feeling.
Speaker 2: Just because it feels bad doesn't mean it is bad
Speaker 2: or that I'm bad for feeling. So I don't like
Speaker 2: feeling anxious right. In fact, it's a pain in the ass.
Speaker 2: I really wish I wasn't feeling anxious. But it's not
Speaker 2: surprising that I'm feeling anxious given what just happened to me,
Speaker 2: or it's not surprising that I'm angry given that what happened.
Speaker 2: A lot of people would be angry in this situation.
Speaker 2: It's valid, it's okay. It's what you would say if
Speaker 2: a good friend came to you and they were really sad.
Speaker 2: You'd say, I'm really sorry to hear that, like, you know,
Speaker 2: I've been there before, and it's really tough, like I understand,
Speaker 2: but it's okay, you know. So it's just being that
Speaker 2: same level of supportive with yourself instead of being critical
Speaker 2: with yourself. Oh I shouldn't feel this way, or what
Speaker 2: do I need to do to make myself not feel
Speaker 2: this way? No, you're going to validate it. It's valid.
Speaker 2: You might not like it, it might be painful as hell, right,
Speaker 2: but it's valid. It okay to feel that way. And again,
Speaker 2: this step, you're not having a therapy session with yourself.
Speaker 2: This is not sixty minutes or like journaling for half
Speaker 2: an hour. This is ten seconds. You're saying, Okay, I'm
Speaker 2: feeling really anxious right now. As much as I don't
Speaker 2: like feeling anxious, it's okay that I'm feeling this way. Okay,
Speaker 2: So that's that's step two, and then the third step,
Speaker 2: arguably the most important step is the second a, which
Speaker 2: is on your values. So many people, especially especially in
Speaker 2: like modern therapy culture, we are a little bit too
Speaker 2: obsessed with our emotions. Fifty years ago, we were probably
Speaker 2: too avoidant with our emotions. We just didn't even talk
Speaker 2: about emotions at all. Right, that's obviously not helpful. I
Speaker 2: would argue we've swung a little too far to the
Speaker 2: other extreme, where we've got kind of obsessive about our emotions.
Speaker 2: We get stuck in them. We think, we overanalyze them,
Speaker 2: we talk about them too much. I think a lot
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a great because.
Speaker 2: And what's key is the reason that's problematic is to
Speaker 2: your brain, it looks like like a fight response, like
Speaker 2: you're trying to get rid of this thing, this emotion,
Speaker 2: and that's just as unhelpful as the avoidant one. The
Speaker 2: healthy middle ground is to acknowledging it, accept it, and
Speaker 2: just let it be there. It's okay, I'm anxious. I
Speaker 2: don't have to do anything about being anxious. My brain
Speaker 2: is just trying to help me. Maybe it's a little
Speaker 2: bit confused. It thinks there's something dangerous, when really there
Speaker 2: is anything dangerous, but it's just trying to help me.
Speaker 2: And I'm not going to stay stuck in this emotion.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to keep ruminating about it or venting
Speaker 2: about it to other people. I'm going to get on
Speaker 2: with my life despite feeling this emotion. I'm going to
Speaker 2: act on my values. What's meaningful or important to me
Speaker 2: right now. I'm not going to act on the emotion.
Speaker 2: This is not coping skills. I'm going to act on
Speaker 2: my values. And when your brain sees that you are
Speaker 2: willing to get on with your life despite feeling anxious
Speaker 2: or sad or angry or whatever it is, it downregulates.
Speaker 2: It stops getting so emotionally worked up every time you
Speaker 2: feel an emotion, and your level of emotional equanimity will
Speaker 2: just be It'll be so profound once you start doing
Speaker 2: this regularly. So that's the third step. Acknowledge, validate, and
Speaker 2: then put on your values. Allow the emotion to be there,
Speaker 2: and get on with your life. Refocus on that the
Speaker 2: other person you're having a conversation with. Start writing that
Speaker 2: report you know you're nervous about writing. Go to the
Speaker 2: gym instead of overthinking about whether you should I shouldn't
Speaker 2: you know what to get on with things. So that's
Speaker 2: my I said, it's going to be brief as usual,
Speaker 2: like over talked a little bit on this, but eva
Speaker 2: aba acknowledge, validate, and then move on, act on your values.
Speaker 2: Let the emotion just be there. So that to answer you.
Speaker 2: That's a long winded way of answering your question all about.
Speaker 4: Like, but it's a great it's a great answer, and
Speaker 4: I particularly like I like all components of it, but
Speaker 4: that it is directed towards acting and linking it to
Speaker 4: values right, which is straight out of acceptance commitments that
Speaker 4: are taking.
Speaker 1: It towards move rather than away, which is hugely important.
Speaker 1: So you know, let's make it real.
Speaker 4: Let's just say I have anxiety and and you have
Speaker 4: a birthday party coming up. But you know fortis birthday,
Speaker 4: whatever it may be, is a big birthday. You invite
Speaker 4: me to the party. My brain all of a sudden
Speaker 4: is going no frequent way, no way can I go
Speaker 4: to this party. You know, everybody's going to be looking
Speaker 4: at me. What am I going to do with my hands?
Speaker 4: People are going to be talking about me, what am
Speaker 4: I going to work? All this shit goes on, and
Speaker 4: then often people do avoidance behaviors, right, they don't go
Speaker 4: to the party. They make up some bullshit excuse, Whereas
Speaker 4: what you're talking about is you acknowledge it, you validate it.
Speaker 4: It's okay to freelanxis, and particularly because I've got a
Speaker 4: bit of social anxiety. But actually a value of mine
Speaker 4: is friendship, and Nick is a very good friend of mine.
Speaker 4: So I'm going to take my anxiety with me to
Speaker 4: the party in the service of something bigger. It's not
Speaker 4: that you're getting rid of the anxiety, you take it
Speaker 4: with you, right bing.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's so right on, And I love that, like
Speaker 2: bringing friendship in. You know, psychologically, why this isn't. One
Speaker 2: of the reasons this is so important is that our
Speaker 2: values are a huge, largely untapped source of motivation that
Speaker 2: we almost never think about. We all have values. There's
Speaker 2: a reason you initially wanted to come to my birthday party, Paul,
Speaker 2: or whatever the whatever this year. You wanted to go
Speaker 2: to the gym, you wanted to do that podcast, you
Speaker 2: wanted to write that book, you want to do whatever
Speaker 2: it is. Tap into that value when you remind yourself
Speaker 2: of that value and make it clear and kind of
Speaker 2: just spend a little time thinking about it. There's so
Speaker 2: much motivation there to help you overcome that whatever difficult
Speaker 2: emotion is getting in your way. Not that the emotion's bad,
Speaker 2: it's just your brain giving you some advice and maybe
Speaker 2: it's not especially helpful advice, so you're not obligated to
Speaker 2: listen if you decide, you know what, Thanks brain, I
Speaker 2: appreciate your input, but I've really decided it's important for
Speaker 2: me to go to this, to go to this birthday party,
Speaker 2: and so I'm going to do it anyway, right, So
Speaker 2: I love your example there.
Speaker 4: And this value I actually want to really dive into
Speaker 4: the value stylence. And you know, because I think and
Speaker 4: I've been thinking about this a lot, and the kind
Speaker 4: of loss of religion in the West. Now I'm not
Speaker 4: religious at all. I'm a recovering Catholic from Northern Ireland.
Speaker 4: I've been in recovery for thirty years.
Speaker 1: But I a lot.
Speaker 4: This is not my original thinking. Lots of other people
Speaker 4: will say this, that the breakdown of religion has has
Speaker 4: had an issue, not because of the lack of religiosity
Speaker 4: or whatever, but because.
Speaker 1: You look at all religions is they give people values
Speaker 1: to live by, and people.
Speaker 4: Will then live by those shared values and they don't
Speaker 4: have to think about it too much, whereas not when
Speaker 4: there's a lot less religion, people then have to think about.
Speaker 1: Their own values and what they actually are.
Speaker 4: And when I run workshops, and I would imagine that
Speaker 4: values come into your workshops when you're when you're doing
Speaker 4: stuff in corporates. When I'm talking about it, lots of
Speaker 4: people are.
Speaker 1: Like, oh, even about what my values are?
Speaker 2: Right, But they are.
Speaker 1: A compassed by which you should be living your life.
Speaker 4: Right, It's hugely important. And and just one other comment
Speaker 4: of me before I throw back to you, and you know,
Speaker 4: talking about values and habits and behaviors, and so for me,
Speaker 4: I'm I'm arismx military. I've had an unhealthy relationship with
Speaker 4: alcohol for for for.
Speaker 1: Many years, not not not not.
Speaker 4: A ridiculous piss hit or an alcoholic, but just probably
Speaker 4: drunk too much. And you know that whole culture of
Speaker 4: binge drinking. The one thing, and it was probably a
Speaker 4: couple of years ago that I significantly reduced my alcohol
Speaker 4: consumption and now I only drink once.
Speaker 1: Or twice a week.
Speaker 4: I'll still give it a nudge if I'm out with
Speaker 4: friends and I'm no ee injel. But the one thing
Speaker 4: for me was authenticity, which is a deeply held value
Speaker 4: of mine. And as somebody who's a corporate speaker and
Speaker 4: talks about high performance, I'm not being authentic if I'm
Speaker 4: coming home on a Tuesday night and drinking half a
Speaker 4: bottler or bottle of wine, right, And so for me,
Speaker 4: it was tapping into that authenticity.
Speaker 1: And particularly when you're walking.
Speaker 4: Past the bottle shop or I don't know what you
Speaker 4: guys call them in the States, but you're walking past
Speaker 4: it and your brain is getting seduced into it, right,
Speaker 4: that's when values become really important and going yeah, wow,
Speaker 4: I'd love to do that, but I wouldn't be being authentic.
Speaker 1: So I just want to throw that back to you.
Speaker 1: That's discussion.
Speaker 2: What I like, too, is like, especially when at the
Speaker 2: end that idea of I think people miss this they
Speaker 2: think about values, is these things inside of you that
Speaker 2: you I don't know. You take a test or you
Speaker 2: listen to someone talk to you, and you kind of
Speaker 2: like uncover your values and it's like, ooh, interesting, there
Speaker 2: are values and that's great. If you haven't done that,
Speaker 2: like that's good. Work to do is to start to
Speaker 2: understand what your values are. But I think what where
Speaker 2: they get really powerful is when you start deliberately using.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: They're not just these abstract things. You should be using
Speaker 2: them on a regular bringing them into your life in
Speaker 2: difficult decisions, when you're trying to follow through on a
Speaker 2: particular commitment, when you're in a difficult conversation with your
Speaker 2: spouse or a person at work or whatever. It is
Speaker 2: like what you Know? Simon Sinek wrote that great book
Speaker 2: like What's Your Why you Know? And I think a
Speaker 2: lot of ways values are about that. It's about just
Speaker 2: this basic thing of reminding yourself there are bigger reasons
Speaker 2: why I'm trying to do these difficult things in my life,
Speaker 2: these important difficult things. And turns out if you just
Speaker 2: get better at reminding yourself of those, you have so
Speaker 2: much more motivation to follow through and do those things
Speaker 2: that you aspire to do. So it's really low hanging
Speaker 2: fruit that I think a lot of us are missing,
Speaker 2: not just exploring our values but using them right, bringing
Speaker 2: them into our lives.
Speaker 4: One hundred percent got to become part of your behavioral DNA.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: And this goes back and some of my listeners. Can
Speaker 4: They'll be rolling their eyes here right because I'm going
Speaker 4: to talk about the stoic philosophers again and arete you
Speaker 4: know arite that that whole character was really all you
Speaker 4: needed to be the good life And it was basically
Speaker 4: acting with integrity and being true to your values or
Speaker 4: your virtues as they called them in those days, and
Speaker 4: that was really all that you needed. And it's actually
Speaker 4: really powerful when you go into a situation and that
Speaker 4: could end up in a heated argument, but you tap
Speaker 4: into some of your values or your virtues and actually
Speaker 4: take the higher grind and then reflect on it later
Speaker 4: on and go, actually, that was good behavior, Well done
Speaker 4: me nice.
Speaker 2: I like that little reflection afterwards. It makes me think
Speaker 2: I was just doing a little workshop on communication, like
Speaker 2: people who are difficult communication scenarios. And we're talking about boundaries, right,
Speaker 2: So there's a hot topic these days. Everyone wants to
Speaker 2: know about like setting down yes. And I think boundaries
Speaker 2: are important. But I think something people misunderstand about boundaries
Speaker 2: is they think of them very negatively, like it's all
Speaker 2: about saying no, and then someone violates your boundary and
Speaker 2: you say no and you yes, yes, and that's part
Speaker 2: of it. But I think what can be really powerful
Speaker 2: people if you're trying to set, you know, a boundary,
Speaker 2: maybe with a you know, a manager at work or
Speaker 2: a relative or whatever it is, your kids, even it's
Speaker 2: important to remind yourself maybe them too, that the reason
Speaker 2: you're saying no is for a bigger yes behind it.
Speaker 2: You're not just saying no to be difficult or to
Speaker 2: be a pain in the ass, right, You're saying no
Speaker 2: because there's something, There's some bigger important value on the
Speaker 2: other side. Like why am I saying, you know, well,
Speaker 2: my kid wants to play locks for you know, the
Speaker 2: third hour in a row on Saturday, and I say no,
Speaker 2: I'm going to go for a run. I'm not just
Speaker 2: saying no because I you know, I don't like my
Speaker 2: kid or something. I'm saying yes to self care, to
Speaker 2: my health and to taking care of myself.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Right, So I'm not just being saying no to be mean, right,
Speaker 2: I'm saying no because I'm trying to balance many values.
Speaker 2: I won't quality time with my kids, but I also
Speaker 2: really value my health, like I want to be around
Speaker 2: for a long time with them. It's the same no
Speaker 2: to some playtime on Saturday, so that I can say yes,
Speaker 2: right to exercise because health is a really important value
Speaker 2: for me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, very good point, Very good point. And let's not
Speaker 4: let's move on to the next topic. That was a
Speaker 4: rather deep little rabbitovey.
Speaker 1: But that's co so link to all of this stuff.
Speaker 4: It's kind of intertwined in it. But you have this
Speaker 4: this concept that stress management is a bad idea, and
Speaker 4: I think we're going to be following a familiar theme here, right, Yeah,
Speaker 4: so this.
Speaker 2: Is definitely a little poking the bear. It's not just provocative.
Speaker 2: I think there's a deeper truth on your here. But
Speaker 2: something I see in a lot of my work, whether
Speaker 2: it was for years when I was doing therapy with
Speaker 2: folks but now in more of my corporate work or
Speaker 2: with my students, is managing your stress can often be
Speaker 2: a distraction from doing more important. Now, what I mean
Speaker 2: to this is, I think there's this important distinction between
Speaker 2: stress and a stressor. Right, so if I'm out for
Speaker 2: a height and again, like a bear jumps out in
Speaker 2: front of me, the you know, me feeling tense and
Speaker 2: my heart rate going up, and like that's a stress response.
Speaker 2: Stress is what happens to your body physiologically, the stressor
Speaker 2: is the bear, right, that's the thing triggering or generating
Speaker 2: the stress in the first place. So it's really what
Speaker 2: people end up doing, though I think is so problematic
Speaker 2: is they forget about the stressor and all they're doing
Speaker 2: is thinking about the stress anytime they get stressed. The
Speaker 2: question isn't why am I getting stressed in the first place,
Speaker 2: The question is how can I feel less stressed, which,
Speaker 2: again very normal thing to want to feel like I
Speaker 2: hate feeling stressed, Like I don't want to fel stressed when
Speaker 2: I'm stressed. And I think there are times when literally
Speaker 2: managing your stress, do some deep breathing exercises or go
Speaker 2: for a run or like whatever it is, like, that's fine.
Speaker 2: But what I don't like is where we get so
Speaker 2: consumed with managing our stress that we don't focus at
Speaker 2: all and do anything about the origins of that stress.
Speaker 2: And where I see this a lot is this usually
Speaker 2: takes the form of assertive communication. If you're chronically stressed,
Speaker 2: nine times out of ten, it's because there's a difficult
Speaker 2: conversation you need to have that you're avoiding. It might
Speaker 2: be with your spouse, it might be with your manager,
Speaker 2: it might be with your kids, it might be with
Speaker 2: your parent, it might be their best friend, it might
Speaker 2: be with your barista at Starbucks. I don't know, right,
Speaker 2: but so often the source of our chronic stress is
Speaker 2: an actual issue or problem out there that we need
Speaker 2: to address, probably a conversation that we need to have,
Speaker 2: but because it's difficult and uncomfortable addressing the source.
Speaker 1: We end up.
Speaker 2: I like people do this explicitly, but because it's easier, right,
Speaker 2: we fall back to, well, I'm just going to do
Speaker 2: some deep breathing as sizes, or I'm gonna have a
Speaker 2: glass of wine or whatever. I'm just going to try
Speaker 2: and manage the stress itself. So any we can probably
Speaker 2: get into more of this. But that's what I don't
Speaker 2: like about the idea of stress management is that it's
Speaker 2: often an avoidance mechanism for looking about these sources of
Speaker 2: stress in the first place.
Speaker 1: And I would build on this.
Speaker 4: What I don't like about the term stress management is
Speaker 4: the inference that all stress is bad and has to
Speaker 4: be managed. Right, there's you know, there's de stress, and
Speaker 4: there's you stress, and you know anybody here's who's listening.
Speaker 4: I want you to think about your biggest achievement in
Speaker 4: your life, like the stuff that you are super super
Speaker 4: proud of, And then did it involve stress and being
Speaker 4: out of your comfort zone? And I guarantee you, for
Speaker 4: ninety nine percent of people, the answer is a resignding yes.
Speaker 1: That is where we grow.
Speaker 4: And I think we've we've created a society where this
Speaker 4: whole idea that stress is bad and is making things
Speaker 4: worse for quite a lot of people, and that that
Speaker 4: that your.
Speaker 1: Attitude as well.
Speaker 4: And this opens up the whole conversation around this, this
Speaker 4: attitude around challenging threat that we know that if we
Speaker 4: are me and you are faced with the exact same
Speaker 4: stressor if I view it as a threat, it I
Speaker 4: start to become have all those negative emotions and avoidance behaviors.
Speaker 4: But what it does physiologically that threat and psychology activates
Speaker 4: cortisol and the major stress hormone, which.
Speaker 1: Has a half life of more than an r.
Speaker 4: Whereas if you view the same thing as a challenge,
Speaker 4: not only does that change your psychology and probably your
Speaker 4: behavior around it, but it changes your physiology because it
Speaker 4: activates your fight or flight response and the chemicals adrenaline
Speaker 4: and nord adrenaline, which you'll know is Epinefforn and nor
Speaker 4: Epeneffor and right, and they have a half life of
Speaker 4: less than a minute, so very quickly you're back to homeostasis,
Speaker 4: whereas in our leader, I'm still in a hypervigilant state.
Speaker 4: There's cortisol going through my body, and we know that
Speaker 4: chronic cortisol ravages your body in your brain, and a
Speaker 4: lot of that comes from people's just their attitude around it.
Speaker 4: And that's one of the reasons why fundamentally I hate
Speaker 4: the term stress management, and that you know, we need
Speaker 4: to encourage people to have more of that challenge response.
Speaker 4: But again, I'll just finish off with my rant, is
Speaker 4: that a challenge response, like I can only really have
Speaker 4: a challenge response if I believe that I have the
Speaker 4: resources to be able to deal with it. And that
Speaker 4: actually comes back to having done hard stuff in a
Speaker 4: lot of and a lot of things. I believe that
Speaker 4: I can do this because I've done this before, Whereas
Speaker 4: if I have a history of avoidance behaviors, of course
Speaker 4: I've got no belief that I'm going to be able
Speaker 4: to come this challenge, and then I'm gonna go into
Speaker 4: a threat response and avoidance behaviors and blah blah blah
Speaker 4: blah blah.
Speaker 1: Anyway, that's my runt. I'll throw that back over to you.
Speaker 2: I love this because it reminds me of one of
Speaker 2: my favorite ideas in all of psychology and really in
Speaker 2: all of life, I think, but I think about it
Speaker 2: in the context of psychology all the time, and that
Speaker 2: is it's kind of a mouthful, but incrementalism, and incrementalism
Speaker 2: is kind of a fancy term for this thing we
Speaker 2: all basically know, which is if you want to get
Speaker 2: better at something in life like, it basically requires slow,
Speaker 2: steady progress. You do. You know, if you want to learn,
Speaker 2: if you want to be a great piano player, you
Speaker 2: don't just try and play Beethoven. It's not gonna work.
Speaker 2: You're gonna suck and then you're gonna feel bad. And
Speaker 2: it's like, that's not how you do it. What do
Speaker 2: you do? You play Twinkle Twink a Little Star right
Speaker 2: until you get kind of good at Twinkle Twink a
Speaker 2: Little Star. Then you play chop sticks, then you play whatever,
Speaker 2: and you slowly but surely incrementally, you work your way up,
Speaker 2: building both competence, ability and skill, yes, and confidence. That's
Speaker 2: where confidence come, everyone wants more confidence.
Speaker 1: Like confidence comes from competence, right exactly.
Speaker 2: But I think a lot of people make this mistake,
Speaker 2: especially with kind of personal growth, self improvement, psychological type topics. Again,
Speaker 2: they think, oh, I read this great book about being
Speaker 2: more assertive, so I'm going to go like barge into
Speaker 2: my boss's office and like demand a fifty percent raise
Speaker 2: or else I'm quitting or something, And then like that
Speaker 2: doesn't go real, Well, that's because you haven't practiced being
Speaker 2: more assertive in kind of a gradual way. Or you decide, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna do this big thing, and then you chicken
Speaker 2: out every time. Why is it because you're not It's
Speaker 2: not because you're a bad person. It's because you're trying
Speaker 2: to play Beethoven when you haven't learned how to play
Speaker 2: Twinkle Twinkle.
Speaker 1: A Little Star.
Speaker 2: So I think this applies to so many situations. Is
Speaker 2: that important to check ourselves and say, yes, we want
Speaker 2: to get up here, right, but what are the steps
Speaker 2: I need to take to get up there? Can I
Speaker 2: design kind of a training program for this? I used
Speaker 2: to all the time with my anxious clients, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you don't want to have panic attacks when you're driving anymore.
Speaker 2: I get it. But what we're gonna start with is
Speaker 2: little tiny bits of anxiety, and you're gonna get better
Speaker 2: at feeling the anxiety and being willing to have it
Speaker 2: and to continue talking to me sitting in a nice
Speaker 2: comfy office.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Then once you're better at that, we're gonna go for
Speaker 2: a walk around the block, right, or we're gonna go
Speaker 2: to the grocery store together, and you're gonna get a
Speaker 2: little bit more anxiety, but you're gonna slowly build up
Speaker 2: the skill so that you really believe it. It's not
Speaker 2: just me. You're like cheerleading therapist telling me you can
Speaker 2: do it right. No, you have confidence because you have
Speaker 2: shown yourself that you can do it. So I think
Speaker 2: this is just so important. I think any good therapist
Speaker 2: or coach who's worth their who's worth their wait and whatever.
Speaker 2: I think we'll adhere to this on some level because
Speaker 2: it's it's just the only way anyone grows in anything.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: So we forgot about that at our at our peril.
Speaker 4: And I think Nick buried within that message, I think
Speaker 4: is one of the best bits of parenting advice. If
Speaker 4: you want to bring up well rounded children. Is they
Speaker 4: get out of this bullshit idea that came out of
Speaker 4: the States in the nineteen eighties of you should just
Speaker 4: boost your kids' self esteem and tell them that they're
Speaker 4: awesome and they're brilliant and they can be anything that
Speaker 4: they want to be.
Speaker 1: As you rightly said, and.
Speaker 4: Any good sports psychologists will tell you this, that confidence
Speaker 4: comes from competence.
Speaker 1: What you just talked about.
Speaker 4: So if you want your kids to grow up as
Speaker 4: well rounded, confident individuals who are adept at stuff, is
Speaker 4: slowly build up their confidence by getting them to do
Speaker 4: incrementally hard stuff. Right, That's the thing, not telling them
Speaker 4: they can be anything they want to be could because
Speaker 4: there's a friggin' bell curve for a reason. Not everybody
Speaker 4: can be an astronaut. Right, Yeah, whatever, But I think that, God,
Speaker 4: I think it's a poor message, right that. I think
Speaker 4: the message we got to give to kids is you
Speaker 4: can be the best that you can be, not you
Speaker 4: can be anything you want to be, or that you
Speaker 4: are amazing or so special, and you can be the
Speaker 4: best that you can be if you put it in
Speaker 4: the work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I feel like I love you brought
Speaker 2: that up. I was just talking to somebody about this.
Speaker 2: I got the advice early on from a psychologist, actually
Speaker 2: a good smart psychologist, who said, you cannot improve your
Speaker 2: kids self esteem. Only they can improve their self esteem. Yes,
Speaker 2: and actually you trying to do it will only make
Speaker 2: it harder from them, because it'll teach them that self
Speaker 2: esteem comes from other people, from outside.
Speaker 1: Yes, south validation from the way.
Speaker 2: To you ever have good self esteem, to assume that
Speaker 2: it's coming from others, You need permission from other people
Speaker 2: to get self esteem. Right. So the idea is more
Speaker 2: can and I think this. You know this applies to
Speaker 2: little kids, I think, but also I think it applies
Speaker 2: to ourselves, anyone who's out there listening and thinking, like
Speaker 2: I wish I had better selfish, which is something people
Speaker 2: write into me all the time about asking about is
Speaker 2: it's not a matter of like staring in the mirror
Speaker 2: and telling yourself that you're great and you're wonderful. Yes,
Speaker 2: that's like telling a kid, oh, you're the best, like
Speaker 2: you can be whatever you want to be. This is
Speaker 2: not It's well intentioned, but it's not going to do anything.
Speaker 2: I think the smarter way to think about it is
Speaker 2: how can I create the conditions such that I can
Speaker 2: build self esteem myself. And I think this idea of incrementalism,
Speaker 2: setting small, meaningful goals for yourself and following through with
Speaker 2: them regularly. I think that so that you can develop
Speaker 2: that competence and confidence. That's where self esteem comes from.
Speaker 2: Self esteem is an output, it's an effect. It's not
Speaker 2: an input. You don't do self esteem. It happens as
Speaker 2: a result of doing things that you can be proud of, right,
Speaker 2: And I think building, But I think the key there
Speaker 2: is that idea of if you're struggling with that, start smaller.
Speaker 2: If you're struggling, do something smaller, so that you can
Speaker 2: give yourself the chance to build up even a tiny
Speaker 2: amount of competence and then the confidence that comes with it,
Speaker 2: and then you can do a little bit more the
Speaker 2: next time. So I think it's a great little till.
Speaker 2: Like if you're running into problems like always get smaller.
Speaker 2: What's the What's what's a smaller unit that I can
Speaker 2: try to tackle so that I can build up that
Speaker 2: that confidence and competence.
Speaker 4: And I think that gets combinded today. The issue of
Speaker 4: this is combinded today with social media and particularly especially
Speaker 4: teenager but not just teenagers and is everybody and looking
Speaker 4: on social media and the ridiculous amount of upwards comparison
Speaker 4: that we have.
Speaker 1: You know, we see.
Speaker 4: The best little herb brush snapshots of people's lives. We
Speaker 4: don't see all this shit that's going on, and often
Speaker 4: we don't see reality.
Speaker 1: And that's what's called an upwards comparison.
Speaker 4: I'm comparing myself, which is what the human braind does,
Speaker 4: especially teenagers. And when do you think of when we
Speaker 4: were kids, Like how many teenagers do we interact with?
Speaker 4: There might have been one hundred in year class at school,
Speaker 4: or or in your year level or stuff like that,
Speaker 4: and we are constantly comparing ourselves. It's a natural thing
Speaker 4: to do. But now we get to compare ourselves to
Speaker 4: tens of thousands of people who seemingly have these amazing
Speaker 4: perfect lives, and that then kind of rule our self
Speaker 4: esteem further because we think I need to be like them,
Speaker 4: and that that gap between where I currently am and
Speaker 4: where I think I should be is just way too
Speaker 4: big and often way too big to even get people started.
Speaker 4: So I love your idea of incrementalism and start small
Speaker 4: and build yourself efficacy through effort.
Speaker 2: Yeah that you know the three where I heard this.
Speaker 2: I heard this somewhere, but it was something like, if
Speaker 2: you must compare yourself to other people, compare yourself based
Speaker 2: on inputs, not outputs. So I always think, you know,
Speaker 2: Jocko has this thing and I don't really follow him,
Speaker 2: but he's got this thing where he every morning he
Speaker 2: takes a photo of his watch at like you know,
Speaker 2: four am or something of him like he's up and
Speaker 2: he's going to the gym. So it's not photos of
Speaker 2: him being jacked, right, it's photos of the input of
Speaker 2: what his photos of him getting up at a godly
Speaker 2: hour to go work out, which is something anyone can do.
Speaker 2: I can't just be Jocko tomorrow, right, I can't just
Speaker 2: look incredible, but I could get up early tomorrow and
Speaker 2: go work out. So I think it's a nice way to,
Speaker 2: you know, think about someone you admire maybe and something
Speaker 2: you want if you do want to start exercising more,
Speaker 2: you want to start writing more, or whatever it is.
Speaker 2: I do think role models can be useful. But then
Speaker 2: when you do that, look for the look for the inputs, right,
Speaker 2: what are the things they're doing that are leading to
Speaker 2: the outcome that you desire or that you want and
Speaker 2: keep your focus on the inputs, not so much the outputs.
Speaker 2: I don't I find that like a nice little distinction.
Speaker 4: Man, that that is sports psychology one oh one, right,
Speaker 4: But it's hugely important. I mean I I've been doing
Speaker 4: some mindset coaching for karate athletes and particularly the guys
Speaker 4: who are wanting to get to the Olympics of the
Speaker 4: World Championships and talking to them about process versus outcome.
Speaker 4: So many light bulbs going off right that thinking about
Speaker 4: when their performance was bad, what were they thinking about?
Speaker 4: And often it was about I'm in the final, I
Speaker 4: need to win this, right, or there's people watching me,
Speaker 4: I need to win this, and they're focusing on the outcome,
Speaker 4: not on the process, on the skills and behaviors that
Speaker 4: they need to do. So it's exactly what you're talking about,
Speaker 4: and all sports psychologists will say this is absolutely critical.
Speaker 4: Process beats outcome. Every single day of the week. You
Speaker 4: focus on the process and then the outcome will come
Speaker 4: or may or may not come. But it's about the
Speaker 4: process that's the key thing. So that's your inputs think
Speaker 4: right and completely endorsement.
Speaker 2: And it's you know, it's the emotional fitness thing. You know.
Speaker 2: So in my world of emotional health and resilience, it's
Speaker 2: if you want to be less anxious, anxiety is the outcome, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you want to be less anxious, like we all want
Speaker 2: to be less anxious. I think for the most part,
Speaker 2: the more important question to ask, though, is what are
Speaker 2: the inputs to my anxiety and what can I do
Speaker 2: differently there? So, when do I find myself worrying a lot,
Speaker 2: getting lost in worries? And how could I handle that better?
Speaker 2: What could I do differently when I start to when
Speaker 2: I start to worry right, or anger if I'm really angry,
Speaker 2: and like I personally am am a very impatient person.
Speaker 2: So I'm trying to like work, I'm not losing my
Speaker 2: temper with my kids as much, being a little more relaxed.
Speaker 2: But I've been trying to think about don't worry about
Speaker 2: the anger. What are the inputs in particular, what are
Speaker 2: my expectations when I'm sitting down to dinner and I
Speaker 2: start getting frustrated with my kids, because often that's what
Speaker 2: I have control over, right, That's what I can actually
Speaker 2: those are the levers I can pull and adjust, right,
Speaker 2: and if I can stay focused on those, I will
Speaker 2: then try to trust that the outcome will take care
Speaker 2: of itself. Right. So, I think even we're talking about
Speaker 2: sports psychology and you know, lifting weights, all that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff, but I think it applies to any type
Speaker 2: of goal, even these kind of emotional goals that we have,
Speaker 2: is to stop focusing so much on the emotion and
Speaker 2: ask yourself, what are the inputs to that emotion that
Speaker 2: I have some control over?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 4: And and then if you can kneel the not being
Speaker 4: so angry with your kids, we'll get you back on
Speaker 4: the podcast because that will be an absolute blockbuster.
Speaker 2: It might be a little laugh if I'm being honest,
Speaker 2: and you and.
Speaker 1: Me both, So let's let's let's let's let's let's.
Speaker 4: Let's take at different chat here, and you talk about
Speaker 4: and why we should stop thinking about insomnia as a
Speaker 4: sleep problem. That's an interesting twist, so so talk us.
Speaker 2: Through that, because bears getting really tired of being poked.
Speaker 2: Ba I used to get in arguments like fights with
Speaker 2: people at conference psychology conferences because I'd sort of poked
Speaker 2: the bear there and claim that you know, insombia is
Speaker 2: obviously classified as a sleep disorder, right, but you talk
Speaker 2: to anyone who actually studies sleep, and they will. There
Speaker 2: is nothing physically wrong with people who have insomnia. There's
Speaker 2: nothing wrong with your brain, there's no pathology involved. And
Speaker 2: in fact, people with insomnia, this is a little known statistic.
Speaker 2: People withinsomnia on average don't sleep any less than people
Speaker 2: without insomnia.
Speaker 1: Oh really, They just spend more time in bed.
Speaker 2: Spend way more time in bed, and they spend a
Speaker 2: ton of time thinking worrying about sleep or not getting sleep,
Speaker 2: anxious about sleep. So my kind of hot take on
Speaker 2: insomnia is that if you if you think about insomnia descriptively,
Speaker 2: what it looks like. Sure, it looks like a sleep disorder, right,
Speaker 2: because it's about sleep. But if you look at it mechanistically,
Speaker 2: which is how any sophisticated field in medicine, it defines
Speaker 2: its disorders by mechanics, how it looks superficially. Right. So
Speaker 2: like when you have a heart attack, right, that's defined
Speaker 2: by you know, what's going on inside your body when
Speaker 2: you're having a heart it's not defined by like the
Speaker 2: fact that you have chest tightness. It's not a chest
Speaker 2: tightness attack, right, Yes, what is with insomnia? What causes insomnia?
Speaker 2: The underlying mechanism is anxiety. It's an anxiety issue. You
Speaker 2: are trying much too hard to sleep, and because you're
Speaker 2: trying too hard to sleep, you're teaching your brain that
Speaker 2: all sorts of things around sleep and bed are dangerous,
Speaker 2: and so you're you go into a state of kind
Speaker 2: of hypervigilance, chronic worry, anxiety, which is fundamentally incompatible with
Speaker 2: rest and relaxation and sleep, which is why people struggle
Speaker 2: so much with sleep. That insomnia is literally it's a
Speaker 2: struggle with sleep. It's the lack of sleep. And so
Speaker 2: I have found Gotcha by far the most helpful way
Speaker 2: to get people out of in Zombia. And you can
Speaker 2: literally cure in Zombia quickly, like really quickly. But what
Speaker 2: it requires is this fundamental shift and you have to
Speaker 2: stop thinking about as a sleep problem, and really it's
Speaker 2: an effort problem. You're trying too hard to do something
Speaker 2: that only happens when you relax. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because if you if you are up tight, you're
Speaker 4: in sympathetic nervous system and you're in high beta wave
Speaker 4: and it is impossible to sleep if you're being as
Speaker 4: in beta waves. It has to go through alpha wave
Speaker 4: to theta to fall asleep today and deep sleep is delta.
Speaker 1: Right, So if you are.
Speaker 4: Stimularly overaraged, and you know that that's what us physiologists
Speaker 4: a psychologists'll talk about it. It's not that sort of
Speaker 4: arrisal in bad but but if you are overaraged from
Speaker 4: a nervous system perspective, good luck getting the sleep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not gonna happen.
Speaker 1: You got no chucks shut.
Speaker 2: And it's interesting all these people who struggle in somnia.
Speaker 2: They've got checklists, dozens of things they have to do
Speaker 2: every night before bed. They've got their blackout curtains and
Speaker 2: they had no blue light, and there's all their weird
Speaker 2: supplements and like all this stuff, right, which really is
Speaker 2: just a form of what I call sleep effort. You're
Speaker 2: trying hard to do something. And if you look at
Speaker 2: all the best sleepers in the world, they're not the
Speaker 2: ones with huge checklists and like meticulous routines around sleep.
Speaker 2: The best sleepers break the rules all the time and
Speaker 2: sleep like babies. You don't need. You don't need all
Speaker 2: of the tips and tricks and the funky gadgets, And
Speaker 2: in fact they often get in the way. And so
Speaker 2: there's we probably all the time to get into like
Speaker 2: the whole thing, but I will sort of leave it
Speaker 2: as a like on the mindset level, if you're thinking
Speaker 2: of sleep as this big problem you have to prepare
Speaker 2: for and solve, is it really surprising that your brain
Speaker 2: starts thinking of sleep as a problem and then you
Speaker 2: shockingly have a hard time actually relaxing and falling asleep.
Speaker 1: Hmmm, yeah. Interesting. There was a guy in university I
Speaker 1: think it was South Australia.
Speaker 4: It was one of the local universities who created this
Speaker 4: program around insmodi. So we created this ring and what
Speaker 4: happened and I actually got a ring. I was part
Speaker 4: of the study, just out of interesting. I don't have
Speaker 4: an insomni issue. But the ring would go on and
Speaker 4: it would vibrate every fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: And you actually, I had to get out of bed.
Speaker 1: You had to physically. So there's people insomnia.
Speaker 4: They had to get out of bed and they had
Speaker 4: to go and sit in another room until they felt
Speaker 4: tired again, and then they got into bed and they
Speaker 4: had to reset it and then it buzzed again after
Speaker 4: fifteen minutes and they had to get out of bed
Speaker 4: right And so they did.
Speaker 1: This for.
Speaker 4: Two nights and created massive amounts of sleep pressure and
Speaker 4: sleep debt and then all of a sudden bomb they
Speaker 4: fell asleep. Right, So just manipulation of the physiology and
Speaker 4: then all the worry and away when I am so
Speaker 4: friggin tired, If she take an insomniac and don't let
Speaker 4: them sleep for two days, they will fall asleep pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: I don't know why it's such a secret, but there's
Speaker 2: an approach, and I think it comes out of that
Speaker 2: approach of describing comes out of this. But there's an
Speaker 2: approach called cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia.
Speaker 1: Which is YIBTI.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is the gold standard. It works and I
Speaker 2: I've worked with hundreds of people with insomnia. I have
Speaker 2: never seen it not work when applied. It's curative. It
Speaker 2: literally gets rid of inzomnia, and it's so powerful and
Speaker 2: nobody knows about it. Everyone's like stuck on sleeping pills
Speaker 2: and all sorts of goofy sleep hygiene routines and stuff.
Speaker 2: And there's this approach which is really straightforward that is
Speaker 2: just phenomenally effective, So people are really interested kind of
Speaker 2: behavioral therapy for insomnia. It's this really robust protocol for
Speaker 2: dealing with insomnia. Is super powerful.
Speaker 4: I've fully endorsed that. And sleeping tablets are not the
Speaker 4: answer you're that. They don't make you sleep, they put
Speaker 4: you unconscious. The brain wave patterns are completely different, changes
Speaker 4: your brain chemistry over time.
Speaker 1: Just a not good ship.
Speaker 4: And last one just because I have to run, but
Speaker 4: I really want to talk about this one. You talk
Speaker 4: about a daily scheduled worry practice being better than drugs
Speaker 4: or therapy for chronic anxiety, and I.
Speaker 1: Think I know where you're going here, but yeah, talk
Speaker 1: us through this. I think this is genius.
Speaker 2: It's my favorite. I think it's my favorite practice in
Speaker 2: all of emotional health. It's so it's so cool, it's
Speaker 2: so simple, and it's so powerful. It is the number
Speaker 2: one thing I do that I recommend for anyone with
Speaker 2: any kind of chronic anxiety. And all it is, it's
Speaker 2: incredibly simple. All it is is you find ten to
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes a day and you make time to worry
Speaker 2: on purpose. And so what you do is you set
Speaker 2: a little timer for like ten minutes. Then you get
Speaker 2: out your little just a little pad of paper, and
Speaker 2: you just write down anything and everything you can think
Speaker 2: of that you're worried about. It could be tiny, little
Speaker 2: minor things like I forgot to get bananas at the
Speaker 2: grocery store. It could be nuclear war, you know it could,
Speaker 2: and everything in between. Anything you're worried about, you just
Speaker 2: barf it all down onto the page. Now you're not
Speaker 2: solving anything. You're not analyzing it, you're not creating to
Speaker 2: do lists. You're just getting it in your brain and
Speaker 2: putting it onto paper. After your ten minutes is up,
Speaker 2: crinkle the paper up, throw it away. Do the same
Speaker 2: thing the next day. It sounds crazy. I have never
Speaker 2: found anything as powerful as this for dealing with chronic anxiety,
Speaker 2: and I don't tend to get into it. But the
Speaker 2: basic mechanism is that it's essentially exposure therapy for chronic worry.
Speaker 2: You are forcing yourself to deliberately approach your worries instead
Speaker 2: of what we always do, which is run away from
Speaker 2: them or try to suppress them or distract ourselves from them,
Speaker 2: which only makes them more intense, which leads to more anxiety.
Speaker 2: But when you get in the habit, and this is
Speaker 2: the thing, this is not a coping mechanism. You don't
Speaker 2: do it when you're anxious. It's an exercise. Like just
Speaker 2: like you go for a run every day, you like,
Speaker 2: do your scheduled worry every day, and over time this
Speaker 2: trains your brain to have a healthier relationship with worry
Speaker 2: and anxiety. So the overall it desensitizes your brain to
Speaker 2: worried anxiety. And people who have chronic worry, they're they're
Speaker 2: highly sensitized to worry and anxiety. So you do this
Speaker 2: regularly and your overall level of chronic worry is dramatically
Speaker 2: going to decrease, and along with it your level of
Speaker 2: chronic anxiety. So it's very simple. I just described it.
Speaker 2: You anyone can do it. I actually maintain a little
Speaker 2: like my website just for it. It's called Scheduled Worry
Speaker 2: dot com. And there's a little like package so people
Speaker 2: can download like little PDAF that shows you how to
Speaker 2: do it. But it is so powerful, like it's the
Speaker 2: best if anyone's interested in this, like shoot medium, I
Speaker 2: love as you can tell, Like, I just get so
Speaker 2: stoked talking about it because it's it's really powerful and
Speaker 2: almost no one knows it about it, and it's it's cheap,
Speaker 2: it's easy, it's free. You're not like eating weird things
Speaker 2: and like ingesting strange shampicles like. It's just very it's
Speaker 2: very straightforward and awesome and I highly.
Speaker 1: Recommend very very cool.
Speaker 4: Can I suggest a tweak, Yeah, it's rather than get
Speaker 4: a piece of paper that you throw away, it's have
Speaker 4: a journal and write it down and just keep it
Speaker 4: and then six months later come back and go through
Speaker 4: it line by line to see what came true and
Speaker 4: what didn't. Because there was a paper released that you've
Speaker 4: probably seen, this paper around generalized anxiety disorder. They took
Speaker 4: a bunch of people, I think the name of the
Speaker 4: paper's worries that don't come true. They got them to
Speaker 4: write down all of their worries, and then they had
Speaker 4: to come back as a bunch of time leader. I
Speaker 4: can't remember when it was hard much later go.
Speaker 1: Through line by line and work out what came true.
Speaker 4: Ninety one percent of the shit that people worried about
Speaker 4: never came true.
Speaker 2: Nice. There's all sorts of really cool variants like that
Speaker 2: that you can do off schedule. You can get really
Speaker 2: like sophisticated with it. That's a good one, though I
Speaker 2: didn't know it was that high. I mean, that's that's
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 1: It's bunkers. I'll flick you the paper.
Speaker 4: These just bonkers and when people go, oh Jesus right.
Speaker 1: But I love you.
Speaker 4: I love that scheduled worry stuff. In fact, I've loved
Speaker 4: everything you've talked about. And there's a whole heap of
Speaker 4: stuff I'd love to talk about, but we will because
Speaker 4: I have to run for an appointment, and so mere
Speaker 4: can people go to find most of their schedule worry
Speaker 4: dot com for the warriors.
Speaker 1: But you have, you've got a pretty awesome news letter.
Speaker 4: Tell us about that and more people can can follow
Speaker 4: you and find out more.
Speaker 2: Sure, I have a newsletter called The Friendly Mind. It's free.
Speaker 2: It goes ou every week every Monday morning. I've been
Speaker 2: doing it for seven years now. It's basically an advice
Speaker 2: column for emotional health, so readers write in with questions
Speaker 2: about anxiety or stress or anger or you know, depression
Speaker 2: or whatever it is. I just answer reader questions about
Speaker 2: bioty things. It's it's really straightforward, practical, kind of no
Speaker 2: nonsense and friendly. So it's free. You can sign up
Speaker 2: check it out see if you like it or not.
Speaker 2: The Friendlymind dot com. And yeah, I would love to
Speaker 2: see you on there. Thanks, Paul. I really appreciate you
Speaker 2: having me that stuff.
Speaker 4: Yep, mate, great to have you on, I love the conversation.
Speaker 1: Keep doing your ship, keep poking the bar
Speaker 2: H