Speaker 1: Fear has nothing to do with the future. It has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with uncertainty. As a functional emotion, it
Speaker 1: evolved to help us handle certain present danger.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 2: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Tracy
Speaker 2: Dennis Tuari, a scientist, entrepreneur, and author. She's a Professor
Speaker 2: of psychology and neuroscience, director of the Emotion Regulation Lab
Speaker 2: at Hunter College, the City University of New York, and
Speaker 2: co founder and CSO of Arcade Therapeutics, where she translates
Speaker 2: cutting edge neuroscience research into gamified clinically validated digital therapeutics
Speaker 2: for mental health. Tracy has been featured throughout the media,
Speaker 2: including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NPR,
Speaker 2: and many others. Today, Eric, Jinny and Tracy discuss her
Speaker 2: book Future Tense, Why Anxiety Is Good for You Even
Speaker 2: Though it Feels bad.
Speaker 3: Hi Tracy, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Hi Eric, great to meet you.
Speaker 3: We are here in New York City together. We're fortunate
Speaker 3: enough to interview some people in person this week, and
Speaker 3: we're so glad you joined us. I also have Ginny
Speaker 3: here with me.
Speaker 5: Yes, Hello everybody, Hello Tracy, Hi Jenny.
Speaker 3: We're going to be discussing your book, which is called
Speaker 3: Future Tense, Why Anxiety is Good for You Even Though
Speaker 3: it Feels bad. But before we do, we'll start with
Speaker 3: the parable, like we always do, and I'm going to.
Speaker 4: Let Ginny do it, sure, all right? So the parable
Speaker 4: goes like this, There's a.
Speaker 5: Grandparent talking with their grandchild and they say, in life,
Speaker 5: there are two wolves inside of us who are always
Speaker 5: a battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 5: like kindness and bravery and love, and one is a
Speaker 5: bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear,
Speaker 5: and the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 5: looks up at their grandparent and says, well, which one wins,
Speaker 5: And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 5: like to ask you what that parable means to you
Speaker 5: in your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: For me, it's a really fascinating one because in the
Speaker 1: work I'm doing in mental health, in reconceptualizing how we
Speaker 1: think about anxiety, we're confronted with binaries all the time.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of us have come to think
Speaker 1: of mental health as the absence of emotional discomfort, and similarly,
Speaker 1: anxiety it is a disease or it's a character flaw, right,
Speaker 1: So we're very used to thinking in these binaries. And
Speaker 1: what do you do with a binary one's good, one's bad.
Speaker 1: You somehow make the other one perfectly present in your
Speaker 1: life and you destroy the other. And the thing about
Speaker 1: that parable, what's salient to me is that both wolves
Speaker 1: are always there. So it's not like the job of
Speaker 1: the individuals to destroy the bad wolf per se, at
Speaker 1: least that's not. What it speaks to me is saying
Speaker 1: it's acknowledging that that bad wolf is there. And so
Speaker 1: what I think about and talk about a lot these
Speaker 1: days in reference to my book and sort of getting
Speaker 1: out there and trying to talk to people about anxiety
Speaker 1: a bit differently than a lot of mental health professionals do.
Speaker 1: It's to say, you know, anxiety can be a disorder,
Speaker 1: but actually we're all born anxious.
Speaker 4: We all have anxiety.
Speaker 1: It's actually something we evolve to have that's an incredible ally,
Speaker 1: so to only treat it as an enemy as the
Speaker 1: bad wolf is actually setting us up to do more
Speaker 1: unhelpful things, things that aren't useful when it comes to
Speaker 1: actually living well with anxiety and learning to be anxious
Speaker 1: in the right way.
Speaker 3: You start the book off by quoting a philosopher who says,
Speaker 3: whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way
Speaker 3: has learned the ultimate tell us a little bit more
Speaker 3: about that, because it seems to point to there being
Speaker 3: a right way and a wrong way to be anxious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in some ways, I think the wrong way is
Speaker 1: when we struggle with anxiety disorders. And so it's really
Speaker 1: important to start by making that distinction between what is
Speaker 1: anxiety and what is an anxiety disorder. So anxiety you
Speaker 1: have to start and say it's an emotion. I'm a
Speaker 1: clinical psychologist by training. I do neuroscience research, but I'm
Speaker 1: also an emotion scientist, and all of us emotion scientists
Speaker 1: are Darwinians. Essentially, there's something called functional emotion theory where
Speaker 1: we're really drawing on Darwin's theory, a third of which
Speaker 1: had to do with emotions. His third book in his
Speaker 1: theory was The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals,
Speaker 1: And in that Darwin and emotion scientists talk about, well,
Speaker 1: why do emotions exist, how do they help our survival?
Speaker 1: Why are they adaptive? And anxiety is an emotion that
Speaker 1: is an apprehension about the uncertain future. A temporary set
Speaker 1: of thoughts and feelings are that experience of anguish or
Speaker 1: angst about the future. And that's important because we're starting
Speaker 1: up by saying that anxiety is temporary. Right, So like
Speaker 1: every emotion we have, an emotion, it rises, it lasts
Speaker 1: for a while, it falls, it's of a certain intensity.
Speaker 1: They don't last forever. But when we're anxious, a lot
Speaker 1: of us fear that it's going to spiral out of
Speaker 1: control immediately because it feels really bad, and a lot
Speaker 1: of I think young people feel that way too, that
Speaker 1: as soon as that little twinge and the butterflies in
Speaker 1: your stomach starts, I think kids have learned to fear
Speaker 1: that it's going to go into a panic attack immediately.
Speaker 1: But we don't think that way about other emotions, like
Speaker 1: when we're really happy.
Speaker 4: We don't think, oh.
Speaker 1: Boy, let's pump the brakes on this one because it
Speaker 1: might spiral into like overwhelming joy. So it's really important
Speaker 1: to know that anxiety is an emotion. It's temporary, and
Speaker 1: it's all about the future. So it exists in the
Speaker 1: space between where we are now and where we want
Speaker 1: to be, so that when we're anxious, we become these
Speaker 1: mental time travelers where we're thinking around the bend and
Speaker 1: there could be something bad that happens. So I'm anxious
Speaker 1: about doing a podcast interview with two wonderful people and
Speaker 1: I hope it goes well, but it might be a disaster.
Speaker 1: So you're thinking about this future with that negative possibility.
Speaker 1: But you also know when you're anxious that something good
Speaker 1: is still possible, because otherwise you would be despair, you'd
Speaker 1: give up, but anxiety keeps you in it to win it.
Speaker 1: So it's this emotion that's helping us look to this
Speaker 1: uncertain future and manage it so that we can thrive.
Speaker 1: And it spurs us, like every emotion, not just to
Speaker 1: get that information about the future and think about it,
Speaker 1: but then to prepare for it. So it's not just
Speaker 1: fight flight. Maybe it prepares us to protect ourselves, but
Speaker 1: anxiety also prepares us to think outside the box, to persist,
Speaker 1: to be creative, to seek social connection so that we
Speaker 1: can find support. So anxiety is doing all of these
Speaker 1: things when we lean into it, when we take it
Speaker 1: as information and preparation and gain skills to ride that
Speaker 1: wave of anxiety. That's being anxious in the right way.
Speaker 1: And when we have times in our life when we're
Speaker 1: not so good at that, we're still being anxious in
Speaker 1: the right way. Anxiety can be really intense and really
Speaker 1: bad many days of our lives, but we only have
Speaker 1: an anxiety disorder, which is perhaps being anxious not in
Speaker 1: the right way, when it's causing functional impairment the ways
Speaker 1: we're coping with those feelings. So if we're socially anxious,
Speaker 1: we refuse to go on that podcast, we stop going
Speaker 1: to work, we cut off from our friends, we're disrupting
Speaker 1: our life in these ways that limit our joy and
Speaker 1: our emotional repertoire and our ability to do what we
Speaker 1: need to do. So for me, almost all anxiety is
Speaker 1: a right emotion, and this life is to help us
Speaker 1: figure out how to use anxiety as an ally and
Speaker 1: negotiate it so that we can create that future we want.
Speaker 5: It's so skillful because I mean, anxiety is a universal
Speaker 5: human experience. So if we make that the problem, then
Speaker 5: you know, we're very often going to be faced with
Speaker 5: something that we're trying to get rid of, but we
Speaker 5: can never rid our life of. So that's quite the
Speaker 5: battle to engage in days.
Speaker 4: It's impossible. It's impossible.
Speaker 5: So this other stance of saying, well, what's its purpose
Speaker 5: and you know, how can I work with it skillfully
Speaker 5: is radical and really radically life changing. I think, you
Speaker 5: know you talked about anxiety is anxiety about an uncertain future?
Speaker 5: And it occurred to me when you said that, I
Speaker 5: was like, is that somewhat redundant? I mean, isn't the
Speaker 5: future fundamentally uncertain?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: Because I mean even if we think, like.
Speaker 5: Well, in just a minute, she's going to answer the
Speaker 5: question I just asked, well, also you could stand up
Speaker 5: in an unforeseen life fit of rage and storm out
Speaker 5: the door because I offended you. I mean, we never
Speaker 5: know what's going to happen. So if the future is
Speaker 5: always uncertain and anxiety is an inevitability of life, then
Speaker 5: I think working with it, not it as the problem,
Speaker 5: but the way we might be interacting with it is
Speaker 5: quite the thing we can work with as smart You
Speaker 5: said that anxiety is a fascinating emotion because it acts
Speaker 5: a lot like fear but contains qualities of hope. As
Speaker 5: soon as I read that, I thought, oh, yes, yes
Speaker 5: it does. There is positivity, you know, faced with uncertainty,
Speaker 5: we tend to think only of like certain doom and
Speaker 5: gloom and failure and awful things happening, But actually there's
Speaker 5: an element of good and hope for good that's there.
Speaker 5: Can you talk a little bit more about that connection
Speaker 5: between anxiety and hope.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's one of my favorite parts of anxiety too,
Speaker 1: because because it's in that space between where we are
Speaker 1: now and where we could be in that uncertain, redundant
Speaker 1: the future, what else exists there?
Speaker 4: Creativity, hope, Yeah, you're.
Speaker 1: In it to win it Still, when you're anxious. As
Speaker 1: painful and as overwhelming and terrible as it can be,
Speaker 1: you have not given up. And it's also important when
Speaker 1: we say it can look like fear, to know that
Speaker 1: it's not quite the same as fear, because fear has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with the future. It has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with uncertainty. As a functional emotion, it evolved to
Speaker 1: help us handle certain present danger. So fear is that
Speaker 1: snake crawling across the room right now about to bite me,
Speaker 1: Which it's not for anyone who's listening to this, but
Speaker 1: if it were, I would have no doubts that there's
Speaker 1: a snake right there, you know, and it looks dangerous
Speaker 1: to me. And fear is that information of present danger,
Speaker 1: and it prepares me to fight, take flight, or freeze.
Speaker 1: That's the preparation. That's not anxiety. I'm anxious about a
Speaker 1: hike I might want to take next week where I
Speaker 1: heard there were sightings of snakes, and as I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about that, I'm thinking, oh, I love this hike, but
Speaker 1: there could be some dangerous snakes. So with that uncertainty,
Speaker 1: what does anxiety help me do? I think, Well, I
Speaker 1: could not go, or I could prepare. I could maybe
Speaker 1: you know, not go on the trails where it's not
Speaker 1: so snaky. I could information seek, ye, I could bring
Speaker 1: I don't know, anti venom. But it allows you to
Speaker 1: actually hopefully work towards and build that future you want
Speaker 1: where you can thrive. So fear helps us deal with
Speaker 1: the effect there are snakes in the world, and anxiety
Speaker 1: helps us create a world in which we can have
Speaker 1: awesome hikes. So for me, I think this is an
Speaker 1: essential emotion, and when we reject it, we're just cutting
Speaker 1: off what evolution has handed us. Is perhaps the most
Speaker 1: powerful ally we have in navigating uncertainty, which is the
Speaker 1: human condition, which is the condition of every living thing
Speaker 1: on the planet. So that's why I think that you
Speaker 1: just have to hold the two together.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you say that what will happen next contains both
Speaker 5: positivity and peril.
Speaker 3: It's both.
Speaker 5: I love that distinction too. Between fear is the present
Speaker 5: moment when you're afraid, you're in the present moment when
Speaker 5: you're anxious, You've time traveled, yes, And it can also
Speaker 5: teach you a little bit about what you care about,
Speaker 5: what you wish for, what you want.
Speaker 1: When you listen to when you don't reject it out
Speaker 1: of hand, and that's the key.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I think one of the reasons that we push
Speaker 3: away or want to push away anxiety. Some of it is,
Speaker 3: as you said, we've been conditioned to do so, but
Speaker 3: it also feels fundamentally unpleasant. And while part of our
Speaker 3: orientation in life should be towards the future and building
Speaker 3: the future we want, part of our life experience is
Speaker 3: also very much about how we are feeling now. So
Speaker 3: how do you think about balancing that? Like, Okay, I
Speaker 3: do want some degree of anxiety because it does help
Speaker 3: me prepare for the future wisely, but a lot of it,
Speaker 3: even if it doesn't become functionally impairing, an awful lot
Speaker 3: of it might render the quality of my life, even
Speaker 3: if the things on the outsider working out, Like well,
Speaker 3: I got prepared for that interview and it went well,
Speaker 3: but I've been miserable for three days up till then. Right,
Speaker 3: So talk about that balance, because I think that's not
Speaker 3: what you're saying, is like, any amount of it that
Speaker 3: tortures you is fine as long as it produces good results.
Speaker 3: Right now, no, thank you.
Speaker 1: That is such a crucial point and question. Right if
Speaker 1: we say, well, anxieties and take me into the future,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to be a type a hamster wheel
Speaker 1: like you know, die at fifty, you know, from a
Speaker 1: heart attack kind of person. And that's definitely not what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Here's the thing. We have to be like
Speaker 1: emotional ninjas in our life, I think to be healthy.
Speaker 1: I think that when we do think of mental health
Speaker 1: as the absence of emotional discomfort, but really it's the
Speaker 1: ability to work through, to struggle with, to do the
Speaker 1: messy work that it takes to be human, right, and
Speaker 1: to bear that suffering sometimes in that discomfort, right. That's
Speaker 1: what mental health is in my mind. We don't talk
Speaker 1: about it that way, in this sort of mental health
Speaker 1: industrial complex kind of way. I think most of us
Speaker 1: don't intend to send that message, but I think that's
Speaker 1: the message we have. So when I'm thinking about what
Speaker 1: we need to do to both have a quality of
Speaker 1: life in the present but work through, you know, the
Speaker 1: inevitable anxiety in our life, I think that instead of
Speaker 1: going right to the letting go right to the let's
Speaker 1: just be in the present or let's just we actually
Speaker 1: have to build skills with anxiety so that we can
Speaker 1: do just as you're saying, not let it become this
Speaker 1: misery producer in our life. And I think actually, when
Speaker 1: we engage with anxiety, we will find more joy, more optionality,
Speaker 1: more creativity. So I sort of frame the approach we
Speaker 1: can take to shift our mindset about anxiety this way
Speaker 1: as the three ls, that you have to first build
Speaker 1: skills in listening to anxiety and then leveraging it, which is,
Speaker 1: as you say, this sort of future thinking, but then
Speaker 1: always then letting go and in that process of listening,
Speaker 1: like what is anxiety telling me? If it's waking me
Speaker 1: up at four am? And it's like, woken me up
Speaker 1: at four am every single morning this week, this is
Speaker 1: not a quality of life, right, But we can't just
Speaker 1: suppress it. Everything we suppress comes back stronger. We can't
Speaker 1: even necessarily ignore it or medicate it. You know, there's
Speaker 1: something that is not right in our life. And so
Speaker 1: to figure out if there is something to figure out,
Speaker 1: we first have to build skills in listening to it
Speaker 1: and saying, okay, I'm worrying at four am, let me breathe,
Speaker 1: and let me just see what is this telling me?
Speaker 1: What's rising to the surface, and this maybe what's a
Speaker 1: chaos of thinking, and this by the way happened to
Speaker 1: me three days ago. Okay, I'm just going to repeat
Speaker 1: to you what happened. And I thought, okay, I'm not
Speaker 1: tuning into what's going on. And when I just sat
Speaker 1: with that really ugly, uncomfortable feeling, what rose to the
Speaker 1: surface is that I had had a conversation with a
Speaker 1: coworker that I really didn't feel good about. And I've
Speaker 1: been sort of sweeping it under the rug and thinking, ouh, whatever,
Speaker 1: just it was, but.
Speaker 4: It wasn't good.
Speaker 1: And I realized that this was something that was at
Speaker 1: least one of the things that was driving this discomfort.
Speaker 1: And when I was able to just listen to that,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I was like, Oh, this is
Speaker 1: what I need to do. And that's the leveraging, that's
Speaker 1: the second L. And again, sometimes anxiety won't reveal it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's message, ye, But I think that most
Speaker 1: of the time you're going to get something out of
Speaker 1: that that's actionable, that allows you to make your life better,
Speaker 1: to be a better human. If it's all about just achieving, achieving,
Speaker 1: and oh, I'm anxious because I need to make five
Speaker 1: million dollars this year and I'm not making it you're
Speaker 1: going to make plans to make five million dollars and
Speaker 1: then you're going to make up the next morning miserable too.
Speaker 1: So there's this way of saying, Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 1: do some things. How do I let go and then
Speaker 1: come back to the present where I can be rejuvenated,
Speaker 1: where I can find flow, where I can connect with people,
Speaker 1: to place to purpose, like when I can bring those things.
Speaker 1: If you're not agile like a ninja and able to
Speaker 1: move from the future to the present to the past
Speaker 1: and back again, that's not how we're going to achieve
Speaker 1: a quality of life. So I think we have to
Speaker 1: do more to engage in the future, in this future
Speaker 1: tense way of thinking like this, this productive accepting way,
Speaker 1: like an ally you need to negotiate with. But we
Speaker 1: can't forget to build those skills to then come back
Speaker 1: and let go and be fully in the present as well.
Speaker 1: So it's a stance.
Speaker 3: So I think what you're pointing to is an idea
Speaker 3: I think I first learned from acceptance of commitment therapy
Speaker 3: and Stephen Hayes, which is to ask, is this emotion useful?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: Like for me, that seems to be sort of the
Speaker 3: litmus test of is it useful? And oftentimes anxiety is
Speaker 3: to a point yes, And I think most of us
Speaker 3: know this experience of all right, I'm anxious about something,
Speaker 3: I think about it like your coworker, and you realize like, okay,
Speaker 3: it's about my coworker, and okay, I know what I'm
Speaker 3: going to do now tomorrow, I just kind of need
Speaker 3: to sit down with her and have the conversation and
Speaker 3: here's what I'm going to say, And then that would
Speaker 3: be the point at which continuing to think about it
Speaker 3: becomes unuseful, perhaps.
Speaker 1: Right, which is why that flexibility that we can practice
Speaker 1: day by day, little by little, with like definite steps
Speaker 1: backwards as well, that's going to allow us to dance
Speaker 1: with anxiety more effectively. Now, as you say, not all
Speaker 1: anxiety is useful, and it's hard to know the difference.
Speaker 1: But you know, I've been a mental health professional for
Speaker 1: twenty years and I actually defended my dissertation on September eleventh,
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, Wow, at nine in the morning, Wow,
Speaker 1: before the towers fell. And when I came out the
Speaker 1: world had changed. Wow, And I knew more than ever
Speaker 1: that this was the work I needed to do. In
Speaker 1: this world where mental health was going to be the
Speaker 1: public health crisis of our time. I was a New
Speaker 1: Yorker at the time and still am, so put my
Speaker 1: head down. For twenty years. I did the work, and
Speaker 1: I know that we have great science around anxiety disorders.
Speaker 1: We have incredible treatments that are really really helpful for
Speaker 1: a lot of people. We have medication that I do
Speaker 1: think is overprescribed, but for a lot of people allows
Speaker 1: them to get in that boxing ring so they can
Speaker 1: put on the boxing gloves and do that work. But
Speaker 1: the rates of anxiety disorders have continued to go up,
Speaker 1: and there's some disconnect. And what I see as the
Speaker 1: disconnect is the bottleneck. In another way, is that our
Speaker 1: mindset about anxiety as always the enemy is actually blocking
Speaker 1: us from learning these skills, from actually engaging with anxiety
Speaker 1: and ways that can make it our ally that we
Speaker 1: can learn to know when it's useful and when it's not.
Speaker 1: If you never allow yourself to feel anxiety or you
Speaker 1: reject it, not only will you not build coping skills,
Speaker 1: but you'll never learn to tell the difference between a
Speaker 1: useful and a not useful experience of anxiety. So that's
Speaker 1: something that I'm very committed to saying, Listen, anxiety disorders exist.
Speaker 1: I have devoted my life to trying to help in
Speaker 1: that arena, to understand the anxious brain, to develop treatments.
Speaker 1: But when we treat all anxiety like a disease, we
Speaker 1: are literally it's a recipe for doing the wrong things
Speaker 1: when it comes to coping with and living well with anxiety.
Speaker 5: I think in your book somewhere you say I may
Speaker 5: not get your words exactly right, but that it's not
Speaker 5: so much we have a public health crisis of anxiety.
Speaker 5: It's a public health crisis of how we relate to anxiety.
Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, we cope with it, and that's really
Speaker 1: what the definition of an anxiety disorder is.
Speaker 4: Again, you can have lots of anxiety.
Speaker 1: It can feel really bad, and it does feel bad,
Speaker 1: it sucks, but you will not be diagnosed with an
Speaker 1: anxiety disorder unless it's causing that functional enpowerment. And actually,
Speaker 1: the tricky part about anxiety is it has to feel
Speaker 1: bad to do its job. It has to feel unpleasant
Speaker 1: for as you were saying, Eric, because we're in the
Speaker 1: future when we're anxious, and it takes a lot of
Speaker 1: resources to be in the future, and you know from
Speaker 1: thinking about prehistoric people, like imagine that they're sitting around
Speaker 1: the fire, they have a full belly. I always tell
Speaker 1: the stories like there's a sabertooth tiger somewhere. Now, there's
Speaker 1: always in my mind, right, it must be too much
Speaker 1: like flintstones or something.
Speaker 3: I don't know what it is. It's going to say, Darwin.
Speaker 3: It's always bring up the sabertooth tiger. It's never like
Speaker 3: a bear or a or it's always a saber tooth tiger.
Speaker 1: I know, but there it is, and it's in my
Speaker 1: mind's eye. And you know the fear helped you handle
Speaker 1: the saber tooth tiger when you like ran into the
Speaker 1: cave and there they were and you had a run
Speaker 1: really fast. Right, but you're sitting around the fire, and
Speaker 1: if you didn't have anxiety, which feels so uncomfortable, making
Speaker 1: you think about, Okay, the sun's going down. I need
Speaker 1: to find shelter. I just went into a cave and
Speaker 1: there were sabertoothed tigers and that's not going to work.
Speaker 1: Like what do I do in this future that I'm
Speaker 1: not in now? Because I'm really comfortable with my full
Speaker 1: belly right now? Anxiety is telling you, oh, well, you
Speaker 1: have to scout out new caves, and you might even.
Speaker 4: Want to build us. Oh, you can build.
Speaker 1: Your own shelter, and you know, fast forward, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty thousand years and you have a civilization. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think of anxiety by its unpleasantness forcing us to do
Speaker 1: the most amazing things to navigate the fundamental uncertainty of life.
Speaker 1: It's a civilization builder.
Speaker 3: A few minutes ago, you talked about a snake on
Speaker 3: the floor, right, and there's a lot of chords in here. Ah,
Speaker 3: So I've heard it in the Buddhist tradition. I don't
Speaker 3: know if the Buddhist said it. I don't know where
Speaker 3: it comes from exactly, but there's an idea that you
Speaker 3: step in somewhere in the dark and you think you
Speaker 3: see a snake and you're afraid, but it turns out
Speaker 3: it was just a cord.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, in what ways do we work with that sort
Speaker 3: of fundamental misunderstanding sometimes of what really is dangerous or
Speaker 3: what is really problematic. I've heard someone once say that
Speaker 3: our evolutionary heritage was great for survival, but not great
Speaker 3: for being happy, And so I'm kind of curious what
Speaker 3: you think about that statement, I kind of ask you
Speaker 3: two questions. There's that statement and there's the when we
Speaker 3: see danger when there isn't really danger necessarily.
Speaker 1: So the solution to both of those human challenges is
Speaker 1: to engage anxiety. There's no way you can tell the
Speaker 1: difference between a snake and accord if you haven't danced
Speaker 1: with those feelings. There's just no way around it.
Speaker 3: You have to go through.
Speaker 1: I think when you see Buddhist thinkers, Hindu thinkers, any
Speaker 1: spiritual tradition, really Western traditions as well, there's this idea
Speaker 1: that to know the fullness of your humanity, you have
Speaker 1: to engage with those darkest parts. And again back to
Speaker 1: the parable that wolf isn't going anywhere. Yep, we're not
Speaker 1: destroying the wolf. It's impossible. We all have two wolves.
Speaker 1: So I really strongly believe that no matter where you
Speaker 1: are on the spectrum of anxiety, and we're all on
Speaker 1: the spectrum, we're all born anxious. And so when someone
Speaker 1: says I have anxiety, like me too, Now, like what
Speaker 1: do we do with it? That's my mind works around it.
Speaker 1: But when we acknowledge it we're all on that spectrum,
Speaker 1: we can start to have more discrimination and more understanding
Speaker 1: and wisdom about how to tell that difference. We can
Speaker 1: only do that by practicing and failing and then getting
Speaker 1: back up again and trying again and happiness. And I
Speaker 1: think the Buddhists might agree with me on this is
Speaker 1: not the absence of emotional discomfort. But we Americans especially
Speaker 1: tend to think of it that way. And we mental
Speaker 1: health professionals have convinced people of that that unless you
Speaker 1: check off twenty or rather two hundred boxes on the
Speaker 1: happiness checklist, two hundred out of two hundred, you're failing
Speaker 1: at happiness. And it's just the worst possible mindset to
Speaker 1: have when it comes to mental health. I think we
Speaker 1: need to start talking about happiness as the struggle. I
Speaker 1: think we need to talk about happiness as the full
Speaker 1: range of emotion and knowing that in those darkest moments,
Speaker 1: do I have the capacity and the great blessing of
Speaker 1: having community to help me? Do I have purpose? Do
Speaker 1: I fail at purpose and then find it again? So
Speaker 1: I just think we need to change the whole story.
Speaker 5: One of the things I loved about your book is
Speaker 5: how you take this big tangled ball of yarn called
Speaker 5: anxiety and you start to help us untangle it by
Speaker 5: getting specific with language, like you just said a minute ago,
Speaker 5: which is fear is this? Anxiety is this? There's a difference.
Speaker 5: Let's get specific, because I think it really helps us
Speaker 5: to have precise language for our feelings, to be able
Speaker 5: to name it. We get a little space in clarity,
Speaker 5: and we can be a little more skillful. So the
Speaker 5: other differentiation that you made that I found so interesting
Speaker 5: and helpful was anxiety versus worry. Hmmm, right, I mean
Speaker 5: maybe prior to reading your book, I would have said they
Speaker 5: were very similar, if not the same, or you worry
Speaker 5: when you're anxious. But it's all kind of tangled up.
Speaker 5: How do you think about those two words.
Speaker 1: I love that you love my distinction making because it
Speaker 1: is true when you name it, you tame it. And
Speaker 1: making this book I found that powerful. You and I both,
Speaker 1: I've discovered, have classical music backgrounds.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so we are.
Speaker 5: Yes, we love the word finding things precisive.
Speaker 1: But I do think for everyone, whether or not that's
Speaker 1: your tendency, I think when it comes to worry and anxiety,
Speaker 1: and by the way, stress and anxiety too is a
Speaker 1: nice distinction to make. But I love making a distinction
Speaker 1: between worry and anxiety, because you can feel anxious and
Speaker 1: not be worried. You have free floating, yucky anxiety and
Speaker 1: it's just so in KO eight and like like a
Speaker 1: horrible fog. And sometimes those are the days that I
Speaker 1: just like, I'm just taking a nap or you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm going to call it a night. I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: up in the morning and see, you know, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do my checklist of you know they say in
Speaker 1: the recovery the halt like hunger, angry, lonely car. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to just check that everything is like you know,
Speaker 1: those is like sometimes you just got to say no
Speaker 1: information yet, I'll check back with you. But it's a
Speaker 1: smoke alarm, right, Like a smoke alarm goes off, you
Speaker 1: don't run out of the house or put in earplugs
Speaker 1: like you do check around, yeah, or you come back
Speaker 1: later and make sure your batteries are you know, in
Speaker 1: the smoke alarms. Right. So I'm not saying disengage, but
Speaker 1: sometimes it's just okay, so you put the brake. But
Speaker 1: worry is the thinking part of anxiety that's directed. It's
Speaker 1: about something. It's very cognitive it's our attempt to control
Speaker 1: the future because we're running the what if simulations when
Speaker 1: we worry, and it's useful. But for so many of us,
Speaker 1: myself included, worry can start to spiral. It can become
Speaker 1: self reinforcing because you feel like you're doing something that.
Speaker 3: Fee really good.
Speaker 1: Right, You feel like I got some control. Yes, And
Speaker 1: you know, there are certain anxiety disorders that really have
Speaker 1: at their core worried, like generalized anxiety disorder, and that's
Speaker 1: a situation in which those worries really are getting in
Speaker 1: the way. If I want to say, listen, worries are not
Speaker 1: all good. We can see them get in the way.
Speaker 1: But when we think of worry as this sort of
Speaker 1: cognitive about like problem solving part of anxiety, it gives
Speaker 1: us different solutions. So you know, there are some useful
Speaker 1: things we can do about worries. We can give them words,
Speaker 1: so when they're vague, not least helpful. So the first
Speaker 1: thing you need to do is contain worries by giving
Speaker 1: them language, by getting specific. I like to schedule worry times,
Speaker 1: or like have a worried box where you like write
Speaker 1: everything down and put it in the worry or you
Speaker 1: say I'm going to worry and write it all on
Speaker 1: paper for twenty minutes and no one's going to stop me.
Speaker 4: But after twenty minutes, I have to stop.
Speaker 1: And what you often find is you can't even worry
Speaker 1: that long, which is a nice feeling, right, because it
Speaker 1: kind of has an end to it. Yeah, But you
Speaker 1: contain it, and then you give it really clear language.
Speaker 4: What exactly am I worried about?
Speaker 1: What's the worst case and what's the best case, you know,
Speaker 1: And so giving it that specificity, you're anchoring it, and
Speaker 1: so you're taking it from this yucky feeling perspective and
Speaker 1: you're owning it in a way. It's kind of like that.
Speaker 1: Ally you need to negotiate with you have to have
Speaker 1: a very specific document you're drawing up right, Yeah, And
Speaker 1: then once you have it more specific, you can start
Speaker 1: to prioritize and say, Okay, I have a lot of
Speaker 1: worries right now in my life. Here's what's uncontrollable, But
Speaker 1: here's what I can control. Here's what I can do
Speaker 1: something about. Wow, that feels actually exciting that there's this
Speaker 1: opportunity I didn't think of. But it's only by making
Speaker 1: it concrete and owning it instead of sweeping it under
Speaker 1: the rug that we can even begin to build those
Speaker 1: skills and you're not going to be good at it
Speaker 1: the first time. You may not even be good at
Speaker 1: the tenth time, but we can get better at it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why I like to make that distinction with anxiety
Speaker 1: and worry.
Speaker 3: You just made a connection for me that is totally
Speaker 3: unrelated to what we're talking about.
Speaker 4: My favorite FID.
Speaker 3: You are both classical musicians. Jenny was an opera singer,
Speaker 3: and you mentioned that need for precision, and I was
Speaker 3: a punk rocker, which is a very imprecise thing. And
Speaker 3: I just never thought about that between you and me,
Speaker 3: that that is a fundamental sort of difference in level
Speaker 3: of precision.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I've not made connection before, so that is interesting.
Speaker 5: I've noticed this. Let me just say that there's something
Speaker 5: else I wanted to follow up on what you just said.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna put a pin in that. I'm going to
Speaker 5: name it so I don't forget and come back to
Speaker 5: what you just said, which is, in general, I tend
Speaker 5: to be the anxious warrior and the detail oriented except
Speaker 5: when it comes to sound and podcast recording.
Speaker 3: That is incredible.
Speaker 5: That is all you but like you know, and you
Speaker 5: tend to be the more diffuse gestalt like bigger picture,
Speaker 5: anxiety doesn't show up in your life as frequently I
Speaker 5: think for you as it does for me.
Speaker 4: Would you agree with that?
Speaker 3: Probably? Probably.
Speaker 5: I mean I'm not saying you never get anxious, but
Speaker 5: just as a general trend. The other thing is, like
Speaker 5: you say, actually that anxiety narrows focus and positive emotions broadened.
Speaker 5: So I think that does other tube of Like I
Speaker 5: even heard that through our eyesight, if we have sort
Speaker 5: of this pinpoint vision of seeing just like myopically versus
Speaker 5: looking at the horizon like a big diffuse, that there's
Speaker 5: a connection there between how we can notice maybe like
Speaker 5: how we can even cultivate calm by looking at taking
Speaker 5: a more diffuse fraud. You know, and you tend to
Speaker 5: see again the gestalta things, and I tend to see
Speaker 5: like the little lent on your you know, your sweater
Speaker 5: or whatever. And so it's just very interesting to see
Speaker 5: how patterns can show up in different areas of life,
Speaker 5: all connected back to some of our feelings.
Speaker 1: It's interesting what I was thinking of. First of all,
Speaker 1: I do want to get back to punk rock. But
Speaker 1: what I was thinking of as you were speaking is
Speaker 1: sort of the lens focus in and in and out.
Speaker 1: Because I am a very precise person. But I also
Speaker 1: started life as an artist, and I hated science. I
Speaker 1: hated everything about science, which is all that I do rightly.
Speaker 1: I hated math. I really preferred poetry to pros and
Speaker 1: I mean on and on. But yet I was a
Speaker 1: classical musician who knew that you played Bach one way
Speaker 1: and you play them another way, and you play rokamanenof
Speaker 1: another way. You know, and that's important, and you master
Speaker 1: those tools so that you can transcend them. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I think there's also something about anxiety that if you
Speaker 1: don't have that skill to go in though, I think
Speaker 1: there's a loss as well, because remember if anxiety has
Speaker 1: shown up in evolution to help us navigate uncertainty, you
Speaker 1: need that detection to be precise sometimes and that when
Speaker 1: you get good at that, it's just easier to then
Speaker 1: practice the pattern recognition pulling out. So I think it
Speaker 1: all now punk rock, I don't think it's imprecise. I'm
Speaker 1: a bit of a punk rock fan, and I'm a
Speaker 1: bit of a like as a classy musician. I actually
Speaker 1: love all sorts of popular music, and I was growing
Speaker 1: up in the eighties and nineties. My favorite band growing
Speaker 1: up was Joy Division, and the thing I loved about
Speaker 1: those recordings before they remastered the crunch out of them
Speaker 1: crunch is they all sounded like Ian Curtis was singing
Speaker 1: in a toilet, and I loved it. It was so beautiful.
Speaker 1: It was completely different from everything. But then if we're
Speaker 1: talking about punk, we can talk about the bass player
Speaker 1: Watt and the minimen, and when you talk about the
Speaker 1: kind of music that they make, I would not characterize
Speaker 1: that was imprecise.
Speaker 3: So I'm thinking about.
Speaker 1: But they could also completely pull out as well. So
Speaker 1: there's this dance that I see in all the kinds
Speaker 1: of music I love, whether it's bah, which I'm a
Speaker 1: big baroque music view. Yeah, that I think transcended everything
Speaker 1: to any sort of music that someone might say is loose.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know what I mean. But I'd love you
Speaker 4: to comment on that.
Speaker 3: Eric, Well, the Minute Men are certainly not loose. They're
Speaker 3: pretty precise, and even Joy Division is not. I mean,
Speaker 3: they turned it into a new Order, which sounds like
Speaker 3: a machine, right, So I should say that I should
Speaker 3: be more broad and say that not all punk rock
Speaker 3: is that way. However, I tended to be more drawn
Speaker 3: towards the shambolic sort of Yes, it just sounds like
Speaker 3: it's about to fall apart, But partially that's because that's
Speaker 3: what I was capable of doing. And it's an interesting
Speaker 3: point because that inability to get very precise did limit
Speaker 3: me as a musician, because I just did what I could,
Speaker 3: and it was that next level of like, instead of going,
Speaker 3: I can't quite play that, so I'll work on it
Speaker 3: so that I can. I just went who cares? Right?
Speaker 5: Which an interesting insight eric, which has.
Speaker 3: A certain to it, I suppose, but also is limiting.
Speaker 3: When the anxiety of I don't know how to play
Speaker 3: that came, I didn't embrace it.
Speaker 5: But way, yeah, that's so interesting.
Speaker 3: Only sellouts care about playing precisely right.
Speaker 1: I'm very sympathetic to that perspective though. I'm a gen
Speaker 1: x er, so I believe that people could be sellouts.
Speaker 1: But then you think about all those garage bands that, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe they never got but you know what, that'sousness transforming.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter the precision. Yeah, so there's a place
Speaker 1: for all of it.
Speaker 3: But there is totally punk rock things.
Speaker 1: But I am a music lover, and I'm really glad we.
Speaker 5: But it does meak to your point earlier of like
Speaker 5: having a dualistic either this or that, that's right, And
Speaker 5: this is why I mean. It's just I think having
Speaker 5: the ability to do ange of things on a spectrum
Speaker 5: of ability, and oftentimes what you're encouraging us to do
Speaker 5: once we've sort of leaned in with skill is to
Speaker 5: correct for the imbalance. You know, if we are too
Speaker 5: like this, could we counter that with zooming out a bit?
Speaker 5: You know, if we're too zoomed out and it's too generalized,
Speaker 5: can we get a bit more specific and concrete. What
Speaker 5: I was going to say before this is what I remember.
Speaker 5: There was a point in my life of peak anxiety.
Speaker 5: It had one really bad panic attack, and I just
Speaker 5: moved to New Jersey from Nashville. It was my first
Speaker 5: promotion at work into the training department.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, here we go.
Speaker 5: I'm getting very excited about the story about to tell.
Speaker 4: Sorry, let's just beat me to the gesticulations.
Speaker 3: That's all.
Speaker 4: I'll be shortly behind you, Okay, good.
Speaker 5: And I had this panic attack that you know, just
Speaker 5: was debilitating, and so I ended up in a psychologist
Speaker 5: office who practiced RIBT therapy, and I was just so
Speaker 5: general with my anxiety. I can remember him continuing to
Speaker 5: invite me to put.
Speaker 4: Language to it.
Speaker 5: What specifically are you worried about? And I would say, well,
Speaker 5: what if this happens? Well, what if that happens? What
Speaker 5: if this happens? And so then the next thing he did,
Speaker 5: which I found incredibly calming, and now I realize it's
Speaker 5: because I was able to gain some sense of control,
Speaker 5: is he said, you know you're missing the other half
Speaker 5: of the sentence, which is what if you need the well,
Speaker 5: then you know you need the what are you going
Speaker 5: to do about that?
Speaker 3: Or what you know?
Speaker 4: Finish that thought?
Speaker 5: And I found that so helpful. It at least in
Speaker 5: the moment, calmed me, but then it also helped me
Speaker 5: realized that I had some capability to handle things that
Speaker 5: were to come.
Speaker 4: I love that so much.
Speaker 1: And I think it's really at the crux of what's
Speaker 1: wrong with the mental health care and just the wellness
Speaker 1: industry right now is that people don't believe that that's possible,
Speaker 1: and we're convincing people unintentionally. I think most of the
Speaker 1: time that they're fragile and that there's not any then well,
Speaker 1: and that actually these are such destructive and dangerous experiences
Speaker 1: that it's really all or none, And so we're setting
Speaker 1: ourselves up to not engage in change. And what happens
Speaker 1: is we maybe finally get there if we are lucky
Speaker 1: enough to receive therapy, which is so hard to access
Speaker 1: for so many people. But no matter where our anxiety
Speaker 1: is on that spectrum, we can use those tools way
Speaker 1: before we get to the therapist's office. So everything I'm
Speaker 1: talking about with anxiety is literally just chapter and verse
Speaker 1: what a therapist tells us once we're debilitated by it.
Speaker 1: So why don't we get in front of things now?
Speaker 1: The whole healthcare industry, of course, is backwards. Mental health
Speaker 1: is health, and it's the same right, So whether it's
Speaker 1: physical health or not, you know, we're always waiting to
Speaker 1: the fires are it's such huge conflagrations that we're just
Speaker 1: dealing with cleanup with symptoms.
Speaker 4: We have so few.
Speaker 1: Resources and so little energy to get to any of
Speaker 1: these causal early factors. And I just think what we
Speaker 1: need to do more than anything is, yes, we need
Speaker 1: to increase access to mental health. Yes we need to
Speaker 1: have more conversations, we need to support our kids who
Speaker 1: are in crisis. But before any of that's going to help,
Speaker 1: we need to change a story that we're telling about anxiety,
Speaker 1: about mental health broadly, but anxiety in particular, and that
Speaker 1: when we talk about mental health we only think illness.
Speaker 1: We don't actually we think about a positive state of health,
Speaker 1: right And when we think mental health, we think serious
Speaker 1: mental illness, things like schizophrenia, things like bipolar disorder that
Speaker 1: are actually quite distinct as mental health conditions compared to
Speaker 1: things like addiction and depression and anxiety disorders and things
Speaker 1: like that. They're different kinds of determinants, and things like schizophrenia,
Speaker 1: I think those are better thought of as disease states,
Speaker 1: whereas something like an anxiety disorder or major depressive disorder.
Speaker 1: I think when we label it as a disease, we
Speaker 1: start doing a lot of the wrong things. We feel
Speaker 1: like it's over and it's like we're broken, and that's
Speaker 1: what sets us up to not believe in the change
Speaker 1: you're talking about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, it also points to those things being sort
Speaker 3: of a distinct thing when they're really much more of
Speaker 3: a syndrome or a you know, there's so many factors
Speaker 3: at work, and they appear.
Speaker 4: So differently for everyone.
Speaker 1: Yea a disease, even though diseases appear differently for everyone too,
Speaker 1: by some token, we like to create these little categories
Speaker 1: and we we're just trying to understand. I mean, psychology
Speaker 1: still suffers from us urious chip on our shoulder because
Speaker 1: we remember, like one hundred and fifty years ago that
Speaker 1: we were in the philosophy departments of universities before we
Speaker 1: were like a science, and so we took on the
Speaker 1: language of medical science to give ourselves validity and honestly
Speaker 1: to claw the resources to help people with mental health struggles,
Speaker 1: which is very valuable, and that's why we developed the
Speaker 1: dsm OUR Diagnostic Manual. But I think that that metaphor,
Speaker 1: the disease metaphor, is starting to and I'm going to
Speaker 1: say this, it's actually starting to cause more harm than good,
Speaker 1: possibly in some cases.
Speaker 3: I think you're right. It makes me think of I'm
Speaker 3: a recovering alcoholic and addict, right, And the disease model
Speaker 3: of alcoholism I think was a useful step from it
Speaker 3: being a moral failing. Yes, But I also don't think
Speaker 3: it's accurate enough that I think we are moving beyond
Speaker 3: it at this point or we need to continue to
Speaker 3: move beyond it. I think similar things there. I was
Speaker 3: going to ask you about your opinion on the DSM
Speaker 3: as a whole, because there's a lot more time talk
Speaker 3: these days about maybe these diagnosises are not as distinct
Speaker 3: and clear as the DSM makes it out to be,
Speaker 3: and that trying to do it that way is becoming problematic.
Speaker 3: I'm curious what you think.
Speaker 1: So I'm a clinical psychologist, but I've never had a
Speaker 1: private practice. So I'm a clinical researcher, and my bread
Speaker 1: and butter is getting grants to do that research. And
Speaker 1: I get grants from the NIMH, the National Institute of
Speaker 1: Mental Health, And I can tell you about ten to
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago, there were several movements and discussions much
Speaker 1: like what you're talking about, that really called into question
Speaker 1: whether these disorders that we've identified are useful and if
Speaker 1: they should drive the science of what we're trying to do,
Speaker 1: which is to understand mechanisms underlying the cause and treatment
Speaker 1: and course of mental health distress. And so it used
Speaker 1: to be that you could easily get a grant.
Speaker 4: Not easily.
Speaker 1: Everything's like you if you get I think the funding
Speaker 1: rate is anything between like five percent and twelve percent
Speaker 1: of grants submitted. But anyway, you could get a grant
Speaker 1: studying something like social anxiety disorder as a disease category,
Speaker 1: and you still can under certain circumstances, but it's much
Speaker 1: harder because what we know is that social anxiety disorder
Speaker 1: fifty percent of the time is co morbid with major
Speaker 1: depressive disorder. It's also co morbid the lots of other
Speaker 1: anxiety disorders and addiction, and so we know that humans
Speaker 1: don't fit into these boxes. As much as it's helped
Speaker 1: us advance our understanding of what some of the causes
Speaker 1: and effective treatments of these conditions are. So as a field,
Speaker 1: as a scientist, we're much less interested in discrete disorders
Speaker 1: as spectra, right as you know, a lot of people
Speaker 1: you know, really for a long time, not just the
Speaker 1: past ten years, but for twenty thirty and more years
Speaker 1: have talked about should we study anxiety and depression separately,
Speaker 1: or should we study some of the anxiety disorders as
Speaker 1: distress related that is actually combined with depression, and that
Speaker 1: there are some more fear based anxiety disorders like a phobia.
Speaker 1: But really we shouldn't be glomming all these things together
Speaker 1: and so I think that that's what you're pointing out
Speaker 1: is a very important movement. I think it should be
Speaker 1: the future of mental health treatment. I think there's some
Speaker 1: really smart and not even like young people per se,
Speaker 1: but even like very established researchers who started.
Speaker 4: To say, you know, we really wanted to help people.
Speaker 1: What we would do is we'd get them into exercise,
Speaker 1: and these are mental health professionals. First we get them
Speaker 1: to exercise, and we get them to strengthen social connections
Speaker 1: and see what's going on in their lives.
Speaker 4: And we'd take care of that. We'd help people.
Speaker 1: We get in front of the problem, and then after
Speaker 1: we get that established, we'd see what was left over
Speaker 1: and we would develop boutique treatments that would target specific
Speaker 1: struggles and mental health and that we devote our resources
Speaker 1: that way if we actually wanted.
Speaker 4: To help people.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of economic forces that work against
Speaker 1: us doing that.
Speaker 3: We all know that good habits are ways that we
Speaker 3: bring what we value into the world, and we each
Speaker 3: have our own list of what matters to us. Maybe
Speaker 3: you want to feel more energetic, improve your relationships, have
Speaker 3: a tidy your home, cook more instead of eating out
Speaker 3: for nights a week. Whatever habit you want to build,
Speaker 3: it's entirely possible to make it happen. But if you
Speaker 3: feel under equipped and overwhelmed to make real sustainable change,
Speaker 3: you are not alone. And that's why I've made my
Speaker 3: free masterclass open to everyone and available to watch anytime.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: It's called Habits that Stick, How to be remarkably consistent
Speaker 3: no matter what goal you set. You can grab it
Speaker 3: at oneufeed, dot net slash habits. Again, it's free, and
Speaker 3: you can watch it whenever it works for you. Go
Speaker 3: to one you feed dot net slash habits. A couple
Speaker 3: things there about that comorbidity. It's that idea of well,
Speaker 3: you get diagnosed with depression, then you get diagnosed with anxiety,
Speaker 3: then you get diagnosed with add and alcoholism, and you're like, well,
Speaker 3: is one person so unfortunate that they got like all
Speaker 3: five of those? Like what you just said about general wellness, exercise,
Speaker 3: eating well, getting enough sleep, general wellness being the first
Speaker 3: thing that we should do. I think that makes a
Speaker 3: ton of sense. One of the things I'm interested in,
Speaker 3: as somebody who's worked with people on behavior for a
Speaker 3: long time, is that sometimes our mental distress makes it
Speaker 3: such that it's very difficult to do a lot of
Speaker 3: those behaviors. Is that in your mind partially because we
Speaker 3: just didn't intervene early enough, So that now to your point,
Speaker 3: we've got a big fire, and you know, a gallon
Speaker 3: of water would put out a very small fire, but
Speaker 3: it's not going to put out a house on fire.
Speaker 1: It's such a great point. You know, I'm sort of
Speaker 1: optimist to a fault. I have had a path in
Speaker 1: life life where I have struggled with mental health, and
Speaker 1: I've been lucky enough to come across certain practices like meditation.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm a practicing Hindu, and I really discovered
Speaker 1: that tradition when I was seventeen or eighteen, and it
Speaker 1: just allowed me to believe that there was a technology
Speaker 1: of consciousness and you could afford yourself, you could avail
Speaker 1: yourself of this technology. And it allowed me to do
Speaker 1: things like go from being a musician to thinking with
Speaker 1: incredible arrogance that I could become a scientist. But I
Speaker 1: think if it hadn't been for that, I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been able to do anything. You know, that's my sense
Speaker 1: of the role of that. So I'm a very internally
Speaker 1: focused person. But you know, life is really hard and
Speaker 1: a lot of people aren't as privileged as I am
Speaker 1: and didn't have as much luck as I had along
Speaker 1: the way. And I think all of us can speak
Speaker 1: to different things like that, And so I think there
Speaker 1: are certain conditions in which just saying eat better an
Speaker 1: exercise is a really heavy lift to your point, and
Speaker 1: I really want to just respect and acknowledge that. At
Speaker 1: the same time, you know, we often say these people
Speaker 1: can if we're from a point of privilege, if we're
Speaker 1: and I know you're not saying that at all, but
Speaker 1: I see that dialogue happening, like, oh, this is a
Speaker 1: single mom or someone from an underresourced community, and so
Speaker 1: because of these systemic problems, we.
Speaker 4: Need to fix that.
Speaker 1: But I don't really I buy into we need to
Speaker 1: fix that, But I don't buy into we have to
Speaker 1: disempower people from making changes that can actually have a
Speaker 1: positive impact. So I want to acknowledge that it's going
Speaker 1: to be very hard for many people because of all
Speaker 1: the barriers in their life. You know, they're not going
Speaker 1: to become a yoga mom. They're not going to be
Speaker 1: you know, necessarily maybe they will, they're not going to
Speaker 1: be able to afford the kinds of nutritional food perhaps,
Speaker 1: But what we have to do as a society is
Speaker 1: start to help people believe that those are solutions that
Speaker 1: can help. Yes, that mental health is health. And then
Speaker 1: when we do as a society, we'll start to put
Speaker 1: dollars as a society towards that and saying, you know what,
Speaker 1: making sure that people are not living in food deserts
Speaker 1: has to actually be a top health buy a priority
Speaker 1: and a mental health priority, indeed, you know. And so
Speaker 1: I just think that without blaming the person or saying
Speaker 1: it's all on you lift yourself up by your own bootstraps,
Speaker 1: which I don't believe in, I do think we have
Speaker 1: to have a dialogue where we have to take this
Speaker 1: holistic approach when things have gone far understanding what are
Speaker 1: the smart and targeted interventions that have the biggest impact.
Speaker 1: So I believe in what are called wise interventions. These
Speaker 1: are these micro interventions and a lot of them are
Speaker 1: behavioral that are relatively simple but have a big exponential
Speaker 1: positive impact. And we see these around diet, we see
Speaker 1: these around habits of addiction. We see these you know,
Speaker 1: these can make big impacts. I see this as you know,
Speaker 1: mindset research. You know, a lot of what I'm doing
Speaker 1: in my book is just trying to press a reset
Speaker 1: button on our mindset about anxiety. And I believe that
Speaker 1: our mindset about mental health as being that, oh, we're
Speaker 1: either broken and have a disease if we're struggling with anxiety,
Speaker 1: or it's a character flawed, that that mindset is blocking us.
Speaker 4: So that we know.
Speaker 1: And there's wonderful research showing that mindset interventions can have
Speaker 1: an immediate and long term positive impact, and they're cheap
Speaker 1: and brief and scalable, and there's abundance of research out there,
Speaker 1: especially in the past ten years. So I believe in
Speaker 1: getting smart, but having to work under the assumption that
Speaker 1: mental health is health, and that we have to get
Speaker 1: more into a preventive and early intervention focus.
Speaker 5: Oh gosh, there are a couple of places that I'm
Speaker 5: tempted to go here do yeah what.
Speaker 3: Practicing Hindu not being the least among.
Speaker 4: Them, I know exactly.
Speaker 5: I mean so many. I wonder if briefly it would
Speaker 5: be nice to touch on. As you're talking about mindset.
Speaker 5: The other thing that I found incredibly compelling was the
Speaker 5: TSS Oh, the TSST, TSST thank you. And then the
Speaker 5: twenty thirteen Harvard study that was done looking at what
Speaker 5: would happen if we tweaked this in our mindset about
Speaker 5: these things. I feel like it's evidence that really shows
Speaker 5: that this is not just all like positive thinking, but
Speaker 5: that it actually can have a meaningful difference. Do you
Speaker 5: mind just walking people? You can explain this far better
Speaker 5: than I can. No, Well, I'm sure you would do
Speaker 5: an amazing job. I do love this study that so
Speaker 5: thank you for having so this study talking about it
Speaker 5: was Jamison in Colleagues twenty thirteen and it was a
Speaker 5: group out of Harvard, so collaborative group, and it was
Speaker 5: one of the earlier studies and it's since been replicated
Speaker 5: and it's even been applied to work with teens. And
Speaker 5: there was a beautiful paper that came out in Nature
Speaker 5: last year that showed that these same kind of interventions
Speaker 5: in teens who are struggling with anxiety, even kids who
Speaker 5: are really at risk communities, they can have massive shifts
Speaker 5: in school performance in anxiety and biological indices. So this
Speaker 5: is like a large body but this is one of
Speaker 5: the earliest and so Jamison and colleagues they use this
Speaker 5: really mean experimental paradigm called the Treer Social Stress Test
Speaker 5: that's been used a lot to study stress, but it's
Speaker 5: really about anxiety because what you do is you have
Speaker 5: someone come in and you're underperformance pressure. So you either
Speaker 5: give a public speech in front of a very judgmental
Speaker 5: panel of judges with no time for preparation on a
Speaker 5: very contentious topic like the death penalty or abortion rights,
Speaker 5: and so you're asked you just like, oh, here, you
Speaker 5: have three minutes to prepare, then go, you know, and
Speaker 5: people measure their biology when they're of this and doing this,
Speaker 5: they measure their performance, right, and then there's also difficult
Speaker 5: math problems that you'll have to do in front of
Speaker 5: these same panel objections. I'm feeling like I'm starting.
Speaker 1: I've I've like made people suffer through these things, like
Speaker 1: for research purposes.
Speaker 4: I promised that.
Speaker 1: So what Jameson and colleagues did is they brought in
Speaker 1: a group of people diagnosed to social anxiety disorder and
Speaker 1: social anxiety disorder. The key symptom is fear of public
Speaker 1: humiliation and judgment. So this is kryptonite for these folks.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really painful. It's painful for all of
Speaker 1: us it's very painful for them. And so when they
Speaker 1: were informed that they'd have to do this, like give
Speaker 1: this public speech, people of course naturally started to feel
Speaker 1: a sense of panic. And what they did is this
Speaker 1: was an experiment. So with half of the group they
Speaker 1: literally were they threw them in the deep end and
Speaker 1: you know, they did the experiment. But the other half
Speaker 1: of the group they did this fascinating thing. They essentially
Speaker 1: did a mindset reset, and in just twenty minutes or so,
Speaker 1: they said, Okay, you're going to start feeling terrible. You're
Speaker 1: probably feeling like you might want to throw up, maybe
Speaker 1: butterflies in your stomach. Your heart's racing. That's not you
Speaker 1: getting ready to fall part. Actually, that's actually you getting
Speaker 1: ready to perform at your peak. And here's some science
Speaker 1: that shows why that's the case. And here's a little
Speaker 1: Darwin thrown in, because we love Darwin, right.
Speaker 3: They a picture.
Speaker 1: Of a sabertooth tiger on the handout, and here's some
Speaker 1: experts talking about it. And essentially, you know, when your
Speaker 1: heart's racing, your heart's pumping oxygen to your brain so
Speaker 1: you can think and you can plan and you can
Speaker 1: be at your beast and those butterflies in your stomach.
Speaker 1: Well that's good old adrenaline because you need to be
Speaker 1: able to bring it, you know, so your body is
Speaker 1: like preparing and blood's go into your muscles. And they
Speaker 1: just kind of talked them through it and normalized their
Speaker 1: experience for about twenty minutes or so, and then they
Speaker 1: threw them in. And when you compare those two groups,
Speaker 1: those who had the mindset reset and those who didn't,
Speaker 1: the ones who were clinically anxious, I mean, struggling with
Speaker 1: social anxiety disorder maybe for years. In many cases, they
Speaker 1: performed better, so they were more confident, they had a
Speaker 1: better argument, There were fewer ums and ohs, they had
Speaker 1: lower heart rates compared to the other group, and lower
Speaker 1: blood pressure such Actually their biological response look like someone
Speaker 1: who was sort of like facing a challenge, engaged in
Speaker 1: something hard, not like someone who's having a panic attack.
Speaker 5: It's incredible.
Speaker 1: It's incredible, and so we can do this in just
Speaker 1: twenty minutes with the right kind of information. That doesn't
Speaker 1: mean it solves everything, but what it means is that
Speaker 1: one day at a time, little by little, we can
Speaker 1: realize wait a second, I can build skills in working
Speaker 1: with this and wait a second, I can start to
Speaker 1: actually harness this if anxiety is a wave that usually
Speaker 1: drowns me. I can learn to swim, I can learn
Speaker 1: to surf, I can learn to sail like I can
Speaker 1: do this. So that's what I feel like is the
Speaker 1: incredible power of mindset interventions, and I just think we
Speaker 1: need to integrate this into the future of all psychotherapy
Speaker 1: that we forward people.
Speaker 5: I totally agree, and I think your book does, like
Speaker 5: I said earlier, just such a fabulous job of that.
Speaker 5: It just helping us make some mindset resets. Now, what
Speaker 5: is the word mindset reset?
Speaker 4: On my saying sete?
Speaker 1: Mindshift?
Speaker 3: Mind shift?
Speaker 4: Okay, whatever I mean.
Speaker 3: You're hoping the way and it was just a little tweak, you.
Speaker 5: Know, it's not herculean. Here's one that I really like.
Speaker 5: This idea of anti fragility was really good.
Speaker 4: Okay, so let me take you back. Here's what it's
Speaker 4: rooted in for me.
Speaker 5: So I too, am I'm recovering addict to prescription stimulants
Speaker 5: to deal with all kinds of issues that it turns
Speaker 5: out now I can have some skillfulness in my life
Speaker 5: without prescriptions. I can actually do this without medicine. But anyway,
Speaker 5: I had about a seven or eight year decline towards
Speaker 5: you know, my particular low point where I burned my
Speaker 5: life just up in flames. And it didn't start at
Speaker 5: this point, but it was very close to the beginning,
Speaker 5: and it was when I said to myself, Oh, I
Speaker 5: have an idea, So like life is hard, right, Like
Speaker 5: why don't you just orient around making my life easier?
Speaker 3: Like why don't I.
Speaker 5: Just make my life like all the things that I
Speaker 5: think just suck, Why don't I just avoid them all?
Speaker 5: Like why am I giving myself any more pain and struggle?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 5: So I can just tell you, as an end of one,
Speaker 5: as an experiment on myself over there, it doesn't lead
Speaker 5: to a life that is strong and thriving and feels good.
Speaker 5: So it turns out that stress or challenge, leaning into
Speaker 5: those things, it's actually how we grow, how we get stronger.
Speaker 5: And so this idea of anti fragility. Can you talk
Speaker 5: about that through the lens of anxiety?
Speaker 1: I think it's one of the most powerful concepts of
Speaker 1: mental health that we can have. As a listener to
Speaker 1: your podcast, I feel like there's a lot of conversations
Speaker 1: about this in what you are talking about because discomfort
Speaker 1: is at the root of so many of these unhealthy
Speaker 1: choices we make, and are intolerance of that, yes, and
Speaker 1: that's seeking of what's going to feel you know, I
Speaker 1: just need to feel better or feel good. So anti
Speaker 1: fragility I think it's important for parenting too, which I
Speaker 1: can go off on that tangent if we will, let
Speaker 1: me just focus on anti fragility. So it's a word
Speaker 1: that was coined by NASA Nicholas t. Leb when he
Speaker 1: wrote his book called Anti Fragility ooh, maybe fifteen years
Speaker 1: ago now, and his tagline was, and I am paraphrasing
Speaker 1: because now I'm forgetting of this is accurate things that
Speaker 1: gain from disorder, And it's this idea that you know,
Speaker 1: we talk a lot about resilience and mental health is
Speaker 1: kind of a ability to bounce back. But really what
Speaker 1: a lot of biological systems are psychological symptom, like societies, economics.
Speaker 1: What we actually see, in addition to resilience is the
Speaker 1: state of growing stronger because of adversity and challenge and
Speaker 1: things not going your way in the bumps in the road,
Speaker 1: not despite it. Resilience is like you bounce back like
Speaker 1: a phoenix rising from the ashes. Anti fragility is being
Speaker 1: the hydra you cut off one head and two grow
Speaker 1: in its place. And the immune system is anti fragile
Speaker 1: because if you don't throw germs at it, we will
Speaker 1: be the boy in the plastic bubble if you grew
Speaker 1: up when we did.
Speaker 4: Does anyone talk about the boys?
Speaker 3: Not much?
Speaker 5: But I know fully, Yeah that makes sense.
Speaker 1: But your immune system will not really function at its optimism,
Speaker 1: you know, and you.
Speaker 3: Might seek out germs and you avoid them. Maybe this
Speaker 3: is a lesson.
Speaker 5: Well I'm taking notes.
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, all reason.
Speaker 1: Like growing up, I like my kids to play in
Speaker 1: country dirt, but not city dirt.
Speaker 4: That's think about it.
Speaker 1: Emotions are anti fragile because if we don't actually learn
Speaker 1: to feel those bad feelings, we can never feel good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: muscles are anti fragile. You have to strain them and
Speaker 1: work them for them to grow strong. So we have
Speaker 1: ceased to treat ourselves and our emotional lives as being
Speaker 1: anti fragile. We really believe in our fragility. And in
Speaker 1: all these great new conversations we're having about mental health,
Speaker 1: what I fear is that we're having too many of
Speaker 1: the conversations about fragility.
Speaker 4: That it's a.
Speaker 1: Little too okay not to be okay. Not that it's,
Speaker 1: of course it's okay not to be okay, but that
Speaker 1: there's something we're always talking about our brokenness and not
Speaker 1: enough about our strength, not enough about that, you know what,
Speaker 1: it is messy being human and that's how we become
Speaker 1: our greatest by going through, not around, and so anti
Speaker 1: fragility is this belief that if we actually prepare for life,
Speaker 1: rather than protect ourselves from it, we will actually be
Speaker 1: at our best.
Speaker 4: And the same for parents.
Speaker 1: If we're protecting our kids from every bump in the road,
Speaker 1: we are not preparing them. Like actually, with a lot
Speaker 1: of parents being very feeling like they need to be protective,
Speaker 1: and I'm a parent, we have both a fear of
Speaker 1: the uncertain future for our kids. We have scarcity mindset
Speaker 1: because it's really hard to know how to help kids
Speaker 1: today and a lot of kids are struggling. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: if we do not allow them to struggle, like, the
Speaker 1: greatest gift we can give them is actually allowing them
Speaker 1: to deal with uncertainty and figure it out. That will
Speaker 1: be the killer app in the future. If we and
Speaker 1: just to think like say we have type A parents
Speaker 1: we just want our kids to succeed and like crush
Speaker 1: it at every point.
Speaker 4: Still the answer.
Speaker 1: Whether you just want them to be happy, which you
Speaker 1: know we all do, or if you want them to
Speaker 1: crush it and like go to all the ivs and
Speaker 1: then do this and then do that, the answer is
Speaker 1: still the same. You have to let kids struggle with
Speaker 1: uncertainty and allow them to be anti fragile, knowing that
Speaker 1: they will not break that they will grow stronger if
Speaker 1: you support them, if you scaffold them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you are confident they can go stronger by allowing
Speaker 5: them to in a you know, in a supportive way, obviously,
Speaker 5: but it's like, you can do this, let's go through it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And our anxiety about our kids' anxiety often blocks
Speaker 1: us from being able to do that. And I tell
Speaker 1: a lot of my own parenting fail stories.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, it's interesting. I was interested in this idea
Speaker 5: as it's connected to perfectionism and excellenism and little girls. Yes,
Speaker 5: because this just really hit home for me. We think
Speaker 5: about youthful fragility, you say, you know, once puberty hits,
Speaker 5: girls are twice as likely as boys to be diagnosed
Speaker 5: within an anxiety disorder like little miss perfect. Right, So
Speaker 5: you have this idea that like, she's strong, but she's
Speaker 5: a lady. She doesn't speak out out of turn, but
Speaker 5: she you know, we have these mixed messages, right, and
Speaker 5: I am someone who is just continually like recovering from perfectionism. Again,
Speaker 5: you say, the scope and intensity of these demanding and
Speaker 5: mixed messages put women squarely into the crosshairs of perfectionism,
Speaker 5: constantly on the precipice of failure because who can live
Speaker 5: up to them? You know, and that failure would destroy
Speaker 5: our self worth. I mean, it's just so excellenism and
Speaker 5: anti fragility being really powerful mindset shifts here.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's sort of what feminism has meant for
Speaker 1: many people is the whole lean in faut, which I
Speaker 1: think is a fallacy. And I think there's been some
Speaker 1: corrections on that idea of you know, lean in, this
Speaker 1: idea that we have to play like the boys play,
Speaker 1: and lean in and prioritize with having dinner with our
Speaker 1: kids like one hour you know a night, or doing whatever.
Speaker 4: But we're still playing by the boys rules. So is
Speaker 4: there actually healthcare support for us during you know, is
Speaker 4: their maternity leave and paternity leave.
Speaker 3: Is their childcare.
Speaker 1: So it's like we we have to be amazing women,
Speaker 1: whatever that might mean to us, and we have to
Speaker 1: be super successful and we have to be the perfect mother,
Speaker 1: And that's the feminist ideal.
Speaker 5: So many reading and as.
Speaker 1: My friend Richmond so Johnny says, who does a lot
Speaker 1: of incredible work in this space, especially with her Mom's
Speaker 1: first movement, she says, you know, having it all means
Speaker 1: that we just have to do it all, and that
Speaker 1: is what puts us in.
Speaker 4: I think that's part of it.
Speaker 1: Now. I wouldn't give up any of those things that
Speaker 1: I want to be as a woman, But it's about fit,
Speaker 1: it's about person environment. What is the environment doing for us?
Speaker 1: What have you done for me lately in terms of
Speaker 1: allowing me to do all these things? So there's that reality.
Speaker 1: But having said that, also a recovering perfectionist, I think
Speaker 1: because we get so rewarded for being as awesome as
Speaker 1: we are as women on all these fronts, and we
Speaker 1: start to aspire to this absolutely unattainable standard, right and
Speaker 1: we know from research and intuition but also research that
Speaker 1: it's like a loser's game to be a perfectionist. You
Speaker 1: can never meet that standard.
Speaker 4: Of flawlessness.
Speaker 1: What happens very quickly over time is you actually get
Speaker 1: less perfect because you never know and good enough is
Speaker 1: good enough.
Speaker 4: You're inefficient. Research SHOs at productivity is actually.
Speaker 1: Less among perfectionists. Quality of work is less over time
Speaker 1: from perfectionists. So and you have higher rates of anxiety disorders,
Speaker 1: major depressive disorder, addiction, and suicidality. So it's really there's
Speaker 1: no upside, right, But there's this idea of excellencism that
Speaker 1: I love and that's what I aspire to be and
Speaker 1: I've actually gotten I think, kind of good at it
Speaker 1: with a lot of practice. It's a term that Patrick Goudreaux,
Speaker 1: who's a Canadian psychologist, coined it's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a mouthful, so I'd love a better term and sense
Speaker 1: of like something gets easier to say, but props to
Speaker 1: go drou for this. So excellentism is this idea that
Speaker 1: you can be excellent, but that on the way to
Speaker 1: excellence you have to fail, you have to learn from mistakes,
Speaker 1: and there's really no perfect because you're really good at
Speaker 1: knowing when good enough is good enough, so that you
Speaker 1: have people like Thomas Edison of one of his famous
Speaker 1: quotes is I haven't failed a thousand times. I've just
Speaker 1: found a thousand ways that don't work.
Speaker 5: Yet.
Speaker 4: He was an excellencist.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 1: It's this idea that you know, on the way to
Speaker 1: being really awesome and excellent. You know, we can spend
Speaker 1: whole years being pretty darn good. Yeah, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: and we can practice it, like literally, I think we
Speaker 1: need to practice letting go of perfectionism, because perfectionism is
Speaker 1: just a way of dealing with anxiety, right, Because when
Speaker 1: you're perfect, can't hate yourself, No one can't hate you,
Speaker 1: no one critique you. You're meeting, you know, and so
Speaker 1: it's just really a way of avoiding all the messiness.
Speaker 5: And control can contribute this way, yeah, that way we
Speaker 5: have to hit that mark or else.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, And of course avoidance is a lynchpin in
Speaker 1: all problematic anxiety. It's going around rather than through, right,
Speaker 1: which is so excellentism. You know, I have exercises I've
Speaker 1: used over time and have talked about that you can practice.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of it is just identifying where
Speaker 1: you're perfectionistic and then very mindfully letting go of just
Speaker 1: one or two things.
Speaker 4: So if it's writing.
Speaker 1: Knowing that, you know what, I can't write perfectly out
Speaker 1: of the gate. I have to maybe not have a
Speaker 1: perfect draft that I give to my editor. For the
Speaker 1: first time, I was very blessed on writing Personal Zen
Speaker 1: to work with the most amazing editor, Bill Tanelli, you know,
Speaker 1: also Italian American. He's like every great like uncle Consiglieri,
Speaker 1: like father, confessor, genius editor, brilliant writer.
Speaker 4: And when I wrote future tense in the head to.
Speaker 1: Throw everything out and start fresh, I started working with Bill.
Speaker 1: And Bill, who is, you know, a brilliant person. He
Speaker 1: started very humbly, he said, Tracy. He's like, I know
Speaker 1: nothing about this topic and I'm moderately intelligent, of course,
Speaker 1: both of which are far farthest from but He's like,
Speaker 1: explain it to me. And I had to have a
Speaker 1: beginner's mind. I had a lego of the perfectionism of
Speaker 1: having it perfectly thought out in the ways that I've
Speaker 1: already thought about for like two years. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: started with the blank page. We had three weeks per
Speaker 1: chapter to meet our deadline, and so I'd write twelve
Speaker 1: pages and it was a mess. But I had to
Speaker 1: be like, you know what, I have to give this
Speaker 1: to Bill, so he could tell me I don't understand this,
Speaker 1: and this is twice as long, and that I don't
Speaker 1: know what that's about. And then and then he'd hand
Speaker 1: it back with like the broad strokes. And then I'd say, Okay,
Speaker 1: he wants me to tell a story. Here, what's the story? Oh,
Speaker 1: there's this story. And then I would dig in again,
Speaker 1: and then I'd send it him again. And for the
Speaker 1: first chapter it was like six or seven backs and forth.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Right, and then he'd.
Speaker 1: Finally be able to say, Okay, I'm a copy of
Speaker 1: it for you, but here's what you do. But by
Speaker 1: the ninth chapter, I have never learned so much in
Speaker 1: my life about writing as going through this painful process
Speaker 1: of excellencism and having to be really wrong a lot
Speaker 1: of the time. Yeah, and knowing that I had to
Speaker 1: let go of that perfect first draft, but then observing
Speaker 1: what happens when I let go of it.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: I discovered things I never knew because I had explained
Speaker 1: stuff because Bill quote unquote knows nothing. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: had to dig deep. I how to do these things?
Speaker 1: I mean, and I'd written for twenty years as a scientist.
Speaker 1: It doesn't prepare you to write a book, so you know,
Speaker 1: shout out to Bill and shout out to excellencism and
Speaker 1: knowing that you can fall down and fall down and
Speaker 1: fall down, and if you have the right community and
Speaker 1: the right support and just a modicum of belief in yourself,
Speaker 1: you can do things you never thought you could do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a failure is not proof that you have no
Speaker 5: self worth, right, Like you have to almost reinterpret, you know,
Speaker 5: failure what it is and what it means and its value.
Speaker 1: And we can teach our kids to do that, and
Speaker 1: we can start to question what our definitions of success are.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of when we think about kids'
Speaker 1: fears about their future and our fears for them. Like
Speaker 1: the first place to start, I think is also what
Speaker 1: does success mean to us? Is it mean going to
Speaker 1: a certain school or getting a certain job, or like,
Speaker 1: how can we expand that conversation, Just as we expand
Speaker 1: our conversation about what's failure, we can do the same
Speaker 1: with success.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that is a perfect place to wrap up.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Tracy. It's been such a pleasure
Speaker 3: to talk with you. We both enjoyed the book so
Speaker 3: much much. I love talking with you and wish the
Speaker 3: timer had not hit zero, but here we are.
Speaker 4: Thank you guys so much. What a gift to be
Speaker 4: speaking with you.
Speaker 6: Thank you so Phil the same way, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2: If what you just heard was helpful to you, please
Speaker 2: consider making a monthly to nation to support the One
Speaker 2: You Feed Podcast. When you join our membership community. With
Speaker 2: this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits.
Speaker 2: It's our way of saying thank you for your support.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 2: We are so grateful for the members of our community.
Speaker 2: We wouldn't be able to do what we do without
Speaker 2: their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted.
Speaker 2: To learn more, make a donation at any level and
Speaker 2: become a member of the One You Feed community, go
Speaker 2: to oneufeed dot net slash join. The One You Feed
Speaker 2: Podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting
Speaker 2: the show.