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Speaker 1: you Feed dot net slash joint. I really can't trust
Speaker 1: my brain to give me the right answer to how
Speaker 1: much progress have I made and is it worth the
Speaker 1: effort that I've invested? Welcome to the one you Feed.
Speaker 1: Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 1: thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 1: you are what you think ring true, and yet for
Speaker 1: 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. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 1: episode is Emily balcetas and associate professor of psychology at
Speaker 1: New York University. She's the author of more than seventy
Speaker 1: scientific publications, and her work has been covered in Forbes,
Speaker 1: newsweek Time, National Public Radio, Cosmopolitan, g Q, and many others.
Speaker 1: She's also received numerous awards for her work. Today, Emily
Speaker 1: and Eric discuss her new book, Clearer, Closer Better, How
Speaker 1: Successful People See the World. Hi, Emily, Welcome to the show. Hi,
Speaker 1: great to be here. We are going to talk about
Speaker 1: your book that's called Clearer, Closer Better, How Successful People
Speaker 1: See the World. But before we do that, let's start
Speaker 1: like we always do, with the Parable. And in the Parable,
Speaker 1: there is a grandmother who's talking with her grandson and
Speaker 1: she says, in life, there are two wolves inside of
Speaker 1: us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness, bravery and love, and there's
Speaker 1: a bad wolf which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. And the grandson stops and thinks about it
Speaker 1: for a second. He looks up at his grandma. Are
Speaker 1: He says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says,
Speaker 1: the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 1: by asking you what that parable means to you in
Speaker 1: your life and in the work that you do. I
Speaker 1: think you know that parable conveys the real power that
Speaker 1: we as people have to shape what our experience on
Speaker 1: and every day, every year, every life scale or time frame,
Speaker 1: that where we invest our energy is a lot driven
Speaker 1: by us, and then we can see the fruits of
Speaker 1: those labors. But as a psychologist, I also recognize that,
Speaker 1: you know, besides having choice about what we feed, about
Speaker 1: where we spend our time, what we focus on, that
Speaker 1: our brain also has a default, and that is to
Speaker 1: prioritize or give more weight to the negative experiences that
Speaker 1: those loom larger in our mind. Even if we don't
Speaker 1: feel like we're a ruminator or have depressive ideologies, our
Speaker 1: brain sort of does. Our brain goes there and we
Speaker 1: hold onto those feelings. So as we're thinking about what
Speaker 1: we feed, we need to also be cognizant of the
Speaker 1: fact that it might take more effort or investment to
Speaker 1: feed the good and to cultivate into nurture that wolf
Speaker 1: in our personality, and it might take more work. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that it's unsuccessful or that there's something
Speaker 1: wrong with us. That's just the way our brains work.
Speaker 1: I love that framing of it, and it's sort of
Speaker 1: the idea of knowing the inclination of our brain and
Speaker 1: not everybody's is the same. But as you say, most
Speaker 1: people are gonna have a negative inclination. But this applies
Speaker 1: to anything. Knowing the inclination the direction we tend to
Speaker 1: go does give us some sense of what way we
Speaker 1: need to correct for, sort of more habitually exactly. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you are interested in talking about evolutionary pressures, you
Speaker 1: know it's important for us to find food, find opportunity,
Speaker 1: find love, find safety, and those are pressing concerns. But
Speaker 1: some might argue that it's even more pressing that we
Speaker 1: keep ourselves safe if we miss seeing the tiger that's
Speaker 1: coming at us. Back in Caveman Cave Lady days, you know,
Speaker 1: death was probably imminent. We might argue, like evolutionarily speaking,
Speaker 1: that our attention to, our focus on, and our concern
Speaker 1: for things that might cause us harm or mistakes that
Speaker 1: we've made in the past so that we can avoid
Speaker 1: making them in the future to keep ourselves safe, that
Speaker 1: might be the basis for what we're calling this negativity dominance.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that we are a depressed or that
Speaker 1: we have clinical symptoms that might just sort of be
Speaker 1: a holdover from what requires more attention. But also that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that that's a limitation or that that's just
Speaker 1: how it needs to be. It's just something we need
Speaker 1: to be aware of so that we can focus our
Speaker 1: efforts on cultivating and feeding the positive in light of
Speaker 1: what might have been these pressures that we've experienced in
Speaker 1: the past. Yeah, I love the way you say that.
Speaker 1: It is one of the things I like about the parable,
Speaker 1: beyond its obvious implications of choice, is it says everybody
Speaker 1: has this in them, which I think normalizes sort of
Speaker 1: what you're saying, the fact like, yeah, of course you've
Speaker 1: got some of these quote unquote negative tendencies, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're welcome to the human race, right exactly. So
Speaker 1: let's move in and talk about your book, which really
Speaker 1: talks about the way we see the world has a
Speaker 1: lot to do with how successfully we navigate it. And
Speaker 1: in the book you frame this entire discussion up in
Speaker 1: a way that I, as a musician love, which is
Speaker 1: about you learning to play the drums. So maybe first
Speaker 1: to share a little bit about why you wanted to
Speaker 1: learn to play the drums, Share a little bit about that,
Speaker 1: and then I think it will help us as we
Speaker 1: put each of your four strategies into context. We can
Speaker 1: put them in context around that, at least as a
Speaker 1: starting point. Sure, you know, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people can resonate with this that maybe some point in
Speaker 1: their life they thought, you know what, I want to
Speaker 1: be a rock star, Like that looks like a really
Speaker 1: great life. And I went through that phase as well.
Speaker 1: I went through that phase when I was in my
Speaker 1: late teen years. I was playing in a band as
Speaker 1: a cover band, and it was loads of fun. We
Speaker 1: had the opportunity to play with a group that was
Speaker 1: coming through that actually was quite successful, and we played
Speaker 1: this show for fifteen thousand people at this outdoor you know,
Speaker 1: rock venue, and it was amazing. It was really exciting. Um.
Speaker 1: But that at eighteen years old was the peak of
Speaker 1: my rock star career and it was all downhill after that,
Speaker 1: which is probably good. You know. I don't think my
Speaker 1: stomach could have tolerated the drugs, and like certainly my
Speaker 1: body wouldn't have put up with all of the late nights.
Speaker 1: So it's probably healthier that I peeked at eighteen, but
Speaker 1: it loved it. I have always been involved in music.
Speaker 1: That's all part of our family, that's a part you know,
Speaker 1: my growing up, um, And in fact, that's what I
Speaker 1: went to study in college, was to study music performance,
Speaker 1: so that has always been a love of mine. My
Speaker 1: career is as a basic experimental motivation scientists. I do
Speaker 1: behavioral research, trying to understand the reasons that people do
Speaker 1: what they do and think what they think, and how
Speaker 1: can we help take advantage of opportunities to help them
Speaker 1: have and shape the kind of life that they want.
Speaker 1: So when I found myself at a point in life
Speaker 1: where life was really changing for me, I had the
Speaker 1: opportunity to write this book the very same month that
Speaker 1: my first son was born. I just felt like, here's
Speaker 1: all these incredible opportunities to try on something new, but
Speaker 1: I'm losing myself in this. Becoming a new mother, you know,
Speaker 1: really took away what I thought I had been cool
Speaker 1: about me in the past. That people were coming to
Speaker 1: visit and saying, oh, let's meet this new baby. What's
Speaker 1: going on? And all I had to talk about was like,
Speaker 1: you know, diapers in formula and what happened to me.
Speaker 1: I used to be interesting. I wanted to be a
Speaker 1: rock star. Where did that go? So I was conscientiously
Speaker 1: at that point in my life trying to choose um,
Speaker 1: carve up more time for myself and to bring back
Speaker 1: what I felt like it was a really important part
Speaker 1: of who I was. I needed that artistic side to
Speaker 1: come through. I needed some more time for myself. So
Speaker 1: I decided to become a drummer. I had saxophone, flute, piano,
Speaker 1: so drums still an instrument, but definitely a different skill
Speaker 1: set than I had tackled before, and so it was
Speaker 1: a challenge that I was excited to take on. Plus,
Speaker 1: being able to play drums is cool, well at least
Speaker 1: I think so, And the world needs more drummers. It
Speaker 1: does not need more guitar players like me. There's plenty
Speaker 1: of us, there are not enough drummers. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: even if I had gotten there, they wouldn't the world
Speaker 1: wouldn't have benefited from my drumming skills. Again, this is
Speaker 1: like a personal conquest that I wanted, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: so that's what I took on. You know, my son
Speaker 1: is a month old. We lived in a one bedroom
Speaker 1: apartment in New York City that's smaller than most people's garages.
Speaker 1: And that's when I thought, like, you know what, we
Speaker 1: need to bring drums into this situation. That's what's going
Speaker 1: to help our life right now. So, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: an ill placed goal, but one that I took on.
Speaker 1: And the book, as we're going to talk about, is
Speaker 1: all about strategies that people can use to manage the
Speaker 1: obstacles that they face when they're trying to meet their goals. So, oh,
Speaker 1: I became well aware of what those challenges are when
Speaker 1: you're taking on a new goals, something that's personally important,
Speaker 1: but on top of an already busy, full life of
Speaker 1: with multiple responsibilities to manage. So the story really is
Speaker 1: about me trying to apply these tactics that behavioral science
Speaker 1: that I am conducting and that others are doing, would
Speaker 1: say would work, should work, try this, and I tested
Speaker 1: it out myself as I was trying to take on
Speaker 1: this this personal goal of becoming a one hit wonder,
Speaker 1: learning one song on drums well enough that I could
Speaker 1: play it publicly and not embarrass myself. Yeah, you and
Speaker 1: I were talking before we started about how sort of
Speaker 1: different our pursuit of an instrument is. Like you were like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to play this one song and you got
Speaker 1: it exactly right, and I'm more of a you know,
Speaker 1: good enough kind of guy. You know. The reason that
Speaker 1: is is when I started, all I wanted to do
Speaker 1: was write songs, And in order to write a song,
Speaker 1: all I needed to do is learn enough of what
Speaker 1: was happening in this other song that I could then
Speaker 1: take it and incorporate. So it built this habit, and
Speaker 1: more recently I've been trying to sort of do a
Speaker 1: little bit more of what you do, which is sort
Speaker 1: of pushed through to try and you know, can I
Speaker 1: get it really right? Anyways, let's now turn towards your
Speaker 1: four strategies that you really outline in the book. Maybe
Speaker 1: we'll start by just listing with the four of them are,
Speaker 1: and then we'll walk through them each in more depth.
Speaker 1: Does that work. Yeah, sure. Number one materializing taking something
Speaker 1: that's abstract, maybe just in your mind, and making it visual, concrete,
Speaker 1: and right in front of you. A second one is
Speaker 1: narrowed frame, so narrowing our focus of attention, trying to
Speaker 1: keep out the distractions, avoiding what's in our peripheral vision.
Speaker 1: And in contrast to that, then there's the wide bracket,
Speaker 1: when do we need to assume a more expansive focus
Speaker 1: of attention. They seem like they might be in opposition
Speaker 1: to one another, but again they're just like two tools
Speaker 1: in a toolbox. Yes, they might work in different ways,
Speaker 1: but you needed different tool for each aspect of the job.
Speaker 1: And framing and number four thank you. Sorry, I'm still
Speaker 1: stuck on my drumming. I'm pulling up my drumming story.
Speaker 1: Framing taking advantage of the fact that we can direct
Speaker 1: our eyes in one way or another, and what we
Speaker 1: point our eyes at frames up a different element of
Speaker 1: our environment. And that is a really powerful tool as well,
Speaker 1: because what we see predicts what we do. One of
Speaker 1: the things I loved about the book I love these
Speaker 1: four tools. I also love how you sort of emphasize,
Speaker 1: you know, we've got studies that show these tools work,
Speaker 1: and these tools are situational. They're going to depend on
Speaker 1: your situation. They're going to depend on who you are.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you might need one of them, sometimes you might
Speaker 1: need another. But you're sort of doing away with that
Speaker 1: over simplicity of like, here's three simple hacks to crush
Speaker 1: your life, right, Like, that's not what you've got here exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, the metaphor of that toolbox is one that
Speaker 1: I do keep coming back to. You know, if you
Speaker 1: only had a toolbox full of hammers, I mean, that
Speaker 1: might be great, if all you needed to do is
Speaker 1: pound in nails. But that's not what life is really like, right.
Speaker 1: The different challenges that are up against and the opportunities
Speaker 1: that we have are different, and so we need different tools.
Speaker 1: Coupled with that, we are people. We are evolving as
Speaker 1: a species, but as a person ourselves, right, we're growing,
Speaker 1: We're changing and what worked a year ago might not
Speaker 1: work today. It might not work during a different phase
Speaker 1: of life, and so we need that flexibility that a
Speaker 1: full toolkit can offer us, the opportunity to change out,
Speaker 1: you know, one instrument for another when the job and
Speaker 1: the needs change. Totally agree. So let's talk now about
Speaker 1: the materializing a goal. You say, understand how to materialize
Speaker 1: a goal our steps or our efforts improves the way
Speaker 1: we track our progress. Which is a nice sentence that
Speaker 1: sort of summarizes everything you cover in that chapter. It's
Speaker 1: kind of in one sentence that's pretty good. But let's
Speaker 1: talk about what are some of the things we want
Speaker 1: to do as we think about materializing a goal. This
Speaker 1: is particularly great this time of year because a lot
Speaker 1: of people are going to start thinking about, Okay, two
Speaker 1: is coming, how might I want to be different? And
Speaker 1: they're going to start to materialize a goal. So, so
Speaker 1: what are some things we need to know in that
Speaker 1: and how did you do that with your drumming? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, this sort of comes back to the conversation
Speaker 1: that we opened with about the parable and how our
Speaker 1: brain is is an amazing organ that we have at
Speaker 1: our disposal, but it also causes us problems. Our brain
Speaker 1: is faulty. It is powerful. It's more powerful than computers
Speaker 1: certainly are now but maybe ever will be. But yet
Speaker 1: there's these inherent biases in the way that our brain
Speaker 1: and our memories work that can do us a real
Speaker 1: disservice when we're trying to monitor our progress, for example,
Speaker 1: So if we were just to leave it to our
Speaker 1: own memory and look back on Let's say it's March
Speaker 1: and we set a new Year's resolution in January and
Speaker 1: we're trying to think, how far have I come? Am
Speaker 1: I making progress? Is the amount of effort that I
Speaker 1: could in commensurate with output that and getting the change
Speaker 1: that I'm seeing? And so many people give up a
Speaker 1: month in, a month and a half in and throw
Speaker 1: away their efforts that they have invested into a new
Speaker 1: Year's resolution or I mean January one, or any time
Speaker 1: that we set gold that's important, And oftentimes that's because
Speaker 1: it just feels like I've tried so hard and I'm
Speaker 1: getting nowhere, to which I ask, really, have you really
Speaker 1: gotten nowhere? I know from my own personal experience when
Speaker 1: I try to reflect on my drumming or many other
Speaker 1: goals that I've taken on, I really can't trust my
Speaker 1: brain to give me the right answer to how much
Speaker 1: progress have I made? And is it worth the effort
Speaker 1: that I've invested. Our mood shapes that so much. Right,
Speaker 1: the mood that we're in can shape our cognitive view
Speaker 1: of how we're doing, exactly what we're thinking and feeling
Speaker 1: right now shapes the information that's available in our brain.
Speaker 1: So when we're in a good mood, we tend to
Speaker 1: have happy memories popped to mind. And when we're in
Speaker 1: a bad mood, that's where that sort of feeling like
Speaker 1: we're in a rut or we're in this cycle that
Speaker 1: we can't get out of. That's part of where comes
Speaker 1: from is because you know, one negative experience begets or
Speaker 1: calls upon another negative memory that we have, and again
Speaker 1: we give more weight to those negative experiences that we've
Speaker 1: had in the past. So for me, when I was
Speaker 1: trying to learn to play drums, knowing that I gave
Speaker 1: myself a date that I was going to perform this
Speaker 1: concert publicly and that I was going to write about
Speaker 1: my experience in this book, and I promised myself I
Speaker 1: would do it accurately and not misrepresent what really happened.
Speaker 1: I felt a lot of pressure and I'm not very coordinated.
Speaker 1: I got kicked out of my basketball team because I
Speaker 1: lost my footing and ran into somebody who was on
Speaker 1: my own team, pushed her out of bounds when she
Speaker 1: had the ball, and we lost the game. I never
Speaker 1: got invited back to play another game. After that. So
Speaker 1: when I'm thinking about can I actually play this song publicly,
Speaker 1: it just felt like every time I practiced, I wasn't
Speaker 1: making enough progress to be able to meet that goal.
Speaker 1: I was so nervous, I was so anxious about this
Speaker 1: personal conquest that I had set for myself. But all
Speaker 1: I was really focusing on was what I wasn't getting.
Speaker 1: It wasn't coming together the coordination problems that I was experiencing.
Speaker 1: And so then I realized, you know what I've been
Speaker 1: talking about, I've been writing about materializing. I need to
Speaker 1: do that here. I got to stop relying on my
Speaker 1: memory to determine whether I'm making sufficient progress to hit
Speaker 1: my mark a couple of months in the future. So
Speaker 1: I set up an app on my phone to ping
Speaker 1: me a couple of times a day and ask did
Speaker 1: you practice drums since last time I asked you? Mostly
Speaker 1: I told it no, but if I said yes, and
Speaker 1: it would say how did you do? Talk about that experience,
Speaker 1: and I dupped down a few little notes. I did
Speaker 1: that for a month, and then I downloaded all the
Speaker 1: data from my phone and I thought about, well, what
Speaker 1: am I going to think in a month that I
Speaker 1: haven't done very much at all. It's been, you know,
Speaker 1: a really busy time of the semester as an academic professor.
Speaker 1: My kids had a lot of stuff going on that
Speaker 1: I've had to manage. I don't I don't feel like
Speaker 1: I've done anything this month. But when I actually looked
Speaker 1: at the data, I had a really different and more
Speaker 1: accurate understanding of the progress that I made. I actually
Speaker 1: practiced a lot more than I remembered practicing. Those sessions
Speaker 1: you tended to be like fairly mundane. They were monumental moments,
Speaker 1: and that's why they didn't stick in my mind. But
Speaker 1: when I was looking at the words that I used
Speaker 1: to describe those experiences at the beginning of the month,
Speaker 1: it was things like I cried, I hated it, it
Speaker 1: was awful. By the end of the month, it was
Speaker 1: like a complement. My husband, who actually is a drummer,
Speaker 1: so gave me my first genuine, legitimate compliment, and my
Speaker 1: own feelings had resonated with that, you know, leading up
Speaker 1: to that, I feel I'm getting like a little bit better.
Speaker 1: My head doesn't feel like it's going to explode today.
Speaker 1: But these are like, you know, small moments. They're not
Speaker 1: life changing. I'm not like concert ready yet, And that's
Speaker 1: why they didn't stick in my memory, which is why
Speaker 1: it's also important to write them down so that you
Speaker 1: can become a better personal accountant of your own effort
Speaker 1: investment in progress. Our minds aren't going to be able
Speaker 1: to do that for us. Yeah, I love that idea.
Speaker 1: I do behavioral coaching work with people, and that is
Speaker 1: such a big one as people will just be like,
Speaker 1: I'm not getting anywhere, and I'll be like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: let's actually look at the data. Let's you know, let's
Speaker 1: look at your chickens over the last few weeks. Let's
Speaker 1: see the progress you've Made's look at the tone, the
Speaker 1: way you're rating things out of curiosity. What app did
Speaker 1: you use to do that? It's called the reporter app. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I got that idea from this really cool collaboration that
Speaker 1: I came upon. These two women who didn't know each
Speaker 1: other at all before found one another at a conference
Speaker 1: for their field. They are like, uh, data scientists and
Speaker 1: I don't know their whole background, architects. I mean they
Speaker 1: are a polymath, each of them that they are like
Speaker 1: experts in so many areas. They found each other as
Speaker 1: total strangers, met and decided in that moment that they
Speaker 1: met that they were going to commit to each other
Speaker 1: for fifty two weeks. They were going to each week
Speaker 1: pick a goal that or pick something that they wanted
Speaker 1: to track, like what sort of animals do I experience
Speaker 1: in New York City on a day to day basis?
Speaker 1: Or how many times do I give or receive compliments?
Speaker 1: And they would just pick these sort of random themes
Speaker 1: and note every element every time they came upon a compliment,
Speaker 1: gave or received one, every animal that they saw, and
Speaker 1: their walks around the city. And then at the end
Speaker 1: of the week they would create this amazing visual depiction,
Speaker 1: I mean really like contemporary art. They would put it
Speaker 1: on the back of a postcard. One lived in New York,
Speaker 1: one lived in London, and they'd send the postcards to
Speaker 1: each other at the end of the week with this
Speaker 1: very beautiful, like vivid depiction of quantifying whatever data they
Speaker 1: had been collecting. Again, this sort of low level, daily,
Speaker 1: everyday stuff that might not stick in your mind unless
Speaker 1: and they used the Reporter app, unless they were noting
Speaker 1: it within their phone and then downloading the data to
Speaker 1: look at all of their experiences over the week and
Speaker 1: their postcards are just beautiful, And in fact, the Museum
Speaker 1: of Modern Art in New York City UM acquired them all,
Speaker 1: purchased their entire collection, and it's a part of their
Speaker 1: permanent exhibits now at the museum. So they were the
Speaker 1: ones who told me about the reporter app for how
Speaker 1: to keep track of daily experiences. That's awesome. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: loved that story in the book. It is such such
Speaker 1: a great story. So we're talking about tracking our progress
Speaker 1: in this way largely exactly. I mean, it's one of
Speaker 1: the most effective ways for getting an accurate insight into
Speaker 1: how far you've come and how far you have to go. Now.
Speaker 1: The next question then is like, well, what do we
Speaker 1: do with that information? So all right, I learned a
Speaker 1: little bit more on drums than I thought I had
Speaker 1: done before. And as a behavioral scientist, then I know
Speaker 1: that what we have choices as people, we have choices
Speaker 1: what do we do with this data that we have now?
Speaker 1: And some really cool insights from behavioral scientists work is saying,
Speaker 1: you know, should you reflect back on that progress you've
Speaker 1: made or should you look at sort of the void.
Speaker 1: Here's where I am now and here's where I want
Speaker 1: to go. I am an accurate understanding of where I
Speaker 1: am and I know what the goal is. So should
Speaker 1: we look to what's to come? Or should we look
Speaker 1: at what we've accomplished? Where are we going to find
Speaker 1: more motivation? And it's really interesting because again there's no
Speaker 1: one right answer, right. It depends on the person, depends
Speaker 1: on that person's goal that they're that they're thinking about
Speaker 1: um And what the research says is that when somebody
Speaker 1: is really committed to a goal and they've you know,
Speaker 1: maybe they have invested a lot in it already, this
Speaker 1: is something that is you know, personally central to who
Speaker 1: they are looking forward, is actually more motivating. They didn't
Speaker 1: doubt that they were going to be committed, you know,
Speaker 1: they don't need to convince themselves that this is something
Speaker 1: that is worth investing in. They want to close that
Speaker 1: gap separating where I am now and where it is
Speaker 1: that I want to be. But people who are new
Speaker 1: to a goal, or maybe for whom you know, the
Speaker 1: goal is more extrinsically motivated. It's something you have to
Speaker 1: do because the boss has said it, or you know,
Speaker 1: it's not like core to who you are as a person.
Speaker 1: Then reflecting back on past accomplishments. Progress to date can
Speaker 1: be more motivating because in a sense, it's signaling, you know,
Speaker 1: how much have you put into this thing? Are you
Speaker 1: really going to give up? Now? Look at what you've
Speaker 1: already accomplished. It can give you a sense of self efficacy,
Speaker 1: of feeling or data to prove you can do this.
Speaker 1: And then also it's signaling that you must want to
Speaker 1: do this because the get what you've already done before,
Speaker 1: and it's hard for people to give up on anything
Speaker 1: that they have invested in, So you know, that's that's
Speaker 1: a point where we can sort of self reflect think
Speaker 1: about is this the goal I'm highly committed to or
Speaker 1: is it less central to who I am? And use
Speaker 1: that as sort of a diagnostic tool to inform whether
Speaker 1: we should use that accounting experience, that materializing experience to
Speaker 1: look forward to the future or look back on our past.
Speaker 1: Is there any correlation in if I'm looking back to
Speaker 1: the past for sort of affirmation that I'm doing better,
Speaker 1: which we might refer to as a positive reinforcement, and
Speaker 1: I may be stretching this, which is why I'm asking
Speaker 1: versus looking towards the gap between where I am and
Speaker 1: the future, which is a little bit of a potentially
Speaker 1: negative reinforcer, or am I stretching making that connection between
Speaker 1: those things? Again, as people, we have opportunities to think
Speaker 1: about it in multiple ways. So some people probably do
Speaker 1: think about looking to the future as a negative. This
Speaker 1: unknown this like you know, mounting to do list that
Speaker 1: separates where I am and where I want to be.
Speaker 1: But for other people, especially those that are most committed
Speaker 1: to this thing that they're pursuing, it's like having something
Speaker 1: hanging over your head. You want to see it come
Speaker 1: to a close. You know, this is sort of an
Speaker 1: interesting personality test. I like movies that are really open ended,
Speaker 1: like indie films, where just sort of like the end
Speaker 1: of the day and you have no idea what happens
Speaker 1: to the people tomorrow, right, and there's so many possibilities.
Speaker 1: I love that, and my husband hates it. He needs
Speaker 1: the closure. He wants the story to get wrapped up.
Speaker 1: He wants that to be the end of the narrative.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't like those open ended feelings. And of course,
Speaker 1: you know, we can all resonate with with both of
Speaker 1: those perspectives in different situations. But for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: looking forward to the future does give you that like
Speaker 1: poll that impulse and like, oh I want to close
Speaker 1: this gap. I don't like having this just hanging open,
Speaker 1: having it is an open thread. So you know, I
Speaker 1: think again, there's opportunities to think about that either as
Speaker 1: a positive of like Okay, it's clear where am I
Speaker 1: going towards now, where is the gap that I need
Speaker 1: to close? And for other people it may not be
Speaker 1: seen that way. And in this section you talk about
Speaker 1: that it's important to know how to materialize a goal
Speaker 1: and also how to create a plan. Yeah. So you know,
Speaker 1: I think especially when it comes to New Year's resolutions
Speaker 1: or major milestones in people's life, when they're thinking about, Okay,
Speaker 1: what do I really want for myself? These moments where
Speaker 1: we reflect and then set a new, grand, big intention,
Speaker 1: those are exciting moments in our life, and oftentimes what
Speaker 1: we do is set an aspirational goal, a stretch goal.
Speaker 1: You know, uh, you know, this is where I want
Speaker 1: to be with my life. Like we're talking in like major, big,
Speaker 1: abstract kind of ways, and that's great to do, but
Speaker 1: sometimes that's where the goal setting stops is that people say,
Speaker 1: all right, world, this is what I'm going to make
Speaker 1: happen this is what I want for myself. A lot
Speaker 1: of people at that moment will do things I create
Speaker 1: dream boards or vision boards for their personal life, for
Speaker 1: their professional life. It's you know, this is like a
Speaker 1: technique of curating images or motifs and compiling them all
Speaker 1: into one visual frame. Some for some people like you know,
Speaker 1: literally a corkboard that they're putting these images that represent
Speaker 1: what they want for themselves in one same space, and
Speaker 1: then the advices hang this in a place where you'll
Speaker 1: see it every day to remind you of what it
Speaker 1: is that you're working for. Again, a very popular technique
Speaker 1: that people use when they're setting goals, and that is
Speaker 1: wonderful because figuring out what you want in life can
Speaker 1: be a big step for a lot of people, right So,
Speaker 1: so that is important. But at the same time, in
Speaker 1: those same sessions when are brainstorming about what it is
Speaker 1: that I want for myself in the future, we need
Speaker 1: to add on some other elements to materialize that not
Speaker 1: just what we want to accomplish, but how we're going
Speaker 1: to accomplish it. So we need to add on some
Speaker 1: other steps. We need a dream big like what those
Speaker 1: vision boards or those dream boards, but we also need
Speaker 1: to concretely plan for action. We need to think about
Speaker 1: what can we do today or this week? What behaviors
Speaker 1: can I engage in? What choices can I make that's
Speaker 1: going to advance my progress in this area. We need
Speaker 1: to translate that abstract idea and to something concrete, manageable, actionable, visionable, right,
Speaker 1: so that we know which way to step first. Do
Speaker 1: I step left? Ors do I step right? We need
Speaker 1: to do that. Another thing that we need to do
Speaker 1: is that we need to foreshadow the obstacles that we
Speaker 1: might experience along the way, and in fact, we will
Speaker 1: find more motivation and persistence if we do that. We
Speaker 1: need to think about what are the challenges I'm going
Speaker 1: to face as I try to take on this goal
Speaker 1: and I take a step in this direction, And you
Speaker 1: might brainstorm a list of three or four possibilities of
Speaker 1: these things that might sty me or throw you off course,
Speaker 1: or be the reason that you throw in the towel.
Speaker 1: And we need to figure out what can we do
Speaker 1: if we experience those obstacles. Now again, I might seem
Speaker 1: like all right, if I'm trying to like psych myself up,
Speaker 1: I'm really excited about this new thing I'm going to
Speaker 1: take on in my life, this new passion that I've
Speaker 1: just discovered that I'm committing to. I'm really going to
Speaker 1: do better. I'm going to be more motivated, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to increase the odds of making it if I
Speaker 1: think about all the ways that I'm going to fail. Really,
Speaker 1: that's a reaction that I get a lot, And the
Speaker 1: answer is yes. And it's the same reason that when
Speaker 1: you get on an airplane, before the plane takes off,
Speaker 1: you know, the flight attendants are telling you what's going
Speaker 1: to happen with the oxygen masks and where can you
Speaker 1: find life jackets? And they do the same thing if
Speaker 1: you get to go out on a boat for a
Speaker 1: boat ride, right, they tell you where you can find
Speaker 1: the life jackets. Now, if you're like, you know, you're
Speaker 1: just about to go off on this new adventure, like
Speaker 1: on a plane or on a boat or whatever, why
Speaker 1: do they kill your buzz by doing that, right, Because
Speaker 1: if that plan is going down or if that boat
Speaker 1: is sinking, that's not the time to try to figure
Speaker 1: out where the life jackets are. You need to already
Speaker 1: know so that you can instantly pick up on plan
Speaker 1: B or Plan C or Plan D whatever you foreshadowed,
Speaker 1: because when we're in those moments of crisis or when
Speaker 1: we're facing challenges, we're thin on resources. We don't have
Speaker 1: as much time to try to like think as creatively
Speaker 1: as possible and to figure out a solution when we're
Speaker 1: in the midst of a problem. And so that is
Speaker 1: why you know, taking that abstretch, high level vision for ourselves,
Speaker 1: planning concretely and foreshadowing those obstacles. When people do those
Speaker 1: steps together, the increase the odds they're actually going to
Speaker 1: make it to their goal. Yeah. An analogy that in
Speaker 1: a slightly different domain is in recovery, right, thinking about
Speaker 1: what might trigger me and what will I do when
Speaker 1: I get triggered? You know what is the actual exact
Speaker 1: thing I will do. It's something that I do with
Speaker 1: with clients a lot. It's like because in that moment,
Speaker 1: like you said, we're low on resources maybe time, but
Speaker 1: we may very well be low on cognitive bandwidth exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's a perfect analogy and a domain that
Speaker 1: really matters to a lot of people. When you're feeling,
Speaker 1: you know, an urge, when you're feeling that temptation, right,
Speaker 1: we can get people in in recovery can be fixated
Speaker 1: on that, right, and so that's not like you're you
Speaker 1: are so narrowly focused on just working through or avoiding
Speaker 1: succoming to this temptation that you know, starting a new
Speaker 1: friendship with a person and feeling confident enough to give
Speaker 1: reach out and make a phone call and ask for help.
Speaker 1: Like that's not going to happen. Then we don't have
Speaker 1: that band, right, like you're saying. You know, another great
Speaker 1: example of this, like you know, the power of force
Speaker 1: shadowing obstacles. I love this example of Michael Phelps, which
Speaker 1: I'm sure you remember from from the book. But in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, right, he was taking the international
Speaker 1: stage for the first time by storm in the Beijing Olympics.
Speaker 1: He you know, is an incredible swimmer. That's what we
Speaker 1: know him for. And he was on the brink of
Speaker 1: doing something that nobody has ever done in the history
Speaker 1: of the entire Olympic Games ever, which is when eight
Speaker 1: gold medals in a single Olympiad. At the time of
Speaker 1: this story, he had already won seven. When he was
Speaker 1: diving into the pool for the two fly was like
Speaker 1: his jam, right, this is what he's known for. It's
Speaker 1: almost like he's a shoe in. To win this race
Speaker 1: in his eighth gold medal, all he needs to do
Speaker 1: is do four lengths of the pool, back and forth,
Speaker 1: back and forth, and the race is over. By the
Speaker 1: time he had done three and just had one length
Speaker 1: of the pool to return, his goggles had filled with
Speaker 1: water and he was swimming blind. If that happened to me,
Speaker 1: I would totally I mean, it would never happen. I
Speaker 1: would never find myself in the Olympics or swimming without
Speaker 1: dying in a pool. Um. But if it was me,
Speaker 1: I would have panicked. He didn't because he had foreshadowed
Speaker 1: this obstacle routinely. In practice. He would rehearse having his
Speaker 1: goggles not be properly sealed and having them filled with water.
Speaker 1: Sometimes his coach would even rip them off his face
Speaker 1: and smashed them on the ground just as he dove in,
Speaker 1: I guess for a dramatic effect. And and he would
Speaker 1: have to practice swimming without goggles. So when it happened
Speaker 1: in the two thousand and eight Olympics, he knew exactly
Speaker 1: what he was going to do, which is start counting
Speaker 1: his strokes because he knew exactly how many strokes it
Speaker 1: would take from him for him to get from one
Speaker 1: end of the pool to the other. He did that
Speaker 1: calmly turned his attention to counting his strokes. He won
Speaker 1: that two fly, won his eighth gold medal, and then
Speaker 1: would go on to win fifteen more in his career.
Speaker 1: So I think that's a great example of what foreshadowing
Speaker 1: obstacles can do and what particular circumstances it's most essential.
Speaker 1: That's a great story. Let's move on to narrowing our
Speaker 1: focus of attention. Why is this valuable and when might
Speaker 1: we want to do it? You know, narrowing our focus
Speaker 1: of attention the idea that, like, you know, we can
Speaker 1: imagine that there's a spotlight shining on just one thing
Speaker 1: at the expense of what's in our periphery. That's a
Speaker 1: powerful tool, especially when what we're focusing on might seem
Speaker 1: far off. So I've been doing research in this area
Speaker 1: for about fifteen years now, and we are really focused
Speaker 1: on exercise. People's exercise goals that they have walking more,
Speaker 1: running faster, and trying to increase the number of steps
Speaker 1: that they've taken. And when you tell people like oh,
Speaker 1: just you know, set a further goal, just just try
Speaker 1: going a little bit farther today, see what happens, and
Speaker 1: then you can up at the next day it up.
Speaker 1: But the next day that can be really overwhelming for
Speaker 1: people because literally, when they're looking at the track that
Speaker 1: they're going around, or the street that they're going to
Speaker 1: walk down that now they're supposed to walk farther, that
Speaker 1: destination can look really far off. It looks farther to them.
Speaker 1: What we have found is that when they have that
Speaker 1: perceptual experience, when to them they are seeing the world
Speaker 1: in more extreme ways than other people do that stop sign,
Speaker 1: I can't make it there, I can't walk to that
Speaker 1: building that's too far away. It affects their psychological oriens, right,
Speaker 1: they stop believing that they can do it. They think
Speaker 1: the task is too challenging, and they throw in the
Speaker 1: towel sooner. So there is a direct connection between that
Speaker 1: visual experience and their motivational and psychological readiness to excel
Speaker 1: at that particular task. So we were trying to figure out, Okay,
Speaker 1: if that visual experience is sort of the the initiator
Speaker 1: of the problem, can we trick people? Can we trick
Speaker 1: their visual experiences into seeing the world in a way
Speaker 1: that is going to energize them. That is going to
Speaker 1: give them the belief that they can do this, and
Speaker 1: will that have consequences for how much they actually exercise.
Speaker 1: So we came up with, you know, these instructions that
Speaker 1: are very simple. They literally cost nothing. It's just about
Speaker 1: changing what you do with your eyes. And like I said,
Speaker 1: we would tell people just imagine that there's a spotlight
Speaker 1: shining on that stop sign up ahead, or that building
Speaker 1: that you're hoping that you can walk to, or the
Speaker 1: other end of the park that you've never quite made
Speaker 1: it too yet. Imagine a spotlight shining just on that location,
Speaker 1: and focus your gaze there. Don't pay attention to the
Speaker 1: people on the sides or the buildings over on the
Speaker 1: right or the left. Just focus your attention, narrow your focus.
Speaker 1: What we found is that when they do that, it
Speaker 1: induces our visual illusion of proximity. When we have them
Speaker 1: estimate the distance, tell us how far away does that
Speaker 1: goal feel, they're saying it feels closer, and they don't
Speaker 1: realize it. They don't realize that that narrowed focus has
Speaker 1: created this sort of perceptual trick for them. But when
Speaker 1: we look to see them, well, what happens if we've
Speaker 1: induced this visual illusion by changing the way that people
Speaker 1: are looking by not paying attention to the distractions on
Speaker 1: the side. What we found is that people across many,
Speaker 1: many studies, thousands of people that we have tested and
Speaker 1: lots of different contexts, they walk and run faster, they
Speaker 1: go out for walks more frequently, they take more steps
Speaker 1: in their day, and they say that it hurts less.
Speaker 1: The tasks are the same. Right, we're not actually changing
Speaker 1: anything about what they're doing. We're changing their psychological experience.
Speaker 1: Now when it seems like it's not so far away,
Speaker 1: they feel empowered, they feel like they're ready to take
Speaker 1: on this challenge, and then the experience defies their expectations.
Speaker 1: It isn't as bad I thought I could do it,
Speaker 1: and look, I did it, And it's sort of creating
Speaker 1: this positive reinforcement cycle. Right with change the visual experience,
Speaker 1: we change which changes their motivational state, which helps them
Speaker 1: perform better. And when they do better than they thought
Speaker 1: that they could, they repeat that experience over time. So
Speaker 1: that's an example. I think of the power of our
Speaker 1: eyes simple tweak early on, and all of that happens
Speaker 1: within the process of setting and reaching a goal, and
Speaker 1: you can see these big downstream consequences, and does that
Speaker 1: translate into something that you know, the goal isn't like
Speaker 1: literally visible with my eyes. You know what I loved
Speaker 1: about this section of the book is the phrase which
Speaker 1: is our mental states have a much bigger impact than
Speaker 1: our physical ones on our ability to get through things.
Speaker 1: And that really hit me and I was like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the type of work that most of us, you know,
Speaker 1: as professionals do is not as physically demanding, right, so
Speaker 1: it is very much a mental gain. You know, you
Speaker 1: say in that chapter, people who think that what they've
Speaker 1: done will take a lot out of them feel more
Speaker 1: tired afterwards, even if you know that's not the case.
Speaker 1: So how does this translate into things that are not
Speaker 1: directly visual? How is that? For a long question? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a great question because you're I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a lot that this technique is relevant to, but
Speaker 1: one of them that you know comes to mind as
Speaker 1: a parallel is time. We can't see time, but time
Speaker 1: is always a big determinant of what goals we set
Speaker 1: and whether we reach those goals. How we manage our
Speaker 1: time is really important. A lot of times when people
Speaker 1: set goals, some of those goals that matter most to us,
Speaker 1: are that are most important, are ones that are pretty
Speaker 1: far off in the future. You can take saving for retirement, right,
Speaker 1: what when is retirement? For some people it might be never,
Speaker 1: but you know, but for almost everybody, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: pretty far off in the future. And all kinds of
Speaker 1: experts tell us, like, what, we should start saving for
Speaker 1: retirement in our twenties and if we do that right,
Speaker 1: think of how much better off will be in our
Speaker 1: retirement years because of how compound interest works. But nobody
Speaker 1: in their twenties is thinking about retirement. And when I
Speaker 1: work with my college students who are in their twenties
Speaker 1: with their first jobs and asking them, um, you know,
Speaker 1: have you thought about your four oh one b play on?
Speaker 1: And they're like, I don't even know what that is.
Speaker 1: I mean, I really don't even know what that is either,
Speaker 1: But but they certainly don't and they're not saving for it,
Speaker 1: they're not investing in it. And when you ask why
Speaker 1: the number one was common answers because it seems like
Speaker 1: that's so far off. I don't even know who, Like,
Speaker 1: who's that person who's going to get that money? Like
Speaker 1: what has retired me look like? I have no idea
Speaker 1: who that is. And so that's what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: is that oftentimes, you know, will reap the biggest benefits
Speaker 1: if we invest small today for a distant, far off future.
Speaker 1: And because of that big separation of time people have,
Speaker 1: people find it challenging to connect what I'm doing today
Speaker 1: with that distant goal, that distant you know, place that
Speaker 1: I'm trying to work towards. So a really amazing researcher
Speaker 1: at U C. L A. Hal Hirschfeld, he's he's done
Speaker 1: work trying to say, like, okay, can we connect that space?
Speaker 1: Can we shrink that temporal space, that psychological distance that
Speaker 1: separates me and my twenties, if we're thinking about retirement
Speaker 1: and me and my sixties, who's actually going to get
Speaker 1: this money? In my lab, we did an analog of
Speaker 1: his research, which is we took pictures of people's faces,
Speaker 1: of twenty year old spaces. We morphed them with you know,
Speaker 1: my angeleu. Tom broke out and created like actual visual
Speaker 1: depictions of what retired you might look like, and we
Speaker 1: contracted that space. We made what seems so abstract and
Speaker 1: far from the future relevant in the here and now,
Speaker 1: and what we saw is that people's interest in understanding
Speaker 1: how retirement works and their commitment to investing some of
Speaker 1: their income now for retirement years increased substantially by contracting
Speaker 1: that space. So I'm not suggesting everyone needs to go
Speaker 1: out by computer morphing software and like, look, you know,
Speaker 1: imagine every day what they're going to look like when
Speaker 1: they have more wrinkles and white hair than they do now.
Speaker 1: But finding ways to connect my current self with that
Speaker 1: future self can help make it easier to make the
Speaker 1: tougher choices today that will be essential for better outcomes
Speaker 1: later on. Let's move on to number three, which will
Speaker 1: be the sort of opposite of the one we just
Speaker 1: talked about, which is, instead of narrowing our focus attention
Speaker 1: is having a wider bracket. Let's talk about why that's helpful,
Speaker 1: and then maybe tell us when one versus the other
Speaker 1: we might want to think about the wide bracket is
Speaker 1: in opposition to that narrowed focus, right when is it
Speaker 1: important to take a step back see the bigger picture,
Speaker 1: to be aware of the paths that are on the
Speaker 1: right versus on the left. That's what using that wide
Speaker 1: bracket is about. If we go back to that example
Speaker 1: of those data scientists who are tracking compliments and animals
Speaker 1: in the urban environments, and they used a wide bracket
Speaker 1: to help maintain their commitment to something that I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people would have thrown in the towel
Speaker 1: on so so literally when they talked about sending these
Speaker 1: postcards back and forth, I asked them, how did you
Speaker 1: How did you do that? That's a lot. You're paying
Speaker 1: attention every single moment of every single day, and you're
Speaker 1: doing that for fifty two weeks, seven days a week,
Speaker 1: like that's incredible commitment that you had. And and one
Speaker 1: of them said that the reason I was able to
Speaker 1: do that was because of this wider bracket that I
Speaker 1: was taking. I was seeing today's choices within this bigger
Speaker 1: context of what it is that I had committed to.
Speaker 1: To be a little bit more concrete, as it might
Speaker 1: apply to the rest of us who aren't just trying
Speaker 1: to track animals and compliments, Sometimes we can get so
Speaker 1: narrowly focused on one course of action that can be
Speaker 1: hard to let go when we might need to the most.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we need to change course. This may not be
Speaker 1: the right career for us, This might not be the
Speaker 1: right person to commit to. This might not be the
Speaker 1: right goal that we're working to achieve, but it can
Speaker 1: be really hard to let go, especially if we've invested
Speaker 1: time and resources into this path that we have taken,
Speaker 1: and so we need to take a step back and
Speaker 1: realize that there might be more ways to accomplish what
Speaker 1: we really want if we try a different path. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that we have failed. It doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that we made a mistake. It means it's time to
Speaker 1: change course, you know. I think a great example is
Speaker 1: Vera Wang. We know her for her fashion empire that
Speaker 1: she's created an incredible company, you know, we know her
Speaker 1: most probably for her wedding dresses that she's made, but
Speaker 1: that's not where her career started. She was a figure
Speaker 1: skater and she was on the national and international stage
Speaker 1: for figure skating. She hit a peek, though that wasn't
Speaker 1: quite the top of where that profession could take you.
Speaker 1: But she's sort of plateaued there, doggedly pursuing the next
Speaker 1: and final level of success, but she never quite made it,
Speaker 1: and at one point she just said that's it. I've
Speaker 1: tried and I'm done now. Some might say, well, she
Speaker 1: feel at figure skating, I didn't know if she was
Speaker 1: a figure skater, I don't know. That was part of
Speaker 1: her history. And then then she stopped trying to make
Speaker 1: it too literally the top of that industry. But for her,
Speaker 1: she doesn't see it that way. When she talks about
Speaker 1: that experience of moving from figure skating to fashion design,
Speaker 1: she said, all I did was take a step back,
Speaker 1: reflect on what is it that I really want? And
Speaker 1: am I going to get that? Am I going to
Speaker 1: meet that passion through figure skating? The answer is no,
Speaker 1: But what is it that I want? For her, it
Speaker 1: was the art and the beauty of line l I
Speaker 1: n e. You literally cut lines into the ice as
Speaker 1: a figure skater, and you cut lines into fabric. So
Speaker 1: she saw this as just a natural connection, you know,
Speaker 1: just another instantiation of what it was that she was
Speaker 1: truly interested in art and lines and the fluidity of
Speaker 1: the lines and how the lines can move together. And
Speaker 1: of course when she moved to fashion, she's incredibly successful.
Speaker 1: It's not a failure. It was just taking a step back,
Speaker 1: thinking more abstractly about what is it that I really
Speaker 1: want and being able to see multiple possibilities that you
Speaker 1: can't before if you just you're focused on taking one
Speaker 1: step forward, one step forward, one step forward, on the
Speaker 1: very same path. Let's take your drumming project. Right, when
Speaker 1: in your drumming project, did you know it's time to
Speaker 1: narrow my focus? And when did you know it's time
Speaker 1: to widen the bracket? Let's use that as an example
Speaker 1: to sort of talk about how do I know when
Speaker 1: to do each I mean, I know it won't apply universally,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean for me, in setting the goal,
Speaker 1: I knew that I needed to be narrow and not
Speaker 1: so wide. And maybe for you you have the opposite
Speaker 1: of experience and guitaring that you know, get and learning guitar, right,
Speaker 1: but your goal is to have an expansive repertoire. For me,
Speaker 1: it was to have a very singular one. And so
Speaker 1: you know, I was learning that the skills that are
Speaker 1: necessary in order to play this one song. But you know,
Speaker 1: I can't say that after all of this time of
Speaker 1: having learned that song, in the years of practicing that
Speaker 1: now it's been I only have one song. I didn't
Speaker 1: learn translatable skills because I was so narrowly focused. But
Speaker 1: it meant that I got I got what I wanted
Speaker 1: out of that experience. And so you know, sometimes when
Speaker 1: we need that extra push in the case of the
Speaker 1: exercise work that we were doing, to cross over that
Speaker 1: finish line to get the extra boost of energy. That's
Speaker 1: when we need to take the distractions away. And when
Speaker 1: a narrowed focus can really be helpful contract that space.
Speaker 1: It can make us feel closer to the end game
Speaker 1: than perhaps we really are, but that can be motivating
Speaker 1: and then we aren't going to be pulled in so
Speaker 1: many different directions. Multitasking is a thing that plagues all
Speaker 1: of us, and for almost all of us, it does
Speaker 1: a disservice for our ability to get the best out
Speaker 1: of what we're putting in. So that's when we might
Speaker 1: want to use that narrowed focus, is when we need
Speaker 1: an extra push of energy to cross over that finish line,
Speaker 1: and when we're feeling really scattered or like, you know,
Speaker 1: having that experience of like I'm just not getting anything
Speaker 1: done and I can't cross over that finish line. The
Speaker 1: wide bracket, though, in contrast, is when we need options
Speaker 1: when this is not working. I'm feeling, you know, like
Speaker 1: I'm on a treadmill and I'm working so hard and
Speaker 1: I'm not getting anywhere. And if you have accurately assessed
Speaker 1: your progress and that is the right conclusion to draw.
Speaker 1: That's when we need to sort of free ourselves from
Speaker 1: that fixation that we have on this one course of action,
Speaker 1: and we need to take a step back and we
Speaker 1: need to think more abstractly at a higher level, going
Speaker 1: back to that vision board. If we've created some version
Speaker 1: of that to to reflect on, Okay, what is it
Speaker 1: that I really want and give ourselves the time in
Speaker 1: the space to think about all the different ways that
Speaker 1: we could get there. That's a great example, and I
Speaker 1: often see this with coach clients, is there are times
Speaker 1: we need to actually, like you're saying, sort of zoom
Speaker 1: back out and go why did I start on this?
Speaker 1: What was important about this? And then connect the narrow
Speaker 1: view Okay, I'm doing this thing, and sometimes reconnect that
Speaker 1: back to the broader thing, because I think there is
Speaker 1: a tendency. You use a phrase somewhere in the book
Speaker 1: about we get caught in the middle. You know, we
Speaker 1: get caught in the middle. We're not seeing a ton
Speaker 1: of progress, We're not beginning, but we're not ending. We're
Speaker 1: kind of in the middle. And sometimes I find you know,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, why does this thing matter to me,
Speaker 1: which is the broader perspective exactly. And you know what
Speaker 1: we're talking about, what are the stages for effective goal setting?
Speaker 1: Thinking abstractly, planning concretely, and foreshadowing obstacles. Those first two
Speaker 1: steps are that are the connection that you're talking about
Speaker 1: thinking abstractly, but in that same goal setting session thinking concretely.
Speaker 1: It can help wed those two together of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is what I'm doing every day, this is what
Speaker 1: my day looks like, why am I doing that? Oh?
Speaker 1: That's right, because I have made that mental connection to
Speaker 1: the bigger purpose that this action is trying to serve. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's similar. Every time when I sit down
Speaker 1: to meditate, the first thing I do is I just
Speaker 1: sort of remind myself like why am I doing this?
Speaker 1: Because it helps me sort of reconnect. I just I'm
Speaker 1: not going through the motions as much at that point
Speaker 1: because I've got I've got a reason that it matters
Speaker 1: to me in that moment. There's this great example, this
Speaker 1: case study done of a Dutch telecom company that had
Speaker 1: set this new high level goal for its for its
Speaker 1: organization and for all the employees, which was sustainability. They
Speaker 1: wanted an increasing amount of recycling that was happening and
Speaker 1: reduced the number of things showing up in the trash
Speaker 1: can that should have been recycled. So they brought in
Speaker 1: a special communications team. They did all kinds of messaging
Speaker 1: to tell their rather large organization, all the members of it,
Speaker 1: this is what we're doing, people, the sustainability of matters,
Speaker 1: start recycling. They gave everybody individual recycling cans, and they
Speaker 1: swapped out the janitorial staff for for members of the
Speaker 1: research team who every night collected every single garbage can
Speaker 1: and recycling. Then encountered the number of things that showed
Speaker 1: up in guard bitch that should have been recycled, and
Speaker 1: what did they find. Simply stating that high level goal
Speaker 1: did not reduce the number of things showing up in
Speaker 1: the trash that should have been recycled. They suspected that
Speaker 1: they thought, with the behavioral scientists that they were working with,
Speaker 1: that just setting this intention wasn't going to get the
Speaker 1: job done. So in a second way, for another coport,
Speaker 1: they did the same thing, sent out this messaging had
Speaker 1: the recycling bins right there, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: in that same sort of first week of messaging, had
Speaker 1: each individual think about a concrete action that they could
Speaker 1: take that would align with that intention, that high level
Speaker 1: abstract goal. But people came up with wasn't magic or
Speaker 1: rocket science. It was used a paper couple, throat and recycling.
Speaker 1: If I have some extra papers, I'll put them in
Speaker 1: the recycling rather than the trash. It's exactly what they
Speaker 1: wanted people to do. But importantly they took that time.
Speaker 1: They had each individual employee think about, all right, this
Speaker 1: is the sustainability initiative, and couple that mentally, pair it
Speaker 1: with the concrete action, and what do they see. Well,
Speaker 1: at baseline, about twelve things were showing up in the
Speaker 1: trash can that should have been recycled, but that dropped
Speaker 1: to less than two hundred within a week, and that
Speaker 1: stayed for two weeks, for a month, for two months
Speaker 1: time that they were tracking what's showing up in the garbage,
Speaker 1: and that stayed at that really low level even when
Speaker 1: they made the actual action the act of recycling more
Speaker 1: challenging by taking away individual recycling cans and putting them
Speaker 1: into a communal space, so people had to get up
Speaker 1: from their desks and walked to the center of the
Speaker 1: office to recycle. So even despite that obstacle. Having gone
Speaker 1: through that experience of pairing the high level vision with
Speaker 1: the concrete action produced long lasting behavioral change that occurred
Speaker 1: even despite facing these added pressures and obstacles. The last
Speaker 1: one we'll talk about is the power of framing. So
Speaker 1: framing the idea here is just based on the principle
Speaker 1: that what we see predicts what we do. Right, So,
Speaker 1: our eyes are incredibly powerful, and our eyes, you know,
Speaker 1: of course we can see them on our face, but
Speaker 1: they are directly connected to our brain, and they're connected
Speaker 1: to parts of our brain that are responsible for producing
Speaker 1: the actions that we take, for moving our hands, for
Speaker 1: coordinating our feet, so you know, you can literally see.
Speaker 1: Neuroscientists can the connection between our eyes and our movements
Speaker 1: are choices that behaviors that we make. So we can
Speaker 1: take advantage of that as people. We don't have to
Speaker 1: be neuroscientists to appreciate and take advantage of that fact,
Speaker 1: but we can use it too. We can use that
Speaker 1: our eyes as a superpower to create a visual world
Speaker 1: that's going to instantly automatically spark the kinds of choices
Speaker 1: that we want ourselves to make. So you can think about,
Speaker 1: you know, we've all we've all lived through COVID times
Speaker 1: and people talk about the COVID nineteen, the nineteen pounds
Speaker 1: that they gain by working at home, and you know,
Speaker 1: of course results of reasons that that has happened. There's
Speaker 1: a stress. We're not going outside to exercise as much.
Speaker 1: But people are working at their dining room table a
Speaker 1: lot right where they're working is the same space that
Speaker 1: they associate with food and comfort, right, or they take
Speaker 1: a quick break and then before I was in the
Speaker 1: office to refill their water bottle or go chat with
Speaker 1: the colleague, but now it's to go visit the fridge.
Speaker 1: So we have set up our environments. We the world
Speaker 1: has created these environments for us that are putting visual
Speaker 1: cues in our visual frame, in our frame that is
Speaker 1: automatically associated with a choice that that maybe isn't ideal.
Speaker 1: If we have found ourselves to be, you know, overeating
Speaker 1: relative to what we have done in the past. So
Speaker 1: we can acknowledge that, you know that part of it
Speaker 1: is like you, out of sight, out of mind, and
Speaker 1: we can you know, change up the way that that
Speaker 1: we craft our home environment or the way that we
Speaker 1: stock our pantry or our fridge. Those things that we
Speaker 1: have to keep in the house because our kids need
Speaker 1: those snacks and they're really tempting for us. Well, we
Speaker 1: can hide them from our kids, and we can hide
Speaker 1: them from ourselves so that it's a little bit more
Speaker 1: challenging to see them or to reach them. And it's
Speaker 1: not that we don't know that they're there, but they don't.
Speaker 1: We don't automatically see them and then reach for them
Speaker 1: as our first go to snack. The company Google did this,
Speaker 1: They did this experiment with their own employees. Right. They
Speaker 1: were noticing that, you know, one of the perks of Google,
Speaker 1: it's all this amazing food and the free snacks, and
Speaker 1: the at Facebook, you know, beer taps that are in
Speaker 1: the wall. You can bring your own growler and get
Speaker 1: more than a pint as you walk by to to
Speaker 1: go to the bathroom. Right, and all of these perks
Speaker 1: were literally increasing, you know, well decreasing the health of
Speaker 1: their employees. So they made some changes. They made the
Speaker 1: unhealthy snacks, they put them with those into opaque containers,
Speaker 1: ones that they couldn't see. They put the unhealthy drinks
Speaker 1: like the full sugar sodas on lower shelves in the
Speaker 1: refrigerator or clouded the glass so that as people are
Speaker 1: walking by, they're not getting that visual cue. What's appearing
Speaker 1: in their their frame is not something that is the
Speaker 1: unhealthy choice. Right. They sort of tried to separate that
Speaker 1: link between you see and what you do by making
Speaker 1: it a little bit harder to see these things. And
Speaker 1: what they noticed, according to those that stock to Google's pantries,
Speaker 1: was that consumption of these unhealthy snacks decreased dramatically. So
Speaker 1: Google showed it with their own employees. And we can
Speaker 1: take advantage of that too and think about how it
Speaker 1: affects what we're eating at home or what we're doing.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe rather than leaving our slippers at the
Speaker 1: foot of our bed, we leave our running shoes or
Speaker 1: keep the yoga mat out so that what our feet
Speaker 1: and our touch first, and what are I c first
Speaker 1: in the morning is the meditation mat or the yoga
Speaker 1: mat to cue that action rather than than something else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm always astounded by those sort of studies. And you know,
Speaker 1: one way of looking at it is like how much
Speaker 1: harder is it to open the opaque can? Right? But
Speaker 1: as you say, it's a sight thing and the clearest
Speaker 1: example of this in my life. Is the difference between
Speaker 1: me playing the guitar when it's sitting there on a
Speaker 1: stand versus in a case. The difference is seconds of effort,
Speaker 1: literally seconds of effort to open a guitar case pull
Speaker 1: it out. But I play it way more when it's
Speaker 1: just sitting there because I, like you said, I see it.
Speaker 1: I bought this. Uh it's kind of behind me. It's
Speaker 1: one of those like balance boards that you kind of
Speaker 1: surf on. I love that thing when it's laid out
Speaker 1: on the ground. I'll do it pretty much every day
Speaker 1: because I'll walk by it four or five times. When
Speaker 1: it's sitting up in the corner again a foot away
Speaker 1: from where it is now. I could go days without
Speaker 1: doing it. I am just astounded by that every time.
Speaker 1: It's just amazing. Yeah. I had the same experience learning
Speaker 1: drums that once I put it within my line of sight,
Speaker 1: we put it in a space that we walk by
Speaker 1: to get out the door, the number of times that
Speaker 1: I practiced increased because it's like waiting for my husband,
Speaker 1: waiting for my kid get their shoes on. I can
Speaker 1: go down and play for the five or ten minutes
Speaker 1: that's going to take before they come out the door,
Speaker 1: because it's that visual automatic queue. When you know, my
Speaker 1: son was born, we had this big bookshelf, sort of
Speaker 1: like a curio cabinet full of books, and every time
Speaker 1: he went to bed, we would make sure that the
Speaker 1: doors were open so that the first thing that he
Speaker 1: saw when he woke up was his shelf of books.
Speaker 1: And we noticed that, you know, as soon as he
Speaker 1: was able to walk, what he would do in the morning,
Speaker 1: get up and go get a book. You can't read,
Speaker 1: of course, but it was queuing that choice and maybe
Speaker 1: bought us another extra minute or two of sleep before
Speaker 1: he came into our room. Yeah, awesome. Well, Emily, thank
Speaker 1: you so much. I'm happy to have gotten through the
Speaker 1: four strategies. I loved the book. Again. It's called Clear,
Speaker 1: Closer Better, How Successful People See the World. World links
Speaker 1: to your book in our show notes well have links
Speaker 1: to how people can find you online so that they
Speaker 1: can check out everything you're doing. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Thanks for this opportunity. It was a great conversation. If
Speaker 1: what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider
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