Hello and welcome to Being Well, I'm Forrest Hansen. If you're new to the podcast, wow, you picked a great episode to listen to. And if you've listened before, welcome back. Today I'm going to be doing something very different, something that I've never done before on the podcast. Over the last six years since the podcast started, I've had hundreds of conversations with incredible guest experts. To prep for those conversations, I've read
so many books and so many studies. I have consumed way too much mental healthy material. And in the process of doing all of that, I've bumped into some ideas over and over again. And I wanted to take a moment to take an episode here to really reflect on all of that and to do what I could to put all of it together and boil it down for you into a kind of start here to all of this.
is really a crash course in everything that I've learned so far, everything that I wish I knew when I started recording the podcast for the first time six years ago. This is what I wish I knew when I started. If your goal is to change something about yourself or your life, the place to begin is figuring out what you really want. We start there because change is possible, but man, change is really hard. We're in this little rowboat on rough water.
And we're trying to wrestle our bodies and our minds in a direction that they usually do not want to go. And we're often doing this while dragging other people along behind us. If you're going to expend the effort necessary to make a meaningful change, travel somewhere you want to go. Focus on identifying your authentic needs and then finding the goals out in the world that will help you really meet them.
It is actually remarkable how rarely people do this. A great example of this is New Year's resolutions. Have you ever wondered why most of them are the same? We're all individual people, and yet there's so much overlap. I want to lose 10 pounds, I want to wake up earlier, start that new hobby, maybe be a bit more disciplined. Why are these resolutions so similar if our lives are so unique?
Some of this is because we're all human, so there's some natural overlap in our desires. But a big reason for it is that we see other people wanting these things. And once we see another person wanting something, we start wanting it too.
This is sometimes called the bandwagon effect or the social proof bias, and it's one of the reasons that people fail their resolutions so frequently. They're going after things that don't actually matter that much to them. And people often choose these common goals and resolutions.
because they haven't actually been able to figure out what they truly care about. Dedicating yourself to figuring out what really matters to you, your authentic values, your true desires, the things that would really help you feel more fulfilled.
is one of the most valuable things that you can do and as you go through it be honest there's going to be stuff in there that is embarrassing that makes you cringe but you need to get really real about what you care about if you're going to do anything about it When we start pursuing the things that truly matter to us, we begin to feel like we're the ones who are guiding our lives. We're the person with our hand on the tiller. And this gives us a kind of ultimate responsibility.
Responsibility is really scary in part because there's so much in our lives that we have no control over. Our personal history, our genetics, the circumstances that we were born into, these are things that we have to find a way to accept because That's all we've got. We can't change them. And it's because so much is outside of our control that we need to focus relentlessly on the things we can do something about. This is how we avoid getting trapped in those feelings of powerlessness.
and nihilism that are so easy for people to fall into, and I've definitely been there myself. This balance is really emphasized in acceptance and commitment therapy, and I think it's the real magic, it's the kind of secret sauce of how change happens.
On the one hand, we see all of these things that we can't control, we appreciate them, and we do our best to come to terms with them. Because doing that is how we land in the truth of what's going on. We're no longer resisting reality, we're grounded in it. And that's what lets us get our hands in the dirt and start expressing our individual agency, the feeling that we have that we can actually do something about our lives. We can appreciate circumstance, but we can't be a prisoner to it.
And so acceptance, in this kind of counterintuitive way, actually supports us in going, okay, from here on out, it's about what I'm going to do, day after day after day. And that's what successful people do. We tend to think in terms of impressive and dramatic efforts. This is often reflected in how we set our goals. We set these big goals that are tied to these big efforts. But most accomplished people, people who live great lives, who get where they want to go in life,
They don't make extraordinary efforts. They make normal efforts really consistently. This is in stark contrast. to most of what you see on the internet. Mindset videos about waking up at 4.30 a.m. and going straight to the gym, the daily routines of high achievers, cold showers 110%, then you come home and you watch Alex Hormozzi videos.
How many of them are actually able to sustain that effort? Respect if you can keep on doing that, if that's a lifestyle that you can really commit to, great, good for you. But for most people, it doesn't work. They try it for a while and then they burn out, and they do so understandably.
because they're committing to unsustainable effort. People who really have their lives together make normal efforts for abnormal periods of time. This means that if you really want to change, it becomes important to figure out what you can commit to consistently.
What's the five-minute activity that you are actually going to do? The five minutes of exercising or meditating, working on your book, investing in your relationship, whatever's meaningful for you. What you find most of the time is that you start with five minutes.
and it goes up from there. You do five, and you think, wow, that was really easy. Why not do a little more? Then you figure out what the right amount is for you. Those efforts then compound over time, and it's only when you look back that you realize how far you've come. So how do we get ourselves to do this day after day after day? If you want to understand behavior, there's a very simple rule. What's rewarded is repeated. What's punished is avoided.
This is basic behaviorism, and it's as true for humans as it is for any other animal. It sounds really obvious and intuitive, carrots and sticks, right? We try to give ourselves carrots to pull us toward the things we should do more of, we use sticks to push ourselves away from the things we should do less of.
But if it's so obvious, why isn't it actually how we typically set goals and try to pursue change? The way that most people approach change is backwards. When setting a goal or resolution, they think about it almost as if they were standing outside of themselves.
and they're watching themselves from this third-person perspective. They look at that person, they look at Forrest in front of them, and they go, you know, it would be really great if I did all of these different things. If I woke up earlier, and I played fewer video games, and I went to the gym more often.
to pick a few that are pretty relevant for me. The tone there is all punishment. There's nothing positive that we're trying to motivate ourselves toward. We're just taking away all of these things we like doing. and then trying to make ourselves do all of these things that we don't like. We're trying to get ourselves in effect to embrace the stick and run from the carrot. And then people wake up on February 3rd and they wonder why they haven't made real progress toward their goals.
They think, I must be so lazy. I'm such a procrastinator. The truth is, they've essentially hit themselves with a stick every single day, and then they're wondering why they aren't saying, like, thank you, sir, may I have another? Of course, you're not going to change that way. You're not nuts. Nobody wants to get hit by a stick over and over again, right? So what's the alternative? We need to find the big, shiny, aspirational object that we're moving toward.
rather than focusing just on what we're trying to move away from. This is how we move from a punishment mindset and into a pursuit mindset. We do everything we can to focus on the deeply rewarding aspects of what we're moving toward. How can we make it as enjoyable and rewarding as possible while you're at the gym? How can we feel as accomplished as possible once you get home? Because it's just remarkable how brutal people are with themselves. They take on this new behavior.
which is very, very difficult to do. They go to the gym, they try hard, they put the effort in, and then they still feel terrible both while they're doing it and afterward. While they're doing it, they feel incompetent, like they're not good enough, and then when they get home, they're awash in self-criticism.
Oh, I just did it for 30 minutes. That wasn't enough. Sure, I went, but I didn't do it very well, and I felt awkward the whole time. What's wrong with me? This person did something incredible. They were able to change their behavior. and do something that was really hard, something they never would have done previously. They took the first step, which is by far the hardest step to take, and what do they give themselves as a reward? Well, it's just a diet of self-criticism.
No wonder you're demotivated, right? We've taught ourselves that the way that we establish a new behavior is by being punished before, during, and after. There's no reward anywhere. There's no upside for your brain. And we have to find that reward. which is another reason that pursuing goals that feel big and meaningful to us is so important. And this whole topic gets to one of the biggest obstacles we have to overcome in life, and that's the nature of the brain itself.
Our brains today are pretty similar to the ones that our ancestors were carrying around 50,000 or 100,000 years ago. Those Stone Age brains that are still in our heads today were very, very good at keeping us alive and helping us pass on our genes. while we survived these very, very harsh conditions. But they're not so well built for modern life. One of the main reasons for this is that the brain is heavily biased towards negativity. This means that it privileges negative information.
over positive information. This is incredibly well researched. Here's an exercise to try. Think about your day. In every day, a hundred things happen. Most of them are pretty small. Some are good, some are bad. But what do you think about when your head hits the pillow?
For most people, it's going to be the negative stuff. It's the person who cut you off in traffic, that dumb thing your boss said, and anxiety about the future. The brain is constantly scanning the world. It then fixates on the negative information it finds. It generalizes conclusions about the world and other people from that negative information, and then it fast-tracks all of it into memory. That negative information becomes the mind's database, it's the foundation.
for our thoughts, our feelings, and our beliefs about the world. There is this great metaphor about the negativity bias that comes from Rick Hansen. He's a psychologist. He's also my dad, if you happen to be new here. We're like Velcro for negative experiences. and Teflon for positive ones. Negative experiences stick to us, while positive experiences slide right off. And our mind is built from what we focus on over and over again. Our attention is like a kind of vacuum cleaner.
And negative information has these big flashing lights around it, because that information was so important for our survival when the brain was developing. Makes sense that we would focus on it. What this means practically, in your life today. is that we have to go out of our way to notice, focus on, and internalize the good aspects of life. Not because we're trying to wear rose-colored glasses or make up a lot of stuff that's not true, but as a deliberate way to balance the brain's biases.
This bias, the negativity bias, leads us to draw all of these inaccurate conclusions about the way the world is or the way our lives are because we're just too influenced by negative information. And a huge place where this shows up for people? It's in their self-appraisal. We experience our own lives as a complete movie. We see every moment, every weird thought, every time we fail to live up to our own expectations.
We then take this complete movie and we compare it to the highlight reels that other people show us. People are often more than happy to share their wins, they're often a bit less happy to share the messy journey that got them there. Then when they're asked to reflect on that journey, That reflection, frankly, often includes a lot of survivorship bias. They emphasize their own efforts, how they attracted everything they wanted.
but they're less likely to see their advantages, the ways they got lucky, the circumstances that supported them, all of that. And look, that's part of life. Life's unfair. Everybody doesn't start from the same starting line. But even so, this can be a really tough comparison for people.
People usually compare up, not down, and that can lead to intense self-criticism and self-judgment. And over time, what this does is it wears away at our self-worth, at our view of ourselves, as somebody that we can really rely on. which is one of the most important things we can develop in life. This is self-efficacy. It's the belief that we have in ourselves that we can do what we need to do to get where we want to go.
Self-efficacy is based on evidence, which means, again, we need to notice the times we do it mostly right rather than just fixating on the times when we mess up. And you've done so much in your life right already. Even if you feel like you've done nothing, every single day there are millions of little goals you've accomplished. All of these little ways that you've showed up for other people, all of these little ways that you spent a genuine effort.
that's a beautiful thing. Seeing that isn't narcissistic, it's usually a much more accurate appraisal of reality. And we need to go out of our way to see that stuff in order to keep on approaching the things that we really care about. One of the biggest things that creates the beliefs that we have about ourselves is how we were viewed by other people when we were young. Kids are little sponges, and when we're young, the brain is very plastic.
So what happens to us when we're developing has a big impact on the rest of our lives. Now, it's not the only thing that matters. Sometimes when people talk about psychology, it sounds like the only thing that matters is your relationship with your mom when you were growing up. It's much more complicated than that.
But there's no doubt that those developmental experiences can cast a pretty long shadow over the rest of our lives. And a major way that those experiences show up for people is in the beliefs that they have about themselves. other individuals, and the world as a whole. We're all carrying this invisible backpack of beliefs, all of these views and models and expectations about how things work or how they are. And these beliefs are best at our experiences, right?
We saw people acting a certain way or treating us a certain way. So we went, okay, I must be that kind of way. These beliefs are often so built into how we view the world that they're basically invisible. And this is a problem because unconscious beliefs have a huge impact on how we act. Let's look at a common example here. You think of yourself, just for example, as a kind of lazy person.
If you're watching this or you're listening to this, it's unlikely that you actually are a lazy person, but hey, I thought of myself that way for a long time, and I'm the one who's recording this right now. So it just shows that these beliefs are often not very rational.
But that doesn't really stop them from messing with us. The source of that belief might be an experience that you had early on in school, and let's say that it led you to believe that you weren't that smart or effective or whatever else. What's important to understand is that the beliefs that we have about ourselves rapidly become self-fulfilling. If you think of yourself as being lazy, you're unlikely to have experiences that could contradict that belief.
Even when you do, they're filtered through the lens of the belief. So let's say that you succeeded not because you are capable and worked hard, but because of some other explanation. Or sure, you succeeded. But it was so difficult for you, it must be easier for other people, right? Even your successes are kind of failures. Let's look at another example here, productivity. The hidden model that most people have about productivity is that productivity sucks.
that it's uncomfortable, frustrating, and painful to consistently apply yourself day after day. Most questions about productivity can be boiled down to how can I get better at doing this thing that I don't want to do because this thing kind of sucks. If that's our model of productivity, we're never going to be able to sustain effort. Instead, we have to change the model. We have to find a way to view being productive and effective as an actually enjoyable activity.
These are examples of how invisible beliefs can constrain our behavior because they're operating unconsciously in the background of the mind. And this leads us to become automated. We're acting in ways that seem natural to us. Our behavior just flows from the beliefs that we're carrying around about ourselves and the world. So working with these models is the crux of change for many people. Of course you're not going to be comfortable in social settings.
if you have a model of other people as being scary and difficult to be around. Now, unfortunately, the only way to start updating that model is by getting evidence that something else might be true. which requires that we brave scary experiences. Now, a way that we can start working with those beliefs and seeing them more effectively is by forming what's called a coherent narrative.
This idea comes from Dr. Dan Siegel. He's a professor of psychiatry at UCLA. And the basic idea is that we take a step back and we look over our lives, particularly our childhood, and we try to find a kind of story. What happened? Why did it happen? Who did what? Not just what immediately pops into our memory, but truly going back through it, looking at the evidence and now with the mind of an adult, revisiting those early experiences. It's this...
remarkably clarifying process that's been incredibly useful for me, that can help people understand why they are the way they are, and maybe why they're struggling with what they're struggling with. Again, you find that balance of acceptance and agency. We're starting with what's true, and then seeing that truth helps us to actually do something about it. And this can be a very touchy topic for people. It's one of the things that I'm the most uncomfortable talking about while recording this.
Because the things that happen to us when we're young are mostly not our fault. We're just kids, developing minds, little influence over our environment, and often dealing with circumstances that range from not great to awful. But those experiences that we have then result in all of these beliefs and behaviors and vulnerabilities that we're now stuck with as adults. It's incredibly unfair.
What this means is that a lot of the change journey for people boils down to being willing to come to terms with that fundamental unfairness. What happened is not your fault. But these days, if you want to change it, your behavior is your responsibility.
and the endpoint of your life is dictated in large part by your willingness to accept that, and then do what you can within constrained circumstances, a lot of imperfections, all of the stuff that you're saddled with, all of the shit you didn't ask for. But here you are. You do what you can. You change that behavior in the ways that you can find.
And some people will be willing to help you on that journey, but the reality is that most people won't. They won't know your history, they won't see all that context, and even if they do, they mostly will not care. They'll just see the behavior, and they'll be focused on themselves. If you want things to improve, it's on you. People who change start by saying, you know what? I don't want to be stuck with this. Not my fault, but now my responsibility.
And as we do this, as we start unpacking those beliefs, we form that coherent narrative, and then we focus on what we can do today. As we do that, we become so much more free. There's this incredible feeling of liberation. We can suddenly do something about all of this because we see the wizard behind the curtain. We see how the machinery operates in the background. And that gives us an incredible freedom. For many people...
It's their first experience of feeling like they get to choose how they act in the world. And then we start to realize something, that most of the stories we're carrying around aren't ours. Those beliefs were given to us by people and by environments that we did not select. And now in adulthood, we have this incredible opportunity to replace these old myths, to reclaim aspects of ourselves that we left behind, aspects which were authentic to us.
but weren't compatible with the beliefs that others gave us. One of the most productive processes I've ever gone through in my life, and I'm still doing it, is evaluating what those beliefs are, where they came from, and then asking myself What do I want to actively choose? Not what did I passively absorb, not what was given to me, but what do I want to choose? How do I want to feel about the world?
And part of what we're facing throughout this process is the frustration that comes up with the reality that the starting lines are not balanced in life. And that can constrain what's possible for us. What's possible for somebody who was dealt a great hand of cards might not be possible for you. somebody who has dealt a tougher hand. But we do what we can't anyway, and we get as far as we can go. But when you're consuming self-help content,
it can easily feel like every problem out there can be solved with enough therapy or kale or meditation or cold showers, you know, whatever. If you just get past your limiting beliefs and you raise your vibration high enough, anything is possible for you, right?
Now, in addition to its incredible tone deafness, the problem with this brand of self-help content is that it turns all problems into problems of effort. You're still struggling with your depression or your anxiety because you haven't done the work yet.
If you're suffering, you're just not trying hard enough. The truth is that life is hard, our outcomes are constrained, and a lot of days are going to suck regardless of what you do. But that is not exactly a compelling marketing copy. It is much closer to reality, though. And knowing that going in helps us set reasonable expectations, be disappointed much less frequently, and fall into less self-criticism when things do inevitably go sideways, because they go sideways for everybody.
There's this well-known model in psychology that describes how people usually change, and it's broken out into these different stages. It's called the trans-theoretical model of behavior change, if you want to look it up. And some people think that relapse... should actually be included as a formal stage, both because falling back into old behaviors is normal, and because understanding that this is a normal part of the process helps people get back up when they fall down.
Now, you might be thinking to yourself, wait a second, Forrest. Just a moment ago, you were talking about personal responsibility and focusing on our own effort, all of that good stuff. And now you're talking about appreciating the role of luck and limited circumstances and all of the things we can't do.
So which one is it? And it's both. It's all yes and. In Buddhism, there's an idea called the middle way, that the path of wisdom usually lies between extremes. Not too much self-gratification on the one hand. not too much self-punishment on the other. Acceptance and agency. Appreciating our past and turning toward the future. What we can influence and what we can't influence.
People often get trapped in this kind of black or white, this or that. But what tends to help people most of the time in reality is flexibility. The ability to see the whole picture, appreciate all of it, and do what they can. amidst all the seeming contradictions. We'll be back to the show in just a minute, but first a word from our sponsors. This might seem surprising, but I have always struggled to eat enough vegetables.
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Let me get you started with my special discount. You'll get 20% off your first order. Just use code beingwell at fieldofgreens.com. That's code beingwell at fieldofgreens.com. Now, back to the show. Now, so far I've mostly focused on what happens before we start changing. When we do start to change, a common problem appears. There's this thing called homeostasis. It's the tendency...
of every living being, humans included, to resist change and to attempt to return to this stable and comfortable base. Our homeostatic base is the place we know it's what we're familiar with. Every brain wants this. and we are caught up in a web of relationships with other people. We are one puzzle piece, and we're surrounded by all of these other puzzle pieces that fit together in different ways—family, friends, all of that.
What this means is that when you start to change your puzzle piece, when it starts getting a little bigger or it changes its shape, you are pushing on all of the pieces that are around you, all of those people, all of those relationships. You are forcing them. to change and adjust alongside you. It is so important to be aware going in that most of the time when we do this, it does not go well. This is hard. Other people do not like it. They push back on us.
you start to get all these little comments like, oh, you're waking up early? Oh, you're going to the gym? Wow, really turning over a new leaf, huh? Wait, why don't you want to go drinking with me anymore? Aren't you my friend? What's this self-help book you're reading? Do you really believe that shit? All of the dumb things that other people say to us, the things we have to deal with, to say nothing of when they really go out of their way, and some of them will, to try to draw you back in.
to that old way of being they're doing this because by changing you're forcing them to change as well and change is very uncomfortable they have figured out how to move through the world in a way that is based on you staying the same and now you're putting pressure on that
so they're going to push on you in return. Just be prepared for this. Okay, so we've gotten this far, and now the question is, what do we need to actually do if we're going to change? How does it work? We need to practice a new way of being. And this means we need to get high-quality repetitions. And we can take our cues here from sports and performance art, where there's been a lot of research on how to get really good at something. I like to use exercise as an example, both because it's...
a common goal, it's an example I use frequently, and it's a relatively simple thing to track. You either exercised or you didn't, and the key variable is your own effort. This is where the consistency principle, the law of little things, really shows up for people. When people start exercising, they often make two mistakes at the same time. They don't do the activity very frequently, and then when they do it, they make it too difficult. They think to themselves for a workout to count.
I need to be at the gym for an hour working really hard, doing uncomfortable things. Because that's the model that I'm carrying around, we're back to those models, of what exercise looks like. But that sounds painful and difficult.
So I'm just going to do it once or twice a week. I need to get over this big mental hurdle every time I go to the gym, and I'm just not going to do that very often. So here we have the worst of both worlds. They're not getting many reps, and they're setting those reps up in a way
that makes it really difficult for them to have an enjoyable experience, to have a good time. How do elite performers practice? They practice regularly, day after day. They consistently push the boundaries of their current level of ability. and they have frequent cycles of high-quality feedback. So we start by figuring out what we can do every day, or as close to every day as possible. You make the obligation too small to fail.
Then people tend to find their area of comfort and hang out there. But useful practice takes place in the space of just enough challenge. We're toward the edges of our competency, we're not going to hurt ourselves, and we're not setting ourselves up to fail.
but we're pushing it a little bit. And it's not a coincidence that this is also the level of challenge that tends to lead to a flow state. So we start with five minutes a day, and then we add a minute each day after that. We start with a one-pound dumbbell, and then we use a two-pound dumbbell.
Finally, we look for ways to get high quality feedback. Maybe this means letting a good friend know what you're trying to do or investing in a little outside coaching, working with somebody who really knows what they're doing. Maybe it means posting a video on Reddit or something, though your mileage may vary with that one. Whatever it is that you're doing to get some good feedback. Now, this focus on small things done consistently is one of the ways that we move away from willpower.
If we only do things when we want to, you're never going to get anywhere. At the same time, willpower is a scarce resource. You don't want to have to force yourselves to do it over and over again. So limiting the number of times we need to exercise willpower.
is a kind of secret hack for life. This is why alcoholics usually start treatment by throwing away all the alcohol in the house. Why have that temptation hanging around? If you want to eat differently, exercise willpower once when you're in the grocery store.
Not every single day when you know it's sitting a few steps away in the kitchen. This is another way that we make things as simple and easy as possible for us. One of the ideas that's had the greatest impact on me comes from Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. He wrote Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, and the key quote from the book is, In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, and the experts there are few. I used to be a pretty rigid person. In large part because...
I was very focused on being right, on being the person who knew the answer, and that was my identity. That's what I derived a lot of my self-worth from. As we move through life, we get all of this information, right? We learn. And the more information we get, in a weird way, the less flexible we become. We become more attached to a way of thinking about and a way of being in the world. We're carrying around all of these beliefs, beliefs about ourselves, beliefs about other people.
we think we have it all figured out. And the more strongly that we believe that, the harder it becomes to take in new information and change how we act. This means that as we learn more, we need to increasingly balance it with a kind of openness to possibility. a willingness to say, you know what, I'm not sure. The most powerful beginner's mind phrases are, I don't know, and I'm sorry. And that energy, phrases like that.
are the total opposite of what tends to get popular on social media. What we reward on social media is confidence, it's assuredness, it's the Ben Shapiros of the world, people who talk very quickly and they act like they've never been wrong.
And that's what tends to get popular because that authority really draws people in, right? It's understandable. The world is big and scary and uncertain. And people want to feel like the person they're listening to has all of the answers. Authority is very compelling. But that kind of overwhelming confidence, it will kill you in real life. It killed me. It'll kill your relationships. Sure, it plays well online, but it prevents you from learning.
from having the flexibility that you need that allows you to be a functional person. If you think you already have all of the answers, particularly if you think that you already know everything there is to know about yourself, why would you do anything different? And this is why there are so many people. where their self-awareness hasn't actually improved their ability to do anything about their problems. I've talked to people who could write you a master's thesis.
on everything they know about themselves, everything that's wrong with them, all the issues going on in their lives. They walk into the therapy session and they can just brain dump all of it to their therapist. Great. They know they need to adopt this new habit. They know they need to take on this new behavior, whatever it is.
but they can't do a damn thing about it. In the expert's mind, there aren't many possibilities, and they've become experts on themselves. If you give them possibilities, if you propose something new and different, what happens? They give you a thousand reasons they can't change. They can only include information in the model they're already carrying around. They haven't been able to change the model itself. They haven't been able to identify and change the beliefs that the model is based on.
They're locked in place by their knowledge because they haven't grown the muscle of flexibility alongside it. And I started to get this commitment to sameness after I had a conversation with Dr. Ross Ellenhorn. He has an idea he calls the fear of hope. The basic principle is that people who've really been struggling with some things start to fear hope itself. Because in hope, there's the possibility of disappointment. If you're trapped, if there's nothing you can do,
Obviously, it sucks. But there's no obligation to change. You don't have to put any effort in. You're just screwed. So there are these kind of two sneaky benefits. First, you are relieved of responsibility, there's no real pressure on you. And then second, you don't have to worry about disappointment. Hope itself becomes a kind of problem we have to solve because hope is a very risky emotion.
It's also a necessary one if we're going to change. I was talking with somebody once, and I will never forget this conversation. It was a friend of mine who was really struggling with depression. They had tried almost everything there was to try other than taking an actual antidepressant.
They didn't want to take an SSRI, and so I asked them, why won't you take an antidepressant? And to be clear, antidepressants are complicated. They've got pluses and minuses. There are a lot of good reasons. Somebody might not want to be on one, but...
If you've been depressed for a long time, you'd think an antidepressant would be the natural thing to try. And what they said to me was, well, you know, Forrest, I really view that as the last step, the last big thing to try. And what I'm afraid of is that... If I try it and it doesn't work, I'll feel like there's nothing left. Wow. That just really stuck with me. There's this thing right there to try it. But to try, you need to be open to the pain of disappointment.
And a huge turning point for me and my understanding of psychology and people in general was when I started to think more in terms of the motivations behind our behaviors. The question that Rick really likes to ask is, what's the function? What role is this behavior serving in our lives? Particularly, what are we getting out of the behaviors that we think are holding us back? Our behavior exists for reasons. We develop patterns of being in the world to protect ourselves.
to shield ourselves from pain, to get more of what we want, a whole bunch of different reasons. And it's really easy to see what we get out of behaviors that we think of as being positive, and much harder to see what we get out of the ones that we struggle with. But all behavior... exists to serve a function. There's something that it's doing for us. When you procrastinate, it's not just that your brain is broken or something like that. But rather, procrastination helps you avoid pain.
So we can start asking ourselves, what's the function? What's the function of waking up later or staying up later than I should, of showing up late, of smiling and nodding even when I don't really want to? What am I getting out? of the behaviors that are holding me back. When we do this, we usually start to see how even problematic behaviors are helping us achieve different goals. They're just not goals we usually focus on. Maybe it helps you with emotional regulation.
Maybe it helps you avoid pain, whatever it is. It's only when we appreciate the function that the behavior serves that we can actually start to do something about it. Because again, it's the wizard behind the curtain. We see it more clearly. And seeing it clearly... helps us, again, take responsibility for it. Procrastination is no longer something that just magically happens to us, which is how many people seem to think about it. It's something we're actively doing because it has a reward.
So far, I have been very focused on what we do as individuals. And it's easy for personal growth to feel like this kind of libertarian enterprise where it's just about us, it's very stoic. It's about personal responsibility and influencing our own effort, all these things that I've talked about a lot already. It's got this real egocentrism to it. But the truth is that we are so enormously affected by our relationships. The single biggest variable for most people...
in terms of their ability to change, is the people that they surround themselves with. Are you in a supportive community? Do you have people around you who help you feel bigger rather than smaller, who offer you real authentic support, who are interested? And what's going on in your life? Or are you surrounded by people who hold you down, who hold you back, who look for reasons you'll fail? The older I get, and I'm basically a boomer at this point, the harder it is to make friends.
The more that you can do early on in life to surround yourself with people who are fundamentally supportive of you, the better your outcomes are going to be long-term. Once you find people who are that way, value them, invest in them, cherish those relationships. They are such a huge part of life and they are rare. Relationships are a place where knowing your wants and needs and tendencies
is so incredibly important because we tend to repeat our circumstances. This is homeostasis, we're going back to that safe base. This is what Freud was talking about with the repetition compulsion, the allure of what we know. is an incredibly powerful force in life. So it's normal for people to keep going after the same problematic type of person romantically over and over again. And being aware of our tendencies is how we start to do something about them.
Why does this kind of repetition tend to happen? Well, think about how a kid learns something. They watch other people do it. So how does a kid learn about relationships? They watch the closest relationships to them. and this is typically the relationship their parents have, that relationship becomes the model of what a relationship looks like. And the reality is that most people do not have good models.
Their parents fought all the time or mistreated them or got divorced, whatever else happened. So now that they're carrying that model around, what happens? They start to look for partners that replicate it. So particularly for those of us... who are carrying around those unhealthy relationship models. What are some better models? What can we replace those models with? Here are three absolute qualifiers for anybody that you want to be in a real relationship with. Not a fling, not a crush.
but who you end up with, the really high-stakes stuff. First, look for somebody who thinks you are amazing, who really, really likes you, not somebody who's lukewarm on you. not somebody that you need to talk into you, not somebody you have to chase or constantly pursue or convince that you really are great. Look for somebody who is thrilled by the idea of being in a relationship with you.
That doesn't always happen immediately. Sometimes it's the end point of a long friendship or where there's a lot of water under the bridge for whatever reason. Sure, that's okay. But you gotta get there. Second, look for somebody who is fundamentally kind. meanness, rudeness, aloofness, this kind of too cool quality can be attractive and intriguing when you're starting out. But I got to tell you, the steam runs out on that so quickly in a real relationship. You do not want to be with somebody
who is cruel, who lacks empathy, who really isn't that interested in what's going on in your mind or in your life, who doesn't have some degree of sensitivity. Third, look for somebody you actually enjoy being around. Do you have fun together? Can you be authentic? Or do you feel like you need to wear this specific mask for them to appreciate you or for them to not constantly criticize you?
When we first get into a relationship, we are essentially meeting the other person's PR agent. That's normal. The first time you sit down with somebody, it is usually all mask. If you're lucky, maybe you get to like 30% authenticity. And then as time goes on, we drop the mask more and more. But you want to get to that authentic part pretty quickly because in the mask-to-mask stuff, the persona-to-persona part of a relationship...
you're not learning stuff that really matters, right? You're not actually learning about who the person is. And I've seen so many people get trapped by a whirlwind nine months of fun and adventure and a lot of acting. Then they get engaged. They get married, they have a kid, and one day everybody wakes up and they go, wait a second, is this really what I signed up for?
And that's because they never explored the real stuff, what their authentic wants and needs are, their expectations for life, who's responsible for what jobs, what their shared values are, all of that. They get married. And then they start doing all the processing after that. Who is this person I'm with? Not when they're happy, but when they're pissed. They haven't learned how each of them responds to stress, what it's like.
walking through an airport with them when your flight's about to leave in 10 minutes. And that's the part that matters long term. That's the person you're ending up with. And the faster that you can get to being authentic and revealed in this way, which to be clear feels incredibly uncomfortable. the more useful information you'll acquire in order to make what is probably the biggest decision in your life. We'll be right back to the show in just a moment.
So as long as we've gotten here, let's talk a little bit about what tends to make relationships go well. One of the most common beliefs that people have about relationships is that good relationships don't have a lot of conflict. But that's not true. Good relationships have the right amount of conflict. To do some serious oversimplifying, you can kind of divide people into two groups. People who value truth more, and people who value harmony more.
People who are more focused on truth tend to value emotional expression and authenticity, and they're usually on the higher communication, let's say, side of the spectrum. People who value harmony tend to focus more on emotional comfort. They want to just get along with each other and they want to avoid rocking the boat if they can. Truth and harmony are both important values in a relationship. We need to tell the truth and we need to have a basic level of harmony for things to survive.
but there's a really important asymmetry between them. It is typically obvious when there is too much truth in a relationship. When we err too far on the side of truth, it usually creates a big disruption. These are the high-conflict, very explosive relationships that you'll see that tend to fall apart. So there are obvious consequences to too much truth, and this can cause people to shy away from it. But what happens when people err on the side of harmony?
When a relationship has no conflict at all, it's often an indicator, not that it's a perfect relationship, but that there are underlying issues that they're not talking about. Maybe there are some avoidant tendencies, or maybe there's a lack of emotional safety.
And we're much more likely to tell the truth when we feel secure inside of a relationship. These relationships that have a bit too much harmony, they might last a little longer. But a little more truth would probably lead to both people getting more of what they wanted even if it created more conflict in the short term and the point here is to encourage you if you're watching this or listening to this to be
a bit more open to the presence of conflict inside of a relationship, and you definitely don't need to run the first time it shows up. And this idea is in some ways supported by the research from John and Julie Gottman on what tends to lead to successful relationships.
What they found is really fascinating. There are many different ways that people can have a successful relationship. There are more volatile couples. These are the big truth-tellers. They tend to be very emotional and engage in a lot of debate.
Then there are more avoidant couples. These are the harmonizers. Then there are couples who spend a lot of time together and are very dependent on each other. And there are also couples who don't really seem to interact much at all, but when they do, they're very warm and they're just happy as can be.
All of these relationships can work. But what really determined the success or failure of a relationship was what the Gottmans called the four horsemen, criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and most importantly, contempt. whether there was contempt in how they talked to each other, was the single greatest predictor of whether a couple would divorce. And divorce is kind of like a car accident.
Nobody gets into a car thinking that they're going to get into an accident, but car accidents happen every day. Divorce is the same way. Nobody gets into a marriage thinking that they're engaging in risky behavior,
They just are. Roughly half of marriages ended divorce. So it's very important to pay attention to the presence of contempt in a relationship. And if you're in the dating stage with somebody and you feel like your partner, the person that you're going out with, is already displaying contempt...
which is just this feeling of I'm better than you, this sense of disgust and superiority. If you pick that up from somebody else, get out of there. I would encourage most people to seriously consider whether or not they want to be in that relationship. One of the best and simplest pieces of advice I've ever gotten about relationships comes from Rick, longtime couples counselor. Start by joining. When somebody brings something to you, lead with empathy and connection.
Try to connect with the emotions that they're bringing to the table rather than immediately going into problem solving. Get on the same team first. And that feeling of being on the same team is such an underrated and important part of a relationship. And I used to make this mistake all the time. I led with problem solving rather than starting by joining. But over time, I realized that it was by going into the feeling.
that the other person had, that they became able to do something about it. It was this kind of counterintuitive thing. When I led with problem solving, I just got resistance. When I led with empathy, the resistance dissolved, which then made the problem solving much more effective. When we offer simple solutions to what feel like big, complex problems to another person, it can feel to them that we're not appreciating how big the problem is. We're kind of minimizing their experience.
So you need to start with fully landing. Wow, that is a problem. What are we going to do about it? And if you could just spend a minute or two there, everything will change for you. And just as we apply this way of being to other people, we can start by joining with ourselves. It's kind of funny, and this is a little embarrassing. But back when I was doing this, back when I was bringing all of these solutions to people, it was really funny. For some reason, I just couldn't apply it to myself.
You know, I had all these solutions for others, but I started trying to do this with my problems and I just couldn't change. So there must have been something deeply wrong with me, right? I wasn't self-aware enough. Maybe I was too self-aware. Maybe I was just messed up.
That wasn't the problem. The problem was this is a shitty strategy. This is a bad way to interact with this kind of mental material. You need to start by appreciating the emotional experience because so many people interact with their experience by pushing it down. pushing it away or just dismissing it altogether, right? So the first step is figuring out how you actually feel about something. What's actually going on inside of you? And a lot of the time when you ask somebody that question,
they're really surprised by what pops out when they start being authentically interested in their experience. No problem has ever been solved by ignoring it. One of the early ideas in psychology was this notion of experiencing out. and this comes from psychoanalysis, particularly Freud and Jung talked about it a lot. The basic idea is that emotions are indestructible, experiences are indestructible, so they don't go anywhere, they just get lodged inside of us somewhere.
and they're buried in our unconscious mind when we haven't processed them. And there's a lot that we don't process in life, so most of us are walking around like a soda bottle that's been shaken one too many times. There's all of this stuff that's bubbling around inside that we just haven't dealt with.
And one of the places that this stuff tends to pop out of people is in their relationships, because hello, relationships are hard. People get frustrated. We've got all these different wants and needs. They're different from our friends and our partners, and managing that clash is really difficult. That's what getting triggered is. It's when our internal material gets activated by something that happens out in the world. And there are many different ways to start experiencing out. It can be...
A pretty complex process and how to do it safely in practice is something that we've done other episodes on. But just understanding that this is how the mind works can help us out on its own. We need to care about our experiences, they matter, they leave a residue.
and processing them is a big part of growing in life. Another example of this kind of idea is called joining with the defense. It's a technique that's used in therapy sometimes where the clinician goes out of their way to get on the same team with the client.
and particularly the parts of a client system that are resisting change. When somebody walks into their office, it generally only takes a good therapist a couple of sessions to develop a view of what's stopping them from getting what they want. When they figure that out,
They've got a couple of different options. First, they could just attack those defenses directly. They just lay it out. Here's the painful experience you're trying to avoid. Here's how you're avoiding it. If you stop doing that, your behavior will improve.
Now, this might work, but a lot of the time, it's a recipe for disaster. The client's defenses get triggered, they get trapped in this intense emotional cycle, shame, anger, regret, all of that. And it's really hard to make any progress from there. Instead, most of the time, good therapists start by trying to communicate to the client's defenses that they're on the same team. They understand that the defense exists to solve a problem.
and they get that it's a big, scary problem that matters to the person, and they, the therapist, want to achieve the same goal that the defense does. All they're asking is that we open up to other ways that we might be able to achieve that goal. So what do these ideas have in common? Joining with the defense, starting by joining, experiencing out. It's a basic principle in psychology that stands out to me. Most of the time we solve a problem by moving toward it, not by moving away from it.
And this runs against all of our instincts. We usually try to push something down, avoid it, fight it, whatever. Then there's some people on the other side of the spectrum, they become totally overwhelmed by things and really wrapped up in them. There's no sense of differentiation between themselves and the problem. But again, the healthy path is the middle path. We move toward the problem, toward the experience or the emotion that the other person is bringing to the table.
but we retain our own sense of individuality. It's kind of like a finger trap. We often have to move towards something before we can pull away from it. Imagine how this could work when applied to yourself. How would your relationship with yourself change, with your own behavior change? If you began by appreciating it, if you started with, hey, I get it. I've had these experiences. It's understandable that I feel the way that I feel.
and I get why I'm defaulting to this behavior, and I'm going to be really thoughtful about it. I'm going to keep an eye out, and I'm going to stay safe, and you, part of my system, can trust me to care about that. And it's often when we do that... and actually embrace the defense that it starts to relax a little bit. Now, this has been going for a little while. I've been talking a lot here. And as we get to the end, I just want to take a moment to appreciate
I don't know, this sounds a little hokey to me as I'm saying it out loud, but bear with me here. To appreciate your willingness to engage with this kind of content. This is not easy stuff. Most people do not... get interested in this stuff because their life is going perfectly. They usually get interested in it because there's something that hurts, something that is not going the way that they want it to go, something that they are struggling with, and they are trying to make it different.
And just that, the trying to make it different, is an unbelievable credit to you. It says so much that is good about you that you are interested in that. And if we're going to keep on going... particularly keep on going when things are hard. We need to appreciate that the path of this stuff is not linear. You don't just get better and better and better over time. Sometimes it gets worse before it gets better. Then it's good for a while. Then it gets hard again. Then life throws us a curveball.
Whatever, we have to deal with it. There's always something else to deal with. And it is a credit to you that you have kept going in spite of all of that. And I just say that to give us a little bit of relief from the self-criticism that it can be so easy to fall into. So hey, appreciate yourself, right? I appreciate you for making it all the way through all of this material. This was a ton of material.
probably the most complete thing that I've ever done personally. I hope that you got some value out of it. If you did, if you're watching on YouTube, I would appreciate it if you would take a moment to, hey, like and subscribe, the things that people say. If you're listening to the podcast episode right now, if you could take a moment to tell a friend about it, that's the best way that we have to reach new people.
and review it in your podcast app of choice hey if you haven't subscribed already please subscribe it really does help us out And also please let me know how you felt about it. Is this the kind of format that you enjoyed? Would you like to see more of it? Was it not really for you so much? Do you prefer the conversations with Rick or with other guest experts that we have on the podcast? Please let me know. It really helps me guide the content. Until next time.
Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.