How to Overcome Overthinking with Jon Acuff

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. We hope you'll enjoy this episode from the archive. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is John Acuff, a New York

Times best selling author of seven books. He's also an I inc Magazine Top one hundred Leadership speaker and has spoken to hundreds of thousands of people at conferences and companies around the world, including FedEx, Nissan, Microsoft, Lockheed, Martin, and many others. Today, John and Eric discuss his new book, Soundtracks, The Surprising Solution to Overthinking.

represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops. She thinks about it for a second. She looks up at her grandfather and she 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 parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do well.

wanted to write. So I think of that parable and go, Okay, the choices you make you Yeah, and so you've got a choice, and the more you make certain choices, the more you become the person you're trying to become. That's how I look at that parable, and that's how I think about even my book. I think part of the you know, the book is about mindset ultimately, is that a lot of people don't understand they get to choose

what they think, they get to choose their thoughts. Yeah, And so this story, to me, this parable is ultimately about the power of choice and the permission to choose, and what happens when you choose consistently right.

so much more space to get stuck in overthinking. And I think, you know, sometimes even that's why the power of something simple like a walk around the neighborhood can clear your head. You go, there's nothing magical about that. You wouldn't say, Okay, it was the perfect walk, or I executed it just right. You'd say getting outside, vitamin D, a little bit of endorphins, those things, that little bit of action can actually help you fix a problem has

nothing to do with walking. I mean it can be a relational problem that you say, Wow, I got this idea for this relationship I'm stuck in. And it happened because I was on a trail run. And it wasn't that the trail run had you know, books about being in relationships on it. It was that you gave yourself a little bit of action and in that moment were able to go Okay, I could see how I could get unstuck from this situation.

thing worth doing? And so when you're getting ready to do this thing that you want to do to feed your good wolf, reflecting on why actually helps to make the reward value on that higher and makes it more likely that you're going to do that. For example, if what you're trying to do is exercise, right before you're getting ready to exercise, it can be useful to remind yourself of why, for example, I want to exercise because

it makes my mental and emotional health better today. If you'd like a step by step guide for how you can easily build new habits that feed your good Wolf, go to Goodwolf dot me, slash change and join the free masterclass. When we are not in action, oftentimes we don't feel good about that because we know we should be doing something, and so then of course the overthinking

starts to sort of crank up. It's sort of an example would be like if I know I need to work out that day, but I haven't been specific about when I'm going to do it, and it's just floating out there. And the longer it goes on, the more overthinking starts, the more I'm thinking about where I don't know if I really want to just all that overthinking gets spun up because I don't have a clear plan or I just haven't done the thing that needs done for me.

you talk yourself into. And if you say that somebody, why did you do that, They'll go I thought it would work out. Very rarely do you hear somebody go, I wanted to ruin my marriage, like I was, just like I want to have a terrible marriage. I wanted to get fired. I thought being homeless would feel good. Like you have these things that you talked yourself into,

This will feel good, this will help. And so I think if you allow yourself lots of decision spaces, there's lots of room for overthinking to come in and go. I mean, it's really kind of cold outside, you really want to get out of bed. You don't even know where your shoes are, Like you can run tomorrow, run double tomorrow, and like you have all this space versus going no remember on Sunday I decided I'm gonna run three times this week Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So the decisions

already happened. Like, I'm sorry, overthinking, you missed the meeting. We decided, like the gavel has struck. Like you can complain during the run. That's fine, you might do that, but we've already made the decision. And so I think that's part of that, not allowing overthinking kind of the room to fester and grow.

I personally connected to it? This podcast wouldn't be as successful if you weren't personally connected to the parable You've talked about it for years and it still rings true and fresh and authentic because you're personally connected to it. The third thing I look for is Okay, is there a spot for me in the marketplace or is the marketplace already overcrowded? So we really jumped on need first, and this PhD Mike Peasley, who does research with me.

We asked ten thousand people if they strug with overthinking. A ninety nine point five percent of people said yes. So it's this massive need And I think the real problem with it kind of lies in how I define it. I define it as when what you think gets in the way of what you want. So you have something you want, you have a desire, you have a hope, you have you know, a plan, a goal, whatever, and then all this extra thinking gets in the way you know.

For instance, according to the New York Times, eighty one percent of Americans want to write a book, eighty one percent. It's one of our most popular goals in our nation. And every year less than one percent to one percent. So eighty one percent say they want to do it, less than one percent do. So there's a huge gap. And I think the real problem when you overthink and you don't end up pursuing the desire using the talent you've been given, is that it doesn't go away. It

turns the bitterness. The way I say it is, the goals you don't finish don't disappear. They become these ghosts that haunt you. Scientists call it the z effect. You remember incomplete goals more than your completed once your incomplete actions have a heavier weight, yes, a heavier residue than the ones you completed. So I think that's the real cost of overthinking. I say it steals time, creativity, and productivity because it's it's this really sneaky, greedy form of fear.

And I'll give you one specific example. Every listener that's listening has done this thing where before you even write down an idea, you judge it as dumb. You go, Okay, somebody's already done that. That's silly. People won't like that before it's even made it from your head to a

piece of paper you've self edited. I just think, imagine the works of art, the curious for diseases, the businesses, the relationships we've lost because somebody overthought something and didn't even pursue it to the next step of just writing it down. So that to me is just kind of an example of the cost of overthinking.

and often we don't even notice its impact. So, for instance, you see a movie and there's a little house with a white picket fence and some kids frolicking, and then all of a sudden, if they play an ominous soundtrack, it changes your whole view of that scene. You go from what a quiet street to be careful, it's quiet, it's too quiet. And so that's what a soundtrack does.

And every repetitive thought, the thoughts that you repeat again and again, the ones you listen to, become your personal playlist. So you have a soundtrack for every relationship, every city you've lived in, every boss, every dream, every hope. And so I really wanted to give people an easy handle for them to go, oh, that's right, I do have

a soundtrack. I gotta give you an example. Everyone listening has a friend or an acquaintance or a coworker that when they see their text message, they don't even have to read it, just the notification fires off broken soundtracks where they go, oh, this person, they're reaching out again. You've built up a soundtrack that played immediately. You haven't even read the text, but you've got all these repetitive thoughts. That are triggered the second you see that person's name

and it plays this automatic soundtrack. And so that's why I picked that particular metaphor because it really, for me captures the power and the potential of a soundtrack.

erases all the good stuff you did that day. You got your kids out the door, you worked a full time job, you did soccer pickup, you did everything, and then one three minute late ride to the pickup line and you go, I'm the worst mom ever. It's because that soundtrack has been playing a thousand times, and so that's to me why they're powerful.

doesn't really work. We have to allow them space and we have to feel them, or we have to not resist them. And so I'm just kind of curious how you think about that piece of it.

is the worst. Mike is the worst. There's not much we can do with that. Mike is the worst. But what's behind that, I'd say, why do you feel that way? And now we'll start to process kind of the thoughts the feelings, and you might say, you know, he only bothers me when he wants something. He only bothers me

when he wants something, and that's a soundtrack. We can start to kind of pull the thread on and it might be what's really going on if you process that feeling is you don't feel like you get to say no to people you know, and you feel like when that person asks you for stuff, you feel powerless, and that doesn't feel good. Maybe the family of origin you grew up in said, always serve people, always put people first, always put and that became mutated into I don't get

to have boundaries. So we might say Wow, that's what's really going on. We can't change Mike. You're one hundred percent of the people you have one hundred percent control over. But what you can do is write yourself a new soundtrack that says, I get to have boundaries, I get to tell people like Mike no, I get to do self care. And so that to me is my version of Okay, let's feel the feelings. Let's see what's really

going on, versus going like, just do it. Like, just do it isn't a complete solution, right, you know, if you don't really spend the time going okay, well, let me talk about what's behind the thing, behind the thing, you keep repeating the things over and over again. My favorite book about kind of exploring your feelings, Chipdod wrote a book called The Voice of the Heart, and it really talks about how anger, you know, is really about passion and how loneliness is really about community. And so

it's funny. It's a list of eight emotions and seven of them on the face you go, seven of them are negative. There's only one that's positive. And he would say no, no, no, no no, like anger, when it's appropriately expressed, is an act of passion. Is you fighting for somebody or four cars? Like we've over labeled it negative, and we overlabel emotions negative. But if you'll sit with them and process them, they'll really teach you even fear like

I would say that. Like I don't like when motivational people say be fearless, be fearless, be fearless, because one I think it's impossible too. I don't think it's true. When I spoke for the first time to ten people, I'd never been a public speaker, I had ten person sized fear, but I worked on it, I processed it, I got over it. And then when I spoke to a hundred people, I had one hundred person sized fear. At each new level of each new thing, I found

fear waiting for me. And so I never would tell somebody you have to be fearless, because I think that means you're stuck. I mean, yesterday I spoke to eight thousand people. That was a different fear than one hundred people. But I worked on that, I got over that. And so what I like to say is fear gets a voice, not a vote. I'm gonna hear it, I'm gonna listen to it, I'm gonna learn from it fears trying to

t teach me a lesson about myself. You don't get self awareness if you say to yourself, I have to stop all fear. And so fear gets a voice, but it doesn't get a vote in that it doesn't get to tell me what to do or what not to do, because it's overcautious. And I've learned that over the years that if it's at the head of the table, I'll never write a book, I'll never go in a podcast because what if I say the wrong thing? What if I look dumb to Eric? All these things that fear

is worried about. So that's kind of how I look at processing your feelings.

listen to your first thoughts. After, listen to your first feelings, after, listen to your reaction, because every reaction is an education. And so if your reaction is smarter, people have already done that. Nobody wants to hear from you. Who are it's too late. It's too late, or you're too young, you know enough experience. Listen to that, and you might need to sit with that as a broken soundtrack, because if your first response isn't let's do it. I bet

we can learn that. I could try that. People do podcasts all the time. I could figure that out. If you're not getting pushed forward by your thoughts, you're getting held back by them, and we can figure those out.

about this situation, or about this conversation? Is it true? One of the greatest mistakes you can make is assuming all your thoughts are true, that just because you've thought it, it must be true, despite the countless times your overthinking has lied to you. Everyone's thoughts at some level, at some point have told him, Oh, this is going to be a gigantic disaster, and you know what, it wasn't Your thought got that one hundred percent wrong. Yeah. The

second question you ask is is it helpful? Is it helpful when I listen to this over and over and over again? Does it push me forward or pull me back? And the reason you ask more than one question is that sometimes there are things that are true but they're not helpful. So my favorite example I interviewed a manager who said, John, I got fired twelve years ago from my job, and in that moment I started to overthink this idea that if I wasn't included in a meeting,

maybe they were about to fire me again. So I got another job, and every time I see a door close at a meeting, I think, uh oh, and I spend five ten minutes. You know who's in that meeting? Should I be in that meeting? Was I not invited that meeting? That I missed that meeting? So let's say he only does it, you know, one time a day, five days a week. That's fifty minutes a week, which doesn't feel like a lot, But then you go over twelve year period, that's sixty two eight hour work days.

Like we try to save time with like apps. But imagine the time he's donated to that. Now that again, is it true he could be fired one hundred percent, We could all be fired at any point. That is true. But is it helpful for him to donate that creativity, that time, that effort to the thought, of course not.

Third question to ask, is is it kind if I said this to a friend where they still want to be in my friend That's what's been fun about doing these podcast interviews about the book is that it often turns into a heart conversation. I had a podcast host get quiet during this question. I said what and he said, well, I've been the number one podcast in my category for nine months and the soundtrack I've been listening to is You're just lucky. You're just lucky. You're just lucky. He said.

If a friend of mine came over and they had worked really hard for nine months on something, I'd never tell them you're just lucky. You're just lucky. So if I wouldn't say it to them, why am I saying it to me? And if you can't answer yes to those three questions, it's true, it's helpful, it's kind. You then have to say, well, why am I accepting that I'm listening to this? Why am I letting this be my soundtrack? And if I don't want it to be, what can I do about it?

processing something in a way that actually is helpful. But then there's very often for most of us who'll recognize, we sort of cross a point where it no longer is helpful. So, for example, if I just got in a fight with my partner, there's a period of time that I'm going to be thinking about that that I actually think it's helpful because I'm learning what did I do?

What could I say? What could I have do? And then there's a certain point that it crosses over that I just circle the same ground over and over and over and over and over again it's no longer helpful.

What was my meaning. But then on some level, because of how your brain works, it tends to distort and add things to situations that weren't really there, and so then you've moved into the territory of it's no longer true.

I mean, one of my favorite people in the plan is this guy named Al Andrews, and he and his wife had an argument in the morning, and he thought about it all day, thought about it all day, and then when he came home that night, he said, I need to apologize because I've been lying for you all day. I was telling myself things you didn't say and didn't do. I was adding words, adding, and that what we do in arguments, and so we add tone and all this, and so is it helpful? Yes, there's a point where

it is. Is it true? There's a point where it's no longer true? And then you go, is it kind? It's probably not kind to you or your partner. So that's why there's more than one question, and that's why they work together to kind of give you a leg to stand on, so that when it's true, you know, okay, is it helpful?

okay that they talked to me that way? Why was okay? And you'll say to your friends, hey, why didn't you tell me? And often if they're good friends, will go we tried, we did because they had the distance yes. And so sometimes, you know, when you think about broken soundtracks, having a friend you trust to go, hey, do you

ever see me hold myself back from opportunity? And a friend who knows you, who actually you have a real relationship with, might be able to say yeah, you know, I notice that when you get certain types of opportunities, you say no before you've even tried. And I think that people see something in you you don't see in yourself,

and I think that might be a broken soundtrack. And it might be that you know, in college, or maybe even in high school, you had a teacher or a professor or a parent say you're not a great leader. You're not a great natural leader. And so now you're getting all these leadership opportunities at your job, and as soon as you get to a certain level, you jump to another job because you don't you know, I'm not

a leader, and a friend might go. The last three jobs you've had, you all jumped right at the time where they said, okay, we want you to manage people because we see something. I wonder if there's a soundtrack there. So sometimes a great way to work on the retired process is to have somebody who can reflect back to you. What's going on.

plane can drop food or a bomb. And so really where the book came from was going, what if I could take all this thinking and actually figure out a way for it to work for me, not against me? And that's where replace comes in. So it's not just stop it, stop it, stop it, Like why do you keep overthinking? It's okay, what do you want to overthink?

That's in a good way? Like for me. That's really where my career changed dramatically is in two thousand and eight, I had a blog that started to get some readership and I started to grow things, and an event planner out of nowhere said, hey, would you come speak at our conference? And I'd never done that. I had no real evidence. I could do that. All I had was one thought, I think I could be a public speaker.

I think I could be an author. Now I turned that into a thousand different actions, a thousand different results over the years. But it started with a thought, and it started with repeating that positive thought. So that's what this part of the idea is. Okay, we retire some of these, but you're going to think. You're going to keep thinking and in a vacuum, good thoughts don't show up on their own. The phrase I use sometimes is fear comes free, hope takes work. You don't have to

go look for negativity. Negativity will find you in the grocery store and remind you of a stupid thing you said three years ago or a mistake you made. I mean, my brain the other day was like, hey, I remember that surprise party you ruined? And I was like, oh yeah. And this woman that I worked with, she sent an email, and in my defense, she buried the lead you got to say in the subject line surprise party, don't tell my husband. But I skimmed the email. I told her

husband I ruined his thirtieth birthday party. When we went to the party that night, my wife and I walked in and I swear to you, she stopped the music and said, this is John Acuff, the guy who ruined the party. And I was like, hey, everybody, and that happened nineteen years ago. And the other day my brain was like, hey, you wanna Are you feeling too good right now? What if we thought about a party you

ruined nineteen years ago? How is that helpful? So the part about repeat is Okay, now that we know we have the power and permission to change our thoughts, what are we gonna put there in of the broken ones? And I would say ninety nine percent of people don't understand they get to choose their thoughts. Most people think they just show up on their own. Even my most type A friends who lay out their clothes the night

before they go to the gym. Very rarely do I meet people that say, got a big negotiation coming up on Thursday, and the last one, like a month ago with a different client went kind of south. And I know I'm going to go in with clenched hands if I'm not careful. So I'm gonna have the soundtracks playing so that I have the right attitude and the right approach in this meeting, I'm gonna choose what I'll be thinking in this moment versus just hoping that it's okay.

doing is we're rewiring those automatic thought patterns. We've got automatic thought patterns, our soundtracks, our greatest hits that keep showing up, and we're like, what I didn't I didn't choose it.

can't believe I'm still thinking about that. Right, Instead, I go, oh, I see it, Oh that you know. Or let's say let's say I'm online and I see another author, another speaker or whatever, and they're really successful, and I feel this ground swell of jealousy. Now I can choose to entertain that and to go, oh, they're so lucky, they have better opportunities, like they live in the right city, like whatever. I can spend a lot of thought time around that, or I can go, wait a second, I

think that's jealousy. And I know that when I'm jealous of somebody, I no longer get to learn from them, and I really like learning. So I'm gonna I'm gonna say, instead of going, I hate that person, I'm jealous of that person. I'm a failure because I don't have what that person has. I'm gonna deliberately work on and it's work like, it's not automatic. I'm gonna work on, going, what can I learn from that person? Or maybe even like,

how can I celebrate them? Maybe celebrating them is my shortcut to cut the jealousy off, or maybe even it's an invitation to gratitude. But now I've got three other options versus going people suck, like, I'm so mad everybody. Like, that's a really hard way to go through life, and it happens to me. Of course, every every industry has some degree of competition or it's hard to see, you know. And so I had a counselor say to me, one of the true marks of friendship is when you can

celebrate somebody getting something you didn't get. Yeah, And that's the kind of friend I want to be. And so, but it's a process and it's not you know, it's not always easy, but it's always worth it because I get to walk around celebrating people grateful for what I have and learning, or I get a walk around bitter and jealous and upset.

a failure for overthinking. I actually have a tool I can use for my good versus going I must be the one person who can't turn all my thoughts off and everyone else has it all together except me. I mean, there's a lot of joy just in admitting that that, Okay, I overthink.

that we have. So when we just keep adding I should do this, I should do that, I should do this, we get discouraged because we haven't really thought about what we're not going to do in order to make that happen. So it's really helpful for you to think about where is this going to fit and what in my life might I need to remove. If you want to step by step guide for how you can easily build new habits that feed your good Wolf, go to good Wolf

dot me, slash change and join the free masterclass. One of the ideas is in the book you talk about with our thinking is that it's a dial say a little bit more about that.

negative thinking. He said, well, the challenge is most people want there to be a switch. They want to find one switch that forever turns off all stress, all negativity, all anxiety, all concerned whatever. He said, So they go and they look for a switch and it works for a week. Maybe they get into yoga and they're like, Yoga's my new thing. I'll never feel bad again. And yoga works for a week, maybe even a month, But then life gets stressful again, because that's what life does.

And he said, So it's not a switch, he said, it's a dial. And when you think about life like a dial, you recognize, wow, I'm at at eleven today. What are some things I could do to turn that dial down versus going I blew it. I found the wrong switch again. I better go look for another switch, which becomes this act of perfectionism of constantly being on You know this will be the book, this will be the guru, this will be the exercise, this will be the yeah, and you put a ton of pressure out

on things. One of the jokes I sometimes talk about, we studied how much fun impacts performance. So we did this big research study about this fun matter to performance, and we looked at two factors, satisfaction and what you actually accomplished. And when you're deliberate about adding fun to things that are challenging, your satisfaction goes up by thirty one percent, your performance goes up by forty six percent.

But what I often say in it is that you have to raise both factors because if say I only raise your satisfaction but your performance fails, you're smiling all the way to last place. That's not helpful. But if I raise your performance but not your satisfaction, you become

every rich, miserable person you've ever met. And I'll ask the audience, have you ever met somebody who's really successful and really unhappy and you think those two things shouldn't go together, but they do because they only care about their performance, and their plan was I'm going to be miserable for sixty two years, but then I'm going to retire and move to Florida and get a golf cart, And I would say, you're putting an awful lot of

pressure on a golf cart. Like Florida is amazing, don't get me wrong, but like, that's an awful lot of pressure on Florida. It's same, you know. And so I think anytime we have a switch mentality, we put this amazing pressure on a book, on a thing, versus going, Wow, I'm at an eleven and that's that's not because I'm a failure. That's because life sometimes raises everybody to an eleven?

So what do I do to turn it down? And what am I what I'd call turn down techniques to go okay, let me get the dial down before and it's going to raise again. I have my oldest daughters in high school. She's a senior, she's going to college next year. I know there's gonna be stressful moments like if I have a switch mentality and go no, Eric, I've already figured out negative thinking. I no longer have it. Guess what happens when she does or doesn't get into

the sorority. She wants to get into it, and I feel this stress and my dial goes eleven. I'll know to go, Okay, what are those things I used to turn it down? Yeah, let me make sure I do a bunch of those right now, because this feels stressful. That's a completely different way to live life.

consultant and you know, I'm online. Doesn't have clear steps, like like the idea, or like being a podcaster, like I have a podcast called All it Takes is a Goal, And so like being a podcaster, there's not one hundred exact steps to do. There's so many options. So doing a lego set for me, like a big four thousand piece Porsche, I have this instruction manual and I get to follow it step by step and see this thing get built. And that's very meditative to me. Like some

people it's knitting. They go, you know, when I knit, I can turn my brain off and I can I can think. You know, some people say I don't like to run, but I like to walk. If I can go walk in the woods without headphones, without distraction, that's relaxing. Fiction is that way for me, if I can kind of crawl inside a good book. And you know, I always tell people the reason you have your best ideas in the shower, it's the only time you've allowed yourself

to still be bored. And so sometimes like allowing myself to be bored on a neighborhood walk or and it can be something like as simple as clearing the top of my desk. That can be a turndown technique for me where I go, wow, it feels out of control. I'm gonna just clear the I'm not going to organize the whole office because that gets into overwhelming. I'm going to clear the top of my desk, like that's what it is. Or we got a bird feeder on the outside of our house. It like attaches to a window,

and that was a COVID life saver. Like that became bird TV for me where I was like, Oh, how's the woodpecker going to get in there? And he had to like, hey, because you're so mas and was like, oh man, that finch is being a huge jerk to that other fench. So little things like that, I always tell people it has to be related to you, not to me. So if you heard those and we're like, man, none like legos are for children, you're weird. That's cool.

I one hundred percent get that. But as long as you have some in your own life that you're cultivating, I think you're in a really good spot.

they want to have. I tell people flip a bad one. So the example I use in the book is. I realized one day that I was the worst boss I'd ever had. I would make myself work, you know, weekends, I would work through the night, like I was doing all these terrible things. And I had just come home from a trip where I had spoken and it was a really stressful day, and the car on the way to the airport broke down. It's just this crazy day.

It was four pm on a Friday, and I thought I should go back in the office for a few more hours. And I thought, if I had a boss that did that to me, I would hate that boss. And I realized, wait, I'm my boss. So instead of going on this long vision quest to figure something out, I said, if I'm the worst boss right now, what would the best boss do? Like, what would the best boss do? And I just flipped the coin in my mind. And I've had good bosses, like you know, I'm forty five.

I've had bosses that I go, wow, she was inspiring or wow he was encouraging. So I made a list of the things a best boss would do. And so then the next time I was attempted to go back into worst boss mode, I was like, wait a second, no, no, no, my boss like we celebrate victories by taking the next day off. That's a amazing boss. Like great. And so that's what I meant for people, is that, Okay, if you say yourself, okay, I'm the worst mom, what would

the best mom do? And chances are you've bumped into some other moms that you'd go, wow, they're so encouraging to their kids, and you go, Okay, the best mom would be encouraging to her kids and herself, or like, wow, that mom takes time for self care. She doesn't believe self care is selfish. That's a broken soundtrack. I'm going to allow myself to have some me time, or I'm going to allow myself to do an arms theory class

or whatever. So that was what the exercise was, is taking these broken ones, flipping them upside down and going what would the reverse of that look like? As an easy way to enter in to the idea of coming up with new soundtracks.

all your predictions are negative and they're never true. So I'm just gonna choose positive ones ahead of time and lean into those. And I think that one comes from a really common broken soundtrack people struggle with is prepare for the worst and be pleasantly surprised when it doesn't happen. Yeah. Now, I think you should prepare for situations, you should have contingency plans, all that, But where it gets dangerous is where all you're enjoying is the tiny bit of surprise

when this terrible thing didn't happen. And I think it was Michael J. Fox that said, when you live that way, you experience the bad thing twice. You experience it how you think about it, and then you experience it when it does really help. You've doubled your sorrows. And I'm not a fake positive person, like I love the reality of dealing with hard stuff. It's not that it's just of the two i'd rather choose to be positive.

why might this not work? Okay, well, yeah, what's a backup? But beyond that, it's all the other minutes that I'm not actively really improving anything.

to my heart and the people I'm around. And there was results I get of positivity. So I work at positivity and I enjoy getting to do that.

how long have you tried it. I'll say ten days. I'll say how long did it take you to gain the weight? I'll say ten years. So you gave the problem ten years to develop and the solution ten days. That's so unkind to you and the solution. And so that's what the process of repeat is about, is that. Okay, I truly believe there are times when learning something new can change your whole perspective. You know, an example that would be I had this guy I worked with that

was really difficult. He was belligerent and angry and always late, and I learned that his wife had stage four cancer and that changed everything that I knew about it instantly. Right, there's times that happened, I believe, But there's other times where you've been carrying around some broken soundtrack for years that's going to take some time to replace. And that's where repeat comes in, is that you're giving the new

one a shot. You're giving the new one a chance to survive, to get stronger, to believe it again, to repeat it again. And so that's why it's not just about retiring or not just about replacing.

about how people can do that. Because one of the biggest challenges I see in personal development, work, spirituality, any of that, is we know a lot of things, but our day starts. Maybe we have a morning reflection where we reflect for a few minutes in the morning, we get things off to a good start. Maybe we meditate in the morning, and then the day starts going at one hundred miles an hour, And the next time I think about any of those ideas, those concepts, these new soundtracks,

is ten pm that night. So I'm very interested in how do we get these ideas into the flow of daily life more.

go Okay, that's helpful for me. To see that to remember that. So I try to get people to come up with as many creative ways as I can to say no, I want to remind myself of this truth. I've got a new thing that I'm trying to put in place, and some of it might feel cheesy. I mean, I you know, we studied affirmations for the book, and I didn't want to, Like I was really hoping I didn't have to because I grew up with sign I

felt like, you know, Serenity now and starn live. I'm good enough, I'm smart enough to dog gone to people like me. But so many people that had successful lives, and I mean across all the channels of their life, not just really successful business, but they had seven wives or you know, something crazy, but had really full lives.

I'd go, hey, what do you think about like affirmations or mantras, And they'd go, well, I give myself a pep talk every afternoon because I kind of I wane a little bit, or I've got some words I repeat to myself. And so I realized, wow, there's value there, and we tested it and it was really fun to see the results. But yeah, so I think you do as many things as you can. And maybe you know one of your questions was going to be about, well, let's talk symbols, because there's a whole chapter in there

about the power of symbols. And I think that's another way to repeat it, is to tie your new true thought to a symbol that's easy for you. And the way you do that is there's three different ways. You make it personal. It's something you care about. You make it visible, it's easy to see, and you make it simple. It's simple to interact with. And my favorite example of this and the history of mankind is the Lance Armstrong

Nike You Live Strong bracelets. They were personal. You never met somebody and said, oh, I wear this bracelet because I hate diseases. I have a an eggs of a necklace. I just wear jewelry about diseases. It was always my mom had cancer, my partner had cancer, my sister. Second thing, it was visible. It was bright yellow Nike. He could have made it beige, they could have made it like gray. They made it bright yellow. Third, it was simple. Everyone knows how to use a bracelet. No one was like,

how do I put this on? The arm park goes in the whole part so I think too like having and again like I'm just grabbing stuff off my desk because this is how I really live. This is a pine cone. So I got this pine cone in Jackson Hawayoming and I picked it up the street because three weeks before I was about to release a book and I was going to Jackson Hole, and I knew i'd be physically present and mentally absent. I'd missed the entire trip if I wasn't careful under the pressure of the book.

And so I wrote a new soundtrack that said, don't miss it, don't miss it, don't miss it. So now I have a soundtrack and it's in place, but it's not strong. And so I'm there and I'm saying it and I'm thinking it, and I was so present I was able to notice while these pine cones on the street are different than the pine cones we have in Nashville. That's really interesting. So I picked it up. I took it home with me, so that now the next time I'm tempted to miss something, I've got a symbol on

my desk that I can remember. And so I try to make it as easy as possible. I think a lot of people make the mistake of holding their breath and trying to change their life in recovery. You'd call it white knuckling. And so I want stuff around me that makes it easy for me to remember this new truth that I'm trying to make automatic.

It's really important when we're trying to implement new habits to often start smaller than we think we need to, because what that does is it allows us to get victories. And victories are really important because we become more motivated when we're feeling good about ourselves, and we become less motivated when we're feeling bad about ourselves. So by starting small and making sure that you succeed, you build your

motivation for further change down the road. If you'd like a step by step guide for how you can easily build new habits that feed your good Wolf. Go to good Wolf dot me, slash change and join the free masterclass. I love that idea of stacking the odds, right, you know. I talk about my depression at points and I'm like, I throw the kitchen sink at it, like literally, why would you hold anything possible? Like all of it? Just stack it all up, you know, like I.

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