4 Things Emotionally Intelligent People DON'T Do

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Welcome back to another episode of The problem with perfect We are live from the loft. Hey everybody, Robin's gonna join me here in just a second. So don't worry, but for the intro, you just get me. I wanted to tell you about our special guest today. His name is Nick wignall. And he is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treatments for anxiety and insomnia. He is board certified by the American Board of Professional Psychology, a diplomat of the Academy of cognitive therapy, as well as a member of the Association of behavioral and cognitive therapies and the New Mexico Psychological Association. So hey, does this guy sound smart? Well, that's because he is And not only is he is so incredibly well educated, but he's also a great writer. So Nick says that everything he writes about comes down to one big goal and that is to share the best ideas from psychology in a way that's simple, relatable and useful for people who are serious about personal growth. I know you guys are going to love them. conversation today we're talking about four things that emotionally intelligent people don't do. That's right. That's four things emotionally intelligent people don't do. So let's go ahead and jump into the conversation. Well, Nick, welcome to the show. We are so happy to have you here.

Yeah. Thanks for having me, guys. So I stumbled across your article for things that emotionally intelligent people don't do a while back. And as I read through it, I was like, Oh, my gosh, this is me. I do all of these things. And I just found it like such a fresh take on emotional intelligence. And so that's what we're going to be discussing today. But before we get into the article, tell me a little bit about your story. And what you do for a living right now.

Sure, so I am what's the my story. I'm a native of Northern California. I spent some time in Dallas, Texas for undergrad and then Chicago, then back in Dallas for more grad school before moving out to New Mexico where my wife is from Originally, I've been here for about five years, and I'm a practicing clinical psychologist and I work exclusively doing therapy. So I do psychotherapy with people. And I specialize primarily in anxiety issues and insomnia. So those are the kind of two things I work with people on in my practice. And then I do a lot of blogging and podcasting kind of on the side.

Yes, exactly. And so what brought up this idea of wanting to write an article about emotional intelligence and the things that people don't do if they are emotionally intelligent?

Yeah, well, I, I appreciate that you kind of framed it as sort of a fresh take, because that was sort of an idea with you know, it's an important concept, but it gets thrown around a lot. It's kind like mindfulness, you know, like everybody talks about it. Nobody's quite sure what it means because so many people talk about it in so many different ways. And so, I, the way I think about emotional intelligence is it's it's sort of like, if you, like, imagine you know, driving your car we all have cars, right or most of us have cars and if you own a car, but you have zero idea how an engine works, and I'm pretty close to that actually, I'm not mechanical at all. There are people who like specialize in building engines and fixing engines so they have like a lot of intelligence when it comes to engines. And so the way I think about emotional intelligence is all of us have this, our minds right? And it's a good idea for I think, for everybody to kind of know the basics about how our mind works just like if you own a car. It's probably you don't have to know like how to build a car engine but it's a pretty good idea to know like, where does the wiper

fluid Yeah, see fluid I might, so on mechanic

or, like, what are the different parts of the engine or if something's kind of overheat, you know, like, just to basically know your way around sort of the basics of how your car works is, you know, a pretty good, smart thing to do, can probably save you a decent amount of grief. And so I think there's there's kind of a analogy there with our own minds and sort of mental health and kind of knowing the basics. So when I think about, yeah, emotional intelligence, that's kind of how I frame it up. But I, with this article in particular, I sort of the way I sort of framed it as what people don't do was sort of my idea to kind of twist it a little bit and get people a little bit more intrigued.

Well, and so you say that you do therapy every single day, right? And so Was this something that you saw was coming up in those therapy sessions every time you're like, gosh, these people, they're missing the mark in these four categories?

Yeah, so these are like things that come up across different types of people, even with different issues. I mean, I work primarily with anxiety, but people have issues with depression, or people have relationship issues or all sorts of things. And these four things are kind of pretty unique, not exclusively, but pretty universal factors, just across all different kinds of people in all different kinds of struggles. So they seem to be pretty universal things that if you can become more aware Have them and work on them a little bit. It's a little like kind of knowing the basics of know how your car works. And if you've got some of those basic skills down, it helps a lot and it just makes the process a lot less stressful. But if you know literally nothing about it,

why do we need to develop emotional intelligence? Why is that something as a psychologist, he would say is an important trait for us to develop?

Yeah, man, so many, like a stream of things out there. I think the biggest reason probably, is that it comes down to what I talk about my clients sometimes as capital W wants and little w wants. I think we all another way of looking at this is kind of like values and desires, right? We all have things that are really important to us things we really aspire to. And then we often have things that we kind of want that like feel good in the moment. And it's not that one of those is better than the other necessarily. But they often come in conflict and sometimes our how we want to feel in the moment comes in conflict with what we want what's really most important to us in our lives long term. Right? So like, I mean, a very, like, simple kind of silly example of this is, I think about my daughter's, like learning to tie your shoes. Right. And so, I often think like we're rushing out the door and you know, we're going to be late or something and she's sitting there like, kind of, you know, just fiddling around trying to figure out how to get her shoes done. Yeah. And, and I'm kind of my instinct is like, I don't want to be late, like I'm afraid of being late. And like she I don't want her to get too frustrated that gets you know, disappointed the whole thing. So my instinct is to rush over there, just do it for because I'm gonna feel better. She's gonna feel better in the moment and we'll get to the whatever we need to get to. But long term does that really align with like, my values with what I want for my daughter? No, I want her to be like a competent, you know, sort of like curious Yeah confident person who is willing to like tolerate some frustration, to learn something new and do what's important. And that's my value. That's what really matters. So if I, I think emotional intelligence and a lot of ways is, it's a way to make that distinction for yourself. It's to clarify, you know, what are my real values and aspirations what's really important to me? And then and then to look at your, your instincts and say, Do those instincts actually align with what's most important to me? And so, emotional intelligence is, it's the kind of set of habits that allow you to do that to make those distinctions so that you can go after your values of what's most important to you in your life instead of being sidetracked by kind of like the whims of the moment.

What I appreciated about this article was kind of twofold. One was that you kind of really talk about emotional intelligence in a way that even intelligent people who in their honest moments would say, I know I'm supposed to really know what emotional and diligence is but like you said, like, it's kind of like mindfulness. It's such a big grand term that sometimes you're like, I don't really know what that means. So I like how you, you explain that there. But then also in this article that you, you, it's encouraging because it's like you make us think that we can get better at it. Hmm.

Yeah, you know, and I really think it's, it's not surprising that most of us don't know a whole lot about our emotions and how our minds work because we're never taught anything about it. Most people wouldn't know anything about calculus if they never took math in school, you know, so yeah, it's really not all that surprising, right? At the same time, though, I think all of us do have we all are capable or most of us are capable of being self aware and kind of introspective and reflecting on what's going on in our own minds with our thoughts and our emotions. And these are things we've thought about to some extent. So the other way I kind of frame this topic is when it comes to becoming more emotionally intelligent. Sometimes it's it's not that you need to do more stuff? Sometimes it's about undoing things that are kind of getting in the way of your your kind of innate emotional intelligence.

Well, I just think and that's kind of the the crux of this article, right? Is that people who are emotionally intelligent, don't do these things. Mm hmm.

Yes. So we're gonna get into these four things. And hopefully, we can all become a little more emotionally intelligent or have the tools to be able to do that by the end of this conversation. So the first thing that people don't do, who are emotionally intelligent, who are emotionally intelligent is criticize others. And so you say in the article that criticizing others is often an unconscious defense mechanism to alleviate our own insecurities. And I read that and I was like, Oh, yeah, that got me. I think that, that that is so true, but you also talk about helpful and unhelpful criticism. And so what is the difference between A healthy criticism in life and being somebody who's critical and criticizing others.

Right? Yeah, I think it's a it's the key distinction. I'm not sure I have the perfect answer to it. But I have some pretty good kind of rules of thumb, I think. And the first thing I think to acknowledge is just that being critical, the capacity to think about things in a critical way, is is not a bad thing. Like we all need to be able to problem solve and think kind of analytically and compare and evaluate certain things. I mean, I think that's important. So I don't think thinking in a critical way is necessarily a bad thing. And I think that's important to kind of, you know, gonna lay out there right off the bat. To me, what usually distinguishes kind of helpful versus unhelpful, critical illness is the motivation behind it. But what's the kind of emotional or psychological impulse behind it? And often, I think for a lot of us, you know, a lot of these articles are based on my experience with clients, but also just with myself. You know, and so this is something that I work a lot on myself because I do tend to be a pretty critical person. But like I think a lot about things and try and think really carefully and systematically about things. But that can easily spill over into doing that in a way that's not really helpful. And usually that happens when the reason you're being critical of someone else is because it makes you feel better. Now, the way this works is kind of interesting, which is it's, it's sort of subtle, but when you you know, when you criticize something in someone else when you you know, see someone I don't know just like have it they had a funky outfit on and like colors clash or something and you're like, Oh my god, how could someone walk out a house like that? What the key thing to realize is, it's not really about them, psychologically, what you're doing by by kind of putting someone else down. You're, you're raising yourself up in relation to that person. So you're sort of very subtly, but powerfully, I think making yourself feel better. So if for, there's a lot of reasons this can happen, but if you've got your own kind of insecurities, or you're not feeling good or whatever, if something's going on, and you're sort of low on, you know, security or self esteem or whatever it is, I think there's something about you can use as a tool, kind of lowering someone else as a way to temporarily bolster how you feel it doesn't last right, it maybe last for a few seconds, it does get a little hit of kind of ego boost. But sometimes, you know, it's, if we don't have a better strategy for doing that we, we can end up getting in that habit, I think of putting other people down, even just internally in our own minds in order to make ourselves feel better.

So what would you say is a better strategy? Oh, we had the same question. He lobby right up there for us and he loved it.

Yeah. So I think the first thing I always encourage people to do is and this goes back to my first point, it's something you want to give up the idea being critical, right? Again, I think it's about finding healthier, more productive outlets for that criticism, that kind of critical faculty of the mind. So think through, you know, like you're driving on the street, like, look at architecture, like look at different houses and think through like, Oh, I like this house because of this. And I don't like it because of this. And I. So practice doing it in a healthy way. And I think I think that can be a good first step, because what you also don't want to fall into is finding yourself being critical of someone, and then being critical of yourself for being critical of someone else.

I believe that feeling guilty about everyone's, yeah. Yeah, no, I just think it leads to a lot of unhelpful kind of negative spirals. Yeah.

There's a book called compared to her and it's written by Sophie DeWitt and I read it with groups of women, multiple times throughout the years, and it's really about how we, as women, particularly are really damaging to each other and to ourselves in that in comparing ourselves to others as in you know, we do it even with people that we love. Like I can walk out the store and go, well gosh, Rachel's I makeup today looks so great and mine looks like crap. And you know, I lose in that right? Right. Or I could walk out of here you go, man. My butt looked way smaller than Rachel's in her show, you know, and again, but no one wins in that. Right. Right. Yeah. And

it is like, I feel like I would win if I had the bigger but Robin, but that's just me. You got bootylicious? We all know it girl. So we're making Megan comfortable here. No, no. But I think about with criticizing that really struck a chord with me is that for me personally, I feel like I criticize people who I'm closest to. But I'm wondering, Nick, how do we determine if we're somebody who criticizes sometimes or if we can be critical or critical person because I think at first glance We would all say, Oh, yeah, sometimes I criticize, but I'm not really critical person. So how do you? How are you? How do you become self aware of that within yourself?

Yeah, I mean, I think it starts with curiosity, really just thinking through. And that's why I try to write articles like this, that they're not just about, like how to be not critical anymore. It's sort about understanding, like why you tend to be critical in the first place. And so I really think self awareness is the key to you know, if you can catch yourself doing it kind of in the moment, you'll kind of notice, oh, yeah, I don't know if I really want to do that. Right. But the key to catching yourself and building that self awareness. I think it's actually curiosity. It's getting curious about how your mind works. And the great thing about curiosity too, is it's very difficult to be self critical and self curious at the same time. So if you're the kind of person who is critical, and then who gets critical with yourself for being critical, curiosity is a great antidote to that.

I love that tip. Yeah, that's good. It's critical, and then we felt critical of ourselves. Yeah, we'd love that.

Thank you. Well, it's really common to I think that's a really common issue. And I, I almost I almost don't think it's especially helpful for people to try and classify themselves as am I really critical person or not, or instead just to sort of be open to when that comes up. Okay. It's not surprising, like we're all we all spend, you know, the first, whatever, 2030 years of our lives in school training to be critical in a lot of ways. Like, that's kind of what school trains us to use our minds critically. So it's not surprising that we come out a lot. And but it's, it's not a bad thing, necessarily. It's just, it's a habit. For most of us. Sometimes it's this, we get something out of it. But I think ultimately, it's about just sort of trying to be curious about how your mind works. And whether it's working in a way that really aligns with your values, you know, like what's important to you and what kind of person you want to be.

So I I have a question for you. Sure. So, the one person I'm most critical with, other than myself is my spouse. So, first of all, what's wrong with me? And second of all, can you fix me?

I don't know. But it's I it's the same with me. And I suspect it's the same with almost everybody. And, and I my like, theory on that is we have the most invested in our spouse, like, you know, like who else who matters more in the world than your spouse, right? Or the you know, then your best friend or your sister or, you know, whatever the people in our lives who are closest to us, we we often tend to be the most critical because it matters most like the relate. There's so much at stake relationship. There's a lot of pressure, I think,

well, good. I'm glad that I'm not alone there. Yeah, and I think kind of self compassion is really important just to realize that you're critical This is it's partly just a reflection of value. Like you value that person a lot. you value the relationship and so of course, you're To end up thinking a lot about it and trying to optimize it, which of course can go overboard. But the initial impulse there, I think is a healthy one.

Hey, I like that. Robbins feeling good about Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna go and tell my husband that the reason I'm just critical is because I care so much about you, right?

Yes. So the second point that you brought up is worrying about the future. And just having this chronic worry about what's going to happen and what the future is going to look like, which I think is so relevant to the conditions we find ourselves in now. COVID-19 It's so easy to let yourself go down that rabbit hole and you talk about anxiety. I know for me personally, I've had so much more anxiety, especially living a life as a creative being and content creator of saying what's gonna happen in my future and, and thinking through those things, but you say that it's actually not good to be too focused on the future, right?

Yeah, so there's a few like distinctions in here that are important to get away right off the bat, I think, first of all, so worry is a worry is a thought process, right? Worry is a type of thinking, right? And it leads to the emotion of anxiety. But it's important to kind of distinguish those like Worry, worry is the fuel that that sort of feeds the emotion of anxiety, because I think that's the first really important thing. The other thing is worry is a form of thinking. But there's all sorts of other forms of thinking that are very similar, right? So problem solving, for instance, you it is really important to be able to think about the future and plan and anticipate and sort of even imagine worst case scenarios. It's not necessarily a bad thing. It's really helpful sometimes, you know, like, whatever kind of like, you know, organization you're in, whether it's your family or your company or your country. You want someone who's thinking about the future and anticipating negative things, right. So, I think that's really important to get across right off the bat that problem solving and Thinking about the future and even anticipating the worst. Sometimes those are not necessarily bad things. Worry, at least the way I define worry is it's unproductive problem solving. So if you're trying to solve a problem that either a isn't a problem, or B, can't be solved by you, either at this time or ever. And so that's, that's the key. Like, if you're, if you're in charge of anticipating the next pandemic, right, you're going to be doing a lot of negative thinking about the future, and it's going to be causing you some stress and anxiety. Right. I would still say that's a good thing, because it's doing something productive. Yes, there's a side effect, but you're getting a good main effect. In addition, the problem with worry is, it's all side effect and no benefit. Mm hmm. Right. It's and it's unpaid. So that's the key question I think to ask yourself is, is this pattern of thinking? Is it really helping anything at all? Is it leading me to new information Is it? Is it opening up new sort of possibilities for action? Is it? Or is it just giving me a whole lot of stress and anxiety?

It's easy to understand that. And it's easy as you say that to realize that, yeah, sometimes we go down the what if and an unproductive way. And clearly right now, as my son prepares for a bone marrow transplant, it could get really ugly to sit in that space. And so I really do try to stay with what is not with what if, and, and I know that as far as problem solving, right, that there are a whole team of physicians that are doing that. Right. And so they're in charge of worrying about the details. That's their job because it's productive for them to do that based on their expertise, expertise. But I would be lying if I said there aren't times where I sit, and I worry or my husband, I mean, it just is and so can you give us some tips for if you find yourself Going down that rabbit hole how to like climb yourself out? Yeah,

sure. Yeah. So I think the first thing is like self compassion, like, you are going to worry if you're going through hard things. You're Yeah, you're gonna worry. You can't not I think it's naive to think that you can just if I have the right strategy, or if I know enough, I'll just be able to not worry. Like, no, you're gonna find yourself worrying. So I think the question is more can I can I limit it? Can I catch it kind of early on and not you know, when I'm two hours into kind of a major worry spiral, and then I'm really strung out with anxiety. So I think that's the key thing is that if you if you try to just get rid of it entirely, you are going to lose like this is not possible. The other thing I think, I think, to realize is that worry will do things. So I said that worries not productive by definition, but it wouldn't keep doing it if it didn't do something for us. Right. And so I think the thing about worry is like everybody knows where it makes you feel like crap. Right, like you feel right, yeah. Doing it like, why do we keep doing it? Right? Well, you're getting something out of it. Right? It's rewarding to us kind of a psychology tournament. It's reinforcing somehow. And often not nothing always. But often the case is that worry gives you a sense of control. It gives you a sense of like, power and agency. And ultimately, it it alleviates the feeling that I think for a lot of people deep down is one of the most painful, uncomfortable feelings, which is helplessness. Like, we really don't like feeling helpless, like we like something's wrong, and we can't control it. We're borderline allergic to hopelessness. Yeah,

go ahead. Well, no, I'm just saying that that is so true. I'm really resonating with everything you're saying. It's just that sense of wanting controlling your life.

Right, which is largely a good thing. I mean, it's there are so many areas of our life where we can exert control to good effect. But I think it's really key for your own kind of sanity and mental health to be able to acknowledge with a kind of clear eyes, there are some things that I just cannot control. It's very uncomfortable. It's very hard to do. But it's, it's a muscle and you can, you can build up your tolerance to helplessness. But like any kind of tolerance, you have to be willing to kind of experience the discomfort and the pain. So if you're learning to play guitar, right, your fingertips are really going to hurt for a while because you're mashing them down on like metal strings, right? If you want those calluses to build up, you have to be willing to do it for a while. So if you like what my first tip, I think is just recognizing when you're in one of those worry spirals, it's not going to feel good to stop worrying and just acknowledge that I'm feeling helpless, right? That that is the state of things often and if I practice kind of tolerating that helplessness, I can get better at it. Like it will become less suffering. be easy, but it will become less uncomfortable over time.

Yeah, I think that that's so good and a lot of our listeners are high achievers are perfectionists and so even as we're going through this article, and we're talking to you, I'm like, Okay, let's go through all these. We're all in these boxes, and we need simple procedures to overcome this in the next 30 minutes, right? Yeah, it's like I'm moving along the spectrum. I was, you know, here, but I'm gonna end up here, you know, it's all about the end result. Yes. And it's a process. We are very much we fall into that trap a lot. But what I love hearing you say is that in order to truly develop better emotional intelligence, that we do have to go through some of that pain of realizing that we can't just put it all in a box. And I love the tip that you gave about just being curious and sitting with your emotions and the why behind your of what you're doing what you're doing anything so often, especially when we think about self help, we think that we need to put into action right away. way. And sometimes the best thing you can do is just sit with yourself and your motivation and think about the why behind what you're doing. And even with all of these tips that you give, I do think that control is a major factor in all of them. Which, which really goes into your third point which, which is ruminating on the past, and how that is a misguided attempt to control because we crave order in certainty as humans, and that we're just with the we're obsessed with the idea that with enough effort and perseverance we can do or achieve anything, which is exactly how I live my life, especially if you're a millennial.

Yes. And so that just really got me right there.

Yeah, and it's, I mean, it's such an American thing, too, I think like it's, it's, it's just built into our DNA. And, again, this is a theme I think, it's largely a good thing. I guess that's not a bad thing that we want to be able to control. We want To build and minimize uncertainty, we, we want to feel good, like, of course, right? That's largely a good thing. But but it is important about it's important to meet reality as it actually is. Right and not to confuse our desires with what's actually true.

So what is it about our past mistakes that we've had that As humans, we become so stuck in our patterns and we're unable to move forward?

Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. And I think there's, there's probably lots of answers to that, that are very person specific. But a very common theme, I think, is, like you said, it goes back to that sense of control and and, and really my second third point, worrying rumination, this is very kind of a two sides of the same coin kind of thing. Worry is unhelpful thinking about the future. And it's often sort of designed psychologically to reduce uncertainty. rumination is real. It's just that kind of the converse of that. It's it's backwards past focus thinking that's unhelpful. And I think similarly, it's designed to, you know, certainty and control in some ways are kind of the same thing. They're, they're almost the same thing, right? When you have, you can't have really, we have control over something, it's, you know, everything about it, you know, all the variables, right?

So it's Yeah, if the outcome is certain, you know,

right, then yeah, then you can exert control when if you know, if you have, you have all the cards, right. Yeah. So really, it's just the same thing, except you're doing it about things in the past usually mistakes. Right? And it's very hard for us, I think, to, essentially, a own up to, and then be except our mistakes. Like, it's just, it's just hard. Like, I don't know, like, I think back on mistakes I've made in it. It hurts like it just hurts just thinking back on it. That the bigger mistake is to kind of delude yourself into thinking, well, if I just analyze this enough I will never make the same mistake again. Or or I cannot, I won't have to feel bad about it. That comes from a good place, right? The ability to look back on your past and self correct and improve in the future. Really important, right? Like, and most of the time, I think that's a good instinct, I think we can't really can't learn from the past and improve that. But the mindset of like, I can, I won't ever have to feel this way again, like, I just think about this mistake I've made, I can get rid of that guilt, right? Or I can get rid of that remorse, or that anger or resentment or whatever it is. And it's, it's not gonna happen. Like if as long as you have a functioning memory, those memories are associated with, you know, they're connected to some emotion, and it may decrease in time and, but it's really dangerous to get into this mindset of, if I do x like think Enough, for instance, about what happened, I won't have to feel why. And it's just, if you really think that's true, you're just gonna get stuck in this cycle of constantly ruminating. And again, back to side effects. The side effect of that is a lot of stress, it's often a lot more guilt in the long term, then, and then maybe most importantly, in some ways, there's the concept I I love I remember distinctly in college, not understanding it in my econ class. Later. Economists talk about the idea of opportunity cost, yes. Which is, it's a really fascinating idea. It's it's that, you know, if you have $1 and you spend it on an ice cream cone, you don't have that dollar to spend on you know, a hamburger or a soda or put in your 401k or whatever, right? So, anytime you make a decision, it's good to think through not just is this will this get me something good by inviting In this one thing, you also have to think through, could I get something better putting it somewhere else. And I think this, this is true of our attention and our thoughts and our mental energy. So often we end up putting our thoughts and our attention and our energy into things that kind of seem good, like, thinking about our past mistakes or worrying about the future. But you always have to consider like, Where else could I be putting my attention and energy? Right?

Mm hmm. That is worth the trade off. Yeah. As you were speaking earlier, I was thinking, honest to goodness, I was thinking about return on investment. You know, when you were talking about the two types of worry like one your return on investment is like productive? And the other the unhelpful worry, it's like, there is no reward right there on that investment. So yeah, yeah, that's great way to put it. Yeah.

Well, and I'm glad you brought up the decision making with the opportunity cost because thinking about The points two and three to me, they tie closely, at least in my life with decision making. When I'm really thinking through my past and thinking about my future, a lot of times it's because I'm trying to make the most intelligent decision in my life or the best choice in my life. And I think that I actually just did a little bit of a podcast episode about this a while ago about how looking to your past and looking to where you want to go in the future can help you make better decisions. But I like going into the other side of that too, that if you are too focused on it, and it brings you too much where you're not being productive with how you're thinking about it, you could actually have the opposite effect.

Right. backfire on you. Yeah. The other thing that that just strikes me that it applies to both number two and three, but to worry and rumination is and this is kind of a little tip or hack to if you want to if you want a more pen ready,

write down one of the kind of exercises That I recommend to people who struggle a lot with with worry. rumination is what I call scheduled worry, or scheduled rumination. And it sounds kind of counterintuitive, like why would you try and worry on purpose. But the the idea is that often we find ourselves worrying. So this is a, or we find ourselves ruminating and this is a great tip off, that it's not the helpful kind of thinking, if you just fall into it, and kind of find yourself in it habitually. That's a much stronger indicator that you're, you're doing it for to feel better on some kind of primitive level, not because it's actually going to do something positive in your life. And so, what you can do to kind of teach your brain that distinction. You can say, all right, like if you catch yourself worrying or ruminating, you can say, Fine, like we will tomorrow at 5pm. I'm gonna sit down for 30 minutes, and I'm just gonna worry really hard. I'm gonna write down everything. Don't worry I can think of. And then after 10 minutes, I'm gonna stop, right? And then I'm not going to do it again until the next day at 5pm for 10 minutes. And what this does is it It sets, it kind of sets boundaries on your minds tendency to want to worry or ruminate.

I'm gonna use that that's good. So it's kind of creating a new neural pathway like, Oh, wait, it's not time for me to worry, right? Let's wait and do that on my allotted worry time as opposed to falling into it. Which The other thing when you open the podcast, and you said that you work a lot with it, and people who struggle with insomnia, and the wheels are just turning about how like, I like how, you know, because a lot of people, I have a friend, right. She does her best worrying when she lays down at night. Yep. And that leads to insomnia, right?

Oh, yeah. I mean, I get in fights with people at conference psychology conferences, because I am convinced that insomnia should be classified as as an insult. disorder not as a sleep disorder. There's nothing wrong with people's physical capacity to sleep insomnia, it's that their their mind is getting in the way. Their overactive mind. Yeah, inhibiting their perfectly well functioning ability to sleep. Right? No, it's it's exactly that thing. It's when the side effect of worry and rumination is arousal, like, generally you're just your whole body gets aroused. And that's, that's directly in conflict with what's called sleep drive, which is your natural need for sleep. Right?

Oh, we need a whole nother episode about that. Yeah, probably. So. Alright, next. So moving on to the last point. You talk about unrealistic expectations. And really those go back to that whole idea of trying to find ways to control our life.

Mm hmm. Yeah, so unrealistic expectations there. So there's a couple themes here to these four points. One theme is they, they all essentially boiled down to thinking to thinking patterns that kind of go awry, right? So when you're criticizing others, it's your capacity to think analytically and comparatively and just mentally, right? When you're worrying or ruminating, it's your capacity to use your imagination or to use your memory to go back and sort of imagine how things were how things are going to be. And when you're setting unrealistic expectations, it's similarly it's it's this capacity to imagine hypotheticals. Which is, which is an amazing capacity like as human beings like, it's incredible our ability to dream up and imagine new possible scenarios and futures is incredibly powerful and it's just awesome. Like it's Yeah, great. Strength Finders attributes,

ideation. Yeah. A lot of these on string fine. Yeah. futuristic. Yeah. So they're not necessarily bad, right? But it's good things gone bad. Not at all. It's how you use it. How you deploy it. And so I think with expectations, often kind of the function there is no expectations can be about all sorts of things. But where a lot of people run into trouble with expectations is with other people. This goes back again to the thing that people were closest with. Yeah,

that was not part of your articles like, oh, gosh, you know, I have unrealistic expectations. And when that doesn't work out, what do I do? I double down on them write something even higher.

And I think, you know, I think part of this goes back to I think we all kind of internalized this idea that that expect setting expectations for other people is motivating. And I'm, I'm not sure about this. I'm kind of agnostic on whether that's actually true or not. I haven't seen good enough evidence to convince me one way or the other. But even if it is sometimes true, that setting expectations for people is motivating and helps them get there. It is by no means a sure bat and I think that's really Key to see that just because sometimes expectations may or may not work for you. It's it's really, it's kind of dangerous to assume that it always works that you can just apply it as a blanket rule that setting a high expectation for someone is good for them. And it's good for us. And it's, it's just really something you want to kind of step back and get curious about I think like, you can ask yourself, this is the classic like Dr. Phil line, which is, how's that working for you? I think that's really important to ask yourself, are your high expectations, even if they're, you know, people often talk about unrealistic expectations. I think I think I maybe you can phrase it that way. Mm hmm. Obviously, sometimes you can have super sky high just crazy expectations for people and that's probably not helpful. But I think it's worth kids even expectations that seem relatively modest. It's really worth kind of investigating those and looking at them, and maybe even updating them. So sometimes an expectation may work in one context or one ad Or, you know, for a certain person, but it may not be working all that well for a different person or a person who's at a different age. So, like a lot of this stuff, expectation setting gets habitual. This is something we kind of fall into doing. And I think it's really important to take a as a psychologist, I would think of a functional perspective on which just means does it work? Yeah, maybe it worked for a while, but is it actually working for you? it right now? Yeah. And what? And when it comes to expectations, it it may not actually be working for the other person or your relationship. It may just be working for you in terms of how you feel in the short term.