Speaker 1: So a big part of the model is learning to
Speaker 1: unhook from those you know harsh self judgments and instead
Speaker 1: bring in some self compassion. What are kind things we
Speaker 1: can say to ourselves? Kind things we can do for ourselves.
Speaker 2: Today? It's great to have Russ Harris on the podcast.
Speaker 2: Russ is one of Australia's foremost practitioners of acceptance and
Speaker 2: Commitment therapy, a mindfulness based psychological therapy that aims to
Speaker 2: help you reduce stress, overcome fear, and find fulfillment. In
Speaker 2: this wide ranging episode on mental health, we discuss Russ's
Speaker 2: happiness trap cards, which include ideas such as your mind
Speaker 2: is not your enemy, when emotional storms blow up, drop anchor,
Speaker 2: and urges are like waves. We also cover our self esteem,
Speaker 2: the experience of being human, and how to set yourself
Speaker 2: up for success in life. I'm a longtime admirer of
Speaker 2: Russ Harris and I'm so glad I was finally able
Speaker 2: to chat with him on my podcast. So without further
Speaker 2: ado you, Russ Harris, Ross Harris, how are you?
Speaker 3: And great?
Speaker 1: Thank you thanks for inviting me. I just had my
Speaker 1: fifty eighth birthday yesterday, so I'm I'm recovering too. Much
Speaker 1: cake and sugar and happy birthday.
Speaker 2: Thank you to the legend himself. You've really made quite
Speaker 2: a name for yourself and really help a lot of
Speaker 2: people kind of reclaim their mind in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2: I feel like everyone feels like they're losing their minds.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think we all feel that way at times.
Speaker 2: Definitely, because your background is in ACT.
Speaker 1: Is that right, Yeah, Like the official association is ACT.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: If you if you cool it ACT within ear shot
Speaker 1: of Professor Stephen Hayes, the guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah actually comes, he comes, he pops out and like
Speaker 2: the candy man. Yeah, you know it that way.
Speaker 1: But the ACT is a good abbreviation for the model
Speaker 1: acceptance and commitment therapy because at the core of it,
Speaker 1: it's about taking action, you know, it's about doing things
Speaker 1: that are meaningful and important in life to make your
Speaker 1: life better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so that's your training and specialty. But it
Speaker 2: really this approach really encompasses so much of human life.
Speaker 2: And this book, you know, you obviously wrote the best
Speaker 2: seller of The Happiness Trap, but this most recent book,
Speaker 2: The Happiness Trap Cards, although I mean it's not a book,
Speaker 2: ahould say this collection of cards. The Happiness Trap Cards
Speaker 2: is is really all encompassing. I mean, as I'm reading it,
Speaker 2: I'm like, wow, he's covering from self esteem to to
Speaker 2: thinking thinking traps, to to living a life of gratitude.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's really it's all of mental life.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Look, it was much harder creating the cards than it
Speaker 1: was writing the book, because when you write a book,
Speaker 1: you can go into stuff in depth, in detail. You can,
Speaker 1: you know, spend a chatter exploring a concept such as
Speaker 1: mindfulness or self compassion. But when you've got a deck
Speaker 1: of cards, you really got to just distill that down
Speaker 1: to two or three paragraphs, you know, or I think
Speaker 1: the limit was two hundred words per card on one side,
Speaker 1: distill a concept, and then put a exercise or skill
Speaker 1: or technique on to the other side.
Speaker 3: And boy was it hard. I mean, talk about losing
Speaker 3: your mind. I really did lose my mind writing that.
Speaker 2: Oh huh. It sounds like it's like a tweet. Everything's
Speaker 2: a tweet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I've never been onto the Twitter space.
Speaker 3: Well, I tell a lie. I was on it for
Speaker 3: about a month and then I gave up.
Speaker 2: It's just too stressful. Ah, just is like an entry
Speaker 2: away into act. Can you just tell people a little
Speaker 2: bit like what are the core can put like, what's
Speaker 2: the core concept of unhooking? You know what does that mean?
Speaker 2: And because you kind of start off the book with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, so basically, difficult thoughts and feelings show up
Speaker 1: for all of us throughout the day every day. You know,
Speaker 1: life is stressful. We all have challenges, and the human
Speaker 1: minds often interpret things in a way that makes things
Speaker 1: even more stressful than they need to be. So when
Speaker 1: I use the term hooked, what I mean is your
Speaker 1: thoughts and feelings are having a huge impact on you.
Speaker 1: They're jerking you around that they may pull your attention
Speaker 1: away from what's important, what's meaningful, so you're no longer
Speaker 1: focused on what you're doing, or no longer engaged in
Speaker 1: what you're doing, or they may hook you in other ways,
Speaker 1: pull you into patterns of behavior that are self defeating
Speaker 1: that make life worse rather than better. You know, drugs
Speaker 1: or alcohol or you know, shouting at people that you
Speaker 1: love or procrastinating on important stuff, all of those self
Speaker 1: defeating patterns of behavior that we all do to one
Speaker 1: extent or another. So basically means your thoughts and feelings
Speaker 1: just having this huge impact on your actions or on
Speaker 1: your attention and just kind of pulling you away from
Speaker 1: what's important or pulling you into self defeating patterns.
Speaker 2: One of this approach is obviously very similar as well
Speaker 2: to Susan David's idea of emotional agility.
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, absolutely, Susan David uses acceptance and commitment therapy.
Speaker 1: She acknowledges it at the back of the book, but
Speaker 1: she doesn't really mention it throughout the book. But yes,
Speaker 1: her book is absolutely based on the same approach. And
Speaker 1: we've had her at a as the guest speaker at
Speaker 1: the World APT Conference, and she said she didn't kind
Speaker 1: of reference it throughout the book because she didn't want
Speaker 1: her book to be filled up with sort of tech,
Speaker 1: you know, scientific references. But it's exactly the same approach actually,
Speaker 1: And so unhooking skills are a set of skills that
Speaker 1: you use to take the power and impact out of
Speaker 1: those difficult thoughts and feelings. It's not about getting rid
Speaker 1: of them or suppressing them.
Speaker 3: It's about just.
Speaker 1: Kind of having a new way of interacting with them.
Speaker 1: So they just lose their power. They'd become like water
Speaker 1: off a duck's back. They can't jerk you around.
Speaker 2: Why did you get so interested in this approach?
Speaker 3: Well, it was started from a personal journey.
Speaker 1: I mean, I graduated as a junior doctor in my
Speaker 1: twenties and I was, you know, miserable. I was depressed,
Speaker 1: I was anxious, and I couldn't understand why. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, being a doctor. Everyone said that was going
Speaker 1: to make your life brilliant. You know, it's prestige status,
Speaker 1: it's a meaningful job, it's good money.
Speaker 3: But I was miserable.
Speaker 1: So I started, you know, exploring why am I so
Speaker 1: depressed and miserable when I've got everything that you know,
Speaker 1: society tells us makes you happy. And basically what happened
Speaker 1: was through my own personal therapy and through reading lots
Speaker 1: of self help books and doing lots of self development,
Speaker 1: I started to become very interested in the psychological aspects
Speaker 1: of medicine and lose much interest in the physical side.
Speaker 1: And so I was working as a GP family doctor
Speaker 1: in Melbourne, Australia, and I found that as a GP,
Speaker 1: my consultations with my patients were getting longer and longer
Speaker 1: and longer, and we were talking more and more about
Speaker 1: the psychological sides of health and less and less about
Speaker 1: the physical side, and I started to realize that I
Speaker 1: was in the wrong profession. Gradually I started retraining as
Speaker 1: a therapist, and it was my income went down and
Speaker 1: down and down, because as a therapist you earned much
Speaker 1: less money as her doctor, but my satisfaction went up
Speaker 1: and up and up. I found this is what I
Speaker 1: was really interested in, and this is what fulfilled me,
Speaker 1: helping people, you know, deal with their psychological health issues
Speaker 1: and build richer lives. So I've you know, it's a
Speaker 1: cut a long story short. I arrived at ACT through
Speaker 1: a long journey of trial and error and blind Alley's
Speaker 1: training in many different models of therapy, and each model
Speaker 1: I found some things that I liked and some things
Speaker 1: that I didn't like, and some things that worked and
Speaker 1: other things that didn't work.
Speaker 3: They were all good things in every model.
Speaker 1: But eventually, when I discovered ACT acceptance some commitments there therapy,
Speaker 1: it just seemed to have everything that I was looking
Speaker 1: for all in one package, and it was just love
Speaker 1: at first sight. I read the first textbook on that
Speaker 1: was out at the time, it was like, this is amazing,
Speaker 1: this is incredible, this is just what I've been trying
Speaker 1: to do, and it's been a love affair that's lasted
Speaker 1: for over twenty years now, so it just keeps getting
Speaker 1: richer and deeper all the time.
Speaker 2: I really like it too. How would you describe the
Speaker 2: difference between ACT and cognitive behavioral therapy, particularly the new
Speaker 2: crop of it, the mindful of cognitivi or therapy that
Speaker 2: my friend south Gilhann is kind of spearheading.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know.
Speaker 1: I think it's a hard question to answer because cognitive
Speaker 1: behavior therapy is evolving all the time, and ACT has
Speaker 1: massively influenced it, so a lot of stuff from ACT
Speaker 1: has actually crept into CBT. Traditionally, probably the biggest difference
Speaker 1: with CBT encouraged you to get into a battle with
Speaker 1: your thoughts. You'd start analyzing them, whether they're true or false,
Speaker 1: and challenging and disputing them and trying to get rid
Speaker 1: of the negative thoughts and replace them with positive thoughts.
Speaker 1: Whereas ACT doesn't do that. ACT kind of you acknowledge
Speaker 1: your thoughts. You recognize that even the most difficult negative
Speaker 1: thoughts are at some level your your mind actually be
Speaker 1: trying to help you. You know, like when you're worrying
Speaker 1: a lot, your mind's trying to help you in you know,
Speaker 1: point out things that are dangerous, point out things that
Speaker 1: you need to take action on. And so I often
Speaker 1: describe the mind as like an overly helpful friend, you know, Scott,
Speaker 1: have you ever had one of those hopefully helpful friends.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I call I called intrusive helping.
Speaker 1: In trues, that's I love it. Brilliant, Yeah, trying so
Speaker 1: hard to help become a real nuisance. And that's usually
Speaker 1: what our mind is doing. So we don't want to
Speaker 1: get into a battle or a fight with it. We
Speaker 1: want to kind of acknowledge it's trying to help, but
Speaker 1: kind of take the power and impact out of those thoughts,
Speaker 1: learn how to see that they're nothing more or less
Speaker 1: than words and pictures popping up in our heads. We
Speaker 1: don't have to fight with them. We can just learn
Speaker 1: to let.
Speaker 3: Them flow through us. And and so that's probably the
Speaker 3: biggest difference.
Speaker 1: Instead of fighting, good disputing and we kind of just
Speaker 1: let the thoughts, you know, float on by like water
Speaker 1: off adopts back really.
Speaker 2: Right, right right, And it's not entirely about your your
Speaker 2: cognitive distortions. There's also a great sense of like acting
Speaker 2: in the world and getting out of your mind, like
Speaker 2: like not get not overthinking it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's there's a you know, a lot of emphasis
Speaker 1: on mindfulness skills, on kind of bringing your attention to
Speaker 1: what's important, focusing on what's important, engaging in what you're doing,
Speaker 1: and savoring the potentially enjoyable, pleasurable aspects of what you're doing.
Speaker 1: But it ACT is a bit different to other models
Speaker 1: in that it doesn't emphasize meditation. Meditation is, let's be honest,
Speaker 1: for a lot of people, it's very boring and very difficult.
Speaker 1: So ACT kind of teaches mindfulness through lots of simple,
Speaker 1: easy to implement strategies that you can build into everyday life,
Speaker 1: you know, without meditating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, good point. What is your mind not your enemy?
Speaker 3: Why is it not your enemy?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well because it's always basically, you know, fundamentally, your
Speaker 1: mind is like a problem solving machine. It's always trying
Speaker 1: to do one of two things inside of trying to
Speaker 1: help you get things that you want or help you
Speaker 1: avoid things that you don't want. So if you think
Speaker 1: about when your mind starts beating you up, judging you,
Speaker 1: that does your mind judge and criticize You've got yes,
Speaker 1: of course, So you know, could you give us an
Speaker 1: example if it's not too asking too much? You know,
Speaker 1: what's a mean, nast thing that your mind says when
Speaker 1: it's judging you.
Speaker 2: Wow, you're a silly goose.
Speaker 1: Okay, And so it's not just saying that. You know,
Speaker 1: I must say your mind's quite polite.
Speaker 3: My mind's a bit ruder to me than that.
Speaker 1: But you know, when your mind kind of judges you
Speaker 1: that way, what's it trying to do? What's it trying
Speaker 1: to It's basically trying to say, if you keep doing this,
Speaker 1: something bad's going to happen. If you keep saying these
Speaker 1: things or doing these things, you're going to upset people,
Speaker 1: or you're going to get rejected, or you're going to
Speaker 1: screw up. You know, if your mind saying you're you're
Speaker 1: a bad mother, it's trying to help you shape up
Speaker 1: and become a good mother. If your mind saying you're
Speaker 1: you know, you're you're stupid, it's trying to tell you, well, look,
Speaker 1: there's an important area that you need to skill up
Speaker 1: on or do differently, or you need to kind of
Speaker 1: you know, handle these things better and more effectively. So
Speaker 1: it's not deliberately trying to make you miserable, it's actually
Speaker 1: trying to help you. Unfortunately, that strategy is not a
Speaker 1: particularly full strategy.
Speaker 2: You know, judging and.
Speaker 1: Beating ourselves up does sometimes motivators, but at other times
Speaker 1: it has the opposite effect. Like Scott, you've got a
Speaker 1: you've got a pet donkey, right that carries your load
Speaker 1: to market every Saturday.
Speaker 2: I sure do.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And you know there's two ways to motivate your donkey, right,
Speaker 1: carrot and stick, that's right, And so you know you
Speaker 1: can motivate your donkey with a stick and whack it
Speaker 1: and it'll kind of carry the load.
Speaker 3: But over time you end.
Speaker 1: Up with a miserable, you know, bruised, battered donkey. And
Speaker 1: that's really what self judgment is. It's our minds using
Speaker 1: the big stick to motivators. But luckily, in act we've
Speaker 1: got something that's much better than a carrot. You know,
Speaker 1: you can motivate your carrots, it'll carry the load. You
Speaker 1: end up with a happy, healthy donkey with really good
Speaker 1: night vision. Right, But we've we've got something much more
Speaker 1: motivating than carrots.
Speaker 3: We've got something called values.
Speaker 1: And values are sort of your heart steepest desires for
Speaker 1: how you want to behave as a human being, how
Speaker 1: you want to treat yourself, how you want to treat others.
Speaker 1: And once we are clear on our values, we can
Speaker 1: use them as a compass, as an inspiration, as a
Speaker 1: guide to help us do the things that we really
Speaker 1: want to do in life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have a really gentle way of being. It's
Speaker 2: very compassionate and gentle on the oneself, I could imagine
Speaker 2: enjoying being your patient.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I hope so, you know, I mean, self
Speaker 1: compassion is such an important part of the you know,
Speaker 1: our default setting for most of this is we just
Speaker 1: judge and criticize ourselves. And you know, again, just like
Speaker 1: sometimes that will motivate a donkey to carry the load,
Speaker 1: it will motivate us at times. But it's a life
Speaker 1: training form of motivation. So a big part of the
Speaker 1: model is learning to unhook from those you know, harsh
Speaker 1: self judgments and instead bring in some self compassion. What
Speaker 1: are kind things we can say to ourselves, kind things
Speaker 1: we can do for ourselves. I often will ask my clients,
Speaker 1: you know, if somebody else were you know, had just
Speaker 1: screwed up like you've screwed up, or have just made
Speaker 1: this mistake, or is going through something painful, like what
Speaker 1: you're going through, you know, and if you love this
Speaker 1: person and you want it to be a source of
Speaker 1: care and support and kindness to this person, what would
Speaker 1: you say to them? Yeah, And usually it's so different
Speaker 1: to what they're actually saying to themselves. Instead of this
Speaker 1: harsh criticism, this really kind, supportive language comes out. And
Speaker 1: so you know, in ACT we encourage people to have
Speaker 1: hooked from the harsh self criticism and kind of find
Speaker 1: kind ways of talking to themselves and more importantly, kind
Speaker 1: things that they can do for themselves. Like very often
Speaker 1: when we're in pain, we we go for the drugs
Speaker 1: or the alcohol, or the junk food or you know,
Speaker 1: the unhealthy distractions. We do all sorts of things to
Speaker 1: try to escape and have albit those painful feelings. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: but a big part of ACT is learning how to
Speaker 1: open up and make room for those painful feelings and
Speaker 1: be kind to ourselves and take the power out of
Speaker 1: those painful emotions and let them sort of flow through
Speaker 1: us without sweeping this away.
Speaker 2: It's beautiful, it's beautiful. What is the idea of dropping
Speaker 2: the anchor when your emotional storms? While how can we
Speaker 2: anyone do that at any time in their life. Yeah, well,
Speaker 2: so it's called dropping anchor because, yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, your boat sailing into the harbor. You hear
Speaker 1: on the radio there's a big storm blowing up. What's
Speaker 1: the first thing you need to do when you get
Speaker 1: into the harbor.
Speaker 3: It's a bad question. You need to drop anchor, right,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: And I need to have some stability, some stability in
Speaker 2: my life exactly.
Speaker 1: And if you don't drop anchor and that storm blows up,
Speaker 1: your boat's eve are going to get smashed against the
Speaker 1: other boats or swept out to the sea. And so
Speaker 1: it's the same with emotional storms, for it, you know,
Speaker 1: for our when the going gets tough, we have emotional storms.
Speaker 1: For some people, it's anxiety storms. For some people, those
Speaker 1: are sort of depressing storms. For some people those anger storms.
Speaker 1: But basically we get jerked around by these painful emotions
Speaker 1: and they sweep us away and they so dropping anchor
Speaker 1: is sort of learning to do the same thing with
Speaker 1: our own emotional storms. We learn how to keep ourselves
Speaker 1: steady so that the emotional storm doesn't pull us away
Speaker 1: from our life or sweep us off into self destructive
Speaker 1: or problematic behaviors and I like this meanciful because you know,
Speaker 1: anchors don't control storms. You know, when you drop an anchor,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make the storm magically go away. It just
Speaker 1: holds the boat steady. So at the same time we
Speaker 1: drop anchor with our own emotional storms, it's a way
Speaker 1: of holding ourselves steady. And and all emotional storms will
Speaker 1: you know, they'll rise and they'll peak and then they'll
Speaker 1: fall again. So let's hold us the steady till the
Speaker 1: storm passes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a it's very in line with my cell
Speaker 2: boat model of self actualization that we need. The security
Speaker 2: needs have to be met in the boat itself before
Speaker 2: we can open up the sail and grow.
Speaker 1: I like that, Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's a it's a reimagining of Maslow's hierarchy.
Speaker 2: That's not a pyramid but a sailboat. So so yeah,
Speaker 2: very very much in line. I resonated with so much
Speaker 2: of your book, and I just pulled out various things
Speaker 2: that I was nodding vigorously when I got to them.
Speaker 2: For instance, this one. I love this quote. To help
Speaker 2: break bad habits or to disrupt self defeating behaviors, ask
Speaker 2: yourself the workability question is what I'm doing workable will
Speaker 2: work in the long term to help me to build
Speaker 2: the sort of life I want, will work in the
Speaker 2: long term to help me become the sort of person
Speaker 2: I want to be. Yeah, that's very active, you you know,
Speaker 2: moving in the direction of your values is is. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's wonderful. Can you elaborate a little bit more on
Speaker 2: the workable?
Speaker 1: So workability is one of the key themes in act.
Speaker 1: You know, the question is is what you're doing working
Speaker 1: to build the life you want to be, the sort
Speaker 1: of person you want to be, doing the things you
Speaker 1: want to do.
Speaker 3: And this is the problem.
Speaker 1: If we go back to the idea of the mind
Speaker 1: as a problem solving machine, the default setting of the
Speaker 1: mind is it doesn't really consider, you know, the long
Speaker 1: term big picture is just what do I need to
Speaker 1: avoid right now? What do I need to get right now?
Speaker 1: So if we can start to add in, you know,
Speaker 1: this kind of reflective way of considering, you know, is
Speaker 1: what I'm doing really working in the long term in
Speaker 1: the big picture to give me what I want that
Speaker 1: can help us help us kind of you know, well, actually,
Speaker 1: you know, no, it's not really it's meeting my needs
Speaker 1: in some way, or it's getting me what I want
Speaker 1: in the short term, but it's not really giving me
Speaker 1: what I want in the long term, and that insight
Speaker 1: is often the first step in changing a problematic or
Speaker 1: self defeating pattern of behavior.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, you say that life is a stage show. I
Speaker 2: would have said life is a shit show. But you know,
Speaker 2: but you're so such as, you're so polite. So okay,
Speaker 2: why why is life like a stage show?
Speaker 3: Well, there is some ship on a life stage show,
Speaker 3: but there's more than a shit there.
Speaker 2: You know, that's true, that's true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the amount of shit on the stage varies from
Speaker 3: moment to moments.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I like this metaphor, the idea that life
Speaker 1: is like a stage show that's changing all the time
Speaker 1: from moment to moment, and on that stage, on that stage,
Speaker 1: there's all your thoughts, all your feelings, everything that you
Speaker 1: can see and hear and touch and taste and smell,
Speaker 1: and it's continually changing. And there's this part of you
Speaker 1: that can step back and watch the show and kind
Speaker 1: of zoom in and take in the details, or zoom
Speaker 1: out and take in the big picture. And this part
Speaker 1: of you in actually often call it the noticing self.
Speaker 1: It's the part of you that can notice your thoughts,
Speaker 1: notice your feelings, notice the world around you. And this,
Speaker 1: this part of you plays a big role in mindfulness
Speaker 1: and engaging in life. There's there's not really a good
Speaker 1: word for this part of you in everyday language. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes people call it the silent self or the silent
Speaker 1: witness or the observer self. When people meditate, they sort
Speaker 1: of build up this this sense of this observing part
Speaker 1: that it's able to notice and observe. As I said
Speaker 1: earlier in that we don't really kind of get into
Speaker 1: meditation that much, but there are other ways of building
Speaker 1: up this kind of observer part, which is useful. Again
Speaker 1: if we come back to this idea of unhooking, if
Speaker 1: you can kind of step back and observe the thoughts
Speaker 1: that are showing up on life stage show, or observe
Speaker 1: the difficult feelings, but without getting swept away by them.
Speaker 1: And you'll see that from moment to moment, they change,
Speaker 1: they come, and they go. We don't have to get
Speaker 1: into a battle with them, we don't have to run
Speaker 1: away from them. So sometimes there's awful stuff from that
Speaker 1: stage show, and sometimes there's beautiful stuff, you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: there's ship and sometimes there's sapphires, sapphires. I was trying
Speaker 1: to think of something that started with an S. I
Speaker 1: could have said silver. Sometimes there's ships and sometimes there's
Speaker 1: silver there.
Speaker 2: No, I like sapphires. No, No, I like that.
Speaker 4: You parsed it like like sapphires, like you know they
Speaker 4: I know where I usually say it was one word no,
Speaker 4: but I I that's the British.
Speaker 2: How do you how do you say it sapphires like
Speaker 2: one word? Oh?
Speaker 3: I see right, Okay.
Speaker 1: My accent is such a hybrid because I grew up
Speaker 1: in England but lived in Australia for more than half
Speaker 1: my life now, so also you think I sound English,
Speaker 1: but when I go back to England, they think I
Speaker 1: sound Australian.
Speaker 2: I love it. I love the way you talk. It's
Speaker 2: actually really calming for something. It's oddly poetic. Oh wow,
Speaker 2: like your your cadences are very poetic.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was thinking that as you were talking. So just
Speaker 2: to continue this, uh cell bot metaphor and see metaphor.
Speaker 2: How are urges like waves?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well so you know, and it's just like a
Speaker 1: wave in the sense that you know, if you watch
Speaker 1: your wave, it rises it reaches a peak or a crest,
Speaker 1: and then it falls again into a trough, and then
Speaker 1: it rises and peaks and falls. And our emotions are
Speaker 1: like that. Our urges are like this, even the most
Speaker 1: intense emotions, they will actually rise and reach a peak
Speaker 1: and then for even when you're really angry, you know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't last forever, crests and peaks and then it
Speaker 1: falls again, you know. So one of the skills that
Speaker 1: can really help us to unhook from difficult urges and
Speaker 1: emotions is that is something that's called urge surfing or
Speaker 1: emotions surfing. Yes you know, have you ever been surfing?
Speaker 2: Or yes, yes, I've been thrown around by the waves before.
Speaker 2: And you know that's what you mean by surfing it too.
Speaker 1: And you know you don't want to resist a wave, right,
Speaker 1: because what happens if you try to resist a wave? No, no,
Speaker 1: you know, if you resist it, you get slammed. And
Speaker 1: so surfing a wave means you kind of ride it.
Speaker 1: And it's the same with our own urges, cravings, intense emotions.
Speaker 1: We can learn how to surf them rather than you know,
Speaker 1: in everyday language, particularly with urges, we talk about resisting urges,
Speaker 1: but resisting urges is much like resisting a wave, you know,
Speaker 1: where whereas if we can learn how to surf the urge,
Speaker 1: let it rise up and I just observe it and
Speaker 1: notice it's there without acting on it. And instead of
Speaker 1: struggling with resisting the urge, what we do is we
Speaker 1: focus on our values. We put our attention into meaningful
Speaker 1: you know, values based behavior, behaving like the person we
Speaker 1: want to be, and we kind of take that urge
Speaker 1: with us. We let it kind of play out inside
Speaker 1: us without acting on it, and we focus our attention
Speaker 1: on what we're doing, and we engage and what we're doing,
Speaker 1: and that urge will rise and peek and then fall
Speaker 1: without sweeping us away.
Speaker 2: See that was poetic, the way you said that really was. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 2: absolutely absolutely, and you really can you can really see that.
Speaker 2: Dare I say? If you meditate over a long period
Speaker 2: of time, you really start to get intimate with your
Speaker 2: own patterns of thoughts and you start to realize as well,
Speaker 2: it all has a certain cadence to it, you know, are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you're right there, and it's important this thing
Speaker 1: about meditation, because you know, I'm not knocking it for
Speaker 1: a lot of people do you like you never find
Speaker 1: it useful, but it most of just being realistic. A
Speaker 1: lot of people find it really hard to do. And
Speaker 1: one of the nice things about ACT I think one
Speaker 1: of the things that I fell in love with is
Speaker 1: that it gives us short, simple ways to learn these
Speaker 1: skills without having to meditate. So you can kind of
Speaker 1: think of meditators. You know, you can get very fit
Speaker 1: by lifting lightweights in the gym. You don't have to
Speaker 1: go for the heavyweights. There are benefits of going for
Speaker 1: the heavyweights, but they're not essential to get fitness, and
Speaker 1: so you can think of meditation as like lifting the
Speaker 1: really heavy weights. It does add benefits, but there's so
Speaker 1: much that we can do without meditation, and this is
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why act is kind of become popular,
Speaker 1: because it helps people to develop these mindful of skills.
Speaker 2: And you know.
Speaker 1: Particularly if you've got something like ADHD, for example, you know,
Speaker 1: it's very hard for adhds to sit still and focus
Speaker 1: with their eyes closed, you know, on their breathing for
Speaker 1: a long period of time. But we can give them
Speaker 1: other ways of retraining their attention that they're much more doable.
Speaker 2: Definitely, definitely, and a lot of your exercises or or
Speaker 2: whatever we want to call them. Cards really help with overwhelm, right,
Speaker 2: help with this feeling of the world as too much.
Speaker 2: I'm feeling too much, I'm thinking too much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you know, in a sense, that was one
Speaker 1: of the main motivators for actually creating the card deck,
Speaker 1: because you know, when you're really you know, when you're
Speaker 1: really overwhelmed, it's hard to read a book. A book
Speaker 1: just seems too much. But if you just you know,
Speaker 1: each card has got one little point that it makes
Speaker 1: and one little practice that you can do, So when
Speaker 1: you're overwhelmed, you can pull out one and that one
Speaker 1: little thing can make a difference. You know. One of
Speaker 1: the problems with overwhelmed is you know, your mind's just
Speaker 1: going to everything that's going on in your life, and
Speaker 1: so one of the most useful things you can do
Speaker 1: is marror your focus. Just focus in on one thing,
Speaker 1: one little thing you can do, no matter how small
Speaker 1: that might be, one little positive thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's gotten me through a lot of a lot
Speaker 2: of panic attacks. That advice.
Speaker 3: Yeah great.
Speaker 2: So why why do you bring chess into this?
Speaker 3: Why? Why?
Speaker 2: Why? Why should you be like a chess board?
Speaker 1: There are a lot of great metaphors in act. You know,
Speaker 1: the danger is of metaphor abuse. You know, you kind
Speaker 1: of give somebody so many metaphors they're just.
Speaker 3: Completely overwhelmed by metaphors.
Speaker 1: But you know, the chessboard metaphor is a nice one
Speaker 1: because it basically goes this way. You know, you're the
Speaker 1: one side of the board. The pieces are all your
Speaker 1: sort of negative foots and feelings. On the other side
Speaker 1: of the boarder all your positive foots and feelings, and
Speaker 1: we go through life caught up in this battle. We're
Speaker 1: trying to get the positive feelings to dominate the board
Speaker 1: and wipe out all the negative pieces. But there's two
Speaker 1: problems with going through your life this way. One is
Speaker 1: there's an infinite number of positive and negative feelings, so
Speaker 1: you know this is a battle that can never be won. Now,
Speaker 1: the other problem is that positive pieces actually attract negative pieces.
Speaker 1: You know, you move forward the positive piece I'm a
Speaker 1: good friend, it attracts the negative piece.
Speaker 3: Well, no, you're not.
Speaker 1: What about the time you said this, What about the
Speaker 1: time you did that. You know, you move forward the
Speaker 1: positive piece I am lovable, it attracts the negative piece.
Speaker 3: Well, no, you're not. What about your big.
Speaker 1: Fat and girt, what about your stretch marks, what about
Speaker 1: your balding head. You know, it's kind of so what
Speaker 1: act teaches us to do is step out of that
Speaker 1: battle instead of learn how to be like the chessboard.
Speaker 1: So the chessboard holds the pieces, it's in contact with
Speaker 1: the pieces, but it's not fighting. It's just making the
Speaker 1: space those pieces can move. So again, it's another way
Speaker 1: of just looking at this idea of unhooking from our
Speaker 1: thoughts and feelings another words, Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's really good, it's really good. Why is there no
Speaker 2: delete button in the brain.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't it be great if there was? You know, it
Speaker 1: would be great if we could just kind of delete
Speaker 1: all those unwanted thoughts and all those difficult memories. But
Speaker 1: the brain doesn't work that way. I'm sure most of
Speaker 1: your listeners have heard of neuroplasticity, this idea that the
Speaker 1: brain is plastic and that it changes throughout your life.
Speaker 3: And that's true.
Speaker 1: Your brain does, but it doesn't change by pulling out
Speaker 1: old neural pathways. The way it changes is by laying
Speaker 1: down new neural pathways on top of the old ones.
Speaker 1: So you know, if for thirty or forty years, your
Speaker 1: mind has been saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm a loser. I'm a loser.
Speaker 1: You're not going to magically be able to delete that
Speaker 1: neural pathway. What you can do is lay down a
Speaker 1: new one that kind of goes, oh, there's the loser story. Ah, okay,
Speaker 1: thanks mind. I know you're trying to help. Ah, there
Speaker 1: you are. You're kind of beating me up a bit,
Speaker 1: hoping to motivate me. But hey, it's okay. I'm dealing
Speaker 1: with it.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 3: You know, I know this one.
Speaker 1: So that new neural powerway helps us to canasy. This
Speaker 1: is just a bit of old programming. It's a bunch
Speaker 1: of words popping up. It's my mind trying to help,
Speaker 1: like pulling out the big stick to beat up that donkey,
Speaker 1: you know, and a very popular you know, if I
Speaker 1: say to you, I say to you, Mary had what
Speaker 1: pops up a big dog? But before you said big dog?
Speaker 1: What pops up in your head?
Speaker 2: Little land?
Speaker 3: A little lab? You know?
Speaker 1: And so you know, anyway programming, and suppose you can't
Speaker 1: get rid of that. Right if you grew up in
Speaker 1: North America, Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, then you
Speaker 1: learned the rhyme Mary had a little lamb at a
Speaker 1: very young age. You can't just delete that. Any point
Speaker 1: in your life someone comes up to you and says,
Speaker 1: Mary had You know, the first thing that pops into
Speaker 1: your head is little lab. You may then say, oh,
Speaker 1: a big black dog, but the first thing that pops
Speaker 1: off this little lamb. I had some old programming. You
Speaker 1: can't delete it, but you can add new stuff on
Speaker 1: top that helped you to see here's my old programming.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like, you know, don't don't think of a
Speaker 2: white bear, and it can't help, but think of white bears. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that never helps, but yeah, we can definitely forge new
Speaker 2: pathways for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, all the self help approaches and
Speaker 1: even old CBT approaches actually deduced to encourage that sort
Speaker 1: of something called thought stuff being so an unwanted thought
Speaker 1: would show up and you'd silently say stop, or you'd
Speaker 1: imagine a stop sign and you push it away. But
Speaker 1: hopefully no modern approach encourages that, because the research is
Speaker 1: so clear that you can push those thoughts away for
Speaker 1: a short space of time, but in the long term
Speaker 1: there's a rebound effect. They come back with greater and
Speaker 1: greater frequency and intensity. So yeah, as she said, if
Speaker 1: you're trying not to think about white bears, you might
Speaker 1: be able to push those thoughts away for a short
Speaker 1: space of time, but in the long term it's going
Speaker 1: to be Yeah, it's going to be full of white
Speaker 1: bears everywhere going crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's not fun when that happened.
Speaker 1: What is the If you've got a phobia of white bears,
Speaker 1: then it's really not fun.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, they could help you with the exposure of therapy.
Speaker 2: Perhaps that's true.
Speaker 1: I don't think about being eaten by white bears very slowly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, who knows. The brain is a funny thing. You
Speaker 2: never know how a person's going to react. What is
Speaker 2: you know, what is the self esteem trap? Why a trap?
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, well, you know, self esteem It didn't really
Speaker 1: exist until about the nineteen sixties. It kind of one
Speaker 1: of one of the USA's exports to the rest of
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 2: That's funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this idea that you have to think positively about
Speaker 1: yourself and have a high self image and reflect on
Speaker 1: all your strengths and your positives and everything that's great
Speaker 1: about you. And you know, this has just become part
Speaker 1: of the culture now. But you know, before nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: that would have been a very alien concept. And parents
Speaker 1: tell this to their children, you have to have high
Speaker 1: self esteem, and teachers tell it to the kids, and
Speaker 1: coaches tell it to their coaches.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: And the problem is that, you know, I mean, there's
Speaker 1: no doubt that low self esteem is problematic, but high
Speaker 1: self esteem has a dark side too. I mean, what's
Speaker 1: the danger of going around thinking you're the greatest, You're wonderful?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Is that the same thing as narcissism? Though, because I've
Speaker 2: seen high self esteem is distinguished from narcissism.
Speaker 1: Well, I think it overlaps, so you know, high self
Speaker 1: esteem easily overlaps with narcissism, over confidence, arrogance, egotism, inflated
Speaker 1: self confidence. So that's the dark side of high self esteem,
Speaker 1: you know, if you can hold these stories lightly. I mean,
Speaker 1: act is more focused on self acceptance and self compassion.
Speaker 1: So self esteem is kind of about focusing on all
Speaker 1: my positives, all my strengths, everything that's right on good
Speaker 1: about me, where self acceptance is accepting myself with my
Speaker 1: pluses and my mind is acknowledging my strengths and my
Speaker 1: you know, positive size, but also acknowledging my weaknesses and
Speaker 1: my failures and accepting myself with all of that. Self
Speaker 1: compassion is being kind to myself when I'm suffering and
Speaker 1: I'm in pain. So in that we kind of emphasize
Speaker 1: the self acceptance of self compassion. We're not saying that
Speaker 1: self esteem is bad. It's just not part of a model,
Speaker 1: and there is a downside to it, certainly as it's
Speaker 1: popularly taught in a lot of self help programs, there
Speaker 1: is a lot of emphasis I'm trying to really build
Speaker 1: up that positive thinking, and that can have you know,
Speaker 1: it's just like the chessboard metaphor we were talking about.
Speaker 3: Actually, there's actually some good research that.
Speaker 1: People with low self esteem that practice positive self affirmations
Speaker 1: often get worse, not better, because they get caught up
Speaker 1: in that battle. They're saying, you know, I'm lovable, I'm worthwhile,
Speaker 1: and then mind comes back with well, no, you're not
Speaker 1: about this, and what about that? They end up worse off.
Speaker 2: Well, narcissists don't think like that. It's need to write
Speaker 2: a book for narcissists to be a little bit harsher
Speaker 2: on yourself.
Speaker 1: Well, what happens with narcissists is they're kind of deeply afraid,
Speaker 1: deep inside that they're not good enough, that they're worthless,
Speaker 1: and so they're just desperately clinging to this story I'm wonderful,
Speaker 1: I'm the greatest, and no one else is good enough,
Speaker 1: and that's their strategy from escaping a deep seated sense
Speaker 1: of self worth, of low self worth.
Speaker 2: Sorry, somebody is jealous of narcissists. No, I'm jocking. I'm
Speaker 2: going that's a lot labor justification there for No.
Speaker 1: You see this in therapy, you know, occasionally, like you know,
Speaker 1: most really narcissistic clients are not great therapy clients because
Speaker 1: they won't go there, they won't acknowl the difficult stuff.
Speaker 1: But sometimes they will, and what you find is just
Speaker 1: this deep sense of worthlessness, emptiness and just clinging to
Speaker 1: this story that I'm a great person to try to
Speaker 1: escape that. So it's very difficult to work with in therapy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's true. My friend Keith Campbell says the
Speaker 2: only narcissists who end up on the counts are either
Speaker 2: vulnerable narcissists or grandiose narcissists who've been forced to go
Speaker 2: there by their girlfriends. And he's a world expert on
Speaker 2: narcissism Keith Campbell.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you know, it depends on the type of
Speaker 1: therapy you go to. If you go to the sort
Speaker 1: of therapist who just lets you trying to you know,
Speaker 1: talk or about you know. I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: the same term in USA, but in Australia we could
Speaker 1: call it supportive counseling where the therapist doesn't really do
Speaker 1: very much. They just kind of listen and on their
Speaker 1: head and valid days how difficult life is. And you know,
Speaker 1: so a nice sister would probably take very well to
Speaker 1: that kind of therapy because it doesn't challenge.
Speaker 2: That's a good point. We're talking about. Disciplinary therapy is
Speaker 2: what we're talking about. That they don't like it now,
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's that's not a thing, folks.
Speaker 2: I was joking, it's not the thing.
Speaker 3: It is disciplinary therapy, but you could start.
Speaker 1: It, Scott, I'm sure that that would be people.
Speaker 2: Basically, disciplinary therapy is where narcissts go where you tell
Speaker 2: them you're a loser. You you basically do the exact
Speaker 2: opposite of like, you know, you're the point of your
Speaker 2: whole book. It turns it all around. I think that'd
Speaker 2: be a good stand up comedy bit. I'm actually adding
Speaker 2: this to my list for my next stand up act.
Speaker 2: You know, the exact opposite. You get it, You get
Speaker 2: what I'm you, you get what I'm.
Speaker 3: Saying I do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's talk about my favorite one in your whole book. Well, okay,
Speaker 2: one of my topmostly top three, top three favorite noticing
Speaker 2: your direction. This is something that you can even course
Speaker 2: correct yourself at any point, right, like you can if
Speaker 2: you Sometimes we get an autopilot and we could be
Speaker 2: like just noticing that we're not really moving the direction
Speaker 2: we want to be moving, right Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean that's a really just useful thing to do.
Speaker 2: Is just a quick check in through the day, what
Speaker 2: directions am I going in? And it really is never
Speaker 2: too late to change course. It's in normal everyday life,
Speaker 2: it's like, okay, let's try something different. That's when it's
Speaker 2: good to drop a hangkut and just kind of start,
Speaker 2: you know, have a stretch, take a breath, notice what
Speaker 2: you're thinking, notice what you're feeling, notice what you're doing,
Speaker 2: and then consider, you know, how can I course correct
Speaker 2: What's a little thing that I can do, tiny thing
Speaker 2: to start moving in the direction I want to move
Speaker 2: just it's a hopeful. It's so hopeful to feel like
Speaker 2: you can course correct, like my friend Sharon Salisburg says,
Speaker 2: you know, like you can return your breath anytime you want.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's you can start over, she says, any moment,
Speaker 2: you can just start over by returning to your breath.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Sharon Salzburg work, Yeah, Yeah, she's.
Speaker 2: Great legend like you. She's a legend.
Speaker 1: She's got a very calming voice, doesn't she.
Speaker 2: She's a very calming voice.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I love hanging out with her. I feel very calm.
Speaker 2: So the dance of love and pain and this is
Speaker 2: not an eighties rock song, right it could be, couldn't
Speaker 2: It could be a good song or something. It could be.
Speaker 2: It could be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean basically love and pain. You know, they
Speaker 1: are intimate dance partners. They often go hand in hand,
Speaker 1: you know, not all the time, but when you're in
Speaker 1: a loving relationship with someone, boy, oh boy, there's going
Speaker 1: to be pain. And that's not what you want or
Speaker 1: what you expect or what you hope for. That you
Speaker 1: you can't have a loving, committed relationship with anybody, with
Speaker 1: your partner, or your children or your friends, or your
Speaker 1: family without pain showing up, you know, because you have
Speaker 1: different wants, different needs, different expectations. But also when you
Speaker 1: love someone and something bad happens to them, that's intensely
Speaker 1: painful for you too. But our culture doesn't really prepare
Speaker 1: us very well to deal with the pain. And certainly
Speaker 1: popular movies and books and TV shows, it's all about
Speaker 1: the wonderful feelings of being in love. And you know,
Speaker 1: particularly when it comes to romance and romantic movies, you know,
Speaker 1: it's love, love, love, love, love, and you're a little
Speaker 1: bit a little bit of pain in that movie. But
Speaker 1: it's mostly about love and feeling wonderful. And you know,
Speaker 1: in real life it's not like that. There's a lot
Speaker 1: more pain that we are one form or another. Oh
Speaker 1: so we need to learn how to open up and
Speaker 1: make room for the pain in order to have the
Speaker 1: love and have the connection and do the thing things
Speaker 1: necessary to build those rich relationships with others.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you really say so beautiful, You say things that
Speaker 2: matter also hurt. That really hit. That hit when I
Speaker 2: want to learn. Also, you said it, you said it,
Speaker 2: and and it's it's just it's a really profound truth
Speaker 2: of human existence. It's like you can't, you can't ignore it.
Speaker 1: Steve Hayes, the guy who created it, sets on some
Speaker 1: commitment of therapy. He's got a nice way of saying it.
Speaker 1: He says, we we hurt where we care. We hurt
Speaker 1: where we care, you know. And that's true, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, there's definitely a potential for for hurt.
Speaker 2: And that's what you're opening yourself up to with the
Speaker 2: price of admission.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, absolutely, yeah, it's you know, I often say vulnerability.
Speaker 1: He is the price of admission to intimacy. You know,
Speaker 1: if we if we want to have intimate relationships with
Speaker 1: with other people, we need to let them know what
Speaker 1: we're feeling and what we're thinking and what's going on
Speaker 1: for us and what we care about.
Speaker 3: And we're vulnerable when we do that, you know, vuln vulnerable.
Speaker 1: Vulnerability comes from the Latin word vulness.
Speaker 2: Which means wound. You know.
Speaker 1: So normally we've got our arm around, we've got our
Speaker 1: defenses up, and we take off our armor. We can
Speaker 1: be wounded, we can be her. And this intimacy is
Speaker 1: so often scary and difficult, and why we often avoid it.
Speaker 3: Why Tinder exists exactly cure for all our intimacy.
Speaker 2: Problems for people, for people who don't want intimacy, are
Speaker 2: scared of it.
Speaker 3: What what? Why?
Speaker 2: Why should you you told people to stop seeking the
Speaker 2: magic potion? Why why would you do that to people?
Speaker 2: Tell them this, start seeking it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, so you're talking about the magic potion of
Speaker 1: confidence or willpower or discipline or motivation. People have got
Speaker 1: a number of magic potions and many magic potions, and
Speaker 1: you know that people are looking for this magic potion
Speaker 1: because they say things like I'll do it when I'm
Speaker 1: more confident, or I'll do it when I've got the willpower,
Speaker 1: or I can't do it because I don't have the willpower,
Speaker 1: or I can't do it because I don't have the motivation.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of it's.
Speaker 1: A language trap. It creates the idea that there's this
Speaker 1: magic pill or magic potion that's called motivation or willpower
Speaker 1: or discipline, and when I've got that, then I'm going
Speaker 1: to start doing the things that are important, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't work that way. Basically, what happens as we start
Speaker 1: doing the things that are important and making room for
Speaker 1: all the difficult thoughts and feelings that are guaranteed to
Speaker 1: show up.
Speaker 3: Along the way.
Speaker 1: Then if we do that over and over again, keep
Speaker 1: doing the important, meaningful stuff even though difficult thoughts and
Speaker 1: feelings are showing up, then other people will say, oh,
Speaker 1: you've got discipline, Oh you've got motivation, you've got willpower,
Speaker 1: And other people will think we found the magic potion
Speaker 1: that there really never was one in the first place.
Speaker 1: It's about acting on your values, doing what's important, over
Speaker 1: and over and over again, and making room for all
Speaker 1: the psychological and emotional barriers that show up as you
Speaker 1: keep doing that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very true. In a lot of ways, taking
Speaker 2: the route of putting their hard work in creates the meaning,
Speaker 2: which creates hurt. So where can matter portion again?
Speaker 3: Now, Hank, I'm I'm joking. Sell it through my website.
Speaker 3: We've got a special offer just for twenty four hours.
Speaker 2: No, I mean, good point, good point, good point. I
Speaker 2: mean you talk about how precious life is. And I
Speaker 2: mean again, I want to re read a point I
Speaker 2: made at the very beginning of this episode, which is
Speaker 2: like this book, this notes what can I call a book?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this book is like all encompassing, you know,
Speaker 2: like it's not just change your thoughts, you know, change
Speaker 2: your life. No, it's like jump into your life, jump
Speaker 2: into the stream of experience full and live fully. You know,
Speaker 2: you have this whole section on the preciousness of life.
Speaker 2: Can you just talk a little bit about that. I
Speaker 2: love that's that's top three top three favorite ones.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, yeah, well, just coming back to jumping into it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: jump in if you're willing and ready to kind of
Speaker 1: jump in. But if you're not, also just dip a
Speaker 1: toe in, you know. You know, there might be times
Speaker 1: where you jump in, times where you dive in, but
Speaker 1: there might be times where you just dip a toe in.
Speaker 1: You might just put a foot in.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It's kind of as long as you're engaging in life,
Speaker 1: that's the key thing. The it's a given that throughout
Speaker 1: the day, they'll throughout the week, and throughout the month,
Speaker 1: there'll be times that we're more able or more willing
Speaker 1: to kind of engage and do what happens. But even
Speaker 1: a little bit makes a difference. So it's okay if
Speaker 1: you just want to stiff it down. But yeah, life
Speaker 1: is precious. I mean we know this that you know,
Speaker 1: we never know how long we've got, we never know
Speaker 1: how long our loved ones have got. We're always shot
Speaker 1: when when bad things, you know, if people die or
Speaker 1: get sick or injured. And so it's about making the
Speaker 1: most of the very short time that we have and
Speaker 1: throughout the day, I mean, most of us waste large
Speaker 1: amounts of the day just going through the motions on
Speaker 1: automatic pilot. And if we can just start to come
Speaker 1: back and just appreciate this little moment of life right
Speaker 1: now and the next one and the next one, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it makes a difference just to appreciating the
Speaker 1: cup of coffee that you're drinking, or appreciating the meal
Speaker 1: that you're eating, or appreciating the smile on the face
Speaker 1: of somebody you love, or just appreciating you know, like
Speaker 1: in everyday language, we have that phrase stop and smell
Speaker 1: the roses, right, yea back in North America. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, so we've got these sayings there. People have
Speaker 1: recognized the importance of this for a long long time.
Speaker 1: Or count your blessings, you know, but most of us
Speaker 1: forget to do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean you you say, find a find the treasure, right,
Speaker 2: That's that's a great reframe like that. You wake up
Speaker 2: the morning being like, hey, I'm going to find the
Speaker 2: treasure of this human existence. That's a.
Speaker 1: Well, there is stuff that you can treasure even in
Speaker 1: the midst of great pain and suffering.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like, I agree.
Speaker 1: I think funerals are a very dramatic example of this.
Speaker 1: You know, funerals are full of pain and sadness, they're
Speaker 1: also full of love and compassion and people reaching out
Speaker 1: to each other. And you know, there's a you can
Speaker 1: You're not trying to escape the pain, the sadness, the grief,
Speaker 1: but you can at the same time appreciate the love
Speaker 1: and the support and the connection and the compassion that
Speaker 1: is there, you know.
Speaker 3: And that's what I mean by treasure.
Speaker 1: It's not ignoring all the painful stuff, but it's also
Speaker 1: treasuring that the beautiful stuff that goes with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so true. How can you like not set yourself
Speaker 2: up to fail? Because I like, I think a lot
Speaker 2: of people do it in all all sorts of ways.
Speaker 2: They don't realize they are actually setting themselves up.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's inevitable that we will.
Speaker 1: At times set ourselves up to fail. But but we
Speaker 1: can get better at at not doing that by and
Speaker 1: by just being more realistic with our goals. And you know,
Speaker 1: so many of us kind of yeah, I'm going to
Speaker 1: do it, especially if you've just listened to it. You know,
Speaker 1: an American motivational speaker.
Speaker 3: You can do anything. Just your man and you can
Speaker 3: transform the universe. That's good.
Speaker 2: That was good. Good impression of me. Good impression of me.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, like it's got a motivational speaker has
Speaker 1: to have an American accent like it just it doesn't,
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't work with an English accent.
Speaker 3: You know, it just used your mind sensible the universe, you.
Speaker 2: Know, especially a Texas accent, which is which is the
Speaker 2: way you used.
Speaker 1: People do often set themselves unrealistic goals and and then
Speaker 1: course that piles up the pressure and you know, so
Speaker 1: it's all useful just to ask yourself, you know, on
Speaker 1: a scale of zero to ten, how realistic is this?
Speaker 3: Ten is? This is completely realistic. I'm definitely going to
Speaker 3: do it.
Speaker 1: Even if there's a zombie holocaust, I'm going to do it.
Speaker 1: It means there's no way I'm going to do it.
Speaker 1: I'm saying the words now, but it's not going to happen.
Speaker 1: I ask people to make sure it's at least a seven.
Speaker 1: If you can't score it a seven. Then change it,
Speaker 1: make it smaller, make it simpler, make it easier, or
Speaker 1: do something different. There's no point setting yourself up to fail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, excellent point. What is the happiness trap? Not on
Speaker 2: me that I never asked you that question, but I
Speaker 2: want to. I want you to.
Speaker 3: Can you?
Speaker 2: Can you tie everything up in a bowl that we
Speaker 2: talked about today and just answer what happiness trap is?
Speaker 3: Could do? You could also recut the interview.
Speaker 2: I think this is funny. I think this is funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I think this is good. This is good
Speaker 1: role modeling on your path of how kind of change direction?
Speaker 3: New point and answer.
Speaker 2: It'll be a good It'll be a summary, do you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like a summary of everything we just
Speaker 2: talked about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: So the happiness strap both the book and the deck
Speaker 1: of cards.
Speaker 3: I mean. The name comes from.
Speaker 1: The idea that popular ideas about happiness are misleading and inaccurate,
Speaker 1: and they'll actually make it miserable if you base your
Speaker 1: life on those ideas. And the most common of these
Speaker 1: is the idea that happiness means feeling good. If you
Speaker 1: look in most dictionaries, happiness is defined as a state
Speaker 1: of pleasure or contentment. So if that's your notion of happiness,
Speaker 1: then there can be no such thing as lasting happiness.
Speaker 1: I mean, how long can a state of pleasure or contentment?
Speaker 1: Possibly you asked and so, But people hold onto this idea,
Speaker 1: and a link to that idea is the idea that
Speaker 1: if happiness is feeling good, that means I need to
Speaker 1: get rid of all the unpleasant feelings or the negative
Speaker 1: thoughts or the painful emotions. That's how I get to
Speaker 1: be happy. And both of those ideas will just make
Speaker 1: your life miserable, because if you are going to live
Speaker 1: a full human life, living your values, behaving like the
Speaker 1: person you want to be, doing what's important, then you're
Speaker 1: going to feel the full range of human emotions. You're
Speaker 1: going to feel the pleasant emotions of love and joy,
Speaker 1: and you're going to feel the painful emotions of fear
Speaker 1: and sadness and anger and guilt and so forth. You
Speaker 1: don't get one without the other. So I if you
Speaker 1: asked me to define happiness, I would define it as
Speaker 1: living a rich, full and meaningful life in which you
Speaker 1: feel the full range of emotions, both the pleasant and
Speaker 1: painful ones. But that's not what most people mean by happiness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's a no summary I mean of
Speaker 2: a lot of the themes we talked about today. You know,
Speaker 2: I've known about you for quite some time. I'm glad
Speaker 2: we find a guid a chance to talk. Quite a
Speaker 2: few colleagues of mine in the field of positive psychology
Speaker 2: have told me they think your book, The Happiness Trap
Speaker 2: is the best book written on happiness. Oh wow, So
Speaker 2: I'm glad, you know. I multiple people have told me that. Wow.
Speaker 2: Your name has been in my consciousness for for a
Speaker 2: good number of years now, so it was nice to
Speaker 2: kind of get a refresh on you and to read
Speaker 2: these notes and uh, or these these cards, I should say,
Speaker 2: to read these cards and and to talk to you.
Speaker 2: So thank you so much for being on my podcast.
Speaker 1: Oh, thank you, thank you so well.
Speaker 3: You just made my day with that feedback.
Speaker 1: That's lovely, to be sure, thank thank you, and it's
Speaker 1: a lovely if it's lovely to uh. I've really enjoyed
Speaker 1: the interview. It's been great. And if you next time
Speaker 1: you see Sharon Teller, I'm a huge fan and I
Speaker 1: will Okay, thank you