Alex LIckerman

We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m Thanks for joining us. Our guest today is Alex Lickerman. Alex is a physician, speaker, and Assistant Vice President for Student Health and Counseling at the University

of Chicago. Alex's book is called The Undefeated Mind, on the Science of Constructing an Indestructible Self. Here's the interview hi Alex welcome to the show. Yeah, I'm happy that we were able to get you on. I found your book The Undefeated Mind really interesting for a lot of different reasons. But I think one of the things that runs through it that will explore a lot more is really the idea of transforming what we would talk about

his problems into victories. And I think that's such as certainly been something that's happened in my life, and I'm I'm always interested in exploring more. Yeah, that's great stuff. So our podcast is called The One You Feed, and it's based on the parable of two Wolves, where there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,

which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And these two wolves are always at battle. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you how that parable applies to you in your life and in the work that you do. Sure, very yeah, very interesting, terrible. A couple of things they thought of me. One is

the notion that one wins and another loses. I don't quite think of it that way, I think, Um, well, I guess I would say, I don't think of that that there is a final victory that you get to then stop fighting. But these are the two fundamental forces.

And then all of us that really constantly do battle for supremacy of our behavior control of our behavior, I should say, um, but I really like the notion of which one wins at least moment by moment, and when you feed, meaning it really is the action that we take ourselves and the efforts and we make ourselves to promote good qualities and good behavior that results of that.

And if we don't bother to take that action, we're sort of at the mercy of our environment and we really aren't conductricting control of whether we show up with our good self or our bad self. And so for me, it really comes down to what kind of person do I want to forge myself into and what techniques do I used to do that, Because it's not just deciding to be good and then being successful at that. That

certainly hasn't worked in my case. But they really are very specific techniques or or practices that I think people can undertake that either they learn by experience or two, you know, their studies out their psychological studies that show we do work. And it's not just you know, us will power deciding to be good or deciding to be bad, but really how you actually leverage psychological principles and optics with in our minds to sort of show up as the person you want to show up. So for me,

that's what that kind of really talks mostly about. What he speaks to me about is um the effort it takes to become the person you want to be. You really have to defeat it. You have to make effort. Yeah, exactly. So in your book The Undefeated Mind, there's a particular line that I'm going to read that I think acts as a good summary of a place to start with the whole book and we can build from there. And uh, I've used a version of this phrase myself and I

love it. But it says that which doesn't kill us can make it stronger. But it doesn't happen by itself. So your I think your theory is or you know, what the book is about is that we're all going to have challenging experiences in life, and how we respond to those determine whether it does make as stronger or it does not make us stronger. Can you maybe give a brief overview of what some of those key indicators are in that regard, and maybe a brief synopsis of

what you think an undefeated mind means. Sure, So, I guess i'd start by telling you a story that sort of sparked my desire to write this book. And briefly, one day I was in clinics on a general interest. I was in clinic one day seeing a man who came in complaining the stuff he knows, and what I was struck by was just how devastated he seemed to be by the fact that his nose was constantly stuffy, and how he went hunt and on about how this had impacted his wife, and it was sort of looming

his life from his perspective. And the very next picture I saw was a woman who was dying of metasthetic breast cancer, and she was as poised and as calm as you can imagine and I was just struck by the obvious contrast between their approach to their respective illnesses and how you know, it was exactly the opposite of

what you would have expected. And it made me realize, certainly we all adversity in life, but how that adversity effectis is far more determined by our inner life state and where we approach adversity and think about adversity than

the nature of the adversity itself. And the thesis basically is that, um, you know, resilience the ability to either to not just I should say, survive adversity, but thrive in the face of adversity, and the ability to to push on toward a dream or a goal where obstacles arise as they always do when you're trying to achieve something great and not become discouraged and continue and keep going and not getting up. You know, that defines resilience.

That defines what I call an undefeated mind. It's not that you don't become discouraged, but you don't allow the fact of your discouragement to stop you, and you don't look at the things that bad things that happen to do is they never really happen to all of us and and be so caught up and pulled down into depression and anxiety about those things. But find some way to maintain the confidence that no matter what happens, and you can get to it and actually come out stronger

then when you went into it. That doesn't just happen because you go from something bad and suffer a lot of times, you know, an adverse experience just causes suffering, and that's it. You don't have to necessarily grow from adversity.

But if you understand uh certain principles and leverage those principles and figure out how to think about adversity a certain way, absolutely that which is not coless will make a strong Yeah, you've got a line that says inner strength doesn't come from the experience of adversity itself, but from the wisdom that the experience of adversity has the potential to impart. Yeah, I think that's really that's really it.

What are some of these basic principles that you were talking about that that you know, I'm sure I've got listeners right now who are listening who are in the midst of something that seems to be a really terrible experience for them, where can they start. Yeah. So one place is UM. There's a chapter that's called accept Pain, and it talks about this notion of UM, the power of acceptance of unpleasant feelings. So we all experience unpleasant

feelings all the time. And I'm not just talking about emotional unpleasant feelings, you know, like anxiety or depression or guilt or anger, but physically unpleasant feelings, you know, pain, physical pain. Uh. And we evolved, of course to avoid pain of all types, physical and emotional, but in fact we end up causing ourselves often far more suffering by using the strategies we employed to try to avoid pain than the actual experience of pain itself would impart to

our lives if we just let ourselves feel it. And are unbelievable numbers of studies, one after another after another, in so many different contexts that show when you try to avoid pain or suppress pain, and antedly that only makes it worse. And there is some great power in

looking upon pain non judgmentally and with acceptance. So I'll give you a quick example, simple example, UM, people who are trying to quit smoking or trying to use weight and trying to avoid eating over the eating UM, when you train people like that to to face food cravings or cravings for nicotine for the spirit of acceptance and observations and rather than oh, I'm feeling horribly hungry, I really want that cookie right now, or I've got to

get a bag of that cigarette. I'm going crazy. Uh, And they're trying to resist it and push it away. They are paradoxically centering themselves on that they're sending their attention on those cravings. If instead they approach those cravings with the spirit of acceptance and non judgments rather than think themselves it's craving, it's just it's unbearable, I really want to eat that cookie. They sort of become an

observer of their own unpleasant feeling. Wow, I'm really creating that cookie or I'm really creating a cigarette with right now, and allowed to sort of pass through them and don't fight it but accept it but refused to act on it, and terribly What ends up happening is those cravings disappeared.

And they've studied people both in both contacts, looking at people trying to avoid um over eating and trying to quit smoking, and sound of those who approach UH their inevitable cravings with acceptance rather than denial or resistance have higher, much higher rates of success. So this is kind of applies and all types of ums when you are trying

to achieve a goal. And there's a particular exercise that I heat you that I talk about in the book, and it is if you have a dream and you you write that dream down on a piece of paper, and then you write down what are the main tasks that you have to accomplish or to achieve that dream, and then next to those tasks you write what are the unpleasant feelings that arise when we're even constemply having

to to take on those tasks. What you actually are under discover discovering is that often the greatest dreams that you have, it's actually stopping you from achieving those dreams. There's nothing outside of yourself, but actually the unpleasant feeling that contemplating the task requires to achieve between pull out of you and and and the strategy of of avoidance works. Right.

So if you are someone who say is very shy and you and you have social anxiety, but you have a desire to say, have they have a significant other a girlfriend or a boyfriend or whatever, um one you know, but but asking people out is incredibly anxiety producing for you. Well, one really successful strategy you can use to avoid feeling anxiety is to not trigger it, meaning don't ask somebody out and it works. You won't feel that of anxiety. But at the same time you also be able to

achieve your dream. But if instead you approach those feelings with non judgment and also approach yourself without judgment for feeling those feelings. So rather than say to yourself, I'm such a I'm such a loser. I can't call up this person to ask him or her out without feeling anxiety, but instead say I'm feeling terrible anxiety, but I'm going

to do this anyway. I'm gonna let myself feel this, but I'm not gonna let this feeling stop me from taking the action I need to take to achieve my dream. You will find yourself unleashed and capable of accomplishing things you never imagine that you could be capable of withstanding far more than you believe you can. And I'll tell you all of the people we hold up in society as these paradouns of achievement, you know from anywhere from

Braham Lincoln to steve jobs. They all do this secret that the secret success just not avoiding the pain and finding a way to do something, you know, without pain, but carrying on in spite of it and developing themselves so that their goal is not to find a way to avoid pain that becomes so strong that can happen whatever pain they needed to order achieve their dreams. Part of the book talks about niche in Buddhism, which I think is where you got some of the strategies to

help build an undefeated mind. And there's a couple lines in there that I found really interesting that I'd like us to talk about. One is that you say that according to Nietzsche and Buddhism, nothing boosts happiness more than victory or causes more misery than defeat. Can you explain

what that means? I guess there's different ways to sort of cut cut it life, and people think about right and long and good in evil, but I really think about victory and defeit, and that's what nuture Buddhism focus is on, and by victory and deceitit that what what what the principle really is about happiness and suffering. That's really what it comes down to, and so victory and may look like different things depending upon what it is

you're aiming for. It's not always necessarily achieving its goal, but victory in some sense it is always about becoming wiser, happier, and stronger. And so you may actually fail to achieve a goal, but that doesn't mean you lost. You lost if you were defeated, meaning if you if you became, if you if you began to suffer as a result of failure, But failure sometimes it's the very thing you need to actually teach you how to really achieve your dream.

So bottom line is winning and losing really comes down to. You win when you have victory over yourself, when you sort of become stronger, happier, wiser. Lose when you when you allow yourself to become defeated and therefore suffer. You know, this feeling of sort of helplessness, hopelessness, I can't do this, I can't do that, and the suffering that ensues from being broad into that life state. That's what it means

to lose. One of the things that listeners will know I explore all the time is the difference between positive thinking and sort of denial and when is the proper time to give yourself to some degree the pep talk? Right, I can do this, I can get through this. I can versus, when is the proper time to experience the emotions that you're having and and process those through in a way that they're not being suppressed? And I know

that's probably a terribly difficult question to answer. I'm just kind of curious about how your mind goes goes about thinking about that. So I don't think they need too exclusive. I think that, um that if you sure you're talking now about trying to achieve a goal and maybe you're running into obstacles and being stopped and experiencing failure and setbacks, and how do you um manage those setbacks? How do

you how you talk to yourself about those things? Number one is I think that you know, we're human, and so when we fail, it's things, and maybe it's things terribly Maybe in fact, we attach our self worth to ability to succeed, and when we fail, we start to

feel better about ourselves as people. I think that whatever the unpleasant emotion you're feeling, as long as it doesn't become overwhelming and become sort of pathologically, you become paralyzed with it, like paralyze and anxiety or paralyzed and depressions that you getting that in which case you need to see treatment. What we're talking about less severe forms of those emotions that just sort of affect all of us

other day. I think to push them down and to deny them is to give them power, and and to to push them out of sight is to not recognize what type of damage and usualist they can have on. So if you are discouraged and depressed about something, to sort of deny that, uh, you use your your ability to um communipulate it to delk at it constructively. At the same time, I think you always have to um

be giving yourself pep talks, especially when you fail. You yet they have to be a pep talks that are believable. So I talked a bit in the book about there's a difference between what's called the pessimistic self explanatory style and optimistic self explanatory style. The invasic difference is people tend to just have styles with which they explain the

causes of adverse events. So, for example, you fail the tests, some of the pessimistic self explonatory style would say, well, I failed that test because I'm a bad test taker, meaning it's something intrinsically about me that just is a limit that I can do nothing about, whereas an person an optimistic self explanatory style would say, no, I feel

that test because I just didn't study hard enough. And you know, we we leave upon these explanations when bad bags happened to us really quickly and sort of typically unconsciously, and immediately assume the first explanation we come across is correct, and often number when it's not the number two, that explanation exerts great power over us and controls how we You know how well those pep talks that we want

to give ourselves keep ourselves going can affect um. You know how effective they're They're going to be UM people an optimistic self explanatory style in general, they look upon the causes of adversity um from the perspective of they have the agency of the ability to influence them to try again. And so I think the power pousit are thinking is great, But in fact your style of explaining

things to yourself is pessimistic. That's where you really want to intervene and teach yourself, and you can teach yourself to come up with and believe and attached to more optimistic explanations that empower you to take the action that enables the ultimate to succeed. Right, Because we're we are usually making up some sort of story about why things happened.

And it sounds like what you're advocating is that we tell ourselves stories or at least examine the content that those stories a little bit more deeply to show that maybe what we have tended to think is the cause of things in the past isn't what really is the cause. Well, for one, we certainly often get it wrong. We've we come with and explanations that we just pursue a corrected we're we're way off in my field because they don't bother to actually investigate, uh, and to we do it unconsciously.

I'm arguing that we should become mindful of the fact that the stories we used to explain the cause of things are not facts. Their stories, you know, they are stories that have great power over our future behavior, what we're going to do. And so I'm arguing to become mindful because in fact, it turns out the studies are shown you really can train yourself to change yourself exculentory style,

become more optimistic in a way that's really adapted. Yeah, there's a line you had that I really liked, where you said, I find myself thinking about how quickly we pronounced final judgment on the things that happened to us, deciding whether they're good or bad in the first moment they occur, and how in doing so we surrender our own agency, abandon the belief that we have the power to create meaning out of what happens to us. That's right, absolutely, Yeah,

we just we say, well, it's done, it's over. You know, I'm not gonna be able to achieve that dream because this thing is in the way, and we surrender our ability, our belief in our ability to take another path. You know, the path towards success is rarely the way we see it at the outside. You know, optacles always arise, and so how you ultimately get there If you were to look back the paths, it ends up in every being

different from what we fore told. But when when when moving forward towards it, if it's not the path before told, we tend to give up. We tend to think this camp be done because we don't see the other ways. But sometimes you have to get to that place, to get in the road, to actually see there is a fault in the road and then choose it. You have a line that says that we don't know how to solve the prob of them doesn't mean it's not solvable. It means we can't solve it if we remain as

we are. The idea there is that a lot of times, not always, but a lot of times. The what needs to happen for us to be able to solve the problems we need to change in some way. So that may mean that we need to apply it expertise that we don't have. You know, so if my if my my goal today is to become a professional basketball player, I can't just walk out on the court and do that. I have to train, I have to you know, acquire

the skills that I need to acquire. Uh maybe even then it's beyond me because I don't have enough natural talent to succeed in the n B A um. That may or may not be the case, but that a lot of times, do you see ways we have to change the way we think about things, and we have to acquire a different perspectives. So, um, the problem may not be an optacle out in the environment, maybe an

obstacle in ourselves. And maybe, for example, we are unable to control our anger in a certain circumstances, or we're shy, or we're got confidence in some way, and that that those things, those obstacles are what really prevent us from getting a job we want or whatever it may be. And so, you know, in order to sometimes achieve a

goal that you're having, you're struggling with. This is often the last thing people do is look inside themselves and ask themselves, how do I need to change what needs to be different about my approach or me in order to accomplish this goal? And it's not that as I The problem isn't that the goals unattainable. The problem is the goals unattainable if I remain as I am. And when people first start to look, they ask themselves that

question subtenly. Often for me at least, a whole host of possibilities open themselves up, and I realized, wow, yeah, how can I expect to be able to achieve this goal if I keep thinking this way or I keep believing this or I keep doing that. Um. And so it's a really powerful thing because we have much more ability to change ourselves in an adaptive way, Uh, to acquire an expertise or mastery over something that that we

don't necessarily first have. That opens up a world of possibility to achieve goals and hopefully or at least their first class even impossible. Yeah, that's one of the reasons I'm such a big fan. We talk on the show about sort of about taking small steps, and you know, and and that as you take those steps either easier to take right, you can take small steps much easier

than big steps. But as you move down that path, the view changes and now suddenly you can see things that you couldn't have seen, you know, back ten twenty ft and moving in the right direction is always a positive. Good things come from it. Yeah, that's exactly right, because what happens is you think from the outset, you can see all the possibilities and all the boards you might be presented with me. You might have to choose a

note to your goal, but you really can't. You have to sort of get down the road and then sort

of see what THEE is from there. Before you know you'll be get front of with choices or opportunities that you could never have predicted from the outside, and you have to sort of, you know, believe in your heart that even if you can't see the way through from step one, when you get to step ten, you'll see farther ahead, you'll find some way, because veriably, if you look back at what you have accomplished, that's how it

goes exactly. There was another line head that really really struck me, and it's it's you say, most of us deem a problem solved when it no longer confronts us. But a different way to look at it is that the problem is solved when it no longer makes us suffer. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? Yeah, so, certainly, you know, the way we all prefer to solve problems is by eliminating the problem itself. But some problems are

not solvable in the way we want. So, for example, if we come down with the chronic disease like multiple sclerosis right where we really want to solve that problems. We want to cure the multiple sclerosis, but that may not be possible. In fact, right now, that's not possible. But but multiple sclerosis is only a problem for us to be excepted. It makes us suffer. And in fact, there are many people and the in fact, many of my patients who multiple sclerosses aren't suffering because of mulcile

scross is at all. You know, their function is not normal, but they've learned to adapt and in fact it literally no longer makes them suffer. And it's either because they've got enough function with medication or whatever that uh they're able to do with it, or because they change the way they think about it. There's another famous line um from their Frankel's book for Man Searched for Me, and that he says suffering ceases to become suffering what it

acquires meaning. And and it really turns out that you know, how we look at any adversity and how it affects us really is truly determined by um when we think about it and what value we think we can we can gain from it. So um, you know, I I have patients who have terrible diseases, but either they've adapted to them or they've actually found a way to gain value out of them in some way. And when that happens,

the disease you know, it stops making them suffering. They accepted into their lives, they incorporated, and they are as happy as has made my other pensions to go. You know, for example, that the story I told at the beginning of the podcast about that woman of mine, that patient money lad as a beast cancer, she was not suffering because of her breast cancer. She had come to accept it. And in fact, interestingly, part of the reason why was

because um, you know, she had was terminal. She was able to heal relationships with her loved ones that have been toxic for years. But we're confronted with the fact of or mortality. She sort of realized, I don't have any time left, and and just was experiencing this renaissance of emotions and relationships with the people she loved that

had just killed her her life with great joy. And so in the midst of this terrible problem that she really couldn't solve the way she wanted to, which is, you know, to be cured, she was really literally not suffering because of it. Right There's you say at one point that you understand that you know, part of an undefeated mind is understand there's no obstacle which we cannot create some sort of value out of and my my take on that has always been, you know, I don't

believe things happen for a reason. Um, But I do believe we can. We can find a reason or meaning or purpose out of anything that happens to us. But that's solely our responsibility to do the work and the effort to find what that thing is. Yeah, yeah, that's right. I really like what you said about you know, I

don't know. I also don't believe things happen for a reason from the sense that most people mean it, or in the sense most people mean it, which is, at some external force created a circumstance and gave us this experience in order to teach us a specific thing. I don't think the universe work that way, but I do know, and what bad things happen to us, we have a choice about how we're gonna respond to those things and what we're gonna do about them, even if we don't guess.

I think it's us how to feel about them, because I'm not in charge of our feelings that way. Um. But even if the value we're able to create the horrible adverse experience is that we become capable of encouraging other people in the future who go to the exact same thing. And that's a very real thing. And when you talk about people in both the terrible things you get to encourage others, um, that really adds great drawing

to film into their lives. Even if that's the only benefit you can find from adversity, that's quite a benefit. And I'm not, by by the way, suggesting that when terrible things happened to us, that the benefit we gain from them outweighs the loss of the tragedy, you know, with with say the example I've given the book about

parents who use children whose children die. Even though say show very real benefit does occur in parents report those things like, you know, feeling closer to their having children, or feeling more courageous or whatever, um. And those are very real benefits. I'm not permitted saying necessarily that those benefits aweigh the pain of loss that you have to go through the order to to realize them, but the

benefit is still always possible. One of the things I've been particularly interested lately in is the idea of envy or comparison. And you talk a little bit about social comparison, and you you say at one point that there's ways that we can use social comparison not to divide us, but to drive us. Can you walk me through your your approach to making social comparison because it seems to be default, right, it seems like it's it's almost impossible to avoid. But how can we make it less of

a malignant force and more of a positive force? Right? Yeah, we're and it's a human thing to do. We compare ourselves on this all the time. We kind of cant help it. Um, you can by focusing your attention on a certain type of social comparison, you can m make motivate yourself as opposed to discourage yourself. And what it turns out is that when you compare yourself to somebody who has tried to do or succeeded in doing what you want to do, say, um, you know, write a

book and publish a book. Um, if you and if you pick somebody who is similar to you and who it seems that they were able to accomplish the pass through their effort, not because it's some special intrinsic ability that they have. Studies show that that type of social imparison is very motivating um and ahad. If you compare yourself to someone who you think is is beyond you in some way and they're different from you, it has special gifts you don't have, and and they've accomplished something

that you yourself want accomplished. That type of comparison tends to discourage you and should be avoided. And it really is just where do you put your focus. The other thing, though, is if you compare the work of people who succeeded to your work and you compare it to you know, find and the something seems a little bit machia valiant, but it does work. And so if you if you find someone who's work you think is inferior to yours, but they've succeeded um, and you're comparing the work, not

the person that you have. The work that also could be from people very motivating because you save yourself. Well, if basiciated with that, I can do this, which I think is better and you really believe that that can also be very encouraging. UM. But you really want to be careful because it's very easy to do. It's called downward selfial comparison to look down on people whose product

may be inferior to yours and your view. Uh. And to disparage them or to think less of them than that obviously is more along the lines of dividing us out of their inspiring us. I had heard somewhere recently that idea that you had of if we you know, if we are comparing ourselves to somebody who we do think is like us or inspires us, that can be positive because you can always look up or look down from any you know, nearly any position. And what I

find though, is either of those views. I'm not I'm not really connecting with people. I'm just I'm measuring myself against them, and it seems to be so such a painful thing for me to do. Yes, because if you you can always find someone who doing better than you, and if you continue to compare yourself against those people, all you'll do with feeling if you you're or bad about yourself in some way. Uh, And that's that's really

a mistake. But when you find those people who you feel like just like you, they succeeded that that is, you know, um, that's really encouraging to people because that it makes them feel like they can do it is the best kind of encouragement. You can get that someone just like you succeeds and you think yourself, if they can do it, I can do it. Yeah, exactly. That is powerful. The other thing we talked a little bit earlier about sort of taking those small steps and as

you do, the road changes. I think that another thing with comparison, particularly when you talk about goals, whether it be writing a book or doing some kind of art, is that it's very easy to compare where we are now with where somebody else is after ten years of work, for example. And and it's I think it's really useful to try and keep that in mind as we think about it, like, oh, yeah, here's where I'm at, I'm starting here, and in five ten years I will be

in a very different place. Yeah. The other thing too is you know, when you find yourself trapped in that that cons and so much it's far advanced, you would

be discouraged for them so far ahead. The issue is you just don't know their full story, right, because if you actually learn that story, learned about what they were like, what their lives are like, where they were sort of where you are now, often it's worth you here, Wow, they went through that happened in that calful make you feel very better because if the rare person who just is born with a true field spoon in their mouths, who can sort of leap from success and success without

really failing and struggling, And when you really learn what people have to go through and recognize that that even if people have great talent that without how to work and sort of facing obstacles and resisting discouragement, that couldn't have become successful, it again makes them seem more like you. And that's another way on that trap is to sort of understand or learn their stories you can exactly. So

we're nearing the end of our time. But there was one last piece of the book that I wanted to talk about. Maybe we can use this as a as a place to wrap up. But you talk a lot in the book about the power of determination. Can you share a little bit more about what determination means to you and how we feed that. I think it's important to distinguish between determination and will power. That will power or sort of the punching of the will and then pushing them through an obstacle um to give a goal

is one tool of determination. But I think about determination as a promise or a vow that you make for yourself. So in Buddhism, for example, the type of Buddhism my practice prayer is really in determination because Buddhism and Buddhism,

you don't pray to the external force. You really sort of um mustering up your own life force to gear up to sort of lift the heavy weight, whether it's a literal weight or it's actually to take on a big, a big you know, uh goal that you have, and it is it is the commitment that you pull out to um to do whatever it takes, to become whatever it takes. That often is what is the key determining

success and failure. And when I go out to a goal, if it's important to me, I pause and I really think to myself, what am I willing to do to achieve this goal? How far am I willing to go? What am I willing to lose? How can they am I really to this goal? And I, you know, I measure in terms of why, what I'm willing to give up? And that usually is what helping me figure out if

I'm going to be successful or not. Because if I say to myself, I want this so valid I'll do whatever it takes and I mean it, and I can find that because I understand why this is so important to me. I think that's crucial. Why are we're doing something, um and how does it connect to our personals as a mission? When you when you've got a firm sense of why you're doing something, you're able to at least termination, to never give up and and in fact, ultimately what

I will sometimes do. You know, what I'm incredibly discouraged is my commitment will not just be so much to my goal, but my commitment is to not quit. That's that's sometimes easier for me and easily commited for me to make than than and believe I can make than to believe I'm actually ulterily accomplish a goal that's seeming too large or there's too many obstacles in my way

that I had no idea how to overcome. Because then if you can commit to just not quitting and you just keep going and going and taking actually moving forward, ultimately, in most cases, I think your goal will come with

the breach. I think that's a really useful distinction between willpower, which wears out pretty easily, and you talk about that in the book, and there's there's lots of other studies that show, you know, willpower can can quickly go away, and not confusing that with with being determined, and how that we can lose our willpower and not do something that's that's important to us. But that doesn't mean that

we have to quit. And there there seems to be so much of you know, certainly in my life in the past this, If I can't do it, you know, I'm just not going to do it at all, um, versus saying, all right, this is something that's important to me. I'm going to keep at it um. Even if for three days last week I didn't you know, I fell completely off the wagon last week for three days. That the fact that my willpower wore out doesn't mean that I don't have the ability to do this. It just

means that maybe my strategies need to be tweaked. You know. Will power is the moment by moment things, as you've

spted me saying it fatigues quite easily. But determination, even when you're wholly discouraged and lying in your bed alone on the covers that pulled up to your ship and you want to quit, your determination can still be conting, you allow yourself to feel that way as long as underneath you still feel I know, and you know to yourself today, I'm gonna lie in bed and be visible and want to quit the tomom, gonna get up, and

I'm going to do it again. It's that promise that you're to yourself, that you're aiming to fulfill the desire and the aim to fulfill the promise. And that's where determination lies, even when you will power fails and you and you're discouraged. Alex, this has been a really enjoyable conversation, and I really enjoyed the book. I think there's a lot of great stuff in there, and a lot of things that that particularly tie back to two themes that

come up in this show over and over again. So I'll certainly have links in the show notes to the book for our readers. But thanks so much for taken the time to talk with us. Oh, thanks so much for having I really enjoyed the conversation. All right, Thanks Alex, take care you can. You can learn more about Alex Luckerman and this podcast at one new feed dot net slash Alex