Speaker 1: Pushkin. A lot I want to talk to you about
Speaker 1: tonight is why positive thinkers get positive results, and they
Speaker 1: do too, that's for sure. Pastor Norman Vincent Peale officiated
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's first marriage, but that's not his biggest claim
Speaker 1: to fame. Take charge of your thoughts. You can do
Speaker 1: what your will. Peel is famous for his nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: two books The Power of Positive Thinking. Peel was one
Speaker 1: of the first to argue for the power of positive thought,
Speaker 1: the idea that if you get rid of your negativity
Speaker 1: and crush all your worries about the obstacles in your path,
Speaker 1: then things will work out just the way you hope
Speaker 1: they would. The concept was simple and really appealing. Simply
Speaker 1: visualize a great job or the perfect marriage, and it'll happen.
Speaker 1: You think positively in order to send out positive emanations
Speaker 1: to reproduce themselves in kind in positive results. But Peele says,
Speaker 1: if you think about the pitfalls you could meet along
Speaker 1: the way, then they'll appear. You'll be punished for your pessimism.
Speaker 1: You can destroy yourself or you can create yourself by
Speaker 1: the manner and quality of your thoughts. Peele's idea that
Speaker 1: the path to happiness was in our heads took a
Speaker 1: troubled postwar American public by storm. The Power of Positive
Speaker 1: Thinking remained on the best seller list for one hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty six weeks and was translated into fifteen different languages.
Speaker 1: And on this basis and by this method, positive thinkers
Speaker 1: always get positive results. But the notion that negative thinking
Speaker 1: could bring you down didn't end in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: That same punished for pessimism idea continues in the rhetoric
Speaker 1: of self help gurus. Today. Everything we think and feel
Speaker 1: is creating our future, so wrote Rhnda Burne in her
Speaker 1: two thousand and six book The Secret. She argued that
Speaker 1: the power of positive thought was a basic physical law
Speaker 1: of the universe. Her theory became a favorite subject on
Speaker 1: daytime talk shows and most importantly, won the Oprah Seal
Speaker 1: of approval. All of my guests today say they have
Speaker 1: uncovered the secret to bringing love, to bringing happiness, even
Speaker 1: wealth into anybody's life. The secret is the law of attraction.
Speaker 1: It means that the energy you put out into the
Speaker 1: world is always going to be coming back to you.
Speaker 1: Think good things, and good things will come drawn to
Speaker 1: you like a magnet. But as Burne warned. If you're
Speaker 1: worried or in fear, then you're bringing more of that
Speaker 1: into your life too, Even if you don't fully subscribe
Speaker 1: to the law of attraction. I bet you agree that
Speaker 1: thinking positively is probably a good thing. Human thought may
Speaker 1: not work like a magnet, but a little optimism is
Speaker 1: presumably still useful for meeting our goals. And it seems
Speaker 1: obvious that too much negative thinking could bring us down.
Speaker 1: But is that really the case. Does envisioning a positive
Speaker 1: future actually help it come about? And is it helping
Speaker 1: our happiness in the way we think our minds are
Speaker 1: constantly telling us what to do to be happy. But
Speaker 1: what if our minds are wrong? What if our minds
Speaker 1: are lying to us, leading us away from what will
Speaker 1: really make us happy? The good dues is that understanding
Speaker 1: the science of the mind can point us all back
Speaker 1: in the right direction. You're listening to the Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: with doctor Laurie Santois his world records in swimming. I
Speaker 1: think it's forty eight, keep losing track of it. It's
Speaker 1: forty something world records. I think the next postest person
Speaker 1: is twenty something. You know he's just obliterated the record books.
Speaker 1: This is Bob Bowman, the man who coached swimmer Michael
Speaker 1: Phelps to twenty three Olympic gold medals. Twenty freaking three.
Speaker 1: I think the next closest person is nine, and that's
Speaker 1: Mark Spitz, right, and Lassie Varon and Carl Lewis. Bob
Speaker 1: was the first person to spot Michael's immense potential. He
Speaker 1: knew it the instant the fifth grader entered the water
Speaker 1: his Baltimore Swim club, Michael stood out. He was heading
Speaker 1: shoulders above the rest of the group. Then I went
Speaker 1: home and I could not sleep that night because I
Speaker 1: was like, Wow, this kid is something, and I better
Speaker 1: step up my game because he's way ahead of me
Speaker 1: right now. As the youngest pupil at bobs swimming practice,
Speaker 1: eleven year old Michael would be placed at the back
Speaker 1: of the group, behind boys three and four years older
Speaker 1: than him as everyone set off for their daily laps.
Speaker 1: And I remember by the end of it, he had
Speaker 1: worked his way last to first and was swimming times
Speaker 1: that no eleven year old and swimming practice, And the
Speaker 1: first thing I remember doing was like, don't act like
Speaker 1: you're excited, just act like it's normal. I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: nice job. See tomorrow. Even in those first practice sessions,
Speaker 1: Bob could see that Michael was a very raw talent.
Speaker 1: What I saw was someone who had rather undisciplined strokes,
Speaker 1: so he wasn't very efficient. He just used a lot
Speaker 1: of energy. He had an incredible mental capacity to want
Speaker 1: to compete, to give his best effort when it was needed,
Speaker 1: but in practice he was very sloppy and sometimes he
Speaker 1: wouldn't pay attention to things. Michael was particularly resistant to
Speaker 1: altering his front crawl rhythm to adopt the so called
Speaker 1: six beat kick, which means you're going to take six
Speaker 1: kicks for every two arm strokes. This is a critical thing.
Speaker 1: Michael only took two, so he just moved his arms
Speaker 1: like a madman and didn't kick at all, and doing that,
Speaker 1: he was the fastest eleven year old in America. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: Bob wanted to fix this stroke problem, but it meant
Speaker 1: engaging the young Phelps in a battle of wills. If
Speaker 1: Michael stuck to the six beat kick, all was well.
Speaker 1: But if he fell back into his bad habit, he
Speaker 1: got pulled out of the pool. So the first practice
Speaker 1: he made it about five minutes before he didn't do it,
Speaker 1: and I kicked him out of practice next day about
Speaker 1: twenty minutes, kicked out the next day about forty made
Speaker 1: it an hour on about the fourth day, but after
Speaker 1: that he never had to go back, right. That's what
Speaker 1: made Michael Michael Phels. But Michael's physical training could only
Speaker 1: take him so far. To get to the next level,
Speaker 1: Bob had to introduce his pupil to mental training. Oh,
Speaker 1: you have to have the software and the hardware, right.
Speaker 1: Nobody just gets a Mac with nothing on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you have to work on the software too, and
Speaker 1: you have to constantly be upgrading it. And that's where
Speaker 1: I think the mental training comes in. It just makes
Speaker 1: everything you do more meaningful. When Bob talks about mental training,
Speaker 1: he sounds a little like a positive thinking guru. One
Speaker 1: thing you need to have is what I call your
Speaker 1: dream goal, your vision, right, And I said, you know, Michael,
Speaker 1: what's your dream goal? Think about it? And he would
Speaker 1: always say swim in the Olympics. But Michael didn't just
Speaker 1: want Olympic glory. He developed a list of goals for
Speaker 1: his career, a list of goals for the year, and
Speaker 1: even goals for his next training session. And I had
Speaker 1: him put it on his refrigerator because that's where he
Speaker 1: went most of the time. Right, he'd see it one
Speaker 1: hundred times a day. He was eating NonStop. At this time,
Speaker 1: Michael had to focus on meeting all these goals during
Speaker 1: swim practice, which took a lot of hard work. You know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that by swimmers hate hearing me
Speaker 1: say is, you know it takes what it takes. You
Speaker 1: can't you don't get to make up what it takes.
Speaker 1: This is what it takes. So you can either do
Speaker 1: it or not, but realize this is what it's going
Speaker 1: to take. Bob also taught Michael a very advanced form
Speaker 1: of mental training, the art of visualization. Competing for a
Speaker 1: gold medal. In his mind, let's see yourself swimming the
Speaker 1: race and the time that you want to swim. See
Speaker 1: yourself swimming at the tempo. You know, make it as
Speaker 1: vivid as you can smell the chlorine. You know what
Speaker 1: a lot of these pools are going to be like,
Speaker 1: So you know, make sure that your mental pictures. It's
Speaker 1: like a movie, but it's very detail. And he would
Speaker 1: start doing that. Bob's visualization technique is based on the
Speaker 1: latest science of what researchers call mental practice. A form
Speaker 1: of practice that you do not in the physical world,
Speaker 1: but inside your head. It turns out that's simply imagining
Speaker 1: a behavior, say swimming an Olympic race or practicing the violin,
Speaker 1: can train your mind in some of the same ways
Speaker 1: as hopping into a real pool or picking up an
Speaker 1: actual instrument. Mental practice works because our minds aren't all
Speaker 1: that great at telling the difference between something that's really
Speaker 1: happening to us and something we just imagined. Envisioning an
Speaker 1: activity vividly, it turns out, recruits the same brain circuits
Speaker 1: as experiencing that event in real life, which means minds
Speaker 1: can learn from imagined events in a lot of the
Speaker 1: same ways as we learn from real events. Scientists have
Speaker 1: done some clever experiments to show the power of mental
Speaker 1: simulation to influence what we learn in the real world.
Speaker 1: The psychologist carry Morwdge in his colleagues wanted to see
Speaker 1: if simply imagining eating lots of bad food can have
Speaker 1: the same consequences as actually eating a lot of bad food.
Speaker 1: Morwig had his subjects imagine one of two activities, either
Speaker 1: putting thirty quarters into a laundry machine slowly, one by one,
Speaker 1: or eating thirty pieces of Eminem's candy slowly, one by one. Afterwards,
Speaker 1: he made both groups of subjects sit in a room
Speaker 1: with a real candy dish. Did simulating eating the M
Speaker 1: and ms affect how many real Eminem's people ate? Morwig
Speaker 1: found that people who imagined eating M and m's ate
Speaker 1: about half as many as people who imagine popping quarters. Mentally,
Speaker 1: eating of food feel so much like you're actually doing
Speaker 1: it that you eat less chocolate in real life. Merely
Speaker 1: imagining causes enough of the same cues and zoological signals
Speaker 1: that we can learn from a behavior we just saw
Speaker 1: inside our heads. Mental practice, it turns out, can also
Speaker 1: make perfect, or in the case of Michael Phelps, more
Speaker 1: than perfect. We used to call it the movie right
Speaker 1: like back then there wasn't you know, digital, We had
Speaker 1: VHS tapes, so I would carry it into practice. So
Speaker 1: let's say we were doing a series and practice where
Speaker 1: Michael was swimming one hundred meters freestop. I would say,
Speaker 1: put in the videotape and run your rehearsal of your
Speaker 1: race right now, see the movie right now as you're
Speaker 1: doing this last one hundred meters and hit the time.
Speaker 1: Was the kind of thing Michael wasn't envisioning his head
Speaker 1: always positive, like the perfect race, everything goes perfectly well,
Speaker 1: you know, I used to think it was until after
Speaker 1: the Beijing Olympics. Yes, the two thousand and eight Beijing Olympics.
Speaker 1: That year, Michael was hoping to smash the record in
Speaker 1: the two hundred meter butterfly final. It was his best
Speaker 1: event and quite frankly, he and I were both hoping
Speaker 1: for a performance that would last forever. That butterfly final
Speaker 1: was definitely a race that fans would remember, but not
Speaker 1: for the reasons Bob expected. A real life disaster struck
Speaker 1: during that race, one that challenged the tenets of positive
Speaker 1: thinking right to the core. The Happiness Lab will be
Speaker 1: back in a moment. Michael Phelps was about to begin
Speaker 1: one of the biggest races of his career, the two
Speaker 1: hundred meter men's butterfly Olympic Final. Coach Bob Bowman was
Speaker 1: poolside when the race suddenly went wrong. After the dive,
Speaker 1: he noticed in the first fifty meters that his goggles
Speaker 1: are filling up with water, but he knew he couldn't
Speaker 1: stop and take his goggles off because that would be disqualification.
Speaker 1: He would have broken stroke, so he was stuck with
Speaker 1: the goggles and by the time he was halfway through
Speaker 1: the race, he could not see anything. Think about this
Speaker 1: for a second, your Michael Phelps, You've trained for this
Speaker 1: moment your entire life. You've been reminded of how important
Speaker 1: the gold medal is every time you went to the refrigerator.
Speaker 1: You've played mental videotape after mental videotape of the perfect race.
Speaker 1: But when you dive into the pool, your goggles fill
Speaker 1: with water in your swimming blind. What did Michael do well?
Speaker 1: Even though his coach didn't realize it, Michael had a
Speaker 1: tape for that too. It turns out Michael had gotten
Speaker 1: so bored with all those think positive, perfect race visualizations
Speaker 1: that he threw some not so perfect mental simulations into
Speaker 1: the mix. And I had no idea he was doing that.
Speaker 1: He did that on his own. Very important. The importance
Speaker 1: of this is clear when we cut back to that
Speaker 1: butterfly race. How did Michael deal with the tragedy of
Speaker 1: swimming blind? He played back a mental movie. So what
Speaker 1: he decided to do was revert back to what he
Speaker 1: had seen and worked on so hard mentally. And he's like,
Speaker 1: I hope at nineteen strokes. I'm going to hit the wall.
Speaker 1: He did, and then he made the last fifties. Okay,
Speaker 1: at twenty, I really hope I'm going to get this done,
Speaker 1: and he did. The result was a world record gold medal,
Speaker 1: and if you ever watched the video of it, Michael
Speaker 1: takes off his throws off his cap and goggles and
Speaker 1: he looks like somebody who got last place, right, And
Speaker 1: he went into this tantrum like he used to have.
Speaker 1: What he was like twelve, you know, my goggles filled up.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what to do. I just count on
Speaker 1: my strokes. I could have gone one fifty point five.
Speaker 1: I went one fifty two flat. I'm like, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we're kind of in front of a few billion people
Speaker 1: right now, gold medal, world record, let's just smile. And
Speaker 1: he did. But that's a perfect example of him taking
Speaker 1: what we had rehearsed so many times and putting it
Speaker 1: to practice under incredible pressure. Right. And my first thought
Speaker 1: about that is who does that? What kind of freak
Speaker 1: is this? It does that? But when you can go
Speaker 1: back and dissect how he got there, he had been
Speaker 1: prepared for that for a very long time. I saw
Speaker 1: an interview with him where he was asked what was
Speaker 1: it like to swim blind? And I think he said,
Speaker 1: just like I imagined it would exactly exactly. Michael didn't
Speaker 1: just visualize all the positive stuff, the perfect race when
Speaker 1: everything went well. He also simulated what it felt like
Speaker 1: to swim blind, and so he swam perfectly in spite
Speaker 1: of the awful situation, and in the end he won
Speaker 1: the race, got the gold, and even took the world record.
Speaker 1: Bob Breckens. Things would have been very different if Michael's
Speaker 1: visualizations had used purely positive thinking. Your brain is a computer, right,
Speaker 1: That's what I say, and you're giving it input, right,
Speaker 1: So you're giving it, on the one hand, the input
Speaker 1: of the things that you want to do. On the
Speaker 1: second part, you're rehearsing a database of scenarios so that
Speaker 1: you're ready for whatever comes up. If you dive in
Speaker 1: and something doesn't go well, you can immediately call on
Speaker 1: these other scenarios. But if you haven't put those in
Speaker 1: your database, you don't get to call on those. You
Speaker 1: have to consciously start thinking about what to do. And
Speaker 1: we all know that's not the best way to be
Speaker 1: in competition, right. You want to shut your brain off
Speaker 1: and just let it automatically happen. Michael Phelps is a
Speaker 1: one in a million, maybe one in a billion athlete,
Speaker 1: but science suggests the strategy he used, focusing his mental
Speaker 1: energy on the worst possible outcome that nightmare scenario is
Speaker 1: one that all of us can learn from. Despite what
Speaker 1: shelves of self help books say, it turns out that
Speaker 1: negative thinking is really really helpful. In fact, new research
Speaker 1: is beginning to show that positive thinking focusing only on
Speaker 1: the good outcomes, can be a recipe for disaster. Or
Speaker 1: we find is the more positive people think about the future,
Speaker 1: actually the less well they do in reaching the positive future.
Speaker 1: I'm talking with gabrielle Otingen, professor of psychology at NYU,
Speaker 1: an author of a book entitled Rethinking Positive Thinking. We
Speaker 1: need to listen to all of the positive fantasies and
Speaker 1: daydreams because they are an expression of our needs, so
Speaker 1: we know where to go. The only problem is that
Speaker 1: these positive fantasies and datreams accept our energy. They are
Speaker 1: actually an impediment to our actual successes. Gabriel's work has
Speaker 1: documented lots of cases were more positive thinking leads to
Speaker 1: worst outcomes. The more positively people enrolled in a weight
Speaker 1: production program, fantasized about their success in the program, the
Speaker 1: fewer pounds they shed, or the more positively university credits.
Speaker 1: Fantasized about success in transferring into the work life, the
Speaker 1: fewer dollars they earned two years later, the fewer job
Speaker 1: offers they had gotten, and the fewer job applications that
Speaker 1: had sent out. You name the goal, and research shows
Speaker 1: that positive thinking makes it less likely you'll reach it.
Speaker 1: Those who fantasy about starting a romantic relationship are more
Speaker 1: likely to remain alone. People who dream of an ideal
Speaker 1: future get more depressed. Carefully imagine getting good grades, and
Speaker 1: you risk flunking the class. The downside of positive thinking
Speaker 1: even extends to physical outcomes. Elderly individuals who dream of
Speaker 1: a full recovery after their hip surgery are the ones
Speaker 1: who can walk the fewest steps afterwards. Simply put, positive
Speaker 1: thinking alone doesn't work. I asked Gabrielle if people are
Speaker 1: shocked when they hear about this work, whether she gets
Speaker 1: a lot of pushback. I do. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: people are sometimes grateful because this positive thinking alone did
Speaker 1: not work for them, and they always think something is
Speaker 1: wrong with them, and they feel kind of relieved that
Speaker 1: they are not alone, where they experience that they can
Speaker 1: sink positive and positive and positive and still things don't
Speaker 1: rain from heaven. The coolest thing about Gabrielle's work is
Speaker 1: that she's figured out why positive fantasies are counterproductive, the
Speaker 1: reason mentally simulating our desired outcome makes us think we
Speaker 1: already got there, like we just ate all the eminem's
Speaker 1: we need in their mind, they experience this desired future
Speaker 1: already there, and therefore they relax. So it's almost like
Speaker 1: the simple act of experiencing this positive fantasy, it's like
Speaker 1: it confuses our mind. Our mind thinks we've already gotten it,
Speaker 1: so we don't have to put energy in exactly, you
Speaker 1: can measure that by lord blood pressure, for example. And
Speaker 1: so how do we actually get the energy back we
Speaker 1: need to realize our goals? Oddly enough, we need a
Speaker 1: burst of negative thinking, just like Michael Phelps visualizing swimming blind,
Speaker 1: getting to our own personal goals requires thinking about the
Speaker 1: obstacles that block our path. It's kind of contraintuitive that
Speaker 1: the obstacles in our way are actually the trigger for
Speaker 1: overcoming them and getting to implement all positive fantasies. But
Speaker 1: it's exactly what we've found. We need to ground our
Speaker 1: positive fantasies in the gritty reality. It's a strategy, Gabrielle
Speaker 1: calls mental contrasting. Every time we have a positive ambition
Speaker 1: for ourselves, we need to directly contrast that goal mentally
Speaker 1: with the reality of the situation, the actual obstacles in
Speaker 1: our way. And we need to simulate all of the obstacles,
Speaker 1: both the physical ones like a pair of goggles falling off,
Speaker 1: but also the mental obstacles are dumb habits, fears, and
Speaker 1: bad tendencies. That's a critical point in mental contrasting. Identify
Speaker 1: the inner obstacle and get rid of the excuses. Then
Speaker 1: we get the energy to overcome these obstacles. Mental contrasting
Speaker 1: is not just negative thinking or simply ruminating about all
Speaker 1: the bad stuff. It's making sure you factor the obstacles
Speaker 1: you're facing into your plans. It's contrasting the harsh realities
Speaker 1: of the world with what you'd like to see in
Speaker 1: the future, and that helps you determine whether your vision
Speaker 1: is really achievable or worth it. If the obstacle is
Speaker 1: just too formidable or too costly to overcome, we can
Speaker 1: then say Okay, I can let go without having a
Speaker 1: bad conscience, and then I am free to invest my
Speaker 1: energy to more feasible wishes. So it is a strategy
Speaker 1: to set priorities and to let go from wishes that
Speaker 1: is simply not feasible or too costly. Mental contrasting can
Speaker 1: help us get our goals in line with what's actually doable,
Speaker 1: what's really worth our effort. But that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: mental contrasting causes you to give up when the going
Speaker 1: gets tough. In fact, this strategy can be essential for
Speaker 1: getting through the toughest physical and mental challenges a person
Speaker 1: can face. Check check. This is Kristen back with Laurie
Speaker 1: Santo's all right. Kristen is a decorated veteran of one
Speaker 1: of the most elite military forces, a unit where even
Speaker 1: if you're lucky enough to try out, the chances of
Speaker 1: you making the grade are tiny. It's probably like seven percent.
Speaker 1: I think back when I joined, it was like the
Speaker 1: late eighties early nineties, and there was really no publicity
Speaker 1: for the seal teams. But it was a really crappy
Speaker 1: movie called Navy Seals. And after I saw that movie
Speaker 1: about the Navy Seals, I was like I'm gonna do that. Nowadays,
Speaker 1: the Navy Seals are famous. They're the unit that killed
Speaker 1: Osama bin Laden, and their extreme training techniques made great television.
Speaker 1: They're shouted at, made to carry heavy logs, and thrown
Speaker 1: into the freezing ocean with their hands tied. And that's
Speaker 1: just the warm up for the real challenge of joining
Speaker 1: the Seals. Hell Week, you start training all they're doing,
Speaker 1: defeating the heck outia. You're gonna be awake for six days.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be working out constantly for six days. You're
Speaker 1: making you do, you know, a thousand sit ups and
Speaker 1: hundreds and hundred of pushups, and you swim for seven
Speaker 1: miles and you run four miles, and it's just like
Speaker 1: a constant physical abuse. And what they're trying to do
Speaker 1: is they're trying to make you break. They're trying to
Speaker 1: make your body break or your mind break, you know,
Speaker 1: one or the other. The attrition rate for wannabe Seals
Speaker 1: is insane. During Hell Week, recruit after recruit just gives up.
Speaker 1: It's even ritualized to drop out. Recruits need to walk
Speaker 1: over to a brass ship's bell, assuming they can even walk,
Speaker 1: and ring it to signal their surrender. But part of
Speaker 1: what makes Kristen such an incredible person is that she
Speaker 1: never hit that bell. You never quit, you still keep going.
Speaker 1: And so you're barely walking, but you're still going. You know,
Speaker 1: you're doing fushups and you're like your knees are on
Speaker 1: the ground and you're barely moving. Well, you're still doing it.
Speaker 1: And they kind of have to train you that hard
Speaker 1: physically because that's what you're going to deal with physically
Speaker 1: when you're actually in the job, right exactly. I mean
Speaker 1: a physical is a huge part of it, but I
Speaker 1: think the mental is bigger. Why do the Seals make
Speaker 1: their recruits train so hard? It's the old military adage,
Speaker 1: train hard, fight easy. Having survived Hell Week, Kristen had
Speaker 1: the confidence that she could meet even the greatest mental
Speaker 1: and physical challenges and still succeed. But once becoming part
Speaker 1: of the Seal's proper Kristen found that the unit doesn't
Speaker 1: just practice in the real world. They also practice in
Speaker 1: their heads. And this elite unit takes the simulations Michael
Speaker 1: Phelps and Gabrielle Otingen recommend to a whole new level.
Speaker 1: So we've practice all the bad stuff to make sure
Speaker 1: that when we do get there. We go, wow, this
Speaker 1: is easy. I've already seen something like that, or I've
Speaker 1: already been there, so that you're not quite as shocked
Speaker 1: when you know it really hits the fan. Just like
Speaker 1: with Michael Phelps imagining a race, thinking of every stroke,
Speaker 1: in every detail, down to the smell of the chlorinated water,
Speaker 1: Kristen would painstakingly plan every facet of her missions in
Speaker 1: Iraq and Afghanistan. So we do sand tables interactually these
Speaker 1: big tables with sand, and then we shaved the sand
Speaker 1: into the terrain. And so if it's a mountain over there,
Speaker 1: in a valley here, and it's a stream here, we'll
Speaker 1: make it as close as possible to what that train's
Speaker 1: gonna look like. If we encounter enemy forces here, then
Speaker 1: this is gonna be your heart our way out. If
Speaker 1: this doesn't work, I want to go back to here.
Speaker 1: We're constantly nitpicking and constantly saying what if this happens,
Speaker 1: what if that happens, And then we throw on all
Speaker 1: the other ranches in the machine to make things break down,
Speaker 1: and this happens. This happens. So just like Michael Phelps,
Speaker 1: maybe a little little harsher and word weird stuff happens.
Speaker 1: So when you guys swim, it's like legit and with
Speaker 1: big bags of mortars and things like that, one hundred
Speaker 1: pounds and through the water for seven miles. So I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how much of this is classified, but I'm wondering, like,
Speaker 1: if this kind of simulation was classified, there was there
Speaker 1: like you know, or maybe in vague terms, you can
Speaker 1: tell it was there one time where those simulations really
Speaker 1: paid off. I mean, I could probably tell you that
Speaker 1: every mission goes that way. You'd never go as accord
Speaker 1: in Flan. I didn't push Kristen to tell me any
Speaker 1: more of her war stories. There's a good reason her
Speaker 1: activities are classified. I deployed thirteen times overseas. I did
Speaker 1: a lot of work behind enemy lines in deep I
Speaker 1: was kind of sneaky, peeky, so I did a lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff that you would do like in other agencies.
Speaker 1: But Kristen's most important role in the Seals was as
Speaker 1: a planner, the person charged with predicting the terrible obstacles.
Speaker 1: She's trained more in the okay, what could go wrong
Speaker 1: next thought than nearly anyone else in our nation. I
Speaker 1: do it out of habit because I did it so
Speaker 1: many times, and because it's a habit, Kristen really gets
Speaker 1: that the kind of positive thinking we're often told to
Speaker 1: adopt by well meaning friends and self help grows, it
Speaker 1: isn't all that helpful when the bullets start to fly.
Speaker 1: We always plan on all the negatives and all the
Speaker 1: bad stuff happen. Hope is not a course of ashion.
Speaker 1: If all you have is hope, then you don't have
Speaker 1: very much. Kristen's training in the Seals made her the
Speaker 1: human embodiment of mental contrasting, thinking through all the possible
Speaker 1: obstacles before they happen. But there's a second reason I
Speaker 1: wanted to interview Kristen for this episode, and that's because
Speaker 1: she's also faced a different kind of battle, one that
Speaker 1: she began speaking about publicly only after leaving the Armed Services.
Speaker 1: Right after I retired, I knew who I was, you know,
Speaker 1: borned Christopher, but Kristen was part of my life since
Speaker 1: I was like a very young age, I knew who
Speaker 1: I was. Kristen is a transgender woman and the author
Speaker 1: of Warrior Princess, a US Navy Seals journey to coming
Speaker 1: out transgender. After she left the military, she made the
Speaker 1: courageous decision to live in accord with her gender identity,
Speaker 1: not the sex she happened to be assigned at birth.
Speaker 1: She has now gone on to become one of the
Speaker 1: country's most celebrated transactivists, but like many trans people, Kristen
Speaker 1: has also faced a number of harrowing challenges in the
Speaker 1: process of her transition from daily harassment and discrimination to
Speaker 1: acts of physical violence. I wanted to learn how Kristen's
Speaker 1: expertise in mental contrasting helped her navigate this difficult personal challenge.
Speaker 1: Her honest answer blindsided me and taught me that the
Speaker 1: lives of the mind go way deeper than we often realize.
Speaker 1: The happiness lab will be right back. Unless we understand
Speaker 1: what the obstacle is, we will not have the energy
Speaker 1: to overcome the obstacle, and we will also when we
Speaker 1: don't imagine the obstacle, we will not be creative in
Speaker 1: finding solutions to overcome the obstacle. Gabrielle Outingen's work on
Speaker 1: mental contrasting has shown just how powerful thinking about our
Speaker 1: obstacles can be. Her studies have shown time and again
Speaker 1: that simulating the barriers to our goals can give us
Speaker 1: the motivation we need to solve them. The blood pressure
Speaker 1: goes up provides the oxygen to get going. But there's
Speaker 1: one more feature of mental contrasting that makes it such
Speaker 1: a powerful strategy. It gets our minds to start planning.
Speaker 1: When we think about obstacles, our brains naturally want to
Speaker 1: search for solutions to those obstacles. Very often, this solution
Speaker 1: comes already when you think about the obstacle. When you
Speaker 1: imagine the obstacle happening, you will suddenly understand, Ah, this
Speaker 1: is what I could do in order to overcome the
Speaker 1: obstaclet Why didn't I discover that years ago? Thinking through
Speaker 1: all those inner and outer obstacles drives our mind into
Speaker 1: plotting mode. We turn on our inner navy seals. We
Speaker 1: hunger down at our mental stand tables to work out
Speaker 1: a plan that can successfully overcome the barrier we've identified.
Speaker 1: But Gabrielle has found a new way to put this
Speaker 1: planning process into overdrive by adding one additional form of
Speaker 1: mental practice. In addition to simulating the obstacles, Gabrielle recommends
Speaker 1: also taking time to imagine, very intentionally, what it would
Speaker 1: feel like to implement our plan whenever the obstacle comes up.
Speaker 1: Kind of like what Michael Phelps did in his training.
Speaker 1: If goggles come off, then take exactly nineteen strokes. This
Speaker 1: intentional simulation of an if then plan is a strategy
Speaker 1: that researchers have called implementation intentions. The practice was developed
Speaker 1: by Gabrielle's husband, the psychologist Peter Goldwitzer. The couple has
Speaker 1: now teamed up to study the power of using these
Speaker 1: two mental practices in parallel. They've even tied the two
Speaker 1: techniques together into one convenient package. It's even got a
Speaker 1: hanti acronym whoop woop, that's right, that's right, whoop, which
Speaker 1: means wish, outcome obstacle and then plan. So it is
Speaker 1: identify a wish that is dear to your heart, find
Speaker 1: the best outcome and imagine it. Find the inner central obstacle,
Speaker 1: meaning the obstacle in you that stands in the way,
Speaker 1: and imagine the obstacle, and then form an if then plan.
Speaker 1: So wish outcome obstacle plan. So that's then what we
Speaker 1: call whoop. Let's try it now really quickly. What's something
Speaker 1: you wish for? What's a goal you really want to
Speaker 1: achieve in life? Now take a second to think of
Speaker 1: the outcome, what your life will really be like if
Speaker 1: you actually achieve that wish, But what are the obstacles?
Speaker 1: Non judgmentally think of what's really in your way? And
Speaker 1: now that you know the obstacles, what's your plan how
Speaker 1: will you actually overcome the barriers to realize in your goal.
Speaker 1: That only took a few seconds and Gabrielle recommends taking
Speaker 1: a bit longer to whoop, but you get the general idea.
Speaker 1: It's a simple technique, but one that's really powerful. Research
Speaker 1: shows it helps people eat healthier, lose more weight, study
Speaker 1: more effectively, and even procrastinate less. It can help depress
Speaker 1: people exercise and be more social, and even helps patients
Speaker 1: recover faster and take their medications more regularly. When you
Speaker 1: ask people, how did it work for you, the obstacle
Speaker 1: didn't appear, so they can't even remember that the obstacle
Speaker 1: appeared because they've just automatically summar did it. And that's
Speaker 1: why whooping is so powerful. It harnesses the processes we
Speaker 1: learned about in the first part of this episode. One
Speaker 1: of the most awesome features of our mind. Our brains
Speaker 1: can automatically learn from mental practice. Imagine eating a bunch
Speaker 1: of M and m's and you've learned what it feels
Speaker 1: like you're done eating them. Imagine swimming the perfect race
Speaker 1: and your brain knows what to do. And imagine the
Speaker 1: solution to a tough obstacle and your brain has already
Speaker 1: figured out how to overcome it automatically. But there is
Speaker 1: one small challenge to whooping. Like all other good things
Speaker 1: in life, we actually have to do it for it
Speaker 1: to work, and that can be tough in reality, not
Speaker 1: just because it takes time, but also because doing it
Speaker 1: well involves taking a long, hard look at yourself and
Speaker 1: your circumstances. Whatever the obstacle is, it needs to be identifying, honestly,
Speaker 1: without excuses, and then you can see whether you will
Speaker 1: be able to overcome it or not. Whooping works because
Speaker 1: it forces you to ask some tough questions. What are
Speaker 1: my inner obstacles? What am I afraid of? What are
Speaker 1: my real priorities? What are my insecurities? Are the people
Speaker 1: around me preventing me from doing what I really want?
Speaker 1: People who employ techniques like whoop know that this part,
Speaker 1: the unfettered honesty can be daunting. Remember what Bob Bowman
Speaker 1: told his swimmers. Every day, it takes what it takes.
Speaker 1: Some obstacles require a lot of work, and that can
Speaker 1: be tough to come to terms with, so tough that
Speaker 1: we sometimes would rather put on blinders and just think
Speaker 1: positive instead. Even people who understand the power of mental
Speaker 1: practice aren't always able to put the work in for
Speaker 1: goals that really matter are most personal ones, the ones
Speaker 1: that involve a really long, hard look at the inner
Speaker 1: obstacles we face. It's worse than combat because combat is
Speaker 1: very cut and dry. But this is, this is you
Speaker 1: don't know. When Kristin left the Navy Seals and began
Speaker 1: her transition, she found enemies on all sides. I'm one
Speaker 1: of one. I'm the only transgender Navy seal. I'm the
Speaker 1: only female Navy seal. I'm the only however you want
Speaker 1: to explain it, I'm a very small minority. I went
Speaker 1: to the inauguration of Donald Trump, and people are angry
Speaker 1: at me for doing it. It It says, why would you
Speaker 1: do that? And I said, because I was being visible,
Speaker 1: because I was sitting there amongst all of these people
Speaker 1: and all the supporters and everyone that loves our president.
Speaker 1: There automatically have all those respect for the military and
Speaker 1: patriots and all the stuff that they talk about. But
Speaker 1: they don't respect transgender people. But now they're in a
Speaker 1: weird conundrum whether what are they gonna do. They're not
Speaker 1: gonna walk up to me and start yelling at you're
Speaker 1: disrespecting me because they can't because the nets against a uniform.
Speaker 1: So they're in a really weird spot that I forced
Speaker 1: them into. I'm gonna worth you to be with me
Speaker 1: and talk to me and be respectful, and they are.
Speaker 1: Kristen has been made to feel like an outsider on
Speaker 1: the other side of the political aisle as well. Some
Speaker 1: liberals are suspicious of anyone who served so long in
Speaker 1: the military, and Kristin says people make assumptions about her
Speaker 1: all the time, so it kind of bums me out.
Speaker 1: You know. It makes me feel like I'm not worthy
Speaker 1: or valid even amongst the LGBT community, And I'm not
Speaker 1: worthy or or validated amongst the women's groups or the
Speaker 1: civil rights groups because they never invite the end. But
Speaker 1: Kristen's new identity also brought more intense challenges than feeling
Speaker 1: misunderstood on both sides. Like many transgender people, she also
Speaker 1: faced physical violence. In two twelve, I was out in
Speaker 1: Florida and I was walking down this sidewalk and I
Speaker 1: was alone, which is a mistake that I learned the
Speaker 1: hard way. I was ignorant to the fact that I
Speaker 1: had to always protect myself and always be on guard.
Speaker 1: So I'm walking on a sidewalk and four dudes I
Speaker 1: don't want to call them gentlemen because I definitely weren't.
Speaker 1: One of them ran out behind me real fast and
Speaker 1: he was yelling fag and hit me in the back
Speaker 1: of the head, total sucker punch, and I was knocked
Speaker 1: out and I went down like a sack of potatoes.
Speaker 1: I'm on the ground with four guys not for me,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to kill me. So I gained my
Speaker 1: conscienceness back and I was getting up and one of
Speaker 1: them kicked me my head just like a football boom.
Speaker 1: I got knocked out again. How do you bounce back
Speaker 1: from something like that or how do you survive knowing
Speaker 1: that this is the world that you're going to live in?
Speaker 1: And so at that point I started really looking at
Speaker 1: my life and looking at the world around me in
Speaker 1: a whole different light. And that's kind of when I
Speaker 1: started becoming an activist. After Kristin recovered, she made a
Speaker 1: film about her story set up her own charity and
Speaker 1: even ran for a seat in Congress. She has now
Speaker 1: dedicated her time and energy to the biggest fight of
Speaker 1: her life, making the world safer and more inclusive for
Speaker 1: trans people. And as you might imagine, a challenging goal
Speaker 1: like that faces lots and lots of obstacles. And that
Speaker 1: was why I wanted to talk with Kristen so badly
Speaker 1: for this episode. Do you use the same process that
Speaker 1: you use as a seal? You know? Do you get
Speaker 1: out the sand? Do you think through all these negative scenarios.
Speaker 1: It's a great point, and I wish I did, but
Speaker 1: I don't, And maybe that's one of my problems. I'll
Speaker 1: be honest. I was pretty shocked by this reply. Kristen
Speaker 1: has years of training in the power of negative thinking.
Speaker 1: She knows better than anyone that hope isn't a replacement
Speaker 1: for planning, but even she has trouble thinking about the
Speaker 1: obstacles when it comes to the goals that are most
Speaker 1: dear to her, especially when those obstacles aren't just personal
Speaker 1: but societal as well. Looking head on at the real
Speaker 1: barriers can be scary, but it's a necessary step from
Speaker 1: making big changes. But Kristen's not alone. We all find
Speaker 1: it tough to look directly at the hurdles that stop
Speaker 1: us from achieving what we care about most deeply, and
Speaker 1: even once we're ready to face those obstacles, we sometimes
Speaker 1: have trouble taking the time we need to practice these techniques.
Speaker 1: Kristen's military training required hours and hours of practice at
Speaker 1: those sand tables. The seals also gave her the structure
Speaker 1: she needed to take the necessary time to imagine and plan.
Speaker 1: But Kristen can't do that nowadays because there are many
Speaker 1: forms of activism keep her really, really busy and famished
Speaker 1: for time. So you talked about the whoop and the planning,
Speaker 1: and if I planned well, I don't have the luxury
Speaker 1: to clianic because I feel like I'm always playing catch up.
Speaker 1: The science shows the many benefits of mental practice. You
Speaker 1: increase the chances of achieving realistic goals. You can discard
Speaker 1: the impossible fantasies which make you feel defeated and a
Speaker 1: bit guilty. You can even harness your brain to work
Speaker 1: with you rather than against you, pursuing your objectives with
Speaker 1: greater energy and self confidence. But as we've seen in
Speaker 1: this episode, mental practice and whooping takes work. Successfully get
Speaker 1: to our goals requires an honest look at the real
Speaker 1: challenges we face, and doing it right takes time. It
Speaker 1: might just be five minutes of quiet reflection, but even
Speaker 1: those few minutes can feel prohibitive when we're already feeling
Speaker 1: overwhelmed by the challenges ahead. But there's hope for all
Speaker 1: of us. Kristin told me after our interview that our
Speaker 1: discussion changed her that she's planning to bring whoop and
Speaker 1: other techniques into her activism despite the hard work it takes.
Speaker 1: I've had a lot of goods and bads, and I
Speaker 1: do find that the balance that we can find between
Speaker 1: the goods and the bads, between seeing life is positive
Speaker 1: but also knowing that negatives exist and a plan for
Speaker 1: those negatives, and to try to understand that, you know,
Speaker 1: life is not always going to be perfect, and it's
Speaker 1: not going to always be fun. That you're going to
Speaker 1: run into some hard times and some difficult situations. Taking
Speaker 1: a long, hard look at the struggles ahead is not
Speaker 1: as enjoyable as fantasizing about how amazing it would feel
Speaker 1: so simply have achieved our goals, to have learned that
Speaker 1: new language, run that half marathon, or created a more
Speaker 1: inclusive society for people of all identities. Often it feels
Speaker 1: easier to put on our rose colored glasses and ignore
Speaker 1: the challenges ahead. But that's not the way we become
Speaker 1: our best selves or our best societies. Even a podcast
Speaker 1: about happiness recognizes that sometimes we got to look on
Speaker 1: the dark side. The good news is that once we
Speaker 1: take the time to do that, once we face the
Speaker 1: obstacles head on, our minds give us the power to
Speaker 1: harness the automatic energy that comes from mental contrasting and planning.
Speaker 1: It comes really easy once we do the work. We've
Speaker 1: just got to put the time in. It only takes
Speaker 1: a few minutes a day, and the benefits of that
Speaker 1: work can be impressive. I had to go through forty
Speaker 1: some years of denying who I was. I'm looking in
Speaker 1: a mirror and kind of hate myself. But I've made
Speaker 1: it and I'm here and now I'm happy. So just
Speaker 1: put your head down and be good to yourself. The
Speaker 1: question why will you finally be good to yourself? Why
Speaker 1: will you actually put your head down and take the
Speaker 1: time needed to whoop it up, play that mental obstacles
Speaker 1: videotape and move toward the goal You've been fantasizing about.
Speaker 1: When you're done, you can come back and learn more
Speaker 1: concrete strategies for meeting your goals, ones that will cover
Speaker 1: in the next episode of The Happiness Lab with me
Speaker 1: Doctor Laurie Santos. If you enjoyed the show, I'd be
Speaker 1: super grateful if you could spread the word by leaving
Speaker 1: a rating and a review. It really does help other
Speaker 1: listeners find us, and don't forget to tell your friends.
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about the science you
Speaker 1: heard on the show, then check out our website Happiness
Speaker 1: Lab dot fm. You can also sign up for our
Speaker 1: newsletter to get exclusive content. The Happiness Lab is co
Speaker 1: written and produced by Ryan Dilley. The show is mixed
Speaker 1: and mastered by Evan Viola and edited by Julia Barton,
Speaker 1: fact checking by Joseph Fridman, and our original music was
Speaker 1: composed by Zachary Silver. Special thanks to Mia LaBelle, Carly
Speaker 1: mcgliorre Heather Faine, Maggie Taylor, Maya Kanig, and Jacob Weisberg.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries
Speaker 1: and Me Doctor Laurie Sanders