Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
So a big part of the model is learning to
unhook from those you know harsh self judgments and instead
bring in some self compassion. What are kind things we
can say to ourselves? Kind things we can do for ourselves.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Today? It's great to have Russ Harris on the podcast.
Russ is one of Australia's foremost practitioners of acceptance and
Commitment therapy, a mindfulness based psychological therapy that aims to
help you reduce stress, overcome fear, and find fulfillment. In
this wide ranging episode on mental health, we discuss Russ's
happiness trap cards, which include ideas such as your mind
(00:41):
is not your enemy, when emotional storms blow up, drop anchor,
and urges are like waves. We also cover our self esteem,
the experience of being human, and how to set yourself
up for success in life. I'm a longtime admirer of
Russ Harris and I'm so glad I was finally able
to chat with him on my podcast. So without further
ado you, Russ Harris, Ross Harris, how are you?
Speaker 3 (01:04):
And great?
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Thank you thanks for inviting me. I just had my
fifty eighth birthday yesterday, so I'm I'm recovering too. Much
cake and sugar and happy birthday.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Thank you to the legend himself. You've really made quite
a name for yourself and really help a lot of
people kind of reclaim their mind in a lot of ways.
I feel like everyone feels like they're losing their minds.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yes, I think we all feel that way at times.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Definitely, because your background is in ACT.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Is that right, Yeah, Like the official association is ACT.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
If you if you cool it ACT within ear shot
of Professor Stephen Hayes, the guy.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah actually comes, he comes, he pops out and like
the candy man. Yeah, you know it that way.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
But the ACT is a good abbreviation for the model
acceptance and commitment therapy because at the core of it,
it's about taking action, you know, it's about doing things
that are meaningful and important in life to make your
life better.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, and so that's your training and specialty. But it
really this approach really encompasses so much of human life.
And this book, you know, you obviously wrote the best
seller of The Happiness Trap, but this most recent book,
The Happiness Trap Cards, although I mean it's not a book,
ahould say this collection of cards. The Happiness Trap Cards
(02:42):
is is really all encompassing. I mean, as I'm reading it,
I'm like, wow, he's covering from self esteem to to
thinking thinking traps, to to living a life of gratitude.
I mean, it's really it's all of mental life.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Look, it was much harder creating the cards than it
was writing the book, because when you write a book,
you can go into stuff in depth, in detail. You can,
you know, spend a chatter exploring a concept such as
mindfulness or self compassion. But when you've got a deck
(03:26):
of cards, you really got to just distill that down
to two or three paragraphs, you know, or I think
the limit was two hundred words per card on one side,
distill a concept, and then put a exercise or skill
or technique on to the other side.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
And boy was it hard. I mean, talk about losing
your mind. I really did lose my mind writing that.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Oh huh. It sounds like it's like a tweet. Everything's
a tweet.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Yeah, yeah, I've never been onto the Twitter space.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Well, I tell a lie. I was on it for
about a month and then I gave up.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
It's just too stressful. Ah, just is like an entry
away into act. Can you just tell people a little
bit like what are the core can put like, what's
the core concept of unhooking? You know what does that mean?
And because you kind of start off the book with that.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah, well, so basically, difficult thoughts and feelings show up
for all of us throughout the day every day. You know,
life is stressful. We all have challenges, and the human
minds often interpret things in a way that makes things
even more stressful than they need to be. So when
(04:42):
I use the term hooked, what I mean is your
thoughts and feelings are having a huge impact on you.
They're jerking you around that they may pull your attention
away from what's important, what's meaningful, so you're no longer
focused on what you're doing, or no longer engaged in
what you're doing, or they may hook you in other ways,
pull you into patterns of behavior that are self defeating
(05:05):
that make life worse rather than better. You know, drugs
or alcohol or you know, shouting at people that you
love or procrastinating on important stuff, all of those self
defeating patterns of behavior that we all do to one
extent or another. So basically means your thoughts and feelings
(05:26):
just having this huge impact on your actions or on
your attention and just kind of pulling you away from
what's important or pulling you into self defeating patterns.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
One of this approach is obviously very similar as well
to Susan David's idea of emotional agility.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Right. Yeah, absolutely, Susan David uses acceptance and commitment therapy.
She acknowledges it at the back of the book, but
she doesn't really mention it throughout the book. But yes,
her book is absolutely based on the same approach. And
we've had her at a as the guest speaker at
(06:03):
the World APT Conference, and she said she didn't kind
of reference it throughout the book because she didn't want
her book to be filled up with sort of tech,
you know, scientific references. But it's exactly the same approach actually,
And so unhooking skills are a set of skills that
you use to take the power and impact out of
those difficult thoughts and feelings. It's not about getting rid
(06:25):
of them or suppressing them.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
It's about just.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Kind of having a new way of interacting with them.
So they just lose their power. They'd become like water
off a duck's back. They can't jerk you around.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Why did you get so interested in this approach?
Speaker 3 (06:39):
Well, it was started from a personal journey.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
I mean, I graduated as a junior doctor in my
twenties and I was, you know, miserable. I was depressed,
I was anxious, and I couldn't understand why. I mean,
you know, being a doctor. Everyone said that was going
to make your life brilliant. You know, it's prestige status,
(07:04):
it's a meaningful job, it's good money.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
But I was miserable.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
So I started, you know, exploring why am I so
depressed and miserable when I've got everything that you know,
society tells us makes you happy. And basically what happened
was through my own personal therapy and through reading lots
of self help books and doing lots of self development,
(07:29):
I started to become very interested in the psychological aspects
of medicine and lose much interest in the physical side.
And so I was working as a GP family doctor
in Melbourne, Australia, and I found that as a GP,
(07:51):
my consultations with my patients were getting longer and longer
and longer, and we were talking more and more about
the psychological sides of health and less and less about
the physical side, and I started to realize that I
was in the wrong profession. Gradually I started retraining as
a therapist, and it was my income went down and
(08:16):
down and down, because as a therapist you earned much
less money as her doctor, but my satisfaction went up
and up and up. I found this is what I
was really interested in, and this is what fulfilled me,
helping people, you know, deal with their psychological health issues
and build richer lives. So I've you know, it's a
(08:38):
cut a long story short. I arrived at ACT through
a long journey of trial and error and blind Alley's
training in many different models of therapy, and each model
I found some things that I liked and some things
that I didn't like, and some things that worked and
other things that didn't work.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
They were all good things in every model.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
But eventually, when I discovered ACT acceptance some commitments there therapy,
it just seemed to have everything that I was looking
for all in one package, and it was just love
at first sight. I read the first textbook on that
was out at the time, it was like, this is amazing,
(09:15):
this is incredible, this is just what I've been trying
to do, and it's been a love affair that's lasted
for over twenty years now, so it just keeps getting
richer and deeper all the time.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
I really like it too. How would you describe the
difference between ACT and cognitive behavioral therapy, particularly the new
crop of it, the mindful of cognitivi or therapy that
my friend south Gilhann is kind of spearheading.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Yeah, well, you know.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
I think it's a hard question to answer because cognitive
behavior therapy is evolving all the time, and ACT has
massively influenced it, so a lot of stuff from ACT
has actually crept into CBT. Traditionally, probably the biggest difference
with CBT encouraged you to get into a battle with
(10:06):
your thoughts. You'd start analyzing them, whether they're true or false,
and challenging and disputing them and trying to get rid
of the negative thoughts and replace them with positive thoughts.
Whereas ACT doesn't do that. ACT kind of you acknowledge
your thoughts. You recognize that even the most difficult negative
thoughts are at some level your your mind actually be
trying to help you. You know, like when you're worrying
(10:29):
a lot, your mind's trying to help you in you know,
point out things that are dangerous, point out things that
you need to take action on. And so I often
describe the mind as like an overly helpful friend, you know, Scott,
have you ever had one of those hopefully helpful friends.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yeah, I call I called intrusive helping.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
In trues, that's I love it. Brilliant, Yeah, trying so
hard to help become a real nuisance. And that's usually
what our mind is doing. So we don't want to
get into a battle or a fight with it. We
want to kind of acknowledge it's trying to help, but
kind of take the power and impact out of those thoughts,
learn how to see that they're nothing more or less
than words and pictures popping up in our heads. We
(11:10):
don't have to fight with them. We can just learn
to let.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Them flow through us. And and so that's probably the
biggest difference.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Instead of fighting, good disputing and we kind of just
let the thoughts, you know, float on by like water
off adopts back really.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Right, right right, And it's not entirely about your your
cognitive distortions. There's also a great sense of like acting
in the world and getting out of your mind, like
like not get not overthinking it.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yeah, there's there's a you know, a lot of emphasis
on mindfulness skills, on kind of bringing your attention to
what's important, focusing on what's important, engaging in what you're doing,
and savoring the potentially enjoyable, pleasurable aspects of what you're doing.
But it ACT is a bit different to other models
in that it doesn't emphasize meditation. Meditation is, let's be honest,
(12:04):
for a lot of people, it's very boring and very difficult.
So ACT kind of teaches mindfulness through lots of simple,
easy to implement strategies that you can build into everyday life,
you know, without meditating.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, yeah, good point. What is your mind not your enemy?
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Why is it not your enemy?
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah, well because it's always basically, you know, fundamentally, your
mind is like a problem solving machine. It's always trying
to do one of two things inside of trying to
help you get things that you want or help you
avoid things that you don't want. So if you think
about when your mind starts beating you up, judging you,
that does your mind judge and criticize You've got yes,
(12:48):
of course, So you know, could you give us an
example if it's not too asking too much? You know,
what's a mean, nast thing that your mind says when
it's judging you.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Wow, you're a silly goose.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Okay, And so it's not just saying that. You know,
I must say your mind's quite polite.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
My mind's a bit ruder to me than that.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
But you know, when your mind kind of judges you
that way, what's it trying to do? What's it trying
to It's basically trying to say, if you keep doing this,
something bad's going to happen. If you keep saying these
things or doing these things, you're going to upset people,
or you're going to get rejected, or you're going to
screw up. You know, if your mind saying you're you're
a bad mother, it's trying to help you shape up
(13:36):
and become a good mother. If your mind saying you're
you know, you're you're stupid, it's trying to tell you, well, look,
there's an important area that you need to skill up
on or do differently, or you need to kind of
you know, handle these things better and more effectively. So
it's not deliberately trying to make you miserable, it's actually
trying to help you. Unfortunately, that strategy is not a
(13:59):
particularly full strategy.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
You know, judging and.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Beating ourselves up does sometimes motivators, but at other times
it has the opposite effect. Like Scott, you've got a
you've got a pet donkey, right that carries your load
to market every Saturday.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
I sure do.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Yeah. And you know there's two ways to motivate your donkey, right,
carrot and stick, that's right, And so you know you
can motivate your donkey with a stick and whack it
and it'll kind of carry the load.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
But over time you end.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Up with a miserable, you know, bruised, battered donkey. And
that's really what self judgment is. It's our minds using
the big stick to motivators. But luckily, in act we've
got something that's much better than a carrot. You know,
you can motivate your carrots, it'll carry the load. You
end up with a happy, healthy donkey with really good
night vision. Right, But we've we've got something much more
(14:54):
motivating than carrots.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
We've got something called values.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
And values are sort of your heart steepest desires for
how you want to behave as a human being, how
you want to treat yourself, how you want to treat others.
And once we are clear on our values, we can
use them as a compass, as an inspiration, as a
guide to help us do the things that we really
want to do in life.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yeah, you have a really gentle way of being. It's
very compassionate and gentle on the oneself, I could imagine
enjoying being your patient.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Well, yeah, I hope so, you know, I mean, self
compassion is such an important part of the you know,
our default setting for most of this is we just
judge and criticize ourselves. And you know, again, just like
sometimes that will motivate a donkey to carry the load,
it will motivate us at times. But it's a life
(15:56):
training form of motivation. So a big part of the
model is learning to unhook from those you know, harsh
self judgments and instead bring in some self compassion. What
are kind things we can say to ourselves, kind things
we can do for ourselves. I often will ask my clients,
you know, if somebody else were you know, had just
(16:16):
screwed up like you've screwed up, or have just made
this mistake, or is going through something painful, like what
you're going through, you know, and if you love this
person and you want it to be a source of
care and support and kindness to this person, what would
you say to them? Yeah, And usually it's so different
to what they're actually saying to themselves. Instead of this
(16:40):
harsh criticism, this really kind, supportive language comes out. And
so you know, in ACT we encourage people to have
hooked from the harsh self criticism and kind of find
kind ways of talking to themselves and more importantly, kind
things that they can do for themselves. Like very often
when we're in pain, we we go for the drugs
(17:01):
or the alcohol, or the junk food or you know,
the unhealthy distractions. We do all sorts of things to
try to escape and have albit those painful feelings. Oh yeah,
but a big part of ACT is learning how to
open up and make room for those painful feelings and
be kind to ourselves and take the power out of
those painful emotions and let them sort of flow through
(17:25):
us without sweeping this away.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
It's beautiful, it's beautiful. What is the idea of dropping
the anchor when your emotional storms? While how can we
anyone do that at any time in their life. Yeah, well,
so it's called dropping anchor because, yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
You know, your boat sailing into the harbor. You hear
on the radio there's a big storm blowing up. What's
the first thing you need to do when you get
into the harbor.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
It's a bad question. You need to drop anchor, right,
you know.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
And I need to have some stability, some stability in
my life exactly.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
And if you don't drop anchor and that storm blows up,
your boat's eve are going to get smashed against the
other boats or swept out to the sea. And so
it's the same with emotional storms, for it, you know,
for our when the going gets tough, we have emotional storms.
For some people, it's anxiety storms. For some people, those
are sort of depressing storms. For some people those anger storms.
(18:24):
But basically we get jerked around by these painful emotions
and they sweep us away and they so dropping anchor
is sort of learning to do the same thing with
our own emotional storms. We learn how to keep ourselves
steady so that the emotional storm doesn't pull us away
(18:44):
from our life or sweep us off into self destructive
or problematic behaviors and I like this meanciful because you know,
anchors don't control storms. You know, when you drop an anchor,
it doesn't make the storm magically go away. It just
holds the boat steady. So at the same time we
(19:04):
drop anchor with our own emotional storms, it's a way
of holding ourselves steady. And and all emotional storms will
you know, they'll rise and they'll peak and then they'll
fall again. So let's hold us the steady till the
storm passes.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yeah, it's a it's very in line with my cell
boat model of self actualization that we need. The security
needs have to be met in the boat itself before
we can open up the sail and grow.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
I like that, Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
It's it's it's a it's a reimagining of Maslow's hierarchy.
That's not a pyramid but a sailboat. So so yeah,
very very much in line. I resonated with so much
of your book, and I just pulled out various things
that I was nodding vigorously when I got to them.
For instance, this one. I love this quote. To help
(20:00):
break bad habits or to disrupt self defeating behaviors, ask
yourself the workability question is what I'm doing workable will
work in the long term to help me to build
the sort of life I want, will work in the
long term to help me become the sort of person
I want to be. Yeah, that's very active, you you know,
moving in the direction of your values is is. Yeah,
(20:24):
it's wonderful. Can you elaborate a little bit more on
the workable?
Speaker 1 (20:28):
So workability is one of the key themes in act.
You know, the question is is what you're doing working
to build the life you want to be, the sort
of person you want to be, doing the things you
want to do.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
And this is the problem.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
If we go back to the idea of the mind
as a problem solving machine, the default setting of the
mind is it doesn't really consider, you know, the long
term big picture is just what do I need to
avoid right now? What do I need to get right now?
So if we can start to add in, you know,
this kind of reflective way of considering, you know, is
what I'm doing really working in the long term in
(21:04):
the big picture to give me what I want that
can help us help us kind of you know, well, actually,
you know, no, it's not really it's meeting my needs
in some way, or it's getting me what I want
in the short term, but it's not really giving me
what I want in the long term, and that insight
is often the first step in changing a problematic or
(21:26):
self defeating pattern of behavior.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Absolutely, you say that life is a stage show. I
would have said life is a shit show. But you know,
but you're so such as, you're so polite. So okay,
why why is life like a stage show?
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Well, there is some ship on a life stage show,
but there's more than a shit there.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
You know, that's true, that's true.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Yeah, the amount of shit on the stage varies from
moment to moments.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
So yeah, I like this metaphor, the idea that life
is like a stage show that's changing all the time
from moment to moment, and on that stage, on that stage,
there's all your thoughts, all your feelings, everything that you
can see and hear and touch and taste and smell,
and it's continually changing. And there's this part of you
that can step back and watch the show and kind
(22:18):
of zoom in and take in the details, or zoom
out and take in the big picture. And this part
of you in actually often call it the noticing self.
It's the part of you that can notice your thoughts,
notice your feelings, notice the world around you. And this,
this part of you plays a big role in mindfulness
and engaging in life. There's there's not really a good
(22:41):
word for this part of you in everyday language. You know,
sometimes people call it the silent self or the silent
witness or the observer self. When people meditate, they sort
of build up this this sense of this observing part
that it's able to notice and observe. As I said
earlier in that we don't really kind of get into
(23:03):
meditation that much, but there are other ways of building
up this kind of observer part, which is useful. Again
if we come back to this idea of unhooking, if
you can kind of step back and observe the thoughts
that are showing up on life stage show, or observe
the difficult feelings, but without getting swept away by them.
And you'll see that from moment to moment, they change,
(23:24):
they come, and they go. We don't have to get
into a battle with them, we don't have to run
away from them. So sometimes there's awful stuff from that
stage show, and sometimes there's beautiful stuff, you know, sometimes
there's ship and sometimes there's sapphires, sapphires. I was trying
(23:45):
to think of something that started with an S. I
could have said silver. Sometimes there's ships and sometimes there's
silver there.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
No, I like sapphires. No, No, I like that.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
You parsed it like like sapphires, like you know they
I know where I usually say it was one word no,
but I I that's the British.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
How do you how do you say it sapphires like
one word? Oh?
Speaker 3 (24:11):
I see right, Okay.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
My accent is such a hybrid because I grew up
in England but lived in Australia for more than half
my life now, so also you think I sound English,
but when I go back to England, they think I
sound Australian.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
I love it. I love the way you talk. It's
actually really calming for something. It's oddly poetic. Oh wow,
like your your cadences are very poetic.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
I was thinking that as you were talking. So just
to continue this, uh cell bot metaphor and see metaphor.
How are urges like waves?
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Yeah, well so you know, and it's just like a
wave in the sense that you know, if you watch
your wave, it rises it reaches a peak or a crest,
and then it falls again into a trough, and then
it rises and peaks and falls. And our emotions are
like that. Our urges are like this, even the most
(25:13):
intense emotions, they will actually rise and reach a peak
and then for even when you're really angry, you know,
it doesn't last forever, crests and peaks and then it
falls again, you know. So one of the skills that
can really help us to unhook from difficult urges and
emotions is that is something that's called urge surfing or
(25:36):
emotions surfing. Yes you know, have you ever been surfing?
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Or yes, yes, I've been thrown around by the waves before.
And you know that's what you mean by surfing it too.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
And you know you don't want to resist a wave, right,
because what happens if you try to resist a wave? No, no,
you know, if you resist it, you get slammed. And
so surfing a wave means you kind of ride it.
And it's the same with our own urges, cravings, intense emotions.
We can learn how to surf them rather than you know,
(26:13):
in everyday language, particularly with urges, we talk about resisting urges,
but resisting urges is much like resisting a wave, you know,
where whereas if we can learn how to surf the urge,
let it rise up and I just observe it and
notice it's there without acting on it. And instead of
struggling with resisting the urge, what we do is we
(26:34):
focus on our values. We put our attention into meaningful
you know, values based behavior, behaving like the person we
want to be, and we kind of take that urge
with us. We let it kind of play out inside
us without acting on it, and we focus our attention
on what we're doing, and we engage and what we're doing,
and that urge will rise and peek and then fall
(26:54):
without sweeping us away.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
See that was poetic, the way you said that really was. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no,
absolutely absolutely, and you really can you can really see that.
Dare I say? If you meditate over a long period
of time, you really start to get intimate with your
(27:16):
own patterns of thoughts and you start to realize as well,
it all has a certain cadence to it, you know, are.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Yeah, well, you're right there, and it's important this thing
about meditation, because you know, I'm not knocking it for
a lot of people do you like you never find
it useful, but it most of just being realistic. A
lot of people find it really hard to do. And
one of the nice things about ACT I think one
of the things that I fell in love with is
(27:46):
that it gives us short, simple ways to learn these
skills without having to meditate. So you can kind of
think of meditators. You know, you can get very fit
by lifting lightweights in the gym. You don't have to
go for the heavyweights. There are benefits of going for
(28:07):
the heavyweights, but they're not essential to get fitness, and
so you can think of meditation as like lifting the
really heavy weights. It does add benefits, but there's so
much that we can do without meditation, and this is
one of the reasons why act is kind of become popular,
because it helps people to develop these mindful of skills.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
And you know.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Particularly if you've got something like ADHD, for example, you know,
it's very hard for adhds to sit still and focus
with their eyes closed, you know, on their breathing for
a long period of time. But we can give them
other ways of retraining their attention that they're much more doable.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Definitely, definitely, and a lot of your exercises or or
whatever we want to call them. Cards really help with overwhelm, right,
help with this feeling of the world as too much.
I'm feeling too much, I'm thinking too much.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Yeah, well, you know, in a sense, that was one
of the main motivators for actually creating the card deck,
because you know, when you're really you know, when you're
really overwhelmed, it's hard to read a book. A book
just seems too much. But if you just you know,
each card has got one little point that it makes
(29:28):
and one little practice that you can do, So when
you're overwhelmed, you can pull out one and that one
little thing can make a difference. You know. One of
the problems with overwhelmed is you know, your mind's just
going to everything that's going on in your life, and
so one of the most useful things you can do
is marror your focus. Just focus in on one thing,
(29:49):
one little thing you can do, no matter how small
that might be, one little positive thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Yeah, it's gotten me through a lot of a lot
of panic attacks. That advice.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Yeah great.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
So why why do you bring chess into this?
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Why? Why?
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Why? Why should you be like a chess board?
Speaker 1 (30:10):
There are a lot of great metaphors in act. You know,
the danger is of metaphor abuse. You know, you kind
of give somebody so many metaphors they're just.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
Completely overwhelmed by metaphors.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
But you know, the chessboard metaphor is a nice one
because it basically goes this way. You know, you're the
one side of the board. The pieces are all your
sort of negative foots and feelings. On the other side
of the boarder all your positive foots and feelings, and
we go through life caught up in this battle. We're
(30:44):
trying to get the positive feelings to dominate the board
and wipe out all the negative pieces. But there's two
problems with going through your life this way. One is
there's an infinite number of positive and negative feelings, so
you know this is a battle that can never be won. Now,
the other problem is that positive pieces actually attract negative pieces.
(31:08):
You know, you move forward the positive piece I'm a
good friend, it attracts the negative piece.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
Well, no, you're not.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
What about the time you said this, What about the
time you did that. You know, you move forward the
positive piece I am lovable, it attracts the negative piece.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
Well, no, you're not. What about your big.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Fat and girt, what about your stretch marks, what about
your balding head. You know, it's kind of so what
act teaches us to do is step out of that
battle instead of learn how to be like the chessboard.
So the chessboard holds the pieces, it's in contact with
the pieces, but it's not fighting. It's just making the
(31:47):
space those pieces can move. So again, it's another way
of just looking at this idea of unhooking from our
thoughts and feelings another words, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
It's really good, it's really good. Why is there no
delete button in the brain.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Wouldn't it be great if there was? You know, it
would be great if we could just kind of delete
all those unwanted thoughts and all those difficult memories. But
the brain doesn't work that way. I'm sure most of
your listeners have heard of neuroplasticity, this idea that the
(32:25):
brain is plastic and that it changes throughout your life.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
And that's true.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Your brain does, but it doesn't change by pulling out
old neural pathways. The way it changes is by laying
down new neural pathways on top of the old ones.
So you know, if for thirty or forty years, your
mind has been saying.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
Yeah, I'm a loser. I'm a loser.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
You're not going to magically be able to delete that
neural pathway. What you can do is lay down a
new one that kind of goes, oh, there's the loser story. Ah, okay,
thanks mind. I know you're trying to help. Ah, there
you are. You're kind of beating me up a bit,
hoping to motivate me. But hey, it's okay. I'm dealing
with it.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Ah.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
You know, I know this one.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
So that new neural powerway helps us to canasy. This
is just a bit of old programming. It's a bunch
of words popping up. It's my mind trying to help,
like pulling out the big stick to beat up that donkey,
you know, and a very popular you know, if I
say to you, I say to you, Mary had what
(33:36):
pops up a big dog? But before you said big dog?
What pops up in your head?
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Little land?
Speaker 3 (33:44):
A little lab? You know?
Speaker 1 (33:45):
And so you know, anyway programming, and suppose you can't
get rid of that. Right if you grew up in
North America, Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, then you
learned the rhyme Mary had a little lamb at a
very young age. You can't just delete that. Any point
(34:06):
in your life someone comes up to you and says,
Mary had You know, the first thing that pops into
your head is little lab. You may then say, oh,
a big black dog, but the first thing that pops
off this little lamb. I had some old programming. You
can't delete it, but you can add new stuff on
top that helped you to see here's my old programming.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Yeah, it's like, you know, don't don't think of a
white bear, and it can't help, but think of white bears. Yeah,
that never helps, but yeah, we can definitely forge new
pathways for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
I mean, you know, all the self help approaches and
even old CBT approaches actually deduced to encourage that sort
of something called thought stuff being so an unwanted thought
would show up and you'd silently say stop, or you'd
imagine a stop sign and you push it away. But
hopefully no modern approach encourages that, because the research is
(35:12):
so clear that you can push those thoughts away for
a short space of time, but in the long term
there's a rebound effect. They come back with greater and
greater frequency and intensity. So yeah, as she said, if
you're trying not to think about white bears, you might
be able to push those thoughts away for a short
space of time, but in the long term it's going
(35:33):
to be Yeah, it's going to be full of white
bears everywhere going crazy.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Yeah, and that's not fun when that happened.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
What is the If you've got a phobia of white bears,
then it's really not fun.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Yes, yes, they could help you with the exposure of therapy.
Perhaps that's true.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
I don't think about being eaten by white bears very slowly.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Yeah, who knows. The brain is a funny thing. You
never know how a person's going to react. What is
you know, what is the self esteem trap? Why a trap?
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Oh gosh, well, you know, self esteem It didn't really
exist until about the nineteen sixties. It kind of one
of one of the USA's exports to the rest of
the world.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
That's funny.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Yeah, this idea that you have to think positively about
yourself and have a high self image and reflect on
all your strengths and your positives and everything that's great
about you. And you know, this has just become part
of the culture now. But you know, before nineteen sixties,
that would have been a very alien concept. And parents
(36:52):
tell this to their children, you have to have high
self esteem, and teachers tell it to the kids, and
coaches tell it to their coaches.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
You know.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
And the problem is that, you know, I mean, there's
no doubt that low self esteem is problematic, but high
self esteem has a dark side too. I mean, what's
the danger of going around thinking you're the greatest, You're wonderful?
You know?
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Is that the same thing as narcissism? Though, because I've
seen high self esteem is distinguished from narcissism.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Well, I think it overlaps, so you know, high self
esteem easily overlaps with narcissism, over confidence, arrogance, egotism, inflated
self confidence. So that's the dark side of high self esteem,
you know, if you can hold these stories lightly. I mean,
(37:46):
act is more focused on self acceptance and self compassion.
So self esteem is kind of about focusing on all
my positives, all my strengths, everything that's right on good
about me, where self acceptance is accepting myself with my
pluses and my mind is acknowledging my strengths and my
you know, positive size, but also acknowledging my weaknesses and
(38:06):
my failures and accepting myself with all of that. Self
compassion is being kind to myself when I'm suffering and
I'm in pain. So in that we kind of emphasize
the self acceptance of self compassion. We're not saying that
self esteem is bad. It's just not part of a model,
and there is a downside to it, certainly as it's
popularly taught in a lot of self help programs, there
(38:29):
is a lot of emphasis I'm trying to really build
up that positive thinking, and that can have you know,
it's just like the chessboard metaphor we were talking about.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
Actually, there's actually some good research that.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
People with low self esteem that practice positive self affirmations
often get worse, not better, because they get caught up
in that battle. They're saying, you know, I'm lovable, I'm worthwhile,
and then mind comes back with well, no, you're not
about this, and what about that? They end up worse off.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
Well, narcissists don't think like that. It's need to write
a book for narcissists to be a little bit harsher
on yourself.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Well, what happens with narcissists is they're kind of deeply afraid,
deep inside that they're not good enough, that they're worthless,
and so they're just desperately clinging to this story I'm wonderful,
I'm the greatest, and no one else is good enough,
and that's their strategy from escaping a deep seated sense
(39:33):
of self worth, of low self worth.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Sorry, somebody is jealous of narcissists. No, I'm jocking. I'm
going that's a lot labor justification there for No.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
You see this in therapy, you know, occasionally, like you know,
most really narcissistic clients are not great therapy clients because
they won't go there, they won't acknowl the difficult stuff.
But sometimes they will, and what you find is just
this deep sense of worthlessness, emptiness and just clinging to
(40:12):
this story that I'm a great person to try to
escape that. So it's very difficult to work with in therapy.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Yeah, yeah, that's true. My friend Keith Campbell says the
only narcissists who end up on the counts are either
vulnerable narcissists or grandiose narcissists who've been forced to go
there by their girlfriends. And he's a world expert on
narcissism Keith Campbell.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Yeah, well, you know, it depends on the type of
therapy you go to. If you go to the sort
of therapist who just lets you trying to you know,
talk or about you know. I don't know if it's
the same term in USA, but in Australia we could
call it supportive counseling where the therapist doesn't really do
very much. They just kind of listen and on their
(40:56):
head and valid days how difficult life is. And you know,
so a nice sister would probably take very well to
that kind of therapy because it doesn't challenge.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
That's a good point. We're talking about. Disciplinary therapy is
what we're talking about. That they don't like it now,
I don't know if that's that's not a thing, folks.
I was joking, it's not the thing.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
It is disciplinary therapy, but you could start.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
It, Scott, I'm sure that that would be people.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Basically, disciplinary therapy is where narcissts go where you tell
them you're a loser. You you basically do the exact
opposite of like, you know, you're the point of your
whole book. It turns it all around. I think that'd
be a good stand up comedy bit. I'm actually adding
this to my list for my next stand up act.
You know, the exact opposite. You get it, You get
what I'm you, you get what I'm.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
Saying I do.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
Yeah, let's talk about my favorite one in your whole book. Well, okay,
one of my topmostly top three, top three favorite noticing
your direction. This is something that you can even course
correct yourself at any point, right, like you can if
you Sometimes we get an autopilot and we could be
like just noticing that we're not really moving the direction
(42:11):
we want to be moving, right Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah.
I mean that's a really just useful thing to do.
Is just a quick check in through the day, what
directions am I going in? And it really is never
too late to change course. It's in normal everyday life,
it's like, okay, let's try something different. That's when it's
(42:34):
good to drop a hangkut and just kind of start,
you know, have a stretch, take a breath, notice what
you're thinking, notice what you're feeling, notice what you're doing,
and then consider, you know, how can I course correct
What's a little thing that I can do, tiny thing
to start moving in the direction I want to move
just it's a hopeful. It's so hopeful to feel like
(42:54):
you can course correct, like my friend Sharon Salisburg says,
you know, like you can return your breath anytime you want.
I mean, it's you can start over, she says, any moment,
you can just start over by returning to your breath.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
Yeah, Sharon Salzburg work, Yeah, Yeah, she's.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Great legend like you. She's a legend.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
She's got a very calming voice, doesn't she.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
She's a very calming voice.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
I love hanging out with her. I feel very calm.
So the dance of love and pain and this is
not an eighties rock song, right it could be, couldn't
It could be a good song or something. It could be.
It could be.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
Yeah, I mean basically love and pain. You know, they
are intimate dance partners. They often go hand in hand,
you know, not all the time, but when you're in
a loving relationship with someone, boy, oh boy, there's going
to be pain. And that's not what you want or
what you expect or what you hope for. That you
(44:00):
you can't have a loving, committed relationship with anybody, with
your partner, or your children or your friends, or your
family without pain showing up, you know, because you have
different wants, different needs, different expectations. But also when you
love someone and something bad happens to them, that's intensely
(44:20):
painful for you too. But our culture doesn't really prepare
us very well to deal with the pain. And certainly
popular movies and books and TV shows, it's all about
the wonderful feelings of being in love. And you know,
particularly when it comes to romance and romantic movies, you know,
it's love, love, love, love, love, and you're a little
(44:41):
bit a little bit of pain in that movie. But
it's mostly about love and feeling wonderful. And you know,
in real life it's not like that. There's a lot
more pain that we are one form or another. Oh
so we need to learn how to open up and
make room for the pain in order to have the
love and have the connection and do the thing things
necessary to build those rich relationships with others.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
Yeah, you really say so beautiful, You say things that
matter also hurt. That really hit. That hit when I
want to learn. Also, you said it, you said it,
and and it's it's just it's a really profound truth
(45:26):
of human existence. It's like you can't, you can't ignore it.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
Steve Hayes, the guy who created it, sets on some
commitment of therapy. He's got a nice way of saying it.
He says, we we hurt where we care. We hurt
where we care, you know. And that's true, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, there's definitely a potential for for hurt.
And that's what you're opening yourself up to with the
price of admission.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
Yes, yeah, absolutely, yeah, it's you know, I often say vulnerability.
He is the price of admission to intimacy. You know,
if we if we want to have intimate relationships with
with other people, we need to let them know what
we're feeling and what we're thinking and what's going on
for us and what we care about.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
And we're vulnerable when we do that, you know, vuln vulnerable.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
Vulnerability comes from the Latin word vulness.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Which means wound. You know.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
So normally we've got our arm around, we've got our
defenses up, and we take off our armor. We can
be wounded, we can be her. And this intimacy is
so often scary and difficult, and why we often avoid it.
Speaker 3 (46:39):
Why Tinder exists exactly cure for all our intimacy.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
Problems for people, for people who don't want intimacy, are
scared of it.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
What what? Why?
Speaker 2 (46:53):
Why should you you told people to stop seeking the
magic potion? Why why would you do that to people?
Tell them this, start seeking it.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
Yeah, well, so you're talking about the magic potion of
confidence or willpower or discipline or motivation. People have got
a number of magic potions and many magic potions, and
you know that people are looking for this magic potion
because they say things like I'll do it when I'm
(47:23):
more confident, or I'll do it when I've got the willpower,
or I can't do it because I don't have the willpower,
or I can't do it because I don't have the motivation.
Speaker 3 (47:34):
So it's kind of it's.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
A language trap. It creates the idea that there's this
magic pill or magic potion that's called motivation or willpower
or discipline, and when I've got that, then I'm going
to start doing the things that are important, and it
doesn't work that way. Basically, what happens as we start
doing the things that are important and making room for
(47:57):
all the difficult thoughts and feelings that are guaranteed to
show up.
Speaker 3 (48:00):
Along the way.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
Then if we do that over and over again, keep
doing the important, meaningful stuff even though difficult thoughts and
feelings are showing up, then other people will say, oh,
you've got discipline, Oh you've got motivation, you've got willpower,
And other people will think we found the magic potion
that there really never was one in the first place.
(48:22):
It's about acting on your values, doing what's important, over
and over and over again, and making room for all
the psychological and emotional barriers that show up as you
keep doing that.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yeah, it's very true. In a lot of ways, taking
the route of putting their hard work in creates the meaning,
which creates hurt. So where can matter portion again?
Speaker 3 (48:52):
Now, Hank, I'm I'm joking. Sell it through my website.
We've got a special offer just for twenty four hours.
Speaker 2 (49:01):
No, I mean, good point, good point, good point. I
mean you talk about how precious life is. And I
mean again, I want to re read a point I
made at the very beginning of this episode, which is
like this book, this notes what can I call a book?
Speaker 3 (49:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (49:18):
Yeah, yeah, this book is like all encompassing, you know,
like it's not just change your thoughts, you know, change
your life. No, it's like jump into your life, jump
into the stream of experience full and live fully. You know,
you have this whole section on the preciousness of life.
(49:39):
Can you just talk a little bit about that. I
love that's that's top three top three favorite ones.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
Oh wow, yeah, well, just coming back to jumping into it. Yeah,
jump in if you're willing and ready to kind of
jump in. But if you're not, also just dip a
toe in, you know. You know, there might be times
where you jump in, times where you dive in, but
there might be times where you just dip a toe in.
You might just put a foot in.
Speaker 3 (50:01):
You know.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
It's kind of as long as you're engaging in life,
that's the key thing. The it's a given that throughout
the day, they'll throughout the week, and throughout the month,
there'll be times that we're more able or more willing
to kind of engage and do what happens. But even
a little bit makes a difference. So it's okay if
(50:23):
you just want to stiff it down. But yeah, life
is precious. I mean we know this that you know,
we never know how long we've got, we never know
how long our loved ones have got. We're always shot
when when bad things, you know, if people die or
get sick or injured. And so it's about making the
(50:46):
most of the very short time that we have and
throughout the day, I mean, most of us waste large
amounts of the day just going through the motions on
automatic pilot. And if we can just start to come
back and just appreciate this little moment of life right
now and the next one and the next one, well,
(51:09):
you know, it makes a difference just to appreciating the
cup of coffee that you're drinking, or appreciating the meal
that you're eating, or appreciating the smile on the face
of somebody you love, or just appreciating you know, like
in everyday language, we have that phrase stop and smell
the roses, right, yea back in North America. But yeah,
(51:29):
you know, so we've got these sayings there. People have
recognized the importance of this for a long long time.
Or count your blessings, you know, but most of us
forget to do it.
Speaker 2 (51:40):
Yeah, I mean you you say, find a find the treasure, right,
That's that's a great reframe like that. You wake up
the morning being like, hey, I'm going to find the
treasure of this human existence. That's a.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
Well, there is stuff that you can treasure even in
the midst of great pain and suffering.
Speaker 4 (52:05):
You know.
Speaker 2 (52:05):
It's like, I agree.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
I think funerals are a very dramatic example of this.
You know, funerals are full of pain and sadness, they're
also full of love and compassion and people reaching out
to each other. And you know, there's a you can
You're not trying to escape the pain, the sadness, the grief,
(52:32):
but you can at the same time appreciate the love
and the support and the connection and the compassion that
is there, you know.
Speaker 3 (52:40):
And that's what I mean by treasure.
Speaker 1 (52:41):
It's not ignoring all the painful stuff, but it's also
treasuring that the beautiful stuff that goes with it.
Speaker 2 (52:47):
Yeah, so true. How can you like not set yourself
up to fail? Because I like, I think a lot
of people do it in all all sorts of ways.
They don't realize they are actually setting themselves up.
Speaker 3 (52:59):
I mean, I think it's inevitable that we will.
Speaker 1 (53:02):
At times set ourselves up to fail. But but we
can get better at at not doing that by and
by just being more realistic with our goals. And you know,
so many of us kind of yeah, I'm going to
do it, especially if you've just listened to it. You know,
an American motivational speaker.
Speaker 3 (53:21):
You can do anything. Just your man and you can
transform the universe. That's good.
Speaker 2 (53:28):
That was good. Good impression of me. Good impression of me.
Speaker 1 (53:31):
Well, you know, like it's got a motivational speaker has
to have an American accent like it just it doesn't,
you know, it doesn't work with an English accent.
Speaker 3 (53:40):
You know, it just used your mind sensible the universe, you.
Speaker 2 (53:43):
Know, especially a Texas accent, which is which is the
way you used.
Speaker 1 (53:48):
People do often set themselves unrealistic goals and and then
course that piles up the pressure and you know, so
it's all useful just to ask yourself, you know, on
a scale of zero to ten, how realistic is this?
Speaker 3 (54:05):
Ten is? This is completely realistic. I'm definitely going to
do it.
Speaker 1 (54:08):
Even if there's a zombie holocaust, I'm going to do it.
It means there's no way I'm going to do it.
I'm saying the words now, but it's not going to happen.
I ask people to make sure it's at least a seven.
If you can't score it a seven. Then change it,
make it smaller, make it simpler, make it easier, or
do something different. There's no point setting yourself up to fail.
Speaker 2 (54:29):
Yeah, excellent point. What is the happiness trap? Not on
me that I never asked you that question, but I
want to. I want you to.
Speaker 3 (54:39):
Can you?
Speaker 2 (54:40):
Can you tie everything up in a bowl that we
talked about today and just answer what happiness trap is?
Speaker 3 (54:46):
Could do? You could also recut the interview.
Speaker 2 (54:50):
I think this is funny. I think this is funny.
Speaker 1 (54:53):
Yeah, no, I think this is good. This is good
role modeling on your path of how kind of change direction?
Speaker 3 (55:00):
New point and answer.
Speaker 2 (55:02):
It'll be a good It'll be a summary, do you know.
I mean, it's like a summary of everything we just
talked about.
Speaker 3 (55:06):
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (55:07):
So the happiness strap both the book and the deck
of cards.
Speaker 3 (55:12):
I mean. The name comes from.
Speaker 1 (55:16):
The idea that popular ideas about happiness are misleading and inaccurate,
and they'll actually make it miserable if you base your
life on those ideas. And the most common of these
is the idea that happiness means feeling good. If you
look in most dictionaries, happiness is defined as a state
of pleasure or contentment. So if that's your notion of happiness,
(55:39):
then there can be no such thing as lasting happiness.
I mean, how long can a state of pleasure or contentment?
Possibly you asked and so, But people hold onto this idea,
and a link to that idea is the idea that
if happiness is feeling good, that means I need to
get rid of all the unpleasant feelings or the negative
thoughts or the painful emotions. That's how I get to
(56:01):
be happy. And both of those ideas will just make
your life miserable, because if you are going to live
a full human life, living your values, behaving like the
person you want to be, doing what's important, then you're
going to feel the full range of human emotions. You're
going to feel the pleasant emotions of love and joy,
(56:22):
and you're going to feel the painful emotions of fear
and sadness and anger and guilt and so forth. You
don't get one without the other. So I if you
asked me to define happiness, I would define it as
living a rich, full and meaningful life in which you
feel the full range of emotions, both the pleasant and
painful ones. But that's not what most people mean by happiness.
Speaker 2 (56:45):
Yeah, I think there's a no summary I mean of
a lot of the themes we talked about today. You know,
I've known about you for quite some time. I'm glad
we find a guid a chance to talk. Quite a
few colleagues of mine in the field of positive psychology
have told me they think your book, The Happiness Trap
is the best book written on happiness. Oh wow, So
(57:05):
I'm glad, you know. I multiple people have told me that. Wow.
Your name has been in my consciousness for for a
good number of years now, so it was nice to
kind of get a refresh on you and to read
these notes and uh, or these these cards, I should say,
to read these cards and and to talk to you.
So thank you so much for being on my podcast.
Speaker 1 (57:27):
Oh, thank you, thank you so well.
Speaker 3 (57:30):
You just made my day with that feedback.
Speaker 1 (57:32):
That's lovely, to be sure, thank thank you, and it's
a lovely if it's lovely to uh. I've really enjoyed
the interview. It's been great. And if you next time
you see Sharon Teller, I'm a huge fan and I
will Okay, thank you