Speaker 1: Suppression is a pretty blunt psychological instrument. And what you
Speaker 1: get when you suppress negative feelings as you also suppress
Speaker 1: positive feelings Welcome to the one you feed throughout time.
Speaker 1: Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 1: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think ring true, and yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest today is Robert Biswastiner, a psychologist, author,
Speaker 1: and instructor at Portland State University. Biswastiner's research focuses on
Speaker 1: income and happiness, culture and happiness, and positive psychology. Robert
Speaker 1: has written a number of books, including his latest The
Speaker 1: Upside of Your Dark Side, Why Being your whole self
Speaker 1: not just your good self drive, success and fulfillment. The
Speaker 1: book was co written with Todd Cashton. Here's the interview. Hi, Robert,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. I am very excited to get
Speaker 1: you on the show. Your book is UM right up
Speaker 1: the alley of a lot of things that we talked
Speaker 1: about on the show. One of our i think our
Speaker 1: second interview ever was UM with a guy named Oliver
Speaker 1: Berkman who wrote a book called The Antidote Happiness for
Speaker 1: people who Hate Posity of Thinking. So we've explored a
Speaker 1: lot of the ideas in your book on this show before,
Speaker 1: so I'm looking at taking those to a different level.
Speaker 1: So our show is called The One You Feed, and
Speaker 1: it's based on the parable of Two Wolves, where there's
Speaker 1: a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us. One
Speaker 1: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 1: 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 for a second, and
Speaker 1: he looks at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins, and the grandfather 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. Sure, that's a fantastic way
Speaker 1: to to open I'm tickled by it. I have to
Speaker 1: tell you, UM and I think you know the the
Speaker 1: overall interpretation of the parable, hopefully it's relatively straightforward. It's
Speaker 1: speaks to um, people's internal worlds, all of their psychological states,
Speaker 1: their emotions, their attitudes, their values and so forth, as
Speaker 1: having a large impact in the world. That is it's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the world isn't just luck and circumstance, um,
Speaker 1: But it has to do with with how you see things,
Speaker 1: and how you see things is largely the product of
Speaker 1: your own effort, your own attention, your own self awareness,
Speaker 1: and so forth. UM. And I would think that that's
Speaker 1: the one. The one you feed is whichever one you
Speaker 1: put the the effort or attention into. UM. And I
Speaker 1: also like that it's sort of dichotomizes things, you know,
Speaker 1: good and bad. Um. You know, I know that there
Speaker 1: aren't just two types of people in the world, UM,
Speaker 1: But but I do sometimes see the utility and these
Speaker 1: kind of simplifications, not because they're somehow true, but because
Speaker 1: they're a great way to to understand things. And I
Speaker 1: think that within all of us we we actually UM
Speaker 1: feed both wolves a tiny bit. I don't think anyone's
Speaker 1: totally just feeding one or the other. What I find
Speaker 1: interesting is that your book is called The Upside of
Speaker 1: Your Dark Side, so you're you're really talking about how
Speaker 1: we do need to embrace both sides of ourselves as
Speaker 1: part of UM driving a life that has the most
Speaker 1: success and fulfillment in it. Yeah. Absolutely, And I think
Speaker 1: that's a hard pill to swallow. I mean, especially in
Speaker 1: the context of the parable you just read, UM, because
Speaker 1: when you describe the traits of the bad wolf, you
Speaker 1: know things like greed. Um, those sound really awful, you know,
Speaker 1: this sort of sound seven deadly sins kind of stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: And for most people, I think they would say things
Speaker 1: like hatred, rage, greed. I mean, these these are just
Speaker 1: such terrible traits and and we would want to avoid
Speaker 1: them at all costs, UM. And while I am mostly
Speaker 1: in agreement with that, I don't know that we always
Speaker 1: want to avoid every iteration and of the dark side
Speaker 1: at all costs, and in fact, in certain instances I
Speaker 1: think they're helpful. What are some of those instances where
Speaker 1: you think it's it's helpful? So, UM, just to to
Speaker 1: you know, so that no one kills me, just to reiterate,
Speaker 1: I am a big fan of positivity. I do think
Speaker 1: it works for people, and I think it's where we
Speaker 1: should spend the majority of our time. UM. And having
Speaker 1: said that, when I think about sort of the darker
Speaker 1: aspects of psychology, UM, my co author Todd and I
Speaker 1: divide them into three separate types, so you could have UM, emotions,
Speaker 1: of course, thinking or cognition UM. And then we also
Speaker 1: talk about the social life and all the behaviors that
Speaker 1: go along with your social relationships. So let's just take
Speaker 1: the first of those, because I think it's in many
Speaker 1: ways the easiest for people to understand. UM. If you
Speaker 1: think about emotions and your feelings, there are a range
Speaker 1: of feelings joy, enthusiasm, anticipation, love, that we think of
Speaker 1: as pleasant or positive, and then a whole slew that
Speaker 1: we think of as negative. Those would be things like guilt, frustration, boredom, anger, UM.
Speaker 1: And I think of emotions in general as being a
Speaker 1: thermometer basically, emotions are we think of them as information.
Speaker 1: They're just sort of taking the temperature of your day
Speaker 1: to day life. You get that last parking spot, you know,
Speaker 1: close up to the store, and your little emotional thermometer
Speaker 1: goes up. You have this little burst of joy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got it, Um, You get a flat tire and
Speaker 1: oh no, you get this this. You know, the thermometer
Speaker 1: goes down into the frigid reason regions where where you're frustrated. Um.
Speaker 1: I want everyone's thermometer to be working. And on the
Speaker 1: one hand, for the people who take this idea of
Speaker 1: positivity too far, they say, you know, we should just
Speaker 1: always be positive all the time, we should never feel guilt,
Speaker 1: anger as always toxic. It's essentially like saying, hey, let's
Speaker 1: break our thermometer so that only measures half of the
Speaker 1: overall degrees. And I I think that that's not a
Speaker 1: well thought through um approach to to living the full
Speaker 1: emotional life. Yeah, that's a really good analogy. One of
Speaker 1: the things that I ask people on the show a lot.
Speaker 1: One of our earlier guests Um mentioned in her book,
Speaker 1: but I'm always sort of asking myself, when is it
Speaker 1: positive thinking and when is it sort of outright denial
Speaker 1: of things. And I always think that's such an interesting
Speaker 1: line to try and walk, because I think you're you're
Speaker 1: exactly right. I think if we ignore an entire emotional
Speaker 1: side of ourselves that seems to always be be problematic,
Speaker 1: and yet how we think about things tends to affect
Speaker 1: also how we feel about things in a lot of cases.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they're they're they're absolutely combined. And and emotions
Speaker 1: in particular part of our evolutionary birthright, I mean, the
Speaker 1: the entire palette of emotions, Uh, is there is in
Speaker 1: existence to help us function. We didn't wind up with
Speaker 1: anger because you know, it's just this sort of affective
Speaker 1: poison that exists within us that we have to tiptoe around.
Speaker 1: We ended up with anger because it has motivational consequences.
Speaker 1: It helps us defend ourselves. That helps us, um, take
Speaker 1: on challenges and rise to to risk the occasions, defend
Speaker 1: those we love. Uh, it actually can work for us.
Speaker 1: You know. Guilt is the same way guilt, Um, it's
Speaker 1: sort of a red flag waving telling you that you've
Speaker 1: violated your own ethics or values and that you need
Speaker 1: a course correction. Um. While these are unpleasant, they they
Speaker 1: are for good purpose, and I think that some of them,
Speaker 1: the prejudice against them has to do with a few
Speaker 1: a few misunderstandings about them, and one of them is
Speaker 1: that we're going to somehow get stuck in these emotions. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I think people especially feel like this about anger,
Speaker 1: that you're gonna get carried away, swept away, out of control.
Speaker 1: These are the types of phrases and language that people
Speaker 1: use around anger, as if you're not you anymore, you
Speaker 1: become animalistic, um or or that you're just gonna just
Speaker 1: be you know, the tsunami of emotion is going to
Speaker 1: carry you away and you won't have any control at all. Um.
Speaker 1: And at the most extreme cases, that certainly could be true.
Speaker 1: But but all of us, me, you, we all have
Speaker 1: a long history of being angry at things large and small,
Speaker 1: and and we're not stuck there now, so at least
Speaker 1: at some point that those feelings eroded into other new
Speaker 1: feelings like like joy or boredom or eagerness or what
Speaker 1: have you. I do these many episodes where I just
Speaker 1: record myself talking. There's clearly our least listen to episodes.
Speaker 1: Thanks all you guys out there. Um. Anyway, I did
Speaker 1: one recently about rumination, right, this idea that this tendency
Speaker 1: to just circle around the same thing in our head
Speaker 1: over and over. So I'm somebody who certainly can get stuck.
Speaker 1: Now we might it sounds like what maybe you're saying
Speaker 1: is I'm not actually stuck in the feeling at that point,
Speaker 1: so much is the thinking, Well, it could be, and
Speaker 1: you're not. I think most importantly, you're not stuck permanently. UM.
Speaker 1: I asked people today. It's just a little experiment on Facebook.
Speaker 1: I just posted when you get angry normal anger, not
Speaker 1: absolutely enraged, the most angry you've ever been, and not
Speaker 1: just the tiniest amount of irritation, but whatever you perceive
Speaker 1: as normal anger. How long do you think it takes
Speaker 1: for you to recover? And some people wrote five minutes,
Speaker 1: some people wrote two to three days, which actually sounds
Speaker 1: like a long time to me. Um, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people wrote sort of anywhere between one and four hours. UM.
Speaker 1: And I think that that that's actually pretty interesting. And
Speaker 1: I don't know what what the right answer is for you,
Speaker 1: but it might be interesting to keep track of your
Speaker 1: own angry episodes, because if it's true that they only
Speaker 1: last two hours, on average between before you're sort of
Speaker 1: back to your calm, resting self. It just may not
Speaker 1: be as bad as as people believe. I mean, two
Speaker 1: hours of anger is is not the end of the world, right,
Speaker 1: It certainly isn't. Um. I think that what I'm what
Speaker 1: I've wrestled with, and I think I agree. I think
Speaker 1: what you're you're talking about is people do get worried
Speaker 1: that they'll get stuck, and some people do have maybe
Speaker 1: a tendency to be Maybe stuck isn't the right word,
Speaker 1: but you do certainly see people who are more perpetually
Speaker 1: in a certain emotion perhaps than other than other people.
Speaker 1: We think we all know somebody who's kind of perpetually
Speaker 1: angry at most situations. Um. And I'm sure that's not
Speaker 1: at all what you guys are are driving at. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. And and you're right. I mean, you know
Speaker 1: there are people that seem, you know, perhaps because of
Speaker 1: genetic leanings that you know, maybe are you know, their
Speaker 1: needle is pointed a little bit grumpier than someone else's.
Speaker 1: So so certainly you'll find individual differences. Um, But you're right.
Speaker 1: I I we just want people to be able to
Speaker 1: be psychologically flexible. To be agile and flipping back and
Speaker 1: forth between the whole range of things. Because one of
Speaker 1: the things that people do around things like anxiety, stress, guilt, anger,
Speaker 1: boredom is they try and avoid it because it feels unpleasant. Um.
Speaker 1: And there are a few ways to avoid it. You
Speaker 1: can distract yourself, you can have a beer, you can
Speaker 1: um you know, in the case of boredom, whip out
Speaker 1: your smartphone. Um. But one of the most common ways
Speaker 1: that people do it is they try and suppress it.
Speaker 1: That is, they tamp it down. And unfortunately, suppression is
Speaker 1: a pretty blunt psychological instrument. And what you get when
Speaker 1: you suppress negative feelings is you also suppress positive feelings.
Speaker 1: Suppression isn't a surgical life you you can't suppress one
Speaker 1: without suppressing the other. Um. And we find that people
Speaker 1: who suppress actually are more likely to become emotionally exhausted,
Speaker 1: they're more likely to quit their jobs, um, they're more
Speaker 1: likely to have health consequences as a result of kind
Speaker 1: of trying to avoid these negative emotions. Um. And we
Speaker 1: don't want people to dwell in anger or or guilt,
Speaker 1: but we want people to to be able to tolerate them,
Speaker 1: to feel them and to acknowledge them as they come up,
Speaker 1: which happens to be the minority of the time. You
Speaker 1: said somewhere in the book that avoidance is the tectonic
Speaker 1: issue of our times. Yeah. Absolutely, and I think it's
Speaker 1: it's something that's happening um. More and more. We we
Speaker 1: call it uh comfort addiction. Um. And the basic argument
Speaker 1: goes like this, modern people are more able to achieve
Speaker 1: comfort than at any time in human history. UM. And
Speaker 1: I know people, uh, you know, they get a little
Speaker 1: angry about this, and they say, oh, well, what are
Speaker 1: you talking about. Is are you know, living standards really
Speaker 1: going up? And you know, we had this this hard
Speaker 1: economic time in two thousand and eight. And while all
Speaker 1: of that's true, I would point people to the year
Speaker 1: seventeen oh eight or the year one thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: and yes, we are far far more comfortable than those
Speaker 1: people are. Um. You know, we have space age foams
Speaker 1: that we can make beds with, we have microwave popcorn,
Speaker 1: we have cars that can take us huge distances. We
Speaker 1: have you know, incredibly smart phones that can entertain us
Speaker 1: at at a whim. Um. We really do have a
Speaker 1: lot of kind of physical and psychological comforts available to us,
Speaker 1: and as comfort becomes our new natural resting state, we
Speaker 1: become a little bit out of practice with discomfort. UM.
Speaker 1: And you find this more and more with UM. The idea,
Speaker 1: for example, of helicopter parenting and parents, you know, trying
Speaker 1: to take the burden or negotiate life for their children,
Speaker 1: and what it leads to maybe is is their kids
Speaker 1: continue to advance, but what their kids don't get to
Speaker 1: do is contend with disappointment, contend with UM, frustration or
Speaker 1: confusion or boredom or all of these things that are
Speaker 1: really implicated in the learning process. I think that comfort
Speaker 1: thing is a is a big one. We talk often
Speaker 1: about that comfort is not the same thing as is
Speaker 1: happiness or fulfillment. UM. If comfort is the main thing
Speaker 1: that we're striving for, it's easy for at least for me,
Speaker 1: my life can shrink really really fast. There's less and
Speaker 1: less that I'm going to do because everywhere I go,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be more uncomfortable, and so my life
Speaker 1: just gets smaller and smaller. One of the things that
Speaker 1: I think is so interesting about it and comfort addiction.
Speaker 1: I wrestle with it as much as anyone else. You know,
Speaker 1: this isn't me just wagging my finger and saying, and
Speaker 1: the good old days, everything was wonderful, and look at
Speaker 1: the kids now. Um. When we want to relax, we
Speaker 1: really gravitate towards comfort. You know, think lying on the beach,
Speaker 1: think um, a bubble bath, those types of things. But
Speaker 1: we when we want to grow and learn, we knowingly
Speaker 1: take on discomfort. So think, for example, if you're privileged
Speaker 1: enough to be able to take an overseas trip, you
Speaker 1: do that knowing that, um, there's a lot of uncertainty there,
Speaker 1: that you're gonna have to contend with novelty and unpredictability,
Speaker 1: that you might get lost, that you'll be confused, um,
Speaker 1: and you assume that through that challenge you'll find it
Speaker 1: a very rewarding kind of self growth experience. UM. So
Speaker 1: even there, I like to to guide people to be
Speaker 1: agile and flip back and forth. There's nothing wrong with comfort, um.
Speaker 1: But but comfort and sort of novelty slash challenge act
Speaker 1: like a seesaw and you can kind of go back
Speaker 1: and forth between them. Yeah. I didn't interview a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago. We haven't released it yet. Um, but
Speaker 1: where the guests talked about something called cotton candy comfort
Speaker 1: that the way we similar very similar to what you
Speaker 1: describe that when we are trying to uh, you know,
Speaker 1: comfort ourselves in some ways, we tend to do things
Speaker 1: that are um they you know, it's sort of like
Speaker 1: cotton candy, right, very sweet at first, but no real
Speaker 1: lasting effect, and you usually don't feel a lot better afterwards.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to listen to that interview. It sounds
Speaker 1: it sounds good. Although I wouldn't throw out all comfort
Speaker 1: because I think there is a time and a place
Speaker 1: to lay on the beach or to take a bubble bath.
Speaker 1: Um and and you know, we expect those to have
Speaker 1: short term effects. You don't expect the bubble bath you
Speaker 1: took last year to make you feel relaxed this year. Um. So,
Speaker 1: so I think those are okay, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: think we only have to be steeped and meaning and
Speaker 1: growth all the time without ever, you know, letting our
Speaker 1: hair down. Um But I also wouldn't want to go
Speaker 1: the other way where we're only relaxed and and never
Speaker 1: facing hardship or challenge or growing. Right. I think the
Speaker 1: thing I got from from your book, and it's come
Speaker 1: up several times that you're talking about is find in
Speaker 1: that that middle ground, that that makes sense, that that
Speaker 1: being too far on either of those extremes with that
Speaker 1: or with indulging or suppressing emotions or all that stuff,
Speaker 1: that there's a place that sits in the middle. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And you know, kind of an interesting if if I
Speaker 1: could just kind of pull back the curtain on, you know,
Speaker 1: show you the inner workings of this book as it
Speaker 1: came about. A few people have reacted to the book
Speaker 1: sort of like, oh, well, of course what you're making,
Speaker 1: what you're saying makes sense, but you know, like it
Speaker 1: has a so what effect, Like, well, of course you
Speaker 1: should sometimes feel bad and sometimes feel good. Of course
Speaker 1: you should sometimes relax and sometimes grow. Um. But I
Speaker 1: I usually respond by saying, well, you know, in in
Speaker 1: the creation of this book, we came across not not
Speaker 1: one person or dozens of people, but you know, literally
Speaker 1: hundreds of people that strongly prefer one way or the other. Um.
Speaker 1: We wrote this book and in part to address a
Speaker 1: real world phenomenon, and that phenomenon is that there are
Speaker 1: people that that truly believe anger is never appropriate. There
Speaker 1: are people who truly believe that comfort is never appropriate. Um.
Speaker 1: Just as there are people who who believe that UM
Speaker 1: comfort is always appropriate. UM so right, So it's kind
Speaker 1: of it's you know, these are real these are real
Speaker 1: people out in the real world, you know, so I
Speaker 1: do think they're this doesn't matter, and it's maybe less
Speaker 1: obvious to some people as it it may at first.
Speaker 1: So I think it's one of those It's I often
Speaker 1: think that knowing something is fine, right, it's great, I
Speaker 1: know it, but it's can I actually live it? And
Speaker 1: that's a whole another let jump of complexity and effort.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, it's obvious, like, yes, we should try
Speaker 1: not to go to extremes in either of those things.
Speaker 1: But boy, day to day that is a lot more challenging. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I'm so glad you brought that up, um and,
Speaker 1: in fact, because you know, I'm as guilty of that
Speaker 1: is absolutely any one and one of the places that
Speaker 1: I've really noticed that's popping up in my own life
Speaker 1: us just as a parent, um and and there have
Speaker 1: been times when, for example, my son has been bored
Speaker 1: or um where I have to disappoint my son something
Speaker 1: that he desperately wants to do, and you know, my
Speaker 1: wife and I just have to say no to him. Um.
Speaker 1: In the past. I think before writing this book, I
Speaker 1: had a really hard time with that. UM. And now
Speaker 1: I almost take a sort of absurd glee in it. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, you're like, oh, you're bored. That's so great, Like,
Speaker 1: what an amazing opportunity for you, which drives him crazy
Speaker 1: of course, But UM, but I really have noticed that
Speaker 1: in the creation of this book, it has changed my
Speaker 1: attitude about occasional negative feelings. Yeah. One of the things
Speaker 1: that you said about avoidance, and uh, I have a
Speaker 1: classic avoidance streak in me, give me an opportunity to avoid,
Speaker 1: and uh, if I'm sort of on autopilot, I will avoid.
Speaker 1: But you had a line in there that really struck
Speaker 1: me which said that unfortunately, avoiding problems also means avoiding
Speaker 1: finding the solutions to them, which I thought was really profound.
Speaker 1: Well absolutely, I mean it used the kind of just
Speaker 1: a modern classic example of someone who has a huge
Speaker 1: amount of credit card debt, um, and and the way
Speaker 1: the often people who are burdened with with this you know,
Speaker 1: fiscal and psychological weight. Um, what they do is they
Speaker 1: just don't think about it. They don't make minimum payments,
Speaker 1: they don't make larger than minimum payments. They don't make
Speaker 1: any payments. They just kind of wish it would go away. UM.
Speaker 1: And that avoidant strategy turns out not to be very good,
Speaker 1: first of all, because you can't avoid what's inside you,
Speaker 1: which is the feeling, So they end up really continuing
Speaker 1: to feel bad even while not paying UM. And then
Speaker 1: of course the problem lingers UM. So so really it's
Speaker 1: not a great way to head towards a solution in
Speaker 1: the long term. Yeah, it's it is a seductive one,
Speaker 1: at least for me, UM. But I think that's the
Speaker 1: that's part of like you said, write in the book
Speaker 1: for you made you aware of a lot of those things,
Speaker 1: and that's that's what this show does for me, is
Speaker 1: it keeps me aware of these things so that I
Speaker 1: just don't sort of drift into my habitual patterns, or
Speaker 1: at least try to have that happen. You talk in
Speaker 1: the book about something else that I'm always very intrigued by. UM.
Speaker 1: I describe it as sort of not really knowing what's
Speaker 1: going to make us happy. But you've got a different
Speaker 1: term for it called emotional time travel errors. Can you
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about where you see that
Speaker 1: fitting into this Sure, so you know I didn't. I
Speaker 1: didn't create that myself. Um. You know I don't. I
Speaker 1: want to give credit where credits due. But um, it
Speaker 1: turns out that, on the one hand, happiness is wonderful.
Speaker 1: If you feel positive emotions, You're more likely to get
Speaker 1: good customer evaluations, better supervisor evaluations, you'll live longer, you'll
Speaker 1: make more money, I mean, all sorts of benefits. But
Speaker 1: then there are also a whole bunch of problems with
Speaker 1: happiness too. Um. And one of these is we've spend
Speaker 1: a lot of our time making decisions based on predicted
Speaker 1: future happiness. You know, I'm going to purchase a relatively
Speaker 1: expensive ticket to Hawaii based on the idea that a
Speaker 1: vacation there will yield some kind of happiness dividend for me,
Speaker 1: That that I would enjoy the beach, that I'll have
Speaker 1: good food, that I'll enjoy my time with my family,
Speaker 1: it will be relaxing, and so forth. Um. But but
Speaker 1: some of those predictions turn out to be wrong, not
Speaker 1: entirely wrong. I mean, it doesn't turn out that Hawaii
Speaker 1: is just awful. I mean, it's pretty great. Um, But
Speaker 1: we tend to think that that the happiness pay out
Speaker 1: will last longer than we expect and um, and that
Speaker 1: it will be more intense. But it turns out, you know,
Speaker 1: you take that trip to Hawaii just using this example,
Speaker 1: um and and really you you get a mild burst
Speaker 1: of happiness, and it's mixed in with a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of other stuff. Maybe they lose your luggage on the airline,
Speaker 1: maybe you have about of food poisoning. Maybe it rains
Speaker 1: two of the days you're there. Um. You know, so
Speaker 1: it's not just perfect bliss, but it's pretty good and
Speaker 1: overall you like it. Um. And then you come back
Speaker 1: to work, you know, following your one week vacation, and
Speaker 1: it sort of doesn't linger. You know, you kind of
Speaker 1: expected it to make you happy for the next two months,
Speaker 1: and it it basically paid out happiness for about two
Speaker 1: days afterwards. Um. So I think that's that's an interesting
Speaker 1: thing because people are making real world decisions about which
Speaker 1: job should I take, which person should I marry, where
Speaker 1: should I retire based on these these kinds of assumptions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that is a very tricky one understanding what will
Speaker 1: make us happy. Um, I'm I've I've certainly often found
Speaker 1: that I think it's this thing I have a tendency
Speaker 1: to be like, it's this thing out there, and then
Speaker 1: when when it occurs, I don't really feel all that different,
Speaker 1: and um, it's it can be sort of startling. One
Speaker 1: of the things that you were talking I was I
Speaker 1: was thinking about you mentioned the weather on the vacation,
Speaker 1: and I've been working on creating a short course for
Speaker 1: some of the listeners on a book that I love,
Speaker 1: the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, um and and
Speaker 1: the first part of that book is about being proactive,
Speaker 1: and it starts to border on that controlling your emotion
Speaker 1: state to some degree. The way he describes it is
Speaker 1: that a proactive person, uh, sort of carries their weather
Speaker 1: inside of them. And so if there's a if it's
Speaker 1: a day they plan to go outside and and it's raining,
Speaker 1: they they are able to um still find a way
Speaker 1: to make that a positive experience. And I'm curious how
Speaker 1: you guys describe where's the how do you how do
Speaker 1: you move from? All? Right? I want to feel what
Speaker 1: I genuinely feel in my emotions, and yet I don't
Speaker 1: sort of want to be on the roller coaster of
Speaker 1: what the outside world's throwing in me. That's a it's
Speaker 1: a great question. Um, if I had a perfectly bottled,
Speaker 1: you know, magical answer for you, I would probably be
Speaker 1: the smartest person in the world. And then you know,
Speaker 1: people would be studying me in two thousand years from now.
Speaker 1: UM So I'll give you a more feeble answer with
Speaker 1: my apologies. UM. I think that that you acknowledge your
Speaker 1: emotional states. So if you're really looking forward to a
Speaker 1: long walk on the beach and it happens to be,
Speaker 1: you know, pouring rain, which discounts what you had chosen,
Speaker 1: it's okay that you feel disappointed. You don't need to
Speaker 1: kind of in an inauthentic way, say oh, my goodness,
Speaker 1: I'm absolutely so thrilled that has happened, because it gives
Speaker 1: me the opportunity to take up jigsaw puzzles at home. UM.
Speaker 1: Much in the same way that that you find this
Speaker 1: around um self growth experiences that follow traumas. Um. While
Speaker 1: many people grow from traumas, you would never wish a
Speaker 1: trauma on someone just for the growth they might experiences
Speaker 1: as a result. UM So I think that that that's
Speaker 1: a bit disingenuous. UM. You know, to just say, oh,
Speaker 1: these are the best opportunities ever. Um. It doesn't sit
Speaker 1: well with me anyway. But I also don't think you
Speaker 1: need to be mired in the in the emotional experience
Speaker 1: that disappointment need not linger for four or five hours
Speaker 1: because it's a relatively minor emotion. So I think there's
Speaker 1: something about the duration of the motion that is you
Speaker 1: acknowledge the emotion and it's legitimacy. I'm disappointed that I
Speaker 1: didn't get to do what I wanted. I'm gonna kind
Speaker 1: of feel that I'm not going to try and hide that.
Speaker 1: I might even complain openly about it. That's an okay
Speaker 1: thing to do. And then after experiencing it for some
Speaker 1: small amount of time, I'm going to move on past it.
Speaker 1: I don't need to get rid of it or anything.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna continue my day, um with new activities,
Speaker 1: indoor activities, using our that's I had an example very
Speaker 1: similar to that exact thing today. Something happened. I was disappointed.
Speaker 1: My initial reaction was to be like, oh, no, it's fine,
Speaker 1: it's fine, and then I went, all right, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna okay, yep, I'm disappointed by this, and
Speaker 1: I did even I expressed it, and then um kind
Speaker 1: of got back to it. I think, and you you
Speaker 1: talk about this in the book. I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: have the words exactly, but it's I think it's the
Speaker 1: thoughts that we add to that so often, like it's
Speaker 1: always my luck it rains when I go to the beach.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have the worst lot. You know, those
Speaker 1: stories that that then are driving that emotion home in
Speaker 1: some way, that that are that are not necessarily really
Speaker 1: based on reality at all. That's right. And and you know,
Speaker 1: in all honesty, this comes right back to which wolf
Speaker 1: do you feed? Um? Because that that story you tell
Speaker 1: is the is the food um? You know, having the
Speaker 1: the emotional reaction as natural, that's just your radar system
Speaker 1: for life. You know, those motions are going to bubble
Speaker 1: up whether you want them to or not. But do
Speaker 1: you fuel the fires? Do you stoke them? Or do
Speaker 1: you let the coals, you know, kind of burned down
Speaker 1: and go out on their own, leaving room for for
Speaker 1: new emotional experiences. Yeah, I think that's a great way
Speaker 1: to put it. We are getting near the end of
Speaker 1: the time, but before we do, I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: a question about something that you guys reference in the
Speaker 1: book and I've just heard about it a few times
Speaker 1: now recently, and but I don't know what it is
Speaker 1: and its m acceptance and commitment therapy. Sure, yeah, UM
Speaker 1: we we briefly reference it. Uh, it's it's a form
Speaker 1: of therapy. And I want to preface this by saying,
Speaker 1: although I do have a graduate degree in in clinical psychology,
Speaker 1: I don't work as a therapist, so I'm not going
Speaker 1: to talk too in depth about it. But UM, it's
Speaker 1: a relatively new form of therapy and it's part of
Speaker 1: a whole UM bunch of therapies that are known UM
Speaker 1: largely as mindfulness based therapies. That is, they have at
Speaker 1: their core some degree of kind of mindfulness or or
Speaker 1: meditative meditation type training where you can acknowledge your emotional experience. UM.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like watching it up on stage saying yes,
Speaker 1: there it is, UM, but that that doesn't need that
Speaker 1: stage play. I'm looking at in front of me, UM,
Speaker 1: it doesn't need to define me or or the totality
Speaker 1: of my experience. And skilled act or skilled acceptance and
Speaker 1: commitment therapists UM have a variety of tools for helping
Speaker 1: people to tolerate unpleasant states UM and largely through through meditation,
Speaker 1: through acceptance and so forth. Yeah, that's one of the
Speaker 1: very things you guys start with and in the beginning
Speaker 1: the book and talk a lot about. Is that idea
Speaker 1: that one of the biggest indicators of success in test
Speaker 1: after test um in different areas of life is the
Speaker 1: ability to tolerate some degree of psychological discomfort. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And that's that's what I would um, that's what I
Speaker 1: would kind of wish for your listeners. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't want people to go out and have to to
Speaker 1: suffer in a truly large way, But I don't mind
Speaker 1: if your listeners can't find a parking spot for a
Speaker 1: little bit, or if they get stuck in traffic. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't mind if they're bored while they wait
Speaker 1: for the bus. Um. And I think that that learning
Speaker 1: to tolerate those kind of small stakes, negative um circumstances,
Speaker 1: I think that's a great way to kind of build
Speaker 1: up your your psychological muscles so that when the bigger
Speaker 1: stuff does come around and inevitably will, you're better prepared
Speaker 1: for it. Great. Well, I think that is a really
Speaker 1: good spot to wrap up. So thanks so much for
Speaker 1: being on the show. This has been a really enjoyable
Speaker 1: Tall Talk and I'll have links on the site to
Speaker 1: your your book. And um, thanks for taking the time
Speaker 1: to talk with us as absolutely my honor. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. All right, take care, bye bye bye. You
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