Speaker 1: In case you're just recently joining us, or however long
Speaker 1: you've been a listener of the show, you may not
Speaker 1: realize that we have years and years of incredible episodes
Speaker 1: in our archives. We've had so many wonderful guests so
Speaker 1: that we've decided to hand pick one of our favorites
Speaker 1: that may be new to you, but if not, it's
Speaker 1: definitely worth another lesson. We hope you'll enjoy this episode
Speaker 1: with Claire Booth. When we put the achievement at the
Speaker 1: absolute pinnacle of who we are, and that's our happiness
Speaker 1: and our self worth, that's when we completely lose perspective.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 1: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Claire Booth and entrepreneur, author,
Speaker 1: and speaker. She's the founder and CEO of market research
Speaker 1: firm Lux Insights, with two decades of experience serving some
Speaker 1: of the world's most recognized brands. Her book is The
Speaker 1: Achiever Fever Cure, How I Learned to Stop Striving Myself Crazy.
Speaker 1: Hi Claire, Welcome to the show. Hi Eric, Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. I'm excited to have you on. Your book
Speaker 1: is called The Achiever Fever Cure, How I Learned to
Speaker 1: Stop Striving Myself Crazy. And we will get into all
Speaker 1: the details of that shortly, but let's start like we
Speaker 1: always do, with the parable. There is a grandmother who's
Speaker 1: talking to her grandson and she says, in life, there
Speaker 1: are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and he looks up at his grandmother says, well, grandmother,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. So the first time I
Speaker 1: heard that parable was the first time I heard your show,
Speaker 1: and I was listening to it while I was hiking,
Speaker 1: because I often listened to podcasts while I hike, and
Speaker 1: I remember hearing that parable and hearing the last line,
Speaker 1: and it literally stopped me in my tracks because only
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks previous had I started to become
Speaker 1: aware of this voice in my head, this really loud, negative,
Speaker 1: incessantly nagging voice in my head. And so when I
Speaker 1: heard the parable, that was my realization that it's not
Speaker 1: just me. There's other people that suffer from this and well,
Speaker 1: and in fact, here's a whole show about it, here's
Speaker 1: a whole podcast about it, and so as as you know,
Speaker 1: this podcast has been a huge part of my personal
Speaker 1: self transformation. So once I became aware of this bad wolf,
Speaker 1: the first thing I wanted to do was just starve
Speaker 1: it out. I wanted to I wanted to just watch
Speaker 1: it die. But I soon realized it doesn't work that way.
Speaker 1: Having a good wolf necessarily means that we're going to
Speaker 1: have a bad wolf. You can't have one without the other.
Speaker 1: The concept of good needs the concept of bad um
Speaker 1: and so what I had to do was learn how
Speaker 1: to of my bad wolf, which was surprisingly easy because
Speaker 1: I started to realize how much that bad wolf and
Speaker 1: those feelings of fear and self doubt and worry had
Speaker 1: brought me success to that point in my life. And
Speaker 1: it was only when I learned to start loving and
Speaker 1: finding the gratitude for my bad wolf that I was
Speaker 1: able to start developing a relationship with my good wolf.
Speaker 1: The bad wolf had been so dominant up until that
Speaker 1: point that I didn't really have a relationship with my
Speaker 1: good wolf. So now my relationship with my good wolf
Speaker 1: basically means keeping my inner house clean. So, for example,
Speaker 1: when the bad wolf gets fed and it as it will,
Speaker 1: I just watch the feeding, so I try to step back.
Speaker 1: I don't try to resist it, I don't try to
Speaker 1: stop it. I don't necessarily try to talk myself out
Speaker 1: of it. I just become aware that, oh, this is
Speaker 1: happening right now. And as I watch I become more
Speaker 1: a aware of the words, more aware of the thoughts
Speaker 1: that brings me into presence. And once I'm in presence,
Speaker 1: those feelings of gratitude and love, that kind of higher
Speaker 1: elevated states starts to emerge from that. Just to take
Speaker 1: the analogy a little further, I get regular reminders that
Speaker 1: I have overfed my bad wolf for so long, because
Speaker 1: sometimes he just kind of barfs up his food, like
Speaker 1: when I least expect it, it just barfs it up.
Speaker 1: I don't think we've had that analogy before. So if
Speaker 1: I try ignore, you know, that kind of pile of puke,
Speaker 1: right and pretend it doesn't exist, then it really starts
Speaker 1: to smell awful, and I get myself into this emotional turmoil. Um.
Speaker 1: And so now what I do is again try to
Speaker 1: bring myself into presence and um, give that bad wolf
Speaker 1: a bit of a compassionate pat on the head and say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: there you are and uh, and either get present or
Speaker 1: inquire into what prompted, for lack of the better word,
Speaker 1: puke in the first life. That's great. That is a
Speaker 1: new analogy. I'll give you that, and it's a good one.
Speaker 1: So let's go back a little ways to what got
Speaker 1: you to the point that you wrote a book called
Speaker 1: The Achiever Fever Cure. Um, it's one I certainly relate with.
Speaker 1: The achievement has been something that I have seen as
Speaker 1: both the good and the bad wolf in my own life,
Speaker 1: and so so I'm very interested in, um, how you
Speaker 1: did that. But let's set the stage about what brought
Speaker 1: you to the point that you sort of embarked on
Speaker 1: this new journey of even trying to not be an
Speaker 1: achiever all the time. Right. So, being an achiever has
Speaker 1: been my identity for as long as I can possibly remember,
Speaker 1: and as a result, it's brought me all sorts of
Speaker 1: success in my business and athletics and and um, so
Speaker 1: I never really thought to question it. What I didn't
Speaker 1: do was make the tie between being an achiever and
Speaker 1: these feelings of anxiety and depression and for me insomnia. Um.
Speaker 1: And and you experienced that enough that finally I started
Speaker 1: to see the pattern. And it got to the point
Speaker 1: where I was about five years into running my business,
Speaker 1: and you know, everything was going the way I wanted
Speaker 1: it to go. We were profitable, we were growing twenty
Speaker 1: percent a year. I was adding great new employees, we
Speaker 1: were at in clients each year. You know, everything in
Speaker 1: my my life seemed good, but I was miserable because
Speaker 1: all of this was accompanied by this anxiety and beating
Speaker 1: myself up, and this constant worry and this needing to prove.
Speaker 1: And uh so five years in I had experienced this
Speaker 1: patterns so many times that I thought, I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: at risk of being a liability to my own company
Speaker 1: if I don't do something. My employees need a confident,
Speaker 1: you know, a confident, strong leader. They don't need somebody
Speaker 1: that's constantly beating themselves up. And so they there came
Speaker 1: a point where I just had to hold up my
Speaker 1: hand and and say enough, I cannot live my life
Speaker 1: like this anymore. I I can't go days without sleep.
Speaker 1: There's got to be a better way, right And your
Speaker 1: business is market research. That's kind of what you do.
Speaker 1: And one of the things you did is part of
Speaker 1: this book, is you did some market research quote unquote
Speaker 1: on other high achievers. And I did. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that you found was that this anxiety, depression,
Speaker 1: insomnia was certainly not limited to you. A matter of fact,
Speaker 1: it was relatively prevalent in a lot of achievers. It
Speaker 1: was prevalent. Yeah. Um, So I did a survey of
Speaker 1: hundreds of other self reported achievers, and one of the
Speaker 1: questions I asked was one was the last time you
Speaker 1: experienced insomnia? Are really bad sleep? And over a third
Speaker 1: of the of the achievers that I spoke to or
Speaker 1: that that did the survey, over a third said they
Speaker 1: had experienced insomnia that week a loan, and then depression
Speaker 1: you know, within the past six months, and anxiety within
Speaker 1: the past couple of weeks. It was high. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's one of those things that I've noticed throughout
Speaker 1: my career that achievers don't want to talk about. Right,
Speaker 1: you wrestle with us if you're leading a company, right,
Speaker 1: you don't want to project anxiety about how the companies
Speaker 1: do into your employees. You know, there's been more writing
Speaker 1: in the last few years about the incidents of depression
Speaker 1: among entrepreneurs how high it really is, because I think
Speaker 1: that part of what achievers get into they are seen
Speaker 1: as achievers, and often that's the image they feel like
Speaker 1: they need to project, so they don't acknowledge it to themselves,
Speaker 1: let alone anyone else. Right, we don't acknowledge it within
Speaker 1: ourselves because it's so important to us for everyone to
Speaker 1: see us as strong and powerful and and on top
Speaker 1: of things and in control of things. Um, but the
Speaker 1: stats and my own experience show that that's not the
Speaker 1: case at all. So we almost double down on on
Speaker 1: trying to prove ourselves. My achievers say they are trying
Speaker 1: to always prove that they are the strong, confident, powerful being,
Speaker 1: And the ability to make oneself vulnerable gets further and
Speaker 1: further pressed down. And we know, based on Burnet Brown
Speaker 1: and and and UH speakers and writers like that, how
Speaker 1: much strength there is in vulnerability. And this is starting
Speaker 1: to make its way into business circles now, but it's
Speaker 1: still I mean, it's still pretty quiet in terms of
Speaker 1: people actually doing it right. Absolutely, I think it is
Speaker 1: still a thing there. So let's talk about achiever fever.
Speaker 1: What is it? Because, um, you didn't walk off and
Speaker 1: give up your business. You wrote a book, I mean,
Speaker 1: so you continued to achieve. What's the difference between achieving
Speaker 1: and achiever fever. It's a good question. So achiever fever
Speaker 1: is their dark side of achieving. There's nothing wrong with achieving.
Speaker 1: There's nothing wrong with having goals and working hard and
Speaker 1: wanting to do your best there's nothing wrong at all
Speaker 1: with that achiever. Fever is the dark side of achieving.
Speaker 1: It's when we tie our our happiness, our sense of
Speaker 1: self worth to our achievements and get away from seeing
Speaker 1: an achievement as just another point in time. So when
Speaker 1: we we put the achievement as the abstcule, absolute pinnacle
Speaker 1: of who we are and thus our happiness and our
Speaker 1: self worth, that's when we completely lose perspective and we
Speaker 1: enter into this delusion, the spell of if I'm not
Speaker 1: working towards my achievement, then there's something very very wrong
Speaker 1: with me, and it means I'm lazy. It means I'm weak,
Speaker 1: it means I'm ordinary average, you know, it means I'm
Speaker 1: it means I'm dying or going backwards, and so real
Speaker 1: kind of polarity in our thinking. So I continue to
Speaker 1: achieve in different aspects of my life, but I don't
Speaker 1: have the fever now like I used to. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: so many things I think in what you said there.
Speaker 1: I think there's the tying of our self worth to
Speaker 1: what we achieve. You know, this very fundamental I am
Speaker 1: what I do right. There's also the idea of I'll
Speaker 1: be happy when right when I achieve this, then I'll
Speaker 1: be happy. Everything up till then is just me getting
Speaker 1: to that point. And what most of us know, if
Speaker 1: we've had enough years on this earth, is that we
Speaker 1: get there and we're not really any happier. Maybe we
Speaker 1: are for a day, a week, depends, you know, three hours,
Speaker 1: and then we just set the next goal. We just
Speaker 1: how are we get Now it's the next thing, and
Speaker 1: off we go. It's this perpetual I'll be happy when
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And then the other thing that you
Speaker 1: sort of set in there and you allude to in
Speaker 1: the book that uh, you know, I'll just i'll bring
Speaker 1: up is that we can do this with anything. If
Speaker 1: we tend to be achievers. It doesn't tend to only
Speaker 1: be oh, I'm achiever at work. But at least for me,
Speaker 1: it's always been, well, yes, I'm achiever here. And then
Speaker 1: if I'm going to start playing tennis, I have to
Speaker 1: be really really good at tennis, And you know, if
Speaker 1: I'm going to meditate, I've really got to be good
Speaker 1: at meditating. And it's just everything gets swept up. Right
Speaker 1: when I'm at my uh let's say, less evolved mindset,
Speaker 1: it sucks everything in for me, well, what tends to
Speaker 1: happen I find, at least in my experience and the
Speaker 1: people that I talked to, is that we tend to
Speaker 1: gravitate to things that we are good at so that
Speaker 1: we can achieve in them. Because you're right, it's not
Speaker 1: just work, it's not just sports. It's anything else that
Speaker 1: I put my mind to. I want to you know,
Speaker 1: I need to achieve at it. So so much of
Speaker 1: what was interesting to me previous, but I didn't think
Speaker 1: i'd be very good at you know, I let it
Speaker 1: fall by the wayside um and just getting back to
Speaker 1: what you were talking about earlier, this need to to
Speaker 1: to set the next goal, because you're right that the
Speaker 1: elation that comes from achievement can last anywhere from ten
Speaker 1: seconds to thirty seconds. Throw a bottle of wine in there.
Speaker 1: It can last in the evening. But the next day.
Speaker 1: It's not just setting the next goal. The goal has
Speaker 1: got to be a little bit bigger, a little bit faster,
Speaker 1: a little bit better, because now we're trying to prove
Speaker 1: ourselves at the next level, and it it brings us
Speaker 1: into this cycle of craving, right like we crave these
Speaker 1: achievements because we're convinced that that's what's going to make
Speaker 1: us happy. And you know that when we get into
Speaker 1: that craving mindset, we'll never be happy. You know. It's
Speaker 1: it's we will never get to where we think we
Speaker 1: can be, and it's such a limiting mindset. So when
Speaker 1: you embarked on this journey, you engaged a guy who
Speaker 1: is a climbing coach of yours to kind of help
Speaker 1: you through this journey. And you had a line in
Speaker 1: there I can't resist reading, which is this, as your
Speaker 1: husband would think, I hired the dreaded life coach code
Speaker 1: for you can't get your ship together, so pay a
Speaker 1: bunch of money to someone else who can't get their
Speaker 1: shipped together, which I thought was really funny, and I
Speaker 1: guess in a way, I'm a life coach. So I
Speaker 1: read it and laughed because I certain I've always disliked
Speaker 1: that word because I think it has that connotation. But
Speaker 1: you now use coaches for a lot of your leaders
Speaker 1: in your business. I do. Every leader in my business
Speaker 1: now has their own personal coach, and I know um
Speaker 1: that those conversations that happened between senior staff and coaches
Speaker 1: are probably just as much personal as they are business.
Speaker 1: In fact, they're probably more personal than they are business.
Speaker 1: And back when I was really suffering with achiever fever,
Speaker 1: the idea of having a coach, the idea of having
Speaker 1: someone to help me hold my hand, was something I
Speaker 1: resisted so strongly because I thought, how do I need
Speaker 1: somebody to show me how to live my life? Like,
Speaker 1: surely I'm better than that. And and now I see
Speaker 1: the absolute importance of a coach, you know, any professional
Speaker 1: um for that matter, because we limit ourselves and the
Speaker 1: questions that we ask ourselves the stories that we're in.
Speaker 1: And if we don't have a coach, you know, to
Speaker 1: question us of poke holes into our stories or show
Speaker 1: us that we're believing our own stories, you know, we
Speaker 1: hold ourselves back. So yeah, bring on the coaching. We
Speaker 1: could all use the occasional nudge, a little wake up
Speaker 1: from the autopilot we fall into in our day to
Speaker 1: day routine. That's why we send brief text reminders to
Speaker 1: listeners of the show for free. The texts help you
Speaker 1: stay on track with what you're learning from the podcast
Speaker 1: episodes we release on Tuesday's and Friday's. They periodically prompt
Speaker 1: you to pause for a second and become more present
Speaker 1: and mindful and encourage you to engage with the week's
Speaker 1: podcast topics in a bite sized, short and simple manner.
Speaker 1: We've heard from listeners that these texts help them take
Speaker 1: a moment to reconnect with what's important amidst the business
Speaker 1: of daily life. Someone said, it feels like a little
Speaker 1: bit of wisdom is being whispered into my psyche, which
Speaker 1: I thought was cool. So, if you'd like to hear
Speaker 1: from us a few times a week via text, go
Speaker 1: to one you feed dot net slash text and sign
Speaker 1: up for free. So let's talk about some of what
Speaker 1: you started to do to deal with your achiever fever.
Speaker 1: And I feel like one of the first things was
Speaker 1: you recognized the inner critic or you also called it
Speaker 1: the judge. The judge. Yeah, And that was one of
Speaker 1: the first things that my coach helped me to do,
Speaker 1: was to become aware of this voice that I just
Speaker 1: accepted on autopilot for so long. I thought of the
Speaker 1: voice the same way I thought of any appendage on
Speaker 1: my body. It was just it was just part of me.
Speaker 1: In fact, it was me. The voice was me. I
Speaker 1: could not imagine ever uncoupling those things. And um, so,
Speaker 1: once my coach had drawn my attention to how loud
Speaker 1: and dominant this voice was. UM. The first thing that
Speaker 1: I do that I did was name it, and for me,
Speaker 1: the judge was it just kind of fell out of
Speaker 1: my mouth. I didn't even have to think too hard
Speaker 1: about it. And then the next thing I did was
Speaker 1: actually find an image that described it, and for me,
Speaker 1: it was just like this gnarled, blackened tree stump. This,
Speaker 1: you know, something that had been in a forest fire
Speaker 1: or something was just bleak and dead. And once I
Speaker 1: had a name and an image, I was able to
Speaker 1: move that inner voice from the back of my head
Speaker 1: right between my eyes where I couldn't not see it,
Speaker 1: and my awareness of it grew and grew and grew
Speaker 1: until I learned how to start disrupting it and questioning it.
Speaker 1: And that was the game changer for me, was realizing
Speaker 1: that that inner voice lied to me, not through any
Speaker 1: fault of its own. You know, it's it's it's evolved
Speaker 1: to keep us safe and to protect us, UM, and
Speaker 1: so it fills us with fear and worry and self
Speaker 1: doubt UM. And so I would just believe whatever that
Speaker 1: inner critic told me to do on autopilot. And learning
Speaker 1: that it lied with the game changer for me and
Speaker 1: learning how to question it a couple of different things there.
Speaker 1: That leads me into a concept you discussed in the
Speaker 1: book that I'm always so interested in, which is what
Speaker 1: is this voice that is talking to us all the time,
Speaker 1: because most of us, if we stop, we noticed like
Speaker 1: it's just going on on and on. I was on
Speaker 1: a silent retreat recently and I just, you know, nothing
Speaker 1: to do, but here the here, the damn thing, right,
Speaker 1: and I, you know, I walk away. Just always sort
Speaker 1: of astounded like if I had a friend who talked
Speaker 1: to me not only that negatively, but just that boringly
Speaker 1: and repetitively and and mainly, I'd be like, I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. Like four hours later, I would be like,
Speaker 1: I am never hanging out with that person again. But
Speaker 1: that's that's what we have going on in our head.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what that thing is. You name
Speaker 1: it the left brain interpreter. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: more about what is this narrative that's happening. Right. So
Speaker 1: that's that's not my name. That's a name that comes
Speaker 1: from cognitive psychology, the left brain interpreter, and it's the
Speaker 1: name for that inner narrator that, as you said, just
Speaker 1: goes on repeat. And I love the way that you
Speaker 1: explain it, like it's so boring and it says the
Speaker 1: same thing over and here, like shut up already. But
Speaker 1: it's called the left brain interpreter, and it evolved, um,
Speaker 1: you know, over the hundreds of thousands of millennia of
Speaker 1: years to keep us safe. And it's it is constantly
Speaker 1: looking for threats. And we live in a world where
Speaker 1: there's not really a lot of threats anymore, or like, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some environmental wackiness going on and maybe some political
Speaker 1: wackiness going on, but in terms of real threats, there's
Speaker 1: not much out there. So our left brand interpreter tends
Speaker 1: to make them up. And if it can't identify any
Speaker 1: obvious threats, it will find those threats within ourselves or
Speaker 1: or with other people. So we start to look at
Speaker 1: other people as as threats, and if we can't find
Speaker 1: another people will find it in ourselves. There's science that
Speaker 1: explain how the left brand interpreter works, and a science
Speaker 1: experiment um that actually proves that this left brand interpreter
Speaker 1: will tell us lies because it just bases itself off
Speaker 1: the thoughts that we have and when we say things
Speaker 1: like oh, I'm you know, I'm so depressed today, everything
Speaker 1: is just kind of crappy, it just will um narrate
Speaker 1: our lives back to us with that same theme. So
Speaker 1: we're stuck in that vicious circle. Yeah, it's amazing because
Speaker 1: the studies that you're referring to, among many other are
Speaker 1: the famous split brain experiments. And what it sort of
Speaker 1: shows is that you know the science more and more
Speaker 1: and and a lot of spiritual traditions tend to say that,
Speaker 1: you know what, there's not this one self in there.
Speaker 1: There's actually there's a lot of things going on in
Speaker 1: our brain consciously, subconsciously, you know. It's almost to think
Speaker 1: of it as a bunch of different processes, right, And
Speaker 1: one of those processes is this left brain narrator who
Speaker 1: tries to explain everything. That's its primary job. I've also
Speaker 1: heard it referred to as the press secretary. Right, It's
Speaker 1: trying to explain everything. And what some of these split
Speaker 1: brain studies show, and people who have had their brain
Speaker 1: essentially split in half to stop them from having seizures,
Speaker 1: is that one half of the brain will decide to
Speaker 1: do something, the other half of the brain, that is,
Speaker 1: the left brain interpreter has no idea why that side
Speaker 1: of the brain decided to do it, but it just
Speaker 1: immediately makes up some crazy reason that it is completely
Speaker 1: unaware of. Right, And so it's such an interesting thing
Speaker 1: to me that that brain is just going along trying
Speaker 1: to explain lots of stuff that it simply can't explain.
Speaker 1: It doesn't know, but it has to make a coherent
Speaker 1: story out of it. It has to. Like, for example, um,
Speaker 1: I remember going into my hotel room and I told
Speaker 1: my team, look, don't call me, don't don't text me.
Speaker 1: I want to have this private weekend with my partner,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, just let me know if there's
Speaker 1: an absolute emergency. And that I remember getting into my
Speaker 1: hotel room and looking across the room and seeing the
Speaker 1: red light on the hotel room phone lit up, and
Speaker 1: my first thought was like, oh shit, something's happened. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a cash flow thing, like a client has freaked out,
Speaker 1: something really bad has happened. And my whole body was
Speaker 1: consumed with that thought. Right, it was, It was totally true.
Speaker 1: In that moment, my stomach sees, my hands clenched, my
Speaker 1: jaw clenched, and I walked over to the desk, feeling
Speaker 1: that stress, you know, grow and grow and heighten and heighten.
Speaker 1: And I leaned over the desk and I saw that
Speaker 1: that red light indicated that the phone was charging, so
Speaker 1: that nobody had called. But had I not gone over
Speaker 1: to factually ascertain why that red light was on, I
Speaker 1: would have stayed in that that that heightened, you know,
Speaker 1: fearful state. And so often in our lives we are
Speaker 1: in that state, and we don't think to actually check
Speaker 1: factually whether what we believe is actually true. Right. And
Speaker 1: when you said earlier, you know that left brain interpreter
Speaker 1: will say I'm so depressed, right, and then off will
Speaker 1: trigger these things. And I have started to really notice
Speaker 1: that phenomenon in me. It will say I'm so depressed,
Speaker 1: or another one that happens my back hurts so bad,
Speaker 1: and then from there it'll be like I don't know
Speaker 1: if I can take it? How long can I everything hurts?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just and if I stop and go, well,
Speaker 1: hang on a second, like, how do I know I'm depressed? Right?
Speaker 1: How do I actually know I'm depressed? Or how do
Speaker 1: I know my back hurts? What does my back feel like?
Speaker 1: I almost suddenly realized, particularly with the back, that it
Speaker 1: doesn't hurt that bad, that there was this automatic sensation
Speaker 1: that arises, and then all of a sudden that left
Speaker 1: brain interpreter takes off. My back hurts so bad, poor me.
Speaker 1: I can't stake everything hurts. What am I gonna do?
Speaker 1: I'm I just I'm like, WHOA hold on this? I'm like,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting. So let's talk about a big piece
Speaker 1: for you that you said of dealing with the inner critic.
Speaker 1: The judge will start to question those thoughts because noticing
Speaker 1: them is very important, right. Not resisting them is very important,
Speaker 1: which is tough sometimes but critical, And so is checking
Speaker 1: them for veracity, right, like actually checking them to see
Speaker 1: if they are true. Um, you know, I often think
Speaker 1: it's it's you know, it makes sense to like allow
Speaker 1: the thought the emotion to be, not not forcing it away,
Speaker 1: but then actually take a look at it pretty closely.
Speaker 1: So talk to me about how that worked for you. Well,
Speaker 1: I think the first thing is to actually understand that
Speaker 1: you are believing a thought. You got to identify what
Speaker 1: that thought is. And the way that I do that
Speaker 1: is it will creep up in my body, something will
Speaker 1: go tight and I will fall out of that ease state.
Speaker 1: And that's my queue to know that, Okay, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: believing something. I'm I'm I'm caught with this thought. And
Speaker 1: often what I used to do was whenever I felt
Speaker 1: in that state, UM, I thought, you know, well, this
Speaker 1: is uncomfortable and I want to be comfortable, so let's
Speaker 1: go and eat something, or let's go and drink something,
Speaker 1: or let's fall asleep or watch something on Netflix, anything
Speaker 1: to have to deal with this thought, which of course
Speaker 1: never worked at all because I would just take that
Speaker 1: thought into the eating, of the drinking, the Netflix, and
Speaker 1: then it would be doubly bad. So by identifying it
Speaker 1: and writing it down, what I then learned to do
Speaker 1: was inquire into it. And the way that I learned
Speaker 1: to do that was through this woman, Byron Katie, and
Speaker 1: she has the system of self inquiry called the Work
Speaker 1: and you can find that online the Work dot com.
Speaker 1: She's very free and open with it. Yeah, there's also
Speaker 1: a previous episode of Us with Byron Katie if listeners,
Speaker 1: if you want to look for that, where I interviewed
Speaker 1: her son way I couldn't encourage listeners to to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: go and find that episode. For sure. I had the
Speaker 1: privilege of going to UM, the nine Day School, the
Speaker 1: school for the work, which is where I learned how
Speaker 1: to do the work. And just quickly to paraphrase, how
Speaker 1: it works is it's taking that stressful thought asking ourselves
Speaker 1: is that true? And usually that first response will be yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course that's true, because it's just a natural kind
Speaker 1: of habit, like, yeah, of course I believe what I say.
Speaker 1: But then we say is that absolutely true? And I
Speaker 1: add to that in a court of law, could I
Speaker 1: say that that is true? And usually in that question
Speaker 1: I can find something just a sliver of a doubt,
Speaker 1: and that is enough to start shedding some like to
Speaker 1: let some light in. I think of that Leonard Cohen
Speaker 1: line there's a crack in everything that that's how the
Speaker 1: light gets in. We have to find that crack, and
Speaker 1: that question alone helps us identify that crack. And then
Speaker 1: the third question is, um, how do you react what
Speaker 1: happens when you believe the thought? Which is a really
Speaker 1: easy question to answer, right Like I'm if I'm believing
Speaker 1: the thought that I've done a bad job on a presentation,
Speaker 1: I'll think, oh, well, I feel like I didn't try
Speaker 1: hard enough, and I feel like I'm being judged, and
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm gonna lose that client, and I
Speaker 1: feel like really angry with myself. And it's really easy
Speaker 1: to answer that question. And then the next question is
Speaker 1: who would you be without that thought? And that can
Speaker 1: be a very difficult question to answer because you're so
Speaker 1: hooked onto that thought. And if it's really difficult to answer,
Speaker 1: it just shows you how in that thought you are.
Speaker 1: And when you're in that thought, you can't see anything else,
Speaker 1: You are completely blinded. So then you answer that question
Speaker 1: and you realize as you answer it, how at peace
Speaker 1: and happy and and um, you know, full of joy
Speaker 1: you could be if you weren't believing that thought. Now
Speaker 1: you can't magically like let that thought go. There's no
Speaker 1: kind of magic that allows you to do that. And
Speaker 1: so Byron Katie gives us these three turnarounds where we
Speaker 1: take that thought and flip it to the opposite to
Speaker 1: the other. And once we start working that thought through
Speaker 1: different lenses, um, usually we get to a place where
Speaker 1: it's like that thought is like a complete lie. What
Speaker 1: was I thinking? And there has been nothing that I've
Speaker 1: done the work on thus far that I wasn't able
Speaker 1: to find some kind of cracking and Byron Katy argues,
Speaker 1: there's really nothing out there. They won't completely dissipate once
Speaker 1: you do the work on it. You were doing interviews
Speaker 1: for your book, and I think you asked me what
Speaker 1: do you think of Byron Katie, and I said, I
Speaker 1: actually think it's a very useful framework. It's sort of
Speaker 1: like cognitive behavioral therapy in certain ways. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a structured method of of inquiring into our thoughts. Um
Speaker 1: My question for you is, sometimes it seems that thought
Speaker 1: causes emotion, and if it's a thought that's driving it,
Speaker 1: it's nice to unwind the thought. But a lot of
Speaker 1: other times it seems like emotion just springs out of,
Speaker 1: you know, out of something that you can't really identify.
Speaker 1: Do you have a method of working with when or
Speaker 1: does that even happen for you where it's like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm feeling this and I can I'm not even sure
Speaker 1: I can find a thought for it, or I can
Speaker 1: see the thought and I know it's not true, and
Speaker 1: I still feel terrible. That is something that I'm continuing
Speaker 1: to learn to do, which is to drop into my
Speaker 1: body to feel that emotion as opposed to staying up
Speaker 1: in my head and trying to tackle it through you know,
Speaker 1: what is the thought doing the work on it, doing
Speaker 1: that kind of surgical, precise thinking on it. Learning to
Speaker 1: identify an emotion requires an ability to just kind of
Speaker 1: dropped down into one's body. And often we think we've
Speaker 1: identified that emotion only to find that there is another
Speaker 1: emotion behind it. And for me, whenever I the way
Speaker 1: that I know, I'll meant I'm an emotional state as
Speaker 1: I'll feel it in my body. Right. I've learned to
Speaker 1: understand the difference between mechanical pain, so pain that's come through, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, if I've if I've worked out too hard
Speaker 1: that day, or if i haven't eaten properly, or you know,
Speaker 1: that kind of mechanical pain. Most of the pain I
Speaker 1: feel is emotional. So when my toes curl up when
Speaker 1: I'm in traffic, or you know, my lower back starts
Speaker 1: to hurt if I think that somebody's not listening to
Speaker 1: me or whatever the cases, um, and I'll drop into
Speaker 1: that and really just kind of be with that pain
Speaker 1: and see what emotion comes up in my chest. And
Speaker 1: I've learned not to take that first emotion, you know,
Speaker 1: I'll be able to identify it, but I've I've come
Speaker 1: to understand there's usually an emotion underneath that, and for me,
Speaker 1: the emotion underneath that tends to be fear m. And
Speaker 1: once I've identified that as fear, then I can say, well,
Speaker 1: what is it that I'm fearful of? And then I
Speaker 1: can do the work on it. As you learned the work,
Speaker 1: also learned about cognitive biases, and there was We've talked
Speaker 1: on the show a bunch about them, but there's one
Speaker 1: I don't know that we've talked about before. So I
Speaker 1: wanted to touch it, and it was the power of
Speaker 1: the default, tell me what that is. So the power
Speaker 1: of the default. The way that I know cognitive biases
Speaker 1: is through my work and market research, you know, twenty
Speaker 1: years like my the past two decades of my career
Speaker 1: is trying to understand human behavior, which is really ironic
Speaker 1: when you think about it, because here I am with
Speaker 1: two decades of experience and I can't understand my own behavior.
Speaker 1: But anyway I can now at least um. But remembering that, uh,
Speaker 1: people's brain activity is not based on rational thought, It's
Speaker 1: based on all sorts of weird filters and norms and
Speaker 1: and um and cognitive biases and so this particular bias,
Speaker 1: and there's hundreds of them, but this particular bias. The
Speaker 1: power of the default is when we default back to
Speaker 1: behavior or habits that are just so ingrained we don't
Speaker 1: think to question them. So, for example, UM, my default
Speaker 1: thought was wine will take my pain away. Wine at
Speaker 1: the end of the day after a long day of
Speaker 1: work is gonna make me feel better. That's its job
Speaker 1: in life. And so getting home and grabbing that glass
Speaker 1: of wine, um, which would have been fine if it
Speaker 1: had just been one glass, but often, you know, you
Speaker 1: have dinner and that becomes to wine two glasses, and
Speaker 1: then oh well, we may as well finish this bottle
Speaker 1: off so it doesn't go bad. And whatever else you
Speaker 1: want to tell yourself. That was just that was my routine. UM.
Speaker 1: And once I started to understand the power of the default,
Speaker 1: I looked at different aspects of my life and thought,
Speaker 1: what behavior am my defaulting too that don't really work
Speaker 1: for me anymore? And back then, UM, I didn't see
Speaker 1: wine as something that was distracting me from dealing with
Speaker 1: painful thoughts. I saw it as something that was giving
Speaker 1: me extra calories. So that was the key reason, you know,
Speaker 1: a few years ago why I identified wine as a
Speaker 1: default behavior that I wanted to change, and so rabbing
Speaker 1: then rip all the wine out of my fridge and
Speaker 1: forced myself to drink tap water. When I got home,
Speaker 1: I put new beverages into the fridge, so you know,
Speaker 1: kombucha or diet sodas or or um you know, Stevia
Speaker 1: based type stuff, so that I knew that my natural
Speaker 1: bias was to put my hand into the fridge because
Speaker 1: it was usually white wine that I drank, put my
Speaker 1: hand to the fridge, but this time I just grabbed
Speaker 1: something else other than wine. UM. But it wasn't until
Speaker 1: I understood the power of the default that I was
Speaker 1: able to see that that was just default behavior, it
Speaker 1: wasn't truth. And and now I don't I don't drink
Speaker 1: at all. Actually now I stopped in December, which is
Speaker 1: just kind of a new interesting practice for me, and
Speaker 1: when I'm still learning about UM. But I realized now
Speaker 1: that not drinking is helping keep me in that awareness,
Speaker 1: you know, it like just just taking myself out of
Speaker 1: the awareness for the simple you know, for the for
Speaker 1: the hangover that it often leads to or saying something
Speaker 1: really stupid to somebody. It's just not worth it. I'll
Speaker 1: take the awareness. Thanks. So it's just something i'm playing with.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's a forever thing, but it's
Speaker 1: working for me right now. So it's been about seven
Speaker 1: months then, so that's not a it's not a short
Speaker 1: period of time to do it by any strength. It's not. No,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's funny. I noticed the other day there's
Speaker 1: a book called Sober Curious. It's not just me. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not. Yeah, yeah, I I know more
Speaker 1: and more. I'm not a millennial, I'm Gen X, but
Speaker 1: I know more and more millennials. I think the numbers
Speaker 1: among millennials are um uh, you know, not not drinking
Speaker 1: or wanting to see what life is like without alcohol.
Speaker 1: It's it's becoming a thing. I think we've grown up
Speaker 1: with a narrative that says like, well, if you're alcoholic,
Speaker 1: you need to stop. But if you're not alcoholics, so
Speaker 1: what right? And I think that this speaks to a
Speaker 1: growing awareness, which is a good aware, and it's that
Speaker 1: there are certainly stages along the way, and we've had
Speaker 1: Catherine Gray on a couple of times, and she wrote
Speaker 1: a book I cannot remember the name of it, The
Speaker 1: Surprising Joy of Being Sober perhaps something like that. You
Speaker 1: should read it, you would love it. Um. But she says,
Speaker 1: here's a simple question. Would your life be better if
Speaker 1: you weren't drinking? That's it. You don't have to get
Speaker 1: into and do I have a problem? Am I drinking
Speaker 1: too much? Would your life be better if you weren't?
Speaker 1: And and I thought that was such a powerful way
Speaker 1: of just sort of looking at that thing very simply,
Speaker 1: without any of the cultural baggage that comes with addiction
Speaker 1: and sobriety and abstinence and all of that stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there seems that seems a very useful question. I was
Speaker 1: just talking about it this weekend with friends of mine,
Speaker 1: and we were talking about how drinking and talking is
Speaker 1: just default adult behavior when you get together, Like what
Speaker 1: else do you do besides have a glass of wine
Speaker 1: in your hand and talk? Like we never did that
Speaker 1: as kids, you know, kids sitting around with a glass
Speaker 1: of kool aid and just she and the ship like no,
Speaker 1: And so what would we be doing if we didn't
Speaker 1: have alcohol in our hands? What what would these social
Speaker 1: occasions look like just an interesting thought experiment well as
Speaker 1: somebody who doesn't drink for very important reasons. I'm happy
Speaker 1: to see more adults not drinking because it is sort
Speaker 1: of the default behavior, and you just, you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: you feel like I'm just the odd person out here
Speaker 1: all the time. But and that's why finding people that
Speaker 1: are also uh sober is really helpful if you're trying
Speaker 1: not to drink all the time. Anyway, that was a
Speaker 1: slight distraction. So I want to get back to the
Speaker 1: concept of worry. And I'm just gonna read something you
Speaker 1: wrote because I thought this was so good and I
Speaker 1: just experienced it. This feeling of worry had been my
Speaker 1: normal for so long that I would even worry about
Speaker 1: worrying on vacations. I would worry about how much time
Speaker 1: I had left, anxious to make the remaining days worry free.
Speaker 1: Then I would recognize that, being consumed by the worry,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't enjoy the actual vacation. Then I would worry
Speaker 1: about not enjoying it, and then worry about worrying about
Speaker 1: not enjoying it, which makes me laugh. I was recently
Speaker 1: on vacation. I get myself into the like, how many
Speaker 1: days left, How many days left? How soon? You know
Speaker 1: the same thing. I'm like, oh, the vacation's half over.
Speaker 1: So I start worrying about the vacation being half I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's no good. I just had a wonderful vacation anyway. Um.
Speaker 1: I just thought that was so instructive of the way
Speaker 1: worry works. It just consumes us. It consumed me. Um.
Speaker 1: And so that was not something that happened on every
Speaker 1: second vacation. That was something that happened on every vacation.
Speaker 1: You know. I left the house and within two hours,
Speaker 1: you know, my first thought was like, did I turn
Speaker 1: the stove off? Did I turn the stove off? Oh? Great,
Speaker 1: I'm worrying already about this vacation. Oh. I thought this
Speaker 1: is gonna be a different vacation. And then I, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of go down into that vicious spirals. And then
Speaker 1: I'd wake up and I'd be happy because I was
Speaker 1: on vacation, and then I would search my mind for like, oh,
Speaker 1: wait a second, I'm missing something. There's something I should
Speaker 1: be worried right that, Yes, I only have four more
Speaker 1: days left. And then it would kick back in and yeah,
Speaker 1: it was exhausting. What are some of your tools then
Speaker 1: for working with worry worry. I think of all the
Speaker 1: things that I've learned to do, not worrying is a
Speaker 1: big one. And I mean if I added up all
Speaker 1: the hours of my life that I that I used
Speaker 1: to worry, I who knows how many, it would be
Speaker 1: like way too many to even look at. Um. And
Speaker 1: worry is something that I have let go of because
Speaker 1: um and I don't mean a percent. But let's say
Speaker 1: if I was a warrior a hundred percent of the time,
Speaker 1: I'm a warrior maybe maybe five percent of the time. Now,
Speaker 1: it's good, it is an achievement. Wait a second, I
Speaker 1: couldn't resist And this isn't um. This is something that's
Speaker 1: kind of developed itself because I'm used to pulling myself
Speaker 1: back to being present and I have a number of
Speaker 1: ways of doing that. And whenever I see whenever I
Speaker 1: catch myself veering into that worry stage, I my first
Speaker 1: thought is, there's nothing I can do about that, because
Speaker 1: I don't have any control over any of that. All
Speaker 1: I can control is what is how I react to
Speaker 1: what's in front of me right here, right now, And
Speaker 1: that thought is enough for me to let the worry go.
Speaker 1: So it's no longer, and it's it's hours of my life,
Speaker 1: hours of my life that I get back, both when
Speaker 1: I'm asleep or trying to get to sleep and during
Speaker 1: my day that I can now pour into things that
Speaker 1: I find really fulfilling and inspiring and engaging. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: so when people ask me if I lose my achiever fever,
Speaker 1: does that mean I won't perform anymore? Does that mean
Speaker 1: I'll lose my lose my competitive spirit? And the only
Speaker 1: thing that we lose when we lose our achiever fever
Speaker 1: is worry. Self deab out in fear, and losing that
Speaker 1: worry has allowed me to gain so much more. Yep,
Speaker 1: that's wonderful. Well, we are at time here all of
Speaker 1: a sudden. Um, So you and I are going to
Speaker 1: continue a conversation in the post show conversation. I think
Speaker 1: we'll talk about some more of the practices that you did,
Speaker 1: and we'll explore a line that I loved, which is
Speaker 1: I could see these things as irritating or I could
Speaker 1: see them as practice. And that's a wonderful line. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna explore that in the post show conversation. Listeners,
Speaker 1: if you are interested in getting those as well as
Speaker 1: a weekly mini episode and other bonuses go to One
Speaker 1: you Feed dot net slash Support. Well, Claire, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for coming on the show. It was a pleasure.
Speaker 1: It was a pleasure to have you on and talk
Speaker 1: to you. I really enjoyed the book. I got to
Speaker 1: give a blurb for it, which was kind of fun.
Speaker 1: So I'm happy to have happy you have gotten us
Speaker 1: to finally have this conversation. So thank you, Thank you
Speaker 1: all right bye. If what you just heard was helpful
Speaker 1: to you, please consider making a donation to the One
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