You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Girl. Hello, Hello, Hello, welcome to I Choose Me. This podcast is about making choices that focus on what's going right. My guest has helped the likes of Kim Kardashian and Lady Gaga, but his method isn't just for celebrities. He has this incredible way of helping you understand yourself on a deeper level so you can actually decide what you want your life to be. I cannot wait to jump into Mental Health
Awareness Month with doctor Paul Kanti. Hi, Doctor Kanti.
Hello, it's nice to meet you. I appreciate you having me on.
I'm so grateful that you are here today with me. Thank you. May is one of my favorite months because it's Mental Health Awareness Month and ooh do we need this awareness now more than ever. Really feels like we're in a real decline in our collective level of happiness in this world. As I read your book What's Going Right, I realized that you really are introducing us to a
new sort of framework for improving our mental health. I was very intrigued by everything you were talking about, one of them being the three internal drivers, the assertion drive, the pleasure drive and the generative drive. We're going to break those down in detail in our bonus episode. But these are all new terms to me. So what in the world are internal drivers? Tell me?
Yeah? Sure, Well. It has been long thought in the mental health field that there are two drives that are in every one of us. That there's what is called aggression. I think assertion is a better word, but what has historically been called aggression and pleasure seeking, and that this is in every human being and it's what's literally driving us forward. That's why their drives. And assertion or aggression is about being able to maneuver in the world around
us and make change in the world around us. And pleasure isn't just seeking things that are overtly pleasurable, but it can be the pleasure of having a roof over one's head or relief from distress. So that we're asserting ourselves or being aggressive, and we're doing it in the service of pleasure of one form or another. And I think it's so clear that this doesn't make any sense.
I think that if we only had aggression, high levels of assertions, aggression and pleasure seeking, that we wouldn't be here. A long, long, long time ago, human beings would have gone away, and that model doesn't explain why, for example, one person might do something kind for another without any expected benefit. The theories have to kind of gyrate and say, well, you want to feel good about yourself because you can do something good and that's your pleasure, And it doesn't
really make sense right. People do things that are altruistic, people do things for other people. People create art and beauty for no reason other than to create art and beauty.
That there's something else going on inside of us. And then when you see when human beings in human societies are in healthy places, the assertion drive and the pleasure drive are in balance, and they're sitting under the generative drive, a third drive in humans that I think is clear, and I think our literature and our philosophy have written about this and thought and talked about this for so long, and I think it's also clear in psychology, in our
history and our academics. It's clear that this exists, but it hasn't been acknowledged that there's a generative drive, a drive to just make the world a better place around us, a drive to express ourselves and to be in the world with ourselves and with others. And when we look at that truth, then everything comes into line and there are ways of understanding ourselves and now we're putting ourselves on the trajectory to healthy and great lives.
Yes, your passion for what you do is incredible. I'm just so happy to be absorbing your lessons. What I'm asking, what are some tips or tools that you have for when we're feeling out of whack, you know, that feeling of just not in alignment. How do we get back into balance mentally?
Well, when we feel out of balance, we need to have something to do that's repeatable, rights, something that we say, oh, I could go look at that right, and like that'll help me, that'll help you, It'll help me for the next five things that come up in me. Same with
you and everyone else because it applies to humans. So just like if there's a physical health problem and someone has pain in a hip or someone's short of breath, we say, well, there's something that we do, right, we go to see someone or or here it's not necessary to see someone, but there's the idea, is that something happens here right, Like a physician asks a bunch of questions and then does a physical exam and maybe get some labs and then we say, well, let's figure out, oh,
you're short of breath. Because of now we've identified a problem that we can go and fix. We need to be able to do that with mental health so that we can understand and build mental health just as we're able to understand and build our physical health. So there's a structure of self and a function of self that's in each of us and we can go there. And in the book, the idea is to explain there's a way of doing this, just like if I were explaining, well, we all have a body and we think about our
heart and our lungs and our muscles. So it's doing that for mental health and that leads to good things that then help our drives be in balance. So we have to have somewhere to go and something to do. And if we approach ourselves with compassion curiosity, and we go look at the structure and function of self, then the vast majority of times we figure things out and
they get better. That's why mental health isn't depressing. It's interesting to me that throughout my career people have often thought it must be so depressing to do this, and I think it's not at all. You know, great things happen and people get better and healthier, and I think if we approach it in a way that just makes sense and looks at the truth in us, it's not surprising that the results are different. Right.
I personally have found that self awareness and self reflection are really important when it comes to my growth and healing. Why is that from your perspective? Because I feel like it's really tied into what you were just talking about.
Yeah, So self reflection, for example, is it's great to be able to do that because it's neutral, Right, You're approaching yourself without a bias, right, And what's the bias? In most people? It's not positive, right, it's a negative bias. Right, that we get down on ourselves. We're critical of ourselves, We have a negative self talk inside of us, we create a negative life narrative. Well, these things are not even true. They're bad, and they push us away from
health and they also push us away from truth. So like, that can't be good. So when we do that, we're so biased that we almost like start off the quest with hindering ourselves so that we can't figure out the answer that feels worse. We get more frustrated what's wrong with me? We get more angry with ourselves. So the idea is to bring compassionate curiosity to ourselves, the ability to go, Okay, this is interesting, what's going on in me?
I want to look at it. So if my performance at work has been getting worse over the last four months, and I was doing a good job before, but I've gotten a warning or to people will oh God, what's wrong with you? They're mad at themselves, or damn it, why are you doing that? And we do these things that then take us away from truth as opposed to seeing it's interesting that this happens. Right, I'm a person who values doing a good job, and I haven't been
right these last four months. Why what did something change? Did something happen in there? Now we're looking at ourselves in a way that is curious and that has a framework of understanding that says, oh, we can figure that out. A lot of it becomes detective work in a way that says, oh, let's go look at that. Maybe there's a physical health incident. Then maybe something happened in life that we thought was minor or mild, but is really
affecting us much more. Maybe there was a change in the job setting around that time and I didn't feel able to perform as I was before. But by going and looking at it, we can figure it out. Most of the time the answer lies in us. But I think that's okay. When the answer lies in us and we can see what it is, we can then write the situation right.
So often you hear people say like, oh, you know, they do what they do or they react the way they react, and they say, oh, that's just me, That's how I'm built. But I think, like what you're talking about is even in a situation that's not like questioning something at work, but like maybe it's how you reacted in the moment, like a you know, a snap reaction or decision or and maybe you didn't handle it the
best way you could. That's an opportunity to say, ooh hm, let's look at that, like why did I just react that way? I don't want to react that way. I know that's not me being the best me I can be in the situation. It's that kind of self inquiry, And you suggest that we kind of create a self inquiry practice, right, so that we can identify those moments.
Yes, and I think the example you gave was it was even a better one because it's the kind of thing that happens to us all the time. It happens to pretty much any one where we respond to something differently than we would like. You know, maybe someone does something and we don't like it so much. When we say something really short, you know, to them, or someone say something we don't like, and we kind we hide away, We try and get away to understand that we have
to come at ourselves with some compassion. Most of the time, it's not that it's like, oh, I did it again when you said, oh, that's me. You know, that's not a neutral statement in the person well that's me, No, that's someone like, well that's me. There's a sense of hopelessness or a sense of self criticism to it. So so often our reflexes are to see ourselves through those lenses, which is why we have to make efforts to not do that. To say, okay, I have to stop and
ground myself to compassionate curiosity. I have to realize there's a way I can understand myself, so I don't have to be afraid of looking at the problem. Why did I react that way? It's okay, right, I'm gonna learn something and I'm gonna make myself healthier. This is the end of the world. It's okay. So when I do that, let me approach myself in an open way. These are the things that lead us to answers, but so often we're not finding answers. But things can get worse and worse,
but we don't see is right. We're approaching ourselves in such a stilted way that we're not giving ourselves any hope. And what we need to do is look at ourselves, often as we would look at someone else and say, okay, let's just think if you reacted. Most people would say to someone else, if you acted in a way you didn't like. I don't know, let's think about it. I guess if someone would say to a friend, right, But
often we can't do that for ourselves. So if we can't do that for ourselves, have a friend do it with us. Right, look at ourselves in that interested way, and boy, how many of our problems will solve? Right? Yes?
Because I think when you do kind of I love inner child work, or even if it's just kind of that sense of talking to myself and sort of you know, auto like self correcting when it's necessary, but instead of doing it in a negative way, or like ough, you did it again, like this is how you do this and you keep making the same mistake over and over in your life, like to gently just ask yourself, like, hmm, is that how I want to show up and then answer that question for yourself?
Right, you said, instead of doing it in a negative way. But the idea is it may be impossible to do it in a negative way, right that if you approach yourself that way, you can't find the answer. Right, But if you approach yourself in a way that's not stilted in such a negative way, then you can find the answer. So often it's a difference between success and failing to understand ourselves, which just often makes us feel worse about ourselves and you know, to feel more afraid and to
sort of shy away from inquiry. So the idea is, if we approach ourselves in a positive way, like we can solve our problems, we can understand ourselves. If we approach ourselves in a negative way, it becomes likely that we just can't.
So you're suggesting instead of saying, oh, you're an idiot, you did it again, you're suggesting saying, Okay, that's interesting. Let's kind of look at that, like, I think that's much more gentle approach.
You're suggesting. Sure, right, I mean if I don't know how you would respond. But if I mean a group of people and I I drop something or I do something that makes me feel a little embarrassed, and someone comes and yells, you're an idiot, right, nothing constructive is going to happen, right, And I feel worse. I'm going to hide away. I feel ashamed, I feel all these negative feelings. But it's worse if you do it to yourself.
I mean as bad as it would be someone else comes over and yells at at a person, we're like, wow, that's that's really not appropriate and that's really negative. It's worse when we do it inside. So how are we going to open up? We're not going to respond any better than we would if someone said that to us outside of ourselves. So we need not to do with it, or we're not going to get where we want to be.
Absolutely. Maybe people don't want to self reflect or take that time to examine what's going on inside and them, because it can get so painful, because it could be so emotional. Maybe, And how would you suggest we learned to stay compassionately curious instead of just wanting to shut it all down and ignore it.
Well, the first response I would give is in the example that you gave, be reflective about why being reflective is painful? Right? Be thoughtful about that? Right? Because we don't have to be afraid of sadness. Right, if what we find inside of ourselves is is real sadness or grief, say about a loss, whatever, It may be a loss of a person, or an opportunity, or just something we enjoyed. So if we approach ourselves in a thoughtful way, and
I think, why is it that being reflective makes me sad? Right? It makes me feel bad in some way, what we can do is then we become curious about that, and we start looking at ourselves instead of looking away from it. They said, well, what is in there that I'm finding? Because if it's sadness or grief, we don't have to be afraid of that. You know, sadness doesn't hurt us. There are plenty of things in life that warren't being
sad and when we feel sad about them were healthier. No, we don't snap at the next person or hide from something or grab for a drink. It's okay to find sadness. We don't have to be afraid of finding sadness inside of ourselves. There are ways that we can be sad that are consistent with health and happiness. We have to figure that out as human beings and anything else we find is all grist for the mill. Right do I not want to be reflective? Because is it that I
find shame inside of myself? So is that I find fear? Let's look at why, because we would like, ideally to help ourselves and be healthy enough that we don't have to be afraid of being reflective because we're not going to find We're not scared of it. We're not finding things that make us afraid. So if I find that they're shame in me, let's look at that and think about why. Because it's not so healthy and happy to avoid being reflective, because when you do, you feel ashamed.
We can come at that, we can understand where the shame comes from. It can all be diffused, but we have to approach ourselves with compassionate curiosity, and we have to be willing to look at ourselves, including sometimes saying, why do I not want to look at myself? What is it that I'm scared of?
What is it that I'm scared of? Yes, my friend ale as a therapist, and she told me to just ask myself in any given moment, what is it that I need right now? And I think that just even starts the self inquiry process. And like speaking like you said, like speaking to a friend, or as I like to do it, like speaking to a younger version of myself or a child, because I am a mother and I have children, and the way I speak to them is so drastically different than the way my negative voice speaks
to me in my own head. And I think going back to that, being more gentle and curious and compassionate is really key. And we don't do that automatically. We just don't.
No, it's often much much easier to do that outside of us, where we could approach another person with compassionate curiosity, where if one person came up to another and say, I feel if I said to you her, oh gosh, I started thinking about myself. I feel ashamed. You know, you'd probably say something nice or something inquiring, right like I did. That's what we would do for someone else. But when it's ourselves, it's very different. We hirede from
We feel embarrassed about the whole thing. We think it's going to show something about us that we should be scared of, that says something really bad about us. So then we we'll act differently towards anyone else than we would ourselves. And I say this fairly often, and I think it's an important thing to highlight of it. Don't make yourself special in a negative way. And this is often what happens is then we say, well, okay, the other the other billions of people on earth deserve some
compassion about this, but I don't. Yeah, don't make yourself special in a negative way, and they'll take much much better care of yourself.
Oh my gosh, Why are why are our brains this way?
You know? One thought is that we are trying to find safety in the world. We have to have some basic safety before soer our generative drives can thrive. So that we're looking for negative things because they're they're important, right, If you know, if we're hunting and gathering in we find five different kinds of berries, and four of them are good. It'd be nice to remember that if they're nutritious and tasty. If the fifth one makes us really sick,
we really better remember that. So we're built with where there's more salience around negative things. But then because of going through life is hard, right, and we're not working then to keep ourselves in balance because we don't have a way of doing that right. The mental health world has not given us a way of doing that, so that we're not keeping ourselves in balance, and then that
looking for the negative gets hijacked. It gets hijacked. Now we're telling ourselves how terrible we are, so that what we stay safer. So I'm going to just bully myself till I can't come out the front door, and that's going to keep me safer. You know, these things are not they're not valid or helpful, but it's not surprising. Life is difficult that we end up there, right. We need to have a way of not ending up there.
Just as if we understood nothing about physical health, we've understood absolutely nothing, we wouldn't be able to stay healthy.
When you find yourself having one of those thoughts that are not helpful. What do you say to yourself in the moment, like how do you correct the course?
Well, I think recognizing it often can just make a pause inside of us, so and they be realized, hey, I'm doing that, or what did I just say, you know to myself, like would you say that to someone else?
You know? When I realized that, it gives me a pause, And often the pause will just gather ourselves together, and then I might say something like it's not a secret to me that I have a tendency to be really hard on myself about things if it's just reflexive, So let me realize that it's okay that I did that even though I've been working for years not too you know, it happens less, but it still happens. So what's really going on? You know? How do I really want to inquire?
I want to try and learn from this so that it's better. Now I have a fighting chance of understanding myself making things better, whereas before I and have any And often that that pause lets us think a lot of things happen. It can happen in us automatically like dominoes, unless we stop and pause. So I think that's important. It's noticing something that happens automatically because you think, well, how do you stop something that happens automatically, Well, we
can't in that sense really stop it. What we can do is effectively stop it if we're aware of what that is and what that feels like, and then we put a stop to it as it starts to happen, like.
An interruption into that thought.
So bad, right, right? So if you have that oh it's that thing I do, or I say that to myself, it's like, that's a bad feeling, and that feeling can tell us well, let me pause now, because this thing hasn't happened yet where I'm beating up on myself. It's just it's just starting, and that's a bad feeling that tells me, let me stop. Is this what I want to do? So that's what I'm going to choose to do with the next few minutes of my life. I'm going to beat up on myself and think that's going
to make things better? Or can I stop and think, Hey, what just happened here and what I want to make of it? About it? That's right?
It's interesting because I spend a lot more time talking to myself than I ever did, and that's because I'm really trying to interrupt those negative thoughts, and I'm really trying to question them and get to the bottom of them and ask myself, are they really true? Because most of the time they are not right.
And different brain mechanisms come online when we make words. It is very good to put what is going on inside of us into words. Our brains function differently, and error checking mechanisms, empathy mechanisms come online. So that's why sometimes we just can't figure something out or get to any idea of how we feel about something or how we might proceed when it's just bouncing around in our minds. But once we put words to it, we say it to someone else or even to ourselves, because we're still
making speech right or we're writing it down. It's very very different, and a putting it outside of you is a different process that happens in your brain. And once it's happened, then you can look at what's outside of you and now you can observe it and think about it. So getting things outside of us and the written or spoken word is often very important.
Very important. That's why I love therapy so much and it makes me think of I just started with a new therapist after a long time of not having therapy, and be honest, it's not something I'm excited to get to know or them to get to know me and to kind of feel like I'm starting over again, because that has to happen in order for them to help me. But the first question of a therapy session is usually like how are you feeling? Like where where are we today?
Like what are we talking about today? And there's so much going on for me all the time that I'm like, whoa, Okay, let me just stop for a second and figure that out, because yeah, so much is happening without me knowing even what it is.
Right. You know, there are many really great, experienced, caring, helpful therapists in the world, but there are also is with any occupation, there are also people who are not being helpful, and there has to be a process of inquiry. So if someone is asking how you're feeling, that might really make sense or it might not right. It might not So I think if we're going to therapy, we have to be educated consumers of therapy just like any product, so we know, am I getting what I want to
here my feeling under understood? Am I feeling a connection with the person? Are we looking at what's going on inside of me in a way that really brings new understanding? If not, then one might maybe talk to the therapist right, or one might decide I need a new therapist. I mean, you know, if the car is broken down and you take it to the same mechanic three times and when it comes out nothing is different, you might stop in question that. Right. It doesn't mean someone's doing something wrong,
but I mean stop and think about it. Is this the right way to get this accomplished? And I think we have to look at therapy that way too, where there's a process right of both giving oneself over to the therapist as knowledge and it's guiding things, but also staying a strong self that says I have to feel this is helpful to me. And if I don't have to ask questions about that, it may be that there's not any positive change expected for some period of time.
Let's talk about that. So it's always good to talk about any concern inside about it. Is this therapy process a helpful process? And unfortunately, very often the answer is no. And that's also a problem in the world of mental health that doesn't have a leadership and guidance and a structure and a foundation, it's going to train a lot
of people in ways that are not helpful. Again, that's not everyone, but to stop and step back and look at you know, it's an unhealthy system, so some of its output is going to be unhealthy.
Right, and maybe give it some time, right when you start with a new therapist, to sort of be able to give yourself that time to come to that realization is this feeling helpful?
And to have a collaborative process. I think if you're having feelings or thoughts or questions, it's important to ask them, right that any process should be a collaborative process. So if you came in to see me, and I'm your therapist, you should ask me, you know, how long do you think it might take before we really know one another
before things could get better? Right? It depends on what people are presenting with, you know, one might think, you know, early on getting to know someone, I think we can get some benefit pretty quickly. Or you might think it's going to take us a couple of months of work to get to the place where we can really make change, but the person has to know that otherwise, you know,
you don't know and where's this going? And oftentimes the patient feels bad about themselves because they're not getting better after three weeks when maybe it was going to take nine. So checking in about it and asking that is what is there that I, you know, should expect. Is it should be part of any collaborative process, and it should be part of any service process, like I'm a service provider and I should be seen like service providers are seen where the person is assessing the service and is
this good? Is this worth a time money effort that I'm putting into it.
I love that concept that thinking that it's a collaborative process because I think a lot of times people will go to a therapist and expect them to fix their problems, and when that doesn't happen on the timeframe they have in mind, then they just quit. But you know, I think I love that suggestion. We're going to dive much deeper in our bonus episode into some more of the
specifics from your book, which is incredible. Your book, What's Going Right, A powerful new method for optimizing your mental health is available now wherever you get your books before I let you go, though, Right now, doctor Contie, what was your last I choose me moment?
You know, as I think about that, it's a small one. It's deciding, even before doing this, to stop and have something to eat in a glass of water, right as opposed to just doing something else that I feel like I should be doing to be productive. And I think a lot of our choose me moments are small ones, but those small ones really add up that there are ways we can just be a little bit easier on ourselves,
a little bit nicer to ourselves. And if we stop and think when we're choosing ourselves, often people who are well meaning, choosing ourselves is good for others too. It's not choosing ourselves at the expense of others. And I think a lot of us have a lot of opportunities to have these small choose me moments that add up to something really big, and it'd be good for us to start taking those opportunities. Even as a result of this question, I'm going to take more of them. I know.
It brings it to your mind, to the forefront of like, oh, you're right, I forgot about me for a second.
So it's easy to do.
Look I inspired you. I feel like my day is done, my work here has done.
People. Then thank you