WEBVTT - 7 Mindset Shifts That ACTUALLY Work (Finally Change How You Think, React & Show Up) 0:00:00.120 --> 0:00:02.200 I want to be honest with you about something before 0:00:02.240 --> 0:00:06.560 we start. Most mindset content is forgettable, not because the 0:00:06.600 --> 0:00:09.520 ideas are wrong. Some of them are genuinely good, but 0:00:09.560 --> 0:00:14.200 because they're delivered like fortune cookies. They're punchy, quotable, and 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:17.279 gone by Tuesday. You read the book, you highlight the line, 0:00:17.360 --> 0:00:21.119 you feel something shift, and then life comes back. The argument, 0:00:21.239 --> 0:00:24.360 the deadline, the three am spiral, and the highlight in 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:27.479 the book means nothing because the idea never got deep 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:31.400 enough to actually change anything. You might see yourself feel 0:00:31.440 --> 0:00:34.600 this way, You're still reacting the same way. You're still 0:00:34.680 --> 0:00:37.559 choosing the same kind of people. You're still telling yourself 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:41.239 the same stories about why things aren't working. The mindsets 0:00:41.240 --> 0:00:44.120 I'm going to share with you today are actually going 0:00:44.159 --> 0:00:47.320 to shift something and change something for you for real. 0:00:47.880 --> 0:00:51.760 They're the ones that, when they finally landed, really landed 0:00:51.880 --> 0:00:55.160 in the body, not just in the head, change something 0:00:55.560 --> 0:01:00.320 that stayed changed, changed how I see a difficult conversation, changed, 0:01:00.360 --> 0:01:03.320 how I moved through failure, changed how I love people. 0:01:03.640 --> 0:01:05.720 There are seven of them, and I'm going to give 0:01:05.720 --> 0:01:08.760 you them straight, with the science, with the wisdom traditions 0:01:08.760 --> 0:01:11.600 behind them, and with the stories from my own life, 0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:15.160 and with the specific way you can use each one immediately, 0:01:15.520 --> 0:01:19.640 not next month, not when things calm down. Immediately, let's 0:01:19.640 --> 0:01:24.880 get stired. Mindset one. Pain is a postcard, not a 0:01:24.920 --> 0:01:29.280 permanent address. The first mindset that changed my life sounds 0:01:29.360 --> 0:01:33.000 almost insultingly simple when I say it out loud, but 0:01:33.080 --> 0:01:36.720 I need you to hear what's underneath. Pain is a postcard, 0:01:37.280 --> 0:01:40.560 not a permanent address. Here's what I mean. When I 0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:42.920 was at my lowest, when the career I thought I 0:01:42.959 --> 0:01:45.800 wanted had fallen apart, when I had moved back home 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:49.680 after failing at the monastery in a way that felt permanent, 0:01:50.000 --> 0:01:52.800 when I was surrounded by people who had expected more 0:01:52.840 --> 0:01:56.480 from me, and I had expected more from myself, I 0:01:56.600 --> 0:02:00.320 made a mistake that I think almost everyone makes when 0:02:00.360 --> 0:02:06.040 things go badly. I moved in, not literally mentally. I 0:02:06.080 --> 0:02:09.720 took the painful chapter and turned it into my identity. 0:02:10.280 --> 0:02:13.360 I stopped treating it like something that was happening, and 0:02:13.480 --> 0:02:16.840 started treating it like something that was true, Like the 0:02:16.919 --> 0:02:20.720 failure wasn't something I'd been through, like it was something 0:02:20.800 --> 0:02:25.000 I was. And here's what the neuroscience says about that distinction. 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:29.760 Because it's not just poetic, it's biological. The psychologist Martin 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:34.840 Seligmann spent decades studying what he called explanatory style, the 0:02:34.880 --> 0:02:38.480 way people explained bad events to themselves, and he found 0:02:38.480 --> 0:02:42.320 that when people experience setbacks, they tend to explain them 0:02:42.639 --> 0:02:46.960 in one of two fundamentally different ways. Some people explain 0:02:47.080 --> 0:02:51.920 setbacks as temporary, specific, and external. This happened in this 0:02:52.040 --> 0:02:57.520 situation for these reasons. Others explain them as permanent, pervasive, 0:02:57.840 --> 0:03:01.000 and personal. This is who I am, I am, this 0:03:01.040 --> 0:03:04.880 is what always happens. This is what I can always expect. 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:10.560 The first group recovers faster, more completely, and often stronger 0:03:10.560 --> 0:03:15.640 than before. The second group gets stuck, not because they're weaker, 0:03:16.080 --> 0:03:20.240 because they moved into the pain and started decorating. The 0:03:20.360 --> 0:03:24.320 Vedic tradition has a concept that maps onto this perfectly, 0:03:24.800 --> 0:03:30.240 a nitia, the Sanskrit word for impermanence. Nothing is permanent, 0:03:31.000 --> 0:03:34.639 not the good and not the bad. The ancient teachers 0:03:34.760 --> 0:03:37.720 weren't saying this to comfort you. They were saying it 0:03:37.760 --> 0:03:45.600 as a precise description of reality. Everything passes, everything, including this. 0:03:46.320 --> 0:03:49.960 The postcard mindset is this when pain arrives, and it 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:54.600 will it always does. You read the postcard. You sit 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:59.080 with it, you feel it fully, because unfelt pain doesn't leave, 0:03:59.480 --> 0:04:03.360 it just goes underground. But you do not unpack your bags, 0:04:03.640 --> 0:04:06.680 You do not redecorate, you do not forward your mail. 0:04:07.560 --> 0:04:11.720 You're a visitor in this moment, not a resident. This 0:04:11.920 --> 0:04:16.080 too shall pass. Here's how you apply this immediately the 0:04:16.120 --> 0:04:20.320 next time something painful arrives, a rejection, a failure, a loss, 0:04:20.520 --> 0:04:25.640 a conversation that goes badly, ask yourself one question before 0:04:25.760 --> 0:04:30.360 you do anything else. Am I feeling this? Or am 0:04:30.360 --> 0:04:36.159 I becoming it? Feeling it is healthy, necessary, human Becoming 0:04:36.200 --> 0:04:41.440 it is the decision, often unconscious, always costly, to let 0:04:41.480 --> 0:04:45.520 a moment define you instead of shape you. You are 0:04:45.560 --> 0:04:50.320 allowed to feel everything, you are not required to become it. 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:55.840 Pain is a postcard, Read it, learn from it, then 0:04:55.920 --> 0:04:59.880 put it down. Mindset too. You are not your thoughts, 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:03.360 you or what you do with them. This one took 0:05:03.400 --> 0:05:06.560 me years to actually understand. You may have heard it before, 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:09.520 but I don't just want you to understand it intellectually. 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:14.919 I understood the theory almost immediately, but to actually understand 0:05:14.960 --> 0:05:18.400 it in the way that changes behavior. Here's the version 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:22.359 I was living before this mindset. I believed that because 0:05:22.400 --> 0:05:26.960 I thought something, it meant something that because a thought arrived, 0:05:27.279 --> 0:05:30.080 you're not good enough. They don't really respect you. This 0:05:30.200 --> 0:05:33.960 is never going to work. It was delivering truth. I 0:05:34.120 --> 0:05:37.400 was taking delivery of every thought like it was a 0:05:37.440 --> 0:05:41.520 certified letter from reality. I was wrong and it was 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:46.239 costing me everything. The cognitive psychologist Aaron Beck, the founder 0:05:46.240 --> 0:05:49.479 of cognitive behavioral therapy, one of the most evidence based 0:05:49.480 --> 0:05:55.039 psychological frameworks, we have identified something he called automatic thoughts, 0:05:55.720 --> 0:06:00.720 rapid reflexive mental commentary that runs continuously below the level 0:06:00.760 --> 0:06:05.599 of deliberate thinking. And he found that in people experiencing depression, anxiety, 0:06:05.880 --> 0:06:12.600 and relational difficulties, these automatic thoughts shared consistent characteristics. They 0:06:12.640 --> 0:06:18.200 were distorted, they were negative. They were experienced as unquestionable truth. 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:22.960 The thought arrives, it feels true, therefore it is true. 0:06:23.680 --> 0:06:29.560 Beck's entire therapeutic revolution was built on one insight. The 0:06:29.600 --> 0:06:34.200 thought is not the truth. The thought is a hypothesis, 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:38.720 and like any hypothesis, it can be tested. Marcus Aurelius 0:06:38.760 --> 0:06:43.000 wrote in his Meditations, you have power over your mind, 0:06:43.680 --> 0:06:48.560 not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength. 0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:52.760 Here's the immediate application. It's three words and I want 0:06:52.800 --> 0:06:56.040 you to use them. Every time a thought arrives that 0:06:56.160 --> 0:07:02.039 feels like an indictment. Is this true? Not? Is this possible? Not? 0:07:02.320 --> 0:07:08.039 Could this be true? Is this actually demonstrably, evidentially true? 0:07:08.600 --> 0:07:11.240 And if you can't answer with concrete evidence, if the 0:07:11.280 --> 0:07:13.920 thought is a feeling dressed as a fact, you are 0:07:14.000 --> 0:07:17.280 not required to take delivery. You are not your thoughts. 0:07:17.800 --> 0:07:20.160 You are what you do with them, and what you 0:07:20.280 --> 0:07:23.720 do with them starts with the radical act of questioning 0:07:24.160 --> 0:07:28.640 whether they deserve your belief. Mindset three. This is a 0:07:28.720 --> 0:07:31.960 rough one. The people who trigger you the most are 0:07:32.000 --> 0:07:35.160 your greatest teachers. I hate this one. It hurts me, 0:07:35.360 --> 0:07:37.880 It pains me, it worries me. I'm like, God, do 0:07:37.960 --> 0:07:40.120 I have to learn it that way? And I need 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:42.360 to be careful with this one because it can be 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:45.840 misunderstood in a way that causes genuine harm. I'm not 0:07:45.960 --> 0:07:49.440 saying that people who hurt you deserve a medal. Just 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:52.320 to be clear, I'm not saying abuse is a lesson 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:55.560 you should be grateful for. I'm not saying that toxic 0:07:55.640 --> 0:08:00.280 behavior is secretly your spiritual curriculum. What I am saying 0:08:00.760 --> 0:08:04.400 is something more specific and more useful than that. The 0:08:04.480 --> 0:08:09.320 emotional reactions that hit hardest, the ones that seem disproportionate, 0:08:09.640 --> 0:08:13.000 the ones that linger longer than make sense, the ones 0:08:13.040 --> 0:08:16.360 that make you behave in ways you don't recognize as yourself. 0:08:17.040 --> 0:08:22.200 Are almost never fully about the present moment. They are signals, 0:08:22.640 --> 0:08:26.360 and the person who triggered the signal is pointing without 0:08:26.440 --> 0:08:30.160 knowing it, at something that was already there. Here's the 0:08:30.160 --> 0:08:35.600 psychology behind this. The concept is called transference, first identified 0:08:35.600 --> 0:08:40.760 by Freud, but significantly developed and validated by modern relational therapists. 0:08:41.280 --> 0:08:45.959 Transference is the unconscious redirection of feelings from a past 0:08:46.040 --> 0:08:49.600 relationship onto a present one. When someone in your life 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:52.920 provokes a reaction that feels too big, too intense to immediate, 0:08:53.280 --> 0:08:56.160 too hard to let go of, it is frequently because 0:08:56.160 --> 0:09:00.439 they have activated a wound that predates them entirely. The 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:04.400 partner who dismisses your feelings isn't just a dismissive partner. 0:09:04.880 --> 0:09:08.360 They are also for your nervous system. Every person who 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:12.119 ever dismissed you, the parent who didn't have the emotional bandwidth, 0:09:12.400 --> 0:09:15.040 the teacher who made you feel stupid, the friend who 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:18.640 chose someone else. The reaction you're having right now is 0:09:18.679 --> 0:09:23.199 the sum of all those reactions, which means the most 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:26.760 triggering people in your life are giving you a map, 0:09:27.360 --> 0:09:30.480 a map to the places that still need your attention, 0:09:31.160 --> 0:09:34.400 a map to the wounds that haven't yet healed, a 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:38.400 map to the patterns that keep repeating, not because you're broken, 0:09:38.960 --> 0:09:42.560 but because the nervous system keeps seeking resolution for what 0:09:42.800 --> 0:09:46.920 was never resolved. The Youngean concept of the shadow is 0:09:47.040 --> 0:09:51.960 essential here. Carl Jung believed that every person carries a shadow, 0:09:52.480 --> 0:09:57.680 the parts of themselves they've disowned, suppressed, or refused to acknowledge. 0:09:58.080 --> 0:10:01.960 And he observed that what he most disliked in others 0:10:02.440 --> 0:10:06.719 is frequently what he most refused to see in himself. 0:10:07.160 --> 0:10:11.160 The person who infuriates you with their arrogance? Do you 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:14.560 have arrogance you've been trained to suppress. The person whose 0:10:14.600 --> 0:10:18.480 neediness exhausts you. Do you have needs you've convinced yourself 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:22.400 not to have. The person whose anger frightens you. Do 0:10:22.480 --> 0:10:25.439 you have anger you've never allowed yourself to feel. This 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:30.079 is not accusation, This is cartography. You're mapping yourself through 0:10:30.120 --> 0:10:34.520 your reactions. Here's how to use this sensitively. The next 0:10:34.559 --> 0:10:37.160 time someone triggers you, and I mean really triggers you, 0:10:37.480 --> 0:10:40.920 the disproportionate reaction, the one you can't shake. Instead of 0:10:40.960 --> 0:10:45.640 asking why are they like this, ask two different questions. First, 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:50.000 what specifically is being activated in me right now? Not 0:10:50.120 --> 0:10:53.680 what did they do? What got activated? Name the feeling 0:10:53.720 --> 0:10:57.680 as precisely as you can. Second, where have I felt 0:10:57.720 --> 0:11:02.520 this before? Not in this relationship, earlier, younger, way back? 0:11:02.600 --> 0:11:05.760 When When was the first time you felt this particular 0:11:05.840 --> 0:11:08.920 flavor of hurt. The answer to that second question is 0:11:08.920 --> 0:11:11.120 not the person in front of you. And when you 0:11:11.240 --> 0:11:13.520 know that, when you can see that trigger as a 0:11:13.559 --> 0:11:16.840 door to something much older, you stop trying to solve 0:11:16.880 --> 0:11:20.480 the present moment and start attending to the actual source. 0:11:21.120 --> 0:11:24.079 That is where the real healing is. And the most 0:11:24.120 --> 0:11:28.360 aggravating person in your life is often the one holding 0:11:28.400 --> 0:11:53.280 the door open mine Set number four. Clarity is not found, 0:11:53.640 --> 0:11:57.880 it's built through action. This is for anyone who's waiting, 0:11:58.200 --> 0:12:00.960 waiting for the sign, waiting to feel a ready, waiting 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:05.240 for the path to become clear. Take the first step. 0:12:05.800 --> 0:12:07.760 I have to tell you something that I wish someone 0:12:07.840 --> 0:12:11.360 told me ten years earlier. The clarity is not coming 0:12:11.640 --> 0:12:15.960 before the action. The clarity is the product of the action. 0:12:16.640 --> 0:12:18.920 You do not think your way to a clear life. 0:12:19.640 --> 0:12:22.920 You live your way to a clear life. The path 0:12:23.040 --> 0:12:27.640 doesn't become clear by just looking. The path becomes clear 0:12:27.920 --> 0:12:30.719 by putting one foot in front of the other, and 0:12:30.760 --> 0:12:35.000 then it appears. Here's the science. The psychologist Mihi Chick 0:12:35.080 --> 0:12:38.720 sent me High, whose work on flow states we've referenced before, 0:12:39.200 --> 0:12:42.480 found that people most commonly experienced their deepest sense of 0:12:42.559 --> 0:12:46.840 purpose and meaning not in moments of reflection, but in 0:12:46.920 --> 0:12:50.920 moments of engaged activity, not when they're thinking about what 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:54.040 they want to do, but when they're doing it. This 0:12:54.120 --> 0:12:58.080 maps directly onto what neuroscience now knows about how the 0:12:58.120 --> 0:13:01.800 brain generates meaning. Meaning is not a conclusion the brain 0:13:01.880 --> 0:13:06.600 reaches after sufficient contemplation. It is a byproduct of engagement, 0:13:06.880 --> 0:13:12.920 of doing, creating, building, moving. The brain makes meaning retrospectively 0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:17.120 from the raw material of lived experience. You cannot think 0:13:17.200 --> 0:13:21.439 yourself into a meaningful life. You have to live yourself 0:13:21.800 --> 0:13:26.199 into one. The ancient Sanskrit concept of karma is entirely 0:13:26.200 --> 0:13:30.120 misunderstood in Western culture. We think of karma as cosmic justice. 0:13:30.120 --> 0:13:32.839 What goes around comes around, and there's truth to that, 0:13:33.120 --> 0:13:37.640 but in its original philosophical context, Karma simply means action. 0:13:38.440 --> 0:13:41.440 Karma is the act itself, and The Bug with Ghita 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:45.760 is perhaps the world's most sophisticated treatise on action, specifically 0:13:45.760 --> 0:13:50.640 on the relationship between action, identity, and liberation. Christna's central 0:13:50.679 --> 0:13:53.679 teaching to origin in the Geta is not figure out 0:13:53.679 --> 0:13:56.960 your purpose and an act. It is act without attachment 0:13:57.040 --> 0:14:01.160 to the outcome, and purpose will reveal its self. Listen 0:14:01.200 --> 0:14:04.679 to that again, write it down. Think about that. The 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:09.600 action comes first, the clarity follows. So many people are 0:14:09.600 --> 0:14:13.040 paralyzed waiting to know, waiting to be sure, waiting for 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:16.160 the vision to be clear enough before they risk moving 0:14:16.160 --> 0:14:19.560 toward it. And the painful irony is that the waiting 0:14:19.920 --> 0:14:24.040 is the very thing preventing the clarity from arriving. Here's 0:14:24.080 --> 0:14:27.680 the immediate application, and it's simply enough to do today. 0:14:27.760 --> 0:14:30.680 You don't need to know the five year plan. You 0:14:30.800 --> 0:14:34.160 just need to know your next five steps. You don't 0:14:34.280 --> 0:14:37.800 need to know where you'll be in ten years. All 0:14:37.840 --> 0:14:40.840 you need to know is what you're going to do 0:14:40.920 --> 0:14:44.880 next today, whatever it is, whether it's a phone call, 0:14:44.960 --> 0:14:48.560 an application, a conversation, and hours spent doing the thing 0:14:48.840 --> 0:14:52.120 instead of thinking about the thing. The clarity you're waiting 0:14:52.160 --> 0:14:57.200 for is hiding inside the action you keep postponing. Stop 0:14:57.320 --> 0:15:02.720 waiting to know, start doing. Find out. Mindset five. You 0:15:02.760 --> 0:15:06.640 don't rise to your goals, you fall to your environment. 0:15:07.400 --> 0:15:10.280 This one changed how I designed every aspect of my 0:15:10.400 --> 0:15:13.080 daily life, and it is the mindset that I think 0:15:13.160 --> 0:15:17.560 most people resist the hardest, because accepting it means accepting 0:15:17.640 --> 0:15:22.440 something deeply uncomfortable. Your willpower is not the problem. Your 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:25.680 environment is. Let me say that again, because it runs 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:30.320 counter to everything productivity culture tells you. Your willpower is 0:15:30.440 --> 0:15:34.680 not the problem. Your environment is. The psychologist James Clear, 0:15:34.960 --> 0:15:38.920 building on decades of behavioral science, articulated something in atomic 0:15:38.960 --> 0:15:42.240 habits that has now been validated across hundreds of studies. 0:15:42.840 --> 0:15:47.120 Human behavior is far less driven by conscious intention than 0:15:47.160 --> 0:15:51.440 we believe, and far more driven by environmental cues. What 0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:55.200 we see, what's accessible, what surround us, what the people 0:15:55.240 --> 0:15:58.800 around us do. These are the primary drivers of behavior, 0:15:59.280 --> 0:16:03.160 not goals, Motivation not discipline. The person who wants to 0:16:03.200 --> 0:16:05.960 eat better but keeps their kitchen full of food that 0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:09.880 undermines that goal is not going to succeed through willpower. 0:16:10.320 --> 0:16:12.360 The person who wants to read more but keeps their 0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:15.640 phone on their bedside table instead of a book is 0:16:15.680 --> 0:16:19.400 not going to succeed through discipline. The person who wants 0:16:19.400 --> 0:16:22.280 to grow but surrounds themselves exclusively with people who are 0:16:22.320 --> 0:16:26.640 comfortable with stagnation is not going to succeed through intention. 0:16:27.320 --> 0:16:30.920 This is not pessimism. This is power, because if the 0:16:31.040 --> 0:16:34.800 environment is the primary driver of behavior, then designing your 0:16:34.920 --> 0:16:37.920 environment is the most powerful thing you can do for 0:16:38.080 --> 0:16:42.240 your goals, more powerful than motivation, more powerful than a 0:16:42.320 --> 0:16:46.560 vision board, more powerful than any amount of willpower. The 0:16:46.640 --> 0:16:52.640 ancient Indian concept of Sunger understood this completely. Sunger or 0:16:52.760 --> 0:16:58.200 sut sung literally means the company of truth. This was 0:16:58.240 --> 0:17:02.800 the practice of deliberately sourrounding yourself with people whose presence 0:17:02.920 --> 0:17:07.360 pulled you toward your highest self, not just people you liked, 0:17:07.920 --> 0:17:10.560 people who, by virtue of who they were and how 0:17:10.600 --> 0:17:14.159 they lived, made it easier for you to be who 0:17:14.200 --> 0:17:17.880 you were trying to become. The tradition understood that humans 0:17:18.200 --> 0:17:23.680 are profoundly inevitably influenced by their environment, especially their social environment, 0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:28.240 and rather than fighting that influence through discipline, the wisdom 0:17:28.440 --> 0:17:31.760 was to design the environment so that the influence worked 0:17:32.080 --> 0:17:36.720 for you rather than against you. Research by social psychologist 0:17:37.040 --> 0:17:41.080 Nicholas Christakis at Yale confirmed this at scale in a 0:17:41.119 --> 0:17:44.760 landmark study tracking thousands of people over decades. He found 0:17:44.800 --> 0:17:50.760 that behaviors including happiness, obesity, smoking, and even loneliness spread 0:17:50.800 --> 0:17:55.239 through social networks like contagion. You're not just influenced by 0:17:55.240 --> 0:17:59.480 your friends. You were influenced by your friends, friends, friends, 0:18:00.320 --> 0:18:05.640 three degrees of separation. The environment is that powerful. Here's 0:18:05.680 --> 0:18:08.119 the immediate application. You don't have to quit on all 0:18:08.160 --> 0:18:12.400 your friends. Three questions to ask about your current environment. First, 0:18:12.640 --> 0:18:17.040 does your physical space make your most important behaviors easier 0:18:17.560 --> 0:18:20.159 or harder? If you want to meditate, is there a 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:24.200 clear quiet space that invites it? If you want to create, 0:18:24.640 --> 0:18:28.760 is your workspace organized around creation or is everything arranged 0:18:28.800 --> 0:18:33.600 around distraction? Second? Does your social environment the five people 0:18:33.600 --> 0:18:36.080 you spend the most time with make you more or 0:18:36.160 --> 0:18:39.080 less likely to become who you're trying to be, not 0:18:39.160 --> 0:18:42.000 whether you love them, whether their orbit is pulling you 0:18:42.119 --> 0:18:45.600 forward or holding you in place. Third, what is the 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:48.639 single easiest change you could make to your environment today, 0:18:49.119 --> 0:18:52.960 right now, that would make your most important goal more likely? 0:18:53.520 --> 0:18:57.919 Not a dramatic thing, The smallest possible environmental adjustment that 0:18:58.000 --> 0:19:01.240 removes friction between you and who you're trying to become. 0:19:01.680 --> 0:19:04.439 You don't rise to your goals, as James Claire says, 0:19:04.640 --> 0:19:08.960 you fall to your environment. So build an environment worth 0:19:09.000 --> 0:19:13.200 falling to. Mindset six, The most dangerous story you tell 0:19:13.800 --> 0:19:16.880 is the one about yourself. Every person walking the planet 0:19:17.080 --> 0:19:19.560 is a narrator of their own life, and like all 0:19:19.680 --> 0:19:24.399 narrators were, unreliable. We edit. We emphasize certain chapters and 0:19:24.400 --> 0:19:29.080 minimize others. We assign causation where there's only correlation. We 0:19:29.160 --> 0:19:32.600 cast ourselves in roles, sometimes the hero, sometimes the victim, 0:19:32.880 --> 0:19:36.000 always the protagonist, and we mistake those roles for truth. 0:19:36.400 --> 0:19:39.680 The story you tell about yourself is the most powerful 0:19:39.720 --> 0:19:43.840 force in your life, more powerful than your circumstances, more 0:19:43.880 --> 0:19:48.240 powerful than your talent, more powerful than your opportunities, because 0:19:48.280 --> 0:19:52.800 the story decides which opportunities you see, which risks you take, 0:19:53.359 --> 0:19:56.879 which relationships you believe you deserve, and which version of 0:19:56.920 --> 0:20:00.719 your future you allow yourself to move forward. The psychologist 0:20:00.800 --> 0:20:05.160 Dan mccadams at Northwestern University has spent his career studying 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:10.160 what he calls narrative identity, the story each person constructs 0:20:10.400 --> 0:20:12.600 about who they are and how they came to be 0:20:12.720 --> 0:20:15.920 that way, and his research has found something both obvious 0:20:16.320 --> 0:20:21.680 and profound. The content of yourself narrative predicts your psychological 0:20:21.760 --> 0:20:25.920 well being, your resilience, and your capacity for growth more 0:20:25.960 --> 0:20:30.760 reliably than almost any other variable. Not what happened to you, 0:20:31.440 --> 0:20:35.120 how you story what happened to you. Two people can 0:20:35.160 --> 0:20:39.840 go through almost identical experiences, the difficult childhood, the professional failure, 0:20:40.080 --> 0:20:44.639 the painful relationship, and construct completely different narratives from the 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:48.600 same raw material. One person stories it as evidence of 0:20:48.640 --> 0:20:52.159 their damage, the other stories it as the origin of 0:20:52.240 --> 0:20:57.360 their depth. The experiences were similar, the narrators made different choices. 0:20:58.080 --> 0:21:02.639 McAdams identified what he called the redemption narrative, a story 0:21:02.680 --> 0:21:07.120 structure where difficult chapters are told as leading to growth, insight, 0:21:07.320 --> 0:21:10.960 or strength. He found that people who naturally organize their 0:21:11.000 --> 0:21:17.520 self narratives around redemption are significantly more psychologically healthy, more generative, 0:21:17.640 --> 0:21:21.760 and more resilient than those who organize around contamination, where 0:21:21.760 --> 0:21:24.440 a good thing was ruined, where a hopeful beginning led 0:21:24.480 --> 0:21:27.600 to a bad end. The difference is not in what happened. 0:21:28.119 --> 0:21:31.199 The difference is in how it is told. Here's what 0:21:31.240 --> 0:21:33.760 I want you to do with this immediately, think of 0:21:33.800 --> 0:21:37.280 the story you most consistently tell about yourself, the one 0:21:37.280 --> 0:21:40.080 that comes up in therapy or with close friends, or 0:21:40.119 --> 0:21:42.920 at three am when you're being most honest, the one 0:21:42.920 --> 0:21:45.919 that explains why things are the way they are, why 0:21:46.040 --> 0:21:49.399 you are the way you are. Now ask is this 0:21:49.520 --> 0:21:53.560 the only story the evidence supports or is it one story, 0:21:53.800 --> 0:21:57.200 one edit, one emphasis, of many that could be constructed 0:21:57.280 --> 0:22:00.520 from the same facts. What would the story look like 0:22:00.880 --> 0:22:03.960 if you're telling it as evidence of your strength rather 0:22:04.040 --> 0:22:07.760 than your damage, as evidence of your wisdom rather than 0:22:07.800 --> 0:22:12.159 your wounds, as a chapter rather than a conclusion. You 0:22:12.480 --> 0:22:16.919 are the narrator, the raw materials fixed, The narration is yours. 0:22:17.320 --> 0:22:21.120 This isn't toxic positivity. Choose a story that is honest 0:22:21.640 --> 0:22:24.879 that gives you somewhere to go. Mindset seven. Love is 0:22:24.920 --> 0:22:28.520 not a feeling. It is a daily decision. A student 0:22:28.720 --> 0:22:32.840 once asked a teacher, what's the difference between I like 0:22:32.960 --> 0:22:36.720 you and I love you? The teacher replied, when you 0:22:36.960 --> 0:22:40.399 like a flower, you simply pluck it, but when you 0:22:40.440 --> 0:22:44.720 love a flower, you water it every day. Love is 0:22:44.760 --> 0:22:49.080 a daily act, a daily decision, not just a feeling. 0:22:49.640 --> 0:22:52.840 I've saved this one for last deliberately because I think 0:22:52.840 --> 0:22:55.240 it is the most important, and I think it is 0:22:55.280 --> 0:22:58.200 the most misunderstood, and I think getting it wrong is 0:22:58.280 --> 0:23:01.800 responsible for more human suffering than almost anything else I 0:23:01.840 --> 0:23:05.080 could name. Here's the story our culture tells us about love. 0:23:05.720 --> 0:23:08.880 Love is a feeling that arrives, a lightning bolt, a chemistry, 0:23:08.960 --> 0:23:12.480 a sense of recognition there you are, that happens to 0:23:12.520 --> 0:23:15.280 you rather than being made by you. And when the 0:23:15.280 --> 0:23:18.800 feeling is there, the relationship works. And when the feeling fades, 0:23:19.119 --> 0:23:23.000 which it inevitably does because all feelings are temporary, the 0:23:23.080 --> 0:23:26.600 relationship is over because the love is gone. This story 0:23:26.680 --> 0:23:29.520 is everywhere, in every rom com and every love song 0:23:29.600 --> 0:23:33.240 and every dating app designed around the initial spark. It 0:23:33.320 --> 0:23:36.000 is so pervasive that most people have never questioned it. 0:23:36.440 --> 0:23:40.240 The psychologist Robert Sternberg at Yale developed what he called 0:23:40.400 --> 0:23:44.560 the triangular theory of love, a framework that identifies three 0:23:44.640 --> 0:23:51.119 components of genuine, durable love passion, intimacy, and commitment, and 0:23:51.200 --> 0:23:54.480 his research found that of the three, passion, the feeling, 0:23:54.520 --> 0:23:58.760 the spark, the chemistry has the shortest lifespan. It peaks early, 0:23:59.040 --> 0:24:02.800 often within months of relationship beginning, and it declines predictably 0:24:03.160 --> 0:24:06.399 regardless of how compatible, how suited, or how deeply in 0:24:06.440 --> 0:24:09.560 love two people genuinely are. This is not a bug, 0:24:10.040 --> 0:24:14.480 This is biology. The neurochemicals responsible for the early intensity 0:24:14.680 --> 0:24:19.600 of romantic love, dopamine uropanephrine, are designed to initiate bonding, 0:24:20.119 --> 0:24:23.880 not maintain it. They're a starter motor, not an engine. 0:24:23.920 --> 0:24:27.600 The relationships that last, the ones that deepen rather than erode, 0:24:27.960 --> 0:24:32.040 are built on what remains after the starter motor quiets, 0:24:32.600 --> 0:24:35.640 And what remains is not a feeling. It is a 0:24:35.680 --> 0:24:41.119 series of daily, often mundane, often imperfect choices. The choice 0:24:41.119 --> 0:24:44.959 to be curious about this person rather than certain about them, 0:24:45.280 --> 0:24:49.160 the choice to repair the rupture rather than catalog it. 0:24:49.200 --> 0:24:52.119 The choice to see them fully, not just the version 0:24:52.160 --> 0:24:55.680 you fell for, but the complex, contradictory, sometimes maddening, a 0:24:55.680 --> 0:24:58.280 whole person in front of you, and choose them anyway. 0:24:58.800 --> 0:25:03.160 The difference between a relationship that survives and a relationship 0:25:03.200 --> 0:25:07.439 that dies is not the absence of conflict. It was 0:25:07.480 --> 0:25:11.760 the presence of what John Gotman calls bids for connection, 0:25:12.560 --> 0:25:17.320 the small, daily, often trivial, attempts one person makes to 0:25:17.440 --> 0:25:21.680 reach toward the other, a joke, a question, a touch, 0:25:22.040 --> 0:25:25.840 a look, and the critical variable was whether those bids 0:25:26.040 --> 0:25:30.520 were met, turned toward in Gotman's language, rather than turned 0:25:30.560 --> 0:25:34.280 away from. The Relationships that lasted were not the ones 0:25:34.320 --> 0:25:37.879 with the most passion or the best compatibility scores or 0:25:37.920 --> 0:25:41.520 the fewest arguments. They were the ones where both people, 0:25:42.119 --> 0:25:45.160 most of the time, in the small moments that feel 0:25:45.240 --> 0:25:49.440 like they don't count, choose to turn toward each other. 0:25:50.200 --> 0:25:53.720 That is not a feeling, That is a practice. Here's 0:25:53.720 --> 0:25:57.240 the immediate application. Think of the most important relationship in 0:25:57.280 --> 0:26:00.760 your life right now, and ask what is the smallest, 0:26:01.160 --> 0:26:05.360 most available, most concrete bid for connection I could make 0:26:05.480 --> 0:26:09.040 toward this person today. Not a grand gesture, not a 0:26:09.080 --> 0:26:14.359 difficult conversation, the smallest genuine movement toward them. A text 0:26:14.359 --> 0:26:16.800 that says I was thinking of you, A question that 0:26:16.800 --> 0:26:20.040 shows you've been paying attention, five minutes of eye contact 0:26:20.040 --> 0:26:22.399 without a phone in the room, the choice to be 0:26:22.520 --> 0:26:26.440 curious rather than reactive in the next disagreement. Love is 0:26:26.440 --> 0:26:30.040 a daily decision. Make it today. Here's what I know 0:26:30.080 --> 0:26:33.680 about mindsets. They don't change your life by being interesting. 0:26:34.240 --> 0:26:37.920 They change your life by being practiced, by being returned 0:26:37.920 --> 0:26:41.000 to again and again until they stop being ideas you 0:26:41.080 --> 0:26:44.159 agree with and start being the lens through which you 0:26:44.280 --> 0:26:49.000 automatically see. That process takes time, takes repetition, takes the 0:26:49.000 --> 0:26:51.840 courage to keep applying an idea even when the situation 0:26:51.960 --> 0:26:55.520 is hard and the easier thing is to react from habit. 0:26:56.119 --> 0:26:58.680 Thank you so much for listening today. I hope you'll 0:26:58.680 --> 0:27:01.000 share this with a friend, and I hope you'll choose 0:27:01.000 --> 0:27:04.199