Speaker 1: People don't realize that the negative emotion and the problem
Speaker 1: solving are not the same thing. Welcome to the one
Speaker 1: you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true. And yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. At the age of five, Amelia Javatovskaya and
Speaker 1: her family fled from Kiev, escaping the fall of communism
Speaker 1: and the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. She found herself in
Speaker 1: a new land, faced with challenges completely foreign to the
Speaker 1: average kid growing up in a New York suburb. Then
Speaker 1: nine years later, she faced another tragedy, the sudden loss
Speaker 1: of her brother as he ran to save his fiance
Speaker 1: from drowning and lost his life in the process of
Speaker 1: saving hers, and again years later the loss of her mother.
Speaker 1: From this place of deep challenge, she could have given up,
Speaker 1: blamed the world, and walked away from joy, from happiness
Speaker 1: and possibility. Instead, she discovered within herself a well spring
Speaker 1: of resilience and a relentless desire to understand where this
Speaker 1: came from and how to bring a similar lens to others.
Speaker 1: She was determined to help others flourish. Her exploration quickly
Speaker 1: developed into a lifelong quest, leading her to study psychology
Speaker 1: at Long Island University, followed by a master's degree and
Speaker 1: applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. She's gone
Speaker 1: on to create her own company, The Flourishing Center. Amelia
Speaker 1: is currently pursuing her PhD and Mind Body Medicine at
Speaker 1: Saybrook University. Here's the interview. Thanks for taking a couple
Speaker 1: of minutes and sitting down with me. So our podcast
Speaker 1: is called The One You Feed and it's based on
Speaker 1: the old parable of Two Wolves, where there's a grandfather
Speaker 1: who's talking with his grandson and he says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us. One is a
Speaker 1: good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love,
Speaker 1: and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops
Speaker 1: and he thinks about it for a second, and he
Speaker 1: asked his grandfather which one wins, and the grandfather says,
Speaker 1: the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 1: by asking you what that podcast means to you in
Speaker 1: your life and in the work that you do. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I have to say that my first instinct is it
Speaker 1: like chook me up a little like and maybe want
Speaker 1: to cry um and I guess it'll come out as
Speaker 1: to why. I'm not really quite sure why um and
Speaker 1: And honestly, I see them both as essential parts of
Speaker 1: the human condition. So when we say which one do
Speaker 1: you feed? I, of course, my my my rational brain
Speaker 1: goes no, of course we should feed the good wolf,
Speaker 1: because you know, that's what we've been raised to do,
Speaker 1: is feed the good wolf. But then my empathy goes
Speaker 1: out to the other wolf, the hatred, degreed, the fear.
Speaker 1: That's a part of the human condition, and um, we
Speaker 1: can't leave that part of us starving because it's gonna
Speaker 1: then it doesn't go away, doesn't die, It'll just be starving.
Speaker 1: And the work that I do is about helping people
Speaker 1: integrate the different parts of themselves. And I'm wondering if
Speaker 1: there's if there's a way to feed the good wolf
Speaker 1: and feed the other wolf. Um. And and it's not
Speaker 1: that either needs to win, it's that they have to
Speaker 1: learn how to work together. UM. A lot of the
Speaker 1: work I do in coaching is helping people take their
Speaker 1: fears and rather than thinking that they have to check
Speaker 1: their fears at the door, work with them. UM. Some
Speaker 1: really interesting signs coming out in research around courage and
Speaker 1: courageous people. And so often people think that courage means
Speaker 1: that you just you're fearless, you move without fear. And
Speaker 1: what we know time and time again is that people
Speaker 1: who embody courageousness don't note they It's not that they
Speaker 1: don't feel fear, it's that they their willingness to act
Speaker 1: is stronger than their fear. So what they've done is
Speaker 1: that they've taken that wolf. And some people could say
Speaker 1: they decided that they weren't going to feed it. I
Speaker 1: would say that they gave it the protein and good
Speaker 1: food that it needs and put it on a leash
Speaker 1: and said, let's walk alongside me, and I want you
Speaker 1: to be on the lookout for what might go wrong.
Speaker 1: And i want you to whisper in my ear because
Speaker 1: I'm going to listen to you, but not always take
Speaker 1: your advice. You don't need to shout at me. And
Speaker 1: that the real transformation I've seen that people make is
Speaker 1: not when they completely ignore the other wolf or starve it,
Speaker 1: but when we find a way to say, there's abundance
Speaker 1: and there's enough to go around. And so often when
Speaker 1: you are able to honor that emotional that the darker side,
Speaker 1: the scared side, the guilty side, the shame side, with
Speaker 1: just compassion, with just love and saying I hear you,
Speaker 1: and it's okay, We're okay, because that other wolf, it's
Speaker 1: just trying to protect and it's doing something that has
Speaker 1: been planted within us evolutionarily thousands and thousands of years ago.
Speaker 1: And if we ignore that part of ourselves in some ways,
Speaker 1: it just ends up being starving and like that grumble
Speaker 1: in your stomach that you get on empty, and we
Speaker 1: try to put that part of ourselves in the dungeon,
Speaker 1: and after a while, it actually it gets it gets angrier,
Speaker 1: It gets hungrier, and it it acts out even more
Speaker 1: simply because it's hungry. But it doesn't need you don't
Speaker 1: need to give it all of your attention, because at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, when we're really integrated, we're
Speaker 1: just one wolf, and and we can really show up
Speaker 1: as the highest expression of ourselves and then really carried
Speaker 1: a stronger platform for that good wolf, for that loving wolf,
Speaker 1: for the one that is is dedicated to service and
Speaker 1: acts with gratitude and with humility and doesn't just shun
Speaker 1: a part of themselves out, but really brings it all forward.
Speaker 1: You know. I actually had somebody say, well, I don't
Speaker 1: really believe there's two wolves inside us. I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I know there's not two wolves inside me, right, it's
Speaker 1: a story that but but what I really like there,
Speaker 1: and I'd like to maybe spend another couple of minutes
Speaker 1: on it is you do hear that integrate? You have
Speaker 1: to integrate your your dark side, right, you have to
Speaker 1: do those things. And and we could start, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to twist the parable. Does the bad wolves start
Speaker 1: to become nicer? Does it? But but we you know,
Speaker 1: it's a story, so how do we bring those parts
Speaker 1: of ourselves that are there that probably have some information
Speaker 1: to tell us about who we are and what's important
Speaker 1: to us. How do we work with those in a
Speaker 1: constructive way. Great question. It might even be helpful for
Speaker 1: me to talk a little bit about what positive psychology
Speaker 1: is and what it's not in the context of what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. When positive psychology first came about, people said, oh,
Speaker 1: this must be a scientific study of happiness, so you
Speaker 1: must be trying to make everybody happy and or focus
Speaker 1: just on positive emotions, and you were trying to get
Speaker 1: rid of negative emotions. And we would say, of course not.
Speaker 1: Of course we can't get rid of negative emotions. Why
Speaker 1: would you want to. In fact, they actually did a
Speaker 1: study where they ask people if we hypothetically could give
Speaker 1: you a pill that you could take, and if you
Speaker 1: took this pill, you would never have to feel any
Speaker 1: negative emotion. You wouldn't feel sadness or grief or anger
Speaker 1: or despair, and you would just be able to feel
Speaker 1: the positive emotions content, happy, joyful, grateful, connected. Would you
Speaker 1: take the pill? And almost everybody always says, of course not.
Speaker 1: And I think the reason that they do is because
Speaker 1: inherently they under stand that it's it's not human to
Speaker 1: not feel all those negative emotions, because some people would
Speaker 1: say it's the contrast, it's knowing the dark or knowing
Speaker 1: the downsides helps you feel that actually really appreciate the
Speaker 1: positive um Some people would say, I want my my
Speaker 1: fear with me when I'm walking down a dark alley.
Speaker 1: I need to have my spidy senses up to be
Speaker 1: able to see what might go wrong. And from a
Speaker 1: positive psychology perspective, we want to understand what good or
Speaker 1: what value do these emotions serve and use them for
Speaker 1: what they're here to give us, and check that which
Speaker 1: we don't need at the door. Because any one emotion,
Speaker 1: it's not that positive emotions are good and negative emotions
Speaker 1: are bad. It's that they serve different functions and call
Speaker 1: this thought action tendencies. So negative emotions have a very
Speaker 1: specific thought action tendency. When you're scared, you want to run.
Speaker 1: When you're angry, you want to fight back. When you're disgusted,
Speaker 1: you want to repel. When you're embarrassed, you want to hide,
Speaker 1: And those are really important evolutionarily programmed emotions, and anyone
Speaker 1: emotions not bad. It's when we get stuck in them
Speaker 1: and most people just don't have the tools as to
Speaker 1: how to work with those emotions, and so we get
Speaker 1: stuck in them. Like expressing anger and experiencing anger are
Speaker 1: two very different things, and most people hide from it
Speaker 1: because they think that expressing their anger is the way
Speaker 1: to experience it. But actually learning how to experience your emotions,
Speaker 1: breathe with them, feel with them, move them, I have
Speaker 1: found is a lot more helpful than than what most
Speaker 1: people try to do, which is they try to shun it.
Speaker 1: So just because you stuff an emotion doesn't mean it
Speaker 1: goes away, and more personal mastery comes from actually working
Speaker 1: with those emotions, moving through them so that there's also
Speaker 1: more space for the positive emotions, and then we actually
Speaker 1: actively have to put in things like love and contentment
Speaker 1: and gratitude. For the record, if you find that pill,
Speaker 1: I'm on the fence, so you just let me know
Speaker 1: if it exists. And as a former addict, I spent
Speaker 1: a lot of my time chasing that exact thing. Um
Speaker 1: So this I like that, and I like the evolutionary talk.
Speaker 1: I've done a couple of many episodes recently where it's
Speaker 1: just sort of me talking, and most like that's probably
Speaker 1: when most listeners turn it off. But um, but I've
Speaker 1: been talking about I was talking about negativity, Like, why
Speaker 1: is it that we're prone to see the negative? You know,
Speaker 1: it's sort of evolutionarily, it's we have to be alert
Speaker 1: for threats, right, but we're not so our world is
Speaker 1: different today, and and that that knowing that that's what
Speaker 1: we're going to default to in a lot of cases.
Speaker 1: If we know that, we can sort of say, all right,
Speaker 1: let me try and reframe the situation. What you know,
Speaker 1: instead of seeing a bunk house that's cold and with
Speaker 1: a thin mattress, you can see one that's surrounded with people.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's all a framing exercise and that point. So, um,
Speaker 1: now let's talk a little bit about I want to
Speaker 1: explore the idea of positive psychology and depression because that's
Speaker 1: a theme that comes up on the show. I know
Speaker 1: some of our I know a bunch of our listeners
Speaker 1: wrestle with that. I've shared my stories of wrestling with it.
Speaker 1: So where does Because the layman's take on it is
Speaker 1: traditional psychology is focused on the things that are wrong
Speaker 1: with this. Positive psychology is focused on taking you from
Speaker 1: a baseline to a higher point. But I don't. That
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense to me. I think that's a false
Speaker 1: It seems to me to be a false division. So
Speaker 1: how does this work in with people who might have
Speaker 1: something that might be considered more of a traditional mental illness,
Speaker 1: a depression or an anxiety type thing. Firstly, in today's world,
Speaker 1: it's it's so hard to even reliably define mental illness
Speaker 1: um with a new D s M. I don't know
Speaker 1: what constitutes normal anymore. And something I've been really connecting
Speaker 1: with lately is research by John Caciopo. He has a
Speaker 1: great book out called Loneliness, and he points out that
Speaker 1: very often, not very often, but enough, doctors will will
Speaker 1: diagnose something as depression where it actually is loneliness, and
Speaker 1: they look very connected. And so while they're getting treatment
Speaker 1: for their depression, the heart of it is actually the
Speaker 1: root of is that they're lonely. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: interrupt you on that because that's fascinating. But why do
Speaker 1: you not think there's depression support groups? I have been
Speaker 1: pondering that question because I agree, I think loneliness is
Speaker 1: a big piece of it. There is enormous number of
Speaker 1: support groups that proved to be enormously helpful to people.
Speaker 1: And I'm wondering, is it just that nobody has done
Speaker 1: it and pushed it or is it that you cannot
Speaker 1: engage depressed people in that kind of way? Great question. Well, firstly,
Speaker 1: one of the leading researchers, the founder of positive psychology,
Speaker 1: Dr Martin Seligmann, actually started off as a depression specialist
Speaker 1: in studying depression UM and he became a famous psychologist
Speaker 1: based on his learned Helplessness theories, basically showing that one
Speaker 1: of the ways in which depression shows up is that
Speaker 1: people learn that they're helpless UM, they learned to be helpless,
Speaker 1: and they take on internalize this belief that nothing I
Speaker 1: do matters, And the way that that shows up in
Speaker 1: our mind chatter is why bother? So, why bother going
Speaker 1: to talk to someone? Or why bother going to a
Speaker 1: support group? Nothing I do matters? So that could be
Speaker 1: one is that by that that that people aren't being
Speaker 1: reached at that time. Another version is just that it's
Speaker 1: just it's such a low level background music, and we
Speaker 1: as human beings are so resilient and we're so adaptable
Speaker 1: that oftentimes we just we keep going. And so people
Speaker 1: are functionally depressed, not realizing that there could be another way,
Speaker 1: and um, so it could be also maybe depression groups
Speaker 1: are around and they're just not marketing themselves well enough
Speaker 1: to even make it known to the public. I also
Speaker 1: think that mental illness or anything related to the mind
Speaker 1: scares the Jesus out of us, because when a person
Speaker 1: has a physical illness that you can see, or even
Speaker 1: a behavior that is concrete, like with an alcoholism, Okay,
Speaker 1: well that's the concrete behavior. There's drinking. With sex acolics,
Speaker 1: there's a concrete behavior, food aholic, there's you know there
Speaker 1: there should be a support group that says, Hi, I'm
Speaker 1: addicted to my thinking, I'm addicted to my thoughts, I'm
Speaker 1: addicted to my emotions, whereas the e A, the emotional
Speaker 1: addiction groups. I actually think there is something called Emotions Anonymous,
Speaker 1: but it has never really gotten in any traction. I've
Speaker 1: never really even known what it does. But it's just
Speaker 1: because there's blurred lines. It's it's all so blurry because
Speaker 1: even something like depression, it's like, am I depressed or
Speaker 1: is this just you know, I'm muddling through. This is
Speaker 1: just my life and this is just a tough time
Speaker 1: I'm going through and we are just now being able
Speaker 1: to understand what is actually happening in people's minds when
Speaker 1: they are depressed, and now we're relating it also to
Speaker 1: the body. How much of it is physiological. Some people
Speaker 1: will will have a massive shift in their depression as
Speaker 1: they shift their diet. One of the but in terms
Speaker 1: of what can people do for depression, because I realize
Speaker 1: that even in our conversation, we're feeding one wolf, we're
Speaker 1: feeding the what's wrong wolf, We're feeding even the conversation
Speaker 1: of of focusing on on what isn't working because some people,
Speaker 1: UM would even say that even even depression actually serves
Speaker 1: an evolutionary function. In terms of what people can actually
Speaker 1: do when they are stuck in sadness and depression, there's
Speaker 1: so much And if you define um depression as believing
Speaker 1: that nothing you do matters, or you learn that you're helpless.
Speaker 1: The minute a person starts to take small action steps
Speaker 1: and see positive changes, then they start to believe that
Speaker 1: maybe I can make a change. And so there's two interventions.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's many, but the two that come to
Speaker 1: mind is firstly, this is one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: exercise is so beneficial for people with depression. Um. Firstly,
Speaker 1: you get your you get yourself moving, and you start
Speaker 1: to see physiological changes, whether it be my heart rate
Speaker 1: is up, I've broken a sweat, I feel a little better,
Speaker 1: I have a little bit more energy. You can't keep
Speaker 1: saying nothing I do matters, because here it is I
Speaker 1: just made a change within my body. We also know
Speaker 1: that there's a b d n F and serotonin loop.
Speaker 1: So b dnf is a neurotransmitter that gets released in
Speaker 1: our brain, and basically what it does is that it
Speaker 1: helps the two neurons fire a little bit better together.
Speaker 1: It's like miracle grow for your brain. It helps the
Speaker 1: connections come together. It gets released when we're active, and
Speaker 1: when we're not active, it's it decreases its production. Even
Speaker 1: as much as twenty minutes of sitting will start to
Speaker 1: decrease your production of b d NF. And there's a
Speaker 1: there's a relationship between b d n F and serotonin.
Speaker 1: So as b d nf is present, we release more serotonin,
Speaker 1: which makes us feel better, which actually releases more b
Speaker 1: d n f. In fact, some researchers would say that
Speaker 1: not moving, not being physically active, is actually like taking
Speaker 1: a pill for depression. Speaking of finding magic pills. You know,
Speaker 1: I often say to people if I had this pill
Speaker 1: that I would say, here, you take this pill, and
Speaker 1: when you take this pill you get depressed. Would you
Speaker 1: take it? And say, of course not. But that's what
Speaker 1: many of us do when we don't physically move our bodies.
Speaker 1: So a great huge amount of exercise and it and
Speaker 1: it perpetuates itself as the I mean depressions. Once it's
Speaker 1: sort of set into a certain degree, it's defining characteristic
Speaker 1: to a large extent, is lethargy feeling that is. And
Speaker 1: so that's why we talk about exercise being so important,
Speaker 1: but that like a minute, just if that's all you've got.
Speaker 1: But if you did a minute a few days in
Speaker 1: a row, you did something right and you succeeded at something.
Speaker 1: And it sounds silly, right, I mean, it's one of
Speaker 1: those things I've had. I've had people right and go, well,
Speaker 1: but look at these people. They didn't get there by
Speaker 1: doing a minute of exercise a day. And I said, uh,
Speaker 1: maybe not, but they started somewhere. They started where they
Speaker 1: were yeah. Yeah. And that's the key point though, is
Speaker 1: that firstly, we want to give compassion to that wolf
Speaker 1: that compares and says, well, what do you mean a minute?
Speaker 1: Like you know this person is doing an hour. Even
Speaker 1: even social comparison that's biologically wired within us thousands of
Speaker 1: years ago, it was really useful and it's important that
Speaker 1: the person chooses that time frame, whatever that small step
Speaker 1: is based on what's appropriate to them. For some people
Speaker 1: it might actually just be I got out of bed,
Speaker 1: and for others it will be I went for a
Speaker 1: minute long walk. One of the first studies in positive
Speaker 1: psychology had actually been done on looking at an intervention
Speaker 1: that was just for two weeks. People were told to
Speaker 1: write down three good things that happened to them that day,
Speaker 1: and for each of those good things, write down how
Speaker 1: they contributed to that good thing happening. And what they
Speaker 1: found was that after two weeks, the group that did
Speaker 1: this compared to the control group, had a significant increase
Speaker 1: in their happiness level and a significant decrease in their
Speaker 1: depression level. And what they found is that a six
Speaker 1: month follow up, those those those um that effect was
Speaker 1: still present statistically significantly. And some people would say, really
Speaker 1: just for two weeks, doing something for two weeks would
Speaker 1: have created that kind of change. And what often happened
Speaker 1: is that people experienced the benefit of it and they
Speaker 1: kept going. But the critical piece to that is not
Speaker 1: just the three good things that I'm grateful for, because
Speaker 1: many people will do that and they'll make it. They'll
Speaker 1: make their gratitude lists. They'll say, I'm grateful for my
Speaker 1: health and grateful for my family, grateful I have a
Speaker 1: roof over my head. Day two, I'm grateful for my husband,
Speaker 1: I'm grateful that I can put food on the table,
Speaker 1: and I'm grateful for my health, and they just kind
Speaker 1: of get into this monotonous being around even something like
Speaker 1: their gratitude exercise. The brilliance of this intervention is actually
Speaker 1: also in the second piece, which is how did you
Speaker 1: contribute to that good thing happening? And what that starts
Speaker 1: to do is it gets a person recognizing that they're
Speaker 1: able to impact their life, and it shifts that left
Speaker 1: something I do matter. So even if it's like I'm
Speaker 1: grateful that it was a beautiful day outside today, the
Speaker 1: person says, well, you know, how did I do? I
Speaker 1: didn't create the weather, but they stopped and they noticed it.
Speaker 1: So it's that self acknowledgement that starts to little by
Speaker 1: little build not a person's self esteem, but a person's
Speaker 1: self efficacy, a belief in themselves that they can make
Speaker 1: something happen in their life. And this intervention is just
Speaker 1: as powerful for people who we would say are north
Speaker 1: of neutral or at that neutral point in terms of
Speaker 1: their happiness in their life satisfaction. You don't have to
Speaker 1: be in the negative zone. Um the idea of positive psychologies.
Speaker 1: It's not just about making people happy, it's about wherever
Speaker 1: you are moving you north of neutral in your own
Speaker 1: life satisfaction. You said something yesterday that blew me away
Speaker 1: about this, and it's something I've thought about with gratitude.
Speaker 1: Is you said that people who don't feel grateful for
Speaker 1: something but do that exercise feel worse. Did I understand?
Speaker 1: You know? Actually, what it is is that people who
Speaker 1: know that they have a lot that they should be
Speaker 1: grateful for but can't feel it, it actually does more
Speaker 1: harm than good. So the guilt trip that I get
Speaker 1: my kids on what they're starving children in Africa. You
Speaker 1: should be grateful for what you had, which I really
Speaker 1: try never to do, but it inevitable that it slips
Speaker 1: out occasionally. Yeah, and it happens to all of us.
Speaker 1: And and again this is where I have so much
Speaker 1: compassion for that wolf, the wolf that says, well, well know,
Speaker 1: I want things to be different. Um if sometimes the
Speaker 1: we don't let ourselves feel grateful for the things that
Speaker 1: we have because we think we'll just we'll get too content,
Speaker 1: we'll get too complacent. If I just start finding things
Speaker 1: to be grateful for. Here, like I'm not happy in
Speaker 1: my body, I need to lose a hundred pounds. Well
Speaker 1: if I if I start to be too grateful, well
Speaker 1: then I'll stop working on this goal. As opposed to
Speaker 1: recognizing that, there's a lot of benefit to going into
Speaker 1: the positive saying I accept certain things are really good
Speaker 1: in my life. I see that they're good and things
Speaker 1: will change. But when people you know that, when when
Speaker 1: people have a lot that they think that they should
Speaker 1: be grateful for. I have a beautiful house, I have
Speaker 1: a steady paycheck, I've got a partner who loves me.
Speaker 1: Yet why can't I feel grateful? That does even more harm.
Speaker 1: And the feeling part is what Burnet Brown calls foreboding joy.
Speaker 1: It's that we we don't let ourselves feel. It's like
Speaker 1: there's this this little flower starts to open up of
Speaker 1: oh this feels good and then one of the other
Speaker 1: wolves comes in and goes, don't hey, be careful. You
Speaker 1: know if you feel if you get too happy about this,
Speaker 1: you know someone's going to come steal your thunder or
Speaker 1: what if you lose this? Don't enjoy this too much
Speaker 1: because this this can go away. Um. However, when we
Speaker 1: actually allow ourselves to feel grateful and um, some of
Speaker 1: the ways that I will have people do that is
Speaker 1: first I asked them, where do you feel that in
Speaker 1: your body? Start with something that they can feel grateful for,
Speaker 1: like your mother, unless you've got some suggering mother issues,
Speaker 1: which not everybody can go to a positive place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: wherever it might be, start with where you're at. And
Speaker 1: actually I would say not your mother. Most people can
Speaker 1: get there quicker with their pet. So if you have
Speaker 1: a classic tager cat and just start there and I go,
Speaker 1: and I asked them just to connect with their body.
Speaker 1: Where are you feeling that in your body? Will focus
Speaker 1: on letting that grow. Other times I asked them to
Speaker 1: think of something that they have in their life that
Speaker 1: they think they should be grateful for, but they can't
Speaker 1: generate that emotion. And then we do thought experiments. What
Speaker 1: would it be like if you didn't have this thing
Speaker 1: in your life imagining and actually walking that through. And
Speaker 1: some people would go, well, Amelia, why would you make
Speaker 1: that person think about the how bad that would feel?
Speaker 1: But sometimes we go into the negative emotion to then
Speaker 1: really experience that positive emotion. But it is key that
Speaker 1: that that what makes those positive emotions effective is that
Speaker 1: you can feel them. It's not enough just to think them.
Speaker 1: And the negativity bias is that we have no problem
Speaker 1: feeling fear or anger or hurt or mistrust or any
Speaker 1: of those other things. And you can almost think of
Speaker 1: those emotions on a scale. And the reason why depression
Speaker 1: is the hardest is because it's one of the lowest vibrations,
Speaker 1: apathy and depression. It's like trying, you know, and they
Speaker 1: say an object once and emotions stays in motion. And
Speaker 1: when someone is in that place where they're just like,
Speaker 1: the worst that can happen is I don't care. That's
Speaker 1: what happens sometimes with suicide, it's like I don't care anymore,
Speaker 1: I give up. I'd rather see a person be angry
Speaker 1: about where they're at than be depressed them with they're at.
Speaker 1: And obviously we honor where people are at every every chapter,
Speaker 1: every stage of the game. But it requires a very
Speaker 1: different tool kit because there's almost like no energy there
Speaker 1: and you have to generate energy. I want to keep
Speaker 1: sticking with our wolf analogy because our metaphor, because that's
Speaker 1: what we're here for. And I would say that many
Speaker 1: of us feed feed the wolf of judgment and and
Speaker 1: and shooting on ourselves and not letting us and letting
Speaker 1: ourselves feel really happy and grateful for what we have.
Speaker 1: I know, I'm like that, you know, I put all
Speaker 1: this work into one of my programs, and then my
Speaker 1: program happens, and I'm like, oh, that was nice, and
Speaker 1: I'm onto the next thing. And I'm always onto the
Speaker 1: next thing, and I'm always onto the next thing, and
Speaker 1: and that um. And I think the reason why we
Speaker 1: why we push ourselves in that way, is a useful
Speaker 1: thing to do. It's the same reason why we whip
Speaker 1: ourselves on the back saying you should go to the gym,
Speaker 1: you should make a change. And oftentimes people think that
Speaker 1: they have to push themselves as the only way that
Speaker 1: they're going to make a change. And it's being able
Speaker 1: to hand hold both of those things at the same time.
Speaker 1: I want things to change and I'm gonna look for
Speaker 1: ways to feel positive right now, because in my choosing positivity,
Speaker 1: I actually gain resources in my mind and in my
Speaker 1: body that can help me move towards that goal. So
Speaker 1: what I mean by that is that, let's take worry
Speaker 1: for example. So I want to scale my business, and
Speaker 1: in order to do that, I need to raise, say
Speaker 1: half a million dollars in order to scale my business,
Speaker 1: and I want and I'm worrying how am I going
Speaker 1: to do this? What if I don't do this? And
Speaker 1: the brain gives all of these I won't be happy
Speaker 1: until I do these things, And so there's there's not
Speaker 1: there's not that much positive emotion because how can I
Speaker 1: be grateful and happy for what I have right now?
Speaker 1: Because I need this and I have all these what
Speaker 1: ifs going on in my brain. Well, people don't realize
Speaker 1: that the negative emotion and the problem solving are not
Speaker 1: the same thing. They can be. They can be stuck
Speaker 1: together for people. But you can problem solve and take
Speaker 1: action towards your steps, action towards the things that you
Speaker 1: want in your life, and use a little bit of
Speaker 1: pain as a motivator, but not the amount of pain
Speaker 1: that we give to ourselves, and then on the positive side,
Speaker 1: the positive emotion of maybe pausing and taking being mindful
Speaker 1: and recognizing I'm grateful for what I've done thus far,
Speaker 1: or or looking at the resources that you have around you.
Speaker 1: Anytime we start to shift into a neutral or more
Speaker 1: positive state, what happens in our brain is that we
Speaker 1: tend to think more creatively. I always say that, you know,
Speaker 1: you're not thinking about how you can cure rold tonguer
Speaker 1: when you just stubbed your toe. Because when we're in
Speaker 1: a negative emotional space, we narrow and we focus. We
Speaker 1: are our field of vision narrows, and are are the
Speaker 1: access to the areas of our brain, and our creativity
Speaker 1: just narrows. But if we can get ourselves into an
Speaker 1: upward spiral, even if it's just hey, you know, they're
Speaker 1: beautiful things around me right now, then we can think
Speaker 1: more creatively. Um more concrete examples. So when somebody comes
Speaker 1: to me for for for career coaching, they've been they've
Speaker 1: been unemployed for a while, they've been searching, and everybody
Speaker 1: tells them things like just follow your passion. And the
Speaker 1: P word has now become a curse word, you know,
Speaker 1: And and because they're digging and they're searching, and there's
Speaker 1: no worse feeling in the world than searching for something
Speaker 1: that you've lost. Right, It's like trying to find your
Speaker 1: keys and you just can't find it, and then you
Speaker 1: feel worse and it just becomes a narrowing and focusing
Speaker 1: downward spiral. And what people end up doing is they
Speaker 1: keep going down there downward spiral because like, I have
Speaker 1: to to come up with something, I need to do something,
Speaker 1: and then they're they're feeding that negative wolf, not realizing that, hey,
Speaker 1: my keys are right here, and that the what I
Speaker 1: do with people is the first step to help them
Speaker 1: begin to uncover their life purpose or even think about
Speaker 1: what can they do, because literally ask them, you know, so,
Speaker 1: what are your options, and it's like looking at a
Speaker 1: deer in headlights. They go, I have no options. I
Speaker 1: don't know. And it's not that they don't have any options,
Speaker 1: but in that moment, their brain can't give them access
Speaker 1: to them. So we'll start with tell me something good
Speaker 1: that's happened in the past twenty four hours. Tell me
Speaker 1: about a time in your life when you were you
Speaker 1: felt like you were at your best, and we start
Speaker 1: exploring the more positive side of their of their experience
Speaker 1: and doing that. Oftentimes all of a sudden, a creative
Speaker 1: ideal come up. You know what, I just realized, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm really good at doing that, or that really lights
Speaker 1: me up, or sometimes you know, these miraculous things will happen,
Speaker 1: like they wind up talking to someone and a job
Speaker 1: shows up, and these I have examples of this in
Speaker 1: my practice come up all the time. But really what
Speaker 1: just happened is within that person, they shifted gears in
Speaker 1: their car out of narrowing and focusing into a more
Speaker 1: broaden and build space and more positive emotional space. Negative
Speaker 1: emotions we associate with fight or flight. Positive emotions we
Speaker 1: associate with tendon befriend and we were more likely to
Speaker 1: like who wants to network? When you're down in the
Speaker 1: dumps and you feel like you've got nothing to offer.
Speaker 1: Your resume has been turned on so many times, and
Speaker 1: people say you have to go to a networking event.
Speaker 1: You know, but when you can get yourself into a
Speaker 1: more positive, grateful, optimistic space, you're you're just naturally tending
Speaker 1: and befriending because that's just the gear that you're in
Speaker 1: your car. So many different thoughts there but it occurred
Speaker 1: to me that we hear a lot about that. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be happy or content because then
Speaker 1: I would become complacent. And it just occurred to me
Speaker 1: as you were saying that that I don't think that's
Speaker 1: what causes complacency. I think that's a complete myth. Now,
Speaker 1: there is something to be said for being young and hungry.
Speaker 1: But but as I think about my own life, because
Speaker 1: I always wrestle with this idea of how much discontent
Speaker 1: do you need in your current situation to push you?
Speaker 1: And so real life example, right, if I am working
Speaker 1: on a consulting job and I like it, right, it's
Speaker 1: you know, I do some e commerce consulting. I like it,
Speaker 1: I'm engaged, I'm but is it ultimately what I want
Speaker 1: to be doing? But what I realize is that that
Speaker 1: being in that groove is the energy for everything else
Speaker 1: that comes. And it's that sort of tortured artist myth
Speaker 1: that's out there. Yeah, you said so many great things there,
Speaker 1: which one do I jump on? First? Um? Well, firstly
Speaker 1: about the how much how much pain do you use
Speaker 1: as a motivator? It's the law of diminishing returns. Many
Speaker 1: people think stress is a bad thing. And there's a
Speaker 1: type of stress that's a good stress. It's called you
Speaker 1: stress in research EU S t R E S S.
Speaker 1: You stress is actually I think of it as useful
Speaker 1: stress um and that that you stress is the stress
Speaker 1: that motivates you. It's that time pressure, It's that sense
Speaker 1: of urgency. It's that you know, I have to make
Speaker 1: this business succeed because I've got I've got a kid
Speaker 1: to feed. You know, It's that thing that motivates you.
Speaker 1: And then if you stay in that stress too long,
Speaker 1: it's the law of diminishing returns that then you get
Speaker 1: into a place of distress or chronic low love stress.
Speaker 1: And so being able to tell the difference is really important. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did. I did. One of the many episodes I
Speaker 1: did recently was on rumination and how that there's this
Speaker 1: we have a fallacy that if we keep thinking about something,
Speaker 1: somehow we're doing something with it, and the reality is
Speaker 1: we're making it worse because we be as we become
Speaker 1: more anxious, we become less able to problem solve the
Speaker 1: very problem that we that we have, which is so
Speaker 1: counterintuitive to people. Yeah. In fact, a recent study just
Speaker 1: came out looking at comparing people who think about the
Speaker 1: fact that they want to become happier compared and how
Speaker 1: that affects their well being compared to people who take action.
Speaker 1: And of course this makes perfect sense that people who
Speaker 1: take action would have higher that would be happier. But
Speaker 1: we actually have data now to show that people who
Speaker 1: sit around and who think I should be happier, not
Speaker 1: only does it not contribute to their well being, it
Speaker 1: actually takes away from their well being compared to people
Speaker 1: who even take the smallest action. May I share my
Speaker 1: theory and complacency with you? Um? I think one of
Speaker 1: the most brilliant psychologists of our time that has done,
Speaker 1: um that that has addressed this, but in some ways indirectly.
Speaker 1: Dr Carol Dweck has done research on on mindset and
Speaker 1: her book is called The The Psychoic Mindset The Psychology
Speaker 1: of Success, and she identified that there's two different two
Speaker 1: different types of mindsets that a person can hold. One
Speaker 1: is a belief that things are fixed and another is
Speaker 1: a belief that things can change. One is a belief
Speaker 1: that either you have it or you don't, and another
Speaker 1: is a belief that no matter how much of it
Speaker 1: you have, you can change. Now you can plug in
Speaker 1: for that intelligence, potential as a business person, talent for
Speaker 1: art or singing or dancing, or whether or not a person.
Speaker 1: When people come together and it's just if you're good fit,
Speaker 1: then you then you're perfect fit as a couple, and
Speaker 1: then things you just always work compared to no relationships
Speaker 1: require effort, and that no matter where you're at, it's
Speaker 1: always going to be changing and growing. And so what
Speaker 1: she finds is that when people are in a inherit
Speaker 1: a fixed mindset, even if it's hey, I'm smart or
Speaker 1: or i'm a I'm a leader, um, but their belief
Speaker 1: is that either you're born a leader or not. Either
Speaker 1: you're born to be a success or you're not. What
Speaker 1: happens is that they're the ones who are likely to plateau.
Speaker 1: They're likely the ones to actually become complacent and not
Speaker 1: take that next step because if you look at it
Speaker 1: as um, either you have it or you don't. Inherent
Speaker 1: this belief that a people are constantly judging you as
Speaker 1: either you have it or you don't. And what often
Speaker 1: happens is this fear, well it's like, okay, well I've
Speaker 1: reached a certain level of success, but if I if
Speaker 1: I try something harder, and I fail, Well, then people
Speaker 1: will find out I really wasn't as smart as they
Speaker 1: thought I was. And what often happens is that people's
Speaker 1: mindset influences how they treat challenges, how they treat opportunities,
Speaker 1: and what they put their energy to. So when a
Speaker 1: person really becomes complacent, it's not that they became too
Speaker 1: grateful for what they had, because what we actually know
Speaker 1: the motto is what we appreciate appreciates. It's that that
Speaker 1: complacency is usually held back by a place of fear
Speaker 1: and a place of judgment and all those what ifs,
Speaker 1: and it's often linked because they believe that they would
Speaker 1: be exposed or it's like, okay, you know, what if?
Speaker 1: What if I try something and I fail. Whereas those
Speaker 1: who take on the growth mindset, who are just curious
Speaker 1: and they recognize it's all about learning and it's all
Speaker 1: about growing, they don't become complacent because some doing something
Speaker 1: that's a little bit more challenging. Sure it's challenging, but
Speaker 1: that's where the growth happens. So we hear time and
Speaker 1: time again, and I think some people just want to
Speaker 1: puke when they hear this statement where it's like you
Speaker 1: should enjoy the process and not the destination. Well, you
Speaker 1: can't do that in a fixed mindset, because the fixed mindset,
Speaker 1: when you're just trying to prove either you have it
Speaker 1: or you don't, it's binary. It's all about the outcome,
Speaker 1: and there's so much anxiety built into the process that
Speaker 1: you never really want to stop and enjoy the process.
Speaker 1: Whereas in a growth mindset, where you it's you literally
Speaker 1: you get happy, you get off on the journey, you
Speaker 1: get off on the destination because that's what enables growth
Speaker 1: to happen. And when you believe, well, it's all about growing,
Speaker 1: it's all about learning, and then you really can enjoy
Speaker 1: the process, and then you get to the destination, and
Speaker 1: sure you might enjoy the destination too, but it's not
Speaker 1: any less satisfying than than the work that got you there.
Speaker 1: And so complacency is almost like when you really talk
Speaker 1: to someone who embodies growth mindset, it's like, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: even come up in my mind to just become complacent
Speaker 1: or to think that I would just be grateful for
Speaker 1: what I have and therefore not able to do it.
Speaker 1: So I really think it all keeps coming back to
Speaker 1: what's a person's mindset. Do you ever have the urge
Speaker 1: to just drop the mic when you're done, like you know,
Speaker 1: like an m C does after they just nail it,
Speaker 1: just drop the mic and walk off. This would be
Speaker 1: a moment that if you did, you could. It's so
Speaker 1: much respect for your technology. I would be all worried
Speaker 1: about what would happen to the to the equipment. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that might be a good stopping point, even
Speaker 1: though I could probably do this for hours, So I
Speaker 1: think maybe we'll have to do a part two. Thank you,
Speaker 1: because I want to explore savoring and lots of other
Speaker 1: things that that I know you talked about. But thanks
Speaker 1: so much for taking the time to be on. This
Speaker 1: has really been I think it it tied. It is
Speaker 1: tied together so many of the themes that come up
Speaker 1: in the show in a really um coherent way, which
Speaker 1: has got to be positive for folks because the coherency
Speaker 1: is not coming from this end. So thank you so
Speaker 1: much for having me on. It's such a such an honor.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you. You can learn more about this
Speaker 1: podcast and Amelia Schovatovskaya at one new feed dot net
Speaker 1: slash Jovatovskaya. I'm just kidding, good Luck,