Speaker 1: The best kind of encouragement. You can get someone just
Speaker 1: like you succeeds, and you think yourself, if they can
Speaker 1: do it, I can do it. Welcome to the one
Speaker 1: you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true. And yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf m Thanks for joining us. Our guest today
Speaker 1: is Alex Lickerman. Alex is a physician, speaker, and Assistant
Speaker 1: Vice President for Student Health and Counseling at the University
Speaker 1: of Chicago. Alex's book is called The Undefeated Mind, on
Speaker 1: the Science of Constructing an Indestructible Self. Here's the interview
Speaker 1: hi Alex welcome to the show. Yeah, I'm happy that
Speaker 1: we were able to get you on. I found your
Speaker 1: book The Undefeated Mind really interesting for a lot of
Speaker 1: different reasons. But I think one of the things that
Speaker 1: runs through it that will explore a lot more is
Speaker 1: really the idea of transforming what we would talk about
Speaker 1: his problems into victories. And I think that's such as
Speaker 1: certainly been something that's happened in my life, and I'm
Speaker 1: I'm always interested in exploring more. Yeah, that's great stuff.
Speaker 1: So our podcast 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: these two wolves are always at battle. And the grandson
Speaker 1: stops and he thinks about it for a second, and
Speaker 1: he looks up 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 how
Speaker 1: that parable applies to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Sure, very yeah, very interesting, terrible.
Speaker 1: A couple of things they thought of me. One is
Speaker 1: the notion that one wins and another loses. I don't
Speaker 1: quite think of it that way, I think, Um, well,
Speaker 1: I guess I would say, I don't think of that
Speaker 1: that there is a final victory that you get to
Speaker 1: then stop fighting. But these are the two fundamental forces.
Speaker 1: And then all of us that really constantly do battle
Speaker 1: for supremacy of our behavior control of our behavior, I
Speaker 1: should say, um, but I really like the notion of
Speaker 1: which one wins at least moment by moment, and when
Speaker 1: you feed, meaning it really is the action that we
Speaker 1: take ourselves and the efforts and we make ourselves to
Speaker 1: promote good qualities and good behavior that results of that.
Speaker 1: And if we don't bother to take that action, we're
Speaker 1: sort of at the mercy of our environment and we
Speaker 1: really aren't conductricting control of whether we show up with
Speaker 1: our good self or our bad self. And so for me,
Speaker 1: it really comes down to what kind of person do
Speaker 1: I want to forge myself into and what techniques do
Speaker 1: I used to do that, Because it's not just deciding
Speaker 1: to be good and then being successful at that. That
Speaker 1: certainly hasn't worked in my case. But they really are
Speaker 1: very specific techniques or or practices that I think people
Speaker 1: can undertake that either they learn by experience or two,
Speaker 1: you know, their studies out their psychological studies that show
Speaker 1: we do work. And it's not just you know, us
Speaker 1: will power deciding to be good or deciding to be bad,
Speaker 1: but really how you actually leverage psychological principles and optics
Speaker 1: with in our minds to sort of show up as
Speaker 1: the person you want to show up. So for me,
Speaker 1: that's what that kind of really talks mostly about. What
Speaker 1: he speaks to me about is um the effort it
Speaker 1: takes to become the person you want to be. You
Speaker 1: really have to defeat it. You have to make effort. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So in your book The Undefeated Mind, there's a particular
Speaker 1: line that I'm going to read that I think acts
Speaker 1: as a good summary of a place to start with
Speaker 1: the whole book and we can build from there. And uh,
Speaker 1: I've used a version of this phrase myself and I
Speaker 1: love it. But it says that which doesn't kill us
Speaker 1: can make it stronger. But it doesn't happen by itself.
Speaker 1: So your I think your theory is or you know,
Speaker 1: what the book is about is that we're all going
Speaker 1: to have challenging experiences in life, and how we respond
Speaker 1: to those determine whether it does make as stronger or
Speaker 1: it does not make us stronger. Can you maybe give
Speaker 1: a brief overview of what some of those key indicators
Speaker 1: are in that regard, and maybe a brief synopsis of
Speaker 1: what you think an undefeated mind means. Sure, So, I
Speaker 1: guess i'd start by telling you a story that sort
Speaker 1: of sparked my desire to write this book. And briefly,
Speaker 1: one day I was in clinics on a general interest.
Speaker 1: I was in clinic one day seeing a man who
Speaker 1: came in complaining the stuff he knows, and what I
Speaker 1: was struck by was just how devastated he seemed to
Speaker 1: be by the fact that his nose was constantly stuffy,
Speaker 1: and how he went hunt and on about how this
Speaker 1: had impacted his wife, and it was sort of looming
Speaker 1: his life from his perspective. And the very next picture
Speaker 1: I saw was a woman who was dying of metasthetic
Speaker 1: breast cancer, and she was as poised and as calm
Speaker 1: as you can imagine and I was just struck by
Speaker 1: the obvious contrast between their approach to their respective illnesses
Speaker 1: and how you know, it was exactly the opposite of
Speaker 1: what you would have expected. And it made me realize,
Speaker 1: certainly we all adversity in life, but how that adversity
Speaker 1: effectis is far more determined by our inner life state
Speaker 1: and where we approach adversity and think about adversity than
Speaker 1: the nature of the adversity itself. And the thesis basically
Speaker 1: is that, um, you know, resilience the ability to either
Speaker 1: to not just I should say, survive adversity, but thrive
Speaker 1: in the face of adversity, and the ability to to
Speaker 1: push on toward a dream or a goal where obstacles
Speaker 1: arise as they always do when you're trying to achieve
Speaker 1: something great and not become discouraged and continue and keep
Speaker 1: going and not getting up. You know, that defines resilience.
Speaker 1: That defines what I call an undefeated mind. It's not
Speaker 1: that you don't become discouraged, but you don't allow the
Speaker 1: fact of your discouragement to stop you, and you don't
Speaker 1: look at the things that bad things that happen to
Speaker 1: do is they never really happen to all of us
Speaker 1: and and be so caught up and pulled down into
Speaker 1: depression and anxiety about those things. But find some way
Speaker 1: to maintain the confidence that no matter what happens, and
Speaker 1: you can get to it and actually come out stronger
Speaker 1: then when you went into it. That doesn't just happen
Speaker 1: because you go from something bad and suffer a lot
Speaker 1: of times, you know, an adverse experience just causes suffering,
Speaker 1: and that's it. You don't have to necessarily grow from adversity.
Speaker 1: But if you understand uh certain principles and leverage those
Speaker 1: principles and figure out how to think about adversity a
Speaker 1: certain way, absolutely that which is not coless will make
Speaker 1: a strong Yeah, you've got a line that says inner
Speaker 1: strength doesn't come from the experience of adversity itself, but
Speaker 1: from the wisdom that the experience of adversity has the
Speaker 1: potential to impart. Yeah, I think that's really that's really it.
Speaker 1: What are some of these basic principles that you were
Speaker 1: talking about that that you know, I'm sure I've got
Speaker 1: listeners right now who are listening who are in the
Speaker 1: midst of something that seems to be a really terrible
Speaker 1: experience for them, where can they start. Yeah. So one
Speaker 1: place is UM. There's a chapter that's called accept Pain,
Speaker 1: and it talks about this notion of UM, the power
Speaker 1: of acceptance of unpleasant feelings. So we all experience unpleasant
Speaker 1: feelings all the time. And I'm not just talking about
Speaker 1: emotional unpleasant feelings, you know, like anxiety or depression or
Speaker 1: guilt or anger, but physically unpleasant feelings, you know, pain,
Speaker 1: physical pain. Uh. And we evolved, of course to avoid
Speaker 1: pain of all types, physical and emotional, but in fact
Speaker 1: we end up causing ourselves often far more suffering by
Speaker 1: using the strategies we employed to try to avoid pain
Speaker 1: than the actual experience of pain itself would impart to
Speaker 1: our lives if we just let ourselves feel it. And
Speaker 1: are unbelievable numbers of studies, one after another after another,
Speaker 1: in so many different contexts that show when you try
Speaker 1: to avoid pain or suppress pain, and antedly that only
Speaker 1: makes it worse. And there is some great power in
Speaker 1: looking upon pain non judgmentally and with acceptance. So I'll
Speaker 1: give you a quick example, simple example, UM, people who
Speaker 1: are trying to quit smoking or trying to use weight
Speaker 1: and trying to avoid eating over the eating UM, when
Speaker 1: you train people like that to to face food cravings
Speaker 1: or cravings for nicotine for the spirit of acceptance and
Speaker 1: observations and rather than oh, I'm feeling horribly hungry, I
Speaker 1: really want that cookie right now, or I've got to
Speaker 1: get a bag of that cigarette. I'm going crazy. Uh,
Speaker 1: And they're trying to resist it and push it away.
Speaker 1: They are paradoxically centering themselves on that they're sending their
Speaker 1: attention on those cravings. If instead they approach those cravings
Speaker 1: with the spirit of acceptance and non judgments rather than
Speaker 1: think themselves it's craving, it's just it's unbearable, I really
Speaker 1: want to eat that cookie. They sort of become an
Speaker 1: observer of their own unpleasant feeling. Wow, I'm really creating
Speaker 1: that cookie or I'm really creating a cigarette with right now,
Speaker 1: and allowed to sort of pass through them and don't
Speaker 1: fight it but accept it but refused to act on it,
Speaker 1: and terribly What ends up happening is those cravings disappeared.
Speaker 1: And they've studied people both in both contacts, looking at
Speaker 1: people trying to avoid um over eating and trying to
Speaker 1: quit smoking, and sound of those who approach UH their
Speaker 1: inevitable cravings with acceptance rather than denial or resistance have higher,
Speaker 1: much higher rates of success. So this is kind of
Speaker 1: applies and all types of ums when you are trying
Speaker 1: to achieve a goal. And there's a particular exercise that
Speaker 1: I heat you that I talk about in the book,
Speaker 1: and it is if you have a dream and you
Speaker 1: you write that dream down on a piece of paper,
Speaker 1: and then you write down what are the main tasks
Speaker 1: that you have to accomplish or to achieve that dream,
Speaker 1: and then next to those tasks you write what are
Speaker 1: the unpleasant feelings that arise when we're even constemply having
Speaker 1: to to take on those tasks. What you actually are
Speaker 1: under discover discovering is that often the greatest dreams that
Speaker 1: you have, it's actually stopping you from achieving those dreams.
Speaker 1: There's nothing outside of yourself, but actually the unpleasant feeling
Speaker 1: that contemplating the task requires to achieve between pull out
Speaker 1: of you and and and the strategy of of avoidance works. Right.
Speaker 1: So if you are someone who say is very shy
Speaker 1: and you and you have social anxiety, but you have
Speaker 1: a desire to say, have they have a significant other
Speaker 1: a girlfriend or a boyfriend or whatever, um one you know,
Speaker 1: but but asking people out is incredibly anxiety producing for you. Well,
Speaker 1: one really successful strategy you can use to avoid feeling
Speaker 1: anxiety is to not trigger it, meaning don't ask somebody
Speaker 1: out and it works. You won't feel that of anxiety.
Speaker 1: But at the same time you also be able to
Speaker 1: achieve your dream. But if instead you approach those feelings
Speaker 1: with non judgment and also approach yourself without judgment for
Speaker 1: feeling those feelings. So rather than say to yourself, I'm
Speaker 1: such a I'm such a loser. I can't call up
Speaker 1: this person to ask him or her out without feeling anxiety,
Speaker 1: but instead say I'm feeling terrible anxiety, but I'm going
Speaker 1: to do this anyway. I'm gonna let myself feel this,
Speaker 1: but I'm not gonna let this feeling stop me from
Speaker 1: taking the action I need to take to achieve my dream.
Speaker 1: You will find yourself unleashed and capable of accomplishing things
Speaker 1: you never imagine that you could be capable of withstanding
Speaker 1: far more than you believe you can. And I'll tell
Speaker 1: you all of the people we hold up in society
Speaker 1: as these paradouns of achievement, you know from anywhere from
Speaker 1: Braham Lincoln to steve jobs. They all do this secret
Speaker 1: that the secret success just not avoiding the pain and
Speaker 1: finding a way to do something, you know, without pain,
Speaker 1: but carrying on in spite of it and developing themselves
Speaker 1: so that their goal is not to find a way
Speaker 1: to avoid pain that becomes so strong that can happen
Speaker 1: whatever pain they needed to order achieve their dreams. Part
Speaker 1: of the book talks about niche in Buddhism, which I
Speaker 1: think is where you got some of the strategies to
Speaker 1: help build an undefeated mind. And there's a couple lines
Speaker 1: in there that I found really interesting that I'd like
Speaker 1: us to talk about. One is that you say that
Speaker 1: according to Nietzsche and Buddhism, nothing boosts happiness more than
Speaker 1: victory or causes more misery than defeat. Can you explain
Speaker 1: what that means? I guess there's different ways to sort
Speaker 1: of cut cut it life, and people think about right
Speaker 1: and long and good in evil, but I really think
Speaker 1: about victory and defeit, and that's what nuture Buddhism focus
Speaker 1: is on, and by victory and deceitit that what what
Speaker 1: what the principle really is about happiness and suffering. That's
Speaker 1: really what it comes down to, and so victory and
Speaker 1: may look like different things depending upon what it is
Speaker 1: you're aiming for. It's not always necessarily achieving its goal,
Speaker 1: but victory in some sense it is always about becoming wiser, happier,
Speaker 1: and stronger. And so you may actually fail to achieve
Speaker 1: a goal, but that doesn't mean you lost. You lost
Speaker 1: if you were defeated, meaning if you if you became,
Speaker 1: if you if you began to suffer as a result
Speaker 1: of failure, But failure sometimes it's the very thing you
Speaker 1: need to actually teach you how to really achieve your dream.
Speaker 1: So bottom line is winning and losing really comes down to.
Speaker 1: You win when you have victory over yourself, when you
Speaker 1: sort of become stronger, happier, wiser. Lose when you when
Speaker 1: you allow yourself to become defeated and therefore suffer. You know,
Speaker 1: this feeling of sort of helplessness, hopelessness, I can't do this,
Speaker 1: I can't do that, and the suffering that ensues from
Speaker 1: being broad into that life state. That's what it means
Speaker 1: to lose. One of the things that listeners will know
Speaker 1: I explore all the time is the difference between positive
Speaker 1: thinking and sort of denial and when is the proper
Speaker 1: time to give yourself to some degree the pep talk? Right,
Speaker 1: I can do this, I can get through this. I
Speaker 1: can versus, when is the proper time to experience the
Speaker 1: emotions that you're having and and process those through in
Speaker 1: a way that they're not being suppressed? And I know
Speaker 1: that's probably a terribly difficult question to answer. I'm just
Speaker 1: kind of curious about how your mind goes goes about
Speaker 1: thinking about that. So I don't think they need too exclusive.
Speaker 1: I think that, um that if you sure you're talking
Speaker 1: now about trying to achieve a goal and maybe you're
Speaker 1: running into obstacles and being stopped and experiencing failure and setbacks,
Speaker 1: and how do you um manage those setbacks? How do
Speaker 1: you how you talk to yourself about those things? Number
Speaker 1: one is I think that you know, we're human, and
Speaker 1: so when we fail, it's things, and maybe it's things
Speaker 1: terribly Maybe in fact, we attach our self worth to
Speaker 1: ability to succeed, and when we fail, we start to
Speaker 1: feel better about ourselves as people. I think that whatever
Speaker 1: the unpleasant emotion you're feeling, as long as it doesn't
Speaker 1: become overwhelming and become sort of pathologically, you become paralyzed
Speaker 1: with it, like paralyze and anxiety or paralyzed and depressions
Speaker 1: that you getting that in which case you need to
Speaker 1: see treatment. What we're talking about less severe forms of
Speaker 1: those emotions that just sort of affect all of us
Speaker 1: other day. I think to push them down and to
Speaker 1: deny them is to give them power, and and to
Speaker 1: to push them out of sight is to not recognize
Speaker 1: what type of damage and usualist they can have on.
Speaker 1: So if you are discouraged and depressed about something, to
Speaker 1: sort of deny that, uh, you use your your ability
Speaker 1: to um communipulate it to delk at it constructively. At
Speaker 1: the same time, I think you always have to um
Speaker 1: be giving yourself pep talks, especially when you fail. You
Speaker 1: yet they have to be a pep talks that are believable.
Speaker 1: So I talked a bit in the book about there's
Speaker 1: a difference between what's called the pessimistic self explanatory style
Speaker 1: and optimistic self explanatory style. The invasic difference is people
Speaker 1: tend to just have styles with which they explain the
Speaker 1: causes of adverse events. So, for example, you fail the tests,
Speaker 1: some of the pessimistic self explonatory style would say, well,
Speaker 1: I failed that test because I'm a bad test taker,
Speaker 1: meaning it's something intrinsically about me that just is a
Speaker 1: limit that I can do nothing about, whereas an person
Speaker 1: an optimistic self explanatory style would say, no, I feel
Speaker 1: that test because I just didn't study hard enough. And
Speaker 1: you know, we we leave upon these explanations when bad
Speaker 1: bags happened to us really quickly and sort of typically unconsciously,
Speaker 1: and immediately assume the first explanation we come across is correct,
Speaker 1: and often number when it's not the number two, that
Speaker 1: explanation exerts great power over us and controls how we
Speaker 1: You know how well those pep talks that we want
Speaker 1: to give ourselves keep ourselves going can affect um. You
Speaker 1: know how effective they're They're going to be UM people
Speaker 1: an optimistic self explanatory style in general, they look upon
Speaker 1: the causes of adversity um from the perspective of they
Speaker 1: have the agency of the ability to influence them to
Speaker 1: try again. And so I think the power pousit are
Speaker 1: thinking is great, But in fact your style of explaining
Speaker 1: things to yourself is pessimistic. That's where you really want
Speaker 1: to intervene and teach yourself, and you can teach yourself
Speaker 1: to come up with and believe and attached to more
Speaker 1: optimistic explanations that empower you to take the action that
Speaker 1: enables the ultimate to succeed. Right, Because we're we are
Speaker 1: usually making up some sort of story about why things happened.
Speaker 1: And it sounds like what you're advocating is that we
Speaker 1: tell ourselves stories or at least examine the content that
Speaker 1: those stories a little bit more deeply to show that
Speaker 1: maybe what we have tended to think is the cause
Speaker 1: of things in the past isn't what really is the cause. Well,
Speaker 1: for one, we certainly often get it wrong. We've we
Speaker 1: come with and explanations that we just pursue a corrected
Speaker 1: we're we're way off in my field because they don't
Speaker 1: bother to actually investigate, uh, and to we do it unconsciously.
Speaker 1: I'm arguing that we should become mindful of the fact
Speaker 1: that the stories we used to explain the cause of
Speaker 1: things are not facts. Their stories, you know, they are
Speaker 1: stories that have great power over our future behavior, what
Speaker 1: we're going to do. And so I'm arguing to become
Speaker 1: mindful because in fact, it turns out the studies are
Speaker 1: shown you really can train yourself to change yourself exculentory style,
Speaker 1: become more optimistic in a way that's really adapted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a line you had that I really liked, where
Speaker 1: you said, I find myself thinking about how quickly we
Speaker 1: pronounced final judgment on the things that happened to us,
Speaker 1: deciding whether they're good or bad in the first moment
Speaker 1: they occur, and how in doing so we surrender our
Speaker 1: own agency, abandon the belief that we have the power
Speaker 1: to create meaning out of what happens to us. That's right, absolutely, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we just we say, well, it's done, it's over. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna be able to achieve that dream because
Speaker 1: this thing is in the way, and we surrender our ability,
Speaker 1: our belief in our ability to take another path. You know,
Speaker 1: the path towards success is rarely the way we see
Speaker 1: it at the outside. You know, optacles always arise, and
Speaker 1: so how you ultimately get there If you were to
Speaker 1: look back the paths, it ends up in every being
Speaker 1: different from what we fore told. But when when when
Speaker 1: moving forward towards it, if it's not the path before told,
Speaker 1: we tend to give up. We tend to think this
Speaker 1: camp be done because we don't see the other ways.
Speaker 1: But sometimes you have to get to that place, to
Speaker 1: get in the road, to actually see there is a
Speaker 1: fault in the road and then choose it. You have
Speaker 1: a line that says that we don't know how to
Speaker 1: solve the prob of them doesn't mean it's not solvable.
Speaker 1: It means we can't solve it if we remain as
Speaker 1: we are. The idea there is that a lot of times,
Speaker 1: not always, but a lot of times. The what needs
Speaker 1: to happen for us to be able to solve the
Speaker 1: problems we need to change in some way. So that
Speaker 1: may mean that we need to apply it expertise that
Speaker 1: we don't have. You know, so if my if my
Speaker 1: my goal today is to become a professional basketball player,
Speaker 1: I can't just walk out on the court and do that.
Speaker 1: I have to train, I have to you know, acquire
Speaker 1: the skills that I need to acquire. Uh maybe even
Speaker 1: then it's beyond me because I don't have enough natural
Speaker 1: talent to succeed in the n B A um. That
Speaker 1: may or may not be the case, but that a
Speaker 1: lot of times, do you see ways we have to
Speaker 1: change the way we think about things, and we have
Speaker 1: to acquire a different perspectives. So, um, the problem may
Speaker 1: not be an optacle out in the environment, maybe an
Speaker 1: obstacle in ourselves. And maybe, for example, we are unable
Speaker 1: to control our anger in a certain circumstances, or we're shy,
Speaker 1: or we're got confidence in some way, and that that
Speaker 1: those things, those obstacles are what really prevent us from
Speaker 1: getting a job we want or whatever it may be.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, in order to sometimes achieve a
Speaker 1: goal that you're having, you're struggling with. This is often
Speaker 1: the last thing people do is look inside themselves and
Speaker 1: ask themselves, how do I need to change what needs
Speaker 1: to be different about my approach or me in order
Speaker 1: to accomplish this goal? And it's not that as I
Speaker 1: The problem isn't that the goals unattainable. The problem is
Speaker 1: the goals unattainable if I remain as I am. And
Speaker 1: when people first start to look, they ask themselves that
Speaker 1: question subtenly. Often for me at least, a whole host
Speaker 1: of possibilities open themselves up, and I realized, wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: how can I expect to be able to achieve this
Speaker 1: goal if I keep thinking this way or I keep
Speaker 1: believing this or I keep doing that. Um. And so
Speaker 1: it's a really powerful thing because we have much more
Speaker 1: ability to change ourselves in an adaptive way, Uh, to
Speaker 1: acquire an expertise or mastery over something that that we
Speaker 1: don't necessarily first have. That opens up a world of
Speaker 1: possibility to achieve goals and hopefully or at least their
Speaker 1: first class even impossible. Yeah, that's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: I'm such a big fan. We talk on the show
Speaker 1: about sort of about taking small steps, and you know,
Speaker 1: and and that as you take those steps either easier
Speaker 1: to take right, you can take small steps much easier
Speaker 1: than big steps. But as you move down that path,
Speaker 1: the view changes and now suddenly you can see things
Speaker 1: that you couldn't have seen, you know, back ten twenty
Speaker 1: ft and moving in the right direction is always a positive.
Speaker 1: Good things come from it. Yeah, that's exactly right, because
Speaker 1: what happens is you think from the outset, you can
Speaker 1: see all the possibilities and all the boards you might
Speaker 1: be presented with me. You might have to choose a
Speaker 1: note to your goal, but you really can't. You have
Speaker 1: to sort of get down the road and then sort
Speaker 1: of see what THEE is from there. Before you know
Speaker 1: you'll be get front of with choices or opportunities that
Speaker 1: you could never have predicted from the outside, and you
Speaker 1: have to sort of, you know, believe in your heart
Speaker 1: that even if you can't see the way through from
Speaker 1: step one, when you get to step ten, you'll see
Speaker 1: farther ahead, you'll find some way, because veriably, if you
Speaker 1: look back at what you have accomplished, that's how it
Speaker 1: goes exactly. There was another line head that really really
Speaker 1: struck me, and it's it's you say, most of us
Speaker 1: deem a problem solved when it no longer confronts us.
Speaker 1: But a different way to look at it is that
Speaker 1: the problem is solved when it no longer makes us suffer.
Speaker 1: Can you elaborate on that a little bit? Yeah, so, certainly,
Speaker 1: you know, the way we all prefer to solve problems
Speaker 1: is by eliminating the problem itself. But some problems are
Speaker 1: not solvable in the way we want. So, for example,
Speaker 1: if we come down with the chronic disease like multiple
Speaker 1: sclerosis right where we really want to solve that problems.
Speaker 1: We want to cure the multiple sclerosis, but that may
Speaker 1: not be possible. In fact, right now, that's not possible.
Speaker 1: But but multiple sclerosis is only a problem for us
Speaker 1: to be excepted. It makes us suffer. And in fact,
Speaker 1: there are many people and the in fact, many of
Speaker 1: my patients who multiple sclerosses aren't suffering because of mulcile
Speaker 1: scross is at all. You know, their function is not normal,
Speaker 1: but they've learned to adapt and in fact it literally
Speaker 1: no longer makes them suffer. And it's either because they've
Speaker 1: got enough function with medication or whatever that uh they're
Speaker 1: able to do with it, or because they change the
Speaker 1: way they think about it. There's another famous line um
Speaker 1: from their Frankel's book for Man Searched for Me, and
Speaker 1: that he says suffering ceases to become suffering what it
Speaker 1: acquires meaning. And and it really turns out that you know,
Speaker 1: how we look at any adversity and how it affects
Speaker 1: us really is truly determined by um when we think
Speaker 1: about it and what value we think we can we
Speaker 1: can gain from it. So um, you know, I I
Speaker 1: have patients who have terrible diseases, but either they've adapted
Speaker 1: to them or they've actually found a way to gain
Speaker 1: value out of them in some way. And when that happens,
Speaker 1: the disease you know, it stops making them suffering. They
Speaker 1: accepted into their lives, they incorporated, and they are as
Speaker 1: happy as has made my other pensions to go. You know,
Speaker 1: for example, that the story I told at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the podcast about that woman of mine, that patient
Speaker 1: money lad as a beast cancer, she was not suffering
Speaker 1: because of her breast cancer. She had come to accept it.
Speaker 1: And in fact, interestingly, part of the reason why was
Speaker 1: because um, you know, she had was terminal. She was
Speaker 1: able to heal relationships with her loved ones that have
Speaker 1: been toxic for years. But we're confronted with the fact
Speaker 1: of or mortality. She sort of realized, I don't have
Speaker 1: any time left, and and just was experiencing this renaissance
Speaker 1: of emotions and relationships with the people she loved that
Speaker 1: had just killed her her life with great joy. And
Speaker 1: so in the midst of this terrible problem that she
Speaker 1: really couldn't solve the way she wanted to, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, to be cured, she was really literally not
Speaker 1: suffering because of it. Right There's you say at one
Speaker 1: point that you understand that you know, part of an
Speaker 1: undefeated mind is understand there's no obstacle which we cannot
Speaker 1: create some sort of value out of and my my
Speaker 1: take on that has always been, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: believe things happen for a reason. Um, But I do
Speaker 1: believe we can. We can find a reason or meaning
Speaker 1: or purpose out of anything that happens to us. But
Speaker 1: that's solely our responsibility to do the work and the
Speaker 1: effort to find what that thing is. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: I really like what you said about you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I also don't believe things happen for a
Speaker 1: reason from the sense that most people mean it, or
Speaker 1: in the sense most people mean it, which is, at
Speaker 1: some external force created a circumstance and gave us this
Speaker 1: experience in order to teach us a specific thing. I
Speaker 1: don't think the universe work that way, but I do know,
Speaker 1: and what bad things happen to us, we have a
Speaker 1: choice about how we're gonna respond to those things and
Speaker 1: what we're gonna do about them, even if we don't guess.
Speaker 1: I think it's us how to feel about them, because
Speaker 1: I'm not in charge of our feelings that way. Um.
Speaker 1: But even if the value we're able to create the
Speaker 1: horrible adverse experience is that we become capable of encouraging
Speaker 1: other people in the future who go to the exact
Speaker 1: same thing. And that's a very real thing. And when
Speaker 1: you talk about people in both the terrible things you
Speaker 1: get to encourage others, um, that really adds great drawing
Speaker 1: to film into their lives. Even if that's the only
Speaker 1: benefit you can find from adversity, that's quite a benefit.
Speaker 1: And I'm not, by by the way, suggesting that when
Speaker 1: terrible things happened to us, that the benefit we gain
Speaker 1: from them outweighs the loss of the tragedy, you know,
Speaker 1: with with say the example I've given the book about
Speaker 1: parents who use children whose children die. Even though say
Speaker 1: show very real benefit does occur in parents report those
Speaker 1: things like, you know, feeling closer to their having children,
Speaker 1: or feeling more courageous or whatever, um. And those are
Speaker 1: very real benefits. I'm not permitted saying necessarily that those
Speaker 1: benefits aweigh the pain of loss that you have to
Speaker 1: go through the order to to realize them, but the
Speaker 1: benefit is still always possible. One of the things I've
Speaker 1: been particularly interested lately in is the idea of envy
Speaker 1: or comparison. And you talk a little bit about social comparison,
Speaker 1: and you you say at one point that there's ways
Speaker 1: that we can use social comparison not to divide us,
Speaker 1: but to drive us. Can you walk me through your
Speaker 1: your approach to making social comparison because it seems to
Speaker 1: be default, right, it seems like it's it's almost impossible
Speaker 1: to avoid. But how can we make it less of
Speaker 1: a malignant force and more of a positive force? Right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're and it's a human thing to do. We compare
Speaker 1: ourselves on this all the time. We kind of cant
Speaker 1: help it. Um, you can by focusing your attention on
Speaker 1: a certain type of social comparison, you can m make
Speaker 1: motivate yourself as opposed to discourage yourself. And what it
Speaker 1: turns out is that when you compare yourself to somebody
Speaker 1: who has tried to do or succeeded in doing what
Speaker 1: you want to do, say, um, you know, write a
Speaker 1: book and publish a book. Um, if you and if
Speaker 1: you pick somebody who is similar to you and who
Speaker 1: it seems that they were able to accomplish the pass
Speaker 1: through their effort, not because it's some special intrinsic ability
Speaker 1: that they have. Studies show that that type of social
Speaker 1: imparison is very motivating um and ahad. If you compare
Speaker 1: yourself to someone who you think is is beyond you
Speaker 1: in some way and they're different from you, it has
Speaker 1: special gifts you don't have, and and they've accomplished something
Speaker 1: that you yourself want accomplished. That type of comparison tends
Speaker 1: to discourage you and should be avoided. And it really
Speaker 1: is just where do you put your focus. The other thing, though,
Speaker 1: is if you compare the work of people who succeeded
Speaker 1: to your work and you compare it to you know,
Speaker 1: find and the something seems a little bit machia valiant,
Speaker 1: but it does work. And so if you if you
Speaker 1: find someone who's work you think is inferior to yours,
Speaker 1: but they've succeeded um, and you're comparing the work, not
Speaker 1: the person that you have. The work that also could
Speaker 1: be from people very motivating because you save yourself. Well,
Speaker 1: if basiciated with that, I can do this, which I
Speaker 1: think is better and you really believe that that can
Speaker 1: also be very encouraging. UM. But you really want to
Speaker 1: be careful because it's very easy to do. It's called
Speaker 1: downward selfial comparison to look down on people whose product
Speaker 1: may be inferior to yours and your view. Uh. And
Speaker 1: to disparage them or to think less of them than
Speaker 1: that obviously is more along the lines of dividing us
Speaker 1: out of their inspiring us. I had heard somewhere recently
Speaker 1: that idea that you had of if we you know,
Speaker 1: if we are comparing ourselves to somebody who we do
Speaker 1: think is like us or inspires us, that can be
Speaker 1: positive because you can always look up or look down
Speaker 1: from any you know, nearly any position. And what I
Speaker 1: find though, is either of those views. I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: not really connecting with people. I'm just I'm measuring myself
Speaker 1: against them, and it seems to be so such a
Speaker 1: painful thing for me to do. Yes, because if you
Speaker 1: you can always find someone who doing better than you,
Speaker 1: and if you continue to compare yourself against those people,
Speaker 1: all you'll do with feeling if you you're or bad
Speaker 1: about yourself in some way. Uh, And that's that's really
Speaker 1: a mistake. But when you find those people who you
Speaker 1: feel like just like you, they succeeded that that is,
Speaker 1: you know, um, that's really encouraging to people because that
Speaker 1: it makes them feel like they can do it is
Speaker 1: the best kind of encouragement. You can get that someone
Speaker 1: just like you succeeds and you think yourself, if they
Speaker 1: can do it, I can do it. Yeah, exactly. That
Speaker 1: is powerful. The other thing we talked a little bit
Speaker 1: earlier about sort of taking those small steps and as
Speaker 1: you do, the road changes. I think that another thing
Speaker 1: with comparison, particularly when you talk about goals, whether it
Speaker 1: be writing a book or doing some kind of art,
Speaker 1: is that it's very easy to compare where we are
Speaker 1: now with where somebody else is after ten years of work,
Speaker 1: for example. And and it's I think it's really useful
Speaker 1: to try and keep that in mind as we think
Speaker 1: about it, like, oh, yeah, here's where I'm at, I'm
Speaker 1: starting here, and in five ten years I will be
Speaker 1: in a very different place. Yeah. The other thing too
Speaker 1: is you know, when you find yourself trapped in that
Speaker 1: that cons and so much it's far advanced, you would
Speaker 1: be discouraged for them so far ahead. The issue is
Speaker 1: you just don't know their full story, right, because if
Speaker 1: you actually learn that story, learned about what they were like,
Speaker 1: what their lives are like, where they were sort of
Speaker 1: where you are now, often it's worth you here, Wow,
Speaker 1: they went through that happened in that calful make you
Speaker 1: feel very better because if the rare person who just
Speaker 1: is born with a true field spoon in their mouths,
Speaker 1: who can sort of leap from success and success without
Speaker 1: really failing and struggling, And when you really learn what
Speaker 1: people have to go through and recognize that that even
Speaker 1: if people have great talent that without how to work
Speaker 1: and sort of facing obstacles and resisting discouragement, that couldn't
Speaker 1: have become successful, it again makes them seem more like you.
Speaker 1: And that's another way on that trap is to sort
Speaker 1: of understand or learn their stories you can exactly. So
Speaker 1: we're nearing the end of our time. But there was
Speaker 1: one last piece of the book that I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about. Maybe we can use this as a as
Speaker 1: a place to wrap up. But you talk a lot
Speaker 1: in the book about the power of determination. Can you
Speaker 1: share a little bit more about what determination means to
Speaker 1: you and how we feed that. I think it's important
Speaker 1: to distinguish between determination and will power. That will power
Speaker 1: or sort of the punching of the will and then
Speaker 1: pushing them through an obstacle um to give a goal
Speaker 1: is one tool of determination. But I think about determination
Speaker 1: as a promise or a vow that you make for yourself.
Speaker 1: So in Buddhism, for example, the type of Buddhism my
Speaker 1: practice prayer is really in determination because Buddhism and Buddhism,
Speaker 1: you don't pray to the external force. You really sort
Speaker 1: of um mustering up your own life force to gear
Speaker 1: up to sort of lift the heavy weight, whether it's
Speaker 1: a literal weight or it's actually to take on a big,
Speaker 1: a big you know, uh goal that you have, and
Speaker 1: it is it is the commitment that you pull out
Speaker 1: to um to do whatever it takes, to become whatever
Speaker 1: it takes. That often is what is the key determining
Speaker 1: success and failure. And when I go out to a goal,
Speaker 1: if it's important to me, I pause and I really
Speaker 1: think to myself, what am I willing to do to
Speaker 1: achieve this goal? How far am I willing to go?
Speaker 1: What am I willing to lose? How can they am
Speaker 1: I really to this goal? And I, you know, I
Speaker 1: measure in terms of why, what I'm willing to give up?
Speaker 1: And that usually is what helping me figure out if
Speaker 1: I'm going to be successful or not. Because if I
Speaker 1: say to myself, I want this so valid I'll do
Speaker 1: whatever it takes and I mean it, and I can
Speaker 1: find that because I understand why this is so important
Speaker 1: to me. I think that's crucial. Why are we're doing something,
Speaker 1: um and how does it connect to our personals as
Speaker 1: a mission? When you when you've got a firm sense
Speaker 1: of why you're doing something, you're able to at least termination,
Speaker 1: to never give up and and in fact, ultimately what
Speaker 1: I will sometimes do. You know, what I'm incredibly discouraged
Speaker 1: is my commitment will not just be so much to
Speaker 1: my goal, but my commitment is to not quit. That's
Speaker 1: that's sometimes easier for me and easily commited for me
Speaker 1: to make than than and believe I can make than
Speaker 1: to believe I'm actually ulterily accomplish a goal that's seeming
Speaker 1: too large or there's too many obstacles in my way
Speaker 1: that I had no idea how to overcome. Because then
Speaker 1: if you can commit to just not quitting and you
Speaker 1: just keep going and going and taking actually moving forward, ultimately,
Speaker 1: in most cases, I think your goal will come with
Speaker 1: the breach. I think that's a really useful distinction between willpower,
Speaker 1: which wears out pretty easily, and you talk about that
Speaker 1: in the book, and there's there's lots of other studies
Speaker 1: that show, you know, willpower can can quickly go away,
Speaker 1: and not confusing that with with being determined, and how
Speaker 1: that we can lose our willpower and not do something
Speaker 1: that's that's important to us. But that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: we have to quit. And there there seems to be
Speaker 1: so much of you know, certainly in my life in
Speaker 1: the past this, If I can't do it, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm just not going to do it at all, um,
Speaker 1: versus saying, all right, this is something that's important to me.
Speaker 1: I'm going to keep at it um. Even if for
Speaker 1: three days last week I didn't you know, I fell
Speaker 1: completely off the wagon last week for three days. That
Speaker 1: the fact that my willpower wore out doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: I don't have the ability to do this. It just
Speaker 1: means that maybe my strategies need to be tweaked. You know.
Speaker 1: Will power is the moment by moment things, as you've
Speaker 1: spted me saying it fatigues quite easily. But determination, even
Speaker 1: when you're wholly discouraged and lying in your bed alone
Speaker 1: on the covers that pulled up to your ship and
Speaker 1: you want to quit, your determination can still be conting,
Speaker 1: you allow yourself to feel that way as long as
Speaker 1: underneath you still feel I know, and you know to
Speaker 1: yourself today, I'm gonna lie in bed and be visible
Speaker 1: and want to quit the tomom, gonna get up, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to do it again. It's that promise that
Speaker 1: you're to yourself, that you're aiming to fulfill the desire
Speaker 1: and the aim to fulfill the promise. And that's where
Speaker 1: determination lies, even when you will power fails and you
Speaker 1: and you're discouraged. Alex, this has been a really enjoyable conversation,
Speaker 1: and I really enjoyed the book. I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot of great stuff in there, and a lot of
Speaker 1: things that that particularly tie back to two themes that
Speaker 1: come up in this show over and over again. So
Speaker 1: I'll certainly have links in the show notes to the
Speaker 1: book for our readers. But thanks so much for taken
Speaker 1: the time to talk with us. Oh, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for having I really enjoyed the conversation. All right, Thanks Alex,
Speaker 1: take care you can. You can learn more about Alex
Speaker 1: Luckerman and this podcast at one new feed dot net
Speaker 1: slash Alex