Speaker 1: Even the most average human existence undergoes major inevitable life changes,
Speaker 1: and there's just no way around it. We're always in
Speaker 1: conversation with change.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their goods. Wolf, Thanks
Speaker 2: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Brad Staalberg,
Speaker 2: a researcher and writer who focuses on sustainable excellence and
Speaker 2: mental health. He's a best selling author and writer of
Speaker 2: the Practice of Groundedness. He regularly contributes to The New
Speaker 2: York Times, and his work has been featured in The
Speaker 2: Wall Street Journal and Atlantic, among others. Today, Brad and
Speaker 2: Eric discuss his new book, Master of Change, How to
Speaker 2: Excel When Everything Is Changing, Including You.
Speaker 3: Hi, Brad, welcome back.
Speaker 4: Hey Eric. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 3: I'm excited to have you on again. As I've said
Speaker 3: to you before, I feel like our philosophy and our
Speaker 3: approach and the things that we talk about and teach
Speaker 3: are so aligned that I love connecting with you. We're
Speaker 3: going to be discussing your new book, which is called
Speaker 3: Master of Change, how to Excel when Everything Is Changing,
Speaker 3: including You. But before we do that, we'll start, like
Speaker 3: we always do, with a parable. In the parable, there's
Speaker 3: a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 3: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 3: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 3: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 3: other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 3: hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops think about it
Speaker 3: for a second. They look up at their grandparent and
Speaker 3: they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says,
Speaker 3: the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 3: by asking you what that parable means to you. In
Speaker 3: your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: I love that parable because it gets to the non
Speaker 1: dual nature of just about everything that is complex and nuance,
Speaker 1: including ourselves. And we like to think that we're good
Speaker 1: or bad, but in fact there are parts of us
Speaker 1: that are good and parts of us that are bad.
Speaker 1: To me, that parable means that our actions in the
Speaker 1: world shape our character. Character is just a habit. It
Speaker 1: is what you show up and do. And I think
Speaker 1: that the good wolf or the bad wolf are being.
Speaker 1: Influences are doing, yes, but are doing also influences are being.
Speaker 1: And I think what this parable means, at least how
Speaker 1: I interpret it, is that the more that we can
Speaker 1: show up and we can act in alignment with our
Speaker 1: good nature, our better angels, then that's feeding the good wolf.
Speaker 1: And that's really what trying to be a mature adult
Speaker 1: is all about.
Speaker 3: I love that. So character to you is not like
Speaker 3: who you are at a thinking level or a values level.
Speaker 3: It's who you are via action.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 1: And I think that who you are via action shapes
Speaker 1: your thinking and your values every bit as much as
Speaker 1: your thinking in your value shape your actions. Yes, I
Speaker 1: see being and doing again, I see them as non dual.
Speaker 1: They're part of a cycle, right one leads to the
Speaker 1: other and vice versa. And in this case, to me,
Speaker 1: the feeding the wolf is the doing actually impacting the being.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'm sure we talked about this last time,
Speaker 3: and it's something I've enjoyed about your work from the beginning.
Speaker 3: Is I think that that perspective that these things are
Speaker 3: two way streets, right, our actions can actually change how
Speaker 3: we think and feel. You know, I probably shared the
Speaker 3: quotes that's been most important to me in life or
Speaker 3: the phrase, and it was I learned it early in
Speaker 3: AA and it was sometimes you can't think your way
Speaker 3: into right action. You have to act your way into
Speaker 3: right thinking. And I think the keyword there is sometimes,
Speaker 3: because sometimes you can think your way hitto right action,
Speaker 3: and you do, but sometimes that's not going to work
Speaker 3: and you need to be able to go both directions.
Speaker 4: Love it. I could not agree more so.
Speaker 3: You and I agree on nearly everything, it seems, but
Speaker 3: there is one thing that we do not, and it
Speaker 3: is that you love Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Speaker 3: Maintenance as one of your favorite books, and I want
Speaker 3: to love it. I mean, I'm a Zen student. I
Speaker 3: want to love that book. People I know love that book.
Speaker 3: But I have tried multiple times and I get part
Speaker 3: way in and I just am like, I'm not really
Speaker 3: enjoying this. I just don't know what it is. What
Speaker 3: am I missing?
Speaker 1: There's got to be some day life between us somewhere,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately for Robert Persig, the author of Zen and
Speaker 1: the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I guess it's there.
Speaker 4: That book was really formative for me.
Speaker 1: I read it first as an undergraduate student, and I'd
Speaker 1: say it was the moment that I chose something that
Speaker 1: was more intellectual versus just partying or smoking a bomb
Speaker 1: with my friends, Like I distinctly remember them starting to say,
Speaker 1: you're against having fun because I wanted to go and
Speaker 1: read this book alone. But then I reread that book
Speaker 1: in graduate school, and I reread it before I became
Speaker 1: a father. I reread it after I became a father.
Speaker 1: I reread it recently is research for an upcoming project.
Speaker 1: And every time I reread it, there's a part of
Speaker 1: me that's a little bit worried, that thinks, huh, is
Speaker 1: this just like a young kind of this is a
Speaker 1: cult like book? And I did a spiritual bypass with it,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to come back to it and realize
Speaker 1: I was immature, But every time I read it I
Speaker 1: like it more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I'm certain that at some juncture in my
Speaker 3: life I will try again. There are certain books that
Speaker 3: are like that that I'm like, well, I'm going to try. However,
Speaker 3: I did love your book, so we can agree on that.
Speaker 3: I want to jump into that book now. And I
Speaker 3: love this idea of you know how to excel when
Speaker 3: everything is changing, including you, and that is always right.
Speaker 3: I mean, the Buddhist notion of impermanence means that things
Speaker 3: are always changing. However, there are times that things change
Speaker 3: a lot, and I think those are the sort of
Speaker 3: things when we talk about change being difficult, that tends
Speaker 3: to be what we're talking about, these big shifts. I've
Speaker 3: heard them referred to as life quakes by someone I
Speaker 3: maybe been a guest on the show, Bruce Filer. I'm
Speaker 3: not sure if you use that term, but you say
Speaker 3: that these disorder events are really common. Research shows that
Speaker 3: on average, people experience thirty six disorder events in the
Speaker 3: course of their adulthood, or about one every eighteen months.
Speaker 3: And we're talking about getting a job, losing a job,
Speaker 3: getting into a significant relationship, ending one moving. I mean,
Speaker 3: those are some of the key ones that come to mind.
Speaker 3: What are some others that fall into these sort of
Speaker 3: disorder events?
Speaker 1: Having kids, having kids leave the house after you raise them,
Speaker 1: starting school, graduating from school, distancing from a best friend,
Speaker 1: meeting a new best friend, getting a challenging health diagnosis
Speaker 1: or an injury, recovering from that challenging health diagnosis or injury,
Speaker 1: falling in love and then losing love. Yeah, even the
Speaker 1: most average human existence undergoes major inevitable life changes, and
Speaker 1: there's just no way around it. We're always in conversation change.
Speaker 1: And then there's the more gradual change, so not the
Speaker 1: major disruptor, but aging or having a body that used
Speaker 1: to be able to do certain things that it no
Speaker 1: longer can, or identifying with a certain esthetic and having
Speaker 1: that shift over time. So we have these major changes
Speaker 1: that feel like significant disruptions, and then we have the
Speaker 1: ongoing process of change that is much slower but equally
Speaker 1: as significant.
Speaker 3: You end up in the same place, right, which is
Speaker 3: sort of you may have been able to track it
Speaker 3: over a period of time, but you're like, this is
Speaker 3: this is different. I want to ask about the friend
Speaker 3: thing a little bit, because that's interesting. I would not
Speaker 3: have thought getting a new best friend or losing the
Speaker 3: best friend, or maybe losing the best friend. It speaks
Speaker 3: to the centrality of friendship in our lives and how
Speaker 3: influential friendships are in our lives.
Speaker 1: That's right, and I think that it is a real
Speaker 1: problem right now. I'm not the first person to say this.
Speaker 1: The loneliness epidemic and crisis, especially perhaps amongst men, is
Speaker 1: friendship has really been on the decline, and I think
Speaker 1: that part of the reason that folks might not think
Speaker 1: that meeting a new best friend or distancing from a
Speaker 1: best friend is a major life change is just because
Speaker 1: the centrality of friendship has shifted. It's not essential to
Speaker 1: many people's lives anymore. Yet I believe that it's so
Speaker 1: so important. It takes pressure off of an intimate partnership.
Speaker 1: If your partner doesn't need to be a switchblade and
Speaker 1: be able to do everything. You can find that in
Speaker 1: really close friends. It is a spiritual relationship, someone that
Speaker 1: you can just share everything with that you know is
Speaker 1: going to be there for you. Or maybe it's not
Speaker 1: as complicated or complex as a partner and I do
Speaker 1: think that welcoming someone like that in your life and
Speaker 1: then distancing from someone like that, those represent really big changes.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, I mean my best friend Chris is listening
Speaker 3: and editing, and you know, as part of the reason
Speaker 3: I started the show. Certainly, any big change in that
Speaker 3: relationship would be a huge thing to me. I think
Speaker 3: that's interesting that, Like you said, if that doesn't seem
Speaker 3: like it would be, it's probably because friendship may not
Speaker 3: be as central in your life. But I mean it's
Speaker 3: one of to me, the great gifts in life. I
Speaker 3: just am extraordinarily fortunate and blessed in the friendships that
Speaker 3: I have, and I'm so grateful. So you go on
Speaker 3: to say, you know, we're always somewhere in this cycle
Speaker 3: of order, disorder, reorder. Right, we go from things being
Speaker 3: as they are, changing and then how they emerge from there.
Speaker 3: And you say, the way to stay stable through the
Speaker 3: process of change is by changing, or at least to
Speaker 3: some extent. So we're meeting change with change.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 1: In the scientific community, the old and conventional model for
Speaker 1: change is one called homeostasis, and it describes change as
Speaker 1: a cycle of ordered dis order. It inherently says that
Speaker 1: change is bad, we should resist it, we should avoid it,
Speaker 1: and if we have no choice but to enter into it,
Speaker 1: we should try to get back to where we were
Speaker 1: as fast as possible. This has been the prevailing model
Speaker 1: since the late fifteen hundreds, since the beginning of empirical science.
Speaker 1: Only more recently have researchers stepped back and said, actually,
Speaker 1: when you look at individuals that thrive over the long haul,
Speaker 1: that excel for long periods of time, that's not a
Speaker 1: good fit model. Homeostasis doesn't accurately describe how they navigate life,
Speaker 1: and they coin this term alostasis, which, as you alluded to,
Speaker 1: describes change as a cycle of order, disorder, reorder. And
Speaker 1: the etymology of these two words tells the whole story.
Speaker 1: Homeostasis comes from the Latin root homo, which means same
Speaker 1: in stasis, which means standing, so it argues that we
Speaker 1: achieve stability by staying the same. Alostasis comes from the
Speaker 1: Latin root alo, which means change, are variable, and then
Speaker 1: standing with which means stasis, so it argues that we
Speaker 1: achieve stability through change. And it has this beautiful double meaning,
Speaker 1: which is one, it's possible to be stable through change,
Speaker 1: and number two, the way that we're stable through change
Speaker 1: is through change, is by changing, at least to some extent.
Speaker 1: And this gets to the subtitle of the book. How
Speaker 1: can we think about having a strong and enduring sense
Speaker 1: of self while that very self is changing all the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, and I'm excited to get into those things.
Speaker 3: You mentioned the term non dual earlier, and some people
Speaker 3: use that term in the sense of reality, like that
Speaker 3: reality is nondual, as in, there's only one thing, but
Speaker 3: you're using in the more philosophical sense, which says that
Speaker 3: life isn't all one thing or the other, it's actually
Speaker 3: these different things. So change and stability are both there.
Speaker 3: They're both true exactly.
Speaker 1: Other examples, not self discipline or self compassion, but the
Speaker 1: importance of self discipline and self compassion, Not stress or rest,
Speaker 1: but stress and rest. Not tragedy or optimism, but tragedy
Speaker 1: and optimism. And in the book, the key construct is
Speaker 1: what I've come to call rugged flexibility, which is another
Speaker 1: example of nondual thinking, which is individuals and organizations that
Speaker 1: are really good at weathering change, that are good at
Speaker 1: navigating that order disorder reorder cycle. They're not rugged or
Speaker 1: flexible they're rugged and flexible. Yeah, And they have determination
Speaker 1: in grit and toughness, and they're durable, and they're soft
Speaker 1: and supple and highly adaptable. And by marrying these two qualities,
Speaker 1: that is what allows them to thrive and be anti
Speaker 1: fragile amidst change.
Speaker 3: I love that term because it is a really great
Speaker 3: description of what we are trying to be right, which
Speaker 3: is both strong and supple. O the words you use.
Speaker 3: We're both fans of the Dowada Chain. Those words are
Speaker 3: in there a lot. You also talk about an important
Speaker 3: way of dealing with change is to think of life
Speaker 3: as being on a path versus on a road. Say
Speaker 3: more about that.
Speaker 1: This is a central metaphor in the book. And a
Speaker 1: road is very linear. The whole goal on a road
Speaker 1: is to get from here to there. It's very smooth,
Speaker 1: and it plows through its environment. It doesn't care what's
Speaker 1: around it. It paves right over it. And when you're
Speaker 1: on a road, the goal is to stay on the road.
Speaker 1: And if you were to get thrown off the road
Speaker 1: or make a wrong turn, you would immediately navigate to
Speaker 1: get right back on that road to get where you're going.
Speaker 1: A road again, it is an opposition to its environment,
Speaker 1: whereas a path works with its environment. And on a path,
Speaker 1: the goal is to go in a general direction, but
Speaker 1: you're finding the way you go as you walk, and
Speaker 1: you have to pay really close attention to your environment,
Speaker 1: and you have to work in concert with your environment.
Speaker 1: And there's no such thing as getting.
Speaker 4: Knocked off a path.
Speaker 1: You get knocked off a path, you can still head
Speaker 1: in that general direction. You just pick up another outlet
Speaker 1: or you bush whack. And the mindset that you have
Speaker 1: when you go on a path is one of openness, curiosity, caring, attention.
Speaker 1: The mindset that you have on a road is often
Speaker 1: being rushed or being checked out, or just staring at
Speaker 1: a map to get where you're going, not paying much
Speaker 1: attention to your surroundings. And I think a big risk
Speaker 1: is treating life like a road and really just setting
Speaker 1: these goals in trying to get from here to there
Speaker 1: as fast as possible, when in fact, viewing life like
Speaker 1: a path is so much more realistic because we don't
Speaker 1: know what obstacles are going to come in our way.
Speaker 1: We don't know when the weather is going to change,
Speaker 1: we don't know when we're going to get seemingly thrown off,
Speaker 1: and if we can go in with that mindset, it
Speaker 1: just sets us up to have the expectation. But yeah,
Speaker 1: things are going to change and things are going to shift,
Speaker 1: and that's okay.
Speaker 3: As I was reflecting on that metaphor, it made me
Speaker 3: think of spiritual path, right, that's the way we refer
Speaker 3: to it as spiritual path or you know Jack Cornfield's
Speaker 3: book A Path with Heart, right, And yet a lot
Speaker 3: of us, if we're not careful, we treat it not
Speaker 3: as a spiritual path but as a spiritual road, right.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: It's why the metaphor path is so good for a
Speaker 3: spiritual path, because that's really what it has to be
Speaker 3: for it to be lasting and effective. But our culture
Speaker 3: tends to make everything a road, and so we're on
Speaker 3: the spiritual road. And I've been disabused to that notion
Speaker 3: countless times, I mean, like I'm guilty of it, countless
Speaker 3: times of like trying to want to get there directly,
Speaker 3: you know. And I've been disabused of that as a
Speaker 3: workable way to pursue a spiritual life over and over
Speaker 3: and over again, or is any way to approach life
Speaker 3: at all?
Speaker 1: And I think that we all are and I think
Speaker 1: that that is a sign of maturity, is just realizing that.
Speaker 1: It makes me think of the spiritual bypass, which I'm
Speaker 1: sure is a term that you've heard of, Yeah, which
Speaker 1: is like you have a teaching or you go do
Speaker 1: one meditation retreat and suddenly you're enlightened. And well, the
Speaker 1: term bypass comes from civil engineering. You know, a bypass
Speaker 1: is a bridge that takes you over water or that
Speaker 1: runs through the middle of a mountain, which is fine
Speaker 1: for transporting in a car, but it's very hard to
Speaker 1: actually bypass through life in a way that is lasting
Speaker 1: and sustainable. Better is learning how to navigate that weather
Speaker 1: and growing from it, so on and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it makes me think of a verse in the Dow,
Speaker 3: and I don't remember exactly what verse, but I've actually
Speaker 3: been working on my own interpretation of the Doo using
Speaker 3: lots of different translations, and it's something along the lines
Speaker 3: of the Dow is broad and straight, but people always
Speaker 3: want shortcuts through the mountains.
Speaker 4: Ooh, I love that. Yeah, we are on the same page.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So in the book, you come up with ten
Speaker 3: tools for developing this rugged flow mixibility. You also have
Speaker 3: five questions, and I thought that might be a way
Speaker 3: for us to sort of orient I don't think we're
Speaker 3: going to get through all ten tools in all five questions,
Speaker 3: but I thought we could hit a couple of them.
Speaker 3: And one of them that I wanted to talk about
Speaker 3: was frequently update your expectations to mesh reality.
Speaker 1: If you are running a marathon in you expect mile
Speaker 1: twenty to feel really easy, and then you get to
Speaker 1: mile twenty, you are going to freak out. You might
Speaker 1: even call for paramedics. Your heart's going to be raising,
Speaker 1: your legs are going to be hurting. If you thought
Speaker 1: that mile twenty would feel easy, you would really have
Speaker 1: a rough psychological and physiological spot When you got to
Speaker 1: mile twenty, you think something is very wrong. If you
Speaker 1: go into a marathon expecting mile twenty to be really hard, well,
Speaker 1: then when you get there you'll be able to meet
Speaker 1: the moment, and on a good day, you might even
Speaker 1: be pleasantly surprised. And this is true for all hard things.
Speaker 1: Our expectations really spe how we experience the world. Psychologists
Speaker 1: use this very shorthand equation, which is our mood at
Speaker 1: any given moment is a function of our reality minus
Speaker 1: our expectations. So when our expectations are way better than
Speaker 1: our reality. We tend not to feel very good, and
Speaker 1: we tend not to be able to take wise, skillful action. Now,
Speaker 1: this is so pertinent to change because in many ways,
Speaker 1: change is simply our expectations going awry. What we thought
Speaker 1: was going to happen didn't happen, or doesn't happen in
Speaker 1: those moments. It is so important that we update our
Speaker 1: expectations to match reality. Another example of this during the
Speaker 1: beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, absolutely horrible, and then we
Speaker 1: kind of got used to living with it, and it
Speaker 1: still was. Again, I don't want to minimize at all, horrible,
Speaker 1: and I'm so fortunate my family experienced. My immediate family
Speaker 1: experience no death, no hospitalization, so relative, I had it easy,
Speaker 1: but still really rough. And then about a year and
Speaker 1: a half in in the summer of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: cases started to decline precipitously, and I distinctly remember those
Speaker 1: dashboards cases per hundred thousand. It started to look like
Speaker 1: one or two per hundred thousand, and we started to
Speaker 1: go into restaurants, and we started to go hang out
Speaker 1: in other people's homes. And this went on in June, July, August,
Speaker 1: and we thought that the pandemic was over. It was
Speaker 1: as if we had gotten to the other side of
Speaker 1: this really hard thing. And then what happened in October
Speaker 1: and November, the delta wave in the Delta variant, and
Speaker 1: it was such a gut punch. And I was already
Speaker 1: reporting on this book when that happened, and I remember
Speaker 1: asking people did they feel worse then, or did they
Speaker 1: feel worse a month or two into the pandemic, And
Speaker 1: just about everyone felt worse with the delta variant, even
Speaker 1: though objectively the reality was much better. We had vaccines,
Speaker 1: we had medications, we understood more how this thing was transmitted.
Speaker 1: Yet we still felt worse. Why because our expectation was
Speaker 1: that we had gotten to the other side of this thing.
Speaker 1: Visuals that were quickly able to say, Hey, I don't
Speaker 1: have to like what's happening, but this is reality. I
Speaker 1: can see it clearly for what it is, and I
Speaker 1: need to update my expectations. They felt better, and they
Speaker 1: were able to meet the moment with more compassion, more strength.
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Speaker 3: You say, in my own experience, the worst way to
Speaker 3: be happy is by trying to be happy all the time,
Speaker 3: or worse yet, assuming and expecting that you ought to
Speaker 3: be and that I totally relate with when I expect
Speaker 3: that I should be happy all the time, Like, Oh,
Speaker 3: I've read all these books, I've talked to all these people,
Speaker 3: I've done all these silent meditations, I've done all this stuff,
Speaker 3: and now I should be happy. That raises the expectation, right,
Speaker 3: that's right, when I am better able just to go well, no,
Speaker 3: not always, and when I'm like, yeah, you know what,
Speaker 3: I kind of have a melancholy tendency in my overall
Speaker 3: being and I just let that be. It's so much
Speaker 3: better than fighting it and saying, oh, you know, I
Speaker 3: should be some other way and you know, yeah, expectations
Speaker 3: are in aa. I heard a phrase once expectations are
Speaker 3: premeditated resentments.
Speaker 4: Ooh, I like that.
Speaker 1: I too have perhaps more of a melancholy disposition. I've
Speaker 1: experienced significant clinical depression. And something that I have realized
Speaker 1: this really in my own life and then certainly through
Speaker 1: my research and reporting more recently, is that happiness is
Speaker 1: probably the wrong goal, and even if it's the right
Speaker 1: goal for many people, it's not attainable. Is a constant,
Speaker 1: consistent state, right, And a better goal is meaning in
Speaker 1: texture text, because if happiness is the goal and you
Speaker 1: have a melancholy disposition, not only are you feeling down,
Speaker 1: but now you're judging yourself for feeling down or you're
Speaker 1: freaking out that you're feeling down. Why can't I be happy?
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to be happy, right, But yes, goal is texture. Well,
Speaker 1: you don't have to like those down moments, you don't
Speaker 1: have to like impermanence, but when it comes, you don't
Speaker 1: judge yourself.
Speaker 4: You accept it and you expect it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and think.
Speaker 1: About what makes truly great art beautiful. It's not smooth
Speaker 1: and shiny and perfect edges.
Speaker 4: It's texture.
Speaker 1: And I've really tried to adopt that as a goal.
Speaker 1: Novice isn't to say that I actively seek out suffering
Speaker 1: and I celebrate bad things, but it's I have an
Speaker 1: expectation that those things are going to happen, and a
Speaker 1: part of my life is navigating those things when they
Speaker 1: do happen. And therefore, because of that expectation, I experience
Speaker 1: those things and a little bit more of a stable
Speaker 1: stance than I otherwise would.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think that's important to well. A first,
Speaker 3: I love texture as an idea. I've heard people talk about,
Speaker 3: you know, seek meaning seek fulfillment, but I love the
Speaker 3: addition of texture to that. That's great. The second thing
Speaker 3: I was going to say is I think what you
Speaker 3: just said there is really important. That it allows me
Speaker 3: to do it with a little bit more of a
Speaker 3: stable stance, And I think that is really critical because
Speaker 3: often when we hear this stuff and I know I
Speaker 3: can be this way, I think that that means that
Speaker 3: by applying these principles, it's going to hurt less. And
Speaker 3: that's not actually often how it works. But there is something,
Speaker 3: and I've been through some really difficult times over the
Speaker 3: last six months, there is something about even hurting a
Speaker 3: lot and yet there being a more stable sense underneath that,
Speaker 3: like this is to be expected, this is natural, this
Speaker 3: is normal. It sucks, and things will move, things will change.
Speaker 3: All of that. I described it as the big container
Speaker 3: is one of knowing that things are okay, and the
Speaker 3: small container is like drowning in sadness. But the bigger
Speaker 3: container is knowing that things are generally okay. And I
Speaker 3: think that's what we're referring to here as a stable stance,
Speaker 3: is that, at least to me, it means that broader
Speaker 3: sense of everything's not awry. It just doesn't feel.
Speaker 4: Good, that's right.
Speaker 1: This also segues to another concept that I think is important,
Speaker 1: which is having multiple rooms in your identity house. And
Speaker 1: if you think about a house and it only has
Speaker 1: one room in it, and that one room floods or
Speaker 1: catches fire, you're really kind of screwed. You've got nowhere
Speaker 1: to go. You're going to have to move out of
Speaker 1: the house. It's going to be really disorienting. If you
Speaker 1: have a house that has multiple rooms in it. In
Speaker 1: a room catches fire floods, well then you can go
Speaker 1: seek refuge and stability in those other rooms while you
Speaker 1: work out the flood, while you let the fire extinguish itself.
Speaker 1: And identity is the same way. We want to have
Speaker 1: multiple rooms in our identity house because then when a
Speaker 1: big change comes in one of those rooms, we can
Speaker 1: go seek stability and go seek refuge in those other rooms.
Speaker 1: So what are examples. You could have the professional room,
Speaker 1: you could have the partner room, you could have the
Speaker 1: parent room. You could have the athlete room, you could
Speaker 1: have the spirituality room, you could have the recovery room,
Speaker 1: you could have the musician room. Doesn't matter what the
Speaker 1: rooms are. It's just so important to have more than
Speaker 1: one room because what happens when.
Speaker 4: You only have one room.
Speaker 1: If you just identify with being an olympian, well, then
Speaker 1: when you get injured, you lose that stable stance. If
Speaker 1: you just identify with being someone's partner. If there's a
Speaker 1: rupture in the relationship or a divorce or God forbid
Speaker 1: a death.
Speaker 4: Again, it's so freaking hard.
Speaker 1: I'm not minimizing this, but if that's your only room,
Speaker 1: you lose stability, Whereas if you have a friendship room
Speaker 1: or a community room to support you, you can seek
Speaker 1: refuge there. The last example that I'll give is for parents.
Speaker 1: It's so easy, and I'm a parent of young kids,
Speaker 1: to just make that your identity, to make that the
Speaker 1: only room. And then of course people experience all kinds
Speaker 1: of suffering when their kids move out of the house
Speaker 1: because they have no other rooms. So I think, in
Speaker 1: addition to expectancy, diversifying your sense of identity, having multiple
Speaker 1: rooms in your identity house, these two things together are
Speaker 1: what creates that stability.
Speaker 4: And I love how you said.
Speaker 1: That, not that you're going to hurt less, but you're
Speaker 1: going to hurt at least from a stable stance.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I love that identity analogy. And I think
Speaker 3: a lot about identity and how important flexibility is in
Speaker 3: identity and how difficult it is when we get locked
Speaker 3: into a particular identity. I often talk about this a
Speaker 3: lot around the idea of somebody being alcoholic, right the
Speaker 3: diagnosis of that and knowing that condition is really really
Speaker 3: helpful until that becomes the entire thing, you know. It's
Speaker 3: what ultimately sort of pushed me away from twelve step
Speaker 3: programs I still go sometimes. Was this sense that that
Speaker 3: identity is an alcoholic was fixed. You were always that
Speaker 3: and it defined something about you, and I just was like,
Speaker 3: that does not accord with my sense of reality, Like
Speaker 3: I am not the same person who walked in here
Speaker 3: the first time twenty three years ago at all.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: Can I still not drink alcohol successfully?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: That seems to be a truism, But in so many
Speaker 3: other ways I am a radically different person. And so
Speaker 3: to continue to orient around this thing, you know, being
Speaker 3: my primary identity and it being somewhat limited and not
Speaker 3: flexible became problematic for me. And I think we can
Speaker 3: all look at lots of areas in life, but if
Speaker 3: we become too identified with one aspect of identity, it
Speaker 3: is problematic in a lot of ways, not only in
Speaker 3: times of big change as you're describing, but just day
Speaker 3: to day life and the ability to update your sense
Speaker 3: of who you are. You know, doctor Rick Hanson once
Speaker 3: said to me something like our sense of who we
Speaker 3: are is often like six months out of date, and
Speaker 3: I was like six months. I mean, that's a a
Speaker 3: great insight, but b I think it can be years
Speaker 3: out of date sometimes if we're not careful.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 1: And when we get stuck into fixed ideas about our identity,
Speaker 1: we just become fragile because one, if those are positive ideas, well,
Speaker 1: eventually they change and they get taken away. If those
Speaker 1: are negative ideas well, then we don't have the confidence
Speaker 1: that we can go meet the world. We kind of
Speaker 1: can fall almost into a victim mindset. And what you
Speaker 1: said I think is so important, which is the label
Speaker 1: of alcoholic was helpful until it got in the way. Yes,
Speaker 1: And that's another example of nondual thinking. And I think
Speaker 1: this is so true of all identity labels. They can
Speaker 1: be really really useful as tools and means of understanding
Speaker 1: and getting effective help in treatment. And then at some
Speaker 1: point in recovery. I've never been an alcoholic, but I
Speaker 1: had really bad obsessive compulsive disorder. At some point in
Speaker 1: my recovery, shutting the label OCD was actually the most
Speaker 1: important thing to do. So at first for yours, OCD
Speaker 1: was nothing but helpful, and then it started to get
Speaker 1: into yes, yep, and having the flexibility to say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, underneath that is maybe a slightly obsessive temperament
Speaker 1: and that might not change, but OCD this disorder that
Speaker 1: is not who I am.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, it's something we
Speaker 3: talk about on the show a lot, which is exactly that.
Speaker 3: You know, identity just being something you hold somewhat loosely
Speaker 3: and you adopt when it's useful and you let it
Speaker 3: go when it's not. And knowing that can you know
Speaker 3: knowing when to do, which can be difficult. But I
Speaker 3: think this is the case with almost all diagnoses, particularly
Speaker 3: of a mental health sort, is that they are often
Speaker 3: very early on, very empowering, and over time they can
Speaker 3: become very disempowering if we're not careful. You talk about
Speaker 3: self in a variety of ways, and I thought maybe
Speaker 3: we could just spend some time here. It's a topic
Speaker 3: that I think about a lot, and you talk about
Speaker 3: these different aspects of self, and I'm going to talk
Speaker 3: about them. But you say that a fluid sense of
Speaker 3: self is nondual. It's not differentiated or integrated, but it's
Speaker 3: differentiated and integrated, you know, it's not independent or interdependent.
Speaker 3: It's not separate or connected. It's not conventional or ultimate. Right,
Speaker 3: it's both of those things. So let's pick a couple
Speaker 3: of those descriptions and talk a little bit about them.
Speaker 3: Talk about independent and interdependent as aspects of ourselves.
Speaker 1: So, an independent self is influencing, autonomous, controls its environment,
Speaker 1: problem solves, has a will to power, impacts the world
Speaker 1: around its Western notion of self separate from everything else.
Speaker 1: An interdependent self is rooted in community and belonging. It's
Speaker 1: very much affected by its environment. It works in tandem
Speaker 1: with things around it, and it relinquishes from control and
Speaker 1: problem solving. That's a very Eastern sense of self.
Speaker 4: Really good.
Speaker 1: Anthropology research shows that the vast majority of people that
Speaker 1: grew up in the West predominantly have an independent self,
Speaker 1: in the vast majority of people who grow up in
Speaker 1: the East have an interdependent sense of self. But this
Speaker 1: is not genetic. We know this because someone born in
Speaker 1: Asia that moves to America grows up with an independent
Speaker 1: sense of self and vice versa.
Speaker 4: So these can be learned.
Speaker 1: And I think that the best method of identity for
Speaker 1: navigating certain changes is to realize that they're both true
Speaker 1: at the same time. Yes, we can where both of
Speaker 1: those solves when it behooves us to. So when I
Speaker 1: am at a red light in an intersection and the
Speaker 1: light turns green, I'm really glad to have an independent
Speaker 1: sense of self that can be autonomous and put my
Speaker 1: foot on the gas and go. But when I'm on
Speaker 1: my deathbed, I hope that I can channel that interdependent
Speaker 1: sense of self that is connected to everything and everyone
Speaker 1: around me that I've ever touched and just try to
Speaker 1: rest in that as best as I can say me
Speaker 1: different lenses. And this is at the heart of so
Speaker 1: many ancient wisdom traditions, particularly Buddhism, just the non dual
Speaker 1: nature of self. There's this passage in the Polycanon, which
Speaker 1: is one of the older Buddhist tax and i'll paraphrase,
Speaker 1: but essentially a wander asked the Buddha if there's such
Speaker 1: a thing as a self? And the Buddha remains silent,
Speaker 1: and then he says, well, is there no such thing
Speaker 1: as the self? And the Buddha remains silent again, And
Speaker 1: scholars interpret this is the Buddhist saying there is a
Speaker 1: self and there's also not a self, and if that sounds.
Speaker 4: Woo woo and spiritual. Let's just talk physics here.
Speaker 1: Clearly, I am here having a conversation with you, So
Speaker 1: I definitely exist as a self, but my cells turn
Speaker 1: over every couple of years. I'm nothing without my parents.
Speaker 1: I'm completely impacted by what I ate earlier in the day.
Speaker 4: It is true that I'm.
Speaker 1: Connected to everything, and both of these things are true
Speaker 1: at the same time.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, And that sort of speaks to conventional and
Speaker 3: ultimate a little bit too, right. That's a similar idea.
Speaker 3: I talk about this from time to time. It's a
Speaker 3: Buddhist idea. Particularly in Zen. We talk a lot about
Speaker 3: the absolute and the relative right, which is a similar thing,
Speaker 3: but talk about it from a self perspective.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 1: So Tick not Han Zen Buddhist teacher Master sadly passed
Speaker 1: away recently. He talked about the conventional and ultimate selves.
Speaker 1: And essentially, the conventional self is the self that shows
Speaker 1: up to work, that sets its alarm clock, so on
Speaker 1: and so forth, and the ultimate self is the self
Speaker 1: that is connected to everything. Tick not Han uses this
Speaker 1: beautiful metaphor of the conventional self is a wave, and
Speaker 1: the ultimate self is the ocean. And sometimes we identify
Speaker 1: with the wave, and sometimes we identify with the ocean,
Speaker 1: And in periods of change, it can be really helpful
Speaker 1: to do both because for most changes, there are things
Speaker 1: that we can control where we want to be the
Speaker 1: wave and identify as the wave trying to make its
Speaker 1: way wherever it's going. But there are other times when
Speaker 1: we just need to accept and we need to identify
Speaker 1: with the ocean, and we need to kind of let
Speaker 1: go and surrender.
Speaker 4: And it's not either or, it's both and right.
Speaker 3: And as you were saying that, I was thinking very
Speaker 3: much about that, like, I may have to surrender to
Speaker 3: the big change that may not be what I want, right,
Speaker 3: I have to surrender to that, But within the context
Speaker 3: of how I choose to respond to that, there are
Speaker 3: all sorts of little things that I'm going to want
Speaker 3: to do or control or take action on that are
Speaker 3: going to make the response to that thing better. So
Speaker 3: I'm doing both the same time. Right, I'm acquiescent in
Speaker 3: saying this is the direction life's going. I guess I'm
Speaker 3: going this direction, right, But as I'm going that direction,
Speaker 3: I have all sorts of little decisions I can make
Speaker 3: that can make that trip a little bit easier exactly.
Speaker 1: And it reminds me this isn't in the book. But
Speaker 1: as you're saying that, another way to think about this
Speaker 1: is the accepting self versus the problem solving self. And
Speaker 1: if you're problem solving a lot and you're not getting
Speaker 1: much out of it, maybe ask yourself, hey, would it
Speaker 1: make sense to practice acceptance a little bit more of
Speaker 1: what's happening? And if you have a tendency to just
Speaker 1: throw your hands up and accept whatever's happening, well, then
Speaker 1: maybe look the other way and.
Speaker 4: Say, hey, what would it look like to problem solve
Speaker 4: a bit more?
Speaker 1: Because for every situation we're faced with in life, there's
Speaker 1: some degree of acceptance in some degree of problem solving,
Speaker 1: and we never know exactly where we're going to be
Speaker 1: on that spectrum. But it's never either or it's always both.
Speaker 3: End Yeah, yeah, And that is a question. I have
Speaker 3: been very even more than usual, thinking a lot about
Speaker 3: which is that e versus changing circumstances in life? Right Like,
Speaker 3: when it's very clear that I can change it, or
Speaker 3: it's very clear that I can't change it, it's relatively easy.
Speaker 3: I don't want to minimize the emotional turmoil of accepting
Speaker 3: something that you really don't like. But if you just
Speaker 3: know you can't change it at some juncture, you go, well,
Speaker 3: I guess the only path is to go with this.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: It's all that muddy middle ground that is so hard.
Speaker 3: And I love that this idea of I'm actually going
Speaker 3: to bring both those skills into this very situation at
Speaker 3: different times in different ways, because that's better than trying
Speaker 3: to rest it into one of those two categories. Right,
Speaker 3: Like the Serenity prayer says, either I've got the courage
Speaker 3: to change it or I accept it, right, And what
Speaker 3: you're saying and I love is that in most things
Speaker 3: of life have complexity. We're not going to land on
Speaker 3: acceptance or change. And I mean by like us changing
Speaker 3: like we're not going to either fully accept it or
Speaker 3: we're not going to fully control it. We're going to
Speaker 3: find a mixture of those two. But I love what
Speaker 3: you said there, which is knowing our tendency. If I
Speaker 3: have a tendency towards over control, and I do, right,
Speaker 3: there are certain situations in my life this is one
Speaker 3: of my really good qualities is that when there's a
Speaker 3: problem presented, I will move into problem solving mode and
Speaker 3: I will become very creative, and I will become very dexterious,
Speaker 3: and I will respond, well, but that's not the way
Speaker 3: to approach everything, and so I bring that to everything.
Speaker 3: So for me, sometimes it's really helpful to be like,
Speaker 3: all right, knowing that's my tendency. If I'm not sure
Speaker 3: which way to go, I know which way to at
Speaker 3: least think about going, because i know I'm almost always
Speaker 3: over on this side.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's the work. It's just being sure to
Speaker 1: look the other way. And that is the power of
Speaker 1: nondual thinking, that you always can pause and ask yourself, Hey,
Speaker 1: what would it look like to consider myself a little
Speaker 1: bit more independently now, or a little bit more interdependently now.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm really identifying with my conventional self and as
Speaker 1: a result, I'm feeling a lot of neuroticism. Or maybe
Speaker 1: I'm over identifying with my ultimate self and as a result,
Speaker 1: I'm feeling kind of helpless. And it's just always about
Speaker 1: having those two bookends and working your way between the
Speaker 1: two over and over again.
Speaker 3: My senses, most of us in a Western culture are
Speaker 3: over identified with the conventional self, right, just we don't
Speaker 3: have much experience of interconnection and unity and absolutism, right,
Speaker 3: Like I can say that I have to go seeking that,
Speaker 3: like it's not a matter of correcting, it's like that's
Speaker 3: you know, if I'm not careful, I'm in conventional all
Speaker 3: the time, and I have to actually, you know, make
Speaker 3: myself go seek the other side a little bit. I
Speaker 3: want to talk about another of the steps, and I
Speaker 3: love this one too, and I'm so glad to see it,
Speaker 3: which is, don't force meaning and growth, let them come
Speaker 3: on their own time. And I'll just apply this back
Speaker 3: to me recently, as I was going through a difficult time,
Speaker 3: I knew that meaning and growth would come because I've
Speaker 3: had that experience countless times. I mean, every time I
Speaker 3: go through something really difficult, I'm like, I know this
Speaker 3: is gonna turn out, like I'm gonna grow from this.
Speaker 3: But in the moment, I was feeling like, but I
Speaker 3: don't know what it's gonna be. How am I gonna grow?
Speaker 3: How am I going to change? I don't see the
Speaker 3: lesson here. I don't write, which was not an allowing
Speaker 3: way to be. And I would have loved this reminder
Speaker 3: then that meaning and growth occur on their own time,
Speaker 3: not ours, say a little bit more about it.
Speaker 1: When we go through major changes, positive and negative doesn't
Speaker 1: really matter, which we often come with a lot of.
Speaker 4: Baggage for what we expect to happen.
Speaker 1: So the example of a positive change is you have
Speaker 1: kids or you get married, and you just expect that
Speaker 1: there's going to be all this immediate meaning and growth,
Speaker 1: and then a week later you're kind of like, huh oh, like.
Speaker 4: I kind of feel the same as I did two
Speaker 4: weeks ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The negative is you experience a rupture in an
Speaker 1: important relationship or a health diagnosis, or a depression or
Speaker 1: anxiety or substance use disorder, and you get into recovery
Speaker 1: in week one or week two, you say, you know,
Speaker 1: skills come from suffering. I got to find the meaning
Speaker 1: and growth in this, and this is what spirituality is
Speaker 1: all about. So how am I going to grow from
Speaker 1: this terrible thing that just happened to me? And in
Speaker 1: both cases what ends up happening is you actually get
Speaker 1: in the way of that meaning and growth occurring because
Speaker 1: it has to come on its own time. So when
Speaker 1: you are in the thick of a big life event,
Speaker 1: your job is just to show up with openness and
Speaker 1: curiosity and just to keep showing up and with kindness
Speaker 1: for yourself, understanding that you don't get to reorder without
Speaker 1: going through disorder. And when you're in disorder, that's enough.
Speaker 1: Just working through that, adapting, being rugged and flexible is enough.
Speaker 1: You don't have to know how the story ends. You
Speaker 1: don't have to immediately find growth and meaning that you
Speaker 1: can go podcast about and tell your friends about. Just
Speaker 1: showing up and getting through is enough. However, once you
Speaker 1: are on the other side of disorder, looking back on
Speaker 1: these experiences, we do almost always find meaning and growth,
Speaker 1: but it cannot be contrived or force. It has to
Speaker 1: occur on its own time, and we have to be patient.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite studies in the history of studies,
Speaker 1: and I've looked at thousands of studies for my work,
Speaker 1: is conducted by the neuroscientist David Eagelman, and he's very
Speaker 1: interested in how we perceive time, and he wanted to
Speaker 1: explore this very common phenomenon about when we're in the
Speaker 1: middle of disorder, when we're going through through a big change,
Speaker 1: especially if it's a negative one to challenge, time slows down,
Speaker 1: minutes feel like days, days feel like yours. It just
Speaker 1: feel like you are just stuck in the mud, you're
Speaker 1: in molasses. So for this experiment, he took participants to
Speaker 1: an amusement park in Texas where they have a ride
Speaker 1: called the SCAD and it stands for Suspended catch Air
Speaker 1: Device and it is essentially just a mattress that falls
Speaker 1: two hundred feet to the ground bungee jumping without the bungee.
Speaker 1: This ride can only be allowed in Texas because no
Speaker 1: other state regulator would ever permit it, right, just insanity.
Speaker 1: And he has participants go on the ride and he
Speaker 1: asks them how long did it take them to fall?
Speaker 1: And then he lets them regroup and gather themselves in
Speaker 1: an hour later, he has them watch other people on
Speaker 1: the ride from the stability of the ground, and then
Speaker 1: he says how long did it take those people to fall?
Speaker 1: And what he found is that when they're on the ground,
Speaker 1: they can very accurately predict how long the fall takes.
Speaker 1: But when they are in mid air, when they are
Speaker 1: the ones falling, they say it takes about forty percent
Speaker 1: longer than it actually does. And it's this beautiful metaphor
Speaker 1: that when the ground is swept out from underneath us,
Speaker 1: when we feel like we're in free fall, when our
Speaker 1: world is upside down. Our perception of time slows and
Speaker 1: there's nothing we can do to speed it up. But
Speaker 1: just knowing that nothing is more important than just knowing
Speaker 1: that if you are going through a hard time, just
Speaker 1: reminding yourself that my brain is making this feel like
Speaker 1: it is going to be forever.
Speaker 3: Ye.
Speaker 1: But if in when I get to the other side
Speaker 1: of this, when I look back on it, it will
Speaker 1: not feel that bad. I can't speak to substance abuse.
Speaker 1: I can't speak to depression. One day in depression can
Speaker 1: feel like it is going to be the rest of
Speaker 1: your life forever. That's what makes depression so hard. But
Speaker 1: if you get to the other side of that day,
Speaker 1: just two weeks later, you look back on that day
Speaker 1: and it feels like any other day of your life.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: But when you're in it, you are in it and
Speaker 1: just remembering and reminding yourself that it feels like this now,
Speaker 1: but it won't in the future. That is such an
Speaker 1: important source of strength and consolation during challenging times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think everything you said there is so accurate
Speaker 3: and so important. You know, going back to this, you
Speaker 3: know meaning and growth. To me, the most helpful stance
Speaker 3: is to just at least hold the kernel of hope
Speaker 3: that meaning and growth will come. Right. It's it's helpful
Speaker 3: in the midst of a dark time to just even
Speaker 3: see that there's a little bit of hope there. But
Speaker 3: as you said, then sort of let go. I love
Speaker 3: that idea that like, when you're in disorder, you have
Speaker 3: to be in disorder, right, You're not in reorder, you're
Speaker 3: in the disorder phase. And when you're in it, you
Speaker 3: just kind of have to be in it and respond
Speaker 3: as wisely as is possible.
Speaker 1: Victor Frankel has this term tragic optimism, and it essentially
Speaker 1: says that we can both accept the inevitability of tragedy
Speaker 1: in our human existence and still try to hold on
Speaker 1: to optimism nonetheless. And I think that comes into play
Speaker 1: here too, because when we're in the disorder, it's not
Speaker 1: about being a Pollyanna or toxic positivity. No, this this sucks,
Speaker 1: this is track, this is hard. But if just one
Speaker 1: percent of ourselves can hold out and have hope that,
Speaker 1: you know, I think I'm going to get to the
Speaker 1: other side of this, And even it feels impossible right now,
Speaker 1: when I do, I'll look back on this and I'll
Speaker 1: probably have grown or learned a thing or two like.
Speaker 4: That's it, that's the work.
Speaker 1: There's a quote from Bruce Springsteen in the book of
Speaker 1: Course is Bruce Springsteen, who and I'm paraphrasing, says that
Speaker 1: the work of a mature adult is meeting the world
Speaker 1: on its terms, not yours.
Speaker 4: In staying hopeful anyways, Yep, that's kind of it.
Speaker 1: So if you're listening to this and you are in
Speaker 1: the thick of a struggle or for future struggles, sometimes
Speaker 1: you can just let things suck and listen. You're listening
Speaker 1: to this podcast because you're like me and Eric, you're
Speaker 1: probably into personal growth and development, and it's a strength
Speaker 1: to search for meaning. And often we do find meaning,
Speaker 1: and we grow very quickly from challenges, but sometimes that's
Speaker 1: not available in the moment, and in those periods, the wisest, kindest,
Speaker 1: most spiritually mature thing you can do is just drop
Speaker 1: that way altogether and do whatever it takes to get through.
Speaker 3: Yeah. We hit on the idea of behavioral activation kind
Speaker 3: of early on when we talked about, you know, thinking
Speaker 3: your way into right action versus acting your way into
Speaker 3: right thinking. But let's talk about it using behavior activation
Speaker 3: in the context of what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: So one thing that often happens to people during periods
Speaker 1: of change is they freeze up. Sometimes it's because what
Speaker 1: they're going through feels so overwhelming, so they just don't
Speaker 1: even know what, if anything, they could do. Other times
Speaker 1: it's because the path forward is unknown, it's ambiguous, it's
Speaker 1: uncertain what they ought to do, so they freeze. And
Speaker 1: behavior activation essentially says that you don't have to know
Speaker 1: the answer to get started. Sometimes you have to get
Speaker 1: started to find out the answer. Or you don't have
Speaker 1: to feel motivated and inspired to get going.
Speaker 4: Sometimes you have to.
Speaker 1: Get going to feel motivated and inspired. And behavior activation
Speaker 1: is of particular important during change because the changes that
Speaker 1: happen within our brain. So neuroscientists call this the difference
Speaker 1: between the rage pathway and the seeking pathway. So the
Speaker 1: rage pathway is the amygdala, it's fear, it's threat, it's
Speaker 1: very reactive and often overfaced with change. That's what gets activated,
Speaker 1: it's how we evolved. The seeking pathway is activated when
Speaker 1: we are taking some sort of action that feels productive.
Speaker 1: In the work of Yakpan Schep, a neuroscientist, shows that
Speaker 1: the rage pathway and the seeking pathway. It's a zero
Speaker 1: sum game. If you activate the seeking pathway, you turn
Speaker 1: the rage pathway off. And the best way to activate
Speaker 1: the seeking pathway is by taking some sort.
Speaker 4: Of action toward a goal.
Speaker 1: So even if the action itself turns out to be
Speaker 1: futile or hardly bends the needle, simply by doing it
Speaker 1: you get that rage pathway turned off, and you put
Speaker 1: yourself in a better state to be able to respond
Speaker 1: not react.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as I was reading that section of the book,
Speaker 3: I also thought a really important point was that the
Speaker 3: rage pathway at a certain point, if it's activated for
Speaker 3: too long, turns into the sadness pathway. I mean, I've
Speaker 3: often heard depression as anger turned inwards, right, So it's
Speaker 3: a similar corarel it say a little bit more about
Speaker 3: this sadness pathway sounds like the road going to Chris's house.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the sadness pathway is essentially activated under neuroimaging
Speaker 1: when you are feeling depressed, despairing, despondent, And it often
Speaker 1: happens as you said, after the rage pathway is exhausted,
Speaker 1: So anger turns into depression. Unchecked panic and anxiety often
Speaker 1: turns into depression. The very close cousins, and in all
Speaker 1: of these cases, I think what's happening is that rage pathway.
Speaker 1: Eventually it just flames out and you feel sad. And
Speaker 1: there's all kinds of fancy neuroscience that backs this up,
Speaker 1: but I think everyone's had the experience of snapping on
Speaker 1: someone that you care about, whether it's a partner, a child,
Speaker 1: a good friend, a colleague. And when you're in the
Speaker 1: process of snapping and you're really angry, kind of feels good.
Speaker 1: It's like scratching an itch. You just go, go, go.
Speaker 1: But then once your brain kind of exhausts that, you
Speaker 1: tend to feel really sad and really bad. And if
Speaker 1: you were to put someone under an fMRI machine while
Speaker 1: they were doing that, what you'd probably see is the
Speaker 1: rage pathway on and then boom their sadness pathway. And again,
Speaker 1: the way to short circuit all this is just by saying, hey,
Speaker 1: what are my values, and how can I just take
Speaker 1: one small action, one right action to use recovery speak
Speaker 1: in the direction of my values and that just completely
Speaker 1: changes your brain and gives you a chance to get
Speaker 1: on a better path.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so when we say pathway in the neuroscience sense,
Speaker 3: are we talking about brain networks. What are we talking
Speaker 3: about when we say a pathway in this case, what
Speaker 3: do we mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're talking about brain networks exactly. And this is
Speaker 1: outside of my area of expertise. I'm not a neuroscientist.
Speaker 1: I cite them often, but it is essentially a circuitry
Speaker 1: of neurons that are lighting up at the same time
Speaker 1: in a predictable fashion.
Speaker 4: Got it.
Speaker 3: You talk about real and fake fatigue, Tell us about that,
Speaker 3: because I was very intrigued by that idea.
Speaker 1: All right, So, real fatigue is when your mind body
Speaker 1: system is genuinely exhausted. You are biologically psychologically tired. You've
Speaker 1: just been sick, you've been through a really stressful time
Speaker 1: in work or in a relationship, you just launched a book,
Speaker 1: you just finished a marathon, race at work, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: and of course you feel exhausted, You feel tired, and
Speaker 1: the right thing to do is to rest. Fake fatigue
Speaker 1: is when your body continue us to feel that way,
Speaker 1: even though you're recovered, and even though you're rested and more.
Speaker 1: Rest just creates inertia of continuing to feel exhausted. And
Speaker 1: the way out of fake fatigue is the polar opposite,
Speaker 1: which is behavioral activation, just to get going, just to
Speaker 1: get started. Another way to think about this is there
Speaker 1: is fatigue that responds to rest, and then there's fatigue
Speaker 1: that responds to action. And in the book I use
Speaker 1: real and fake fatigue. I wish I would have used
Speaker 1: fatigue that responds to rest versus fatigue the response to action,
Speaker 1: because fake fatigue isn't really fair because when you feel tired,
Speaker 1: you feel tired.
Speaker 3: It's real, Yeah exactly, You're not making it up. It's real.
Speaker 1: It's a real feeling. What it responds to is different,
Speaker 1: yeah exactly. So that's ultimately what it's about. And I
Speaker 1: think just reminding yourself when you're feeling really down, when
Speaker 1: you're feeling really tired, and saying, hey, you know what
Speaker 1: strategy am I trying? Am I trying rest? And if
Speaker 1: you start to feel better, great, that's the right strategy.
Speaker 1: But if you continue to feel lethargic, or maybe you
Speaker 1: feel worse, then it might be helpful to say, hey,
Speaker 1: I wonder if this is actually the variety of fatigue
Speaker 1: that responds to action.
Speaker 3: I don't do as much of it as I used to,
Speaker 3: but I used to do a lot of coaching work
Speaker 3: and a lot of behavioral coaching work, and a lot
Speaker 3: of the people that I was working with were people
Speaker 3: who they would often have something that was really blocking
Speaker 3: an easy path to action. Meaning it might be this
Speaker 3: extreme sense of fatigue that you're describing, It might be
Speaker 3: chronic pain, it might be you know, depression, right, And
Speaker 3: it was always an art to figure out exactly what
Speaker 3: you're saying, when is the answer to say, you know what,
Speaker 3: I like, I got a rest today, I'm going to
Speaker 3: get myself a break. I'm just going to take it
Speaker 3: down a notch and be here. And when is that
Speaker 3: just feeding the thing? And the action, as you said,
Speaker 3: is to push through that and get into motion. And again,
Speaker 3: like I said, it was an art, and I found
Speaker 3: it frustrating from the outside because I couldn't say right,
Speaker 3: you know, but I love that you're sort of saying, like,
Speaker 3: start with the rest in the book that one of
Speaker 3: the reasons to do that is the cost of pushing
Speaker 3: through quote unquote real fatigue is bad, right, you push
Speaker 3: too much, you head into burnout, you sort of start
Speaker 3: to fry the system. Right, So if you're in doubt,
Speaker 3: start by resting because it's safer. And then if that's
Speaker 3: not working. Respond with action, and I think internally with us,
Speaker 3: if we pay attention over time, we can start to
Speaker 3: feel this.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: I've gotten much better at doing it with depression right
Speaker 3: where I'm sort of like, okay, today is a day that, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm just really down. I'm gonna I'm just gonna let
Speaker 3: myself be there, right versus the action is to get
Speaker 3: moving now. In my case, what I have found, and
Speaker 3: it's why I love the phrase depression hates a moving target.
Speaker 3: Is that nine times out of ten for me, it's
Speaker 3: about getting into some kind of motion, not necessarily pushing
Speaker 3: hard on something, but movement. And I will calibrate the
Speaker 3: movement based on what I feel like. I'm you know,
Speaker 3: sort of capable of I know that movement is the
Speaker 3: right direction for me, but I will often be like,
Speaker 3: you know what, some days like I'm going to be
Speaker 3: up here in movement. In other days I'm going to
Speaker 3: be way down here in movement. But I know movement
Speaker 3: is the thing, but not always. That's a lot of
Speaker 3: empirical testing for myself to sort of figure out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't have much to add because you just
Speaker 1: describe that so eloquently. Perhaps the one addition is just
Speaker 1: another example relating to what might be called depressive fatigue
Speaker 1: or fatigue that responds to action. And there I think
Speaker 1: the trap is that when you have the flu or
Speaker 1: you have COVID, it can feel a lot like depression.
Speaker 3: Yes, oh yeah, And then.
Speaker 1: The default could be like, oh crap, I'm getting depressed again,
Speaker 1: like I better go exercise, when in fact, like, no,
Speaker 1: you actually just have the flu. And anyone that's experienced
Speaker 1: depression knows that when you get the flu or you
Speaker 1: even get a bad cold, it's really scary because it
Speaker 1: feels so similar to falling into a depression.
Speaker 4: But there you actually want to rest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think it's just about cultivating that self
Speaker 1: knowledge and that self awareness and just pausing to ask
Speaker 1: the question, Hey, what do I think is going on?
Speaker 4: What am I going to try?
Speaker 2: First?
Speaker 4: Am I going to try rest? Or action?
Speaker 1: And let me just be aware that if things don't
Speaker 1: move in the right direction, I should probably go the
Speaker 1: other way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's so well said. And I think some of
Speaker 3: it also is you can read the situation. So for example,
Speaker 3: if I'm really tired at night, you know, as it
Speaker 3: gets to the later hours, sometimes my mood will just drop,
Speaker 3: you know, and I would have called that being depressed.
Speaker 3: Now I've learned better to say, Oh, I'm just really tired.
Speaker 3: It's been a long day. I've got a lot of
Speaker 3: good stuff done. I'm just kind of out of gas.
Speaker 3: And as I'm doing that, my mood is sort of
Speaker 3: falling in that situation, right, Hopping on the peloton bike
Speaker 3: is not the right response. It's eleven at night, right,
Speaker 3: So situationally, I kind of know like, Okay, well, what's
Speaker 3: most likely to be going on at eleven at night.
Speaker 3: It's probably that I just actually need to rest.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so well said.
Speaker 3: So let's come kind of all the way back to
Speaker 3: where we started and talk a little bit about rugged
Speaker 3: flexibility in the context of change. Maybe give us some
Speaker 3: last words around those ideas that we can sort of
Speaker 3: take with us as we get near the end here.
Speaker 1: Well, we talked a lot about nondual thinking, and rugged flexibility,
Speaker 1: to me is the ultimate example of nondual thinking for
Speaker 1: not only navigating acute change, but really just sustaining whatever
Speaker 1: your version of excellence is over the long time. And again,
Speaker 1: to be rugged is to be determined, durable, to know
Speaker 1: your values, to know your sources of stability, but not
Speaker 1: to hold on to them too tightly, and not to
Speaker 1: get rigid around them, not to calcify around them, so
Speaker 1: that when you change, and when the world changes, which
Speaker 1: is going to happen, you can meet the moment with softness,
Speaker 1: with suppleness, and just taking that mindset as you chart
Speaker 1: your path towards whatever goal you're chasing, or even if
Speaker 1: it's just life as a whole, and always reminding yourself,
Speaker 1: am I being rugged and am I being flexible?
Speaker 4: Not either or, but both?
Speaker 1: And it's such an important mindset to excelling over the
Speaker 1: long haul and navigating the inevitable changing weather patterns in life.
Speaker 3: Thanks Brad, I think that is a beautiful place for
Speaker 3: us to wrap up. You and I are going to
Speaker 3: go into the post show conversation where I would like
Speaker 3: to talk about the five questions we can ask ourselves
Speaker 3: to see are we developing along the lines of rugged flexibility?
Speaker 3: But thank you so much. Has been a great conversation. Listeners,
Speaker 3: if you'd like access to the post show conversation with
Speaker 3: Brad a special episode I do called the Teaching Song
Speaker 3: and a Poem. And you want to support an organization
Speaker 3: that shares your values, go to one you Feed dot
Speaker 3: net slash join. Thanks so much, Brad, Thank you Eric.
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