Eric Barker: Success and Happiness

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 good wolf. Thanks for joining us.

Our guest on this episode is Eric Barker, whose humorous practical blog Barking Up the Wrong Tree presents science based answers and expert insight on how to be awesome at life. Over three hundred thousand people subscribe to his weekly newsletter, and his content is syndicated by Time magazine. The Week and Business Insider. In his book Barking Up the Wrong Tree, Eric reveals the extraordinary science behind what actually determines success

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Good Wolf. Thanks again for listening, and here's the interview with Eric Barker. Hi, Eric, welcome to the show. It's great to be here. I have read your blog for a while called Barking Up the Wrong Tree, and recently you wrote a book called Barking Up the Wrong Tree, The Surprising science behind why everything you know about success is mostly wrong. So we'll get into the book in a minute. And as I was joking with you before we started, I actually broke the Amazon highlight limit for

your book. So lots and lots of great stuff, we'll only get to a fraction of it um and so I'll encourage listeners to get the book. It's wonderful. But let's start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. What 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. The grandson stops and thinks about it for a second and 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 what that paril means to you in your life and in the work that you do. I've actually had that parable in UM blog post I

did so UM, so I take it very seriously. And for me, you know, I believe that you know, we have patterns of behavior, and we we have had and you can take that all the way down to the neuroscience level. And you know, if you spend more time angry, if you spend more time you know, upset, if you spend more time and envy than you do enjoy and gratitude,

it's going to become a habitual pattern of behavior. And you know, I think it's it's something we have to be cognizant of, that that that's always in us, that ability to change, to choose which side of ourselves we're going to be. So it's something I'm very cognizant of and something I try and I definitely try and think about.

Which wolf I'm feeding excellent. Let's start with the words success, because your book is about success, but I'd like to go kind of to the end of the book where you talk about what success is and how to measure it. So let's start there and then we can work our way back from there. So what is success in the

sense that you're using it well? In the end, I do recommend that, you know, people need a personal definition of success that given the modern era, you know, you go on the internet, you watch TV, and you are c in the point zero zero one most uh, the richest, most beautiful, most intelligent, most accomplished, accomplished people. So we're constantly seeing unrealistic standards of a lot of definitions of success.

And with the work life balance issue, you know, now with technology, we're able to work seven and that sets up a very dangerous paradigm where we're shown these unattainable levels of success, uh, and we're given the ability if we so choose to to work seven. So we're it's incumbent upon all of us to have a personal definition of success to to say when is enough for me? And I talk about the issue. There's some research by Nash and Stevenson at Harvard showing that it takes a

balance of four metrics. You know, to have a well rounded life, you need to not only be concerned with, you know, success in terms of money or achievement, you know, or success in terms of just relationships are happiness, you know, because we need to be able to pay the rent, and we also need to have people who love us and who we love UH, And you know one or the other UH is not is not going to cut it.

Nash and Stevenson found that people need for they need to be they need to be accomplished in four metrics. Number one is happiness in other words, do you enjoy what you're doing? Achievement are you achieving your goals? Uh? Number three is significance. Is what you're doing benefiting the ones you love and forth as legacy in some small way, or you're making the world a better place. So you know,

I think success is something that should be personal. Um, you know, and has to be personal because if we take the off the rack definition of success, then we're gonna be chasing those people on TV UH two completely unattainable standards and we're not going to live a happy life. Yeah. I love the way you put it. I'm just going to read a quote from the book. You have to make a decision. The world will not draw a line. You must. You need to ask what do I want?

Otherwise you're only going to get what they want. Sorry to have to break this to you, but in today's world, having it all isn't possible when others determine the limits in each category. And I think that's just a great way of of stating that you're right, we we have to take this on ourselves to decide when is enough. And I also like the idea of you know, evaluating life by one metric turning out to be you say, it turns out to be a key problem. We can't

use just one yardstick. And that just when I read that, it just seemed so obvious on one hand and yet very profound on the others that I don't think that's what a lot of us do. Yeah, it's it's a problem. A problem they called the you know, having a collapsing metric where basically try and collapse all of success and happiness into one metric. And of course that metric is usually dollars, simply because our society promotes that, but also

because dollars are easy to count. You know, it's it's very difficult to say how good a father was I today? How good a husband you know was I today? You only get an employee review a job, typically annually but it's very easy to look at your your bank balance or look in your wallet, you know, and count dollars and have a video game style score of how you're doing.

And so it often, you know, we we collapse it into one metric and as we know, or I hope we know, uh, you know, money is nice, but it you know, it's it's it's not everything, and and having trying to collapse all of success into one metric is is not a good way to go about things. Yep. And I'm always a fan of the middle way with things like finding the middle path, and I think that idea of On one hand, people say, well, money doesn't make you happy, right, so some people go all the

way you know, on the well what's the point? And then other people everything is about money. And what I like about what you're saying is money is in there, but there are other factors that we have to consider also if we want to truly have a life that makes sense for us and and meets our own definition

of success. Absolutely. I mean, there's plenty of research that shows money can buy happiness, but it's not in the way we typically think, um, you know, in terms of you know, buying a big house or a ferrari or something like that. When people use their money to buy themselves more free time, so to hire someone to to say, clean their house versus doing it themselves, you know, that does promote happiness. When people spend money on others, um,

that promotes happiness. You know, there there are ways whereby money brings happiness, but it's not the the end all be all. It's usually as a lever towards towards something else, towards. When you're buying gifts for other people, you're using money to enhance your relationships. And the research shows that relationships so the number one source of happiness. So the green rectangle you know, does not deliver happiness directly. If you use it in the right way, it can facilitate happiness.

Often we don't use it in the right way, but we can facilitate happiness. And I I would argue, um that you know money, money is good defensively. You know, it prevents it certainly prevents problems UH that can uh that can reduce happiness. And you know some of some of the research you know basically shows that once you can pay your bills, once you can can uh, you know, are are protected from being in debt, from not being able to to pay the rent. That money has diminishing

marginal value. It still has a benefit. But but again, the you'd have to trade off, you know, that extra hour at the office, how much do you make per hour? How much would how much happiness would spending that time with friends or family bring? You? So if you do that math, you know roughly in your head, you know, hey, if you are an investment banker, perhaps perhaps that extra hour would bring you enough money to to overcome the

happiness of relationship. But for most people, relationships bring so much more money than happiness that chasing money is is is not the good way to go, right, And you say, the problem that in the quest for what makes me feel good, there's no finish line. And I think that's what things like money or other success metrics for me have shown is that if I'm not evaluating the way I'm looking at the whole thing, I reach one one goal post and then I just reset the next, and

I reset the next. You know, I got you know, for me, one of them is downloads of show Right, so I get X number and then all of a sudden, that's normal and I need the next number and the next number and so. And I think money can very much and has been for me very much the same thing. In certain cases. It never really ends, you know, We're

always gonna want things. There's no kind of end to it, there you That's why we need to decide what's enough, you know, and to to sit there and really think about it, as opposed to wait until the next shiny thing pops up and then oh we want something new again. Um, you know where the promotion gets dangled in front of you and then all of a sudden you're working more

than you wanted to know. It's it's something we really need to think about in advances because in the spare of the moment, as with many things, in the spare of the moment, you're probably not going to make the best decision if you haven't if you haven't thought it through beforehand. Ye. And it would be easier if those things didn't give a temporary boost, right. I think that's what's so challenging is they tend to work, at least for me briefly, So there's a brief bump and then

you know, I think they call it adaptation. Right then, I'm kind of back to where I was before. And I think that's what makes it a little bit. If it just didn't work at all, would be really easy to dismiss it. But it works briefly, and I think that becomes confusing. Absolutely. You know, it's it's because it's new. It's a novel, and you know, our brains like things that are better new and novel. You know, it's it's

very simple. I mean, if you if you continue to live the lifestyle that you know you did, you know, uh, you know, after high school or in college, and you know, you lived an average career and got pay raises and got promotions, you'd be sitting pretty you probably have a ton of money in the bank. But but that's not what happens. What happens is, yes, that that hedonic adaptation where you know, Okay, this apartment is not big enough, I want a bigger apartment. Okay, well I don't want

to partment anymore. I want a house. Okay, you know, I want a bigger house because no, I'm gonna have a family and that, you know, and my car is not a shame where don't want a new car? And so you keep wanting those things and you know, it's it's very often, you know, people find all too often, you know, that their needs seem to always line up with the level of income there at and and we

could prevent that, but we don't want to. And um, you know, and I'm not recommending that everybody everybody lived their entire lives like a college student, but it is an option, but we choose not to do it. And again, it's because we have this this uh, you know, we want novel things, we want nice things, but it's usually because we haven't taken the time to really sit through what is really going to make us happy, you know, in the long run, versus that immediate next kind of

uh oh wow, cool boost uh. And you know it's the it's the same thing. You know, food is tasty and and so people, you know, we we like the way food tastes and you know, and now we have an obesity epidemic. Right, let's shift gears. You're talking about how we like novelty, and so let's talk about one of the things that you cover in the book is how turning the things that we do in our life where we can into games can be very helpful. And

what it is about those strategies that actually make it work. Yeah, it's really interesting because we all have lots of you know, lots of things we do that are very frustrating and difficult, and we we fail at them a bunch of times, and it drives us crazy. If you look at you know, like video games, they can be frustrating, you fail a lot of times, and then people love them and you know, it's it's great and it's very interesting to look at.

And sometimes we get that feeling. Sometimes we say, gee, what am I doing wrong? And all of a sudden, you're trying to fix the sink and it becomes like a detective story and you know, what he is wrong here? Let me try this, So let me try to and it becomes this compelling and I can't go to bed until I get this thing done. And we've all had that feeling. And it's interesting when you look at the

research on games. It's basically a game work that is superimposed, you know, upon different situations because games can be very difficult, very frustrating. You know, your taxes are the same way, but you know doing taxes is awful and video games are fun. Why is this, Well, it's because there are a number of elements that games always possessed. They're winnable first and foremost by design. We do lots of things and we don't know if we actually can achieve this.

You know, games, you know, if you've purchased a video game, there is a way to win, so somebody can do that, and that gives us an optimistic, you know, feeling towards spending the time and completing it. Past that, games always have novelty. You know, there's a first level and the second level, and there's new enemies and there might be you know, new weapons or whatever you're using in the game.

That keeps it fresh. It's not the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over again. And past that, games have goals, you know, where you have to achieve this, you have to do that, and having goals focuses your attention allows you to get into more of a flow state. And that's what video games are pretty much designed to do, is put you into a flow state and pass that. Games provide instantaneous, you know, easily understandable feedback. You did well, you didn't do well,

you got a point, you lost a point. It's very quick, you know, very quick versus It's like you think about your job. Um, you know, most people get an annual review that is not very fast, very good feedback as to what they're doing wrong. And if people think back to their first few months on the job, you probably weren't you know board because you know you you want to you see other people who are doing well at

this job. Okay, it's winnable there, it's novel you you've never been at this place, this company doing this thing before. You have goals. People are they're telling you what what they want you to do, and you're getting feedback because at first you're probably screwing a bunch of stuff up or not doing it as well as everyone else and you and you need to learn. But the problem is with most jobs is that we see that very quickly. You know, those things fade out. You know, you're doing

the same things over and over again. The novelty has gone, the goals might be unclear. Your own of getting feedback annually, and you start to look around. You're not getting promoted and you're wondering if this game really is winnable. So you know, there are certain things that if we try and take you know, those elements and apply them to deliberately to a lot of the activities which we find frustrating,

are difficult, you know, winnable, novelty, goals, feedback. If we try and apply those specifically to a lot of tasks that are difficult, we can actually make them more enjoyable and increase our level of persistence and grit. Yeah. I've found there's a music program out there called Musician and it's that doesn't sound right, but anyway, it's a game that you can play on your iPhone, but you're using

a real guitar. It is really teaching you to play the guitar, but it has exactly the things you're describing. The feedback is literally instant It tells you whether you played that note right or not. And I find that I can practice so much longer with that. I just get lost in it in the same way that I

don't get lost in playing the guitar. I think it's because it, like you said, it's I don't know if it's winnable, but you're always making progress, you're always changing, and the feedback is instantaneous, and I have found it to be an amazing way to continue to practice playing the guitar. All it is is making a game out of it. Well, I mean, Teresa Mobili's research at Harvard show that the single most motivating thing is a feeling of progress and meaningful work is when people feel like,

you know, I moved the needle forward. You know today I got closer to my goal. I'm making progress in something that matters. That's what produces, you know, the greatest amount of motivation. And you know, unfortunately many situations, you know, that's what's lacking, is you know, the goal might be unclear, or we just might not be getting you know, of

getting any feedback at all. And so it's it's interesting to me that you know, as you're describing, you know, playing the guitar, you have the general amount of feedback. You can listen to what you're playing and get that, but to have that really crystallized and immediate, you know, that provides that much more motivation for you to want to keep playing that game as opposed as opposed to just normally playing the guitar. I think the other thing that is so helpful is it advances me at a

very slow skill level. I've heard about flow is you know, getting to flow one of the things is just the right amount of challenge level. And I find like when I'm practicing guitar, otherwise I I either undershoot or overshoot that mark a lot. Either I'm not pushing myself at all, or I've just gone to a place where I'm like I can't do that, and this game just sort of

slowly brings me along in a way that is really useful. Yeah, when you look at it was ma Hailey chick Semi I who did most of the research on Flow, and that's exactly what he found, which is it's operating in this bound where you know, if there's two little challenge, you get bored. If there's too much challenge, you're not doing well and you get frustrated and you want to quit. And so you know you need to stay optimally to

be in flow. You want to be at that just that right level of challenge where your skills are being taxed, but not to the point where it feels futile. But the important thing, and this is what video games do so well that that life doesn't always do, is that as you as your skills progress, the challenge needs to needs to progress. And that's something that that very often

many jobs are lacking. Is that with time your ability to do the job improves the challenges, don't we become bored, listless, and and all of a sudden, you know, the vibrancy, the interest, the motivation in doing jobs starts to wane. Hey, everyone, before you hit that thirty second forward button, a quick discussion.

A long time ago, I went through a very difficult period and the book When Things Fall Apart by Pemma Children was so important to me during that period that to this day I still give that book to people when they're going through a difficult time. I've heard from a lot of you that this show has been a big help as you've gone through difficult times. And a way for you to give this show to other people who are going through difficult times is to be a supporter.

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and many other people. So go to one new feed dot net slash support now and make a contribution and you are able to keep the show for yourself and as a gift to other people. Thanks so much, as always for your support. And here's the rest of the interview with Eric Barker. You talk about the idea that a lot of us, when we're bored at work, what

we need is to re engage at work. Our our default strategy is to pull back, try and do less, not be as involved, but that the way through that is to is to get more involved and more into it. And I found that to be so true for me. The difference between me resisting doing something and kind of figuring out how I can get around it versus diving in is night and day for me on the exact

same job. Very often. You know, it's because because the instructions were often given, or the channel or the difficulties were presented with you know, don't always have that proper level. So we can work to reframe, you know, the goals to provide that proper level of challenge or to change

the goals altogether. Where if you have to do a power point presentation, you know, it might be something you've done a thousand times, but if you challenge yourself that, hey, you know what, I want to make this presentation much more visual. How few words can I use? Can I use more images that really get my point across? Or

or get the emotional valence you know across? Um? You know, I I want to do this in a way that's going to be like X instead of why where all of a sudden you start framing it and making it more challenging, challenging in a way that's interesting to you. And now all of a sudden you can achieve the goals that your job has put ahead of you, and you can make it more interesting and challenging to yourself by again adding your own set of goals you know,

to it. And this is something that's that's not that hard to do, and most people have some level of latitude. Like I said, to focus on improving your performance versus just achieving the completion of the of the presentation adds a level of challenge that can make it interesting and motivating. Instead of the four hundred presentation that you've done like this, yep.

And I always find there's room even if the job itself doesn't provide that that I can find it in the people I'm around and seeing if I can like making a challenge out of can I make people smile more? Or can I can I make somebody's day better? Or I mean, there's lots of different ways to give ourselves a place to engage deeper versus withdrawal. Yeah, and withdrawal is the path to burn out because what the research shows is that is that burnout isn't merely an issue

of too much. Because you know, when you work too hard too long, Hey, you take a break, Okay, you're fine. When you easily recover from working too hard, that's not true burnout. True burnout, it turns out, is actually the flip side of grit. It's when you start to feel, you know, pessimistic about your job. You start to feel like I'm not getting anywhere, this isn't doing anything, and

basically you start to withdraw. You do a worse job, you know, so of course what do you get worse feedback, worse performance, which only increases the feeling of futility, and then that produces a persistently negative attitude towards the job, towards being there, and and that's what creates true burnout, where people just don't even want to be there and think there's no point to it, you know. I mean, obviously vacations are good. Short term taking breaks is good.

But when we just completely disengage and don't care anymore, that's really difficult because that doesn't actually make us feel better in the long term. That leads to burnout as opposed to re engaging, finding a new way to to perceive it, to reframe the work and make it interesting,

you know, that's the path towards reinvigorating yourself. Yeah, it's interesting because I do this show and I also do some coaching associated with it in different things, and that's what I would like to be doing full time at some juncture, but I'm not there yet, So I have other things that I do work wise, and I have found that when I am resenting those things and I am trying to get by with the minimum, I am

just miserable. But if I just go ahead and engage in it and really give it my all, when I'm there, all of a sudden, I have more energy in general even to pursue the things that are outside of that. And it's sort of counterintuitive to me, but it's proven to be true. Yeah, I think it comes back to to that, to that research. Like I said, treesa mobilie, it's progress in meaningful work. And so you know, there's two questions there to ask yourself. Are you doing work

that's that's meaningful or you're just doing busy work? And then are you moving the needle forward? Which which means you have to know what's what's forward, what's the goal? And am I getting closer to it? And in Dan Pink's great book Drive, he talks about you know three qualities that that leads to motivation, which is autonomy, mastery, and purpose. And that is number one. Do we have autonomy? Do we have the freedom to make some decisions where we feel like we're in control and we we actually

what we do matters? Once again that avoiding the feeling of futility. I have autonomy, I make a difference. Second is mastery and that's that do I feel like I'm getting better? Do I feel like I'm improving? And third is purpose Again that meaningful issue. Do I feel like this is actually providing some value, this is actually having an impact on the world. When you combine those two, you just see that none of these elements are withdraw

do less procrastinate. You know, they're all forward looking, um and and very often, you know, our brains get lazy, our brains get tired. But you know there's as the old saying goes, it changes as good as a rest. You know, when we find a novel problem, something that makes us curious, makes us want to engage. You know, that becomes the secret to really diving down. And then things that from a distance look difficult close up, they

often pull us into a flow state. Uh, if we give them the chance and we engage them in the right way. So all of this really leads us to another part of the book that you talk about, and is also another subject that is probably one of the most talked about things on this show, which is that all of this stuff is a story. To a certain extent, right, we are telling ourselves stories about what has meaning and what doesn't. Talk to me about telling stories. Stories are

basically the operating system of the human brain. We see our lives as you know, a story and across the board. This is seen again and again when you look at the research on parenting. If a child knows the family history where they came from and there was this you know story, a lineage, UM, kids do much better in school, they avoid drugs, they do they do better overall. They feel like they're part of something, They're part of a story. Yeah. John Gottman, who's you know, led the research in terms

of successful relationships and marriages. The best predictor of whether a couple will get divorced is simply asking them to tell their story. And if it's a positive, uplifting story. It might involve challenges and difficulties, but they were resolve alved, they were overcome. Um, if they tell a positive story versus a negative story, you know, that's a great predictor that the marriage is gonna last. You know, how we

talk about ourselves. If when you look at the research by Tim Wilson at uv A on you know what therapists are actually doing a big part of therapy is actually story editing, where we are reinterpreting the story of our lives. When you get depressed, you feel like I'm a failure. I'm never going to do anything. Look at my past, I've done this wrong, and this wrong and this wrong. Well, you've been alive for decades. There's plenty of examples of you doing bad, but there's also plenty

examples of you doing good. But when you tell your personal story, which ones do you choose to highlight? And and those the negatives are? Did you learn something from them? Was that a period of growth? Could that be seen as a positive? How we interpret those stories is really critical.

And you know, work by James Penna Baker, University of Texas at Austin, he showed that you know if when by just simply sitting down for twenty minutes a day for four days, you know, and eating about difficult you know, a tragic event or heartbreak or or some kind of difficult issue we're struggling with. When people have to write, because when we ruminate, that's bad, that leads to depression. But we write, we have to structure our thoughts and

typically what happens we structure them into a story. And merely by taking that time to structure it out to make sense of it, you know, which is what writing requires, people often feel much much better and they're able to get past difficult things again and again. You see that the story we tell ourselves, you know, is critical in terms of whether we persist, how we feel and the

person that we are and the person we become. Yeah, and I love what you said there that in our lives there are good and there are bad things, because I don't think it's a matter of like making up things that aren't true, right, we don't believe things that aren't true. It's really where are we're gonna put the focus? Because since we are constructing it, why not construct a story that is used full You talk about the term cognitive reappraisal, it sounds like that that's just another way

of saying changing our story and changing our reference to it. Absolutely, I mean, I think I think this very much ties into the to the parable behind the name of this podcast. I think again, you know, it's are you thinking about

the good wolf for the bad wolf? You know, because we have all engaged the bad wolf in terms of you know, being angry or envious or negative, and we've also all had plenty of times where we were good people, we were altruistic, we were kind, And when we tell the story, are we telling the story of the good wolf. Are we're telling the story of the bad wolf? Which one do we really see ourselves as which one do we perceive to be the more accurate depiction of who

we are? So in that way, I think the story you tell yourself is really critical. So those are the stories that we tell ourselves. Broadly, there's also what's going on in our head at any given minute. You say between three d a thousand words is what we're saying to ourselves every minute, and those words can be positive or negative. One of the things I thought was really interesting in the book was talking about Navy seals and the training and how high the dropout rate is, but

that people who learned to speak themselves um positively. That changed dramatically. Basically, after nine eleven, the military needed more lead operators and obviously the training is very difficult, the vetting process is very difficult. So they couldn't lower standards because then you they wouldn't be a lead anymore. Uh So they were trying to figure out, how can we help more people qualify in a way that's that's not

lowering their standards. So the Navy did something that they had never really done before and asked, what are the things that helps help us be gritty and help us persist. And they came up with four than the number one was was positive self talk, you know, where we have that voice in our head is telling us, you know, positive things again not not necessarily delusional. And uh, and we're not talking about the secret here where just because

you wish it, the reality is going to warp and change. No, but having a positive voice in your head because what you see across the board, even including research in physiology, your brain quits much quicker than your muscles do. When we look at the levels of glycogen, that's the sugar

that your your muscles actually used to power themselves. Uh. When people say I can't run any further or I can't lift any more weights, when they actually check the muscle, they often find that the glycogen is far from depleted. You know, the muscles are not at their breaking point. The brain acts as a governor, you know, in many ways, because the brain doesn't want you to get hurt, so it quits long before your body does. But when we have this positive self talk, that you can move forward.

And that also ties into I talked about in the book the idea of self compassion when we are compassionate with ourselves, when the voice in our head is warm and soothing and accepting, rather than you know, getting get we get angry with ourselves, We punish ourselves, we beat ourselves up. Um, you know, we get much better results from when it's positive, soothing and supportive than when we

we get angry with ourselves. Yeah, the actual line you have in the book is between saying things to ourselves like I can do it or oh god, I can't take this anymore. And that hits home so much. That distinction in my mind when I'm pushing myself, like what is it I'm saying, and as soon as it starts to get into I can't take this anymore is when I start to become very unhappy. And it doesn't have

to happen just an exercise. I will notice that kind of come up just as a as an underlying sort of repetitive voice that's going on, whether it's I can't take this anymore or this is terrible or and when I can catch it, it's so easy for me to sort of reframe that and go, oh wait a second, No, that's not that's not the case at all, Like, yes, I you know, I can do this. It's not as nearly as bad as what this almost unconscious voice is saying. Yeah.

And I mean that ties into a lot of the uh, the what comes the working mindfulness which originally comes to us from Buddhism, but you know has now uh you know, if it's been scientifically validated in terms of mindfulness, where that voice, you know doesn't have to be us. You know, in the same way that you know, our body does things. Our brain produces thoughts. You know, if you if you broke your arm, you would not say I am broken. You would say your arm is broken. Well, your brain

produces thoughts. Sometimes those thoughts are crazy. Sometimes we don't listen to them. Sometimes they're silly. Yet all too often, you know, our brain produces these thoughts and we immediately identify with them, you know. And when I when I interviewed Joseph Goldstein, one of the one of the leading leading voices in terms of mindfulness, you know, he said, the first step very often is listening to that voice in a distance sort of objective way, and then asking

is this useful? Because our brain produces all these crazy thoughts, and we dismiss many of them. But sometimes, you know, we listen to it and we we don't need to that that voice isn't us, that is our brain. Your arm is broken, you're not broken. Your brain produces thoughts, they are not necessarily you. So we we don't need to take all of those thoughts as seriously, We don't

need to identify with them as us. We can say, oh, hey, that's my brain being crazy again, you know, and to take a step back and listen to that voice, you know as not us and ask is this useful? Is this something I want to move forward with? And putting a little gap in there where we take a second and rather than being reactive to whatever thought occurs to us, we choose to respond to respond thoughtfully as opposed to

blindly reacting. Very often we make better choices, you know, that that do represent who we want to be again, much like the podcast, you know, taking that pause, do I want to feed the bad wolf or the good wolf? For me, I don't think there's been anything that has more contributed to the quality of my life. And I used to be an addict, and so I've come a long way, and I think probably the biggest if I hadn't boil it down to one thing, was that recognition like, oh,

I don't have to believe those thoughts. I can step away from them, I can notice them. And and for me that was such a big unlock, because I can only imagine now thinking back, what a mess my head must have been. That's something we really need to think about, because we already have that perspective in our vocabulary when we're drunk. You know, we don't take everything we do or say seriously. When we're angry, will say when you're hungry, you know, you act differently. You might have a very

short temper, you haven't got enough sleep. You know, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you. I really was tossing and turning last night. We understand that there are different states were in that cause us to to act quote unquote, and I wasn't myself, you know. So we we have this perspective, and we we pull it out again with drunkenness, with tiredness, with anger. You know, we do have the ability to say I did that,

but that wasn't me. And we need to actually broaden that, you know, somewhat and say that there are many thoughts going through our head. We don't need to identify with all of them. We can pick and choose, and when we take the time to do that, we often make much better choices. I totally agree. I want to change directions back to we were talking about withdrawal, and one of the things you talk about is says research shows we don't off and choose to do what really makes

us happy. We choose what's easy. And I'm not going to choose to take on the challenge of trying to say his name, which you did earlier, the guy who wrote flow. I'll let you do that again because that's braver than I am. But it's his research that we're talking about here. Yeah, Haley Chick, send me hi. Uh. He did research, uh, you know, showing that I believe specifically it was teenagers and it was watching TV, socializing,

or playing sports. And what he found was that TV made them least happy, socializing made them more happy, and playing sports made them the happiest. Uh. And when given the option, uh, teenagers chose in the exact wrong order. They were much more likely to pick watching TV, uh, you know, slightly less likely to specializing again, and far less likely to pick sports. And I think we see that across the board where you know, very often we get tired, we think, oh I can't do this, I

don't and we we make the easy choice. We don't make, you know, the good choice, the low long term choice. And this is something again where kind of like pausing and reflecting. Daniel Gilbert did a lot of research at Harvard showing this in terms of, you know, we are often very poor at remembering what made us happy. Now, some people would would be quick to reject that out of hand, but when you look at the research that they've done in terms of how bad are Monday's really,

how great are Friday's really? How good do you really feel on your book? And it turns out that Mondays aren't that bad, and you know, and that that the people don't actually feel like that, and we're quick to forget this and we do it all the time. I mean, where you know, when you feel really depressed, you know, after you know, lose a job, the end of a relationship, what's the natural feel Oh my god, the sadness is

never going to end. These kind of things happen all the time, and yet every time it's it's never gonna end. I'm gonna feel this way forever. And we're very bad often at remembering what made us really unhappy and what made us, you know, very happy. And if we actually take the time to write down, to record what makes us extremely happy, what makes us less happy and then and then follow the script as opposed to trusting are very fallible memories, um, we can actually end up living

much happier lives making better choices. Yeah, you say, without a plan, we do what's passive and easy, not what it's really fulfilling. And then you go on to talk about another study that shows that managing your free time is associated with the higher quality of life. It's not so much about increasing it, but scheduling that time in advance. And for me that I find that so true. If I wake up on a weekend and I know kind of what I'm doing through the day, I really enjoy

the whole day. But if I wake up and I have no idea what I'm doing, I tend to fret. You know, I don't really know what to do with myself, and I feel very aimless. And so having to plan and laying it out makes such a difference in it.

Now it looks like there's you know some studies that show that I think we have all had days where we're happy to have the day off and and what's the first ourselves, I'm going to do nothing, and and you know you waste you waste the day, and then we often feel like that, where did the day go?

You know, I haven't really gotten started. I just kind of sat around and watched TV, you know, versus that that Christmas morning feeling where you know, I'm anticipating this, this is great, and you know in the research shows that very often, UH, anticipation UH provides us with more happiness than the actual event, does you know, anticipating the vacation, you know, you get you're gonna get a month or two months to say, oh my god, it's gonna be

so great, and and that that's happiness. You know, there is no such thing as fake happiness. If you feel good, you feel good. And so to have two months of anticipating that vacation, that is real joy. That's real happiness. And so again, if we take the time, I know most people you know have a need or negative response to planning their free time. I don't want to have to, you know, yes, but when we make plans with friends.

We can look forward to them and we enjoy the company of our friends, as opposed to very often you sit on the couch, you watch Netflix, there's nothing good on, you surf around on the internet. I mean, when you look at the research in terms of television, you know, actually, for the most part, it shows that it's it's actually similar to load grade load grade depression. You know, it's

it's very often we're not watching extremely entertaining stuff. It's the desire to get away from work, from being told what to do, but it doesn't actually bring us much joy versus when we make plans with friends. You know, not only are those you know often much more enjoyable than just sitting around aimlessly doing nothing, but also we get the opportunity to anticipate them and again, very often the anticipation is the best part. And without a plan

it is easy just to default to nothing. Well, Eric, thanks so much. That was a great conversation. I love the book, um so much of it is very much in line with the things that we talked about on the show. I will have links in the show notes to the book where people can find you great read. And I had a great conversation. Oh thank you. I really I really really appreciate you hoping me get the word out about barking up Throng Tree. And it's it's

been great talking to you, all right. Thanks bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the one you Feed podcast. Head over to one you Feed dot net slash support