Dr David K Reynolds

or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. 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 and wolf. Thanks for joining us.

Our guest today is David K. Reynolds. David is the creator of Constructive Living, a Western approach to mental health education based largely on adaptations of two Japanese psychotherapies, Marita therapy and Nikon therapy. David is the author of countless books on the subject and he lectures around the world. Here's Eric with a quick message followed by the interview

in this episode that you're going to hear. We're talking awful lot about taking action regardless of the feelings that we have, but often for some of us that's really difficult to do. If you're interested in getting some one on one help with that, send an email to Eric at one you Feed dot net. Thanks, you're welcome. Hi. Dr Reynolds, welcome to the show. Thank you good to be here. Yeah, I'm glad to glad to have you on.

We had a particular listener, uh Paul from Ireland who was a real big fan of what you did, and we also had Dan Millman early on and he's a referenced your work a couple of different times. So I'm I'm happy to get you on here to to to get it from the horse's mouth, so to speak. So our show is called The One You Feed and it's based on the parable of Two Wolves, where there is a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always

at battle. 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 the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second. He asked his grandfather, 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. Constructively thing is about doing, and I love the notion that feeding is the key key term in that in that parable, Um, it's it's what you do that influences, um, how you feel, what your orientation is, whether you're doing good or bad, feeling

good or bad. So UM, I'll be talking later on about specific people who come to constructive living and what instruction, what advice, what assignments they got, and perhaps inductively the folks who are listening can get an idea of what constructive living is about. From that, do you want to give us a brief definition of constructive living before we go into that piece. Constructive living is just is just about living realistically sensibly. And there are some basic principles

of constructive living. For example, Um, you're not responsible for anything that you feel. You can't control your feelings and so or whatever you feel, you need to acknowledge it, to recognize it, not to deny it or pretend it's not there. Um, and get on with then what is your purpose and doing what needs to be done. Those

are basic principles in constructive living. From the action side of constructive living and the other side of constructive living is um based on a Japanese psychotherapy called nicon, which suggests that we're supported. The word in Japanese actually is ecacided, which means to be lived. Literally, it means that although we Americans may think that we're self made people and that we've made it on our own, it just isn't so.

The reality is that reality keeps supporting us, whether we recognize it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not, whether we say thank you or not. Um, that's just the way life really is. And and I'll be asking your listeners to to check out what I'm saying on the basis of their experience. This is not wild oriental

religious philosophy. This is about just being practical and realistic life. Yeah, I mean, that was one of the things that really attracted me to uh, your your writings and you're you're thinking was really the realism around it? There was there was something you said about this is a book about

outgrowing your problems, um, not making your problems go away. Yeah, and uh you've got another line that that talks about where anybody who promises a whole lot more than that arouses your doubts, which is absolutely you know the case for me too. I I get my I get skeptical very quickly with anything that sounds like an easy answer.

All right, you want to grab your wallet exactly. You suggested that maybe a good way to go about it would be for you to talk about some examples of people who came to you and you you treated them with with the constructive living approach, and we could maybe um investigate a little bit about what that approach and tails by going through those a calm case studies for lack of a better word. Yeah, I'll he is really simple once and you can jump in anytime if you

think I'm rambling on. The first guy comes and says I wasn't motivated to do my housework, and I said to him, you mean you didn't do it? And he said, well, I couldn't make a clear decision to do it, and I said, you mean you didn't do it. Another guy came in saying, I seemed to resist doing the assignment, and I said to him, you mean you didn't do it. So these fellows had in mind that they had to

do something with their mind. They had to sort of feel like doing something before they could get themselves to do it. And I'm more interested in whether they did what they said they were going to do or not. Okay, So the constructive living approach focuses in on magnifies on the importance of the doing itself, rather than figuring out some sort of motivation or prior feeling state that that a person thinks that he needs in order to get something done. We live in a in American culture. We

have a two big problems. One of the problems is that you should feel happy all the time, that you feel should feel confident all the time, that you should um feel like doing something before doing it. That you have to fix your feelings before you can do something important in your life. And that's just a waste of time, actually, because I don't know how to fix feelings, and I don't know anybody else who knows how to turn on and off feelings, it will we have a lot more

control over what we do our behavior. That is what I could see someone doing, as opposed to what goes on inside the mind. Um. Another fellow came in. He was a young medical student who gave his first pelvic exam to a pretty young lady. And he came in because he felt shy and nervous while giving that first pelvic exam, and he wanted to work on his shyness. And I told him, as you can expect by now, um, the shyness is perfect and there's nothing wrong with that.

You want to do well, you feel self conscious about it, that's terrific. We're not going to work on your shyness at all. We're gonna work on your giving the best pelvic exam that a young shy medical student ever gave. So I want him to get his attention on the exam rather than on himself. That's the problem with most roses. Actually, the focus gets turned in on the self, how am I doing, rather than on the task that's right in

front of them. It needs to be done. It's it's the same sort of problem that you run into with people who get nervous before speaking in front of crowd. Um, when you start thinking about, um, how am I doing? Am I making a mistake? Do they notice that I'm nervous in this situation? And so forth, the focus has turned away from the content of the speech and getting that speech across to the the people who are listening. Uh, And it's turned in on the self. It's that self focus. Well,

that's that's a big problem. It's it's a it's the other problem that that I run into an American culture, the problem of a feeling focus and the problem of self focus that distracts one from the task at hand. You've got a phrase, it's one of I think Marita's maxims that, um, you know, behavior wags the tail of feelings. Um. You know, I say on the show a lot that you can't sometimes you can't think your way in the right action. You have to act your way into right thinking.

And I think that's really what you're you're getting at is taking the action anyway and then turning your attention to what you're doing the present moment, that that thing itself being back in in reality, the reality which is the real world versus so much in our maybe not spending so much time in our head exactly. And Marita

also said effort is good fortune. He said in Japanese, but he said he was saying that, Um that the doing itself, whether it fixes your mind or not, whether it succeeds or not, whether you get the result that you desired or not. There's something about the doing, the wholehearted doing, losing yourself in doing, that's important in itself, that's already success, however things turned out in the end. I love it because it's so there's so much common

sense in it. And my life has certainly been in you know, my life has always gotten better when I have taken action, regardless of how I might feel about it in that moment. But I think that is a very challenging thing for people. You're right, I think culturally we're raised that way here here in America a great degree. So is there some advice or tips or things that you can, you know, help bridge that where someone goes well, I agree I should take behavior or I should do

certain things regardless of my emotions. But you know what, I followed my emotions around for all these years. How do I how do I start to move in the right direction. Well, the first thing we need to do is help people get clear on what's a feeling and what's a behavior. So, for example, a person comes in and says, I have a problem with overeating. I feel anxious and that makes me hungry, and they think that's their problem. And I asked them, what's the difference between

hunger and eating? See, they haven't thought that, um, that there's a difference. They know intellectually there's a difference, but they think that there's something about hunger that forces the to eat, and that's a problem. So the first thing that people need to do is get clear on what's the difference between an emotion or something that's going on the mind and behavior, something an activity that I could

actually observe you doing. UM. And then for people who come in early on and they need some help with with getting things done even though the feelings, the anxiety, the fear, of the jealousy, of their rage, whatever is interfering. And some of the short term band aid suggestions that we have in constructive living for folks, the first one

is UM. Wait for for example, that's one sort of thing we all have the experience that whatever feeling we've we've had never existed over time at the same intensity unless something came along to restimulate it. So when my father died, Mom felt extreme grief, and then abs weeks and months that faded to some extent, and then in the day that was their anniversary and she felt that sadness. We're up again, it was. It was actually a new sadness.

By the way, it's it's it reminds her of the sadness she felt when Dad died, But it it's um, it's not exactly the same. We changed moment by moment, and then the day that she gave away his clothes to Salvation Army and so forth, those events we stimulated her feelings, and that's the good news. The bad news is, of course, that that the feelings that we like are

like that too. So UM. When couples come to me because they're having problems with their relationship, whatever that is, UM, and I'll say, well, what did you do when you were recording when you were dating? And they'll say, well, we cuddled and we said sweet things to another, and you had delicious dinners and he gave you to the gifts and so forth. And now it's ten years after we got married, and and the relations ship is isn't as strong as it used to be, And I say, well,

are you doing those things anymore? And then well, no, we were not doing those things. Well, of course not. Then then the love, the the affection, the intimacy that you've felt in your courtship days, of course, that's going to fade over time unless you do things that we stimulate it so that the first hint if you're having trouble with feelings that we've given constructive things, is to wait a while. The second hint is to distract yourself. In my books, typically I write about how I am

afraid to fly. I'm scared to deathify I'm sure that every time I get on the plane, I'm going to die. And I really believe that I put my affairs into order before I get on the flight and I have to fly to Japan. I spend some spring and fall in Japan every year, and um, there's no bridge between the US and Japan, so there's no chance for me to drive. But when I get on a a plane and we hit turbulence, especially, that's when I get really scared.

And that's just flying being afraid doesn't stop me from flying. That's the only thing that stops people from flying is if they don't buy airline tickets. You can check that out and try to get on a plane without an airline ticket, and you can't do it. But you can get on a plane feeling scared to death. And so when I get on a plane and we hit turbulence, what I want to do is I want to um

get up and sleep the aisles. And the reason why I want to do that is because when you're upset about something, it's easier to do activities that involve big muscle activity. It's easier to polish your shoes or wash the dishes or clean your house than it is to do your income tax or to read a book. And if you want to distract yourself, the best way to you to speak musle activity. And so when I sit in my seat because they won't let me get up and sleep the plane, I sit in my seat with

the seatbelt fastened, and I paint little postcards. And sometimes while I'm painting flowers on postcards, I forget about the fear, and that gives me some temporary relief. But the important thing is that it's okay to be scared to death to fly, as long as you can get on the plane and do what we need to do. Anyway. I need to get to Japan, I need to get back to the United States, and I can do that scared

to death or not. That's one of my membership cards into the into the community of of folks who are imperfect and sometimes neurotic. So when somebody talk to me about phobias or anxiety or whatever, I can talk to them from my experience. I'm rather in some ways, I'm rather glad that I have with your offlying um. That's one of the stimuli. It helped me to write those

those dirty books really fast. Let's talk about feelings for a second, because I'm always I always explore a lot this idea of the gray line between um experiencing an emotion and UM, you know, sort of on one end of the spectrum is wallowing in your emotion. On the other end of the spectrum is I just don't think about them. I repressed them, I make them go away somehow.

And I think you're describing more of a middle ground there. So, so what is the what do you see the role of of emotions to be and um, you know, I don't think you're advocating just trying to pretend that they exist. So how does that fit in? Because I see that the behavior is the thing that you're saying, let's focus on that. But what do we do with the emotions? Yeah, feelings give us information, and feelings are real, their their reality.

And if there's anything in constructive living in more to therapy or the icon side of constructive living, um, it's to be realistic. And so you don't want to deny or ignore important parts of reality that they are giving you information. So great, whatever feelings come along, um, you you pick up the information from them, but they're not That's not the only information that reality is sending you.

It's sending you information about one of the people desire from you, from what the situation that you're in requires of you, what your purposes are. So you take into consideration all those things and then you decide on what needs to be done and go and do it. But you don't let feelings be the only um piece of information that that guides your behavior. You don't want to

do that. For example, you had a person come to me and said she was having trouble she was wanted to be a designer, but she didn't have confidence, and she felt insecure about becoming a designer. And I told her, you know, um that lack of confidence is normal, natural, it's information that you haven't been a successful designer. And the way if you want to get confidence about being a designer, what you need to do is start being a designer, and if you succeed at it, the confidence

is going to come. She thought that confidence ought to come first, and confidence was the most important criterion for becoming whatever it was she wanted to become a designer. It's it's a confidence is a byproduct of trying thing and succeeding. My guess is the first time that you gave an interview with somebody, you weren't absolutely full of confidence. You hoped you wouldn't make too many mistakes, and as as you went along, the confidence grew because you had

experience and you succeeded in what you do. One of the things I thought was really interesting was and again, you've written thirty books, so I've only gotten you know, parts of So if any of this is evolved since aying the things I've I've read, you know, certainly let me know. But one of the things I got was that the point of taking action, so you know, I feel this thing, I recognize it. Okay, now what's the next thing to do? The point of that is not

necessarily to make those emotions go away. The point is to is to to um to take the action itself right to use those emotions. You might as well use them, because there's there's nothing I don't know of any way of eracing that makes up UM. If you take enough drugs or try to pretend that they're not there and so forth, that's that's just a waste of time. You're you're better off just taking advantage of those emotions that

come up. What you don't want to do is you don't want to focus so much on the emotions that you lose track of whatever else is going on in your life. One of the things that you talked about that was really really hit me, and I'll just I'll just read it, um, was that you said, some people who haven't got their conduct under control are afraid of their feelings. They're worried that if they allow their passions to well up, they're going to behave themselves into a

lot of trouble. So they sit on their feelings, try to ignore them, try not to feel. Such people usually come in for therapy complaining that life is gray and meaningless. And that really hit me as somebody who used to not have my behavior under control UM earlier in my life, I was really struck by by that fear of having a feeling because I don't think I'll be able to

control it. I don't know about UM about that so much from experience, because I grew up with a in a have a strict environment where behavior was was was really important, and so UM. I hope that that people understand that whatever uncontrollable feelings appear, that behavior is still controllable. No one said that constructive living is easy. UM, it's really easy to understand. I think it makes a certain certain amount of perfect sense. It sounds almost like grandmother's

common sense. And you can find this kind of wisdom in Um Sufism, and you can find it in UM in Americason's work. You can find it in a lot of different places. Now that I know about it, I know where to look. But nobody suggests that developing these habits of of of holding to your purpose and doing what needs to be done is easy, and nobody that I know does it right all the time, including myself. Yeah,

it is. It is a challenge, and I think it's a it's it's a habit to definitely a behavior to work on, and I think that's the I think for me, the realization that I didn't need to feel a certain way to take action really was a big one. I

think that's like a lot of things. It's one thing to intellectually know it and another to be able to implement it, which is kind of why I was asking earlier, what are what are some ways people can can work to retrain that very It's a pretty dominant UM way of thinking at this point for for an awful lot of people. Yeah, we had have some hints about how to make behaviors easier. For example, their common sense sorts

of things. UM, if you have a big project, you break it up into little pieces and do it one piece at a time. Or you might UM tell other people, for example, you want to quit smoking, you might tell other people that you're gonna quit smoking. If you make a public commitment about that, it makes a little easier to do UM if you if you start one one of the hints that more to suggest is get yourself, get your body up and moving, and it's easier to um to get a task accomplished rather than sitting on

the couch. For example, we had a lady who's whose house needed to be cleaning. Her house was completely messy, and she would sit in the couch for an hour or so trying to figure out the best place to start cleaning your house. The kitchen was messy, that the bathroom was messy, and so forth, and and so when a constructive living instructor went to a house. We don't have to always do constructive living in an office situation.

Sometimes we go to our students facilities and the constructive living lady showed up and and just started cleaning right in front of where the lady was, And the lady caught on that once you get started, you can you start looking around for oh, this part needs cleaning too, and this part needs cleaning too. But sitting on the couch trying to figure out mentally the best place to

start is is really a waste of time. We suggested, if you haven't decided where to clean your house after ten minutes sitting on the couch, you do it in alphabetical order. That doesn't it's anything is better than just sitting, that's right, And it's that that sitting is just um. You know, can become can become very paralyzing. And I was having a conversation with somebody um about a week ago, and we were talking about the idea of decision fatigue.

How how for some of us, we we spend so much time thinking we have to come up with the right decision. And that's why routines can be so valuable because we're not spending cycles on trying to decide. Am I going to the gym? Am I not going to the gym? Am I getting out of bed? Am I not getting out of bed? Those are I think, at least for me, those those uh, those where wear me down versus just getting in motion in some way. Yes, the whole the whole half hour, four or five minutes

of my morning is is just automatic. It's um. But the other side of that is you have to be flexible enough to know that when the situation, when reality presents you with something different that needs to be done, that you're flexible enough to step out of the routine for a moment and then get back to it. Later one. You need to somewhere In one of your readings, you talked about your your icy Ohio birthplace. Where are you from in Ohio? That's actually where where we're we're out

of Columbus is where I'm not out of Dayton. We have the oak Wood which is a suburb of Dayton. Dad worked at the NCR at the big factory there and mom mom worked at Wright Patterson Air Force Air Force Space. And Um, I grew up not knowing anything about college or the difference between a b A and a master's degree or whatever. So it was a long, long journey that that got me to become a d h D. Let's talk a little bit about the nikon um work because I don't I don't really understand that's

a that's a concept I'm not real familiar with. So can we spend a little bit more time on that. Yeah, Um, you know, we were taught as I was growing up that any success that I had in my life was thanks to my own efforts, and that any failures that came up in my life were the faults of other people. My parents didn't raise me properly, or the boss didn't like me, or the teacher had a different teacher's better whatever.

So in the United States that it's convenient to believe that that our successes are thanks just to our own efforts. Unfortunately that that just isn't realistic. For example, UM, we're talking now on a telephone that neither of us actually created, and we didn't invent it, we didn't um produce it. Um, we're talking because somebody went to the trouble to teach

us this English language that we can communicate with. Um, we're talking using energy from food that other people produced and truckers that we never met trucked produced to a supermarket and and we bought that food with money that we call our money. But but the money that we call our money to buy that food was given to

us by other people because of work we did. And the work that we did was we learned how to do from other people, and other people hired us to do the work that we did, and and so forth. So when I try to trace back anything in my life that's strictly mine thanks to my own efforts, I'm I have to run into hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of folks that I never met. U one of the things I found is I have a class that I teach her in Kuse Bay on Mondays for

elderly folks that at local residents. And one of the things that we're fond of saying is that when when you come into the class and you sit down in the chair, as soon as you sit down in a chair, you think of it as you were a chair. Of course, you didn't produce that chair, You didn't design that chair. He didn't carry it up into that room or set set it up. But all you had to do is rub your rump against that chair and it became your chair.

And if we take a break and go out of the room and come back and somebody else is sitting in your chair, you might really be upset. So there's this this funny notion in American culture that that we can ascribe things as ours thanks to just our own, our own efforts, even though it's all borrowed. Our whole lives are borrowed. Um our parents, of course, but then other ancestors going back and back and back and back

in history. So um. The good news is that even though I'm sometimes a really fine fellow and sometimes to use these technical terms, I'm a jerk. Um, reality keeps supporting me, whether I deserve it or not. Um, people still keep producing food for me, and that the telephone system continues to work for me, and the car that that some factory workers that I never met made, um

continues to move me around from place to place. So any notion that UM that I need to be full of confidence about myself, knowing that sometimes I'm a good guy and sometimes I'm not, that goes by the wayside, and in in replacement for that is something that we call reality. Confidence that it means that UM, whether I deserve it or not, whether I recognize it or not, whether I'm thanks well or not, whether I say thank you or not, the reality is that, in concrete, specific,

ordinary ways, the world keeps supporting me. Help me understand how practically you use that with people to apply to the challenges they're having. Okay, here's some assignments that I'll give folks to to help them understand what that's about. A quarreling couple comes to me, and one of the things I'll give them is the assignment individually. I'll see them individually, and I'll give each of them the assignment to give the their partner ten thank you as a day.

And you can imagine the resistance that comes to me from that. They're quarreling and they don't thank that other guy for anything. They're they're busy looking for the problems that that other person is causing them. They're they're sort of like lawyers. They're working on that um. But in order to get the ten thank yous out of the way, that's their assignment. They'll keep track, they'll actually make little marks. And because the assignment is ten to thank you is um.

They have to look for occasions when that other person is doing something for them. And and they wouldn't give an eleventh and thank you to that person for the world because the assignment was tenn and and they don't. They don't feel like giving him the other on. But sometimes they surprise themselves by discovering that um, that that it's not all that difficult to get the ten thank yous out of the way. And of course they don't want to say thank you for nothing. They have to

find something that that person actually does for them. And and so what I'm trying to do is get them to see the other side of things. Also, I'll give them an assignment. I'll give a lot of folks and assignment to um clean out a drawer. And the way they to do that is to take every item out of the drawer and as they polish it, as they wipe it off with a cloth and put it back into the drawer, there could thank it for something specific

that it did for them in the past. And I always warned them to tell their family that they've got this assignment first, because if somebody walks in the kitchen, for example, and find some talking to the soup label is, they could be in a certain amount of trouble. So we're nearly out of time. But there's one last of Marita's maxims that I wanted to um talk about just because I thought it was really really interesting. It was give and give until you wave goodbye. Can you breaking

up breaking up with folks? Um? Some people shut down because they know that that other person is leaving um um um I suggested, and constructive living is um to keep doing what you can to work on your debt with that person until you can't do it anymore. UM. The good news, for example about um uh folks who you owe who have died, is that there are still lots of ways that you can work on that debt, on repaying what you owe them even after they passed away.

The common ways are visiting their grave side and bring flowers to the grave side and so worth. But there are other ways like UM taking care of some plants that that person valued, or passing along stories UM. For example, one of the debts that I'm working with my mother is just before she died, we we did audio tapes of her childhood and now I can pass along after she died at a couple of years ago, I can pass along to other people UM stories from her childhood

and about her. Actually wrote a book about her in Japan that's used for high school students to study English in Japan. The ways that you can actually repay people who have passed away, and that's a that's an important problem, especially for folks who have been grieving UM and and need to be able to do something for a person who's not even uh still around to personally appreciate it.

It's a it's it's another version of what we call a secret service, which is an icon assign which means that you do something for someone and you don't let them know that you did it, and you get no social critic thing. You shine their shoes, for example, and put it back where they were and without being seen. And in order to do those secret services, if the person is alive, he's got to attention to when they're not around and when you can get away less, I'm

doing something nice for them. Yeah. I really liked that given give until you wave goodbye, um, because like you said, I think that it's a lot of us see something. An example that came to mind for me was I'm going to I know that I'm only going to be at this particular job or consulting assignment for a particular amount of time, and there's a tendency, certainly for me, there's always been a tendency to start to disengage and

do less and less. And I really like the idea of you say, we aim at doing everything well until we begin something else, and then we do that well. But I just think it's that it's that, um, it's the behavior they're regardless of how I'm feeling about that particular relationship that it is. It's living in a way

that feels good to me. I would have you dying that in a in a hospital, a word where old old guys were sent to die, essentially, and they knew that when they got placed in that word, that they wouldn't be ever discharged from that word except in an agree,

and they'd be carried out dead. And the old guys independently, we would I'd sit by their beds, and they'd independently say the same sort of thing, Sunny, When I was at your age, there were things that I needed to do, but I didn't get around to do them because I was too lazy, or too busy, or haven't too good a time for whatever reason, I didn't get around to

doing them. So, Sunny, while you can, you'd better get done the things that you need to do in your life, because you don't want to be someday lying here in a bed like this regretting what you didn't do. Well. I think that is a wonderful, wonderful place to wrap up. So I want to thank you Dr Rounds for taking the time to be on the show with us and share some of your thoughts on constructive living. Thank you

for your time, Eric, Okay, take alright bye. You can learn more about David K. Reynolds and this podcast at one you Feed dot net slash Reynolds