Speaker 1: You can override some of these mental resistances by focusing
Speaker 1: on how good these things feel, by really noticing at
Speaker 1: the end of a workout that you feel good, and
Speaker 1: then really motivating yourself to do the next workout, not
Speaker 1: by saying, oh, I should exercise now, but by being like,
Speaker 1: I will feel better in half an hour for having
Speaker 1: done this.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 3: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 3: Carrie Leibowitz, a health psychologist, speaker, and writer. Carrie taught
Speaker 3: the Mindsets Matter Stanford Continuing Studies course and combine scholarly
Speaker 3: expertise with practical strategies to help people understand and harness
Speaker 3: the power of their mindsets and find joy and winter. Today,
Speaker 3: Eric and Carrie discuss her new book, How to Winter
Speaker 3: Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on cold, dark or difficult Days.
Speaker 4: Hi Carrie, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hi Eric, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: Cited to talk with you. Your book is called How
Speaker 4: to Winter Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on cold, dark
Speaker 4: or difficult Days. And I will tell you this is
Speaker 4: very timely because it is cold here, it is dark,
Speaker 4: and the winter weather has caused me a couple of
Speaker 4: difficult days recently, so this is right on time for me.
Speaker 4: But before we get into that, we'll start, like we
Speaker 4: always do, with the parable and the Parable. There's a
Speaker 4: grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life,
Speaker 4: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 4: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 4: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other's a
Speaker 4: bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.
Speaker 4: And the grandchild stops. They think about it for a second.
Speaker 4: They look up at their grandparent and they say, well,
Speaker 4: which one wins, and the grandparent says, the one you feed.
Speaker 4: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 4: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 4: the work that you do.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, I mean, I'm here as a psychologist and
Speaker 1: a mindset recent searcher, which is my profession but also
Speaker 1: certainly seeps into my whole life philosophy and the way
Speaker 1: that I live. And so to me, when I was
Speaker 1: thinking about this, I was really thinking about feeding as attention,
Speaker 1: as the power of our attention, and what we are
Speaker 1: attending to, what thoughts we are giving power to and
Speaker 1: attending to most, what language and words we're using to
Speaker 1: reflect the things that we notice in the world really
Speaker 1: shapes our reality in profound ways. And I think a
Speaker 1: lot of us think of attention as being automatic, but
Speaker 1: it's also of course very trainable and influenced by things
Speaker 1: like our mindsets. And so to me, it's really about
Speaker 1: which wolf, which part of you, which mindset are you
Speaker 1: reinforcing with that attention, and how is that going to
Speaker 1: become self fulfilling and create your reality?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I love that I'm at work on a book
Speaker 4: and I was just yesterday literally writing about attention, about
Speaker 4: this very idea, and I was writing about the idea
Speaker 4: that you just sort of reference that it's both sort
Speaker 4: of conscious and unconscious. It's a little bit like our breath, right,
Speaker 4: Like you can focus on your breath and do this,
Speaker 4: and then you could forget about it and it just
Speaker 4: kind of does its thing. Attention is the same way.
Speaker 4: You can consciously choose where to direct your attention and
Speaker 4: it just goes off on its own also, and what
Speaker 4: it chooses to go off on is very interesting. There's
Speaker 4: a lot of different factors that control that. But what
Speaker 4: I've noticed is, and I think everybody who's paid any
Speaker 4: attention has probably noticed this that for a lot of us,
Speaker 4: if we're not careful, where our attention goes is to
Speaker 4: what's not right, what's wrong. It's just a natural place
Speaker 4: for it to land. And on the topic of winter,
Speaker 4: that's really easy to do because you know we're going
Speaker 4: to talk about changing the mindset. But initially you're like,
Speaker 4: it's dark, I don't particularly like that, it's cold. I
Speaker 4: don't particularly like that. You know, it's easy to find
Speaker 4: what's wrong with winter. So maybe we could start off
Speaker 4: by you talking about how you started to learn how
Speaker 4: to find what's right with winter.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm here today as a reformed winter hater.
Speaker 1: So I grew up at the Jersey Shore, which is
Speaker 1: a very summer centric location, and you know, really lived
Speaker 1: for those summers and really didn't enjoy the winter. But
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen I ended up moving to a city
Speaker 1: in northern Norway called Trumsa, and Trumsa is over two
Speaker 1: hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle, and it's so
Speaker 1: far north that they experienced two months of what's known
Speaker 1: as the polar night, which is the time of year
Speaker 1: from late November to late January in which the sun
Speaker 1: never actually rises above the horizon, so you get a
Speaker 1: little bit of indirect light, but you don't see the
Speaker 1: sun for two months. And I was there because people
Speaker 1: and Trump's so actually have relatively low rates of winter
Speaker 1: depression or seasonal effective disorder. There's not none, but given
Speaker 1: how far north they are, given how long and dark
Speaker 1: and cold their winters are, the rates are a lot
Speaker 1: lower than we would expect. And I was there to
Speaker 1: research and try to understand why is this and do
Speaker 1: they have strategies for surviving the winter that maybe we
Speaker 1: could use elsewhere.
Speaker 4: Maybe their mental health is so bad you don't even
Speaker 4: have a scale to measure it. Maybe that's what it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I maybe your response reflects what I thought
Speaker 1: before I went there and what people said to me,
Speaker 1: Like I moved there really afraid of the winter, because
Speaker 1: everyone I told that I was doing this was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I could never do that. I would
Speaker 1: get so depressed. People would ask me, are you going
Speaker 1: to go there to research why they're not depressed and
Speaker 1: get depressed yourself. And there's this assumption that winter is
Speaker 1: really inherently depressing. But in Trumsa, I was introduced to
Speaker 1: a new way of seeing the season, a new way
Speaker 1: of experiencing winter, and a new mindset for looking at
Speaker 1: the cold, dark days of winter with a little bit
Speaker 1: of a different eye.
Speaker 4: Okay, so I'm going to explore what that different eye is.
Speaker 4: I do have a couple questions, though, and you can say, hey,
Speaker 4: we're going to get to those in due course if
Speaker 4: they're out at place. But there's two things I'm thinking of.
Speaker 4: One is it does appear that seasonal effective disorder seems
Speaker 4: to be a real thing. I don't know. I'd be
Speaker 4: curious your thoughts on that. And then secondly, the other
Speaker 4: thing that I'm thinking about is you can find a
Speaker 4: lot of studies that show like people who work, say,
Speaker 4: second shift, really have worse mental health outcomes. And I'm
Speaker 4: curious how much of either of those things is expectation
Speaker 4: driven and how much of it is reality. Let me
Speaker 4: try and say this slightly differently. I do think that
Speaker 4: life is not what happens to us, nor is it
Speaker 4: how we respond to it. It is a co creation
Speaker 4: of those two things, and so there's some of each
Speaker 4: at work here. So tell me how you think about that,
Speaker 4: Having really studied this in more.
Speaker 1: Detail, absolutely so. As mindset researchers, you know, I'm often
Speaker 1: trying to get people to understand the impact of mindset.
Speaker 1: But of course our objective circumstances also matter, and it's
Speaker 1: always going to be the interplay of our objective circumstances
Speaker 1: and the power of our mindset. Which is something I
Speaker 1: really observed in Norway, where my mindset shifted in response
Speaker 1: to a culture around me, infrastructure around me, things like
Speaker 1: that that supported enjoying winter. The thing that I like
Speaker 1: to focus on in my work is that mindset is
Speaker 1: often overlooked. We often really know that the objective circumstances matter,
Speaker 1: but underestimate the impact of our mindset. Now, seasonal effective
Speaker 1: is or is a little bit complicated, and I have
Speaker 1: a lot to say on it, so I'm going to
Speaker 1: try to keep it succinct and then you can use
Speaker 1: whatever is the most interesting. So there is actually a
Speaker 1: lot of debate amongst psychologists about how quote unquote real
Speaker 1: seasonal effective disorder is. I don't think that that debate
Speaker 1: is the most useful thing to get into. I think
Speaker 1: the most useful thing is to understand a little bit
Speaker 1: about the history of the disorder and how it's understood
Speaker 1: today by clinical psychologists versus by the broader population. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, seasonal effective disorder was discovered in the
Speaker 1: United States, in Maryland, not in the Arctic, not in Iceland,
Speaker 1: not in the Netherlands, not in places with longer, darker,
Speaker 1: colder winters. It was discovered at this sort of middle latitude,
Speaker 1: and it was originally measured with something called the SPACK,
Speaker 1: the Seasonal Pattern Assessment Questionnaire. And basically this questionnaire met
Speaker 1: measures how much people's behavior changes in the seasons. So,
Speaker 1: what times of year do you sleep the most and
Speaker 1: socialize the most and eat the most, and feel the
Speaker 1: best and feel the worst. And this scale supposed that
Speaker 1: if you had a lot of seasonal variation, you would
Speaker 1: have winter depression. If your behavior is changing too much,
Speaker 1: if you're having two extreme fluctuations, that's a symptom of
Speaker 1: winter depression. Now, in a place like Tromso, where I lived,
Speaker 1: they go from twenty four hours of full sunlight in
Speaker 1: the summer where the sun never sets, to twenty four
Speaker 1: hours where the sun doesn't rise in the winter. And
Speaker 1: in a place like that, it doesn't really make sense
Speaker 1: this idea that you wouldn't have a seasonal fluctuation in
Speaker 1: your energy or your mood, or your motivation or what
Speaker 1: you eat. And so people in these places tend to
Speaker 1: adapt more to the winter and not see that as problematic,
Speaker 1: but see that as healthy and normal and living in
Speaker 1: tune with nature. Now, since the initial development and conception
Speaker 1: of seasonal effective disorder, most psychologists now use different criteria.
Speaker 1: They don't use that seasonal pattern assessment questionnaire anymore. It
Speaker 1: is now considered a subtype of clinical depression. So that
Speaker 1: means first you have to meet the criteria for a
Speaker 1: clinical depressive episode, and then you can be diagnosed with
Speaker 1: the sort of seasonal pattern that indicates winter depression. And
Speaker 1: I think this is a really important thing about winter
Speaker 1: depression that gets misunderstood because I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people feel that it is a lighter, milder form of depression,
Speaker 1: that it is a less stringent criteria than full blown
Speaker 1: clinical depression, when in fact it is not. It is
Speaker 1: a subset of clinical depression, and so you first need
Speaker 1: to meet those criteria. What I think a lot of people,
Speaker 1: especially in the US, experience is maybe some form of
Speaker 1: the winter blues that comes from the fact that we
Speaker 1: are affected by this change in daylight. We are affected
Speaker 1: by rhythms of light and dark. So I think this
Speaker 1: gets back to your question about people who work the
Speaker 1: second shift having worse health outcomes. We know that light
Speaker 1: and darkness affects our circadian rhythms. So light in the
Speaker 1: morning helps us feel awake and alert and improves our
Speaker 1: concentration and improves our mood, and darkness at night makes
Speaker 1: us sleepy and helps us get ready for bed. And
Speaker 1: if we're living out of sync with that, we're fighting
Speaker 1: our natural internal rhythms. And what I think happens a
Speaker 1: lot for people in winter is they feel more tired
Speaker 1: in the winter because there's this real change in the environment.
Speaker 1: But their lifestyle or their schedule or their personal belief
Speaker 1: system doesn't make space for fluctuations in energy and mood
Speaker 1: and behavior. And so when they're fighting the season and
Speaker 1: they feel down, the automatically go to, oh, I must
Speaker 1: be depressed. I must have seasonal effective disorder. So some
Speaker 1: of that is definitely expectation of what you think winter
Speaker 1: is going to be like, but some of that is
Speaker 1: also meaning making where you know everyone. I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of warnings about seasonal effective disorder that come
Speaker 1: up every single year, more so even than other mental
Speaker 1: health disorders that are far more prevalent. And so when
Speaker 1: somebody feels down in the winter, there's a real top
Speaker 1: of mind explanation for it, which is, oh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: must have seasonal effective disorder.
Speaker 4: Makes sense. It sounds like the first way that it
Speaker 4: was measured was partially measuring change in behavior and interpreting
Speaker 4: that as bad. Right, if there's a change in behavior,
Speaker 4: then it shows that the season is affecting you in
Speaker 4: a bad way. You know, a big theme that's in
Speaker 4: your book. You said it there when you were talking
Speaker 4: like of course, things change, particularly if you're in a
Speaker 4: place where you have no light. And so what we're
Speaker 4: talking about is skillful adaptation to the changes that are
Speaker 4: occurring naturally and allowing our lives to try and flow
Speaker 4: with those changes instead of trying to force our existing
Speaker 4: ways of operating into a different environment that's not conducive
Speaker 4: to it. Is that about correct?
Speaker 1: Absolutely? I mean, if you look at every other living
Speaker 1: thing on the planet, plant or animal, they're all changing
Speaker 1: their behavior in the winter, they're all slowing down, they're
Speaker 1: all resting more. But I think a lot of us
Speaker 1: see it as a personal failure of strength or grit
Speaker 1: or willpower when we can't have the same energy and
Speaker 1: sleep schedule and productivity year round. So if you live
Speaker 1: north of Boston, there is more than a six hour
Speaker 1: difference in daylight between the summer solstice and the winter solstice,
Speaker 1: So you're getting more than six hours less daylight in
Speaker 1: the winter than the summer. Now, if you live at
Speaker 1: other latitudes, it might be a smaller difference, but there's
Speaker 1: still a difference in how much daylight you're getting. And
Speaker 1: you know, we like to pretend we're not animals on
Speaker 1: a planet, but we are animals on a planet and
Speaker 1: that's going to affect us, and I think making space
Speaker 1: for that can actually be a lot healthier and feel
Speaker 1: a lot better than trying to fight it and sort
Speaker 1: of tough it out through it by beating ourselves up
Speaker 1: when we're more tired at this time of year.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's really interesting. I'm reading a book right now.
Speaker 4: It's a fiction novel called Orbital, and it won the
Speaker 4: Booker Prize this year, and it's based on a bunch
Speaker 4: of astronauts who are out on the International Space Station
Speaker 4: and one of the key ideas in the book is
Speaker 4: they get I think it's sixteen sunsets and sunrises in
Speaker 4: their twenty four hour day, and they're only going to
Speaker 4: be out there for a certain amount of time, six months,
Speaker 4: nine months, right, And it's interesting to see because the
Speaker 4: training they're given is stay on twenty four hour time,
Speaker 4: stay on twenty four hour time. You have to remain
Speaker 4: anchored to twenty four our time. But they're seeing sunset
Speaker 4: and sunrise sixteen times a day, so they're trying to
Speaker 4: sort of adapt to that and live in that world,
Speaker 4: but also stay tethered to a world. And she makes
Speaker 4: the point in the book too that you just made,
Speaker 4: which is that as animals we are synced. We have,
Speaker 4: you know, billions of years of sunrise, sunset, certain amount
Speaker 4: of light, certain amount of dark. That adjusting and the
Speaker 4: animals adjust to that. And it's interesting to see them
Speaker 4: as humans being told, don't adjust to what you're seeing,
Speaker 4: adjust to this external idea of what time is. It's
Speaker 4: just a similar concept to what you're describing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think you know there are benefits to it,
Speaker 1: right if you're the kind of person that likes that routine,
Speaker 1: if you're in space and you're trying to stay tethered
Speaker 1: to your life on Earth, right, maybe it's valuable to
Speaker 1: try to keep that routine. But I also think that
Speaker 1: there is something that we've lost when we're fighting this
Speaker 1: natural rhythm, and something to be gained by leaning into
Speaker 1: that natural rhythm and letting different times of year affect
Speaker 1: us in different ways.
Speaker 4: Yep. So let's move into some of what you learned there.
Speaker 4: You've got a great quote in the book, and maybe
Speaker 4: we can just use this as a place to jump off.
Speaker 4: And you say, people in Tromsou don't dread winter. They
Speaker 4: embrace it as a season of unique beauty and joy.
Speaker 4: And then you also go on to say mindset is
Speaker 4: the difference between suffering through winter and savoring it. So
Speaker 4: let's talk about some of what they do there that
Speaker 4: makes winter more enjoyable for them that we often don't
Speaker 4: do here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I noticed three things that you know, three
Speaker 1: sort of broad strategies, and there's lots of little things
Speaker 1: within them. But I think people in northern Norway appreciate
Speaker 1: winter for what it is, so they're not bemoaning that
Speaker 1: it's not summer. They're letting it be a time for
Speaker 1: slowing down and sort of embracing it. They make it special.
Speaker 1: So if appreciating it is about noticing with your thoughts,
Speaker 1: making it special is about using your actions to create
Speaker 1: opportunities in the winter. So doing hobbies that you enjoy
Speaker 1: in the winter, making it cozy, working with the darkness
Speaker 1: by lighting candles, all of those things give you something
Speaker 1: to look forward to in the winter and make the
Speaker 1: season special. And then finally, they're getting outside at all
Speaker 1: times of year, in all weather, and they really don't
Speaker 1: let the darkness, the cold, or the wet stop them
Speaker 1: from going outside, connecting with the outdoors, moving their bodies,
Speaker 1: and so broadly those strategies I've found and I've observed them,
Speaker 1: not just when I was living in Trumsa, but since that,
Speaker 1: I've traveled to you know, winter places all over the
Speaker 1: world researching the book, and those three strategies pop up
Speaker 1: again and again. And what I like about them is
Speaker 1: that you can make them your own. They don't have
Speaker 1: to look the same for everyone, and you can do
Speaker 1: specific practices within each of them that fit for you
Speaker 1: and your lifestyle and your climate. But these broad principles
Speaker 1: of appreciating the season for what it is, trying to
Speaker 1: make it special, and getting outside. They're all ways of
Speaker 1: finding the opportunities in the season rather than seeing winter
Speaker 1: as only limiting.
Speaker 4: Okay, so let's start at the prequel to those, which
Speaker 4: is expectation. Talk to me about the role of expectation
Speaker 4: in the cocreation of our reality.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, in my other line of work, which I
Speaker 1: did as a graduate student at the Stanford Minded Body Lab,
Speaker 1: I was a placebo researcher, and I was researching how
Speaker 1: placebo effects influence our health and well being, because there's
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of evidence that placebos work and placebos
Speaker 1: can help us heal from all different kinds of conditions,
Speaker 1: and a big factor that is part of that is
Speaker 1: our expectation of healing is what we believe is going
Speaker 1: to happen. So if you take a sugar pill and
Speaker 1: you feel better, it's not the sugar and the sugar
Speaker 1: pill that is healing you. It's at least in part,
Speaker 1: your expectation of relief. And what I think expectations do
Speaker 1: is they prime our attention to notice certain things in
Speaker 1: our environment that make things more likely. So in the
Speaker 1: case of winter, if you think of winter and you
Speaker 1: conjure only the worst parts of winter, right the miserable
Speaker 1: cold days, the grayness, the feeling uncomfortable, the feeling tired,
Speaker 1: then not only are you setting yourself up to experience that,
Speaker 1: but that is the psychological pathway that is easiest for
Speaker 1: your mind to take all season long. So every time
Speaker 1: you see something that confirms your expectations or that matches
Speaker 1: your expectations, that's going to stand out to you even
Speaker 1: more and that's going to create your reality. The other
Speaker 1: thing expectations do, and this is something that humans are
Speaker 1: actually unique in, is humans are the only animals that
Speaker 1: can worry about something that has not happened yet or
Speaker 1: may never happen, right, And so expectations can also create
Speaker 1: double suffering, where not only are you suffering during the winter,
Speaker 1: but you're suffering in anticipation of the winter. And then
Speaker 1: I think the other thing that expectations do is they
Speaker 1: also prime our behavior. And so when we are focusing
Speaker 1: on all the things we don't like about winter, there's
Speaker 1: a really strong incentive for us to push away from that,
Speaker 1: to try to deny or ignore or deflect or sort
Speaker 1: of other what we might call unhealthy coping mechanisms. It
Speaker 1: doesn't really help us to go towards doing the things
Speaker 1: that can actually make a difference and make the winter
Speaker 1: more comfortable and more enjoyable.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you talk about that this winter can be an
Speaker 4: invitation to shift our perspective, and yeah, so much of
Speaker 4: our experience. And again we hit on this earlier, Right,
Speaker 4: it's a co creation between what actually is what we
Speaker 4: think about, what is The number of studies on this
Speaker 4: is amazing and we can just tell it ourselves. There's
Speaker 4: two examples I can give. One I give often is
Speaker 4: I have some back pain, and so when my back
Speaker 4: hurts a little bit, my default, if I tune in
Speaker 4: my brain, is saying something on the order of my
Speaker 4: back is killing me. My back is killing me. And
Speaker 4: if I stop that train of thought and I actually
Speaker 4: pay attention to what's actually going on, it's really more
Speaker 4: like my back is a little bit tight in this
Speaker 4: very little area down here. And you talk later in
Speaker 4: the book about the relationship of words, and a previous
Speaker 4: guest once said, extreme words create extreme emotions. And I
Speaker 4: love that idea, because when I say my back's killing me,
Speaker 4: I'm creating this certain frame or tone. It's very different
Speaker 4: the other one I play with in the winter. And
Speaker 4: I did it just last night. I had to take
Speaker 4: the trash out and it was really cold and it
Speaker 4: was dark, and I didn't really feel like getting my
Speaker 4: coat on, so I just going to just hop or
Speaker 4: then my first thought was it's e f and freezing
Speaker 4: out here, right, That's my first thought. And then I
Speaker 4: just thought, well, what if I just think of this
Speaker 4: as invigorating and all of a sudden, it's a different experience.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying I wasn't cold, of course I was cold,
Speaker 4: but how I felt about being cold, how I related
Speaker 4: to being cold, was different. And this is really what
Speaker 4: you're driving at here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the same sensation interpreted in two different ways feels different,
Speaker 1: you know, And a lot of things in life and
Speaker 1: in the winter, they're ambiguous or they're complex. Right, the
Speaker 1: cold can be effing freezing and invigorating. Those things can
Speaker 1: exist simultaneously. But which thing you're focusing on is going
Speaker 1: to determine your experience. And I really like and appreciate
Speaker 1: your example about the back pain. This is something that
Speaker 1: we use in my house a lot. So my husband
Speaker 1: has some you know, gi distress issues, and so you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes they'll flare up and you go into that stress
Speaker 1: and anxiety mode of like, oh, I'm gonna feel so bad.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm going to be up all I oh whatever.
Speaker 1: And the thing that I have found that helps him
Speaker 1: the most is when he's like, oh, my stomach hurts,
Speaker 1: I just ask him how bad is it? And a
Speaker 1: lot of the time he stops and he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's not that bad. Like, it's not the actual sensation
Speaker 1: you're experiencing in the moment that is so unbearable. It's
Speaker 1: the fear and anxiety and uncertainty that it's going to
Speaker 1: get worse. Yes, But if you can just be in
Speaker 1: the present moment with it, not always, but sometimes, or
Speaker 1: even a lot of the time. It's a lot more
Speaker 1: manageable than your runaway train of a brain is telling
Speaker 1: you it is.
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Speaker 4: placebo for a second. I'm indulging a curiosity here. Placebo
Speaker 4: works on some people, it doesn't work in other cases.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm thinking of my mother right now. My
Speaker 4: mother has a lot of chronic pain, has had it
Speaker 4: for a long time. I'm not asking you to solve
Speaker 4: my mother's problem, by the way, and she has had
Speaker 4: a number of procedures done, including back surgery, where our
Speaker 4: expectation was this is really going to help, and then
Speaker 4: it doesn't really seem to help. And I'm curious because
Speaker 4: I feel like, as I think about that, I'm like, well, Okay,
Speaker 4: there's the reality of whatever nerves are being affected or
Speaker 4: not being affected, and what the impact is on those.
Speaker 4: There's the expectation that this should make it better, but
Speaker 4: there's also probably fear in there that it's not going
Speaker 4: to do any good because previous things haven't done any good.
Speaker 4: So do I really you know, like all this swirls together,
Speaker 4: do we know in what situations and under what circumstances
Speaker 4: and what type of people placebo tends to work best on.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is really the million dollar question and
Speaker 1: the thing that we're trying to figure out. So we
Speaker 1: do know that placebos tend to work very well on
Speaker 1: conditions for which there is a large psychological component, right,
Speaker 1: so in general things like chronic pain, anxiety, depression, although
Speaker 1: there are many conditions where objective metrics like Parkinson's tremors
Speaker 1: or blood pressure or heart palpitations also respond to placebos.
Speaker 1: I think the thing with expectations and something like surgery,
Speaker 1: and I've seen this with family members as well, is
Speaker 1: it's really complicated because expectations have to be properly calibrated.
Speaker 1: You know. We keep coming back to this that it's
Speaker 1: the combination of objective reality and your mindset, and your
Speaker 1: mindset can't completely override objective reality. And so I think,
Speaker 1: especially when you have something like a surgery, if your
Speaker 1: expectation is that it's going to solve all of your problems,
Speaker 1: and that afterwards you're going to have no pain, and
Speaker 1: you're not thinking about the recovery you're going to have
Speaker 1: to do, and you're not thinking about the physical therapy
Speaker 1: you're going to have to do, and you're not thinking
Speaker 1: about how much pain reduction would actually be considered a success.
Speaker 1: Then expectations might backfire because you thought it was going
Speaker 1: to be one way and then it's a different way.
Speaker 1: And we know from research, for example, on doctor patient relationships,
Speaker 1: that if you set two positive expectations that are totally
Speaker 1: out of line with reality, all that does is sort
Speaker 1: of undermine trust.
Speaker 4: Listen to surgeons take and manage expectations. I see this
Speaker 4: again and again. You know that people are not adequately prepared.
Speaker 4: They're given the best case scenario, right.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of it is on meaning making.
Speaker 1: So we actually have a whole line of work where
Speaker 1: we tell people that the side effects of treatment in
Speaker 1: cases where this is true, are actually a sign that
Speaker 1: the treatment is working. And so that helps people integrate
Speaker 1: unpleasant physical sensations with a positive interpretation.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: And you could imagine something like that, right that after surgery,
Speaker 1: you're going to feel sore, but that's a sign that
Speaker 1: your nerves are recalibrating or you know, I'm not a
Speaker 1: doctor friend. You know, like, if you have a wound
Speaker 1: and your wound is itching and you don't know that
Speaker 1: wound itching means healing, maybe that itch is unbearable because
Speaker 1: you're worried it's infected. But if you know that wound
Speaker 1: itching is a sign that it's healing, maybe it's still uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: but it's okay. And so a lot of this is about,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not just expectations, are you going to
Speaker 1: feel good, are you going to have pain? Are you
Speaker 1: going to feel bad? It's what is the meaning of
Speaker 1: the pain that you're feeling? Right, Think about a marathon runner,
Speaker 1: think about a woman in labor. The meaning of that
Speaker 1: kind of pain is very different than a chronic pain
Speaker 1: that you don't know if it's ever going to go away,
Speaker 1: that feels debilitating. So a lot of it is about
Speaker 1: not just setting positive expectations, but what are the most
Speaker 1: adaptive expectations that can help you make sense of the
Speaker 1: objective reality you're facing in a way that is useful
Speaker 1: for you.
Speaker 4: So what are some of the words that the Norwegians
Speaker 4: use around winter that helped them to reframe it?
Speaker 1: So you might be familiar with a Danish word Huga,
Speaker 1: the Little Book of Huga. That's the Danish word for
Speaker 1: coziness that is very popular. The Norwegian counterpart to that
Speaker 1: word is kushlv, so making it cozy. And it turns
Speaker 1: out that a lot of places with long dark winter
Speaker 1: have special words that mean cozy but really take on
Speaker 1: a heightened meaning, you know that where it's something to
Speaker 1: really aspire to, something to really luxuriate in. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think this idea of kushla of huga is it's
Speaker 1: really an inner contentment. You know, it's not it's not
Speaker 1: your Scandinavia decor. It's not an esthetic, although of course
Speaker 1: you know, things can facilitate feelings. It's really this feeling
Speaker 1: of you know, when it's dark and cold and blustery
Speaker 1: outside and you're inside and you're warm and you're comfortable
Speaker 1: and you're with your loved ones and you have nowhere
Speaker 1: to go, and that feeling it's very prized and it's
Speaker 1: very sought after in Norway, especially in Northern Norway during
Speaker 1: the polar night. So Huga is a really good one.
Speaker 1: Another one that I talk about a lot is free
Speaker 1: of Sleeve, which translates to open air life, and this
Speaker 1: is about the Norwegian's connection with nature and the outdoors
Speaker 1: and having time spent outdoors in nature, usually moving your body,
Speaker 1: but sometimes even just like drinking a beer or sitting
Speaker 1: at a cafe, being part of everyday life year round.
Speaker 1: And it's a really strong cultural value. It's something that's
Speaker 1: taught in schools from a young age. You can get
Speaker 1: a master's degree in free of sleeve in Norway in
Speaker 1: sort of education of the outdoors, and it's something that
Speaker 1: I think people there really embrace and embody on a
Speaker 1: daily basis.
Speaker 4: Do the Scandinavians know their language sounds like a muppet
Speaker 4: language or did Jim Henson get draw his language? I'm
Speaker 4: kidding because I don't know what our language sounds like
Speaker 4: to them. I'm sure it sounds in its own way.
Speaker 1: I do have such a fondness for the Norwegian cadence.
Speaker 4: I love it too. Yeah, it's just you can tell.
Speaker 4: I think Jim Henson must have been influenced by them.
Speaker 4: I love that idea of the outdoors. I was talking
Speaker 4: with you before the show. I was in Amsterdam recently,
Speaker 4: and in Amsterdam everybody gets everywhere on bike. I guess
Speaker 4: I shouldn't say everyone. A whole lot of people, way
Speaker 4: more than you might even imagine as possible, go everywhere
Speaker 4: on bike, and they do it in all weather.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I live in Amsterdam now, and the Dutch
Speaker 1: have a saying you're not made of sugar, you won't
Speaker 1: melt in the rain, and that is you know, when
Speaker 1: you're biking everywhere, come rain or shine, that is something
Speaker 1: that you have to say to yourself sometimes before you're
Speaker 1: going outside for a rainy bike ride.
Speaker 4: Well, I will say this, I noticed about the Dutch
Speaker 4: in the rain, they're a little more intense in their cycling.
Speaker 4: Like I was certain I was going to get run
Speaker 4: over in that city. I was just certain I was
Speaker 4: going to get hit by a bike because in the US,
Speaker 4: when you cross the street, once you leave the part
Speaker 4: where the cars are, you're safe. You're just trained. Once
Speaker 4: I get past the cars, I'm safe. Well, in Amsterdam,
Speaker 4: once you get past the cars, you have about a
Speaker 4: foot of safety before you have the bikes. And I
Speaker 4: mean I just felt like for sure I was going
Speaker 4: to get run over. And I noticed that when it
Speaker 4: was raining, they were just a little bit more intense
Speaker 4: in the like I'm getting where I'm going sort of thing,
Speaker 4: but they were all still out there.
Speaker 1: In the Netherlands, the bikes have the right of way,
Speaker 1: so it goes bikes and then pedestrians and then cars,
Speaker 1: and yeah, you know, frequently my friends and family in
Speaker 1: the US will tell us to watch out for the bikes,
Speaker 1: and my husband and I like to say, we're the bikes. Now,
Speaker 1: we are the bikes. Now watch out for us. But
Speaker 1: in the rain, there is something about, you know, you're
Speaker 1: in the elements, and so you're especially motivated.
Speaker 4: To just get where're going.
Speaker 1: And get where you're going. But this is another good
Speaker 1: lesson in expectations, because you know, even as someone who
Speaker 1: has written this book about winter, who lives in the Netherlands,
Speaker 1: who bikes in the rain, there are so many times
Speaker 1: when it's raining and I look outside and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I really don't want to get on my bike, like
Speaker 1: it does not look nice, and then I have to.
Speaker 1: I have no choice. It's the only it's not the
Speaker 1: only way to get around, but it's usually the fastest
Speaker 1: and the most convenition, And so I put on my
Speaker 1: clothes and I bundle up and I go outside. And
Speaker 1: not always, but I would say, nine times out of ten,
Speaker 1: it is so much more pleasant than I thought it
Speaker 1: was going to be nine times out of ten, having
Speaker 1: learned this lesson a million times, my expectations were wrong.
Speaker 1: And it looks like it's pouring, but actually it's just misting.
Speaker 1: And once I get moving, I feel so good and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm tough, I'm alive, like the wind, the rain,
Speaker 1: and there's something about it. We're like, it's so hard
Speaker 1: to internalize this lesson that it feels better than it looks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm fascinating to know what you think about that,
Speaker 4: because I have a similar listener to the show have
Speaker 4: heard me talk about this countless times where every single
Speaker 4: time in my life I've exercised, and it's probably tens
Speaker 4: of thousands at this point, I don't know, it's been
Speaker 4: a lot. Every single time, I'm like, I'm so glad
Speaker 4: I did that. If you follow basic reward theory, I
Speaker 4: would run to exercise, but I don't. I have to
Speaker 4: force myself into it, forces the wrong word. I have
Speaker 4: to lead myself to it way more often than I
Speaker 4: would think. And you know, I've asked a bunch of
Speaker 4: people about this, and a lot of people have just said, Look,
Speaker 4: the basic animal condition is to conserve energy. You're about
Speaker 4: to put out a whole lot of energy for what's
Speaker 4: potentially questionable benefit. There's always going to be some degree
Speaker 4: of resistance, So that's just natural, you know, don't make
Speaker 4: a big deal out of it. And I'm curious whether
Speaker 4: you think this not wanting to be out in the
Speaker 4: freezing cold or the rain is a biological sort of wiring,
Speaker 4: because you know, it's not good to be out in
Speaker 4: the cold in the rain if you're a hunter gatherer,
Speaker 4: for example, And to what extent that's sort of hardwired,
Speaker 4: and to what extent there's cultural aspects of that. And
Speaker 4: I guess what I'm saying is it, do you think
Speaker 4: for the average Dutch person it's easier to get out
Speaker 4: in the rain than it is for you, or do
Speaker 4: you think everybody is facing some degree of what we're
Speaker 4: talking about here.
Speaker 1: I do think most people face some degree of this.
Speaker 1: I think the question is is how much are you
Speaker 1: able to embody this learning?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: So maybe if you are a Dutch person who grew
Speaker 1: up biking in the rain in all weather, it is
Speaker 1: more embodied for you that it's going to feel good
Speaker 1: or not feel bad or not be such a big deal.
Speaker 1: And then there's very real biological things that happen when
Speaker 1: we expose ourselves to the cold over and over again.
Speaker 1: We get used to the cold.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: You can think of the first chilli fall day in
Speaker 1: autumn when you break out your sweater and your coat
Speaker 1: and your freezing and a day of that exact same
Speaker 1: temperature in March, you're wearing a T shirt, right, And
Speaker 1: so there is also something that's not just mental about
Speaker 1: how often you do it, but that's physical that the
Speaker 1: more you do it, the easier it gets. I do
Speaker 1: think that you can override some of these mental resistances
Speaker 1: by focusing on how good these things feel, really noticing
Speaker 1: at the end of a workout that you feel good,
Speaker 1: and then really motivating yourself to do the next workout,
Speaker 1: not by saying, oh, I should exercise now, but by
Speaker 1: being like, I will feel better in half an hour
Speaker 1: for having done this. I do think that there's what
Speaker 1: we call affective forecasting errors, which is when we are
Speaker 1: bad at predicting how we're going to feel about things,
Speaker 1: and humans are often bad at predicting how they're going
Speaker 1: to feel about things. And then there's also right you know,
Speaker 1: loss a version where anything that is perceived to have
Speaker 1: a cost to you, that potential cost is going to
Speaker 1: weigh very heavily, potentially more heavily than the potential gain.
Speaker 1: But I do think that with attention and intention, you
Speaker 1: can at least reduce some of these tendencies to have
Speaker 1: that resistance by you know, having a more positively reinforcing pattern.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's try and put this into practice, so we
Speaker 4: can use me if you like, because this is happening
Speaker 4: early right now. What I was in Europe, one of
Speaker 4: the amazing things was I walked all the time everywhere. Right,
Speaker 4: It's just a lovely thing. Much harder to do here
Speaker 4: in the States, for a whole bunch of reasons. But
Speaker 4: I have been committed to, like, Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 4: you know, ten thousand steps as an arbitrary number, but
Speaker 4: it's a good arbitrary number. So I'm going to try
Speaker 4: and commit to moving that much every day. It is
Speaker 4: cold here, and I have been walking on the treadmill
Speaker 4: in our you know, apartment complex gym better than not walking, certainly, right, good.
Speaker 4: I'm giving myself the thumbs up for that. And I
Speaker 4: also think being outside is lovely I love to be outside,
Speaker 4: and yet I'm finding it hard to talk myself into
Speaker 4: doing it. So coach me through this. What can I
Speaker 4: say to myself that's going to help me embrace the
Speaker 4: cold and get outside and take the walk.
Speaker 1: Make it nice, make it comfortable. So the first thing
Speaker 1: is to dress appropriately. So in Norway and throughout Scandinavia,
Speaker 1: they have this saying there's no such thing as bad weather,
Speaker 1: only bad clothing. And that was something that I really learn.
Speaker 1: You know, I grew up in New Jersey. It gets
Speaker 1: cold in the winter, and I was never dressing appropriately
Speaker 1: growing up in New Jersey. You know, I would wear
Speaker 1: my normal jeans and sneakers and T shirt and throw
Speaker 1: on a coat and wonder why I was freezing when
Speaker 1: I went outside. So in Norway, I really learned to
Speaker 1: embrace the woolen leggings, the layers, the undergarments to really
Speaker 1: be comfortable for going out in the cold, which makes
Speaker 1: such a big difference. So I would say you want
Speaker 1: to be warm, I would do something else that makes
Speaker 1: it enjoyable. So you could go to a favorite spot.
Speaker 1: You could go to a park, or walk around by
Speaker 1: a lake or a river. You could make yourself a
Speaker 1: thermos of something nice and warm. You could listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite podcast, you could listen to the one you
Speaker 1: feed on your life. You could invite a friend to
Speaker 1: go with you. You could listen to an audiobook. But
Speaker 1: you know, I think you have this general idea of
Speaker 1: health is supposed to be painful, right, Like it's all
Speaker 1: about willpower, and it's all about yeah, forcing ourselves and
Speaker 1: doing it even if it doesn't feel good. But the
Speaker 1: truth is, you can get the benefits even if you
Speaker 1: make it feel good. And so what are the things
Speaker 1: that would make it feel good to you? Maybe you
Speaker 1: phone a friend, Maybe you walk to a special destination,
Speaker 1: you know, a favorite bakery or a coffee shop or something.
Speaker 1: If that's accessible or possible for you. You do something that
Speaker 1: makes it into a pleasurable activity, and then you do
Speaker 1: it with an open mind. You say, I'm going to
Speaker 1: try this, and I'm going to see how it feels.
Speaker 1: And this is something that I assign my students to do.
Speaker 1: I assign people and workshops to do of go out
Speaker 1: and take a winter walk. And most of the time
Speaker 1: when my students write their reflections, they all sound the same.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to take a walk, it was so cold,
Speaker 1: I almost turned around. I almost chickened out. The first
Speaker 1: five or ten minutes I was freezing, my nose was running.
Speaker 1: I was unhappy. And then all of a sudden, the
Speaker 1: air turned from frigid to crisp, and I noticed there
Speaker 1: were some birds out and the sun was shining on
Speaker 1: the leaves or the rain was making a nice sound,
Speaker 1: and my mood lifted and I came back and I thought,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'd like to do that again. And
Speaker 1: so sometimes I think, just do it as an experiment
Speaker 1: with an open mind, see how it feels, and then
Speaker 1: if it's good, maybe you'll do it again.
Speaker 4: Now you need to help reframe me on the fact
Speaker 4: that there's no leaves on the trees. It's gray and brown.
Speaker 4: What do you got for me there?
Speaker 1: Well, I would say that this is an opportunity to
Speaker 1: flex your curiosity and to really notice things as they
Speaker 1: are right, Like you know, bare tree branches against the
Speaker 1: sky beautiful? Are there no birds around? Are there no
Speaker 1: animals or are there things to see?
Speaker 4: Just unhappy birds?
Speaker 1: Just unhappy birds. That doesn't sound like projecting to me
Speaker 1: at all, right, And I would say, is there winter
Speaker 1: weather to look at? Are there clouds in the sky.
Speaker 1: Does the sun ever come out? This is something I
Speaker 1: encounter a lot in places, you know, like Ohio, like Amsterdam,
Speaker 1: like London, that have this reputation for a long gray
Speaker 1: winter and do have very gray winters, but also where
Speaker 1: the sun is coming out a lot more often than
Speaker 1: people actually notice, because there's such a bias towards the
Speaker 1: grayness and a narrative that it's gray all the time.
Speaker 1: I was in London on a day that I walked
Speaker 1: around for an hour in the sunshine, and then in
Speaker 1: the afternoon it rained, and I was in a pub
Speaker 1: and the bartender looked outside and was like, h such
Speaker 1: a rainy day. And if it rains at all, it's
Speaker 1: a rainy day. But if it's sunny for only a
Speaker 1: little bit, it's not a sunny day. And so I
Speaker 1: think you can just go out and be present to
Speaker 1: what is Is it really as gray and boring and
Speaker 1: uninteresting as you think, or are there things that you
Speaker 1: can find to be fascinated about if you do the
Speaker 1: same walk in the same place every week. Is there
Speaker 1: an evolution in the bear trees? Is there an evolution
Speaker 1: in the ground in the sky? And I think it's
Speaker 1: not as easy to do this in the winter, like
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna like, we shouldn't pretend that it is,
Speaker 1: you know, in the spring. In the summer it's easier.
Speaker 1: But I think that is one of the opportunities here
Speaker 1: is really to challenge ourself and to flex these uscles
Speaker 1: and to say, Okay, if I can do this in
Speaker 1: the winter, then I can really do this at any time.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the value of a lot of
Speaker 1: these practices in winter, is that it gives us a
Speaker 1: chance to experiment and try things that are maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit more challenging and see what's possible.
Speaker 4: We talked about attention earlier, and I think there are
Speaker 4: ways that we can challenge ourselves to be more curious.
Speaker 4: I think there are ways to prime our attention, so
Speaker 4: things like, well, what's something I've never seen on this
Speaker 4: walk before? You know, I've started to think about the
Speaker 4: gray and go, okay, what kind of gray do we have?
Speaker 4: What are the variations in the gray? There are days
Speaker 4: it's just socked in monocolor one gray, but there are
Speaker 4: lots of other times it's gray, but there's more going on.
Speaker 4: There are shades of gray, there are sections of gray.
Speaker 4: There is stuff to look at. Right, And this is
Speaker 4: where I lean on like my Zen training, because in
Speaker 4: Zen training, the whole idea is if you pay close
Speaker 4: enough attention to what's ordinary, it can become extraordinary.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: That's how you transform the ordinary, day to day things
Speaker 4: into something more special as you give them very close,
Speaker 4: warm attention.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that that is such a powerful practice.
Speaker 1: And you know, so often we have these mindset's about winter.
Speaker 1: We have these narratives about winter. It is gray, it
Speaker 1: is dark, it is gloomy, and it prevents us from
Speaker 1: noticing the shades of gray, or it prevents us from
Speaker 1: noticing when the sun actually comes out, or it prevents
Speaker 1: us from noticing where when. Oh, it's February, and actually
Speaker 1: the buds are starting to be on the trees a
Speaker 1: lot earlier than I ever thought or noticed, because I
Speaker 1: have the narrative that it's winter until April.
Speaker 4: You know, there are some buds on some trees on
Speaker 4: my walk. I guess I didn't tell you the whole
Speaker 4: truth because I have gotten out a few times and
Speaker 4: walked outdoors and I've seen buds on a couple of trees,
Speaker 4: and I'm like, is that normal? It's early January. Should
Speaker 4: that be happening. I don't know. I don't know the answer.
Speaker 4: I don't know what kind of treat it is, but
Speaker 4: there are some.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I don't know either. But I think that
Speaker 1: that noticing is really powerful and is really a great experiment.
Speaker 1: I also think, you know, you are allowed to like
Speaker 1: going out because it makes being in feel really good. Right,
Speaker 1: There's not really anything like going for a long winter
Speaker 1: walk and then coming home and it's warm, and you
Speaker 1: make something hot to drink and you eat a little
Speaker 1: sweet snack and you're on the couch, but you you
Speaker 1: feel good. You don't feel like, oh, I've just been like,
Speaker 1: you know, I have TV madness and a headache from
Speaker 1: like staring at screens the whole day I was outside,
Speaker 1: I got some fresh air, and now it feels great
Speaker 1: to be home. And that is part of the winter experience,
Speaker 1: you know. Reframing it's so nasty out to it feels
Speaker 1: so good in here is part of winter, and I
Speaker 1: think you're allowed to celebrate that.
Speaker 4: Well. You have a line in the book you're sort
Speaker 4: of talking about this idea of comfort and then challenging
Speaker 4: ourselves to become uncomfortable, and you say challenging comfort are
Speaker 4: two sides of the same coin. What does that mean.
Speaker 1: It means that these things really go together. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think we think of them as an opposition. You're
Speaker 1: challenging yourself or you're feeling comfortable, but actually these things
Speaker 1: facilitate and enable each other. That when we do something
Speaker 1: that is a little bit challenging, then we can really
Speaker 1: luxuriate in the comfort that comes afterwards. Or if we
Speaker 1: let ourselves be comfortable and rest when we really need it,
Speaker 1: then we have the fortitude and the resources to challenge
Speaker 1: ourselves and push ourselves a little bit. I also think
Speaker 1: they are two sides of the same coin in that
Speaker 1: you really need them both. And I think this is
Speaker 1: sort of the nuance of right is that sometimes we
Speaker 1: want to practice listening to our bodies and embracing rest
Speaker 1: and letting ourselves slow down. And sometimes we want to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I haven't been outside in four days, and it's time
Speaker 1: to bundle up and go on that walk, even if
Speaker 1: I feel a little bit of mental resistance to that.
Speaker 1: And I think part of this is really tuning into
Speaker 1: what do we need, what is going to make us
Speaker 1: feel good now and in an hour and in a day,
Speaker 1: and sometimes that requires guilt free indulgence and rest, and
Speaker 1: sometimes that requires a little bit of pushing an effort.
Speaker 1: But those things aren't in opposition. Those things are sort
Speaker 1: of flowing together and reinforcing each other.
Speaker 4: Let's change direction a little bit and talk about being
Speaker 4: together in the winter. It sounds like the Norwegian this
Speaker 4: is something they embrace, I feel like outside of like
Speaker 4: say a Christmas holiday or New Year's which it's interesting
Speaker 4: to think about those holidays in the context of being
Speaker 4: placed there to facilitate the very things we're talking about.
Speaker 4: It's not an accident that they happen at the time
Speaker 4: of the year that those sort of things happen at.
Speaker 4: But in the US they were less and less good
Speaker 4: at gathering in general, and I would say we're probably
Speaker 4: even less good at gathering in winter. People generally want
Speaker 4: to embrace the it's yucky out there, I'm not going
Speaker 4: to go out kind of thing. So how might we
Speaker 4: think about gathering in winter in a different way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think this is another place where you know,
Speaker 1: it seems like things are intentioned, but actually we can
Speaker 1: reconcile them. Right that people feel maybe less motivated and
Speaker 1: less social, but Also, we know that winter can be
Speaker 1: a time of loneliness and isolation, and that can be
Speaker 1: a struggle for people. So how can you balance those
Speaker 1: two things? And to me, it's really about adapting the
Speaker 1: way that we socialize and changing that for the winter.
Speaker 1: So in the summer, you know, I want to go
Speaker 1: to the beach with people. I want to go to
Speaker 1: the park, I want to picnic, I want to go
Speaker 1: to the brewery. I want to like gather in a
Speaker 1: group and be high energy. But in the winter, I
Speaker 1: want to be low energy. I want to be in
Speaker 1: my comfy clothes. I want to be warm. But I
Speaker 1: know that if I don't socialize, it really for me
Speaker 1: takes a toll on my mental health, and so I
Speaker 1: like to do a lot more sort of what we
Speaker 1: would call low arousal social gatherings, calm, peaceful gatherings. So
Speaker 1: I'm thinking small groups coming over for dinner, or stopping
Speaker 1: and grabbing some bagels and coming over for a late
Speaker 1: breakfast on Sunday. I'm thinking having friends over for a
Speaker 1: movie night. I'm thinking of even having people and saying
Speaker 1: do you want to come over and do a passive
Speaker 1: hang where we both read our books, or even scroll
Speaker 1: social media, but we're just near each other. I think
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that we find comfort in,
Speaker 1: you know, over the holidays when we gather with family,
Speaker 1: is it's not always this active catch up activity doing something.
Speaker 1: It's just being in each other's presence. And so for
Speaker 1: me in the winter, those are the kinds of socialization
Speaker 1: that I really crave. Is something that feels slow, that
Speaker 1: feels like a low bar and low energy, but that
Speaker 1: still is allowing me to connect with people. So this
Speaker 1: might look different for different people. You know, you could
Speaker 1: have people over in order takeout. You could have you know,
Speaker 1: your reality TV night where once a week people just
Speaker 1: drop in and watch reality TV and their pajamas. You know,
Speaker 1: you could have meeting for a cup of coffee. But
Speaker 1: I think you're allowed to shift the way that you
Speaker 1: gather and socialize to match your mood and your energy
Speaker 1: and what you need. And I think that's really the
Speaker 1: key insight of what do you need at this time
Speaker 1: of year and how can you get that in your
Speaker 1: gatherings and you're socializing with other people.
Speaker 4: So I think we're nearing the end here. But I
Speaker 4: wanted to talk about the last chapter in the book,
Speaker 4: which is called clearing the way. You say that clearing
Speaker 4: a path is an act of faith, believing in the
Speaker 4: journey ahead. Talk to me about clearing the way in winter,
Speaker 4: what you mean by that, and then talk about the
Speaker 4: emotional and psychological aspects of what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think this is really about facilitating the
Speaker 1: right conditions for the most useful mindsets. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm happy that we've already talked a lot about sort
Speaker 1: of the intersection between objective reality and mindsets, because you know,
Speaker 1: I love being a mindset researcher. I think it's really
Speaker 1: powerful and that we can empower people because you have
Speaker 1: control over your mindset. It's something that no matter what
Speaker 1: your circumstances are, it has the potential to influence your
Speaker 1: well being within those circumstances and is something that you
Speaker 1: can take action on. But that doesn't mean that the
Speaker 1: objective circumstances don't matter. And this is something I really
Speaker 1: observed in Norway is that A I was surrounded by
Speaker 1: a culture of people who were appreciating and celebrating winter,
Speaker 1: and that really rubbed off on me and made it
Speaker 1: easier for me to do that. And B I was
Speaker 1: in a place that had the infrastructure to make it
Speaker 1: easier to enjoy winter, where there's good lighting and ski
Speaker 1: trails and the roads are plowed so when it snows,
Speaker 1: you don't have to stay at home, and it's easy
Speaker 1: to find the right undergarments so you can be properly dressed,
Speaker 1: and all the cafes have the cozy lighting. All of
Speaker 1: those things facilitate our mindset. And of course you can
Speaker 1: adopt the mindset to embrace winter wherever you live and
Speaker 1: work with the circumstances that you have, but when the
Speaker 1: path is cleared for you, it's that much easier to
Speaker 1: adopt that mindset. And you know, I'm a social psychologist
Speaker 1: by training, which is really about the psychology of how
Speaker 1: we respond to other people and our environments, and so
Speaker 1: I think it's really important, especially for me, to acknowledge
Speaker 1: that mindset is not a replacement for things like infrastructure,
Speaker 1: or being able to heat your home in the winter,
Speaker 1: or having access to places that you can go outside
Speaker 1: and take a walk safely and enjoy nature year round.
Speaker 1: And so ideally we would have both, right, we would
Speaker 1: have what psychologists call the seed and the soil. You
Speaker 1: would have the soil of the context that is fertile
Speaker 1: for these mindsets to grow in, and so we would
Speaker 1: help people adopt the most useful mindsets, but those mindsets
Speaker 1: would be supported by their communities, their families, their contexts,
Speaker 1: the physical reality of where they live. And I think
Speaker 1: that you know, that's something that we can't ignore when
Speaker 1: we talk about especially like oh, the Norwegian mindset for
Speaker 1: loving winter. It's all about you know, their mindset and
Speaker 1: you can just extract it. But that's really happening in
Speaker 1: the context of all of these other things.
Speaker 4: Yep. Well, I think that's a wonderful place to wrap up.
Speaker 4: You and I are going to continue in the post
Speaker 4: show conversation for a minute because I want to explore
Speaker 4: this last idea in a little bit more depth. Right,
Speaker 4: You said that we have control over our mindset, So
Speaker 4: I'd like to poke around that a little bit. Do
Speaker 4: we really? And I know if I examine that word,
Speaker 4: you'd probably add nuance to it, which I'm going to
Speaker 4: give you the chance to do in the post show conversation.
Speaker 4: And I also I'm fascinated by this interplay between the circumstances,
Speaker 4: the social factors, and then the individual factors and how
Speaker 4: to work with those as people because on one hand,
Speaker 4: you can and acknowledge that the circumstances aren't set up
Speaker 4: for you to appreciate winter in the same way that
Speaker 4: Norwegians do, and thus you can say, well, I can't
Speaker 4: really do it because I don't have that, and that's
Speaker 4: one side of the coin, and that's probably not the
Speaker 4: best mindset. And on the other hand, you could say,
Speaker 4: none of that stuff matters. I'm a self made man.
Speaker 4: I will I will do my own thing, and we
Speaker 4: know that environment matters so so so much, and so
Speaker 4: I always like a chance to dive deeper on this
Speaker 4: with anybody who studies this. So that's what we're going
Speaker 4: to do in the post show conversation listeners. If you'd
Speaker 4: like access to that, as well as an episode I
Speaker 4: do called teaching song and either a poem or a
Speaker 4: quote depending on how I feel, and you'd like the
Speaker 4: joy of supporting a show that really could use your support,
Speaker 4: you can go to one ufeed dot net slash join Carrie.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for this conversation. I've really enjoyed
Speaker 4: it and it's very timely. I'm going to go out
Speaker 4: and walk tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Great. Thanks so much, Eric, it was a great chat.
Speaker 1: And I really appreciate your very thoughtful questions.
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