Speaker 1: We want to see changes in our lives, in our minds,
Speaker 1: and in our hearts, so we read inspirational authors, we
Speaker 1: listen to podcasts like this one, and get fired up
Speaker 1: to apply what we've learned, but then inevitably we fall
Speaker 1: back into old patterns. It can be so frustrating and maddening.
Speaker 1: When we can stick to our spiritual practices, we see
Speaker 1: real change, but without enough consistency, we barely scratch the surface.
Speaker 1: In the Spiritual Habits group program, I apply behavioral principles
Speaker 1: to powerful spiritual wisdom to help you live this wisdom
Speaker 1: so that you can experience the benefits on a deeper level.
Speaker 1: This is your chance to get accountability, ongoing support, and
Speaker 1: a proven system as you journey towards a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself and start to bridge the gap between knowing
Speaker 1: what to do to access the life you desire and
Speaker 1: actually doing it. And you do this in our group setting,
Speaker 1: in which community, connection and friendships are all created which
Speaker 1: support you along the way. This program is open for
Speaker 1: enrollment until March seven. Had the Spiritual Habits dot net
Speaker 1: to learn all about it and sign up. Go to
Speaker 1: Spiritual Habits dot net to learn all about this opportunity
Speaker 1: for us to connect and dive deeper into how spiritual
Speaker 1: habits can transform the way you experience your day to
Speaker 1: day life that spiritual habits dot net. I hope to
Speaker 1: meet you in this special program that starts very soon.
Speaker 1: There is a linkage between being and doing, between love
Speaker 1: and putting your cell phone away when you're doing the dishes.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear we see we don't have.
Speaker 1: Instead of what we do, we think things that hold
Speaker 1: us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just
Speaker 1: about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and
Speaker 1: creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast
Speaker 1: is about how other people keep themselves moving in the
Speaker 1: right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for
Speaker 1: joining us. Our guest on this episode is Brad Stahlberg, researcher, writer,
Speaker 1: and a coach on health well being and sustainable performance.
Speaker 1: His work has been featured in The New York Times,
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal, New Yorker, Time Magazine, Forbes. I had
Speaker 1: to include that one just because it's my last name,
Speaker 1: but that's actually true. In his coaching practice, he works
Speaker 1: with executives, entrepreneurs, and physicians on their performance and well being. Today,
Speaker 1: Brad and Eric discuss his book, The Practice of Grounded Nous,
Speaker 1: A Transformative Path to Success that feeds, not crushes your soul. Hi, Brad,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Hey Eric, it's great to be here.
Speaker 1: I am really excited to have you on your book,
Speaker 1: The Practice of Groundedness, A transformative Path the success that feeds,
Speaker 1: not crushes your soul. I just resonated with every bit
Speaker 1: of it. You know, so much of it. I was like,
Speaker 1: this is just my worldview. So I think We've got
Speaker 1: a lot to talk about there, and I'm really excited.
Speaker 1: But we will start like we always do, with the parable.
Speaker 1: There's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear, and the grandchild stops and thinks
Speaker 1: about it and looks up at their grandparents says, well,
Speaker 1: which one wins, and the grandparents 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. Well. I'd be remiss not
Speaker 1: to mention the zen master and teacher Tick nat Han,
Speaker 1: who has had an enormous influence on my philosophy of
Speaker 1: life and certainly on my writing as well. And as
Speaker 1: we're recording this, it's really just a not even a
Speaker 1: week after his passing, and he wrote so beautifully about
Speaker 1: the seeds you water are the seeds that grow, and
Speaker 1: within us we all have seeds of love and openness
Speaker 1: and presence and care, and we also have seeds of
Speaker 1: delusion and anger and greed. And to me, that parable
Speaker 1: is really about trying to align your doing out in
Speaker 1: the world with the being that you want, and watering
Speaker 1: the right seeds, feeding the good wealth. I think that
Speaker 1: in spiritual and psychology circles, there's this perception that being
Speaker 1: informs doing, but I think people often forget that doing
Speaker 1: also informs being. It's a cycle, so to me, that
Speaker 1: parable is all about the doing part of that cycle.
Speaker 1: You know, one of my favorite phrases that I use
Speaker 1: on the show all the time. I got it somewhere
Speaker 1: in a A. I don't know if I've ever traced
Speaker 1: it back to who actually first said it, but it's
Speaker 1: sometimes you can't think your way into right action. You
Speaker 1: have to act your way into right thinking. You know.
Speaker 1: It's that idea. I absolutely love it, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: we'll get into this. It's such a big part of
Speaker 1: grounded nous is this notion that mood follows action. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or as you say, right doing often proceeds right thinking. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well let's jump into grounded nous. You use that term groundedness,
Speaker 1: so what does that mean to you? Yeah. I like
Speaker 1: to use the metaphor of a mountain to convey the
Speaker 1: two predominant meanings of groundedness. And the first is if
Speaker 1: you think about a big, beautiful mountain, most people immediately
Speaker 1: gaze up, they look to its peak, and perhaps if
Speaker 1: the mountain is really prominent it has a very steep slope,
Speaker 1: they'll take note of that too. Very rarely does someone
Speaker 1: see a big mountain and admire its base, it's foundation.
Speaker 1: But without that base and foundation, there is no slope,
Speaker 1: there is no peak, and when rough weather comes over time,
Speaker 1: a mountain is only as strong as its foundation. So
Speaker 1: all the beauty that you see up top is impossible
Speaker 1: without the base, without the ground. And I believe and
Speaker 1: I argue in the book that we are very much
Speaker 1: like mountains. We focus a lot on our own proverbial
Speaker 1: peaks and climbs, and at times that can cannibalize energy
Speaker 1: and attention focused on the base, the foundation. The second
Speaker 1: metaphor of a mountain and groundedness is about actually climbing
Speaker 1: a mountain. So you can imagine that you've got two
Speaker 1: mountain climbers and each really want to get to the
Speaker 1: top up and one climber is constantly thinking about whether
Speaker 1: or not she'll make it to the top and the
Speaker 1: selfies that she's going to take when she gets there,
Speaker 1: and how her self worth will be validated when she's
Speaker 1: on the top of the mountain. Another climber, she's just
Speaker 1: focused on every step that she's taking. She's also enjoying
Speaker 1: the view from the side of the mountain. Now, both
Speaker 1: climbers have an equal chance of getting to the top.
Speaker 1: What I argue in the book and what the research
Speaker 1: supports is that the second climber, the one that's enjoying
Speaker 1: the process, has a much better chance of climbing for
Speaker 1: a long period of time. That first climber is more
Speaker 1: susceptible to burn out, to emptiness, to feelings of longing.
Speaker 1: That second climber they might still care about the result.
Speaker 1: Don't get me wrong, They want to get to the top,
Speaker 1: but they're where they are along the way, which is
Speaker 1: the number one most important thing for sustainability and whatever
Speaker 1: it is that you're climbing towards. So it's really about
Speaker 1: this idea of paying attention into where we are as
Speaker 1: we continue to strive for other things, yes exactly um,
Speaker 1: and not letting the outcome supersede the process in our minds,
Speaker 1: because we spend a lot of time thinking about outcomes.
Speaker 1: So do I get the promotion, do I get married
Speaker 1: to the specific attractive partner? Is my book going to
Speaker 1: be a best seller? But when you think about it,
Speaker 1: of our life is the process. So even if you
Speaker 1: have the ultimate of outcomes, you're on the gold medal
Speaker 1: stage at the Olympics representing your country. Well, you only
Speaker 1: get to be up there as long as the national
Speaker 1: anthem is so maybe you get a good ninety seconds
Speaker 1: worth of your life up there, But the rest of
Speaker 1: it is process, and being grounded is about really being
Speaker 1: firmly in the process, and I think that that's just
Speaker 1: a much better way to strive. Yeah, you've got a
Speaker 1: sentence you wrote, and I'll just I'll read it because
Speaker 1: it's a question that I ask people often on the show,
Speaker 1: is about is sort of tension? You say, it's okay,
Speaker 1: even admirable to set a high bar, but and this
Speaker 1: is a big butt, you need to be present and
Speaker 1: accepting as you strive. So you're sort of actually saying
Speaker 1: to the question of like, is it better to strive?
Speaker 1: Is it better to be present, you're sort of saying both, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: And I think that there's this misconception, particularly amongst people
Speaker 1: that have perhaps some more Eastern sensibility, that striving is
Speaker 1: the cause of suffering or not necessarily a good thing.
Speaker 1: But one of the eight principles on the eight Full
Speaker 1: Path in Buddhism is right effort. And if you actually
Speaker 1: look back at the polycanon, right the old tax that's
Speaker 1: been passed down from the historical Buddha, right effort sounds
Speaker 1: a lot like grounded striving. So the Buddha didn't say
Speaker 1: that you should just be a recluse and not engage
Speaker 1: in the world and not strive. What the Buddha said
Speaker 1: is you want. You're striving to be wholesome, and because
Speaker 1: it's Buddhism, such a big part of that is being present,
Speaker 1: striving towards worthy goal, not getting caught up in ego
Speaker 1: and something out in front of you, but being where
Speaker 1: you are. And like so many of these ancient wisdom teachings,
Speaker 1: fast forward millennia and modern science now coins this the
Speaker 1: arrival fallacy, which is this notion that we think that
Speaker 1: if we just strive enough, eventually will arrive and then
Speaker 1: we'll be content, then we'll have our self work. But
Speaker 1: it's a fallacy. The goalpost is always ten yards down
Speaker 1: the field. So if you can't learn to enjoy the process,
Speaker 1: the striving, then you're constantly just going to be chasing
Speaker 1: your tail and that's no fun. Right, Yeah, It is
Speaker 1: the ultimate sort of if then right or when then?
Speaker 1: You know, when I get this or if I get this,
Speaker 1: and it just doesn't work that way. You know. My
Speaker 1: experience has been your dominant mindset follows you, right. And
Speaker 1: if your dominant mindset is always there someplace better than
Speaker 1: here that I have to get to. When you get
Speaker 1: to here, which you thought would be the place that
Speaker 1: would make you happy, it just simply doesn't work. It
Speaker 1: really is about both. And I think that you know, right,
Speaker 1: effort is always so interesting, you know, and Zen we
Speaker 1: talk about great faith, great doubt, and great determination. It's
Speaker 1: always this paradox of on one hand, there is a striving, there,
Speaker 1: there is a determination, there is an effort, and there
Speaker 1: is at the same time a profound letting go or
Speaker 1: acceptance that has to happen at least my experience for
Speaker 1: these steeper spiritual states to unfold. And I think that
Speaker 1: you see this so clearly in a meditation practice, but
Speaker 1: also in other domains. So in meditation or any contemplated
Speaker 1: spiritual practice, if you're really striving or craving a certain state,
Speaker 1: you're never going to get it. But once you give
Speaker 1: up on that, then you suddenly have these moments of peace, freedom, wholeness,
Speaker 1: whatever word do you want to use. And I like
Speaker 1: to think of an athlete. If an athlete is so
Speaker 1: focused on winning the game or scoring high, they're never
Speaker 1: going to perform well. But if an athlete can have
Speaker 1: that disappear, get out of their own way, then suddenly
Speaker 1: they're in the zone and the scoreboard does exist. They're
Speaker 1: just playing the game. And those are the peak moments
Speaker 1: when we play the best. So it's this huge paradox
Speaker 1: that by wanting to be the best, but then not
Speaker 1: really wanting to be the best, you have the chance
Speaker 1: of being the best. It's like ambition works until it
Speaker 1: gets in your way. Striving works until it gets in
Speaker 1: your way. Yes. Yes, The spiritual teacher Audio Shanty said
Speaker 1: to me once and and this just made so much
Speaker 1: sense to me. He said, your will is good to
Speaker 1: get you to the meditation cushion, like you need it.
Speaker 1: You needed to get there, and then at that moment
Speaker 1: is precisely the moment you have to discard it. It's
Speaker 1: at that point it is no longer of value to you.
Speaker 1: And I think that speaks to the same thing with
Speaker 1: like an athlete, right, like, you've got to have the
Speaker 1: practice and the work and the effort to get to
Speaker 1: the game, and then when you're in the game, you've
Speaker 1: got to be in the game. You alluded to this
Speaker 1: a minute ago, which was, we've got these ancient spiritual teachings,
Speaker 1: we've got these modern science practices of peak performers pointing
Speaker 1: to the same truth. You say, I'm interested in convergence. Right,
Speaker 1: When multiple of these things come together, it's probably worth
Speaker 1: paying attention to. And that's something I've articulated before. Also,
Speaker 1: it's like when I see the same thing coming from
Speaker 1: multiple places, it gives me a higher confidence in the
Speaker 1: fact that, like, Okay, there's really something here. Yes. And
Speaker 1: I think that for my own writing practice, for anything
Speaker 1: to make it into a book, it's got to have
Speaker 1: that convergence. I like to use the image of a
Speaker 1: three legged stool, where one leg is modern science and
Speaker 1: empirical findings, another lag is history and ancient wisdom teachings,
Speaker 1: and then the third lag is people out in the
Speaker 1: world actually trying to do this stuff. And a stool
Speaker 1: with three lags is really sturdy. You can be confident
Speaker 1: it's going to hold up and sit on it. Two
Speaker 1: legs maybe one or zero legs, no, And the bar
Speaker 1: of this book was all three legs. This because I
Speaker 1: think that people want certainty and they want to know
Speaker 1: truth with the capital t but in science it's all
Speaker 1: about probabilities. And for me, again, if a finding is
Speaker 1: there in multiple domains of science, if all the spiritual
Speaker 1: wisdom traditions are pointing towards it, and then you go
Speaker 1: talk to people and they manifest it in their own life,
Speaker 1: that gives me confidence it's true. And I think that
Speaker 1: that works opposite to what I call like the single
Speaker 1: small study or the one guru, right, the study of
Speaker 1: eight people that did something, and there's this finding that
Speaker 1: gets a headline in the newspaper, the single guru that
Speaker 1: knows the path versus lineage and tradition in teaching and
Speaker 1: meta analyzes and science and all these peak performers in
Speaker 1: different domains pointing towards it. That gives me the confidence
Speaker 1: to be like, you know, I'm not so special. This
Speaker 1: will probably work for me too. And then I think
Speaker 1: the next leg of the school that comes in that
Speaker 1: is also an incredibly portant one is when it starts
Speaker 1: to become personal experience. You know, when your own experience
Speaker 1: of it also, then you go yeah, and not only
Speaker 1: do these three other places aligne it's working for me, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, And maybe that's where we go from faith
Speaker 1: to knowledge. I'm not sure, but it's another important piece. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that's also where it gets sticky. So
Speaker 1: so many of these concepts and books like the one
Speaker 1: I write in the concepts that you and your guests
Speaker 1: talk about on this podcast. There's knowing and then there's doing.
Speaker 1: Yes and Juts and Brewer, who I know has been
Speaker 1: a past guest on the show. He talks about knowing
Speaker 1: is in your head and like wisdom is in your bones,
Speaker 1: and for me, I say more doing. And I think
Speaker 1: once you have that self experience, that's when it transitions
Speaker 1: from this idea that makes sense to something that has
Speaker 1: a higher likelihood of becoming a habit that you're actually
Speaker 1: going to show up in in an act in day
Speaker 1: to day life. Yeah. Use the phrase the knowing doing gap.
Speaker 1: And I talked about that so much in the Spiritual
Speaker 1: Habits program we created. I mean, that's the part of
Speaker 1: the program is how do you bridge that? You know?
Speaker 1: How do we go from all? Right? These are really
Speaker 1: great spiritual principles that I believe in. Two ones that
Speaker 1: actually have a chance of doing something in my life
Speaker 1: that's useful, and just being able to show up and
Speaker 1: and pound the stone over and over again. And I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people in self improvement are looking
Speaker 1: for a switch, but there are very few switches that
Speaker 1: I found. It tends to be much more of an
Speaker 1: ongoing practice and and you're only as good as that practice. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Do you know of ways that you do with your
Speaker 1: coaching clients of sort of bridging that knowledge to doing
Speaker 1: gap either what stands in the way for for people
Speaker 1: or what are some ways to kind of get through
Speaker 1: that gap. The thing that seems to stand in the
Speaker 1: way most is taking too big of a swing right
Speaker 1: off the bat, so trying to go from zero to
Speaker 1: a hundred instead of zero to one. Close cousin is
Speaker 1: trying to just move too fast, so trying to expedite
Speaker 1: progress instead of being patient and taking these all baby
Speaker 1: steps and allowing yourself to have a string of little
Speaker 1: victories and build up an inertia and momentum and consistency.
Speaker 1: That's the first thing. And then the second thing is
Speaker 1: I find that any kind of behavior change has a
Speaker 1: much higher likelihood of succeeding if it's done in a
Speaker 1: community of practice with others, and it doesn't necessarily have
Speaker 1: to be Hey, you're all showing up to do the
Speaker 1: thing together, but you're all checking in once a month
Speaker 1: to report on your challenges and your successes, and over
Speaker 1: the long haul, I think that community is perhaps the
Speaker 1: most influential factor and stickiness of hard things, because doing
Speaker 1: hard things is hard, and if there's a striving element,
Speaker 1: as we talked about that mountaintop, it's a shiny object, man,
Speaker 1: and if you're looking at it alone, it's easy to
Speaker 1: get caught up on it, Whereas if you're doing it
Speaker 1: with other people, there can be a lightheartedness of fun,
Speaker 1: and that too, keeps you grounded, and it keeps you
Speaker 1: coming back consistently. How have you found that community in
Speaker 1: your life or where are the places you found that
Speaker 1: community in your life, because this is such an important
Speaker 1: topic and is also a very difficult thing for a
Speaker 1: lot of people to find. Yeah, well, I found it
Speaker 1: in a few places. And I'd say that it is
Speaker 1: in some ways activity specific, and then in some ways
Speaker 1: it's kind of overarching. So for my strength and weightlifting practice,
Speaker 1: I go to a gym and it's a small gym,
Speaker 1: and I know that people pretty well, and we're all
Speaker 1: working towards similar goals and having fun with it. For
Speaker 1: my meditation, practice. I have a meditation coach that I
Speaker 1: check in with however often I need to, and will
Speaker 1: help guide me on the path. And I have a
Speaker 1: few friends they're more Buddhist than me, so they would
Speaker 1: call it like sanga dharma brothers, and we talk about
Speaker 1: our practice in writing. My first two books are with
Speaker 1: a co author, and this book is almost every bit
Speaker 1: his is it is mine. There was no parting. It
Speaker 1: was just as we might get into. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of my personal story in this book. But even my
Speaker 1: writing practice is not really a solo effort. So much
Speaker 1: of what I do is with Steve the promote options,
Speaker 1: with Steve the planning. He's got his book coming out,
Speaker 1: I will treat it as if it is my own.
Speaker 1: And then I think the last step, in a really
Speaker 1: important one that I think a lot of people are
Speaker 1: struggling with, is your local community, so your neighbors, the
Speaker 1: barista at your coffee shop, the male person. Just having
Speaker 1: a sense of physical rootedness in a place. I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's all kinds of science as to why, but it
Speaker 1: helps you feel a little bit more secure. And I
Speaker 1: think that what often happens is even prior to the
Speaker 1: COVID pandemic productivity cannibalizes time for building community. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: hanging out with your neighbors and like taking care of
Speaker 1: their dog is inefficient. Walking to the coffee shop when
Speaker 1: you could just have something delivered is inefficient. And I
Speaker 1: think if we prize efficiency, we saw at work, but
Speaker 1: then we feel empty and lonely and we wonder why.
Speaker 1: And it's a practice. I mean, there are there are
Speaker 1: times pre COVID in my life where I am almost
Speaker 1: embarrassed say that I didn't walk to the coffee shop
Speaker 1: because I was in such a writing groove that I
Speaker 1: didn't want to spend that nine minutes commuting each way.
Speaker 1: And those are failures on my part. And those are
Speaker 1: the periods when I string a few days consecutive together,
Speaker 1: but at the end of them, I start to feel
Speaker 1: empty or restless. So in the moment, it's hard, but
Speaker 1: I do think that like there's a local element of
Speaker 1: community too. That's not efficient, right, because all these other
Speaker 1: groups weightlifting, meditation, writing, they're still they're focused on some
Speaker 1: sort of project, which is great, But I think it's
Speaker 1: really important to have community that's not project specific, that's
Speaker 1: just there. You use the term early on in the book,
Speaker 1: you talk about what most of us are stuck in
Speaker 1: is heroic individualism. Say more about what that is? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I define that is an ongoing game of one upsmanship
Speaker 1: against self and others. So you're constantly trying to beat
Speaker 1: yourself and other people where the goal post is always
Speaker 1: ten yards down the field. That's that notion of the
Speaker 1: arrival fallacy, right if then you think you're going to
Speaker 1: get there but you don't. In measurable achievement, in efficiency
Speaker 1: and productivity, those are the main arbiters of success, and
Speaker 1: that's the culture that we're in. It's the water that
Speaker 1: we swim in. An extreme example of this and something
Speaker 1: that I touch on just briefly in the book, but
Speaker 1: I see more and more of my coaching clients is
Speaker 1: these devices that portend to help you be healthier and well,
Speaker 1: they have a lot of utility for many people. They've
Speaker 1: now turned sleep, which is supposed to be the most
Speaker 1: RESTful part of the day, into a game to win
Speaker 1: at because you get a sleep score. So if we're
Speaker 1: quantifying everything, and if we're trying to be good at everything,
Speaker 1: of course we're exhausted. So many people like, why am
Speaker 1: I so exhausted? I'm doing everything right, and I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: that's why you're so exhausted, because you're doing everything right.
Speaker 1: So I think that nothing gets all green lights and
Speaker 1: nothing gets all red lights. In my mind, these devices
Speaker 1: are but one example. They're helpful until they're not. But
Speaker 1: I think that we're in such overdrive in so many
Speaker 1: areas of our life where we're trying to quantify things
Speaker 1: and measure things and beat ourselves and think that oh
Speaker 1: then will be content, only to end up exhausted, empty, lonely,
Speaker 1: and back to what we were discussing earlier. I think
Speaker 1: heroic individualism has the mindset that successes out there in
Speaker 1: front of you and you have to go get it.
Speaker 1: And if you want to get like meta for a second,
Speaker 1: all of consumer capitalism works that way. When I was
Speaker 1: working on the book, I did this experiment where I
Speaker 1: paid really close attention to ads and commercials, and all
Speaker 1: the people are beautiful. I would see an ad for
Speaker 1: dishwasher detergent or cat litter picking up my cat's piem poop,
Speaker 1: and it's this beautiful blond haired woman or this super strong,
Speaker 1: full head of hair masculine man, and they're not selling
Speaker 1: you the cat litter they're selling you this lifestyle. If
Speaker 1: you just buy our cat litter, then you two can
Speaker 1: be flawless and beautiful. And it sets us up to
Speaker 1: constantly chase this elusive thing that's not there, and as
Speaker 1: a result, we don't feel very good and we get
Speaker 1: distracted from the stuff that's right in front of us
Speaker 1: that will make us feel good. Yep. So, heroic individualism,
Speaker 1: in many ways is the nemesis or the opposite to groundedness.
Speaker 1: It's this frantic, frenetic chase of the next thing without
Speaker 1: that foundation, without that ground. Yeah. And I think you
Speaker 1: made a couple of interesting points. They're the one about
Speaker 1: sleep is a great one. I tweeted something the other
Speaker 1: day like the sleep police are helpful till they're not right.
Speaker 1: Like the idea of like, well you should get eight
Speaker 1: hours sleep, Yeah, it's probably a good idea. I went
Speaker 1: through a phase where I had restless sleeve syndrome and
Speaker 1: I wasn't sleeping well, and that constant like you're going
Speaker 1: to die if you don't get eight hours sleep it
Speaker 1: was not was not helpful. And you know there's that
Speaker 1: old what gets measured gets done right. It's non dual. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly like you said, I think you no, no all
Speaker 1: green lights, no, all all red lights. It's it's useful
Speaker 1: till it's not. It's like, the two most important rules
Speaker 1: of sleep are do everything you can to get seven
Speaker 1: to nine hours of sleep. That's rule number one, and
Speaker 1: then real number two is if you don't get seven
Speaker 1: to nine hours of sleep, don't freak out about it. Yep,
Speaker 1: yep exactly. I think the other thing that's become challenging
Speaker 1: for everyone is we want grounded nous, we want more peace.
Speaker 1: I think people are starting to see through to some
Speaker 1: degree the achievement mindset on some level, and yet what
Speaker 1: ends up happening. I think, well, I don't think I know.
Speaker 1: I see is where you then go, Okay, if I
Speaker 1: want more grounded nous, I'm going to have to move
Speaker 1: my body every day. That's really important. I need to
Speaker 1: build a community. I need to connect with more people.
Speaker 1: I better start meditating. What boy, I hear, breath works
Speaker 1: really good, And you know, I would probably in the
Speaker 1: sauna for like twenty minutes a day, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, before you know it, like you said, you've
Speaker 1: added all this extra stuff on the supposed to help
Speaker 1: but doesn't. And yet just taking it all off leads
Speaker 1: you right back to, oh, I'm just running around all
Speaker 1: day focusing on work and and nothing that's really valuable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that gets into the incrementalism. So if
Speaker 1: in the book there's a menu of I don't know
Speaker 1: thirty practices in my own life, at any given time,
Speaker 1: I'm probably only shooting a hundred percent. I'm like eight
Speaker 1: of the thirty, and that tends to be enough. And
Speaker 1: when I go down to five or six, I start
Speaker 1: to feel anxious a little sad. If I go down
Speaker 1: to two, I feel depressed, And if I try to
Speaker 1: do fifteen, I feel totally restless because I just can't.
Speaker 1: I can't be perfect. Again, it gets back to what
Speaker 1: I would call like wholesome striving or right effort that
Speaker 1: is doable, and you're not doing it to try to
Speaker 1: win it a game or like optimize yourself. You're doing
Speaker 1: it because it genuinely feels good. My meditation teacher, when
Speaker 1: we had our our son THEO this is now, I
Speaker 1: don't know, three and a half years ago, I was
Speaker 1: like really trying to to meditate, and I'm coming off
Speaker 1: of or I guess I'm still kind of in like
Speaker 1: really bad obsessive compulsive disorder. Meditation was such a helpful
Speaker 1: part of my recovery, and I remember him telling me,
Speaker 1: your new challenge is you're not going to meditate for
Speaker 1: six months. You can still call me once a month,
Speaker 1: but no meditating for six months. And I think what
Speaker 1: he's getting at is what you were saying. His point
Speaker 1: is you've got an infant drop the weight, like if
Speaker 1: you don't want to go to the cushion. And this
Speaker 1: is where there's nuance, because if you don't want to
Speaker 1: go to the cushion, or you don't want to go
Speaker 1: to the gym, or you don't want to build community,
Speaker 1: well sometimes you actually do need that lump to do
Speaker 1: the hard thing and get going. But that umph can
Speaker 1: very quickly turn into an obsession or compulsion, at which
Speaker 1: point then it's problematic. And I hope in the book
Speaker 1: I point towards that and I give people some language
Speaker 1: and some tools to try to figure out like the
Speaker 1: texture of your drive. Are you doing this because you
Speaker 1: want to or because you have to? Yeah? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's it's really important. You know intention I am
Speaker 1: I doing this and reflecting on that regularly is really important.
Speaker 1: You know what's important about this? Why does this matter
Speaker 1: to me? Yeah? That? And you know, Eric, I know
Speaker 1: that you're a master of language because you have these
Speaker 1: wonderful conversations, so I know I'm speaking to a kindred spirit.
Speaker 1: Just language is so important because once you can name something,
Speaker 1: then you can wrestle with it, you can play with it,
Speaker 1: you can make it your own. And I think a
Speaker 1: set of words that gets to what you were saying
Speaker 1: is good enough. How can you just be good enough? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So not bad, not the best, not great, but good enough.
Speaker 1: And to me, that's what that's like, that's what we're
Speaker 1: going for. I wanted to title the book good enough,
Speaker 1: and my publisher, of course, is like, it's got to
Speaker 1: be marketable. No one's going to buy a book called
Speaker 1: good enough. You can put that on the inside, but
Speaker 1: not on the cover. But that, I think is what
Speaker 1: we're really talking about. And is it type of perfectionist driver?
Speaker 1: If it's something that I've really tried to take on.
Speaker 1: How can I be a good enough parent? How can
Speaker 1: I be a good enough writer? A good enough friend?
Speaker 1: And it takes the weight off my shoulders to be
Speaker 1: perfect and it makes me a happier, more peaceful person.
Speaker 1: I know, you know the psychological precedent of Winnicott talking
Speaker 1: about the good enough parent. You can get into this.
Speaker 1: You have to have perfect, but no good enough, you know.
Speaker 1: And if there's anything in my opinion and my experience
Speaker 1: that will cause you to go, I'm nowhere in the
Speaker 1: neighborhood are perfect with this? It's parenting, right, And so
Speaker 1: that phrase good enough is a really useful one there
Speaker 1: also because Boyd's parenting bring you to the edge of
Speaker 1: your capacity over and over and over. Yeah, And I'm
Speaker 1: glad you mentioned Winnicott. Donald Winnicott used good enough in
Speaker 1: terms of parenting, specifically in not being a negligent parent,
Speaker 1: but also not being a helicopter parent and needing everything
Speaker 1: to be perfect all the time and letting your child
Speaker 1: have some frustration because your child learns that through those
Speaker 1: frustrations they're their own independent person, and you're failable. And
Speaker 1: I think that it's nice to take winn it cuts
Speaker 1: theory and apply it to ourselves. So not just good
Speaker 1: enough parenting with our kids, but how can we be
Speaker 1: good enough to ourselves? How can we give ourselves the
Speaker 1: benefit of the doubt. Let ourselves unfold doesn't mean let
Speaker 1: yourself go off the deep end, like there's a time
Speaker 1: for you know, the imagery of the zend whip. But
Speaker 1: we can loosen the grip a little bit. In paradoxically,
Speaker 1: by loosening the grip and letting go a little bit,
Speaker 1: we tend to feel better and be better. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: why I'm such a middle way guy. Like that idea
Speaker 1: of the middle way is just the very heart of
Speaker 1: my entire personal philosophy or whatever you would want to
Speaker 1: call it. It's so important. We're not gonna get through
Speaker 1: all the principles of groundedness, although we've hit on a
Speaker 1: number of them already just in kind of talking about it.
Speaker 1: But let's talk about one of them, which is patients.
Speaker 1: The title is be patient and you'll get there faster.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about how that works. Heroic individualism tends
Speaker 1: to prioritize speed, and it is both speed day to
Speaker 1: day in our lives. So it feels I think I
Speaker 1: used the words earlier frantic frenetic, like you're kind of
Speaker 1: just in a rush to the next thing. And then
Speaker 1: it's also speed in projects, So how fast can I
Speaker 1: get this done so I can move on to the
Speaker 1: next thing? And what all the research shows is that
Speaker 1: oftentimes going slower on the meaningful things in your life
Speaker 1: helps you go faster. We can even relate this just
Speaker 1: to adopting habits. If you try to go too fast,
Speaker 1: what generally happens is you get out to a great
Speaker 1: start and then you get to mile twelve of the
Speaker 1: proverbial marathon and you start to feel like crap, and
Speaker 1: you're like, holy ship, there's fourteen miles ahead now. Patients
Speaker 1: require shilling restraint early on, and it is so antithetical
Speaker 1: to the culture of crush it go all in post
Speaker 1: your heroic workout on Instagram. In the moment, it can
Speaker 1: be hard to hit the brakes because you might be
Speaker 1: feeling really really good. And what patients ask you to
Speaker 1: do is to think of your future self. To think
Speaker 1: of yourself tomorrow, next week, next month, and have some
Speaker 1: respect for your future stealth and stop one rep short.
Speaker 1: So I use that analogy in the book. It comes
Speaker 1: out of strength training, where the most successful strength training programs,
Speaker 1: contrary to popular belief, they never actually want you to
Speaker 1: go to failure. Maybe you go to failure like once
Speaker 1: or two times a year, but you stop one rep short.
Speaker 1: And why is that it's so that you can pick
Speaker 1: up where you left off the next day, so you
Speaker 1: don't dig yourself too deep of a hole that you
Speaker 1: can't come out of. Then you look at what artists
Speaker 1: have to say about the creative process, it's very much
Speaker 1: the same. I stop when I know where the paintbrush
Speaker 1: is still going to go. I stopped one sentence short,
Speaker 1: one paragraph short, so I can pick up think about
Speaker 1: it in a professional sense. Oftentimes, what tends to blow
Speaker 1: up our big projects is we try to make things
Speaker 1: happen all the way and at some point, generally, especially
Speaker 1: if you're working with other people, you have to learn
Speaker 1: to let them happen. So Patients is really about having
Speaker 1: the restraint to stop one rep short, to go slowly
Speaker 1: by slowly, and to zoom out and take a long view.
Speaker 1: Because if I wanted to make the most progress on
Speaker 1: anything in my life over the course of a week,
Speaker 1: I probably worked twenty hours a day, slam some red
Speaker 1: bulls and coffee, take a two hour and app and
Speaker 1: do the same thing, and at the end of those
Speaker 1: eight days, I'd be toasted. If I want to make
Speaker 1: progress over a couple of decades, it's going to be
Speaker 1: very different. So It is both about in the moment
Speaker 1: having that restraint and then over the long haul, zooming
Speaker 1: out and thinking about your time scale is something that
Speaker 1: you want to be sustainable, not just lipp in time.
Speaker 1: I worked in software startup companies in my late twenties
Speaker 1: and thirties, and you know that world is just all
Speaker 1: pedal to the metal all the time. But at a
Speaker 1: certain point I went, you know what, I've really got
Speaker 1: to measure productivity over months, years. You know, if I'm
Speaker 1: measuring it over a course of a week, like, that's
Speaker 1: not a that's not an accurate way to measure. It
Speaker 1: really got to zoom that out and go, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: what is sustainable? What can I keep doing? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: really like how you think about like that, what is sustainable?
Speaker 1: And I wanna hammer this point home because it's easy
Speaker 1: to say, I'm sure. I think Johann Harrari now it's
Speaker 1: probably a few episodes backs that's something similar, and he's
Speaker 1: right that, like, oh, it's just the people posting workouts
Speaker 1: on Instagram. But I think there's an internal thing happening too,
Speaker 1: because when you're in the moment and you've got that
Speaker 1: excitement and that energy, you've got to put the brakes
Speaker 1: on yourself. It's not just about wanting to keep up
Speaker 1: the jones is. It's about forcing yourself to say, hey,
Speaker 1: this is like a thrill. I could go on a
Speaker 1: work bender or a creative bender, and maybe I can
Speaker 1: get by doing that once a year, but any more
Speaker 1: than that, I'm setting myself up for failure. So it's
Speaker 1: easy just to put all the blame on like the
Speaker 1: social forces around us, maybe we give them fifty of
Speaker 1: the blame. And then also turned the gaze inward and
Speaker 1: realized that this is about having some boundaries for yourself
Speaker 1: as well, especially if you're a workaholic, which many people are.
Speaker 1: And I say that with no judgment. I mean I
Speaker 1: always talk about workaholism. I'm really glad that the team
Speaker 1: that developed the M R and A vaccines were all workaholics,
Speaker 1: right right, Yeah, you've referenced it a couple of times.
Speaker 1: You talk about it in the book a fair amount.
Speaker 1: You're about with O. C. D. Talk to me a
Speaker 1: little bit about kind of what happened there and what's
Speaker 1: the healing from that been like for you. So, about
Speaker 1: five and a half years ago, I did a very
Speaker 1: long run in Central Park one a vacation. I was
Speaker 1: training for a marathon, so probably like twenty miles, and
Speaker 1: I had all kinds of stuff during the day, and
Speaker 1: I rushed from one friend to one friend to the
Speaker 1: next family, and I just didn't eat enough. And dinner
Speaker 1: came around and I thought I was meeting a friend
Speaker 1: for dinner, but it turns out it was just a bar.
Speaker 1: So I had a stiff drink and some kettle chips,
Speaker 1: and my blood sugar dropped precipitously and I had a
Speaker 1: panic attack, which can happen when your blood sugar drops.
Speaker 1: And the next day I went to an urgent care.
Speaker 1: I wanted to make sure that you know, it wasn't
Speaker 1: like a harder rhythmia or something more serious. And the
Speaker 1: doctor said, you know, your blood sugar looks fine now,
Speaker 1: but based on everything that you're saying, sounds like your
Speaker 1: blood sugar dropped and you had some panic. Most people
Speaker 1: have a panic attack and they hear that and they
Speaker 1: move on. Not everyone. And I'm in that ladder bucket.
Speaker 1: So intellectually I could trust that doctor, but I just
Speaker 1: became so worried about my health. I thought, maybe that
Speaker 1: doctor is wrong, maybe I have a heart problem. So
Speaker 1: then I wore an e k G machine. I thought
Speaker 1: that maybe something's wrong with my adrenal plan. So I
Speaker 1: saw an adrenal land specialist and I developed a real
Speaker 1: obsession with my health that spurred from that panic attack.
Speaker 1: I got with a good therapist that understood what was
Speaker 1: going on, and I was being treated broadly for health anxiety.
Speaker 1: I was making a lot of improvement. And after about
Speaker 1: two weeks of what I would call good improvement, So
Speaker 1: maybe this is like six weeks after that initial episode,
Speaker 1: I am supposed to go on a trip with friends
Speaker 1: to do a bunch of trail running and hiking. So
Speaker 1: obviously at that point, I'm feeling pretty good about my health.
Speaker 1: And it's a four hour car ride to get to
Speaker 1: where we're going, and about forty minutes into the car ride,
Speaker 1: I just get absolutely pummeled with the thought that you
Speaker 1: should just drive off the road out of nowhere. And
Speaker 1: not only am I having this thought, it is accompanied
Speaker 1: by the most painful, intense wave of despair and anxiety
Speaker 1: and just a ball of like anxious depression. So I'm
Speaker 1: sitting in the car for three hours just like, don't
Speaker 1: drive off the road, don't drive off the road, don't
Speaker 1: drive off the road. I get there, I try not
Speaker 1: to think about it. I try to forget it, and
Speaker 1: it's just repetitive. I wake up in the middle of
Speaker 1: a night to go pee. You should just go down
Speaker 1: to the kitchen and get a knife and stab yourself.
Speaker 1: Just NonStop barrage of thoughts of self harm. I know
Speaker 1: deep down inside that I don't want to hurt myself,
Speaker 1: but the onslaught of these thoughts is just becoming increasingly painful.
Speaker 1: So maybe i'd have one hour of freedom from them,
Speaker 1: and then it's a half an hour, and then it's
Speaker 1: ten minutes. The drive home, I'm just praying, like maybe
Speaker 1: I'll get through. I've got all these podcasts queued up,
Speaker 1: just trying to distract myself, and of course it didn't
Speaker 1: work out like that. That drive home was twice as
Speaker 1: bad as to drive there, the most painful moments of
Speaker 1: my life. Hours of my life, I felt like years.
Speaker 1: I get home and I tell my wife that, like,
Speaker 1: something is wrong with my brain. I need to get
Speaker 1: help asap, and I am terrified. My wife is pregnant
Speaker 1: at the time with our first kid, so you layer
Speaker 1: that on and I think I'm becoming either suicidally depressed
Speaker 1: or schizophrenic or psychosis. It just feels like I am
Speaker 1: losing total control of my mind and my emotions. So
Speaker 1: I'm living in California and it's very hard to get
Speaker 1: into a psychiatrist. So when I had the health anxiety,
Speaker 1: I couldn't. But if you call them and you say
Speaker 1: that you're having NonStop thoughts of harming yourself, you get
Speaker 1: an appointment pretty quickly. So I got an appointment with
Speaker 1: a psychiatrist, and I go in and I tell him
Speaker 1: what's happening, and he's sitting there non judgmentally is a
Speaker 1: good psychiatrist does. And I end by saying, like, I
Speaker 1: really hope that it don't have to be in an
Speaker 1: impatient facility, but I'm just terrified I'm going to hurt myself.
Speaker 1: And I would be okay with that if it means
Speaker 1: I wouldn't hurt myself. And he just smiles and says,
Speaker 1: you're not depressed, man, you have O c D. I
Speaker 1: had no idea the O c D can manifest like that.
Speaker 1: I always thought that O c D was about being
Speaker 1: really clean or having a set of like numbers that
Speaker 1: you have to count. But O c D is often misrepresented.
Speaker 1: So I quickly learned that o c D is any
Speaker 1: kind of repetitive thought or feeling that causes you tons
Speaker 1: of distress, and when you try to push it away
Speaker 1: or make it not happen, it just gets stronger. And
Speaker 1: while there are visible compulsions like touching a door knob
Speaker 1: or counting to ten, there are also mental compulsions. And
Speaker 1: in my case, the compulsion was trying to reassure myself
Speaker 1: that I wasn't actually depressed. So I'd have all these
Speaker 1: terrible thoughts about harming myself, and then I'd say, well,
Speaker 1: I must not be depressed. I'm successful, I'm this, I'm
Speaker 1: that a reason with myself, and then the thoughts would
Speaker 1: just come back. So thank god that I saw a
Speaker 1: psychiatrist that was well trained in o c D, and
Speaker 1: I later learned, and I'm still learning about o c
Speaker 1: D that it's actually a pretty common theme of o
Speaker 1: c D. It's called self harm and other harm, where
Speaker 1: these are the kinds of thoughts and feelings that you have.
Speaker 1: In a certain point in my o c D, I
Speaker 1: definitely became depressed, because it's no fun being in your
Speaker 1: head when that's happening. For twelve hours a day, Like
Speaker 1: the first thought you have when you wake up in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night is maybe I should go
Speaker 1: kill myself. Not fun, but the depression was always secondary,
Speaker 1: and I am so thankful again that I found the
Speaker 1: right care that could identify that. I started an s
Speaker 1: s r I, which is the medication, the first line
Speaker 1: medication for o c D, and then intensive therapy with
Speaker 1: a therapist who specializes in treating people with o c D.
Speaker 1: And therapy was probably twice a week for the first
Speaker 1: three months, and then once a week for about five months,
Speaker 1: and then after that the therapist tried to fire me
Speaker 1: and I said, no, I still want to meet with
Speaker 1: you once a month. And now it's just something that
Speaker 1: I live with. What did the therapy look like? Broadly?
Speaker 1: Can you sketch kind of what you were doing? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I can. The evidence based model for o c D
Speaker 1: starts with something called exposure and response prevention. So what
Speaker 1: this means is you expose yourself to the thing that
Speaker 1: causes you year and then you prevent the response. Well,
Speaker 1: in my case, the response that makes the anxiety go
Speaker 1: away is convincing myself. While I would never hurt myself,
Speaker 1: I'm not actually depressed. So it started off with just
Speaker 1: like reading scripts to myself about how I'm super depressed
Speaker 1: and how I might kill myself, and every time my
Speaker 1: brain tried to say, you wouldn't do that, I had
Speaker 1: to say, but maybe I will. So just learning to
Speaker 1: live with the uncertainty. And it starts very small. So
Speaker 1: they talk about it on a graded scale from one
Speaker 1: to ten. So maybe you read scripts, that's a one.
Speaker 1: Then my therapist had me watch a really tragic movie
Speaker 1: about people who died of suicide. So it's just exposing
Speaker 1: myself to these things that are causing you so much fear.
Speaker 1: It ended with like pretty intense exposures around holding objects
Speaker 1: that I could harm myself with and just being terrified
Speaker 1: to hold a knife for an hour, but holding the
Speaker 1: knife for an hour and realizing that I wasn't just
Speaker 1: going to jam myself with it. So then the second
Speaker 1: phase of therapy is rooted in a school called acceptance
Speaker 1: and commitment. I know you've had Steven Hayes on the show,
Speaker 1: so you're a veteran of thinking, which basically says that
Speaker 1: for many challenges, mental health challenges, we just have to
Speaker 1: accept that we're going to live with them and still
Speaker 1: commit to living in alignment with your core values. So
Speaker 1: the exposure therapy worked really well, and then like six
Speaker 1: months into it, the obsession switched and I became obsessed
Speaker 1: with doing the exposure therapy. I'm like, I have to
Speaker 1: spend an hour a day doing this otherwise the O
Speaker 1: c D will come back. And at that point my
Speaker 1: therapist is like, no, no more exposures. You're done. You're
Speaker 1: just gonna learn to live with these thoughts. And at
Speaker 1: that point meditation came in, because what is meditation if
Speaker 1: not seeing thoughts and feelings without reacting to them. And
Speaker 1: then this notion of having a rough three hours of
Speaker 1: these kinds of intrusive O c D thoughts, but not
Speaker 1: canceling what I had planned to go do exposures, just
Speaker 1: doing what I have planned taking the thoughts with me.
Speaker 1: In over a year, it's remarkable how the intensity and
Speaker 1: frequency subsided. And I say this not in any way
Speaker 1: is like um to say like, oh I've arrived, because
Speaker 1: there's a decent chance I'll have really rough times. But
Speaker 1: more is a way if people out there are suffering.
Speaker 1: I mean, I went from not having more than half
Speaker 1: an hour of peace for a solid three months two now,
Speaker 1: maybe one hour a month, I get caught in O
Speaker 1: c D. Loube, that is really a hopeful message. I
Speaker 1: know plenty of people who are listening to this who
Speaker 1: deal with O c D. I mean I literally know
Speaker 1: who they are. I mean, there's plenty I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I've come across a bunch of people who listen
Speaker 1: to the show, So I'm hoping that's a hopeful message
Speaker 1: from them. Just find a good therapist if you're out there,
Speaker 1: because it's very often misunderstood and sometimes even in the
Speaker 1: therapeutic community it can be. And man, when you're in it,
Speaker 1: it just feels hopeless and like it's never gonna end.
Speaker 1: But if you look at the research, it's actually one
Speaker 1: of the more responsive to treatment mental illnesses that there is.
Speaker 1: And that's the message of hope to hold on too.
Speaker 1: And you know now, of course that I'm at the
Speaker 1: other side of this for now. When I was in
Speaker 1: the thick of it, I wasn't thinking about groundedness or
Speaker 1: my writing or anything. I was just like, dude, like
Speaker 1: hold on for dear luck life. But now it's become
Speaker 1: just a beautiful model for thinking about our addictions to
Speaker 1: everything in our obsession with success and our we were
Speaker 1: talking about our obsession with sleep, our obsession with becoming enlightened.
Speaker 1: And again, I only can say this looking back. I
Speaker 1: would have never said it in the middle of it.
Speaker 1: But now that I look back, and I'm sure that
Speaker 1: some of this is just my bias to create meaning
Speaker 1: from it, I feel like it's helped me be able
Speaker 1: to take something like striving or success and realize that
Speaker 1: the thought is a thought and the texture behind it
Speaker 1: can change. And our job is to pursue the right
Speaker 1: texture to feed the wolf. That's going to be the
Speaker 1: right texture. And I don't think I would have had
Speaker 1: that without having O. C. D. But again, it's so
Speaker 1: important to say this. This is not like you know,
Speaker 1: Tidy Bow. This is where I'm at right now, and
Speaker 1: that could change in the future. I hope not, but
Speaker 1: maybe it will. Talking about convergence, I see this in
Speaker 1: ancient literature and different traditions, different ways, and I see
Speaker 1: it in modern psychology. And what I see is two
Speaker 1: broad approaches to working with difficult thoughts and emotions. One
Speaker 1: you just articulated it. It's a mindfulness approach. It's a
Speaker 1: acceptance and commitment therapy approach. You know, in Buddhist communities
Speaker 1: we might say it's it's sitting with what's going on,
Speaker 1: but it's you just go all right, there's difficult stuff here.
Speaker 1: My thoughts are this, my emotions are this. Just let
Speaker 1: it be invited in, let it be right one approach.
Speaker 1: Then there is more of an approach that in certain
Speaker 1: parts of Buddhism is talking sort of about pulling the weeds.
Speaker 1: You're noticing the thoughts that are no good, and you're
Speaker 1: you're pulling them out. Cognitive behavioral therapy goes in this direction.
Speaker 1: It says, look, you know you've got thoughts in there,
Speaker 1: they're not accurate. There. You know you've got fouldy beliefs
Speaker 1: behind him. Let's go in and monkey with this stuff.
Speaker 1: Pull it out. And I'm curious how you think about
Speaker 1: knowing you and having read your stuff. I know that
Speaker 1: you're going to say, you know what, there's a valid
Speaker 1: place for both those things. So I'm not asking you
Speaker 1: to pick one of those two. I'm asking how do
Speaker 1: you think about when he's the right tool for the job?
Speaker 1: Oh man, you are going right to the heart of
Speaker 1: like an almost unanswerable question. Just because I can't find
Speaker 1: the words for it, And I've asked this question to myself.
Speaker 1: So first I'm gonna try to make it as concrete
Speaker 1: as possible, and then we'll word vomit together and wrestle
Speaker 1: with it. Okay, So I think what you're saying is
Speaker 1: you can have an intrusive thought like I'm with the
Speaker 1: wrong partner, i should leave and you could say, oh,
Speaker 1: that's just the thought, I'm gonna let it go. But
Speaker 1: maybe it's true. So how do you know what thoughts
Speaker 1: are worth wrestle with? How do you know what thoughts
Speaker 1: are worth engaging versus what thoughts are just totally intrusive?
Speaker 1: And that is really, really, really tough. In my own
Speaker 1: end of one experience, mindfulness practice has been the most
Speaker 1: important here because just by sitting and watching same thought patterns,
Speaker 1: same responses to them, there is a way in which
Speaker 1: you just kind of notice like, oh, this is an O.
Speaker 1: C D thought trying to ruin my day or uproot me,
Speaker 1: versus like, oh, there's it. They're there because we need
Speaker 1: to have intrusive thoughts. Intrusive thoughts tell me that, you know,
Speaker 1: on a much more minor scale, like that's a shitty
Speaker 1: sentence in my book, you should change it, but someone
Speaker 1: with O c D. If your mind's telling you that
Speaker 1: for every sentence you write, you're never going to write
Speaker 1: a book. So it's like, how do you discern signal
Speaker 1: from noise? And again, I think that just sitting with
Speaker 1: your thoughts, paying good attention. And something else that I
Speaker 1: think is helpful is to imagine that a close friend
Speaker 1: is in that situation having that thought, what advice would
Speaker 1: you give to your friend? And that creates just a
Speaker 1: little bit of space between you and what's going on.
Speaker 1: And in that space, I think that you can start
Speaker 1: to know, like, Okay, this is something really three things.
Speaker 1: This is something to weed out and reason with and
Speaker 1: prove to myself it's wrong. This is a pure anxious thought.
Speaker 1: In any negotiation with it's just going to make it worse,
Speaker 1: or holy crap, this is telling you something that I
Speaker 1: actually need to pay attention to in my life. And
Speaker 1: maybe the best that I can do is just give
Speaker 1: people those three distinct things and then over time you
Speaker 1: pay close attention. And maybe this is like the work
Speaker 1: of wisdom or becoming a more mature human being is
Speaker 1: learning for everything that comes your way, which of those
Speaker 1: three buckets it falls into. We've created elaborate flow charts
Speaker 1: around this. We've done all kinds of like is there
Speaker 1: a decision tree to go down that might help you
Speaker 1: sort these out? And I do think there are some
Speaker 1: ways of think keen about it that are helpful. But
Speaker 1: this is kind of the question that I'm most sort
Speaker 1: of interested in these days. Is like you said, I've
Speaker 1: got kind of three choices here, right. One is this
Speaker 1: is a useful thought, I should do something with it.
Speaker 1: To this just shows up all the time and I'm
Speaker 1: just going to ignore it or three no more and
Speaker 1: to give like concrete examples of this, right Like in
Speaker 1: my life, like there's a thought pattern based on addiction
Speaker 1: that I have a no tolerance policy on, and it
Speaker 1: is like if my brain starts to fantasize about what
Speaker 1: it would be like to be drunk or high, cut
Speaker 1: it off, Like how do you cut it off? What
Speaker 1: does that look like for you? Well, a lot of
Speaker 1: times I simply just go no, not having that thought,
Speaker 1: and then I go in a different direction. When I
Speaker 1: was earlier in sobriety, it was harder, and so I
Speaker 1: would sort of just say any distraction is fine. That
Speaker 1: gets me away from this rouminative thought loop. That's non destructive, right,
Speaker 1: because that one was so destructive for me, right, It
Speaker 1: was a thought that was really destructive. And so for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, I've been fortunate enough that that one, when
Speaker 1: I sort of just give it the no to, it works.
Speaker 1: You know, if it turned into O C D with it,
Speaker 1: obviously I'd have to approach it differently. And I think
Speaker 1: that at the end of the day is kind of
Speaker 1: what I get to with all of this is what
Speaker 1: works for you in the moment, right, and it may
Speaker 1: not be the same thing that works for you next week,
Speaker 1: next month, But what is working now or what have
Speaker 1: you been trying recently that hasn't been working? Maybe try
Speaker 1: something different, YEP. I think that's spot on. You want
Speaker 1: to have a big tool kit and then learn what
Speaker 1: tools are fitting for the right circumstance. Knowing that is
Speaker 1: we've alluded to you like a lot of things work
Speaker 1: until they get in your way, and then it's time
Speaker 1: to drop that tool in and pick up the next one.
Speaker 1: And I think that that is the most rounded sound
Speaker 1: way to go about dealing with any big challenges that
Speaker 1: we have. You know, there's maybe one category of things
Speaker 1: that I'm skeptical about, which are like things that are
Speaker 1: heralded as quick fixes. So whether it's a supplement or
Speaker 1: if you just do this, if someone is selling it
Speaker 1: like that's the solution, then I worry. It can be
Speaker 1: part of a solution, no doubt. But if you think
Speaker 1: that this one thing is going to solve the problem
Speaker 1: and someone is trying to have you believe that, then
Speaker 1: I'd be skeptical, like in my own recovery from o
Speaker 1: c D, and not just to make it about o
Speaker 1: c D, just what I see in my clients and
Speaker 1: my research and my reporting, just for like overcoming less
Speaker 1: extreme challenges. Generally, there's a role for some kind of
Speaker 1: spiritual practice. There's a role for some kind of physical practice.
Speaker 1: There's a role for community. When it comes to mental health,
Speaker 1: there's often a role for medication for some people, there's
Speaker 1: a role for supplements. For other people, it is some
Speaker 1: kind of like art or creative expression. So there's no
Speaker 1: one size fits all. It's about you know, figuring out, hey,
Speaker 1: these are the tools. If I can provide someone with
Speaker 1: a toolkit thirty practic this is thirty tools that I'm
Speaker 1: pretty convinced work for a lot of people in a
Speaker 1: lot of situations, then your job is to try those
Speaker 1: on and if you're sick, with the help of a
Speaker 1: therapist or physician, and figure out the tools that work
Speaker 1: for you in that moment. Yeah. I think that's really
Speaker 1: well said. And you do provide a lot of really
Speaker 1: great tools in the book. And as you were going
Speaker 1: through your list there and you were like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a psychological work, there can be medication, there can
Speaker 1: be community, there can be spiritual work, you know. And
Speaker 1: I've thought about, like, my ongoing challenge has been more depression, right,
Speaker 1: Addiction I kind of was a couple of times, but
Speaker 1: I handled it, but depression was the ongoing And I
Speaker 1: often joke like I just have thrown the kitchen sink
Speaker 1: at it, Like I mean, a little bit of everything
Speaker 1: has been what it has sort of taken it. As
Speaker 1: I was thinking through that, I was thinking, like, if
Speaker 1: you took the g off the front of your book,
Speaker 1: you'd be talking about rounded nous, which is what a
Speaker 1: lot of these solutions need to be, right, They need
Speaker 1: to be sort of you know, encompassing a variety of things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I also think that like the acceptance in the
Speaker 1: learning as you go. So I heard this from Stephen Hayes,
Speaker 1: the developer, one of the developers of acceptance and commitment therapy.
Speaker 1: I heard this from my own therapist and coach. I
Speaker 1: love and trust as much as anyone that when you
Speaker 1: have a challenge like depression or anxiety, or panic or
Speaker 1: o c D or bipolar, the experiences over the course
Speaker 1: of your life can be every bit as bad, but
Speaker 1: how you relate to them changes in every single time,
Speaker 1: there's maybe a tenth of a percent more of you
Speaker 1: that knows that it's going to pass. And by the
Speaker 1: time you're sixty, going through a depressive episode still sucks,
Speaker 1: but by then, like a whole four percent of you
Speaker 1: knows it's going to pass, and then you have that
Speaker 1: four percent to hold onto and it makes the whole
Speaker 1: experience perhaps a little bit easier versus like trying to
Speaker 1: push it away or being scared of it, because that's
Speaker 1: what makes it sticky. But again, it's non dual, because
Speaker 1: if you feel a depression coming on, you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: here's depression, I'm just gonna lay in bad. For most people,
Speaker 1: that doesn't really work. But if you're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: here's depression. I'm scared. I need to do all of
Speaker 1: these things. Then depression is going to be like a
Speaker 1: German shepherd that snits your fear and comes right after you. Yep.
Speaker 1: The analogy I've often used is treating it like the
Speaker 1: emotional flu, and so like if I got the flu,
Speaker 1: I would try and take care of myself. I'd be like,
Speaker 1: I need to rest. You know, I should probably get
Speaker 1: some vitamin. See some chicken soup might be going. I don't,
Speaker 1: I'm vegetarian, but you get where I'm going. So I
Speaker 1: make sure that I'm taking care of myself. But I
Speaker 1: also just go. Like you said, flu comes, it passes.
Speaker 1: I know it's gonna go, and as somebody who's fifty one,
Speaker 1: I've got that little bit more time of going. Yep.
Speaker 1: I know this is here now, and I know that
Speaker 1: it's going to go. You know it always has now Again,
Speaker 1: that's easier to say when you're not in it, because
Speaker 1: one of the salient factors of mental illness, I think
Speaker 1: is like, I'm not going anywhere this time. I'm here
Speaker 1: for good. But yeah, knowing that that's not true, you
Speaker 1: know that it will pass is such an important east. Yep,
Speaker 1: And I think that that I'm here for good again.
Speaker 1: If this is if there's that like one percent of you.
Speaker 1: If it's like maybe but maybe not ye, then that's
Speaker 1: the part that you can hold on to. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people, myself included, benefit from naming it too.
Speaker 1: So sometimes I'll experience like what I would just call
Speaker 1: like an intense wave of like depressive feelings, so just
Speaker 1: like emptiness out of nowhere. Instead of running away from it,
Speaker 1: I'll just be like, WHOA, I'm feeling really depressed. And
Speaker 1: then from my own kind of like toolkit, it's just
Speaker 1: don't change what you had planned. So if you're going
Speaker 1: to go out to dinner with your wife, go out
Speaker 1: to dinner with your wife, you're gonna watch a movie,
Speaker 1: watch a movie. Don't do it because you think it's
Speaker 1: going to make the depression go away. But just just
Speaker 1: stay the course. And for me, that's that's something that's
Speaker 1: been effective. So it's name it, acknowledge it, don't repress it,
Speaker 1: but then don't change what you were going to do.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful advice, and it leads me to the final
Speaker 1: question I'll ask you about. You referenced acceptance and commitment
Speaker 1: therapy a number of times, and you know, one of
Speaker 1: the main principle is there right is simply just yeah,
Speaker 1: you allow the thing to be there, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: but then you act according to your values. And I'm
Speaker 1: kind of curious for you, what are some of the
Speaker 1: tools that you have found most helpful for you or
Speaker 1: for your clients when it comes to figuring out what
Speaker 1: your values are. This seems to be a very nebulous space,
Speaker 1: you know, and so I'm kind of curious. Do you
Speaker 1: have tools that you've used that you find helpful in
Speaker 1: that area? M m mmm, I do. So there's a
Speaker 1: couple of ways to think about it. One is, some people,
Speaker 1: if you just get a list of like a hundred
Speaker 1: core values, it just gets the brainstorming going, and then
Speaker 1: you can start to identify the ones that make sense
Speaker 1: for you. Sometimes people like I'm overwhelmed, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It can be helpful to think of someone that you
Speaker 1: admire in the world and then to ask yourself, while,
Speaker 1: what do you admire about that person? And those are
Speaker 1: generally things that you hold in hard regard. You could
Speaker 1: organize a half day or day retreat with friends that
Speaker 1: you really trust, where the whole point is like let's
Speaker 1: talk to each other about like what we value and
Speaker 1: try to come up with these values. I actually don't
Speaker 1: think it's hard to think it's hard to create space
Speaker 1: to do this kind of reflective work. I don't necessarily
Speaker 1: think it's that hard to come up with the things
Speaker 1: what I talk about in the book. And maybe this
Speaker 1: is where it's like a slight departure from pure act
Speaker 1: and more into my way past days as a business consultant.
Speaker 1: Is it's like it's not enough just to have the values.
Speaker 1: You have to define them in super concrete terms, and
Speaker 1: then you have to come up with a list of
Speaker 1: three to five menu items that you can just execute on,
Speaker 1: just show up and do so. An example of this
Speaker 1: might be you have a core value of love, really honorable, beautiful.
Speaker 1: Core value looks nice up on the wall hanging over
Speaker 1: your computer. But what does love mean? So then you
Speaker 1: spend some time, you dig, you think, and let's say
Speaker 1: that you define love as being fully present for the
Speaker 1: people in activities that I care about. Okay, that's good,
Speaker 1: that's closer. Are you going to be fully present always?
Speaker 1: What if there's competing priorities? So then it gets down
Speaker 1: to the practices, and that's where you turn love into
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put my phone in the glove compartment of
Speaker 1: my car from six to nine so I can have
Speaker 1: dinner with my family with my partner and watch a
Speaker 1: TV show before I get it out again. Or three
Speaker 1: times a week at work, I'm going to block off
Speaker 1: an hour to work on one of these two meaningful
Speaker 1: projects with full focus. So you get from like this
Speaker 1: very noble thing like love all the way down to
Speaker 1: literally like what you're doing is you do the dishes,
Speaker 1: and I think that is so important, and sometimes that
Speaker 1: gets lost. It's not enough just to have something on
Speaker 1: your bathroom mirror, particularly if you're susceptible to emotional lows,
Speaker 1: because when you're in those lows, you're gonna look at
Speaker 1: that mirror and you're gonna be like, screw this. None
Speaker 1: of this stuff is ture anymore. But if your value
Speaker 1: under health says twenty minutes of aerobic exercise on Thursday,
Speaker 1: you don't have a choice. You just do it and
Speaker 1: maybe you'll feel better and maybe not, but there's a
Speaker 1: higher likelihood that you will. So I think the the
Speaker 1: extension of ACT and what I try to do in
Speaker 1: the book is really like connect being and doing and
Speaker 1: help people get super concrete and how they define these
Speaker 1: things well at the same time, not forgetting the beautiful
Speaker 1: things that these seemingly trivial activities ladder up to. The
Speaker 1: writer Annie Dillard said, like, how we spend our minutes
Speaker 1: is how we spend our days. How we spend our
Speaker 1: days is how we spend our lives. The philosopher Matt
Speaker 1: Crawford talks about character and the root of the word
Speaker 1: characters habits. So our character, our habits, it's what we do.
Speaker 1: So there is a linkage between being and doing, between
Speaker 1: love and putting your cell phone away when you're doing
Speaker 1: the dishes. I love that, and I love that idea
Speaker 1: of yeah, you've got to sort of connect the dots
Speaker 1: up and down that chain. And what I see is
Speaker 1: oftentimes people get one or the two of those down.
Speaker 1: They've got the doing down. They're just doing, but they
Speaker 1: don't know why they're doing it. Necessarily it may not
Speaker 1: be the right thing. Then the are other people who
Speaker 1: really are, you know, in touch with big values and
Speaker 1: big ideas, but it's not translated down. And if you
Speaker 1: can get both of them right connected, like you're saying,
Speaker 1: up and down the chain, you know, I often say
Speaker 1: that our plans are simply like the vehicle that we
Speaker 1: bring our values into the world. Right is v our plans,
Speaker 1: and if you've got a good plan, it's a vehicle
Speaker 1: to bring your values into the world. You know. My
Speaker 1: challenge with values, and it must because I'm an any
Speaker 1: Graham nine is that I look at him and I'm
Speaker 1: like all of them, which isn't real helpful. So I
Speaker 1: have two thoughts. The first is, I think you'll appreciate
Speaker 1: this because earlier in the conversation you remark that you
Speaker 1: know you're such a middleway guy. Is I think that
Speaker 1: what happens with those two archetypes of people is like
Speaker 1: they lack idealism, maybe get in the way of pragmatism.
Speaker 1: So the person that's so into doing but doesn't know
Speaker 1: why they do, they can't fathom having time for reflection
Speaker 1: and being because they see that as going on a
Speaker 1: ten day retreat. They don't see that a couple of
Speaker 1: minutes of structured reflection and silence. And the person that
Speaker 1: is so into being can imagine doing ninety things in
Speaker 1: the world because they see that as being rushed and
Speaker 1: being anxious. And I think it's just again those incremental
Speaker 1: steps while realizing there's a challenge. I mean there's a
Speaker 1: reason that monks live in a monastery where there are
Speaker 1: no distractions. That is a being environment. But there's a
Speaker 1: whole gray area between being and doing. And then the
Speaker 1: second thing is I'm really shocked, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: poke fun at you. I would have suspected that your
Speaker 1: answer to your indiogram would have been the same as mine.
Speaker 1: So when people ask me about my angiogram, I just
Speaker 1: quote Walt Whitman and say that I contain multitudes because
Speaker 1: I look at them and I'm like, well, it depends
Speaker 1: on the day, it depends on the movies, it depends
Speaker 1: on how I slept. I can be helpless romantic if
Speaker 1: I didn't sleep well, but if I slept well, I'm
Speaker 1: like a seven that just wants to do projects all day. Totally.
Speaker 1: I feel that way about personality tests, all of them.
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, what day. The thing about anagram, it's
Speaker 1: interesting is nine is considered the one that contains all
Speaker 1: of the other types. And I'm like, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1: Yeah that actually makes sense to me. But I'm with
Speaker 1: you on that. Personality tests always drive me up the wallk.
Speaker 1: I'm like, can you give me some more context on
Speaker 1: this question, please? I can't answer without context, and I
Speaker 1: think that's where like Buddhism and and other Eastern philosophies
Speaker 1: are so helpful. So I have a dear friend who
Speaker 1: may be listening, but I'm not gonna name him because
Speaker 1: he wouldn't want to be named. But if you're listening, hi,
Speaker 1: dear friend, who is like the angiogram four, right, that's
Speaker 1: like the romantic Yeah, I think so. I think it's
Speaker 1: a four, but I'm not uper familiar with which aligns.
Speaker 1: But there's the romantic archetype and it's like dashboard confessional band,
Speaker 1: like everything is so this, and he struggled in relationships
Speaker 1: and it's like what you're telling yourself this story. So
Speaker 1: I've slowly introduced him to like more Eastern ways of thinking,
Speaker 1: which is like you can experience being a four without
Speaker 1: being a four, like you're not a four. Four is
Speaker 1: a strong pattern, but there are other patterns available to you,
Speaker 1: and you can, in a way choose when you want
Speaker 1: to be a foreign when you don't, and again nondual
Speaker 1: because you go far east and like full on round
Speaker 1: as and then you just are. And that's beautiful if
Speaker 1: you're spending your entire life as a spiritual teacher, or
Speaker 1: maybe you're retired and your content. But if you're trying
Speaker 1: to be in the real world, it can be hard
Speaker 1: to just be. So it's like this middle way between.
Speaker 1: It's helpful to have a story. It's helpful to have
Speaker 1: a personality, just don't get too attached to it. It's
Speaker 1: helpful to be able to just be until you need
Speaker 1: a story. Yeah, and I think that's it. That's the challenge.
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree more. All Right, we are going to
Speaker 1: wrap up because this is already a very long episode.
Speaker 1: You and I'll talk a little bit more in the
Speaker 1: post show conversation because I suspect we could do this
Speaker 1: all night. Listeners. If you like access to the post
Speaker 1: show conversations, add free episodes, all kinds of other good stuff,
Speaker 1: and a good feeling of supporting something that matters to you,
Speaker 1: go to one you feed, dot net slash joint and
Speaker 1: learn more. Brad, thanks so much for coming on. I
Speaker 1: absolutely loved the book. I knew is gonna love this conversation,
Speaker 1: so I really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. I feel
Speaker 1: exactly the same. If what you just heard was helpful
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