Speaker 1: What the research shows is that separating out what we
Speaker 1: feel is important to getting to that next step of
Speaker 1: doing something about it and taking action. Welcome to the
Speaker 1: one you feed Throughout time, great tinkers have recognized the
Speaker 1: importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think ring true,
Speaker 1: and yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Steve Magnus, a world
Speaker 1: renowned expert on performance, well being and sustainable success. He's
Speaker 1: the co author of the best selling Peak Performance and
Speaker 1: The Passion Paradox, and Steve coaches executives, entrepreneurs, and athletes
Speaker 1: on their performance and mental skills. He also serves as
Speaker 1: a consultant on mental skills development for professional teams, including
Speaker 1: many of the top teams in professional sports. His most
Speaker 1: recent book is Do Hard Things, Why We Get Resilience
Speaker 1: Wrong and The Surprising Science of Real Toughness. Hi Steve,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Hi Eric, thanks so much for
Speaker 1: having me. I am really excited to have you on.
Speaker 1: I appeared on your podcast in the past and I
Speaker 1: just really felt a real connection. We had such a
Speaker 1: good conversation. And you have a new book called Do
Speaker 1: Hard Things, Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising
Speaker 1: Science of Real Toughness, which is such a wonderful book,
Speaker 1: and I can't wait to get into it. But let's
Speaker 1: start like we always do, with the parable. There's a
Speaker 1: grandparent who's talking with their grandchild who said, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents greed and hatred and fear.
Speaker 1: And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: looks up at their grandparents, says, well, which one wins,
Speaker 1: and the grandparents says, the one you feed, So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. So, as you probably know, Eric, I
Speaker 1: love this parable and when I heard it from you,
Speaker 1: it was like a light bulb went off. My background
Speaker 1: is in running and athletics, but for the longest time
Speaker 1: I conceptualized that battle as this angel versus devil on
Speaker 1: my show Older and in sport or running it saying
Speaker 1: you know, one voice saying, come on, you can do it,
Speaker 1: like accomplish your goal, and then another voice saying, slow down,
Speaker 1: You're not good enough. You know, find a hole to
Speaker 1: step in. Just quit. What's the point? And I tho
Speaker 1: fake injury, the fake injury? And I promise you those
Speaker 1: are the thoughts that went through my head. And when
Speaker 1: you get them in private, like even the best of
Speaker 1: the best, you know, marathons in the in the world
Speaker 1: will tell you the same thing. It's a concept that
Speaker 1: is familiar with me, and I always thought of, well,
Speaker 1: how do you navigate this? And in many ways that's
Speaker 1: the genesis of this book. Do Hard Things is like
Speaker 1: that parable of how do you navigate this? And I
Speaker 1: think outside of the athletic context, where that parable really
Speaker 1: comes in is well, what happens is we often spend
Speaker 1: most of our time beating that negative voice or sometimes
Speaker 1: unintentionally the ing it by resisting it and actively trying
Speaker 1: to avoid it, which often makes it come back like
Speaker 1: ten times louder, ten times stronger. So that parable what
Speaker 1: does it means to me? It's central to how I
Speaker 1: think about not only my athletic pursuits, but also my
Speaker 1: pursuits in life. Is what am I feeding and am
Speaker 1: I continuing to do hopefully good work that feeds that,
Speaker 1: you know, good voice or angel on my shoulder, or
Speaker 1: you know, whatever analogy you want to use. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: so many good things you said in there, and I
Speaker 1: want to start at the beginning of the book, which
Speaker 1: will do in a second, but I'm going to jump
Speaker 1: ahead for a second because you just mentioned a little
Speaker 1: bit about sort of these two voices, and there's a
Speaker 1: point in the book where you're discussing sort of the
Speaker 1: positive or negative voice, and you say that it's easy
Speaker 1: to come up with hard and fast rules on what
Speaker 1: we should or shouldn't say to ourselves. But just like
Speaker 1: with emotions, there aren't good or bad inner voices, just
Speaker 1: the ones we need or don't need to hear at
Speaker 1: the moment. It's up to us determine which voice we
Speaker 1: need and when. And then the other sentence right near
Speaker 1: there was it's not whether our inner voice is an
Speaker 1: optimist or a pessimist. It's whether it's fair say more
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, so I think so often we think
Speaker 1: of again, even with those parables, even with this angel
Speaker 1: verst Devil, we think of it as good and bad,
Speaker 1: and I tend to as well. But sometimes the good
Speaker 1: voice actually can be harsh. And in researching and writing
Speaker 1: this book, a couple of things, well, one the research
Speaker 1: was kind of nebulous on well, should you have positive
Speaker 1: self talk or negative self talk? And it essentially said,
Speaker 1: you need the self talk that works in the moment,
Speaker 1: and sometimes that's going to be good. Sometimes that's going
Speaker 1: to be quote unquote negative. And the reason they think
Speaker 1: that is it's because sometimes you just find yourself, maybe
Speaker 1: to use the running example, slowing down or like saying
Speaker 1: I can't do it, and the thing that dislodges you
Speaker 1: from that moment is maybe that negative voice that says,
Speaker 1: hey man, what are you doing? You're better than this? Right,
Speaker 1: or in another context, sometimes as a coach. I've had
Speaker 1: athletes asked me to essentially, Hey, I don't want you
Speaker 1: to do this often, but every once in a while,
Speaker 1: if it looks like I'm kind of like giving in
Speaker 1: to that fatigue and not handling it, well, it's okay
Speaker 1: to you know, maybe even cuss me out briefly, because
Speaker 1: that almost snaps us out and says, oh, I'm too
Speaker 1: narrow and stuck in this spiral. And sometimes that negative
Speaker 1: voice or realistic voice can kind of dislodge us and
Speaker 1: take us out of that moment. Yeah, there's so much
Speaker 1: these days about self compassion, about sort of being on
Speaker 1: our own side. As another phrase that I love, and
Speaker 1: I think there's a ton of wisdom in it. It's
Speaker 1: it's something I teach in my Spiritual Habits program. I
Speaker 1: think it's really important, and I think, like anything, if
Speaker 1: you go way too far in one extreme and you
Speaker 1: only have it, you know. But I think that for me,
Speaker 1: it's not that self compassion is about letting ourselves off
Speaker 1: the hook or not talking to ourselves sternly. A lot
Speaker 1: of it, I think has to do with how we
Speaker 1: do it. And you make this point a lot because
Speaker 1: when we think of toughness, we think of Bobby Knight,
Speaker 1: we think of drill sergeants we see in marines, you know,
Speaker 1: screaming in their faces. We've got this model of toughness
Speaker 1: that says that's how you become tough, and your entire
Speaker 1: book is really an attempt to upend that whole idea.
Speaker 1: It really is. And I think what we see is
Speaker 1: we're stuck in kind of the nineteen forties, nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: version of toughness, which is kind of a rudimentary version
Speaker 1: that said, hey, whenever you face challenging obstacles in your life,
Speaker 1: grit your teeth, put your head down, try and ignore
Speaker 1: or avoid, you know, any emotion or negative thing that
Speaker 1: comes about, and just bulldoze through whatever it is. It's
Speaker 1: the as you said, Bobby Knight, the drill sergeant's method.
Speaker 1: And what happens, or what we see is that is
Speaker 1: essentially like giving me a hammer and saying, any problem
Speaker 1: you face, like, just use this hammer and you're going
Speaker 1: to figure it out. Right, Well, the hammer will work
Speaker 1: for when a nail is there, but unfortunately for life, like,
Speaker 1: we're faced with a myriad of different, you know, difficult
Speaker 1: things we have to encounter in real toughness to me
Speaker 1: is about developing this diverse array of tools so that
Speaker 1: we can match the tool with the problem instead of saying, hey,
Speaker 1: bulldoz through everything. And I think the other part of
Speaker 1: this that is really important is that the old model
Speaker 1: often overemphasizes this kind of disciplinary and demanding no and
Speaker 1: under emphasizes the part that like really matters, which is
Speaker 1: people tend to handle difficult things when they feel secure
Speaker 1: and supported so that they can then you know, utilize
Speaker 1: the tools they have to overcome that challenge. Yeah, when
Speaker 1: you think about that old model, the answer that a
Speaker 1: lot of people would say if they were to combat
Speaker 1: your argument as well, but it works for some people,
Speaker 1: you know, But I actually wouldn't say that. They would say,
Speaker 1: but it works. You know. It's the same thing when
Speaker 1: I'm sure you have clients like this, I do too,
Speaker 1: who say, like, but but this being a real asshole
Speaker 1: to myself has worked up till now. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: it may have, but you make a point and I
Speaker 1: love it, which says that, you know, this would be
Speaker 1: akin to declaring the best way to teach swimming is
Speaker 1: to throw every kid into the deep end of the pool. Sure,
Speaker 1: for some it would work, but for many it would
Speaker 1: prove disastrous. You know. I think that's the point here,
Speaker 1: is that that model of toughness, Yeah, it does work
Speaker 1: for some, but it certainly doesn't work for everybody. There's
Speaker 1: also fascinating research you on earth about how that style,
Speaker 1: that command and control style, or that authoritative style actually
Speaker 1: makes people more fragile and more brittle. It absolutely does,
Speaker 1: and there's some fascinating work, as you said, especially in
Speaker 1: the coaching but more so in the parenting world, that
Speaker 1: shows that, you know, we tend to adopt that authoritarian,
Speaker 1: disciplinarian style because we think, well, it makes people more resilient,
Speaker 1: it makes our kids more disciplined. But if you look
Speaker 1: at the research, it actually backfires. Kids who are raised
Speaker 1: with highly authoritarian parents actually have more behavior problems, They
Speaker 1: have worse emotional control, and even in one fascinating study
Speaker 1: that looked at children who were parented in that way
Speaker 1: and then went into the military, they do worse since
Speaker 1: surviving in the military. The one place where you think, oh,
Speaker 1: the style will resonate. The reason for that is pretty simple.
Speaker 1: When we are parented or coached or lead in that manner,
Speaker 1: it doesn't teach us the skills of the motivation to
Speaker 1: be able to handle difficult things. So, for example, why
Speaker 1: do kids misbehave more because they aren't taught the skills
Speaker 1: how to maybe cope with the emotions they experience, to
Speaker 1: deal with success and more so failure and a way
Speaker 1: because they're essentially only coping style is said, Oh, I
Speaker 1: need to behave this way and forget everything else because
Speaker 1: if I don't, I'm gonna be yelled at or screened at,
Speaker 1: or punished by mom or dad or coach or whoever.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that does is it shifts our
Speaker 1: motivation style from intrinsic to extrinsic. So we're motivated to
Speaker 1: maybe be disciplined in that moment because we're afraid of
Speaker 1: our parent or a coach punishing us. And decades of
Speaker 1: research shows that that extrinsic motivation might work when we
Speaker 1: have someone screaming over the top of us, but when
Speaker 1: we don't, which is most of life, it fades away
Speaker 1: and you need that strong intrinsic motivation, which is often
Speaker 1: developed through support care and in the parenting research was
Speaker 1: called responsiveness. That's what leads you to develop and have
Speaker 1: that flourishing internal motivation wonderful. Yeah, as you were saying that,
Speaker 1: it made me think about a specif of an incident
Speaker 1: in seventh grade where my grades fell off a cliff
Speaker 1: and I spent all my time trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to doctor my report card. I didn't spend any
Speaker 1: time trying to get better grades. I didn't contemplate why
Speaker 1: I might want better grades. I didn't count none of that.
Speaker 1: My energy went into trying to doctor the report card
Speaker 1: so my mom and dad wouldn't punish me. And so
Speaker 1: that's like the classic example of how for me, authoritative
Speaker 1: always has driven me to just be like, Okay, how
Speaker 1: do I get around that? Not how do I get
Speaker 1: better at this thing? Not how do I behave? How
Speaker 1: do I not get caught right? Which is my sort
Speaker 1: of rebellious style, but it makes that point of it
Speaker 1: drove me away from any sort of intrinsic motivation for
Speaker 1: why I might want to do well. You know, I
Speaker 1: love that example because I think we can all resonate
Speaker 1: with that, because we all had moments of that where
Speaker 1: it's like the extreme control often backfires because all it
Speaker 1: does is push us to figure out not the right solution,
Speaker 1: which is like how do I improve my grades, but
Speaker 1: the easy, quickest, you know, coping mechanism. And you see
Speaker 1: the same thing often with actually there's some research on this,
Speaker 1: but you see the same thing often when you see
Speaker 1: like overly controlling parents or coaches who said all these
Speaker 1: crazy rules. Well, what it does is it makes the
Speaker 1: kids or the athletes really smart and ingenious at getting
Speaker 1: around the rules, right. They figure out how to get
Speaker 1: out of the room or avoid the curfew instead of
Speaker 1: like the lesson, which is like we have to prioritize
Speaker 1: stuff and be safe and secure and all that good stuff.
Speaker 1: So I will give everybody out there, if you're a
Speaker 1: seventh grader report cards are probably digital these days, that
Speaker 1: you have to be a hacker now, so never mind,
Speaker 1: this advice won't help. Let me just tell you that
Speaker 1: your parents will not buy two quarters in a row.
Speaker 1: That you dropped your report card in a puddle and
Speaker 1: that's why it looks so scuffed up once, sure, benefit
Speaker 1: of the doubt. Twice. Nope. There was another bit of
Speaker 1: research around this that I found absolutely fascinating also, and
Speaker 1: it was looking at NBA athletes and whether they had
Speaker 1: been coached by an authoritative style coach. And the research
Speaker 1: was if you've been coached by an authoritative style coach,
Speaker 1: you didn't perform as well, So okay, but it went
Speaker 1: further than that, tell me about like kind of what
Speaker 1: was there really, at least for me, the jaw dropping
Speaker 1: part of that. So this is one of my favorite
Speaker 1: pieces of research that I came across for this book.
Speaker 1: As you said, these researchers, psychologists, you know, studied coaches
Speaker 1: and then NBA across numerous seasons, right, And what happened
Speaker 1: is they found, just as you said, the coaches with
Speaker 1: kind of this authoritarian abuse of kind of coaching style
Speaker 1: what they called it, their players performed worse. And then
Speaker 1: also they showed or those players had higher levels of
Speaker 1: aggressive fouls like technical fouls in the NBA. So the
Speaker 1: kind of you know, abuse of authoritarian style rubbed off
Speaker 1: on them. But what was fascinating is it didn't just
Speaker 1: apply when that coach was coaching the as players. It
Speaker 1: applied for the rest of those players career. So even
Speaker 1: after they went to another team and left that coach
Speaker 1: behind for years, their performance decline, you know, was down
Speaker 1: a tick, and their number of technical fouls or aggressive
Speaker 1: fouls went up. So to me, I saw this both
Speaker 1: as a coach, you know, as a parent, as leader,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh my gosh, this is kind of profound
Speaker 1: because the impact that we have can shift someone's trajectory
Speaker 1: for the long term. And this is among the best,
Speaker 1: you know, athletes on the planet. These are adults, right,
Speaker 1: so if it can happen with them, it obviously can
Speaker 1: happen with the rest of us. So we've sort of
Speaker 1: spent a few minutes here defining what toughness is. Not
Speaker 1: let's talk about what toughness is. How would you define
Speaker 1: real toughness? Yeah, So to me, I kind of frame
Speaker 1: it in a decision making concept, which is essentially, any
Speaker 1: time we experienced discomfort, which could be stress, anxiety, fatigue,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it, what often happens is
Speaker 1: we get pushed towards that kind of reactive, quick decision.
Speaker 1: Toughness to me is experiencing that discomfort, then creating the
Speaker 1: space to navigate that experience so that you can come
Speaker 1: out and make a wiser, thoughtful action instead of choosing
Speaker 1: the kind of quick hit, the easy path, the path
Speaker 1: that doesn't lead towards growth. And it really is in
Speaker 1: creating that space so that you can navigate and use
Speaker 1: the tool that matches with that situation. Yeah, your definition
Speaker 1: of toughness is similar to what I refer to as
Speaker 1: emotional regulation. But I know I'm using emotional regulation in
Speaker 1: not the way that it's often used. But I often
Speaker 1: just define emotional regulation is working with our thoughts and
Speaker 1: emotions skillfully enough that we can act according to our values.
Speaker 1: And you're saying something very similar when you're saying that
Speaker 1: toughness is navigated and discomfort to make the best decision
Speaker 1: you can. And I love that idea of being able
Speaker 1: to stay in there with really feeling whatever we're feeling,
Speaker 1: and then say, okay, but still, what do I want
Speaker 1: to do here? Taking all the factors into control exactly.
Speaker 1: I love your definition of emotional regulation because that's what
Speaker 1: it really is, because if if you think about it,
Speaker 1: when we're ever we're in a difficult situation, what often
Speaker 1: happens is we feel that discomfort and then we get
Speaker 1: this barrage of emotion thoughts in this swirl, and often
Speaker 1: when we aren't able to kind of navigate that, what
Speaker 1: happens is we just go, oh my gosh, this is overwhelming,
Speaker 1: you know, my mind kind of spirals and we just
Speaker 1: kind of our brain goes into kind of protect and
Speaker 1: survive mode, and we just hit the eject button, which
Speaker 1: is what's the easiest way to get out of this situation,
Speaker 1: which is often you know, avoidance, like you know, escaping,
Speaker 1: not dealing with the problem where the thing And I
Speaker 1: think we're often told and taught that both in sport
Speaker 1: and life, and instead what I'm trying to do is
Speaker 1: just like you're trying to do, and your mission is like, okay,
Speaker 1: doesn't it make more sense to kind of sit with
Speaker 1: that experience and figure out, Okay, how do I turn
Speaker 1: this alarm down to an appropriate level? How do I
Speaker 1: show my brain that not every moment is life or death,
Speaker 1: but that I can figure out how to navigate and
Speaker 1: handle some of this emotional swirl and these thoughts that
Speaker 1: are spiraling and kind of work my way through it
Speaker 1: to get to something that thoughtful action or something that
Speaker 1: reflects what I truly value and what is really important
Speaker 1: to me exactly. You say that negative thoughts of quitting
Speaker 1: are normal. They don't mean you're weak. They represent your
Speaker 1: mind trying to protect you. And I think that's another
Speaker 1: really important piece because we have this sense of tough
Speaker 1: people don't struggle with this stuff, right if you're a
Speaker 1: marathon or you're just fur than I am, because you
Speaker 1: must not want to give up at mile thirteen like
Speaker 1: I do, you know, So I think this normalization of like,
Speaker 1: of course we have these thoughts of wanting to quit.
Speaker 1: It's our mind trying to protect us. When we get
Speaker 1: signals of discomfort and pain. Those are signals and our
Speaker 1: brain is going to interpret them in a particular way.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean we're not tough exactly. And I
Speaker 1: think this is one of the most important concepts because
Speaker 1: let's think of it like this. If you think, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, having these thoughts of quitting or doubts or
Speaker 1: insecurities are like getting to mile thirteen and being like,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know if I can make it.
Speaker 1: If you think that the best of the best don't
Speaker 1: have those, then that automatically makes you think, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: not good enough, like I'm going through this thing that
Speaker 1: you know, tough people don't. The reality is opposite. And
Speaker 1: I can tell you because in writing this book, I
Speaker 1: interviewed dozens of dozens of world class and durance athletes,
Speaker 1: particularly because that's my background. I talked to some of
Speaker 1: the world's best marathons, and I'd ask every single one
Speaker 1: of them, I'd say, does you know the thought of
Speaker 1: quitting ever come into your mind? And every one of
Speaker 1: them it was like they light up and then they
Speaker 1: tell a story, often in like this crazy you know,
Speaker 1: difficult or this this important race, like some said, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: in the middle of the Olympic Marathon. You know, at
Speaker 1: mile fourteen, I was looking over at the aid station
Speaker 1: or the porter potty and saying, oh, if I duck
Speaker 1: in there, like maybe I don't have to finish this thing.
Speaker 1: You runners have got all kinds of creative stepping a hole,
Speaker 1: duck into the porter potty. You guys have really worked
Speaker 1: this out exactly if your mind. But that's kind of
Speaker 1: the thing, is your mind goes, your mind goes to
Speaker 1: these crazy spots, you know, and instead of thinking like,
Speaker 1: oh I just had that thought that means like I'm
Speaker 1: weak and I'm not tough enough. Well, if you think that,
Speaker 1: that's gonna just cause you to spiral, and even more
Speaker 1: so if you understand that, you know what, this is
Speaker 1: just part of the process. Because I'm doing something, whether
Speaker 1: that's running a marathon or giving a big presentation or
Speaker 1: just doing something that is outside of my comfort zone.
Speaker 1: What happens is those thoughts are normal. It's just your
Speaker 1: kind of brand saying, you know what, this isn't normal.
Speaker 1: Normally you're sitting at a desk working and this is
Speaker 1: a little different. So we're gonna let you know that,
Speaker 1: like this is a little uncomfortable and that's okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've coached a number of people on creative pursuits, on writing,
Speaker 1: on entrepreneurship, and this is a lesson we have to
Speaker 1: definitely cover because to your point, everybody goes through it.
Speaker 1: I've not had a guest on this show, and I've
Speaker 1: had some you know, fairly high profile people that haven't
Speaker 1: felt that exact thing, that haven't said, like, I know,
Speaker 1: I wrote three bestsellers, but when I was working on
Speaker 1: the fourth, I was certain I couldn't do it right,
Speaker 1: Like all my magic is gone. I can't do it.
Speaker 1: And so we all face that, And to your point,
Speaker 1: if we don't think that's normal, then we think we're
Speaker 1: not good enough. And then what happens is that erodes
Speaker 1: our confidence. And you talk about how important confidence is,
Speaker 1: So maybe that would be the place we could move to,
Speaker 1: is kind of talk about the role of confidence in toughness. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: so confidence essentially it kind of sets the table for
Speaker 1: how close to our maximum abilities are we going to
Speaker 1: be able to get right. It sets that line, and
Speaker 1: I think we're again maybe starting with where we often
Speaker 1: get confidence wrong is we focus on the external. So
Speaker 1: we think that we need to act confident. We think
Speaker 1: that we need to walk around with this bravado and
Speaker 1: you know, give us this vibe that everything's in control,
Speaker 1: that we're able to do everything, that it's no problem. Well,
Speaker 1: the reality is the research with top performers across fields
Speaker 1: paints a different picture, which is essentially we need this
Speaker 1: kind of internal quiet confidence, and that quiet confidence often
Speaker 1: comes from a being realistic with maybe a dose of like, yes,
Speaker 1: you need to be optimistic that you can handle the thing.
Speaker 1: But the way I kind of look at it is
Speaker 1: we need a realistic appraisal of both our abilities, what
Speaker 1: we're capable of, and the difficulty of the task at hand.
Speaker 1: So again I'm gonna use way too many running examples,
Speaker 1: but it's if I'm going to sign up for a marathon,
Speaker 1: then I need to know that the marathon is going
Speaker 1: to be incredibly difficult. But at the same time, I
Speaker 1: have done enough training where I can get through it,
Speaker 1: and maybe it's just beyond my reaches, but that's okay.
Speaker 1: I can figure that out. What I don't want to
Speaker 1: do is sign up for the marathon and then be like,
Speaker 1: oh man, I got this, no problem, Like this is
Speaker 1: a piece of cake, because what happens is when I
Speaker 1: get to that difficult moment, reality is going to smack
Speaker 1: me in the face and be like you prepared us
Speaker 1: and told us that this was going to be a
Speaker 1: piece of cake, that you got it. Like now you're struggling,
Speaker 1: like what's the deal, and you're gonna feel that ten
Speaker 1: times or ten x. And what really cemented this for
Speaker 1: me is I was talking to some military operators who
Speaker 1: are in this special forces and one said to me,
Speaker 1: essentially said, often people think it's the people who come
Speaker 1: in and you know, have this extreme confidence, who are
Speaker 1: the ones who make it through special Forces and all that,
Speaker 1: And he said, the reality is you have to have
Speaker 1: a little bit of doubt, because if you don't have
Speaker 1: a little bit of doubt, then you're not gonna stay sharp.
Speaker 1: So it really is that kind of Goldilocks zone of
Speaker 1: confidence where it's kind of realistically optimistic where it's like
Speaker 1: I can handle the thing. It might push me, but
Speaker 1: I've done the work and have the evidence that I
Speaker 1: can do the task. You were talking about having that
Speaker 1: right balance between realistic appraisal and yet some optimism, and
Speaker 1: it made me think about being in the software startup world.
Speaker 1: I was in software startup companies for the first i
Speaker 1: don't know twenty years of my career, and in a
Speaker 1: software startup company, you are faking it till you make it.
Speaker 1: To some degree. You're always out selling stuff that you
Speaker 1: don't have yet, you're just outdoing it. What I learned
Speaker 1: after about the first one, or into the second one,
Speaker 1: was if the gap between what you say you have
Speaker 1: and what you actually have is too big, you're doomed
Speaker 1: because you will convince someone to take a chance on
Speaker 1: you and then you won't be able to jump that gap.
Speaker 1: You'll crash. So, yes, you have to be faking it
Speaker 1: till you make it. You have to be out ahead
Speaker 1: a little bit of what your actual capabilities are. But
Speaker 1: if you get too far out that is just as bad.
Speaker 1: So that was kind of what was coming to my
Speaker 1: mind as you were sharing that. That's a great example,
Speaker 1: and again all youth athletic example is if I'm fit
Speaker 1: and going into a marathon race. If you know previously
Speaker 1: I ran I don't know to thirty five for the
Speaker 1: marathon this time. If I say I'm gonna go run
Speaker 1: to fifteen, that's too big of a gap. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna fail. If I say I'm gonna try and run
Speaker 1: two thirty, well, I've never done that before, so I
Speaker 1: don't know if I can, right, But the gap is
Speaker 1: small enough where it's like, you know what, if I
Speaker 1: train hard enough, if everything goes well, this is possible.
Speaker 1: We're projecting into the future, just like that software example,
Speaker 1: where it's like if the gap is difficult but manageable,
Speaker 1: then we're more likely to have confidence and succeed. And
Speaker 1: the other thing that I think really kind of drives
Speaker 1: this in is that one of the central components of
Speaker 1: having intrinsic motivation is seeing progress in what you're doing
Speaker 1: and seeing that there is a path forward. And this
Speaker 1: is where I think that it kind of aligns with confidence,
Speaker 1: where if that gap is too large at some point,
Speaker 1: we're gonna stop seeing progress for a long time, and
Speaker 1: that's going to hurt our motivation. We're gonna start thinking
Speaker 1: that there's no path forward, there's no way I can
Speaker 1: meet my promises, and that just kills the internal drive
Speaker 1: of everyone. So even setting that kind of gap initially
Speaker 1: where it's something that's hard but manage well, can help
Speaker 1: us keep that internal motivation because it helps us see
Speaker 1: even if the progress is minimal, that hey, I'm still
Speaker 1: inching forward. Hey it's still possible to hit this goal.
Speaker 1: And I think that's vital in central. Yeah. The other
Speaker 1: thing I was thinking about is we're having this conversation
Speaker 1: and thinking about when you talk about confidence being something
Speaker 1: that comes from the inside that we can't fake. I'm
Speaker 1: curious how you might think about someone who is starting
Speaker 1: out with something like I have a goal to be
Speaker 1: a great novelist, but I've never written a line in
Speaker 1: my life. You know, I've gotta have enough confidence. I've
Speaker 1: got to have enough belief in myself to start and
Speaker 1: stay with it, right, But I can't just suddenly be like, well,
Speaker 1: I am a great novelist, you know, move over J D.
Speaker 1: Salinger here, I am right. That doesn't work either. So
Speaker 1: how do you think about sort of getting from that
Speaker 1: very beginning place where you don't have a lot of
Speaker 1: internal ability to this point to call on or draw upon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so a lot of times what happens is we think
Speaker 1: that building confidence takes doing amazing things, but the reality
Speaker 1: consistency matters more than kind of the intensity or you know,
Speaker 1: volume of the amazing things that we do. So instead
Speaker 1: I like to think of it as how do you
Speaker 1: build that kind of confidence muscle? Is consistent small challenges
Speaker 1: or consistent small doses of things that, yeah, maybe push
Speaker 1: you a little bit out of your comfort zone. And
Speaker 1: that writing example, going from hey, I've never written anything
Speaker 1: to I'm gonna start a newsletter or back in you know,
Speaker 1: my day, like start a blog or what have you,
Speaker 1: where it's like get into the writing world and then
Speaker 1: start trying to write for other people, and you're really
Speaker 1: kind of building that muscle so that you can prepare
Speaker 1: and meet your goals over the long haul. The other
Speaker 1: thing that really comes to mind here is, although this
Speaker 1: got cut from the book, I love the research I
Speaker 1: did on us, which is on President Abraham Lincoln. Obviously
Speaker 1: heroic guy, but if you looked at his kind of approach,
Speaker 1: he had this unbelievable hope for the future and his
Speaker 1: writing where he said we're gonna win the Civil war.
Speaker 1: We're gonna, you know, cure the country of this ill
Speaker 1: of slavery. But in the here and now, in those moments,
Speaker 1: he was incredibly kind of almost a little bit pessimistic,
Speaker 1: but I'd call it realistic in the moments, right, he'd
Speaker 1: be like, this is what we need to do on
Speaker 1: this step, like for this battle, for this strategy, what
Speaker 1: have you? This is it. I'm not gonna look, you know,
Speaker 1: two years down the line, five years down the line,
Speaker 1: fifteen years down the line. And I love that kind
Speaker 1: of model for you know, building confidence as well. In
Speaker 1: the moment, be focused on the small step, but keep
Speaker 1: a little bit of that idea or that hope in
Speaker 1: the future that kind of can kind of fuel you
Speaker 1: through those small steps where it's like, you know, I
Speaker 1: believe I can be this novel list or that I
Speaker 1: can accomplish this goal, and the way that I do
Speaker 1: that is focus on nailing the small steps of the
Speaker 1: process to get there. Yeah, that whole section on confidence
Speaker 1: made me think a lot about something called the Stockdale paradox.
Speaker 1: Are familiar with that, Yeah, I'll share it real quick
Speaker 1: for listeners because it's very similar to what you just
Speaker 1: said about Abraham Lincoln and it's you know, there was
Speaker 1: Admiral James Stockdale, the highest ranking prisoner of war in Vietnam,
Speaker 1: and someone was asking him later like who made it
Speaker 1: through these really brutal, terrible circumstances? And you know, is
Speaker 1: that the optimists? He'd say, no, the optimists, they died
Speaker 1: of a broken heart. They thought we'd be out by Halloween,
Speaker 1: by Thanksgiving, by Christmas, and they died of a broken heart. Pessimists, Now,
Speaker 1: pessimists really didn't didn't fare too well either, So okay,
Speaker 1: who did? And he said the thing was you had
Speaker 1: to accept the absolute brutal reality of your circumstances, but
Speaker 1: never lose faith in your ability to ultimately overcome them.
Speaker 1: And ever since I read that, I have loved it,
Speaker 1: and it has been so fundamental to the way I
Speaker 1: look at optimism and pessimism is to really say, like,
Speaker 1: neither is the tool for the job all the time.
Speaker 1: It's really accuracy. And the reason the Stockdale paradox kept
Speaker 1: coming to my mind in your book is that's another
Speaker 1: of the key themes of this book over and over
Speaker 1: and over again, which is accurate appraisal of what's really
Speaker 1: happening and It shows up in a lot of different
Speaker 1: ways in the book, but that is a key piece
Speaker 1: that you talk about. I love that you brought that up.
Speaker 1: I never actually thought, even though I know what it is,
Speaker 1: I never thought of connecting the Stockdale paradox to it.
Speaker 1: But it's so important, and as kind of my outloaded before,
Speaker 1: is what we get is that accurate appraisal sets the stage.
Speaker 1: So it's almost like the way I think about it is,
Speaker 1: how are we preparing our brain for what's to come?
Speaker 1: And we can either prime it by preparing it for
Speaker 1: what we're going to face, or we can prime it
Speaker 1: maybe optimistically or pessimistically. And research again keeps telling us
Speaker 1: that when our brain gets surprised, you know, going either
Speaker 1: way on the extremes, what happens is we default towards protection,
Speaker 1: or we default towards freaking out, or we default towards survival.
Speaker 1: So to me, that's where that kind of middle ground
Speaker 1: is really important. Is if we can have the accurate appraisal,
Speaker 1: then we're better prepared for the challenge. And actually there's
Speaker 1: some fascinating research that shows that it impacts our biology too,
Speaker 1: So going into any sort of you know, difficult moment,
Speaker 1: whether that's a game, you're playing, a race, you're running,
Speaker 1: a speech, you're giving. If we appraise something as a challenge,
Speaker 1: we tend to have what's called a more positive stress response,
Speaker 1: which is adrenaline and testosterone that makes us feel yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit nervous, but also excited, like we're
Speaker 1: going to take on the challenge. If we go in
Speaker 1: with that survival or protective mode, we are appraising it
Speaker 1: as a threat, which is often a companied by more cortisol,
Speaker 1: which makes us ruminate and catastrophizes and all that good stuff. Well,
Speaker 1: if you look at well, what's one of the central
Speaker 1: determinants for whether we see things as a challenge or threat,
Speaker 1: it's that accurate appraisal, that appraisal between what's the task
Speaker 1: at hand, what are my capabilities? If there's at least
Speaker 1: a decent amount of overlap, we're more likely to have
Speaker 1: that challenge response. Let's pivot a little bit because there's
Speaker 1: another area of accurate appraisal that is also right in
Speaker 1: the heart of this book, and it's the accurate appraisal
Speaker 1: of our internal states. We've been talking about accurate appraisal
Speaker 1: of the challenges we're going to face, but you talk
Speaker 1: very much about accurate appraisal of what's going on inside
Speaker 1: of us, because it is our emotions or feelings, and
Speaker 1: we can talk about the difference between those perhaps, but
Speaker 1: that's the sort of thing. It's the internal cacophony that
Speaker 1: you describe that is often pushing us towards giving up
Speaker 1: or a way from our goals. So talk about the
Speaker 1: importance of accurate internal appraisal to get this across for
Speaker 1: the listeners. I love to tell the story that came
Speaker 1: from my wife actually, who is a elementary school teacher
Speaker 1: and for years she taught kindergarten in first grade. One day,
Speaker 1: while I was writing them the book, actually, she she
Speaker 1: asked me, is like, do you know how or why
Speaker 1: kids throw tantrums when they, you know, come into kindergarten
Speaker 1: or whatever have you. I said no, like what's the deal?
Speaker 1: And she said, well, what happens is they experience something
Speaker 1: that causes this cacophony of emotions, right, and they don't
Speaker 1: know how to deal with them, and they don't know
Speaker 1: how to sort through them. So their responses a tantrum.
Speaker 1: And if I, as a teacher go over and say, hey,
Speaker 1: what's wrong, Jimmy or Susie. They say, oh, I'm sad.
Speaker 1: And what you learn over time is that most kids
Speaker 1: kind of say I'm sad, and it applies to everything.
Speaker 1: It applies if you know, they didn't get selected at kickball,
Speaker 1: if someone stole their pencil, or if someone tried to
Speaker 1: you know, cheat on a test, whatever had them that
Speaker 1: that caused them this disarray. They all call it sadness.
Speaker 1: And the reason it is because their kids they haven't
Speaker 1: developed the ability to sort out the nuance that maybe
Speaker 1: us as adults, we'd split apart sadness and say, well,
Speaker 1: maybe that is loneliness or maybe frustration or jealousy or
Speaker 1: whatever have you to describe that emotion or feeling. And
Speaker 1: what the research shows is that separating out what we
Speaker 1: feel is important to getting to that next step of
Speaker 1: doing something about it and taking action. If we can
Speaker 1: slice into dice apart that nuance, it aids our ability
Speaker 1: to navigate the thing. So it kind of comes back
Speaker 1: to again, this accurate receie of in this case, reading
Speaker 1: our body signals allows us to deal with you know,
Speaker 1: uncomfortable or difficult things a lot more. And there's all
Speaker 1: sorts of research that shows that in athletes athletes who
Speaker 1: have what they call better ter reception, which is essentially
Speaker 1: reading your body signals, they're able to perform better and
Speaker 1: make it through the difficult moments in their races or competitions.
Speaker 1: Even surprisingly, in investment makers and stockbrokers, the ones who
Speaker 1: have higher levels of inter reception actually do better when
Speaker 1: the stock market is kind of going crazy and everyone
Speaker 1: feels stressed, because they can separate out what's the stress
Speaker 1: that I'm feeling, maybe because of the stock market versus
Speaker 1: maybe this is just the climate where everyone's kind of
Speaker 1: freaking out and I'm feeling anxious and uncertain and kind
Speaker 1: of slice and dice apart that so they can get
Speaker 1: to the best action. Yeah, the section in the book
Speaker 1: where you talk about inter reception is fascinating. It's something
Speaker 1: I've long been interested in. And you have some studies
Speaker 1: that are really interesting, and one of them is that
Speaker 1: people who self harm had what you call greater inter
Speaker 1: receptive ambivalence and lower inter receptive appreciation. Say a little
Speaker 1: bit more about what that means. So this was fascinating
Speaker 1: work and what it showed is it essentially people self
Speaker 1: harm partly because they're getting all this emotional response or
Speaker 1: this emotion. Something triggers them to feel all this emotion
Speaker 1: and they can't separate it out, meaning they don't have
Speaker 1: that kind of terro receptive like awareness to slice and
Speaker 1: dice apart as we said. So what happens is they
Speaker 1: end up self harming as a way to essentially cope
Speaker 1: with that. Because they create a sensation where they know
Speaker 1: where it's coming from. That kind of overwhelms the rest
Speaker 1: of the stuff that they're feeling, which turns down that
Speaker 1: ambiguous feeling and turns up something where they know where
Speaker 1: that sensation and feeling is coming from. If you talk
Speaker 1: to therapist or psychologists, one of the keys to often
Speaker 1: dealing with people or helping people who have self harm
Speaker 1: is essentially creating emotional vocabulary and an awareness around different
Speaker 1: feelings and sensations so that they can kind of navigate
Speaker 1: it instead of going from, oh, I feel this emotional overload,
Speaker 1: so I need to fix it by you know, cutting
Speaker 1: or harming myself. You talk about how poor and ter
Speaker 1: receptive awareness is linked to addiction, eating disorders, kind of
Speaker 1: all across the board, and what I think is fascinating
Speaker 1: about it. I don't remember the exact line, but the
Speaker 1: essence of it was, and maybe it was with the
Speaker 1: self harm people was they felt more, but they had
Speaker 1: way less ability to understand it. That's fascinating. It's a
Speaker 1: stronger emotion that they don't really understand. So maybe let's
Speaker 1: for a second break apart the definition that you use
Speaker 1: as far as toughness between feelings and emotions, because this
Speaker 1: is kind of important as we move from terroception to
Speaker 1: understanding our emotional life exactly. So feelings, to me the
Speaker 1: way I kind of understand, and we could spend hours
Speaker 1: kind of dissecting it, but the way I like to
Speaker 1: look at it is feelings are the nudge. So they're
Speaker 1: your body's basic communication system that says, hey, something is
Speaker 1: going on internally that I want you to be aware of.
Speaker 1: Right in, emotions are they're kind of more complex cousin
Speaker 1: that move from often from nudge to shove. And the
Speaker 1: reason I say emotions are more complex is because they're
Speaker 1: partly dependent on context that we attribute and assigned to them. Yes,
Speaker 1: there's some wonderful research, most of it done by Lisa
Speaker 1: Feldman Barrett, that shows essentially depending on the context that
Speaker 1: we add on or elaborate on it, that will change
Speaker 1: our kind of biological and you know, behavioral response to things.
Speaker 1: So the way I like to kind of explain this,
Speaker 1: or one of the ways is if you look at
Speaker 1: the word love, for example, in America or if you
Speaker 1: come from the culture in the US, it has a
Speaker 1: particular meaning, right. We often attribute it to like love
Speaker 1: of bous or some sort of romantic love. If we
Speaker 1: look at different cultures, for instance, ancient Greece, instead of
Speaker 1: one love that covers everything from romantic to you know,
Speaker 1: friendship or what have you, they have separate words about
Speaker 1: I think it's five or six different definitions of a
Speaker 1: type of love, which allows them to have more nuance
Speaker 1: around the concept and more specificity. So they interpret and
Speaker 1: often experience or they would interpret and often experience love
Speaker 1: in a different way. And we know this from studying
Speaker 1: you know, different cultures around the world, whether that's you know,
Speaker 1: tribal cultures, modern tigrable cultures in the words they use
Speaker 1: versus you know, maybe Western cultures like ourselves. Is that
Speaker 1: we don't all have the same kind of context that
Speaker 1: goes with every emotional experience, and that changes how people
Speaker 1: interpret and deal with and experience it. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: such a fascinating area and interesting personal exist ample for
Speaker 1: me is that I've been learning to try and work
Speaker 1: with sensations that come up of I mean, the best
Speaker 1: description I have of them as tired, but if I'm
Speaker 1: not careful, I will describe them as depressed. Right, They're
Speaker 1: very similar, but the difference between those two contextualizations is
Speaker 1: actually pretty important. Tired, I can just go well all
Speaker 1: right time, you know, like take a rest. Depressed is
Speaker 1: a bigger problem. Depressed ties to a long history. So
Speaker 1: sort of learning to take those inter receptive signals, the
Speaker 1: feelings that are coming from my body, but then giving
Speaker 1: a little bit more thought to that. And you actually
Speaker 1: say this very well, you said discern nuance involves two components,
Speaker 1: awareness of the feelings and sensations and then interpretation and
Speaker 1: contextualization of them, which I think really speaks to this.
Speaker 1: So I've got to sort of get better at noticing
Speaker 1: what signals my body is sending becoming more aware of them,
Speaker 1: which is a very much a mindfulness thing, right in
Speaker 1: some ways is bear attention, right, which they talk about
Speaker 1: in mindfulness, like what's actually here? Can I get clearer
Speaker 1: on what it is? And then there's that next step,
Speaker 1: which is all right now, how do I contextualize this?
Speaker 1: I love that word that you use for that, because
Speaker 1: I think it really no pun intended, puts it in
Speaker 1: context for what we're actually doing. There's a wonderful tool
Speaker 1: that I discovered that therapists use to get at that
Speaker 1: second one, because I think that first one of awareness
Speaker 1: is we're starting to get an increase of that through
Speaker 1: mindfulness and meditation, and that movement has kind of taken
Speaker 1: us to awareness, but often we haven't moved to that
Speaker 1: second level or second layer, which is that context. And
Speaker 1: there's a tool called the emotional Wheel, and you can
Speaker 1: google it and look it up, but essentially what it
Speaker 1: does is it starts at you know, the very basic
Speaker 1: maybe the word tired, as you said, and then from
Speaker 1: there it gives you different descriptors that get a little
Speaker 1: bit more nuanced and complex. Right, we go for um
Speaker 1: tired to whatever sleepy or fatigued or whatever vocabulary you want.
Speaker 1: You can keep going down multiple levels. And I love
Speaker 1: this and therapists often use it for this exact skill
Speaker 1: because similar to earlier where I said the kindergarteners say
Speaker 1: I'm sad for everything we like to think as adults, Well,
Speaker 1: I've learned how to you know the complexity behind it,
Speaker 1: but often we don't. And often it's because we're told,
Speaker 1: you know, to kind of keep that inner world quiet
Speaker 1: and not to explore it or to avoid these sensations
Speaker 1: that they're negative when the reality is investigating them and
Speaker 1: you know what, safe space allows us to add context.
Speaker 1: And the other example that I give in the book,
Speaker 1: but that really, you know, not surprisingly resonates with me
Speaker 1: as an athlete, that all athletes have to face is
Speaker 1: think about it. When you first got started and you
Speaker 1: go out the door and you start running, you start
Speaker 1: lifting weights, that first sensation of pain. Often you interpreted
Speaker 1: it as like, oh, what's wrong? Like am I gonna
Speaker 1: get injured? Like I should stop? This hurts a lot.
Speaker 1: In fact, I was on a podcast not too long
Speaker 1: ago where someone told me the story of a friends
Speaker 1: children who was walking up a hill for the first
Speaker 1: time and he was like, Dad, my legs feel like
Speaker 1: they're gonna fall off. And the dad's like what, He's like, Oh,
Speaker 1: you've never experienced the fatigue of walking up a very
Speaker 1: steep mountain. It's like, no, your legs aren't gonna fill
Speaker 1: off fall off. But what happens there is often if
Speaker 1: we haven't ever experienced it and sit with that, we
Speaker 1: don't know the difference between pain that might mean injury,
Speaker 1: or pain that might mean I'm a little fatigued, or
Speaker 1: pain that might signal maybe I'm running a little on
Speaker 1: fuel and I need to grab a banana, or I'm
Speaker 1: a little dehydrated and I need to drink a water
Speaker 1: or drink some water and all of those. You know,
Speaker 1: different nuances send us down a different path and send
Speaker 1: us down to different signal. But if we don't kind
Speaker 1: of sit with them and experience them, then it all
Speaker 1: kind of gets jumbled together. And that's why I think,
Speaker 1: you know, that second part is really important. Is you know,
Speaker 1: whether we're talking about physical, psychological, or whatever have you,
Speaker 1: discomfort is being intentional and adding context and nuance to
Speaker 1: things is a vital component we often miss. Yeah, Early
Speaker 1: in my recovery from heroin and alcoholism, I was taught
Speaker 1: this acronym halt, hungry, angry, lonely, tired. And the reason
Speaker 1: we're taught that is because I've had no ability to
Speaker 1: interpret anything except I want to drink. That was my
Speaker 1: entire response to nearly anything. So just having that checklist, oh,
Speaker 1: is it hunger, actually, oh it is? Oh? Am I angry? Oh? Okay,
Speaker 1: well I can do something different. Am I lonely? Am
Speaker 1: I tired? Just be able to go? Is it? Any
Speaker 1: of those common things allowed me to interpret it in
Speaker 1: a more granular way than just needing to drink? You know,
Speaker 1: I love that acronym because it's spot on, because what
Speaker 1: often happens is we associate behaviors with the wrong kind
Speaker 1: of signal. In the book, I tell another story where
Speaker 1: they call it misattribution of arousal. In the book, I
Speaker 1: tell this wonderful story where they put people on a
Speaker 1: very high, scary bridge and people, you know, had physiological arousal. Right,
Speaker 1: they were a little scared, what have you. Well, when
Speaker 1: they were on the bridge alone, they interpreted as scared.
Speaker 1: These were all males. If they put an attractive female
Speaker 1: next to them on the bridge, they interpreted as, I'm
Speaker 1: physiologically aroused because I'm attracted to this other person, so
Speaker 1: they would be more likely to, you know, ask this
Speaker 1: person out. When they did the same experiment on a
Speaker 1: bridge that was like five ft off the ground, they
Speaker 1: didn't make that mistake. So I think, you know, in
Speaker 1: that same way. You know, although that's a fun story.
Speaker 1: Often that happens in the negative, you know side where
Speaker 1: we start, you know, misattributing any sort of feeling or
Speaker 1: discomfort as oh, the way that I deal with and
Speaker 1: cope with this thing is to drink or do drugs
Speaker 1: or self soothe in some other manner. And just having
Speaker 1: something that kind of allows us to step back and
Speaker 1: see that kind of nuance and be like, no, where
Speaker 1: is this actually coming from? Is incredibly helpful. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about inner dialogue for a minute. You say that researchers
Speaker 1: define two main types of inner dialogue, integrated and confrontational.
Speaker 1: And the reason I want to pivot there is that,
Speaker 1: assuming that we have gotten a little bit better at
Speaker 1: recognizing the signals inside, we've gotten a little bit better
Speaker 1: at some degree of emotional granularity. Now we still have
Speaker 1: the thoughts swirling and getting to decision and doing all that.
Speaker 1: So let's move now to kind of inner dialogue. What
Speaker 1: we often have is that integrated dialogue, which is more
Speaker 1: what I would call that kind of productive dialogue that
Speaker 1: is telling you or thinking about things or tasks that
Speaker 1: you might need to do or things that you might
Speaker 1: need to remember. It's very straightforward. The confrontational dialogue is
Speaker 1: often where we have going back to the very beginning
Speaker 1: of this conversation is like that angel versus devil on
Speaker 1: your shoulder, where you have a decision that you need
Speaker 1: to make or you're getting pulled in one of two directions.
Speaker 1: The latest psychological theories almost show it as if it
Speaker 1: is two different self competing. So you have the self
Speaker 1: that wants to eat candy for dinner what have you,
Speaker 1: versus the self that knows that they should, you know,
Speaker 1: order the salad, and we have this bad attle between
Speaker 1: these selves where it's that inner dialogue that is confrontational.
Speaker 1: So you know, people hear that and they say, okay,
Speaker 1: so I'm essentially have two roles in myself battling it out.
Speaker 1: How do I deal with that? Well, often what it
Speaker 1: is is there's several different tricks of the trade that
Speaker 1: can help us kind of get the positive or the
Speaker 1: path that we want to go down. And most of
Speaker 1: the time it is to dislodge, as we talked about
Speaker 1: the beginning, dislodge that kind of negative spiral so that
Speaker 1: you don't get caught in this kind of ruminating, catastrophizing
Speaker 1: battle that often occurs. And we can do that in
Speaker 1: a number of different ways. So for example, there's some
Speaker 1: wonderful research that shows that just changing how you talk
Speaker 1: to yourself, moving from first person to second or third person,
Speaker 1: so from I to you were Steve and Eric, that
Speaker 1: creates what we call psychological distance, where your brain starts
Speaker 1: interpreted in a different way. And the way I like
Speaker 1: to think about this is your brain is used to
Speaker 1: hearing you know, well I should do this or no,
Speaker 1: I should do that, all the time, so it gets
Speaker 1: comfortable with that. But if it here's like you've got
Speaker 1: to do this, Steve or come on, Eric, in its head,
Speaker 1: it's almost like it steps back and says, hey, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, who's this voice? Like who's this person talking?
Speaker 1: And what happens is that creates a little bit of
Speaker 1: that space which we know and research shows brings down
Speaker 1: that kind of like emotional level as well, so that
Speaker 1: we can deal with it. The other tactic that I
Speaker 1: love here is it actually taking that voice from inside
Speaker 1: to an outer voice or outside. And this sounds a
Speaker 1: little strange, but again I'll give a sport example is
Speaker 1: if you watch professional tennis players before difficult shot, often
Speaker 1: you can see them mumbling to themselves. Now why would
Speaker 1: they do this, Because when we move from that inside
Speaker 1: voice of that outside voice, it creates again that psychological distance.
Speaker 1: It dislodges your brain and it says, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: I'm now hearing this voice, you know, through my ears
Speaker 1: as well. Maybe I should pay attention to it. And
Speaker 1: because you've created that space, you can actually use that
Speaker 1: self talk to again focus yourself on things that are
Speaker 1: maybe important, like in the tennis example, where you're going
Speaker 1: to hit that shot versus the negative kind of inner
Speaker 1: battle that often occurs, which is telling you, you know,
Speaker 1: to focus on why you can't hit that shot, or
Speaker 1: why you're being overcome with stress and can't deal with
Speaker 1: the thing that you're doing. So a lot of it is,
Speaker 1: you know, shifting and changing that inner voice. It allows us,
Speaker 1: it gives us the power to handle the difficult moments. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've said this on the show a number of times
Speaker 1: recently that I just have really been rediscovering the power
Speaker 1: of sing to myself similar to like you're saying either
Speaker 1: Eric or you can do this. Eric, you can do this,
Speaker 1: and then reminding myself of plenty of times I have
Speaker 1: done it. It doesn't work every time, but that very
Speaker 1: simple like when I find myself stirring to be like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll just be like, hey, relax, like you've
Speaker 1: done this a thousand times, you know. I'll start getting
Speaker 1: stressed about getting ready to go on a trip, as
Speaker 1: the example I often use, and my brain will start
Speaker 1: to be like, well, I got too much to do,
Speaker 1: and I'm just like, you've done this a thousand times.
Speaker 1: Have you ever not gone away because you didn't? Like
Speaker 1: it always works out? And just that. I think it's
Speaker 1: a combination of reminding myself of capability to handle it,
Speaker 1: but also the distancing voice part of it. I think
Speaker 1: it's it's both those things that make that helpful thing
Speaker 1: for me. I love that example because what you've done
Speaker 1: there is you've created some distance, and then you've also
Speaker 1: backed that up with evidence and perspective. Right, let's step
Speaker 1: back and be like Eric, you've gone through these trips
Speaker 1: hundreds of times, like zoom out, like understand, this isn't
Speaker 1: as big of a deal as you think, which stress
Speaker 1: often causes us too narrow. So you know, this is
Speaker 1: what it is is combining these tools because what happened
Speaker 1: there is often that psychological distance of changing the verbiage
Speaker 1: created that space where you could have that conversation. We're
Speaker 1: often maybe we're in that spiral. We can't insert that
Speaker 1: conversation because our brain is so locked in on that
Speaker 1: negative or catastrophizing. It's almost like we can't get a
Speaker 1: wise word in because it's like we're going down the
Speaker 1: rabbit hole and it's it's too late. So we need
Speaker 1: to like be able to or break ourselves out of it.
Speaker 1: So let's talk very practically here for a second. Maybe
Speaker 1: you could help walk us through like a common example
Speaker 1: and how we might approach it in a tougher manner.
Speaker 1: So let's just use something as simple as exercise. I
Speaker 1: think is always a good one because it's relatively easy
Speaker 1: to understand. And I'm on my peloton bike back there,
Speaker 1: and I'm in the middle of a say, a four
Speaker 1: minute interval, and a minute too I start going, oh, boy,
Speaker 1: like whatever it is, I don't quite know where it's
Speaker 1: coming from, but my brain just starts saying sort of
Speaker 1: like you, like, I can't finish this, this is awful,
Speaker 1: I hate this, whatever the nonsense is. I just suddenly
Speaker 1: noticed like I don't like it and I want to quit. Right,
Speaker 1: how do we work with that? I'm not asking you
Speaker 1: to sum up your entire book in two sentences, although
Speaker 1: I kind of am, but but just you know, like,
Speaker 1: what are some practical takeaways people could use who find
Speaker 1: themselves in this situation or they get home from work
Speaker 1: and they're really tired and they're like, I really should
Speaker 1: go clean the kitchen, but god, I'm really so tired. Sure,
Speaker 1: that's that's no problem. So I'll give some strategies that
Speaker 1: I think really works. So one is we just talked
Speaker 1: about is shift how you're talking to yourself in those moments. Right.
Speaker 1: The other thing I think with that self talk is
Speaker 1: it's really important. Is what I would say is try
Speaker 1: and have what i'd call a calm conversation versus this catastrophizing.
Speaker 1: Try and literally slow that inner voice, that dialogue down,
Speaker 1: because if we can slow it down and act like
Speaker 1: you're talking to maybe a friend or a child, then
Speaker 1: what that does is that sends the signal that hey,
Speaker 1: I don't need to be panicked, I don't need to
Speaker 1: freak out. Because when we kind of spiral often like that,
Speaker 1: our voice gets really quick, we're jumping around all the time.
Speaker 1: That catastrophizing goes, and your brain kind of interprets that
Speaker 1: is like, oh, we're moving really quick. This must be
Speaker 1: a catastrophe like sound alarm. The other thing that I
Speaker 1: think is really important in those moments is that stress
Speaker 1: narrows us. So whether it's you're writing the peloton or
Speaker 1: you're coming home and you're so tired, stress tends to
Speaker 1: focus us on the thing that is causing the stress.
Speaker 1: So all we can see ahead of us is I'm
Speaker 1: so tired, which amplifies the feeling of fatigue, which starts
Speaker 1: giving us evidence of like, oh, of course I'm fatigued.
Speaker 1: I just got home from a you know, a nine
Speaker 1: hour work day or what have you, and I didn't
Speaker 1: get much sleep, and it focuses on those things. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the best things that you can do is
Speaker 1: to shift your attention. So if you find yourself going narrow,
Speaker 1: shift it to very broad. So instead of focusing on
Speaker 1: let's say you're riding your exercise bike and you're like,
Speaker 1: my legs hurt a lot, Like I can't deal with this, Well,
Speaker 1: you've got to shift your focus of attention somewhere far
Speaker 1: away from your legs. Right. Maybe you're thinking about what
Speaker 1: you'll do once you get done with this, or maybe
Speaker 1: you're thinking about the reason that you chose to get
Speaker 1: on the peloton or enter this race in the first place. Right,
Speaker 1: you're taking your attention and shifting it. And this works
Speaker 1: in a number of different ways. So this can be
Speaker 1: literally your attention. So if you're doing something difficult, again,
Speaker 1: our attention tends to narrow because we're in the stress
Speaker 1: or visual field tends to narrow because fight or flight
Speaker 1: narrows our focus. So literally adopting a broader perspective, so
Speaker 1: like softening our gaze or trying to pay attention to
Speaker 1: our periphery or in my case as a glasses where
Speaker 1: taking my glasses off so I can't see any details.
Speaker 1: There's actual research that shows that that will turn down
Speaker 1: our stress response just a little bit in that moment,
Speaker 1: because again it signals to the brain, oh, we're zooming out.
Speaker 1: This stressful thing must not be quite as a big
Speaker 1: of a deal. And the last piece of advice i'd
Speaker 1: give that is another tool you can use, as we
Speaker 1: talked about at the beginning, where progress is really important
Speaker 1: to motivation. When we're in the thick of that challenge
Speaker 1: or stressful event, often what happens is we see the
Speaker 1: big deal and it its impossible. So we get home
Speaker 1: and we think I can't clean the kitchen. That means
Speaker 1: I have to sweep the floors and like the counters
Speaker 1: and clean the oven and you know, wash all the dishes,
Speaker 1: and it just you're You're sitting there like this will
Speaker 1: take hours and I don't have the time or energy.
Speaker 1: You break it down. Instead of going the big thing,
Speaker 1: you say, you know what, what's the first step, and
Speaker 1: we'll just get to this point. I Am just going
Speaker 1: to unload the dishwasher or you know, sweep the floor
Speaker 1: and start there. It's no different than in the middle
Speaker 1: of you know, that four minute interval. You don't think, oh,
Speaker 1: I've got you know, two more minutes left. You say,
Speaker 1: you know what, Eric, just make it to the next
Speaker 1: thirty seconds and then we'll see what happens. And what
Speaker 1: happens is you just kind of break it down, break
Speaker 1: it down, break it down. And this is honestly one
Speaker 1: of my biggest tactics for surviving a marathon. For example,
Speaker 1: is if I thought about, you know, the twenty six
Speaker 1: point two miles or even a half mare it on
Speaker 1: the third teen miles, I drive myself mad. So in
Speaker 1: those difficult moments, what do you do. You say, you
Speaker 1: know what, I get it. You're hurting. Just make it
Speaker 1: to the next mile marker or the next turn. Then
Speaker 1: we can have this conversation again. And what inevitably happens
Speaker 1: is you start to see yourself making progress, You get
Speaker 1: a little closer to that finish line, You see that
Speaker 1: you can make it, and that internal motivation comes back
Speaker 1: online and says, you know what, I understand. You're hurting
Speaker 1: a lot. You don't want to do this, but we're
Speaker 1: really close that finish line, the completion of this task.
Speaker 1: It's manageable, so we might as well keep going. I
Speaker 1: love that. Well, Steve. We are at the end of
Speaker 1: our time. You and I are going to continue talking
Speaker 1: in the post show conversation because I have a ton
Speaker 1: more notes for us. One of the things I want
Speaker 1: to explore a little bit is the idea that experts
Speaker 1: really sort of tune into bodily sensations, like a professional
Speaker 1: runners going to tune into those body sensations, where someone
Speaker 1: who's non professional like me might be trying to distract
Speaker 1: from them. I want to explore that a little bit more.
Speaker 1: I also want to look at the connection between the
Speaker 1: amygdala and the prefrontal cortex and how important that is
Speaker 1: in emotional regulation. Listeners. If you'd like to get access
Speaker 1: to the post show conversation as well as ad free
Speaker 1: episodes and the joy of supporting something you care about,
Speaker 1: go to one you Feed dot net slash join Steve.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. I loved your book. I think
Speaker 1: it's such an important conversation because I think toughness is
Speaker 1: really important, but it's branded badly and a lot of
Speaker 1: people who could benefit from it don't want to get
Speaker 1: near it, and a lot of people who are trying
Speaker 1: to employ it are going about it wrong. So I
Speaker 1: think it's really important work. So thank you, Thanks so much, Eric,
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed this. If what you just heard was
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