How to Overcome Overthinking with Jon Acuff

In this episode, Jon Acuff explores how to overcome overthinking and shift your mindset to start taking action. You’ll discover surprising solutions to breaking free from the negative soundtracks that hold us back. You’ll discover practical strategies for rewiring your mindset and creating a more resilient, positive outlook.

In this episode, you will be able to:

• Master overcoming overthinking with practical action steps that yield real results
• Discover the profound impact of isolation on mental health and strategies to combat its effects
• Uncover the power of setting goals as a tool to combat overthinking and create a positive mindset
• Reap the benefits of physical activity for mental clarity and improved overall well-being
• Learn how to develop positive thinking habits that promote resilience and a more optimistic outlook on life

To learn more, click here!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I was constantly predicting negative things that never happened, So
I said, what if instead I just went ahead and
predicted positive ones, like I get a choice. And again
it was that idea of my brain going, this is
going to be a disaster, a disaster, and then I
would do the thing and it wasn't a disaster.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts
don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,

(00:43):
or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
what we do. We think things that hold us back
and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,

(01:03):
how they feed their good wolf. We hope you'll enjoy
this episode from the archive. Thanks for joining us. Our

(01:23):
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,

(01:46):
The Surprising Solution to Overthinking.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
Hi, John, welcome to the show.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Thanks for having me today. I'm looking forward to it.

Speaker 4 (01:52):
Eric.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
We're going to talk about your new book, which I
really enjoyed, called Soundtracks The Surprising Solution to Overthinking. But
before we do that, will start like we always do
with the parable. There is a grandfather who's talking to
his granddaughter and he says, in life, there are two
wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One
is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and

(02:13):
bravery and love, and the other's a bad wolf, which
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

(02:34):
the work that you do well.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
I think for me, it means you don't become who
you want to be accidentally. I always tell people, no
one accidentally gets in shape. I've never met a single
person that said, you know, it's just beinge watching Netflix.
And then I looked up and I was doing burpies
like I don't even remember doing them, like, or I was,
you know, managing five fantasy football teams. I looked up
and I had finally finished writing the book I've always
wanted to write. So I think of that parable and go, Okay,

(02:59):
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

(03:21):
about the power of choice and the permission to choose,
and what happens when you choose consistently right.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
And you actually allude to this distinction between action and
thought a little bit later in the book, and you say,
if action eliminates overthinking, then in action breeds it. And
your book is about overthinking. It's about the negative soundtracksuite
we have. But I love that line. If action eliminates overthinking,
then in action breeds it, And BOYD does that feel true?

Speaker 1 (03:49):
Yeah? And I think we see that. I mean, especially
in the last eighteen months, it's been interesting. A lot
of people have asked me, did you write the book
during the pandemic? And I always say no, like it
was finished long before spend accidentally well timed. I'm not
smart enough to time something like that. But I think
a lot of people in isolation, in an action, had

(04:09):
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

(04:30):
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

(04:52):
get unstuck from this situation.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
Listener.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
As you're listening, what resonated with you in that? I
think a lot of is have some ideas of things
that we can do to feed our good wolf. And
here's a good tip to make it more likely that
you do it. It can be really helpful to reflect
right before you do that thing on why you want
to do it. Our brains are always making a calculation

(05:16):
of what neuroscientists would call reward value, Basically, is this
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

(05:37):
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

(06:01):
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

(06:21):
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.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
I love the idea of like decide as few times
as possible. Yes, so if you you know, and so
many smart people have written about that concept. It's by
no means an original concept to me, but just the
idea of if I have to decide every day to
do the thing, I have now created five different moments,
if it's or seven different moments a week to talk
myself out of the thing. Every bad decision you've ever made,

(06:54):
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

(07:17):
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

(07:40):
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.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah, I couldn't agree more that idea of sort of
separating our decisions from our actions, you know, deciding ahead
of time. So let's kind of circle back to the
beginning of the book and you talk about overthinking being
a problem in our lives. Let's talk a little bit
about why is overthinking a problem. Although most everybody listening
to the show is going to be like, well, I

(08:09):
know exactly why overthinking is a problem, because it hurts,
it doesn't feel good. But say a little.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
More, Well, what was interesting? Whenever I write a book,
I look for three things, and I think this is
true of anybody who's going to launch a business, do
a podcast, anything you create. I look for three things.
I look for a need the people really need it,
And am I our friends talking to me about it?
Is my audience online talking about it? When I go
to a speaking client, or they asking about it. The
second thing I look for is a personal connection. Am

(08:34):
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,

(08:55):
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,

(09:15):
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.

(09:35):
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

(09:58):
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

(10:19):
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.

Speaker 3 (10:39):
Yep. And you refer to our thoughts as basically a
personal soundtrack to our lives. Why did you land on
that metaphor? It happens to be one I love, But
I'm curious what it was that brought you to that.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
Oh thank you. Yeah. So there's been so many smart
people who've written about mindset and thinking. I mean, I
saw you had Carol Dweck on the podcast I mean
talk about mindset genius. So I certainly wasn't the first
person to explore the concept. But I've heard people say
a thought is like a leaf on a river, it's
like a cloud in the sky, it's like a car
on a highway. But for me, it's a soundtrack, because
a soundtrack has the power to change an entire moment,

(11:14):
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

(11:37):
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

(11:57):
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

(12:18):
I picked that particular metaphor because it really, for me
captures the power and the potential of a soundtrack.

Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah, I love it because I've often talked to people
about the thought patterns in their lives that are really prominent.
I refer to them as sort of like your greatest hits,
you know, but they're like a song in the way that,
like a song, just keeps playing and.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
It stays with you, and it keeps going. The more
you listen to it, the easier it is for it
to get triggered the next time. So the reason you
can be three minutes late to the car writer pickup
line as a mom and feel like I'm the worst
mom is because you've played that a thousand times and
it's so powerful and it's so fast, and it immediately
erases all the good stuff you did that day. You
got your kids out the door, you worked a full

(12:59):
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.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
I want to explore some of the things in the book,
specifically some of the techniques, but before we do that,
I want to bring up a thing that is sat
in some ways at the heart of this podcast kind
of all along in some ways, and it's really this
distinction between we hear different messages in the personal development,
self help psychology space.

Speaker 2 (13:33):
Right.

Speaker 3 (13:34):
One message is very much on point with your book,
which is, Hey, the thoughts that you are thinking are
really really important, and you've got to get them right.
The negative thoughts are going to be problematic, You've got
to work with those right. The other school of thought
is a little bit more about you need to feel
the feelings that you're having. You're having emotions, and just

(13:54):
trying to shove them down or get rid of them
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.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
So my example of that would be one of the
ideas in the book is about pulling the thread that
you should ask the thought behind the thought behind the
thought there's always a thread. So my version of that,
when you feel the feelings, process of feelings is think
about that thought behind the soundtrack. So, for instance, if
you said to me, John, I've got this really difficult
person I have to deal with, and I'd say, well,
let's talk about that. And if you said, oh, Mike

(14:29):
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

(14:51):
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

(15:13):
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

(15:35):
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

(15:57):
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

(16:20):
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

(16:42):
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

(17:04):
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.

Speaker 3 (17:25):
Yeah, that idea of underlying the emotion. There's a phrase
from acceptance commitment therapy where they say your vulnerabilities and
your values kind of are poured from the same vessel.
I love the alliteration to it, but it's the idea
that my vulnerabilities or my emotions, the things that I'm
feeling tell me something very important about what I care about.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
Yeah, they're educating you, you know. One of the activities
I give in the book is this idea of how
do you identify a broken soundtrack the soundtrack that's not helpful.
And so the thirty second activity is write down a dream,
right down a goal, write down a wish. So if
you say, I want to write a book, I want
to start a podcast, I want to get married, I
want to ask that person out, I want to move
to Columbus, Ohio, whatever, write down a wish and then

(18:06):
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

(18:28):
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.

Speaker 3 (18:39):
Yeah, you say, when you're looking at a broken soundtrack,
you can ask it three questions.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
Yeah, so the three questions. I like to think of
these as trojan horse questions because on the face of them,
they're very simple. There's not a single listener today. They'll
be like, I've never heard those words, like John found
a word in the English language that's so unique. But
if you'll sit with them for a minute, there's deep
truth hidden in them. So the first question is is
it true this thing I'm telling myself about myself, or

(19:07):
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

(19:29):
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

(19:51):
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

(20:11):
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,

(20:31):
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

(20:53):
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

(21:13):
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?

Speaker 3 (21:20):
Yeah? I love those Those questions show up in a
lot of different areas, but I love the package of
the three of those together is really true, you know,
And I love the is it helpful? Because sometimes thoughts
that we have that are just use the word negative
because it comes to mind that's not really what they are.
But they're not positive. Sometimes they actually are helpful. I'm
solving a problem, I'm thinking through a difficult situation, I'm

(21:42):
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

(22:04):
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.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
Well, and the other thing is you're one hundred percent right,
because it might also not be completely true. Eventually your
brain distorts reality. So what happens let's go right to
this specific example. You have an argument with a partner
you're working on that is it helpful for you to
think that own the things you need to own? Of course,
like you know, figure out your words, what was my tone?
What was my meaning. But then on some level, because

(22:34):
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.

(22:54):
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

(23:15):
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?

Speaker 4 (23:22):
And vice versa.

Speaker 3 (23:45):
You boil the whole thing down into three actions.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
With alliteration, you know, and I like a literation.

Speaker 3 (23:53):
We do we do retire, replace, repeat, Yes, very nice.
We just talked a little bit about retiring, you know,
retiring your broken soundtracks. But what else do we need
to talk about with retiring our broken soundtracks beyond the
recognition of them, which we just sort of talked through.
One way to recognize them is to ask these three questions.
Is there anything more you'd want to say? On retire?

Speaker 1 (24:15):
I think it's always good to do it in community too.
I think I think one hundred percent self awareness is
a myth. Yes, I think we stand so close to
our own paintings sometimes we can't really see what it is.
And sometimes that's in the context we've mentioned relationships. You're
in a relationship, a dating relationship, and you're so close
to it you can't really see what it is, and
you break up and then three months later you go, wow,

(24:36):
I've got some distance that wasn't healthy. Why was I
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

(24:57):
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.

(25:19):
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

(25:41):
process is to have somebody who can reflect back to you.
What's going on.

Speaker 3 (25:44):
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Discernment is a word that's
used a lot in spiritual communities, but I think discernment
half the battle is having people to help you discern.

Speaker 1 (25:55):
You know, we're not supposed to do it alone, whether
it's recovery, whether it's your faith, anything like, we're not
supposed to carry it alone.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (26:02):
I was just reflecting on something. You may have heard
of this before, called Solomon's paradox. Solomon's paradox is named
after King Solomon, who you know, wise King Solomon. We
all know how wise he was, well, apparently not in
his own life, so people would travel from around the
world to see him to get his wisdom, but for
himself couldn't do it. And that's that's known as Solomon's paradox.

(26:22):
We don't see ourselves.

Speaker 1 (26:24):
Yeah, yeah, it's so true. I mean, he had some
very clear tenets and broke just about every one.

Speaker 3 (26:28):
Of them, right right, Yeah, So okay, so three actions
to change your thoughts. Retire our broken soundtrack. The next
is to replace them with new ones. So let's talk
about this process.

Speaker 1 (26:39):
Yeah, so this one really came from there's a lot
of kind of mindset approach or overthinking approaches says stop it,
stop it, stop overthinking, stop thinking, And one, I think
that's impossible. We're amazing thinking machines. And two why would
I ever turn off this amazing machine? What would happen
if I just fed it with good thoughts? And so
I really believe that if you can work, you can wonder,

(27:01):
If you can doubt, you can dominate, if you can spin,
you can soar. It's kind of the you know, a
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

(27:22):
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

(27:43):
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

(28:04):
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

(28:25):
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

(28:46):
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

(29:08):
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

(29:28):
thinking in this moment versus just hoping that it's okay.

Speaker 3 (29:31):
That phrase choose your thoughts is an interesting one, right,
because on one level, we don't choose what shows up.
If you sit down to try and meditate for ten minutes,
you see this right away. You're like in the grocery,
it's like boom, there it is.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
Yeah, So they just appear.

Speaker 3 (29:48):
So in that sense, we don't choose them, but we
do have the ability to then say what do we
want to respond? We also have the ability to say
what do I want to insert? And then that retiring
and replacing processing that you're discrict actually causes us to be,
in a way choosing our future thoughts because what we're
doing is we're rewiring those automatic thought patterns. We've got

(30:10):
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.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
There it is.

Speaker 3 (30:17):
And so you can't choose what shows up. But by
choosing what you focus on in the moment and working
with them, you're actually working on sort of making it
more likely you're going to choose your thoughts in the
future by what you choose now one hundred.

Speaker 1 (30:30):
That's a great point, and which is why retires the
first step, because you know, I think you might not
be able to choose what shows up. But you choose
what you entertain, You choose what you dance with, you
choose what you give the rest of the day too.
So you're right. You know. I might be walking down
the street and all of a sudden, I remember something
terrible I did, or something that, you know, some negative thought.

(30:53):
I don't in that moment beat myself up, going I
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

(31:13):
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

(31:34):
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

(31:56):
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

(32:17):
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.

Speaker 3 (32:30):
One percent. There's a Buddhist concept called moodita. It means
sympathetic joy, and it is something to be cultivated, but
it means I take joy in the joy of others.
And the Dalai Lama said something along the lines of like, well,
you know, if you do it the normal way, which
is you to get to celebrate your joy, you've got
one chance at joy.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
One of seven billion odds.

Speaker 3 (32:50):
That's right, if you can do it for other people
all of a sudden, right, all of a sudden, And
so yeah, I agree one hundred percent. I think that's
a beautiful way to think about it. And I also
very much agree with what you saying about replacing, right.
I know this from you know, addiction recovery stuff. You
get rid of something, you've got to put something in
its place.

Speaker 1 (33:07):
Yeah, because something positive won't show up on its own
like something negative. Like when you work on the one
negative thing, like seven other are waiting in the wings
and they're like, let's go, dude, let's say And if
you don't have something in that spot, sometimes they're stronger
than the first one, and so you have to go
like no, no, no, no, no, Like there's a void,
and I know in the void, good things don't show up,

(33:27):
So let me deliberately put something good in the void.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
I think that other point you make about like it's
not like we're going to stop thinking. It's not like
the brain is going to turn off. I mean, it
just doesn't.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
No, and it's and it's a beautiful thing.

Speaker 4 (33:39):
You know.

Speaker 1 (33:39):
The joke I do in the book is that, like
the two things that separate us from the animals are
overthinking of Netflix, Like why would I you know, like
it's a very human thing, like we're good at it.
And so I just thought, okay, what if I could
learn how to be good at it and where it
actually helps me versus hurts me. And there's a lot
of freedom in that when you go, okay, I'm not
a failure for overthinking. I actually have a tool I

(34:01):
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.

Speaker 3 (34:13):
I want to pause for a quick good Wolf reminder.
This one's about a habit change and a mistake I
see people making, And that's really that we don't think
about these new habits that we want to add in
the context of our entire life. Right, Habits don't happen
in a vacuum. They have to fit in the life
that we have. So when we just keep adding I

(34:33):
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

(34:54):
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.

Speaker 1 (35:05):
Yeah, So I was having a conversation with a guy
named David Thomas who runs a counseling center here in
Nashville called day Star for Children, which is absolutely amazing.
It's so fun to see this generation of kids get
tools that will help them in adulthood. Yeah, because I
think my generation, very few people knew about counseling. They
didn't know how to interact with kids. And so David

(35:27):
Thomas and I were talking about this, and I was
telling him the concept of the book and soundtracks and
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,

(35:47):
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

(36:08):
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,

(36:31):
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

(36:51):
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,

(37:12):
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?

(37:34):
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

(37:56):
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.

Speaker 3 (38:31):
I love that concept of moving it a few degrees.
I often talk about this formula I love, which is
that suffering equals pain times resistance. You know, and I
talk about like, we're not going to turn off resistance.
You're not going to get rid of the things that
you resist. But can you go from like a five
to a two?

Speaker 1 (38:47):
If you do causes a huge change?

Speaker 3 (38:49):
That's right, because yeah and so so Yeah, I love
the dial idea. So you list some of your favorite
things for turning down the dial? You want to share
a couple of those.

Speaker 1 (38:58):
Yeah, So, I mean I love I love to run,
I love to get out. You know, this morning I
ran three point one miles, got some great endorphins, felt
like I had finished something. I could check something off
a box that felt great. I love being outside. Another
one of mine that's kind of some people would say
on the doorkire side of thing is I love putting
together big Lego sets. You know, a lot of my

(39:19):
life because I'm an author and a speaker and a
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

(39:42):
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

(40:04):
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

(40:26):
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

(40:49):
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.

Speaker 3 (41:01):
Well, it's funny that a we got a bird feeder.
I don't know, it's probably been a year ago, and
same thing.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
I love it.

Speaker 3 (41:07):
I just can't can't get enough of it, you know,
same thing watching them. Now, we have a cardinal who
shows up at the same time every night. It's just
like right on time, I hear it. I can recognize
the call. Now, I'm like, actually, my partner is better
at it than I am. She's like the cardinals out
there and sure enough, you know, shows up every night. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
Yeah, Well I heard somebody once say, if you want
to be connected to the idea that there's a bigger
world than you, get a bird feeder because it connects
you to migratory patterns of thousands of miles. Yeah, and
so that idea that wow, they're like, I'm now connected
to that, and like they go somewhere at night, they
have a plan, and like it's amazing.

Speaker 3 (41:45):
I often have thought about where are they during the
evening And then that led me to find out this
incredible fact. And then we're going to move on from birds.
But some birds are capable talking about like turning off
the brain. How we as humans can't do it. Some
birds can. They literally shut down half their brain. Oh yeah,
and half of their senses. And that part rests and sleeps.

(42:06):
The other part is perfectly awake and alert. And then
I'm like, that is incredible.

Speaker 1 (42:11):
And that's how they can fly across the Atlantic. So
birds that can fly across the Atlantic are doing that.
They're turning off one part of their brain so that
they can still fly and still wake up rested on
the other side of the lane.

Speaker 3 (42:21):
It's crazy, it's incredible, sounds like it would be a
great feature to have build in, but we don't have it. Okay,
as we're talking about this replacing new ones, there's another
one that you have called flip a coin.

Speaker 1 (42:33):
Yeah, So it was interesting when I would tell people, hey,
do you ever overthink? Everybody go, yes, I overthink. It
was a very easy question to answer. But then when
I go, hey, what would you like to think instead
blank stares? It felt intimidating to go because we've never
thought that. So the idea of like, what are good
thoughts you'd like to have in place? That feels intimidating.
So I realized I need a really easy way to
give somebody an ability to think of a good thought

(42:55):
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

(43:16):
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

(43:36):
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

(43:58):
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,

(44:18):
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

(44:39):
up with new soundtracks.

Speaker 3 (44:40):
Yeah, there was one you had in there that I
immediately plucked out, and I thought, I'm going to take
that one, which is my predictions are positive.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
Yeah, well, I just realized that I was constantly predicting
negative things that never happened. So I said, what if
instead I just went ahead and predicted positive ones, like
I get a choice. And again it was that I
the idea of my brain going, this is going to
be a disaster. That's a disaster, and then I would
do the thing and it wasn't a disaster. And I
finally looped back around and I was like, oh, oh, brain,

(45:09):
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

(45:30):
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

(45:51):
of dealing with hard stuff. It's not that it's just
of the two i'd rather choose to be positive.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
I agree.

Speaker 3 (45:56):
I think that's one. For me. I'm generally pretty positive,
but when it comes to things about like this business
and growing it and all that, like you know, we're
making plans, we're setting goals, and my brain is always like,
that's not going to work. And I'm sort of like you,
I've really had to work on, like, okay, positive prediction
because most of the time, yeah, it does work. There's
a time for, as you said, sitting down and thinking about, well,

(46:17):
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.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
I'm just worrying.

Speaker 1 (46:28):
Yeah, you're just you're just kind of ruminating on it,
chewing on it.

Speaker 2 (46:31):
Yea.

Speaker 1 (46:32):
Yeah. And for me, I just I would say I'm
not naturally a positive person, like I work like I'm
I'm naturally a fairly melancholy person. Like the example is,
we went and saw the Counting Crows and concert the
other night, and I loved it, and my wife was
like Oh, they're so MOPy. I loved it. I was like, yeah,
it makes me want to write poetry. And my mom's minivan.
I'm in high school and around here, and so I'm

(46:54):
naturally pretty negative, but I just see the benefit both
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.

Speaker 3 (47:05):
Yeah, so let's talk about the last step, which is
repeat him until it was as automatic as the old ones.

Speaker 1 (47:12):
It was interesting when the book came out. About forty
eight hours after it came out, people would come up
to me and go hey, or they'd email me or
DM me and they'd say, John, my new one hasn't
worked yet, like the old one's still showing up. And
I would go, well, it's only been out forty eight hours,
so I know you haven't had a ton of time.
And so you often see this happen in any type
of goal. People say this exercise doesn't work, and I'll say, well,

(47:34):
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

(47:55):
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

(48:16):
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.

Speaker 3 (48:28):
The repeat matters makes me think of like getting sober,
and yeah, there's moments in there, a moment of clarity. Say,
for example, like if we were going to make a
movie of it, I could give you a couple moments
it would be like the movie moments, right, But there
was still the countless thousands and thousands and thousands of
times of taking the thought about using and reframing it.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
Or reaching out to a sponsor or going okay, hey,
here's this all the daily stuff exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:54):
So there are big insights, and every once in a while,
like you're right, they change everything. But most of the
time the insight, I would say, it's sort of that
you recognize, Oh boy, I've been thinking this negative thought
all this time. My goodness, what else could I say? Okay, great,
now comes the work of installing it. So let's talk
about how people can do that. Because one of the
biggest challenges I see in personal development, work, spirituality, any

(49:19):
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

(49:40):
how do we get these ideas into the flow of
daily life more.

Speaker 1 (49:45):
You're right, it's a great challenge. I try to get
them into the flow my daily life in as many
ways as possible. Yeah, I like to do what I
call stack the odds. Like I'm trying to be the
house at the casino. I'm stacking the odds in my favor.
So if I have something I'm really working on, i'll
I'll grab a note off my wall. So this note says,
ask for more. I wrote it on August twenty seventh,

(50:06):
twenty twenty, so over.

Speaker 2 (50:07):
A year ago.

Speaker 3 (50:07):
I will not pay you for this podcast, John, do
not ask well exactly.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
But what I wrote it for was I found myself
undervaluing my work and negotiations. So I'd be in these
business meetings I would underpriced, under charge, undervalue. So I
knew I needed a reminder of that. And again, this
is a soundtrack for me, and it's not sexy, it's
not hooky, like sometimes when I talk to people about
soundtracks that go, well, i'm not a writer, I'm not creative.
You don't have to be asked for more. Those are

(50:33):
three very dull words. But I needed a reminder to
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

(50:55):
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.

(51:17):
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

(51:38):
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.

(52:00):
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

(52:21):
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

(52:42):
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.

(53:04):
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

(53:26):
truth that I'm trying to make automatic.

Speaker 3 (53:28):
Yeah, I really like that. So listener and thinking about
that and all the other great wisdom from today's episode.
If you were going to isolate just one top insight
that you're taking away, what would it be. Remember, little
by little, a little becomes a lot. Change happens by
us repeatedly taking positive action. And I want to give
you a tip on that, and it's to start small.

(53:50):
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

(54:13):
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

(54:34):
would you hold anything possible? Like all of it? Just
stack it all up, you know, like I.

Speaker 1 (54:39):
Want you like the matrix, Like when Neo's getting the weapons,
like he wasn't like, you know what, one gun will
be enough? He was like, give it to me off. Yeah,
we're on the same page.

Speaker 3 (54:47):
Totally. Well, John, thank you so much. This has been
really fun. I feel like I could do this for
like two or three more.

Speaker 1 (54:52):
Hours, but totally.

Speaker 2 (54:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:53):
Alas we are at the end of time. But the
book is wonderful. We'll have links in the show notes
to where people can find and you find the book.
It's called Soundtracks The Surprising Solution to Overthinking. Thank you
so much.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
Thanks for having me. Eric.

Speaker 2 (55:22):
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