Speaker 1: When we put the achievement as the absolute pinnacle of
Speaker 1: who we are, and that's our happiness and our self worth,
Speaker 1: that's when we completely lose perspective. Welcome to the one
Speaker 1: you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true, and yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good will. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 1: episode is Claire Booth and entrepreneur, author, and speaker. She's
Speaker 1: the founder and CEO of market research firm Lux Insights,
Speaker 1: with two decades of experience serving some of the world's
Speaker 1: most recognized brands. Her book is The Achiever Fever Cure,
Speaker 1: How I learned to stop striving myself crazy. Hi Claire,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Hi Eric, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to have you on. Your book is called
Speaker 1: The Achiever Fever Cure, How I learned to stop striving
Speaker 1: myself crazy. And we will get into all the details
Speaker 1: of that shortly, but let's start like we always do,
Speaker 1: with the parable. There is a grandmother who's talking to
Speaker 1: her grandson and she says, in life, there are two
Speaker 1: wolves inside of us that are always at bad at all.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and he looks up at his grandmother says, well, grandmother,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. So the first time I
Speaker 1: heard that parable was the first time I heard your show,
Speaker 1: and I was listening to it while I was hiking,
Speaker 1: because I often listened to podcasts while I hike, and
Speaker 1: I remember hearing that parable and hearing the last line,
Speaker 1: and it literally stopped me in my tracks, because only
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks previous had I started to become
Speaker 1: aware of this voice in my head, this really loud, negative,
Speaker 1: incessantly nagging voice in my head. And so when I
Speaker 1: heard the parable, that was my realization that it's not
Speaker 1: just me. There's other people that suffer from this and well,
Speaker 1: and in fact, here's a whole show about it, here's
Speaker 1: a whole podcast about it, and so as as you know,
Speaker 1: this podcast has been a huge part of my personal
Speaker 1: self transformation. So once I became aware of this bad wolf,
Speaker 1: the first thing I wanted to do was just starve
Speaker 1: it out. I wanted to I wanted to just watch
Speaker 1: it die. But I soon realized it doesn't work that way.
Speaker 1: Having a good wolf necessarily means that we're going to
Speaker 1: have a bad wolf. You can't have one without the other.
Speaker 1: The concept of good needs the concept of bad um
Speaker 1: And so what I had to do was learn how
Speaker 1: to love my bad wolf, which was surprisingly easy because
Speaker 1: I started to realize how much that bad wolf and
Speaker 1: those feelings of fear and self doubt and worry had
Speaker 1: brought me success to that point in my life, And
Speaker 1: it was only when I learned to start loving and
Speaker 1: finding the gratitude for my bad wolf that I was
Speaker 1: able to start developing a relationship with my good wolf.
Speaker 1: The bad wolf had been so dominant up until that
Speaker 1: point that I didn't really have a relationship with my
Speaker 1: good wolf. So now my relationship with my good wolf
Speaker 1: basically means keeping my inner house clean. So, for example,
Speaker 1: when the bad wolf gets fed and it as it will,
Speaker 1: I just watch the feeding, so I try to step back.
Speaker 1: I don't try to resist it, I don't try to
Speaker 1: stop it, I don't necessarily try to talk myself out
Speaker 1: of it. I just become aware that, oh, this is
Speaker 1: happening right now. And as I watch, I become more
Speaker 1: aware of the words, more aware of the thoughts. That
Speaker 1: brings me into presence. And once I'm in presence, those
Speaker 1: feelings of gratitude and love, that kind of higher elevated
Speaker 1: states starts to emerge from that. Just to take the
Speaker 1: analogy a little further, I get regular reminders that I
Speaker 1: have overfed my bad wolf for so long, because sometimes
Speaker 1: he just kind of barfs up his food, Like when
Speaker 1: I least expect it just barfs it up. I don't
Speaker 1: think we've had that analogy before. So if I try ignore,
Speaker 1: you know, that kind of pile of puke, right and
Speaker 1: pretend it doesn't exist, then it really starts to smell awful,
Speaker 1: and I get myself into this emotional turmoil. UM. And
Speaker 1: so now what I do is again try to bring
Speaker 1: myself into presence and UM, give that bad wolf a
Speaker 1: bit of a compassionate pat on the head and say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: there you are and uh, and either get present or
Speaker 1: inquire into what prompted, for lack of the better word,
Speaker 1: puke in the first place. That's great. That is a
Speaker 1: new analogy. I'll give you that, and it's a good one.
Speaker 1: So let's go back a little ways to what got
Speaker 1: you to the point that you wrote a book called
Speaker 1: The achiever Fever Cure. Um. It's one I certainly relate with.
Speaker 1: The achievement has been something that I have seen as
Speaker 1: both the good and the bad wolf in my own life,
Speaker 1: and so so I'm very interested in, um, how you
Speaker 1: did that. But let's set the stage about what brought
Speaker 1: you to the point that you sort of embarked on
Speaker 1: this new journey of even trying to not be an
Speaker 1: achiever all the time. Right, So, being an achiever has
Speaker 1: been my identity for as long as I can possibly remember,
Speaker 1: and as a result, it's brought me all sorts of
Speaker 1: success in my business and athletics and and um so
Speaker 1: I never really thought to question it. What I didn't
Speaker 1: do was make the tie between being an achiever and
Speaker 1: these feelings of anxiety and depression and for me insomnia,
Speaker 1: um and and you experienced that enough that finally I
Speaker 1: started to see the pattern. And it got to the
Speaker 1: point where I was about five years into running my business,
Speaker 1: and you know, everything was going the way I wanted
Speaker 1: it to go. We were profitable, we were growing twenty
Speaker 1: percent a year. I was adding great new employees. We
Speaker 1: were at in clients each year. You know, everything in
Speaker 1: my my life seemed good. But I was miserable because
Speaker 1: all of this was accompanied by this anxiety and beating
Speaker 1: myself up, and this constant worry and this needing to prove.
Speaker 1: And uh so, five years in, I had experienced this
Speaker 1: patterns so many times that I thought I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: at risk of being a liability to my own company
Speaker 1: if I don't do something. My employees need a confident,
Speaker 1: you know, a confident, strong leader. They don't need somebody
Speaker 1: that's constantly beating themselves up. And so there came a
Speaker 1: point where I just had to hold up my hand
Speaker 1: and and say enough, I cannot live my life like
Speaker 1: this anymore. I I can't go days without sleep. There's
Speaker 1: got to be a better way, right And your business
Speaker 1: is market research. That's kind of what you do. And
Speaker 1: one of the things you did is part of this book,
Speaker 1: is you did some market research quote unquote on other
Speaker 1: high achievers, and I did. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that you found was that this anxiety, depression, insomnia was
Speaker 1: certainly not limited to you. A matter of fact, it
Speaker 1: was relatively prevalent in a lot of achievers. It was prevalent. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: So I did a survey of hundreds of other self
Speaker 1: reported achievers, and one of the questions I asked was,
Speaker 1: when was the last time you experienced insomnia? Are really
Speaker 1: bad sleep? And over a third of the of the
Speaker 1: achievers that I spoke to or that that did the survey,
Speaker 1: over a third said they had experienced insomnia that week alone.
Speaker 1: And then depression, you know, fift within the past six months,
Speaker 1: and anxiety within the past couple of weeks, it was high. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's one of those things that I've noticed throughout
Speaker 1: my career that achievers don't want to talk about. Right,
Speaker 1: you wrestle with us if you're leading a company, Right,
Speaker 1: you don't want to reject anxiety about how the companies
Speaker 1: do into your employees. You know, there's been more writing
Speaker 1: in the last few years about the incidents of depression
Speaker 1: among entrepreneurs how high it really is, because I think
Speaker 1: that part of what achievers get into they are seen
Speaker 1: as achievers, and often that's the image they feel like
Speaker 1: they need to project, so they don't acknowledge it to themselves,
Speaker 1: let alone anyone else. Right, we don't acknowledge it within
Speaker 1: ourselves because it's so important to us for everyone to
Speaker 1: see us as strong and powerful and and on top
Speaker 1: of things and in control of things. Um but the
Speaker 1: stats and my own experience show that that's not the
Speaker 1: case at all, So we almost double down on on
Speaker 1: trying to prove ourselves. Of my achievers say, they are
Speaker 1: trying to always prove that they are the strong, confident,
Speaker 1: powerful being, And the ability to make oneself vulnerable gets
Speaker 1: further and further us down and we know, based on
Speaker 1: Burnet Brown and and uh speakers and writers like that,
Speaker 1: how much strength there is in vulnerability. And this is
Speaker 1: starting to make its way into business circles now, but
Speaker 1: it's still I mean, it's still pretty quiet in terms
Speaker 1: of people actually doing it right. Absolutely, I think it
Speaker 1: is still a thing there. So let's talk about achiever fever.
Speaker 1: What is it? Because, um, you didn't walk off and
Speaker 1: give up your business. You wrote a book, I mean,
Speaker 1: so you continued to achieve. What's the difference between achieving
Speaker 1: and achiever fever. It's a good question. So achiever fever
Speaker 1: is the dark side of achieving. There's nothing wrong with achieving.
Speaker 1: There's nothing wrong with having goals and working hard and
Speaker 1: wanting to do your best. There's nothing wrong at all
Speaker 1: with that. Achiever fever is the dark side of achieving.
Speaker 1: It's when we tie our our happiness, our sense of
Speaker 1: self worth to our achievements and get away from seeing
Speaker 1: an achievement as just another point in time. So when
Speaker 1: we we put the achievement as the abstule, absolute pinnacle
Speaker 1: of who we are and thus our happiness and our
Speaker 1: self worth, that's when we completely lose perspective and we
Speaker 1: enter into this delusion, the spell of if I'm not
Speaker 1: working towards my achievement, then there's something very very wrong
Speaker 1: with me, And it means I'm lazy. It means I'm weak,
Speaker 1: it means i'm ordinary average, you know, it means I'm
Speaker 1: it means I'm dying or going backwards. And it's a
Speaker 1: real kind of polarity in our thinking. So I continue
Speaker 1: to achieve in different aspects of my life, but I
Speaker 1: don't have the fever now like I used to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's so many things I think in what you said there.
Speaker 1: I think there's the tying of our self worth to
Speaker 1: what we achieve. You know, this very fundamental am what
Speaker 1: I do. Right. There's also the idea of I'll be
Speaker 1: happy when when I achieve this, then I'll be happy.
Speaker 1: Everything up till then is just me getting to that point.
Speaker 1: And what most of us know, if we've had enough
Speaker 1: years on this earth, is that we get there and
Speaker 1: we're not really any happier. Maybe we are for a day,
Speaker 1: a week, depends, you know, three hours, and then we
Speaker 1: just set the next goal. We just how we get
Speaker 1: Now it's the next thing, and off we go. It's
Speaker 1: this perpetual I'll be happy when kind of thing. And
Speaker 1: then the other thing that you sort of set in
Speaker 1: there and you allude to in the book that uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll just I'll bring up is that we
Speaker 1: can do this with anything if we tend to be achievers.
Speaker 1: It doesn't tend to only be Oh, I'm achiever at work.
Speaker 1: But at least for me, it's always been, well, yes,
Speaker 1: I'm achiever here, and then if I'm going to start
Speaker 1: playing tennis, I have to be really good at tennis.
Speaker 1: And you know, if I'm going to meditate, I've really
Speaker 1: got to be good at meditating. And it's just everything
Speaker 1: gets swept up. Right when I'm at my uh let's say,
Speaker 1: less evolved mindset, it sucks everything in for me. Well,
Speaker 1: what tends to happen I find, at least in my
Speaker 1: experience and the people that I talked to, is that
Speaker 1: we tend to gravitate two things that we are good
Speaker 1: at so that we can achieve in them. Because you're right,
Speaker 1: it's not just work, it's not just sports. It's anything
Speaker 1: else that I put my mind to. I want to,
Speaker 1: you know, I need to achieve at it. So so
Speaker 1: much of what was interesting to me previous, but I
Speaker 1: didn't think I'd be very good at you know, I
Speaker 1: let it fall by the wayside um and just getting
Speaker 1: back to what you were talking about earlier, this need
Speaker 1: to to to set the next goal, because you're right
Speaker 1: that the elation that comes from achievement can last anywhere
Speaker 1: from ten seconds to thirty seconds. Throw a bottle of
Speaker 1: wine in there. It can last in the evening, but
Speaker 1: the next day. It's not just setting the next goal. Goal.
Speaker 1: The goal has got to be a little bit bigger,
Speaker 1: a little bit faster, a little bit better, because now
Speaker 1: we're trying to prove ourselves at the next level, and
Speaker 1: it it brings us into the cycle of craving, right
Speaker 1: like we crave these achievements because we're convinced that that's
Speaker 1: what's going to make us happy. And you know that
Speaker 1: when we get into that craving mindset, we'll never be happy.
Speaker 1: You know. It's it's we will never get to where
Speaker 1: we think we can be, and it's such a limiting mindset.
Speaker 1: So when you embarked on this journey, you engaged a
Speaker 1: guy who is a climbing coach of yours to kind
Speaker 1: of help you through this journey, and you had a
Speaker 1: line in there I can't resist reading, which is this
Speaker 1: is your husband would think I hired the dreaded life coach,
Speaker 1: code for you can't get your ship together, so pay
Speaker 1: a bunch of money to someone else who can't get
Speaker 1: their shipped together, which I thought was really funny, And
Speaker 1: I guess in a way, I'm a life coach. So
Speaker 1: I read it and laughed because I certain I've always
Speaker 1: disliked that word because I think it has that connotation.
Speaker 1: But you now use coach is for a lot of
Speaker 1: your leaders in your business. I do. Every leader in
Speaker 1: my business now has their own personal coach. And I
Speaker 1: know um that those conversations that happened between senior staff
Speaker 1: and coaches are probably just as much personal as they
Speaker 1: are business. In fact, they're probably more personal than they
Speaker 1: are business. And back when I was really suffering with
Speaker 1: achiever fever, the idea of having a coach, the idea
Speaker 1: of having someone to help me hold my hand, was
Speaker 1: something I resisted so strongly because I thought, how do
Speaker 1: I need somebody to show me how to live my life? Like,
Speaker 1: surely I'm better than that. And and now I see
Speaker 1: the absolute importance of a coach, you know, any professional
Speaker 1: um for that matter, because we limit ourselves and the
Speaker 1: questions that we ask ourselves, the stories that we're in,
Speaker 1: and if we don't have a coach, you know, to
Speaker 1: question us of poke holes into our stories or show
Speaker 1: us that we're believing our own stories, you know, we
Speaker 1: we hold ourselves back. So yeah, on the coaching. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about some of what you started to do
Speaker 1: to deal with your achiever fever. And I feel like
Speaker 1: one of the first things was you recognized the inner
Speaker 1: critic or you also called it the judge. The judge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that was one of the first things that my
Speaker 1: coach helped me to do, was to become aware of
Speaker 1: this voice that I just accepted on autopilot for so long.
Speaker 1: I thought of the voice the same way I thought
Speaker 1: of any appendage on my body. It was just it
Speaker 1: was just part of me. In fact, it was me.
Speaker 1: The voice was me. I could not imagine ever uncoupling
Speaker 1: those things. And um, So, once my coach had drawn
Speaker 1: my attention to how loud and dominant this voice was, um,
Speaker 1: the first thing that I do that I did was
Speaker 1: name it. And for me, the judge was it just
Speaker 1: kind of fell out of my mouth. I didn't even
Speaker 1: have to think too hard about it. And then the
Speaker 1: next thing I did was actually find an image that
Speaker 1: described it. And for me, it was just like this gnarled,
Speaker 1: blackened tree stump. This, you know, something that had been
Speaker 1: in a forest fire or something was just bleak and dead.
Speaker 1: And once I had a name and an image, I
Speaker 1: was able to move that inner voice from the back
Speaker 1: of my head right between my eyes where I couldn't
Speaker 1: not see it, and my awareness of it grew and
Speaker 1: grew and grew until I learned how to start disrupting
Speaker 1: it and questioning it. And that was the game changer
Speaker 1: for me, was realizing that that inner voice lied to me,
Speaker 1: not through any fault of its own. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's evolved to keep us safe and to protect
Speaker 1: us um. And so it fills us with fear and
Speaker 1: worry and self doubt um, And so I would just
Speaker 1: believe whatever that inner critic told me to do on autopilot.
Speaker 1: And learning that it lied with the game changer for me,
Speaker 1: and learning how to question it a couple of different
Speaker 1: things there. That leads me into a concept you discussed
Speaker 1: in the book that I'm always so interested in, which
Speaker 1: is what is this voice that is talking to us
Speaker 1: all the time, because most of us, if we stop,
Speaker 1: we noticed like it's just going on on and on.
Speaker 1: I was on a silent retreat recently and I just,
Speaker 1: you know, nothing to do, but here the here the
Speaker 1: damn thing, right, and I, you know, I walk away
Speaker 1: just always sort of astounded, like if I had a
Speaker 1: friend who talked to me not only that negatively, but
Speaker 1: just that boringly and repetitively and and namely, I'd be
Speaker 1: like I would I wouldn't like four hours later, I
Speaker 1: would be like, I am never hanging out with that
Speaker 1: person again. But that's what we have going on in
Speaker 1: our head. So let's talk about what that thing is.
Speaker 1: You name it the left brain interpreter. Tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit more about what is this narrative that's happening, right.
Speaker 1: So that's that's not my name. That's a name that
Speaker 1: comes from cognitive psychology, the left brain interpreter, And it's
Speaker 1: the name for that inner narrator that, as you said,
Speaker 1: just goes on repeat. And I love the way that
Speaker 1: you explain it, like it's so boring and it says
Speaker 1: the same thing over and you're like, shut up already.
Speaker 1: But it's called the left brain interpreter, and it evolved, um,
Speaker 1: you know, over the hundreds of thousands of millennia of
Speaker 1: years to keep us safe, and it's it is constantly
Speaker 1: looking for threats. And we live in a world where
Speaker 1: there's not really a lot of threats anymore, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some environmental wackiness going on, and maybe some political
Speaker 1: wackiness going on, but in terms of real threats, there's
Speaker 1: not much out there are, so our left brand interpreter
Speaker 1: tends to make them up. And if it can't identify
Speaker 1: any obvious threats, it will find those threats within ourselves
Speaker 1: or or with other people. So we start to look
Speaker 1: at other people as as threats and if we can't
Speaker 1: find another people will find it in ourselves. There's science
Speaker 1: that explain how the left brand interpreter works, and a
Speaker 1: science experiment um that actually proves that this left brain
Speaker 1: interpreter will tell us lies because it just bases itself
Speaker 1: off the thoughts that we have, and when we say
Speaker 1: things like oh, I'm you know, I'm so depressed today
Speaker 1: everything is just kind of crappy, it just will um
Speaker 1: narrate our lives back to us with that same theme.
Speaker 1: So we're stuck in that vicious circle. Yeah, it's amazing
Speaker 1: because the studies that you're referring to, among many other
Speaker 1: are the famous split brain experiments, right. And what it
Speaker 1: sort of shows is that you know the science more
Speaker 1: more and and a lot of spiritual traditions tend to
Speaker 1: say that, you know what, there's not this one self
Speaker 1: in there. There's actually there's a lot of things going
Speaker 1: on in our brain consciously, subconsciously, you know. It's almost
Speaker 1: to think of it as a bunch of different processes, right,
Speaker 1: And one of those processes is this left brain narrator
Speaker 1: who tries to explain everything. That's its primary job. I've
Speaker 1: also heard it referred to as the press secretary. Right.
Speaker 1: It's trying to explain everything. And what some of these
Speaker 1: split brain studies show, and people who have had their
Speaker 1: brain essentially split in half to stop them from having seizures,
Speaker 1: is that one half of the brain will decide to
Speaker 1: do something. The other half of the brain, that is,
Speaker 1: the left brain interpreter, has no idea why that side
Speaker 1: of the brain decided to do it, but it just
Speaker 1: immediately makes up some crazy reason that it is completely
Speaker 1: unaware of. Right. And so it's such an interesting thing
Speaker 1: to me that that brain is just going along trying
Speaker 1: to explain lots of stuff that it simply can't explain.
Speaker 1: It doesn't know, but it has to make a coherent
Speaker 1: story out of it. It has to like, for example, um,
Speaker 1: I remember going into my hotel room and I told
Speaker 1: my team, look, don't call me, don't don't text me.
Speaker 1: I want to have this private weekend with my partner
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, just let me know if there's
Speaker 1: an absolute emergency. And that I remember getting into my
Speaker 1: hotel room and looking across the room and seeing the
Speaker 1: red light on the hotel room phone lit up, and
Speaker 1: my first thought was like, oh shit, something's happened. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a cash flow thing, like a client has freaked out,
Speaker 1: something really bad has happened. And my whole body was
Speaker 1: consumed with that thought. Right it was, It was totally true.
Speaker 1: In that moment, my stomach sees, my hands clenched, my
Speaker 1: jaw clenched, and I walked over to the desk, feeling
Speaker 1: that's rests you know, grow and grow and heighten and heighten.
Speaker 1: And I leaned over the desk and I saw that
Speaker 1: that red light indicated that the phone was charging, so
Speaker 1: that nobody had called. But had I not gone over
Speaker 1: to factually ascertain why that red light was on, I
Speaker 1: would have stayed in that that that heightened, you know,
Speaker 1: fearful state. And so often in our lives we are
Speaker 1: in that state, and we don't think to actually check
Speaker 1: factually whether what we believe is actually true. Right. And
Speaker 1: when you said earlier, you know that left brain interpreter
Speaker 1: will say I'm so depressed, right, and then off will
Speaker 1: trigger these things. And I have started to really notice
Speaker 1: that phenomenon in me. It will say I'm so depressed,
Speaker 1: or another one that happens, my back hurts so bad,
Speaker 1: and then from there it'll be like, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I can take it? How long can I Everything hurts?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just and if I stop and go, well,
Speaker 1: hang on a second, like, how do I know I'm depressed? Right?
Speaker 1: How I actually know I'm depressed? Or how do I
Speaker 1: know my back hurts? What does my back feel like?
Speaker 1: I almost suddenly realized, particularly with the back, that it
Speaker 1: doesn't hurt that bad, that there was this automatic sensation
Speaker 1: that arises, and then all of a sudden, that left
Speaker 1: brain interpreter takes off. My back hurts so bad, Poor me,
Speaker 1: I can't stake everything hurts. What am I gonna do?
Speaker 1: I'm I just I'm like, whoa hold, honest, I'm like,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting. So let's talk about a big piece
Speaker 1: for you that you said of dealing with the inner critic.
Speaker 1: The judge will start to question those thoughts because noticing
Speaker 1: them is very important, right, Not resisting them is very important,
Speaker 1: which is tough sometimes but critical, And so is checking
Speaker 1: them for veracity, right, like actually checking them to see
Speaker 1: if they are true. Um, you know, I often think
Speaker 1: it's it's you know, it makes sense to like allow
Speaker 1: the thought the emotion to be, not not forcing it away,
Speaker 1: but then actually take a look at it pretty closely.
Speaker 1: So talk to me about how that worked for you. Well,
Speaker 1: I think the first thing is to actually understand that
Speaker 1: you are believing a thought. You got to identify what
Speaker 1: that thought is. And the way that I do that
Speaker 1: is it will creep up in my body, something will
Speaker 1: go tight and I will fall out of that ease state,
Speaker 1: and that's my queue to know that, Okay, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: believing something. I'm I'm I'm caught with this thought. And
Speaker 1: often what I used to do was whenever I felt
Speaker 1: in that state. Um, I thought, you know, well, this
Speaker 1: is uncomfortable and I want to be comfortable, so let's
Speaker 1: go and eat something, or let's go and drink something,
Speaker 1: or let's fall asleep or watch something on Netflix, anything
Speaker 1: to have to deal with this thought, which of course
Speaker 1: never worked at all because I would just take that
Speaker 1: thought into the eating, of the drinking, the Netflix, and
Speaker 1: then it would be doubly bad. So by identifying it
Speaker 1: and writing it down, what I then learned to do
Speaker 1: was inquire into it. And the way that I learned
Speaker 1: to do that was through this woman, Byron Katie, and
Speaker 1: she has the system of self inquiry called the Work
Speaker 1: and you can find that online the work dot com.
Speaker 1: She's very free and open with it. Yeah, there's also
Speaker 1: a previous episode of US with Byron Katie if listeners,
Speaker 1: if you want to look for that where I interviewed
Speaker 1: her son way I couldn't encourage listeners to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: go and find that episode. For sure. I had the
Speaker 1: privilege of going to UM the Nine Day School, the
Speaker 1: School for the Work, which is where I learned how
Speaker 1: to do the work. And just quickly to paraphrase how
Speaker 1: it works is it's taking that stressful thought asking ourselves
Speaker 1: is that true? And usually that first response will be yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course that's true, because it's just a natural kind
Speaker 1: of habit, like, yeah, of course I believe what I say.
Speaker 1: But then we say, is that absolutely true? And I
Speaker 1: add to that, in a court of law, can I
Speaker 1: say that that is true? And usually in that question
Speaker 1: I can find something just a sliver of a doubt,
Speaker 1: and that is enough to start shedding some like to
Speaker 1: let some light in. I think of that Leonard Cohen line,
Speaker 1: there's a crack in everything that that's how the light
Speaker 1: gets in. We have to find that crack, and that
Speaker 1: question alone helps us identify that crack. And then the
Speaker 1: third question is, um, how do you react what happens
Speaker 1: when you believe the thought? Which is a really easy
Speaker 1: question to answer, right Like, I'm if I'm believing the
Speaker 1: thought that I've done a bad job on a presentation,
Speaker 1: I'll think, oh, well, I feel like I didn't try
Speaker 1: hard enough, and I feel like I'm being judged, and
Speaker 1: i feel like I'm gonna lose that client, and I
Speaker 1: feel like really angry with myself, And it's really easy
Speaker 1: to answer that question. And then the next question is
Speaker 1: who would you be without that thought, and that can
Speaker 1: be a very difficult question to answer because you're so
Speaker 1: hooked onto that thought. And if it's really difficult to answer,
Speaker 1: it just shows you how in that thought you are.
Speaker 1: And when you're in that thought, you can't see anything else.
Speaker 1: You are completely blinded. So then you answer that question
Speaker 1: and you realize as you answer it, how at peace
Speaker 1: and happy and and um, you know, full of joy
Speaker 1: you could be if you weren't believing that thought. Now
Speaker 1: you can't magically like let that thought go. There's no
Speaker 1: kind of magic that allows you to do that. And
Speaker 1: so Byron Katie gives us these three turnarounds where we
Speaker 1: take that thought and flip it to the opposite to
Speaker 1: the other. And once we start working that thought through
Speaker 1: different lenses, um, usually we get to a place where
Speaker 1: it's like that thought is like a complete lie. What
Speaker 1: was I thinking? And there has been nothing that I've
Speaker 1: done the work on thus far that I wasn't able
Speaker 1: to find some kind of cracking And Byron Katie argues,
Speaker 1: there's really nothing out there they won't completely dissipate once
Speaker 1: you do the work on it. Yeah, you were doing
Speaker 1: interviews for your book, and I think you asked me,
Speaker 1: what do you think of Byron Katie, and I said,
Speaker 1: I actually think it's a very useful framework. It's sort
Speaker 1: of like cognitive behavioral therapy in certain ways. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a structured method of of inquiring into our thoughts. Um.
Speaker 1: My question for you is, sometimes it seems that thought
Speaker 1: causes emotion, and if it's a thought that's driving, it's
Speaker 1: nice to unwind the thought. But a lot of other
Speaker 1: times it seems like emotion just spring out of, you know,
Speaker 1: out of something that you can't really identify. Do you
Speaker 1: have a method of working with when or does that
Speaker 1: even happen for you where it's like, well, I'm feeling
Speaker 1: this and I can I'm not even sure I can
Speaker 1: find a thought for it, or I can see the
Speaker 1: thought and I know it's not true, and I still
Speaker 1: feel terrible. That is something that I'm continuing to learn
Speaker 1: to do, which is to drop into my body to
Speaker 1: feel that emotion as opposed to staying up in my
Speaker 1: head and trying to tackle it through you know, what
Speaker 1: is the thought, doing the work on it, doing that
Speaker 1: kind of surgical, precise thinking on it. Learning to identify
Speaker 1: an emotion requires an ability to just kind of dropped
Speaker 1: down into one's body. And often we think we've identified
Speaker 1: that emotion, only to find that there is another emotion
Speaker 1: behind it. And for me, whenever I the way that
Speaker 1: I know I'm an emotional state as I'll feel it
Speaker 1: in my body, right, I've learned to under stand the
Speaker 1: difference between mechanical pain, so pain that's come through, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, if I've if I've worked out too hard
Speaker 1: that day, or if i haven't eaten properly or you know,
Speaker 1: that kind of mechanical pain. Most of the pain I
Speaker 1: feel is emotional. So when my toes curl up when
Speaker 1: I'm in traffic, or you know, my lower back starts
Speaker 1: to hurt if I think that somebody's not listening to
Speaker 1: me or whatever the cases, um, and I'll drop into
Speaker 1: that and really just kind of be with that pain
Speaker 1: and see what emotion comes up in my chest. And
Speaker 1: I've learned not to take that first emotion you know,
Speaker 1: I'll be able to identify it, but I've I've come
Speaker 1: to understand there's usually an emotion underneath that, and for me,
Speaker 1: the emotion underneath that tends to be fear mhm. And
Speaker 1: once I've identified that as fear, then I can say, well,
Speaker 1: what is it that I'm fearful of, and then I
Speaker 1: can do the work on it. As you learned the work,
Speaker 1: you also learned about cognitive biases. And there is We've
Speaker 1: talked on the show a bunch about them, but there's
Speaker 1: one I don't know that we've talked about before. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to touch it, and it was the power
Speaker 1: of the default. Tell me what that is. So the
Speaker 1: power of the default. The way that I know cognitive
Speaker 1: biases is through my work and market research, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty years like my the past two decades of my
Speaker 1: career is trying to understand human behavior, which is really
Speaker 1: ironic when you think about it, because here I am
Speaker 1: with two decades of experience and I can't understand my
Speaker 1: own behavior. But anyway I can now at least um.
Speaker 1: But remembering that uh, people's brain activity is not based
Speaker 1: on rational thought. It's based on all sorts of weird
Speaker 1: filters and norms and and um and cognitive biases and
Speaker 1: so this particular bias, and there's hundreds of them, but
Speaker 1: this particular bias. The power of the default is when
Speaker 1: we default back to behavior or habits that are just
Speaker 1: so ingrained we don't think to question them. So for example, UM,
Speaker 1: my default thought was wine will take my pain away.
Speaker 1: Wine at the end of the day after a long
Speaker 1: day of work is gonna make me feel better. That's
Speaker 1: its job in life. And so getting home and grabbing
Speaker 1: that glass of wine, um, which would have been fine
Speaker 1: if it had just been one glass, but often, you know,
Speaker 1: you have dinner and that becomes to wine two glasses,
Speaker 1: and then oh well, we may as well finish this
Speaker 1: bottle off so it doesn't go bad. And whatever else
Speaker 1: you want to tell yourself. That was just that was
Speaker 1: my routine. Um. And once I started to understand the
Speaker 1: power of the default, I looked at different aspects of
Speaker 1: my life and thought, what behavior and my defaulting to
Speaker 1: that don't really work for me anymore. And back then, UM,
Speaker 1: I didn't see wine as something that was distracting me
Speaker 1: from dealing with painful thoughts. I saw it as something
Speaker 1: that was giving me extra calories. So that was the
Speaker 1: key reason, you know, a few years ago, why I
Speaker 1: identified wine as a default behavior that I wanted to
Speaker 1: change and so rather them then rip all the wine
Speaker 1: out of my fridge and force myself to drink tap water.
Speaker 1: When I got home, I put new beverages into the fridge,
Speaker 1: so you know, kombucha or diet sodas or or um
Speaker 1: you know, Stevia based type stuff, So that I knew
Speaker 1: that my natural bias was to put my hand into
Speaker 1: the fridge because it was usually white wine that I
Speaker 1: drank put my hand on the fridge, but this time
Speaker 1: I just grabbed something else other than wine. UM. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't until I understood the power of the default
Speaker 1: that I was able to see that that was just
Speaker 1: default behavior, it wasn't truth. And and now I don't
Speaker 1: I don't drink at all. Actually now I stopped in December,
Speaker 1: which is just kind of a new interesting practice for me,
Speaker 1: and when I'm still learning about UM. But I realized
Speaker 1: now that not drinking is helping keep me in that awareness,
Speaker 1: you know, it like just just taking myself out of
Speaker 1: the awareness for this simple you know, for the for
Speaker 1: the hangover that it often leads to, or saying something
Speaker 1: really stupid to somebody. It's just not worth it. I'll
Speaker 1: take the awareness. Thanks. So it's just something I'm playing with.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's a forever thing, but it's
Speaker 1: working for me right now. So it's been about seven
Speaker 1: months then, so that's not a it's not a short
Speaker 1: period of time to do it by any straight It's not. No,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's funny. I noticed the other day there's
Speaker 1: a book called Sober Curious. It's not just me. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not. Yeah, yeah, I I know more
Speaker 1: and more. I'm not a millennial im gen X, but
Speaker 1: I know more and more millennials. I think the numbers
Speaker 1: among millennials are um uh, you know, not not drinking
Speaker 1: or wanting to see what life is like without alcohol.
Speaker 1: It's it's becoming a thing. I think we've grown up
Speaker 1: with a narrative that says like, well, if you're alcoholic,
Speaker 1: you need to stop. But if you're not alcoholics, so
Speaker 1: what right? And I think that this speaks to a
Speaker 1: growing awareness, which is a good awareness that there are
Speaker 1: certainly stages along the way. And we've had Catherine Gray
Speaker 1: on a couple of times, and she wrote a book
Speaker 1: I cannot remember the name of it, The Surprising Joy
Speaker 1: of being Sober, perhaps something like that you should read it,
Speaker 1: you would love it. Um. But she says, here's a
Speaker 1: simple question, would your life be better if you weren't drinking.
Speaker 1: That's it. You don't have to get into and do
Speaker 1: I have a problem? Am I drinking too much? Would
Speaker 1: your life be better if you weren't? And And I
Speaker 1: thought that was such a powerful way of just sort
Speaker 1: of looking at that thing very simply without any of
Speaker 1: the cultural baggage that comes with addiction and sobriety and
Speaker 1: abstinence and all of that stuff. Yeah, there seems that
Speaker 1: seems a very useful question. I was just talking about
Speaker 1: it this weekend with friends of mine, and we were
Speaker 1: talking about how drinking and talking is just default adult
Speaker 1: behavior when you get together, Like what else do you
Speaker 1: do besides have a glass of wine in your hand
Speaker 1: and talk? Like we never did that as kids, you know,
Speaker 1: kids sitting around with a glass of kool aid and
Speaker 1: just shooting the ship like no, And so what would
Speaker 1: we be doing if we didn't alcohol in our hands?
Speaker 1: What what would these social occasions look like? Just an
Speaker 1: interesting thought experiment. Well, as somebody who doesn't drink for
Speaker 1: very important reasons, I'm happy to see more adults not
Speaker 1: drinking because it is sort of the default behavior, and
Speaker 1: you just, you know, sometimes you feel like I'm just
Speaker 1: the odd person out here all the time. But and
Speaker 1: that's why finding people that are also uh sober is
Speaker 1: really helpful if you're trying not to drink all the time. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that was a slight distraction. So I want to get
Speaker 1: back to the concept of worry. And I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: read something you wrote because I thought this was so
Speaker 1: good and I just experienced it. This feeling of worry
Speaker 1: had been my normal for so long that I would
Speaker 1: even worry about worrying on vacations. I would worry about
Speaker 1: how much time I had left, anxious to make the
Speaker 1: remaining days worry free. Then I would recognize that, being
Speaker 1: consumed by the worry, I wouldn't enjoy the actual vacation.
Speaker 1: Then I would worry about not enjoying it, and then
Speaker 1: worry about worrying about not enjoying it, which makes me laugh.
Speaker 1: I was recently on vacation. I get myself into the
Speaker 1: like how many days left, how many days left? How
Speaker 1: soon you know, and the same thing, I'm like, Oh,
Speaker 1: the vacation's half over. So I start worrying about the
Speaker 1: vacation being half I mean, that's that's no good. I
Speaker 1: just had a wonderful vacation anyway, Um, I just thought
Speaker 1: that was so instructive of the way worry works. It
Speaker 1: just consumes us. It consumed me um. And so that
Speaker 1: was not something that happened on every second vacation. That
Speaker 1: was something that happened on every vacation. You know. I
Speaker 1: left the house and within two hours, you know, my
Speaker 1: first thought was like, did I turn the stove off?
Speaker 1: Did I turn the stove off? Oh? Great, I'm worrying
Speaker 1: already about this vacation. Oh. I thought, this is gonna
Speaker 1: be a different vacation. And then I, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of go down into that vicious spirals. And then I'd
Speaker 1: wake up and I'd be happy because I was on vacation,
Speaker 1: and then I would search my mind for like, oh,
Speaker 1: wait a second, I'm missing something. There's something I should
Speaker 1: be worried right that, Yes, I only have four more
Speaker 1: days left. And then it would kick back in and yeah,
Speaker 1: it was exhausting. What are some of your tools for
Speaker 1: working with worry worry? I think of all the things
Speaker 1: that I've learned to do, not worrying is a big one.
Speaker 1: And I mean if I added up all the hours
Speaker 1: of my life that I that I used to worry,
Speaker 1: I who knows how many it would be like way
Speaker 1: too many to even look at. UM. And worry is
Speaker 1: something that I have let go of because um, and
Speaker 1: I don't mean a d percent. But let's say if
Speaker 1: I was a warrior a hundred percent of the time,
Speaker 1: I'm a warrior maybe maybe five percent of the time.
Speaker 1: Now it is achievement. Wait a second, I couldn't resist
Speaker 1: And this isn't um. This is something that's kind of
Speaker 1: developed itself because I'm used to pulling myself back to
Speaker 1: being present and I have a number of ways of
Speaker 1: doing that. And whenever I see whenever I catch myself
Speaker 1: veering into that worry stage, I my first thought is,
Speaker 1: there's nothing I can do about that, because I don't
Speaker 1: have any control over any of that. All I can
Speaker 1: control is what is how I react to what's in
Speaker 1: front of me right here, right now. And that thought
Speaker 1: is enough for me to let the worry go. So
Speaker 1: it's no longer, and it's it's hours of my life.
Speaker 1: Hours of my life that I get back, both when
Speaker 1: I'm asleep or trying to get to sleep and during
Speaker 1: my day that I can now pour into things that
Speaker 1: I find really fulfilling and inspiring and engaging. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: So when people ask me, if I lose my achiever fever,
Speaker 1: does that mean I won't perform anymore? Does that mean
Speaker 1: I'll lose my lose my competitive spirit. And the only
Speaker 1: thing that we lose when we lose our achiever fever
Speaker 1: is worry, self doubt and fear, and losing that worry
Speaker 1: has allowed me to gain so much more. Yep, that's wonderful. Well,
Speaker 1: we are at time here all of a sudden, um,
Speaker 1: so you and I are going to continue a conversation
Speaker 1: in the post show conversation. I think we'll talk about
Speaker 1: some more of the practices that you did, and uh,
Speaker 1: we'll explore a line that I loved, which is I
Speaker 1: could see these things as irritating or I could see
Speaker 1: them as practice. And that's a wonderful line. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna explore that in the post show conversation. Listeners if
Speaker 1: you are interested in getting those, as well as a
Speaker 1: weekly mini episode and other bonuses, go to one you
Speaker 1: Feed dot net slash support. Well, Claire, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming on the show. It was a pleasure.
Speaker 1: It was a pleasure to have you on and talk
Speaker 1: to you. I really enjoyed the book. I got to
Speaker 1: give a blurb for it, which was kind of fun.
Speaker 1: So I'm happy to have happy you have gotten us
Speaker 1: to finally have this conversation. So thank you, thank you
Speaker 1: all right bye m. If what you just heard was
Speaker 1: helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the
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