Speaker 1: I was constantly predicting negative things that never happened, So
Speaker 1: I said, what if instead I just went ahead and
Speaker 1: predicted positive ones, like I get a choice. And again
Speaker 1: it was that idea of my brain going, this is
Speaker 1: going to be a disaster, a disaster, and then I
Speaker 1: would do the thing and it wasn't a disaster.
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 think,
Speaker 2: ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 2: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 2: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 2: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 2: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 2: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 2: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 2: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 2: how they feed their good wolf. We hope you'll enjoy
Speaker 2: this episode from the archive. Thanks for joining us. Our
Speaker 2: guest on this episode is John Acuff, a New York
Speaker 2: Times best selling author of seven books. He's also an
Speaker 2: I inc Magazine Top one hundred Leadership speaker and has
Speaker 2: spoken to hundreds of thousands of people at conferences and
Speaker 2: companies around the world, including FedEx, Nissan, Microsoft, Lockheed, Martin,
Speaker 2: and many others. Today, John and Eric discuss his new book, Soundtracks,
Speaker 2: The Surprising Solution to Overthinking.
Speaker 3: Hi, John, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me today. I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 4: Eric.
Speaker 3: We're going to talk about your new book, which I
Speaker 3: really enjoyed, called Soundtracks The Surprising Solution to Overthinking. But
Speaker 3: before we do that, will start like we always do
Speaker 3: with the parable. There is a grandfather who's talking to
Speaker 3: his granddaughter and he says, in life, there are two
Speaker 3: wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One
Speaker 3: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 3: bravery and love, and the other's a bad wolf, which
Speaker 3: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 3: granddaughter stops. She thinks about it for a second. She
Speaker 3: looks up at her grandfather and she says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 3: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 3: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 3: the work that you do well.
Speaker 1: I think for me, it means you don't become who
Speaker 1: you want to be accidentally. I always tell people, no
Speaker 1: one accidentally gets in shape. I've never met a single
Speaker 1: person that said, you know, it's just beinge watching Netflix.
Speaker 1: And then I looked up and I was doing burpies
Speaker 1: like I don't even remember doing them, like, or I was,
Speaker 1: you know, managing five fantasy football teams. I looked up
Speaker 1: and I had finally finished writing the book I've always
Speaker 1: wanted to write. So I think of that parable and go, Okay,
Speaker 1: the choices you make you Yeah, and so you've got
Speaker 1: a choice, and the more you make certain choices, the
Speaker 1: more you become the person you're trying to become. That's
Speaker 1: how I look at that parable, and that's how I
Speaker 1: think about even my book. I think part of the
Speaker 1: you know, the book is about mindset ultimately, is that
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't understand they get to choose
Speaker 1: what they think, they get to choose their thoughts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so this story, to me, this parable is ultimately
Speaker 1: about the power of choice and the permission to choose,
Speaker 1: and what happens when you choose consistently right.
Speaker 3: And you actually allude to this distinction between action and
Speaker 3: thought a little bit later in the book, and you say,
Speaker 3: if action eliminates overthinking, then in action breeds it. And
Speaker 3: your book is about overthinking. It's about the negative soundtracksuite
Speaker 3: we have. But I love that line. If action eliminates overthinking,
Speaker 3: then in action breeds it, And BOYD does that feel true?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And I think we see that. I mean, especially
Speaker 1: in the last eighteen months, it's been interesting. A lot
Speaker 1: of people have asked me, did you write the book
Speaker 1: during the pandemic? And I always say no, like it
Speaker 1: was finished long before spend accidentally well timed. I'm not
Speaker 1: smart enough to time something like that. But I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people in isolation, in an action, had
Speaker 1: so much more space to get stuck in overthinking. And
Speaker 1: I think, you know, sometimes even that's why the power
Speaker 1: of something simple like a walk around the neighborhood can
Speaker 1: clear your head. You go, there's nothing magical about that.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't say, Okay, it was the perfect walk, or
Speaker 1: I executed it just right. You'd say getting outside, vitamin D,
Speaker 1: a little bit of endorphins, those things, that little bit
Speaker 1: of action can actually help you fix a problem has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with walking. I mean it can be
Speaker 1: a relational problem that you say, Wow, I got this
Speaker 1: idea for this relationship I'm stuck in. And it happened
Speaker 1: because I was on a trail run. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: that the trail run had you know, books about being
Speaker 1: in relationships on it. It was that you gave yourself
Speaker 1: a little bit of action and in that moment were
Speaker 1: able to go Okay, I could see how I could
Speaker 1: get unstuck from this situation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1: Listener.
Speaker 3: As you're listening, what resonated with you in that? I
Speaker 3: think a lot of is have some ideas of things
Speaker 3: that we can do to feed our good wolf. And
Speaker 3: here's a good tip to make it more likely that
Speaker 3: you do it. It can be really helpful to reflect
Speaker 3: right before you do that thing on why you want
Speaker 3: to do it. Our brains are always making a calculation
Speaker 3: of what neuroscientists would call reward value, Basically, is this
Speaker 3: thing worth doing? And so when you're getting ready to
Speaker 3: do this thing that you want to do to feed
Speaker 3: your good wolf, reflecting on why actually helps to make
Speaker 3: the reward value on that higher and makes it more
Speaker 3: likely that you're going to do that. For example, if
Speaker 3: what you're trying to do is exercise, right before you're
Speaker 3: getting ready to exercise, it can be useful to remind
Speaker 3: yourself of why, for example, I want to exercise because
Speaker 3: it makes my mental and emotional health better today. If
Speaker 3: you'd like a step by step guide for how you
Speaker 3: can easily build new habits that feed your good Wolf,
Speaker 3: go to Goodwolf dot me, slash change and join the
Speaker 3: free masterclass. When we are not in action, oftentimes we
Speaker 3: don't feel good about that because we know we should
Speaker 3: be doing something, and so then of course the overthinking
Speaker 3: starts to sort of crank up. It's sort of an
Speaker 3: example would be like if I know I need to
Speaker 3: work out that day, but I haven't been specific about
Speaker 3: when I'm going to do it, and it's just floating
Speaker 3: out there. And the longer it goes on, the more
Speaker 3: overthinking starts, the more I'm thinking about where I don't
Speaker 3: know if I really want to just all that overthinking
Speaker 3: gets spun up because I don't have a clear plan
Speaker 3: or I just haven't done the thing that needs done
Speaker 3: for me.
Speaker 1: I love the idea of like decide as few times
Speaker 1: as possible. Yes, so if you you know, and so
Speaker 1: many smart people have written about that concept. It's by
Speaker 1: no means an original concept to me, but just the
Speaker 1: idea of if I have to decide every day to
Speaker 1: do the thing, I have now created five different moments,
Speaker 1: if it's or seven different moments a week to talk
Speaker 1: myself out of the thing. Every bad decision you've ever made,
Speaker 1: you talk yourself into. And if you say that somebody,
Speaker 1: why did you do that, They'll go I thought it
Speaker 1: would work out. Very rarely do you hear somebody go,
Speaker 1: I wanted to ruin my marriage, like I was, just
Speaker 1: like I want to have a terrible marriage. I wanted
Speaker 1: to get fired. I thought being homeless would feel good.
Speaker 1: Like you have these things that you talked yourself into,
Speaker 1: This will feel good, this will help. And so I
Speaker 1: think if you allow yourself lots of decision spaces, there's
Speaker 1: lots of room for overthinking to come in and go.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really kind of cold outside, you really
Speaker 1: want to get out of bed. You don't even know
Speaker 1: where your shoes are, Like you can run tomorrow, run
Speaker 1: double tomorrow, and like you have all this space versus
Speaker 1: going no remember on Sunday I decided I'm gonna run
Speaker 1: three times this week Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So the decisions
Speaker 1: already happened. Like, I'm sorry, overthinking, you missed the meeting.
Speaker 1: We decided, like the gavel has struck. Like you can
Speaker 1: complain during the run. That's fine, you might do that,
Speaker 1: but we've already made the decision. And so I think
Speaker 1: that's part of that, not allowing overthinking kind of the
Speaker 1: room to fester and grow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I couldn't agree more that idea of sort of
Speaker 3: separating our decisions from our actions, you know, deciding ahead
Speaker 3: of time. So let's kind of circle back to the
Speaker 3: beginning of the book and you talk about overthinking being
Speaker 3: a problem in our lives. Let's talk a little bit
Speaker 3: about why is overthinking a problem. Although most everybody listening
Speaker 3: to the show is going to be like, well, I
Speaker 3: know exactly why overthinking is a problem, because it hurts,
Speaker 3: it doesn't feel good. But say a little.
Speaker 1: More, Well, what was interesting? Whenever I write a book,
Speaker 1: I look for three things, and I think this is
Speaker 1: true of anybody who's going to launch a business, do
Speaker 1: a podcast, anything you create. I look for three things.
Speaker 1: I look for a need the people really need it,
Speaker 1: And am I our friends talking to me about it?
Speaker 1: Is my audience online talking about it? When I go
Speaker 1: to a speaking client, or they asking about it. The
Speaker 1: second thing I look for is a personal connection. Am
Speaker 1: I personally connected to it? This podcast wouldn't be as
Speaker 1: successful if you weren't personally connected to the parable You've
Speaker 1: talked about it for years and it still rings true
Speaker 1: and fresh and authentic because you're personally connected to it.
Speaker 1: The third thing I look for is Okay, is there
Speaker 1: a spot for me in the marketplace or is the
Speaker 1: marketplace already overcrowded? So we really jumped on need first,
Speaker 1: and this PhD Mike Peasley, who does research with me.
Speaker 1: We asked ten thousand people if they strug with overthinking.
Speaker 1: A ninety nine point five percent of people said yes.
Speaker 1: So it's this massive need And I think the real
Speaker 1: problem with it kind of lies in how I define it.
Speaker 1: I define it as when what you think gets in
Speaker 1: the way of what you want. So you have something
Speaker 1: you want, you have a desire, you have a hope,
Speaker 1: you have you know, a plan, a goal, whatever, and
Speaker 1: then all this extra thinking gets in the way you know.
Speaker 1: For instance, according to the New York Times, eighty one
Speaker 1: percent of Americans want to write a book, eighty one percent.
Speaker 1: It's one of our most popular goals in our nation.
Speaker 1: And every year less than one percent to one percent.
Speaker 1: So eighty one percent say they want to do it,
Speaker 1: less than one percent do. So there's a huge gap.
Speaker 1: And I think the real problem when you overthink and
Speaker 1: you don't end up pursuing the desire using the talent
Speaker 1: you've been given, is that it doesn't go away. It
Speaker 1: turns the bitterness. The way I say it is, the
Speaker 1: goals you don't finish don't disappear. They become these ghosts
Speaker 1: that haunt you. Scientists call it the z effect. You
Speaker 1: remember incomplete goals more than your completed once your incomplete
Speaker 1: actions have a heavier weight, yes, a heavier residue than
Speaker 1: the ones you completed. So I think that's the real
Speaker 1: cost of overthinking. I say it steals time, creativity, and
Speaker 1: productivity because it's it's this really sneaky, greedy form of fear.
Speaker 1: And I'll give you one specific example. Every listener that's
Speaker 1: listening has done this thing where before you even write
Speaker 1: down an idea, you judge it as dumb. You go, Okay,
Speaker 1: somebody's already done that. That's silly. People won't like that
Speaker 1: before it's even made it from your head to a
Speaker 1: piece of paper you've self edited. I just think, imagine
Speaker 1: the works of art, the curious for diseases, the businesses,
Speaker 1: the relationships we've lost because somebody overthought something and didn't
Speaker 1: even pursue it to the next step of just writing
Speaker 1: it down. So that to me is just kind of
Speaker 1: an example of the cost of overthinking.
Speaker 3: Yep. And you refer to our thoughts as basically a
Speaker 3: personal soundtrack to our lives. Why did you land on
Speaker 3: that metaphor? It happens to be one I love, But
Speaker 3: I'm curious what it was that brought you to that.
Speaker 1: Oh thank you. Yeah. So there's been so many smart
Speaker 1: people who've written about mindset and thinking. I mean, I
Speaker 1: saw you had Carol Dweck on the podcast I mean
Speaker 1: talk about mindset genius. So I certainly wasn't the first
Speaker 1: person to explore the concept. But I've heard people say
Speaker 1: a thought is like a leaf on a river, it's
Speaker 1: like a cloud in the sky, it's like a car
Speaker 1: on a highway. But for me, it's a soundtrack, because
Speaker 1: a soundtrack has the power to change an entire moment,
Speaker 1: and often we don't even notice its impact. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: you see a movie and there's a little house with
Speaker 1: a white picket fence and some kids frolicking, and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, if they play an ominous soundtrack,
Speaker 1: it changes your whole view of that scene. You go
Speaker 1: from what a quiet street to be careful, it's quiet,
Speaker 1: it's too quiet. And so that's what a soundtrack does.
Speaker 1: And every repetitive thought, the thoughts that you repeat again
Speaker 1: and again, the ones you listen to, become your personal playlist.
Speaker 1: So you have a soundtrack for every relationship, every city
Speaker 1: you've lived in, every boss, every dream, every hope. And
Speaker 1: so I really wanted to give people an easy handle
Speaker 1: for them to go, oh, that's right, I do have
Speaker 1: a soundtrack. I gotta give you an example. Everyone listening
Speaker 1: has a friend or an acquaintance or a coworker that
Speaker 1: when they see their text message, they don't even have
Speaker 1: to read it, just the notification fires off broken soundtracks
Speaker 1: where they go, oh, this person, they're reaching out again.
Speaker 1: You've built up a soundtrack that played immediately. You haven't
Speaker 1: even read the text, but you've got all these repetitive thoughts.
Speaker 1: That are triggered the second you see that person's name
Speaker 1: and it plays this automatic soundtrack. And so that's why
Speaker 1: I picked that particular metaphor because it really, for me
Speaker 1: captures the power and the potential of a soundtrack.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love it because I've often talked to people
Speaker 3: about the thought patterns in their lives that are really prominent.
Speaker 3: I refer to them as sort of like your greatest hits,
Speaker 3: you know, but they're like a song in the way that,
Speaker 3: like a song, just keeps playing and.
Speaker 1: It stays with you, and it keeps going. The more
Speaker 1: you listen to it, the easier it is for it
Speaker 1: to get triggered the next time. So the reason you
Speaker 1: can be three minutes late to the car writer pickup
Speaker 1: line as a mom and feel like I'm the worst
Speaker 1: mom is because you've played that a thousand times and
Speaker 1: it's so powerful and it's so fast, and it immediately
Speaker 1: erases all the good stuff you did that day. You
Speaker 1: got your kids out the door, you worked a full
Speaker 1: time job, you did soccer pickup, you did everything, and
Speaker 1: then one three minute late ride to the pickup line
Speaker 1: and you go, I'm the worst mom ever. It's because
Speaker 1: that soundtrack has been playing a thousand times, and so
Speaker 1: that's to me why they're powerful.
Speaker 3: I want to explore some of the things in the book,
Speaker 3: specifically some of the techniques, but before we do that,
Speaker 3: I want to bring up a thing that is sat
Speaker 3: in some ways at the heart of this podcast kind
Speaker 3: of all along in some ways, and it's really this
Speaker 3: distinction between we hear different messages in the personal development,
Speaker 3: self help psychology space.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: One message is very much on point with your book,
Speaker 3: which is, Hey, the thoughts that you are thinking are
Speaker 3: really really important, and you've got to get them right.
Speaker 3: The negative thoughts are going to be problematic, You've got
Speaker 3: to work with those right. The other school of thought
Speaker 3: is a little bit more about you need to feel
Speaker 3: the feelings that you're having. You're having emotions, and just
Speaker 3: trying to shove them down or get rid of them
Speaker 3: doesn't really work. We have to allow them space and
Speaker 3: we have to feel them, or we have to not
Speaker 3: resist them. And so I'm just kind of curious how
Speaker 3: you think about that piece of it.
Speaker 1: So my example of that would be one of the
Speaker 1: ideas in the book is about pulling the thread that
Speaker 1: you should ask the thought behind the thought behind the
Speaker 1: thought there's always a thread. So my version of that,
Speaker 1: when you feel the feelings, process of feelings is think
Speaker 1: about that thought behind the soundtrack. So, for instance, if
Speaker 1: you said to me, John, I've got this really difficult
Speaker 1: person I have to deal with, and I'd say, well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about that. And if you said, oh, Mike
Speaker 1: is the worst. Mike is the worst. There's not much
Speaker 1: we can do with that. Mike is the worst. But
Speaker 1: what's behind that, I'd say, why do you feel that way?
Speaker 1: And now we'll start to process kind of the thoughts
Speaker 1: the feelings, and you might say, you know, he only
Speaker 1: bothers me when he wants something. He only bothers me
Speaker 1: when he wants something, and that's a soundtrack. We can
Speaker 1: start to kind of pull the thread on and it
Speaker 1: might be what's really going on if you process that
Speaker 1: feeling is you don't feel like you get to say
Speaker 1: no to people you know, and you feel like when
Speaker 1: that person asks you for stuff, you feel powerless, and
Speaker 1: that doesn't feel good. Maybe the family of origin you
Speaker 1: grew up in said, always serve people, always put people first,
Speaker 1: always put and that became mutated into I don't get
Speaker 1: to have boundaries. So we might say Wow, that's what's
Speaker 1: really going on. We can't change Mike. You're one hundred
Speaker 1: percent of the people you have one hundred percent control over.
Speaker 1: But what you can do is write yourself a new
Speaker 1: soundtrack that says, I get to have boundaries, I get
Speaker 1: to tell people like Mike no, I get to do
Speaker 1: self care. And so that to me is my version
Speaker 1: of Okay, let's feel the feelings. Let's see what's really
Speaker 1: going on, versus going like, just do it. Like, just
Speaker 1: do it isn't a complete solution, right, you know, if
Speaker 1: you don't really spend the time going okay, well, let
Speaker 1: me talk about what's behind the thing, behind the thing,
Speaker 1: you keep repeating the things over and over again. My
Speaker 1: favorite book about kind of exploring your feelings, Chipdod wrote
Speaker 1: a book called The Voice of the Heart, and it
Speaker 1: really talks about how anger, you know, is really about
Speaker 1: passion and how loneliness is really about community. And so
Speaker 1: it's funny. It's a list of eight emotions and seven
Speaker 1: of them on the face you go, seven of them
Speaker 1: are negative. There's only one that's positive. And he would
Speaker 1: say no, no, no, no no, like anger, when it's appropriately expressed,
Speaker 1: is an act of passion. Is you fighting for somebody
Speaker 1: or four cars? Like we've over labeled it negative, and
Speaker 1: we overlabel emotions negative. But if you'll sit with them
Speaker 1: and process them, they'll really teach you even fear like
Speaker 1: I would say that. Like I don't like when motivational
Speaker 1: people say be fearless, be fearless, be fearless, because one
Speaker 1: I think it's impossible too. I don't think it's true.
Speaker 1: When I spoke for the first time to ten people,
Speaker 1: I'd never been a public speaker, I had ten person
Speaker 1: sized fear, but I worked on it, I processed it,
Speaker 1: I got over it. And then when I spoke to
Speaker 1: a hundred people, I had one hundred person sized fear.
Speaker 1: At each new level of each new thing, I found
Speaker 1: fear waiting for me. And so I never would tell
Speaker 1: somebody you have to be fearless, because I think that
Speaker 1: means you're stuck. I mean, yesterday I spoke to eight
Speaker 1: thousand people. That was a different fear than one hundred people.
Speaker 1: But I worked on that, I got over that. And
Speaker 1: so what I like to say is fear gets a voice,
Speaker 1: not a vote. I'm gonna hear it, I'm gonna listen
Speaker 1: to it, I'm gonna learn from it fears trying to
Speaker 1: t teach me a lesson about myself. You don't get
Speaker 1: self awareness if you say to yourself, I have to
Speaker 1: stop all fear. And so fear gets a voice, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't get a vote in that it doesn't get
Speaker 1: to tell me what to do or what not to do,
Speaker 1: because it's overcautious. And I've learned that over the years
Speaker 1: that if it's at the head of the table, I'll
Speaker 1: never write a book, I'll never go in a podcast
Speaker 1: because what if I say the wrong thing? What if
Speaker 1: I look dumb to Eric? All these things that fear
Speaker 1: is worried about. So that's kind of how I look
Speaker 1: at processing your feelings.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that idea of underlying the emotion. There's a phrase
Speaker 3: from acceptance commitment therapy where they say your vulnerabilities and
Speaker 3: your values kind of are poured from the same vessel.
Speaker 3: I love the alliteration to it, but it's the idea
Speaker 3: that my vulnerabilities or my emotions, the things that I'm
Speaker 3: feeling tell me something very important about what I care about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're educating you, you know. One of the activities
Speaker 1: I give in the book is this idea of how
Speaker 1: do you identify a broken soundtrack the soundtrack that's not helpful.
Speaker 1: And so the thirty second activity is write down a dream,
Speaker 1: right down a goal, write down a wish. So if
Speaker 1: you say, I want to write a book, I want
Speaker 1: to start a podcast, I want to get married, I
Speaker 1: want to ask that person out, I want to move
Speaker 1: to Columbus, Ohio, whatever, write down a wish and then
Speaker 1: listen to your first thoughts. After, listen to your first feelings, after,
Speaker 1: listen to your reaction, because every reaction is an education.
Speaker 1: And so if your reaction is smarter, people have already
Speaker 1: done that. Nobody wants to hear from you. Who are
Speaker 1: it's too late. It's too late, or you're too young,
Speaker 1: you know enough experience. Listen to that, and you might
Speaker 1: need to sit with that as a broken soundtrack, because
Speaker 1: if your first response isn't let's do it. I bet
Speaker 1: we can learn that. I could try that. People do
Speaker 1: podcasts all the time. I could figure that out. If
Speaker 1: you're not getting pushed forward by your thoughts, you're getting
Speaker 1: held back by them, and we can figure those out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you say, when you're looking at a broken soundtrack,
Speaker 3: you can ask it three questions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the three questions. I like to think of
Speaker 1: these as trojan horse questions because on the face of them,
Speaker 1: they're very simple. There's not a single listener today. They'll
Speaker 1: be like, I've never heard those words, like John found
Speaker 1: a word in the English language that's so unique. But
Speaker 1: if you'll sit with them for a minute, there's deep
Speaker 1: truth hidden in them. So the first question is is
Speaker 1: it true this thing I'm telling myself about myself, or
Speaker 1: about this situation, or about this conversation? Is it true?
Speaker 1: One of the greatest mistakes you can make is assuming
Speaker 1: all your thoughts are true, that just because you've thought it,
Speaker 1: it must be true, despite the countless times your overthinking
Speaker 1: has lied to you. Everyone's thoughts at some level, at
Speaker 1: some point have told him, Oh, this is going to
Speaker 1: be a gigantic disaster, and you know what, it wasn't
Speaker 1: Your thought got that one hundred percent wrong. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: second question you ask is is it helpful? Is it
Speaker 1: helpful when I listen to this over and over and
Speaker 1: over again? Does it push me forward or pull me back?
Speaker 1: And the reason you ask more than one question is
Speaker 1: that sometimes there are things that are true but they're
Speaker 1: not helpful. So my favorite example I interviewed a manager
Speaker 1: who said, John, I got fired twelve years ago from
Speaker 1: my job, and in that moment I started to overthink
Speaker 1: this idea that if I wasn't included in a meeting,
Speaker 1: maybe they were about to fire me again. So I
Speaker 1: got another job, and every time I see a door
Speaker 1: close at a meeting, I think, uh oh, and I
Speaker 1: spend five ten minutes. You know who's in that meeting?
Speaker 1: Should I be in that meeting? Was I not invited
Speaker 1: that meeting? That I missed that meeting? So let's say
Speaker 1: he only does it, you know, one time a day,
Speaker 1: five days a week. That's fifty minutes a week, which
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like a lot, But then you go over
Speaker 1: twelve year period, that's sixty two eight hour work days.
Speaker 1: Like we try to save time with like apps. But
Speaker 1: imagine the time he's donated to that. Now that again,
Speaker 1: is it true he could be fired one hundred percent,
Speaker 1: We could all be fired at any point. That is true.
Speaker 1: But is it helpful for him to donate that creativity,
Speaker 1: that time, that effort to the thought, of course not.
Speaker 1: Third question to ask, is is it kind if I
Speaker 1: said this to a friend where they still want to
Speaker 1: be in my friend That's what's been fun about doing
Speaker 1: these podcast interviews about the book is that it often
Speaker 1: turns into a heart conversation. I had a podcast host
Speaker 1: get quiet during this question. I said what and he said, well,
Speaker 1: I've been the number one podcast in my category for
Speaker 1: nine months and the soundtrack I've been listening to is
Speaker 1: You're just lucky. You're just lucky. You're just lucky. He said.
Speaker 1: If a friend of mine came over and they had
Speaker 1: worked really hard for nine months on something, I'd never
Speaker 1: tell them you're just lucky. You're just lucky. So if
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say it to them, why am I saying
Speaker 1: it to me? And if you can't answer yes to
Speaker 1: those three questions, it's true, it's helpful, it's kind. You
Speaker 1: then have to say, well, why am I accepting that
Speaker 1: I'm listening to this? Why am I letting this be
Speaker 1: my soundtrack? And if I don't want it to be,
Speaker 1: what can I do about it?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I love those Those questions show up in a
Speaker 3: lot of different areas, but I love the package of
Speaker 3: the three of those together is really true, you know,
Speaker 3: And I love the is it helpful? Because sometimes thoughts
Speaker 3: that we have that are just use the word negative
Speaker 3: because it comes to mind that's not really what they are.
Speaker 3: But they're not positive. Sometimes they actually are helpful. I'm
Speaker 3: solving a problem, I'm thinking through a difficult situation, I'm
Speaker 3: processing something in a way that actually is helpful. But
Speaker 3: then there's very often for most of us who'll recognize,
Speaker 3: we sort of cross a point where it no longer
Speaker 3: is helpful. So, for example, if I just got in
Speaker 3: a fight with my partner, there's a period of time
Speaker 3: that I'm going to be thinking about that that I
Speaker 3: actually think it's helpful because I'm learning what did I do?
Speaker 3: What could I say? What could I have do? And
Speaker 3: then there's a certain point that it crosses over that
Speaker 3: I just circle the same ground over and over and
Speaker 3: over and over and over again it's no longer helpful.
Speaker 1: Well, and the other thing is you're one hundred percent right,
Speaker 1: because it might also not be completely true. Eventually your
Speaker 1: brain distorts reality. So what happens let's go right to
Speaker 1: this specific example. You have an argument with a partner
Speaker 1: you're working on that is it helpful for you to
Speaker 1: think that own the things you need to own? Of course,
Speaker 1: like you know, figure out your words, what was my tone?
Speaker 1: What was my meaning. But then on some level, because
Speaker 1: of how your brain works, it tends to distort and
Speaker 1: add things to situations that weren't really there, and so
Speaker 1: then you've moved into the territory of it's no longer true.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of my favorite people in the plan
Speaker 1: is this guy named Al Andrews, and he and his
Speaker 1: wife had an argument in the morning, and he thought
Speaker 1: about it all day, thought about it all day, and
Speaker 1: then when he came home that night, he said, I
Speaker 1: need to apologize because I've been lying for you all day.
Speaker 1: I was telling myself things you didn't say and didn't do.
Speaker 1: I was adding words, adding, and that what we do
Speaker 1: in arguments, and so we add tone and all this,
Speaker 1: and so is it helpful? Yes, there's a point where
Speaker 1: it is. Is it true? There's a point where it's
Speaker 1: no longer true? And then you go, is it kind?
Speaker 1: It's probably not kind to you or your partner. So
Speaker 1: that's why there's more than one question, and that's why
Speaker 1: they work together to kind of give you a leg
Speaker 1: to stand on, so that when it's true, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: is it helpful?
Speaker 4: And vice versa.
Speaker 3: You boil the whole thing down into three actions.
Speaker 1: With alliteration, you know, and I like a literation.
Speaker 3: We do we do retire, replace, repeat, Yes, very nice.
Speaker 3: We just talked a little bit about retiring, you know,
Speaker 3: retiring your broken soundtracks. But what else do we need
Speaker 3: to talk about with retiring our broken soundtracks beyond the
Speaker 3: recognition of them, which we just sort of talked through.
Speaker 3: One way to recognize them is to ask these three questions.
Speaker 3: Is there anything more you'd want to say? On retire?
Speaker 1: I think it's always good to do it in community too.
Speaker 1: I think I think one hundred percent self awareness is
Speaker 1: a myth. Yes, I think we stand so close to
Speaker 1: our own paintings sometimes we can't really see what it is.
Speaker 1: And sometimes that's in the context we've mentioned relationships. You're
Speaker 1: in a relationship, a dating relationship, and you're so close
Speaker 1: to it you can't really see what it is, and
Speaker 1: you break up and then three months later you go, wow,
Speaker 1: I've got some distance that wasn't healthy. Why was I
Speaker 1: okay that they talked to me that way? Why was okay?
Speaker 1: And you'll say to your friends, hey, why didn't you
Speaker 1: tell me? And often if they're good friends, will go
Speaker 1: we tried, we did because they had the distance yes.
Speaker 1: And so sometimes, you know, when you think about broken soundtracks,
Speaker 1: having a friend you trust to go, hey, do you
Speaker 1: ever see me hold myself back from opportunity? And a
Speaker 1: friend who knows you, who actually you have a real
Speaker 1: relationship with, might be able to say yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I notice that when you get certain types of opportunities,
Speaker 1: you say no before you've even tried. And I think
Speaker 1: that people see something in you you don't see in yourself,
Speaker 1: and I think that might be a broken soundtrack. And
Speaker 1: it might be that you know, in college, or maybe
Speaker 1: even in high school, you had a teacher or a
Speaker 1: professor or a parent say you're not a great leader.
Speaker 1: You're not a great natural leader. And so now you're
Speaker 1: getting all these leadership opportunities at your job, and as
Speaker 1: soon as you get to a certain level, you jump
Speaker 1: to another job because you don't you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: a leader, and a friend might go. The last three
Speaker 1: jobs you've had, you all jumped right at the time
Speaker 1: where they said, okay, we want you to manage people
Speaker 1: because we see something. I wonder if there's a soundtrack there.
Speaker 1: So sometimes a great way to work on the retired
Speaker 1: process is to have somebody who can reflect back to you.
Speaker 1: What's going on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Discernment is a word that's
Speaker 3: used a lot in spiritual communities, but I think discernment
Speaker 3: half the battle is having people to help you discern.
Speaker 1: You know, we're not supposed to do it alone, whether
Speaker 1: it's recovery, whether it's your faith, anything like, we're not
Speaker 1: supposed to carry it alone.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was just reflecting on something. You may have heard
Speaker 3: of this before, called Solomon's paradox. Solomon's paradox is named
Speaker 3: after King Solomon, who you know, wise King Solomon. We
Speaker 3: all know how wise he was, well, apparently not in
Speaker 3: his own life, so people would travel from around the
Speaker 3: world to see him to get his wisdom, but for
Speaker 3: himself couldn't do it. And that's that's known as Solomon's paradox.
Speaker 3: We don't see ourselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's so true. I mean, he had some
Speaker 1: very clear tenets and broke just about every one.
Speaker 3: Of them, right right, Yeah, So okay, so three actions
Speaker 3: to change your thoughts. Retire our broken soundtrack. The next
Speaker 3: is to replace them with new ones. So let's talk
Speaker 3: about this process.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this one really came from there's a lot
Speaker 1: of kind of mindset approach or overthinking approaches says stop it,
Speaker 1: stop it, stop overthinking, stop thinking, And one, I think
Speaker 1: that's impossible. We're amazing thinking machines. And two why would
Speaker 1: I ever turn off this amazing machine? What would happen
Speaker 1: if I just fed it with good thoughts? And so
Speaker 1: I really believe that if you can work, you can wonder,
Speaker 1: If you can doubt, you can dominate, if you can spin,
Speaker 1: you can soar. It's kind of the you know, a
Speaker 1: plane can drop food or a bomb. And so really
Speaker 1: where the book came from was going, what if I
Speaker 1: could take all this thinking and actually figure out a
Speaker 1: way for it to work for me, not against me?
Speaker 1: And that's where replace comes in. So it's not just
Speaker 1: stop it, stop it, stop it, Like why do you
Speaker 1: keep overthinking? It's okay, what do you want to overthink?
Speaker 1: That's in a good way? Like for me. That's really
Speaker 1: where my career changed dramatically is in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: I had a blog that started to get some readership
Speaker 1: and I started to grow things, and an event planner
Speaker 1: out of nowhere said, hey, would you come speak at
Speaker 1: our conference? And I'd never done that. I had no
Speaker 1: real evidence. I could do that. All I had was
Speaker 1: one thought, I think I could be a public speaker.
Speaker 1: I think I could be an author. Now I turned
Speaker 1: that into a thousand different actions, a thousand different results
Speaker 1: over the years. But it started with a thought, and
Speaker 1: it started with repeating that positive thought. So that's what
Speaker 1: this part of the idea is. Okay, we retire some
Speaker 1: of these, but you're going to think. You're going to
Speaker 1: keep thinking and in a vacuum, good thoughts don't show
Speaker 1: up on their own. The phrase I use sometimes is
Speaker 1: fear comes free, hope takes work. You don't have to
Speaker 1: go look for negativity. Negativity will find you in the
Speaker 1: grocery store and remind you of a stupid thing you
Speaker 1: said three years ago or a mistake you made. I mean,
Speaker 1: my brain the other day was like, hey, I remember
Speaker 1: that surprise party you ruined? And I was like, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: And this woman that I worked with, she sent an email,
Speaker 1: and in my defense, she buried the lead you got
Speaker 1: to say in the subject line surprise party, don't tell
Speaker 1: my husband. But I skimmed the email. I told her
Speaker 1: husband I ruined his thirtieth birthday party. When we went
Speaker 1: to the party that night, my wife and I walked
Speaker 1: in and I swear to you, she stopped the music
Speaker 1: and said, this is John Acuff, the guy who ruined
Speaker 1: the party. And I was like, hey, everybody, and that
Speaker 1: happened nineteen years ago. And the other day my brain
Speaker 1: was like, hey, you wanna Are you feeling too good
Speaker 1: right now? What if we thought about a party you
Speaker 1: ruined nineteen years ago? How is that helpful? So the
Speaker 1: part about repeat is Okay, now that we know we
Speaker 1: have the power and permission to change our thoughts, what
Speaker 1: are we gonna put there in of the broken ones?
Speaker 1: And I would say ninety nine percent of people don't
Speaker 1: understand they get to choose their thoughts. Most people think
Speaker 1: they just show up on their own. Even my most
Speaker 1: type A friends who lay out their clothes the night
Speaker 1: before they go to the gym. Very rarely do I
Speaker 1: meet people that say, got a big negotiation coming up
Speaker 1: on Thursday, and the last one, like a month ago
Speaker 1: with a different client went kind of south. And I
Speaker 1: know I'm going to go in with clenched hands if
Speaker 1: I'm not careful. So I'm gonna have the soundtracks playing
Speaker 1: so that I have the right attitude and the right
Speaker 1: approach in this meeting, I'm gonna choose what I'll be
Speaker 1: thinking in this moment versus just hoping that it's okay.
Speaker 3: That phrase choose your thoughts is an interesting one, right,
Speaker 3: because on one level, we don't choose what shows up.
Speaker 3: If you sit down to try and meditate for ten minutes,
Speaker 3: you see this right away. You're like in the grocery,
Speaker 3: it's like boom, there it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So they just appear.
Speaker 3: So in that sense, we don't choose them, but we
Speaker 3: do have the ability to then say what do we
Speaker 3: want to respond? We also have the ability to say
Speaker 3: what do I want to insert? And then that retiring
Speaker 3: and replacing processing that you're discrict actually causes us to be,
Speaker 3: in a way choosing our future thoughts because what we're
Speaker 3: doing is we're rewiring those automatic thought patterns. We've got
Speaker 3: automatic thought patterns, our soundtracks, our greatest hits that keep
Speaker 3: showing up, and we're like, what I didn't I didn't
Speaker 3: choose it.
Speaker 2: There it is.
Speaker 3: And so you can't choose what shows up. But by
Speaker 3: choosing what you focus on in the moment and working
Speaker 3: with them, you're actually working on sort of making it
Speaker 3: more likely you're going to choose your thoughts in the
Speaker 3: future by what you choose now one hundred.
Speaker 1: That's a great point, and which is why retires the
Speaker 1: first step, because you know, I think you might not
Speaker 1: be able to choose what shows up. But you choose
Speaker 1: what you entertain, You choose what you dance with, you
Speaker 1: choose what you give the rest of the day too.
Speaker 1: So you're right. You know. I might be walking down
Speaker 1: the street and all of a sudden, I remember something
Speaker 1: terrible I did, or something that, you know, some negative thought.
Speaker 1: I don't in that moment beat myself up, going I
Speaker 1: can't believe I'm still thinking about that. Right, Instead, I go, oh,
Speaker 1: I see it, Oh that you know. Or let's say
Speaker 1: let's say I'm online and I see another author, another
Speaker 1: speaker or whatever, and they're really successful, and I feel
Speaker 1: this ground swell of jealousy. Now I can choose to
Speaker 1: entertain that and to go, oh, they're so lucky, they
Speaker 1: have better opportunities, like they live in the right city,
Speaker 1: like whatever. I can spend a lot of thought time
Speaker 1: around that, or I can go, wait a second, I
Speaker 1: think that's jealousy. And I know that when I'm jealous
Speaker 1: of somebody, I no longer get to learn from them,
Speaker 1: and I really like learning. So I'm gonna I'm gonna say,
Speaker 1: instead of going, I hate that person, I'm jealous of
Speaker 1: that person. I'm a failure because I don't have what
Speaker 1: that person has. I'm gonna deliberately work on and it's
Speaker 1: work like, it's not automatic. I'm gonna work on, going,
Speaker 1: what can I learn from that person? Or maybe even like,
Speaker 1: how can I celebrate them? Maybe celebrating them is my
Speaker 1: shortcut to cut the jealousy off, or maybe even it's
Speaker 1: an invitation to gratitude. But now I've got three other
Speaker 1: options versus going people suck, like, I'm so mad everybody. Like,
Speaker 1: that's a really hard way to go through life, and
Speaker 1: it happens to me. Of course, every every industry has
Speaker 1: some degree of competition or it's hard to see, you know.
Speaker 1: And so I had a counselor say to me, one
Speaker 1: of the true marks of friendship is when you can
Speaker 1: celebrate somebody getting something you didn't get. Yeah, And that's
Speaker 1: the kind of friend I want to be. And so,
Speaker 1: but it's a process and it's not you know, it's
Speaker 1: not always easy, but it's always worth it because I
Speaker 1: get to walk around celebrating people grateful for what I
Speaker 1: have and learning, or I get a walk around bitter
Speaker 1: and jealous and upset.
Speaker 3: One percent. There's a Buddhist concept called moodita. It means
Speaker 3: sympathetic joy, and it is something to be cultivated, but
Speaker 3: it means I take joy in the joy of others.
Speaker 3: And the Dalai Lama said something along the lines of like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, if you do it the normal way, which
Speaker 3: is you to get to celebrate your joy, you've got
Speaker 3: one chance at joy.
Speaker 1: One of seven billion odds.
Speaker 3: That's right, if you can do it for other people
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, right, all of a sudden, And
Speaker 3: so yeah, I agree one hundred percent. I think that's
Speaker 3: a beautiful way to think about it. And I also
Speaker 3: very much agree with what you saying about replacing, right.
Speaker 3: I know this from you know, addiction recovery stuff. You
Speaker 3: get rid of something, you've got to put something in
Speaker 3: its place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because something positive won't show up on its own
Speaker 1: like something negative. Like when you work on the one
Speaker 1: negative thing, like seven other are waiting in the wings
Speaker 1: and they're like, let's go, dude, let's say And if
Speaker 1: you don't have something in that spot, sometimes they're stronger
Speaker 1: than the first one, and so you have to go
Speaker 1: like no, no, no, no, no, Like there's a void,
Speaker 1: and I know in the void, good things don't show up,
Speaker 1: So let me deliberately put something good in the void.
Speaker 3: I think that other point you make about like it's
Speaker 3: not like we're going to stop thinking. It's not like
Speaker 3: the brain is going to turn off. I mean, it
Speaker 3: just doesn't.
Speaker 1: No, and it's and it's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: The joke I do in the book is that, like
Speaker 1: the two things that separate us from the animals are
Speaker 1: overthinking of Netflix, Like why would I you know, like
Speaker 1: it's a very human thing, like we're good at it.
Speaker 1: And so I just thought, okay, what if I could
Speaker 1: learn how to be good at it and where it
Speaker 1: actually helps me versus hurts me. And there's a lot
Speaker 1: of freedom in that when you go, okay, I'm not
Speaker 1: a failure for overthinking. I actually have a tool I
Speaker 1: can use for my good versus going I must be
Speaker 1: the one person who can't turn all my thoughts off
Speaker 1: and everyone else has it all together except me. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of joy just in admitting that that, Okay,
Speaker 1: I overthink.
Speaker 3: I want to pause for a quick good Wolf reminder.
Speaker 3: This one's about a habit change and a mistake I
Speaker 3: see people making, And that's really that we don't think
Speaker 3: about these new habits that we want to add in
Speaker 3: the context of our entire life. Right, Habits don't happen
Speaker 3: in a vacuum. They have to fit in the life
Speaker 3: that we have. So when we just keep adding I
Speaker 3: should do this, I should do that, I should do this,
Speaker 3: we get discouraged because we haven't really thought about what
Speaker 3: we're not going to do in order to make that happen.
Speaker 3: So it's really helpful for you to think about where
Speaker 3: is this going to fit and what in my life
Speaker 3: might I need to remove. If you want to step
Speaker 3: by step guide for how you can easily build new
Speaker 3: habits that feed your good Wolf, go to good Wolf
Speaker 3: dot me, slash change and join the free masterclass. One
Speaker 3: of the ideas is in the book you talk about
Speaker 3: with our thinking is that it's a dial say a
Speaker 3: little bit more about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I was having a conversation with a guy
Speaker 1: named David Thomas who runs a counseling center here in
Speaker 1: Nashville called day Star for Children, which is absolutely amazing.
Speaker 1: It's so fun to see this generation of kids get
Speaker 1: tools that will help them in adulthood. Yeah, because I
Speaker 1: think my generation, very few people knew about counseling. They
Speaker 1: didn't know how to interact with kids. And so David
Speaker 1: Thomas and I were talking about this, and I was
Speaker 1: telling him the concept of the book and soundtracks and
Speaker 1: negative thinking. He said, well, the challenge is most people
Speaker 1: want there to be a switch. They want to find
Speaker 1: one switch that forever turns off all stress, all negativity,
Speaker 1: all anxiety, all concerned whatever. He said, So they go
Speaker 1: and they look for a switch and it works for
Speaker 1: a week. Maybe they get into yoga and they're like,
Speaker 1: Yoga's my new thing. I'll never feel bad again. And
Speaker 1: yoga works for a week, maybe even a month, But
Speaker 1: then life gets stressful again, because that's what life does.
Speaker 1: And he said, So it's not a switch, he said,
Speaker 1: it's a dial. And when you think about life like
Speaker 1: a dial, you recognize, wow, I'm at at eleven today.
Speaker 1: What are some things I could do to turn that
Speaker 1: dial down versus going I blew it. I found the
Speaker 1: wrong switch again. I better go look for another switch,
Speaker 1: which becomes this act of perfectionism of constantly being on
Speaker 1: You know this will be the book, this will be
Speaker 1: the guru, this will be the exercise, this will be
Speaker 1: the yeah, and you put a ton of pressure out
Speaker 1: on things. One of the jokes I sometimes talk about,
Speaker 1: we studied how much fun impacts performance. So we did
Speaker 1: this big research study about this fun matter to performance,
Speaker 1: and we looked at two factors, satisfaction and what you
Speaker 1: actually accomplished. And when you're deliberate about adding fun to
Speaker 1: things that are challenging, your satisfaction goes up by thirty
Speaker 1: one percent, your performance goes up by forty six percent.
Speaker 1: But what I often say in it is that you
Speaker 1: have to raise both factors because if say I only
Speaker 1: raise your satisfaction but your performance fails, you're smiling all
Speaker 1: the way to last place. That's not helpful. But if
Speaker 1: I raise your performance but not your satisfaction, you become
Speaker 1: every rich, miserable person you've ever met. And I'll ask
Speaker 1: the audience, have you ever met somebody who's really successful
Speaker 1: and really unhappy and you think those two things shouldn't
Speaker 1: go together, but they do because they only care about
Speaker 1: their performance, and their plan was I'm going to be
Speaker 1: miserable for sixty two years, but then I'm going to
Speaker 1: retire and move to Florida and get a golf cart,
Speaker 1: And I would say, you're putting an awful lot of
Speaker 1: pressure on a golf cart. Like Florida is amazing, don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong, but like, that's an awful lot of
Speaker 1: pressure on Florida. It's same, you know. And so I
Speaker 1: think anytime we have a switch mentality, we put this
Speaker 1: amazing pressure on a book, on a thing, versus going, Wow,
Speaker 1: I'm at an eleven and that's that's not because I'm
Speaker 1: a failure. That's because life sometimes raises everybody to an eleven?
Speaker 1: So what do I do to turn it down? And
Speaker 1: what am I what I'd call turn down techniques to
Speaker 1: go okay, let me get the dial down before and
Speaker 1: it's going to raise again. I have my oldest daughters
Speaker 1: in high school. She's a senior, she's going to college
Speaker 1: next year. I know there's gonna be stressful moments like
Speaker 1: if I have a switch mentality and go no, Eric,
Speaker 1: I've already figured out negative thinking. I no longer have it.
Speaker 1: Guess what happens when she does or doesn't get into
Speaker 1: the sorority. She wants to get into it, and I
Speaker 1: feel this stress and my dial goes eleven. I'll know
Speaker 1: to go, Okay, what are those things I used to
Speaker 1: turn it down? Yeah, let me make sure I do
Speaker 1: a bunch of those right now, because this feels stressful.
Speaker 1: That's a completely different way to live life.
Speaker 3: I love that concept of moving it a few degrees.
Speaker 3: I often talk about this formula I love, which is
Speaker 3: that suffering equals pain times resistance. You know, and I
Speaker 3: talk about like, we're not going to turn off resistance.
Speaker 3: You're not going to get rid of the things that
Speaker 3: you resist. But can you go from like a five
Speaker 3: to a two?
Speaker 1: If you do causes a huge change?
Speaker 3: That's right, because yeah and so so Yeah, I love
Speaker 3: the dial idea. So you list some of your favorite
Speaker 3: things for turning down the dial? You want to share
Speaker 3: a couple of those.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, I mean I love I love to run,
Speaker 1: I love to get out. You know, this morning I
Speaker 1: ran three point one miles, got some great endorphins, felt
Speaker 1: like I had finished something. I could check something off
Speaker 1: a box that felt great. I love being outside. Another
Speaker 1: one of mine that's kind of some people would say
Speaker 1: on the doorkire side of thing is I love putting
Speaker 1: together big Lego sets. You know, a lot of my
Speaker 1: life because I'm an author and a speaker and a
Speaker 1: consultant and you know, I'm online. Doesn't have clear steps,
Speaker 1: like like the idea, or like being a podcaster, like
Speaker 1: I have a podcast called All it Takes is a Goal,
Speaker 1: And so like being a podcaster, there's not one hundred
Speaker 1: exact steps to do. There's so many options. So doing
Speaker 1: a lego set for me, like a big four thousand
Speaker 1: piece Porsche, I have this instruction manual and I get
Speaker 1: to follow it step by step and see this thing
Speaker 1: get built. And that's very meditative to me. Like some
Speaker 1: people it's knitting. They go, you know, when I knit,
Speaker 1: I can turn my brain off and I can I
Speaker 1: can think. You know, some people say I don't like
Speaker 1: to run, but I like to walk. If I can
Speaker 1: go walk in the woods without headphones, without distraction, that's relaxing.
Speaker 1: Fiction is that way for me, if I can kind
Speaker 1: of crawl inside a good book. And you know, I
Speaker 1: always tell people the reason you have your best ideas
Speaker 1: in the shower, it's the only time you've allowed yourself
Speaker 1: to still be bored. And so sometimes like allowing myself
Speaker 1: to be bored on a neighborhood walk or and it
Speaker 1: can be something like as simple as clearing the top
Speaker 1: of my desk. That can be a turndown technique for
Speaker 1: me where I go, wow, it feels out of control.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna just clear the I'm not going to organize
Speaker 1: the whole office because that gets into overwhelming. I'm going
Speaker 1: to clear the top of my desk, like that's what
Speaker 1: it is. Or we got a bird feeder on the
Speaker 1: outside of our house. It like attaches to a window,
Speaker 1: and that was a COVID life saver. Like that became
Speaker 1: bird TV for me where I was like, Oh, how's
Speaker 1: the woodpecker going to get in there? And he had
Speaker 1: to like, hey, because you're so mas and was like,
Speaker 1: oh man, that finch is being a huge jerk to
Speaker 1: that other fench. So little things like that, I always
Speaker 1: tell people it has to be related to you, not
Speaker 1: to me. So if you heard those and we're like, man,
Speaker 1: none like legos are for children, you're weird. That's cool.
Speaker 1: I one hundred percent get that. But as long as
Speaker 1: you have some in your own life that you're cultivating,
Speaker 1: I think you're in a really good spot.
Speaker 3: Well, it's funny that a we got a bird feeder.
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's probably been a year ago, and
Speaker 3: same thing.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 3: I just can't can't get enough of it, you know,
Speaker 3: same thing watching them. Now, we have a cardinal who
Speaker 3: shows up at the same time every night. It's just
Speaker 3: like right on time, I hear it. I can recognize
Speaker 3: the call. Now, I'm like, actually, my partner is better
Speaker 3: at it than I am. She's like the cardinals out
Speaker 3: there and sure enough, you know, shows up every night. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well I heard somebody once say, if you want
Speaker 1: to be connected to the idea that there's a bigger
Speaker 1: world than you, get a bird feeder because it connects
Speaker 1: you to migratory patterns of thousands of miles. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so that idea that wow, they're like, I'm now connected
Speaker 1: to that, and like they go somewhere at night, they
Speaker 1: have a plan, and like it's amazing.
Speaker 3: I often have thought about where are they during the
Speaker 3: evening And then that led me to find out this
Speaker 3: incredible fact. And then we're going to move on from birds.
Speaker 3: But some birds are capable talking about like turning off
Speaker 3: the brain. How we as humans can't do it. Some
Speaker 3: birds can. They literally shut down half their brain. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: and half of their senses. And that part rests and sleeps.
Speaker 3: The other part is perfectly awake and alert. And then
Speaker 3: I'm like, that is incredible.
Speaker 1: And that's how they can fly across the Atlantic. So
Speaker 1: birds that can fly across the Atlantic are doing that.
Speaker 1: They're turning off one part of their brain so that
Speaker 1: they can still fly and still wake up rested on
Speaker 1: the other side of the lane.
Speaker 3: It's crazy, it's incredible, sounds like it would be a
Speaker 3: great feature to have build in, but we don't have it. Okay,
Speaker 3: as we're talking about this replacing new ones, there's another
Speaker 3: one that you have called flip a coin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it was interesting when I would tell people, hey,
Speaker 1: do you ever overthink? Everybody go, yes, I overthink. It
Speaker 1: was a very easy question to answer. But then when
Speaker 1: I go, hey, what would you like to think instead
Speaker 1: blank stares? It felt intimidating to go because we've never
Speaker 1: thought that. So the idea of like, what are good
Speaker 1: thoughts you'd like to have in place? That feels intimidating.
Speaker 1: So I realized I need a really easy way to
Speaker 1: give somebody an ability to think of a good thought
Speaker 1: they want to have. I tell people flip a bad one.
Speaker 1: So the example I use in the book is. I
Speaker 1: realized one day that I was the worst boss I'd
Speaker 1: ever had. I would make myself work, you know, weekends,
Speaker 1: I would work through the night, like I was doing
Speaker 1: all these terrible things. And I had just come home
Speaker 1: from a trip where I had spoken and it was
Speaker 1: a really stressful day, and the car on the way
Speaker 1: to the airport broke down. It's just this crazy day.
Speaker 1: It was four pm on a Friday, and I thought
Speaker 1: I should go back in the office for a few
Speaker 1: more hours. And I thought, if I had a boss
Speaker 1: that did that to me, I would hate that boss.
Speaker 1: And I realized, wait, I'm my boss. So instead of
Speaker 1: going on this long vision quest to figure something out,
Speaker 1: I said, if I'm the worst boss right now, what
Speaker 1: would the best boss do? Like, what would the best
Speaker 1: boss do? And I just flipped the coin in my mind.
Speaker 1: And I've had good bosses, like you know, I'm forty five.
Speaker 1: I've had bosses that I go, wow, she was inspiring
Speaker 1: or wow he was encouraging. So I made a list
Speaker 1: of the things a best boss would do. And so
Speaker 1: then the next time I was attempted to go back
Speaker 1: into worst boss mode, I was like, wait a second, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: my boss like we celebrate victories by taking the next
Speaker 1: day off. That's a amazing boss. Like great. And so
Speaker 1: that's what I meant for people, is that, Okay, if
Speaker 1: you say yourself, okay, I'm the worst mom, what would
Speaker 1: the best mom do? And chances are you've bumped into
Speaker 1: some other moms that you'd go, wow, they're so encouraging
Speaker 1: to their kids, and you go, Okay, the best mom
Speaker 1: would be encouraging to her kids and herself, or like, wow,
Speaker 1: that mom takes time for self care. She doesn't believe
Speaker 1: self care is selfish. That's a broken soundtrack. I'm going
Speaker 1: to allow myself to have some me time, or I'm
Speaker 1: going to allow myself to do an arms theory class
Speaker 1: or whatever. So that was what the exercise was, is
Speaker 1: taking these broken ones, flipping them upside down and going
Speaker 1: what would the reverse of that look like? As an
Speaker 1: easy way to enter in to the idea of coming
Speaker 1: up with new soundtracks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was one you had in there that I
Speaker 3: immediately plucked out, and I thought, I'm going to take
Speaker 3: that one, which is my predictions are positive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I just realized that I was constantly predicting
Speaker 1: negative things that never happened. So I said, what if
Speaker 1: instead I just went ahead and predicted positive ones, like
Speaker 1: I get a choice. And again it was that I
Speaker 1: the idea of my brain going, this is going to
Speaker 1: be a disaster. That's a disaster, and then I would
Speaker 1: do the thing and it wasn't a disaster. And I
Speaker 1: finally looped back around and I was like, oh, oh, brain,
Speaker 1: all your predictions are negative and they're never true. So
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna choose positive ones ahead of time and
Speaker 1: lean into those. And I think that one comes from
Speaker 1: a really common broken soundtrack people struggle with is prepare
Speaker 1: for the worst and be pleasantly surprised when it doesn't happen. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: I think you should prepare for situations, you should have
Speaker 1: contingency plans, all that, But where it gets dangerous is
Speaker 1: where all you're enjoying is the tiny bit of surprise
Speaker 1: when this terrible thing didn't happen. And I think it
Speaker 1: was Michael J. Fox that said, when you live that way,
Speaker 1: you experience the bad thing twice. You experience it how
Speaker 1: you think about it, and then you experience it when
Speaker 1: it does really help. You've doubled your sorrows. And I'm
Speaker 1: not a fake positive person, like I love the reality
Speaker 1: of dealing with hard stuff. It's not that it's just
Speaker 1: of the two i'd rather choose to be positive.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 3: I think that's one. For me. I'm generally pretty positive,
Speaker 3: but when it comes to things about like this business
Speaker 3: and growing it and all that, like you know, we're
Speaker 3: making plans, we're setting goals, and my brain is always like,
Speaker 3: that's not going to work. And I'm sort of like you,
Speaker 3: I've really had to work on, like, okay, positive prediction
Speaker 3: because most of the time, yeah, it does work. There's
Speaker 3: a time for, as you said, sitting down and thinking about, well,
Speaker 3: why might this not work? Okay, well, yeah, what's a backup?
Speaker 3: But beyond that, it's all the other minutes that I'm
Speaker 3: not actively really improving anything.
Speaker 2: I'm just worrying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're just you're just kind of ruminating on it,
Speaker 1: chewing on it.
Speaker 2: Yea.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And for me, I just I would say I'm
Speaker 1: not naturally a positive person, like I work like I'm
Speaker 1: I'm naturally a fairly melancholy person. Like the example is,
Speaker 1: we went and saw the Counting Crows and concert the
Speaker 1: other night, and I loved it, and my wife was
Speaker 1: like Oh, they're so MOPy. I loved it. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes me want to write poetry. And my mom's minivan.
Speaker 1: I'm in high school and around here, and so I'm
Speaker 1: naturally pretty negative, but I just see the benefit both
Speaker 1: to my heart and the people I'm around. And there
Speaker 1: was results I get of positivity. So I work at
Speaker 1: positivity and I enjoy getting to do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so let's talk about the last step, which is
Speaker 3: repeat him until it was as automatic as the old ones.
Speaker 1: It was interesting when the book came out. About forty
Speaker 1: eight hours after it came out, people would come up
Speaker 1: to me and go hey, or they'd email me or
Speaker 1: DM me and they'd say, John, my new one hasn't
Speaker 1: worked yet, like the old one's still showing up. And
Speaker 1: I would go, well, it's only been out forty eight hours,
Speaker 1: so I know you haven't had a ton of time.
Speaker 1: And so you often see this happen in any type
Speaker 1: of goal. People say this exercise doesn't work, and I'll say, well,
Speaker 1: how long have you tried it. I'll say ten days.
Speaker 1: I'll say how long did it take you to gain
Speaker 1: the weight? I'll say ten years. So you gave the
Speaker 1: problem ten years to develop and the solution ten days.
Speaker 1: That's so unkind to you and the solution. And so
Speaker 1: that's what the process of repeat is about, is that. Okay,
Speaker 1: I truly believe there are times when learning something new
Speaker 1: can change your whole perspective. You know, an example that
Speaker 1: would be I had this guy I worked with that
Speaker 1: was really difficult. He was belligerent and angry and always late,
Speaker 1: and I learned that his wife had stage four cancer
Speaker 1: and that changed everything that I knew about it instantly. Right,
Speaker 1: there's times that happened, I believe, But there's other times
Speaker 1: where you've been carrying around some broken soundtrack for years
Speaker 1: that's going to take some time to replace. And that's
Speaker 1: where repeat comes in, is that you're giving the new
Speaker 1: one a shot. You're giving the new one a chance
Speaker 1: to survive, to get stronger, to believe it again, to
Speaker 1: repeat it again. And so that's why it's not just
Speaker 1: about retiring or not just about replacing.
Speaker 3: The repeat matters makes me think of like getting sober,
Speaker 3: and yeah, there's moments in there, a moment of clarity. Say,
Speaker 3: for example, like if we were going to make a
Speaker 3: movie of it, I could give you a couple moments
Speaker 3: it would be like the movie moments, right, But there
Speaker 3: was still the countless thousands and thousands and thousands of
Speaker 3: times of taking the thought about using and reframing it.
Speaker 1: Or reaching out to a sponsor or going okay, hey,
Speaker 1: here's this all the daily stuff exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So there are big insights, and every once in a while,
Speaker 3: like you're right, they change everything. But most of the
Speaker 3: time the insight, I would say, it's sort of that
Speaker 3: you recognize, Oh boy, I've been thinking this negative thought
Speaker 3: all this time. My goodness, what else could I say? Okay, great,
Speaker 3: now comes the work of installing it. So let's talk
Speaker 3: about how people can do that. Because one of the
Speaker 3: biggest challenges I see in personal development, work, spirituality, any
Speaker 3: of that, is we know a lot of things, but
Speaker 3: our day starts. Maybe we have a morning reflection where
Speaker 3: we reflect for a few minutes in the morning, we
Speaker 3: get things off to a good start. Maybe we meditate
Speaker 3: in the morning, and then the day starts going at
Speaker 3: one hundred miles an hour, And the next time I
Speaker 3: think about any of those ideas, those concepts, these new soundtracks,
Speaker 3: is ten pm that night. So I'm very interested in
Speaker 3: how do we get these ideas into the flow of
Speaker 3: daily life more.
Speaker 1: You're right, it's a great challenge. I try to get
Speaker 1: them into the flow my daily life in as many
Speaker 1: ways as possible. Yeah, I like to do what I
Speaker 1: call stack the odds. Like I'm trying to be the
Speaker 1: house at the casino. I'm stacking the odds in my favor.
Speaker 1: So if I have something I'm really working on, i'll
Speaker 1: I'll grab a note off my wall. So this note says,
Speaker 1: ask for more. I wrote it on August twenty seventh,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, so over.
Speaker 2: A year ago.
Speaker 3: I will not pay you for this podcast, John, do
Speaker 3: not ask well exactly.
Speaker 1: But what I wrote it for was I found myself
Speaker 1: undervaluing my work and negotiations. So I'd be in these
Speaker 1: business meetings I would underpriced, under charge, undervalue. So I
Speaker 1: knew I needed a reminder of that. And again, this
Speaker 1: is a soundtrack for me, and it's not sexy, it's
Speaker 1: not hooky, like sometimes when I talk to people about
Speaker 1: soundtracks that go, well, i'm not a writer, I'm not creative.
Speaker 1: You don't have to be asked for more. Those are
Speaker 1: three very dull words. But I needed a reminder to
Speaker 1: go Okay, that's helpful for me. To see that to
Speaker 1: remember that. So I try to get people to come
Speaker 1: up with as many creative ways as I can to
Speaker 1: say no, I want to remind myself of this truth.
Speaker 1: I've got a new thing that I'm trying to put
Speaker 1: in place, and some of it might feel cheesy. I mean,
Speaker 1: I you know, we studied affirmations for the book, and
Speaker 1: I didn't want to, Like I was really hoping I
Speaker 1: didn't have to because I grew up with sign I
Speaker 1: felt like, you know, Serenity now and starn live. I'm
Speaker 1: good enough, I'm smart enough to dog gone to people
Speaker 1: like me. But so many people that had successful lives,
Speaker 1: and I mean across all the channels of their life,
Speaker 1: not just really successful business, but they had seven wives
Speaker 1: or you know, something crazy, but had really full lives.
Speaker 1: I'd go, hey, what do you think about like affirmations
Speaker 1: or mantras, And they'd go, well, I give myself a
Speaker 1: pep talk every afternoon because I kind of I wane
Speaker 1: a little bit, or I've got some words I repeat
Speaker 1: to myself. And so I realized, wow, there's value there,
Speaker 1: and we tested it and it was really fun to
Speaker 1: see the results. But yeah, so I think you do
Speaker 1: as many things as you can. And maybe you know
Speaker 1: one of your questions was going to be about, well,
Speaker 1: let's talk symbols, because there's a whole chapter in there
Speaker 1: about the power of symbols. And I think that's another
Speaker 1: way to repeat it, is to tie your new true
Speaker 1: thought to a symbol that's easy for you. And the
Speaker 1: way you do that is there's three different ways. You
Speaker 1: make it personal. It's something you care about. You make
Speaker 1: it visible, it's easy to see, and you make it simple.
Speaker 1: It's simple to interact with. And my favorite example of
Speaker 1: this and the history of mankind is the Lance Armstrong
Speaker 1: Nike You Live Strong bracelets. They were personal. You never
Speaker 1: met somebody and said, oh, I wear this bracelet because
Speaker 1: I hate diseases. I have a an eggs of a necklace.
Speaker 1: I just wear jewelry about diseases. It was always my
Speaker 1: mom had cancer, my partner had cancer, my sister. Second thing,
Speaker 1: it was visible. It was bright yellow Nike. He could
Speaker 1: have made it beige, they could have made it like gray.
Speaker 1: They made it bright yellow. Third, it was simple. Everyone
Speaker 1: knows how to use a bracelet. No one was like,
Speaker 1: how do I put this on? The arm park goes
Speaker 1: in the whole part so I think too like having
Speaker 1: and again like I'm just grabbing stuff off my desk
Speaker 1: because this is how I really live. This is a
Speaker 1: pine cone. So I got this pine cone in Jackson
Speaker 1: Hawayoming and I picked it up the street because three
Speaker 1: weeks before I was about to release a book and
Speaker 1: I was going to Jackson Hole, and I knew i'd
Speaker 1: be physically present and mentally absent. I'd missed the entire
Speaker 1: trip if I wasn't careful under the pressure of the book.
Speaker 1: And so I wrote a new soundtrack that said, don't
Speaker 1: miss it, don't miss it, don't miss it. So now
Speaker 1: I have a soundtrack and it's in place, but it's
Speaker 1: not strong. And so I'm there and I'm saying it
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking it, and I was so present I
Speaker 1: was able to notice while these pine cones on the
Speaker 1: street are different than the pine cones we have in Nashville.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting. So I picked it up. I took
Speaker 1: it home with me, so that now the next time
Speaker 1: I'm tempted to miss something, I've got a symbol on
Speaker 1: my desk that I can remember. And so I try
Speaker 1: to make it as easy as possible. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people make the mistake of holding their breath
Speaker 1: and trying to change their life in recovery. You'd call
Speaker 1: it white knuckling. And so I want stuff around me
Speaker 1: that makes it easy for me to remember this new
Speaker 1: truth that I'm trying to make automatic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I really like that. So listener and thinking about
Speaker 3: that and all the other great wisdom from today's episode.
Speaker 3: If you were going to isolate just one top insight
Speaker 3: that you're taking away, what would it be. Remember, little
Speaker 3: by little, a little becomes a lot. Change happens by
Speaker 3: us repeatedly taking positive action. And I want to give
Speaker 3: you a tip on that, and it's to start small.
Speaker 3: It's really important when we're trying to implement new habits
Speaker 3: to often start smaller than we think we need to,
Speaker 3: because what that does is it allows us to get victories.
Speaker 3: And victories are really important because we become more motivated
Speaker 3: when we're feeling good about ourselves, and we become less
Speaker 3: motivated when we're feeling bad about ourselves. So by starting
Speaker 3: small and making sure that you succeed, you build your
Speaker 3: motivation for further change down the road. If you'd like
Speaker 3: a step by step guide for how you can easily
Speaker 3: build new habits that feed your good Wolf. Go to
Speaker 3: good Wolf dot me, slash change and join the free masterclass.
Speaker 3: I love that idea of stacking the odds, right, you know.
Speaker 3: I talk about my depression at points and I'm like,
Speaker 3: I throw the kitchen sink at it, like literally, why
Speaker 3: would you hold anything possible? Like all of it? Just
Speaker 3: stack it all up, you know, like I.
Speaker 1: Want you like the matrix, Like when Neo's getting the weapons,
Speaker 1: like he wasn't like, you know what, one gun will
Speaker 1: be enough? He was like, give it to me off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're on the same page.
Speaker 3: Totally. Well, John, thank you so much. This has been
Speaker 3: really fun. I feel like I could do this for
Speaker 3: like two or three more.
Speaker 1: Hours, but totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Alas we are at the end of time. But the
Speaker 3: book is wonderful. We'll have links in the show notes
Speaker 3: to where people can find and you find the book.
Speaker 3: It's called Soundtracks The Surprising Solution to Overthinking. Thank you
Speaker 3: so much.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. Eric.
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