Something You Should Know - How to Craft a Luckier Life & Why You Tell Yourself Stories That Aren’t True

Episode Date: March 15, 2018

People hate unsolicited advice – and they seldom follow it. Still, that doesn’t stop us from dishing it out to those we are trying to help. Well maybe there is a better and more effective way to influence people other than just telling them what we think they should do. I’ll tell you what it is. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/do-the-right-thing/201407/giving-people-advice-rarely-works-does) Some people have all the luck. But why? Why are some people luckier than others? Can you create a life that has more luck in it? Can you be one of those people that other people think of as lucky? Absolutely, says Janice Kaplan. Janice is the former Editor-in-Chief of Parade magazine and her new book is called How Luck Happens: Using the Science of Luck to Transform Work, Love, and Life (http://amzn.to/2Dp0wiH). Janice joins me to discuss how luck really works and how anyone can craft a luckier life. Organic onions, swordfish and gluten-free muffins are just 3 things you shouldn’t buy at the supermarket if you want to save money. I’ll explain why and give you a few other things NOT to buy. (http://www.mc3cb.com/pdf_nutrition_articles/2011_3_8_7%20Worst%20Supermarket%20Rip.pdf) Has this ever happened…? You send an email or leave a voicemail for someone to get back to you – but they don’t. As a result, you start to imagine why they don’t. And the why is usually a negative story. Why do we do this? And how can we stop doing that? Scott Gortno is a therapist and author of the book , The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Stop Jumping to Conclusions. Free Yourself from Anxiety. Transform Your Relationships (http://amzn.to/2DjTHix). Listen as he explains this interesting quirk in human behavior and why it gets us into trouble. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Something You Should Know, people don't like unsolicited advice. So I have some advice on giving unsolicited advice that works much better. Then, what if you could craft a life that made you luckier, where things just go your way? Very often, people who are the luckiest are actually the people who are the most optimistic and who are the most positive, because they can take an event and they can see the bright side of it. They can see the positive side of it. Also, a list of things you should not buy at the supermarket that will save you some real money. And we all tend to tell ourselves stories, negative stories, about why things happen or don't happen.

And yet... From the research I did, you know, a good 90% plus of the time, these stories that we tell ourselves aren't true. If a good part of the time, I'm making myself miserable with these stories, then I've got to do my part individually to change this, to make my life better. All this today on Something You Should Know. As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know is all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily.

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TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. I want to start the podcast today with a piece of advice about giving people advice which they probably won't listen to anyway. It is our desire to help people,

and part of helping people is to offer them advice. Trouble is that people don't usually take it. You know this because people probably try to tell you how to eat or drink or vote or dress, and you don't listen to them either. So why doesn't offering unsolicited advice work? Well, research indicates that whenever someone tells us what to do and how to do it, we respond with a defensive defiance because we want to maximize our personal freedom and our own

decision-making. It's just human nature. So if unsolicited advice doesn't work, what does work? Well, research on observational learning suggests that while people will resist unsolicited advice and instruction, they will follow the behaviors of others, especially when there appears to be good and reinforcing outcomes from those behaviors. So instead of telling people what to do, you should model the behavior yourself and then be quiet. Now, the problem with this is I've just told you what to do.

So telling you this completely contradicts everything I just told you, and you're probably not going to listen to me anyway. And that is something you should know. Does it ever seem to you that some people, other people, have all the luck, that they just navigate through life winning more than others, winning more than you? Well, what if you could be one of those people who everyone else thinks is so lucky? Well, there does seem to be a way, according to Janice Kaplan. She's a writer and editor. She's the former editor-in-chief of Parade magazine,

and she has a new book out called How Luck Happens, using the science of luck to transform work, love, and life. Hey, Janice, welcome. Thanks, it's great to be with you. So I want to clarify what you mean by luck, because I think what you don't mean by luck, and what other people sometimes do mean by luck, is you don't mean that if I knew what you knew, or if I read your book, I'd be hitting the lottery every week, because that's not the kind of luck you're talking about. Right. Lotteries are about random chance. And by the way, most lottery winners end up miserable anyway, so that's not a very lucky thing. The fun of writing this book was really turning the

definition of luck a little bit on its head and saying that luck isn't just random chance. I looked at luck as having three strands. One of them is chance, but put that to the side. The other two are talent and hard work. And by talent, I don't mean that you have to be Meryl Streep, though it can't hurt. But talent means recognizing opportunities, seeing possibilities, taking some chances. And hard work is hard work. And if you focus on those two, there's a good chance that you're going to be able to create a life that actually looks lucky. It looks like luck to other people, but you know when you look at it that you've actually put all of those pieces in place to make it happen. Well, I can relate to that.

I mean, people have said to me how lucky I am, but I've worked hard for what I've had. But I do know people who seemingly, and maybe that's the key word here, seemingly have been the recipient of amazing luck through circumstance and didn't work that hard. They just happened to fall into it. Sure. You know, things can happen all the time, of course. But I think what we're really looking at is how do you create a lucky life? How do you have not just a single incident that looks lucky, but that whole lucky life? And if somebody has fallen into something that's positive, and they can continue to make it positive, and they can continue to use that talent and hard work to grow the luck, then they have created something.

Very often people get what looks to be like a lucky break, looks like they've had a huge advantage, and they don't know what to do with it because they're not prepared for it or they don't have the interest in making it go on. And ultimately that's not a very lucky outcome. Well, and on the other hand, we all probably know people who seem to have had a very unlucky life, that things always seem to go wrong for them. That's an interesting perspective that a lot of people do have. They think of themselves as unlucky. And I wonder if they actually are, or I wonder if it's how we're perceiving ourselves and our own opportunities. I think very often people who are the luckiest are actually the people who are the most optimistic

and who are the most positive because they can take an event and they can see the bright side of it. They can see the positive side of it, and then they can move forward from there. And the research actually shows that people who think of themselves as lucky tend to become more lucky. There was actually a very amusing experiment that was done out of the UK by a researcher named Richard Wiseman, who's also written a lot about luck. And he gave people who called themselves either lucky or unlucky a newspaper and asked them to count how many photographs were in the newspaper. And on about page three, he had written, stop counting right now. Tell the researcher you saw this and you'll win a hundred pounds and can go home, you know, a hundred dollars and can go home. Well, the people

who thought of themselves as lucky tended to see that because they were open to things. They had a better ability to look widely around them. The people who thought of themselves as unlucky didn't even see that notice in the paper, and they just kept counting the photographs. And I just find that story really lovely because it does show that luck is sometimes right in front of us, and we truly literally don't take it because we're just not noticing, or we're just too scared or we're not paying enough attention. Well, and I would imagine that you would agree that optimism plays a part in this. You seldom see somebody who's one of those real negative person complaining about how

lucky they are. Exactly right. And the psychologist Marty Seligman, who's sort of the father of positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, he told us that the number one trait he would look for if he were looking to take a lucky person along with him to the moon, the number one trait he would look for would be optimism, because those are the people who can recognize opportunities, who can turn things around and make things happen. So how do I create a lucky life? I think the first thing is knowing what you want, knowing what you're aiming for. And that can change over the course of a life, but you have to be focused on something. You have to be aiming towards something because then you're able to let other people know what it is that you want.

And those people can sometimes help you find something specific that way. If you're just kind of vaguely thinking, I just want my life to be better, it's probably not going to be. But if you have those specific goals, those specific things that you want, there's a good chance you can make them happen. Persistence also matters, too. You've got to have a lot of at-bats. You've got to give yourself as of at-bats. You know, you got to give yourself as many chances as you possibly can. Even if you're not terribly good at something, if you're only going to, you know, if you're a one in a hundred hitter, if you take a hundred

at-bats, you're going to get that hit. So sometimes it really is just hanging in there and focusing on where you want to be. But sometimes it isn is just hanging in there and focusing on where you want to be. But sometimes it isn't just hanging in there because you've got a bad idea or you're barking up the wrong tree and persistence might be your enemy. Yeah, that's a really great point. You know, John Grisham, who has sold, I think, you know, 275 million books worldwide, was turned down by 28 publishers before his first book got published. And the same with Dr. Seuss. And, you know, Harry Potter was turned down by, I think, 12 publishers before that got published. So those are all the stories of hanging in.

But you're absolutely right. Sometimes you have to realize that it's not going to happen and that you're not John Grisham. And I think one way to judge that is kind of to see how close you get to something. So if you want to be an actor and you're just getting turned down at every audition, maybe it's time to go to law school. But if you want to be an actor and you're down to the last two for one audition after another, then it really is just giving yourself that extra chance. Because then you have the evidence that you're good, and you just need that little bit of opportunity to change.

So you're absolutely right. You need to be honest with yourself, and you need to see how you're doing and keep judging along the way. And what about the people who surround you? How important are they to how lucky you are? Really important. I think that luck is very often other people. And we tend to think that it's those people who are closest to us, our family members, mom and dad, our closest friends who are going to make luck for us. And actually it's not. Sociologists talk about the strength of weak ties, and I love that phrase. Weak ties are actually the people in that second circle,

slightly beyond those who you are so close to, the people who you know a bit more casually, who you see from time to time. And those people are more likely to have a different circle than you do, to know different people than you do, to know of different opportunities than you do. And so strengthening those weak ties, keeping that circle of friends larger is very often a way to lead to luck. And by the way, sometimes moving away from mom and dad is something that's going to help make luck. We tend to think of Americans as always on the move and always going, and it's just not true. The vast, vast percentage of people still live something

like 20 miles away from their parents. And I have nothing against parents. I am one. But you have to realize that sometimes you have to look for opportunities elsewhere. We're talking about ways to be luckier in your life, and I'm speaking with Janice Kaplan. Her book is How Luck Happens, Using the Science of Luck to Transform Work, Love, and Life. I believe I mentioned this before, but we will be launching a new podcast in the near future, and as with this podcast, we needed a website.

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Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes.

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Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go Network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know, Janice, you're talking about living close to your parents, living close to home and the influence that that has on your life. It also seems that being around those people that you grew up with,

your family and your friends that you grew up with, these are people that are invested in you staying who you are and not becoming somebody else and not growing too much. Yes? I think that's absolutely right. And that is why having a different perspective and being able to have that wider circle can make a big difference. But it does seem that a lot of the lucky events that happen, you know, is a result of the person that you're sitting next to on the plane or someone you meet somewhere at a party. That there is that random meeting that does seem to drive a lot of lucky circumstances.

It's possibly a dangerous attitude to have that everything is unplanned, and so I just have to wait for that. I spoke to one entrepreneur who has a very successful company right now, and he said to me, Oh, my entire life has been based on luck, a random event. I happened to be seated next to an investor at a dinner who liked my idea some years ago, put money into it, and that was it. Can you imagine my whole life was based on just where I happened to be seated? Well, that's a great story, isn't it? That's a really nice story to tell, except if you take it back, you realize that more went into it, that he did have that wide circle of people that he had been building and cultivating. He had this great idea for a company that he had been working on for months

and months and trying to develop. Somebody who knew about him in that circle of weaker ties had invited him to that dinner because he wanted him to meet the investor. When he sat down next to the investor, he knew exactly what to say to him. He had a great pitch to give to him. So it looks like random chance, but I can tell you that if I had been the one who was randomly seated next to that investor, I would not now have a $100 million company. So I think it's very much that combination of what we've put into place, what we have prepared for, and then being able to take advantage of what look like random events. Yeah, you have to be prepared for when those events happen, but you can't plan on those events. They happen when they happen,

with whoever they happen with. Like the guy, it happened, I can think of several cases in my life, my father's life, where it was the guy sitting next to you who knew a guy that had this thing and it all worked out. But it wouldn't, as you say, it wouldn't have all worked out if all those other things weren't in place as well. But that was a factor. It was a random event that kind of triggered it. But then all those other things were in place as well. Right. but then all those other things were in place as well. Right, and I think there's sometimes a good chance that if that random event hadn't happened, it might have been a different one.

Sure, right, right. You might have ended up in a slightly different place than you are now, but if you knew that you were looking to make something happen, you would have made it happen. Do you think, is it your experience, that people who you would consider lucky and who consider themselves lucky are always lucky, or do they have bad luck streaks, or what? Yeah, I think, again, bad luck is sometimes how you look at it. And when you're in the midst of a situation, it can feel like bad luck. When you are able to kind of pull back from that momentary situation

and look at all of the paths that you might be able to take, you can start to feel not quite as stuck. I love the story of the author Lee Child, who I worked with back when I was editor of Parade. And Lee, of course, is the author of the internationally best-selling Jack Reacher thrillers that were made into the movie starring Tom Cruise. And Lee only started writing those books after he was fired from his job as a television director, which he had held for about a dozen years.

And he told me he had expected to stay in that job forever. And he was furious when he got fired. Management had changed, and he had a wife, and he had a kid, and he had a mortgage and a car, and what was he supposed to do? Well, he took some of that anger into trying to think of it as an opportunity and doing something he had always wanted, which was to write. Now, when you've been fired from your job, you don't necessarily know that you're going to end up being an internationally best-selling author. But if you can try to take what seems to be bad luck and try to see it as an opportunity, try to say, okay, nothing I can do about this except think about what the next step

is, then maybe you can turn it into something positive. Well, but that does take that internal optimism to be able to see that, to not see the doom and gloom, but to see that this is an opportunity. It's easy to say that's a good thing to do. It's pretty hard to do it in the moment when you're feeling as if your world's coming to an end. Absolutely. And I'm not suggesting that it's easy, but I do think that having that resilience, having that strength, having that positive outlook really can be what makes you start to look lucky when you look back or when other people look over at you.

What else about luck, when you looked at this, what else about luck surprised you? I think one of the things I was most surprised by was the idea that you need to, what we call, zig when others zag, that sometimes the most successful people go in unexpected directions. So, you know, I'm a pretty straight arrow. I usually think that you're supposed to follow the straight path and go straight ahead and keep doing what, you know, keep plodding along and you're going to be successful. But it turns out that very often taking a different

direction than others are can lead to success. And I'll tell you one story from that. Back when I was a TV producer, I worked with a guy at Fox named Mike Darnell. And this was some years ago, and Mike was really at the very forefront of starting reality television. And Mike told me recently that he had very consciously chosen that direction because in television, everybody is always copying each other. And he thought that the only way he was going to stand out was to take a lane that nobody else was in. So he was doing shows at Fox called, you know, Joe Millionaire and Temptation Island and all of those early reality shows that were just completely scoffed at. But he stuck with it. And then when a guy from

the UK came in to pitch a show, he was a reality show. He was one of the only people willing to take a meeting with him, bought his show, put it on the air. You may have heard of it. It's called American Idol. And it, of course, became one of the biggest shows in television history. And Mike was very ardent that he had that success because he went into a different lane, because he zigged when others zagged, because he was willing to be a little bit different. And, again, it's not always going to work. And there are times when you definitely don't want to be a little bit different. And again, it's not always going to work, and there are times when you definitely don't want to be too different.

But it is worth thinking about and worth sometimes giving yourself that opportunity. There is this image that some people, some people who are seemingly lucky, you know, they put all their eggs in one basket. They just, they closed their eyes and rolled the dice and, wow, look what happened. And that kind of reckless attitude is part of luck. Right. And I think it's a very dangerous myth that we have developed around

entrepreneurs that, you know, they've thrown everything into what they do and they have no backup plan. And I actually looked a little bit more in depth at a couple of companies, including Warby Parker and some of the other big recent startups, looked back at Kate Spade, and those myths really don't hold up. They really all did have some caution behind them. They sure were throwing themselves into these businesses, working really hard for them, but they also knew that the odds weren't 100%, and they had something that they were willing to turn to if it didn't work out. And I think over and over again, that's an important lesson to have, that we all know

that we're going to diversify if we're buying stocks, well, we probably want to diversify in our lives a little bit also. Well, it does seem from what you're saying that in many ways, luck is kind of an illusion, that luck, when we think of luck, it isn't, you know, magic. It's the result of hard work and knowing what you're doing and persevering and all of that. Janice Kaplan has been my guest. She's the former editor-in-chief of Parade magazine, and her new book is called How Luck Happens, Using the Science of Luck to Transform Work, Love, and Life. Thanks, Janice. Great to talk to you. Okay, you too. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure. Take care. Bye-bye. You know, my mother was a great cook, and so was her mom.

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So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to, called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology.

That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong?

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Until it was pointed out to me several years ago, I guess, I never really realized that I and you, we are constantly telling ourselves stories. Here's a perfect example. You send an important email to someone that requires an immediate response and you don't get one, at least not right away. So what do you do? You immediately start telling yourself why. You start filling in the blanks and creating reasons why that other person hasn't written you back. And it's almost always negative, and it's almost never the real reason the person didn't write you back. We all tend to do this over and over again.

And for one thing, it can cause a lot of undue stress, and for another thing, it can get you in trouble, especially if you start to actually believe the story you made up, and you act on that. So what's going on here? Scott Gournteau is a therapist and author of a book called The Stories We Tell Ourselves. Stop jumping to conclusions, free yourself from anxiety, transform your relationships. Hey Scott, so why do we do this?

Why, when we don't know what's really going on, do we make up these stories out of thin air? You know, I think our brain, you know, from the very beginning of time, those first really couple years of life is, you know, fighting for our own survival. You know, we're looking for those first couple years of life, at least, to genuinely connect with another person and also feel like we're safe. And, you know, I don't think that need for safety leaves us. And so certainly in relationships, we don't have all the answers. We have a tendency to fill in the blank as a way of feeling more safe or more in control or more in a position of comfort. Yeah, well, we don't like a story without an ending, so we make up our own, I guess.

That's right. But it's always a negative ending. It's always a negative fill-in-the-blank. It's never a, you know, he's not calling me because he's busy calling the florist to send me flowers. He's not calling me because he's never going to call me. It has a tendency to do that. I've certainly worked with people over the years who, you know, have more of a propensity towards more of the positive narrative. But for

the most part, most of us, including myself, lean more towards that negative narrative. You know, we have the ability to work towards a more of a positive narrative, too. It's almost like it's a skill, really. It's a skill that you can develop and get better at and begin to change the story, because most of the stories that we tell ourselves are really more fictional anyway. Well, if telling yourself a negative narrative is self-protective, what's the harm? That's a fantastic question. So when you're saying, what is the harm? You know, I don't think there's harm in telling yourself more of a positive narrative. Certainly, if your spouse has been distant for a few days and you wonder what's going on,

I mean, it could be a number of things. And, you know, certainly what we want to shoot for is trying to get more information and going to that person and talking with them at the right time. But, you know, in that in-between space, we do have the ability to lean into more of a positive narrative, and I think that's a better way to go. But positive may be just as wrong as the negative.

I would think that truth would be better. I completely agree. However, if I'm going through my day, and that story I just shared about the husband and wife, and I'm going through my day, and I don't have all the information, I have two different options. Either A, well, three, really. Either A, I let myself tell myself a negative narrative that could be based on some past situations in that coupleship or that relationship. Or I could go down a more positive path that says, you know what, let me

give her the benefit of the doubt here. Let me give her the benefit of the doubt. I don't know all the information. I'm going to try to tell myself a little more of a positive narrative, not a made-up narrative, not a fictional narrative in terms of just creating anything, but more of a pressing pause on the negativity and suspending it and saying, look, I'm not going to go down a negative path, but I'm going to go down a little bit more of a positive path, which is I don't know all the information, and I've got to hold it with more of an open hand. And I certainly want to seek the truth, which means I want to sit down with them at the right time to talk with them about this and what I'm, you know, what's going on in my head and what I'm telling myself. But part of the goal is not just, and that's a good nuance there that you're bringing up,

it's not just changing to a positive narrative. It is about suspending the negative narrative at the same time. Which is incredibly hard to do, because if it was easy to do, everybody would do it. So how do you do it? How do you suspend what seems to be a natural inclination to fill in those blanks with a negative story? The very first thing is becoming aware. You've got to become aware that you are doing this to yourself. Hear the language, we're doing that to ourselves. We don't know the story and our brain is naturally going to go towards a default of telling ourself more of a negative narrative, typically. And if we're not even aware we're

doing it, then how can we stop? So I think the first step is awareness of learning, okay, I'm actually doing this. But I do think there has to be a level of awareness that you begin with. Once you start with it, once you get to the awareness piece, then you could put press pause on it. And at that point, there's other things that you can do to help yourself calm it and move to a different place. Like? Well, for example, one of the greatest gifts that we have is our breath, our breathing. And I will work with people specifically on different breathing techniques to calm down their heart and trying to get their oxygen back into their lungs and into their brain

and to feel more breathing techniques. I'll also work with them on getting more present in the moment, meaning if there's really heightened anxiety, if I'm telling myself a story, that story that I mentioned earlier about the husband and wife, if I'm in that narrative and I've got a narrative in my head about my wife and the distance between us for a couple of days, you know, and my brain has a tendency to go more future or what else is going on, which is outside of my body. I'm not in the

present. I'm somewhere else. So the breathing can bring you back to the present. And the other thing that can bring you back to the present is learning to get connected to your senses where you're, you know, if you're sitting in a room, I'll try to put both feet on the ground and I'll, more mindfulness techniques, you know, where you're looking around the room and you're trying to get, you know, connected to something, a painting, color, texture, sight, hearing sounds, you know, that sort of thing to try to get yourself more in the present. Those could be a couple of small ways, but there's a number of other ways that, you know, one can do to help themselves, you know, take steps towards calming their own anxiety, sometimes writing it down and journaling

it, seeing it. I like asking the question, you know, what do I know to be true about this? Is this true or some variation of that? And that's another additional point of stopping. But the whole point of these kind of exercises is just to question the thoughts. It's not, I like to think that every thought that comes into our brain, we don't need to just let it sit there and ruminate. We've got to learn to challenge our thoughts. And it's a skill that we learn to develop. We've got to learn to challenge it and influence them.

And if we don't, if we just let them be there, they'll take us down all sorts of paths. So, you know, just coming to the awareness and the knowledge that our ability as human beings, that we have the ability, rather, to pause our thoughts, that we can't control the first thought that comes into our brain each and every moment of every day, but we have the power to change the second. Is there any value in, if you've been ruminating all day about what might be, and it's probably negative, is there any value in sharing that when you finally do sit down and talk?

Seems like it probably wouldn't be of much value, but I want to get your take on that. You know, I really, I don't get asked that question very much, but I will say that I really appreciate that question because I do see value in that. If you're in a business relationship or more of an acquaintance-type relationship, that sort of thing, no, I don't see a whole lot of value there. It really depends on, I guess, the business relationship you have, whether you have a really good long-term open relationship.

It's certainly more a committed emotional partnership of some kind, yeah, I think it would be great. I mean, one of the things I talk about in the book is I say, hey, you know, go into that person and say, look, you know, especially if there's a lot of openness and vulnerability, you know, between the two parties, if they have that kind of relationship, and certainly it takes a lot of work and time and trust and so on. But, yeah, going to that person and saying, look, you know, over the last few days, this is what I've told myself. And rather than making myself miserable with this because I've been struggling with it, I've tried to put pause on it. But I wanted to, you know, start up all these feelings of, you know, this insecurity and fear. And I realized that I don't even know if it's true.

But I wanted to give you a heads up of where I am with this, and is this true? So yeah, I think, you know, if we go with the belief that having an emotionally committed relationship, part of that is sharing what's going on in your mind and your heart, that would be an example, an opportunity for that type of communication. Well, it is interesting how, you know, we talk to ourselves all day long. We're telling ourselves stories all day, and we don't really stop and critique them and say, you know, do I know this

to be true? We just accept it as truth, and boy, does it get us in trouble. It does. And what I find very interesting is there are a lot of people out there in my research city that I'm finding who don't even think about this. It's not even a thought in their head. There's not an awareness

that they're doing this. They recognize it once we start talking about it, but they don't even think about this. It's not even a thought in their head. There's not an awareness that they're doing this. They recognize it once we start talking about it, but there's not a lot of awareness there for many folks. But, yeah, I think the more that you can become aware of this, the more you can put pause on, press pause on that tape. Well, you know, I am aware of it sometimes. I mean, when I stop to think, Oh, let's be aware of it. But, but most of the time I think people are not, you know, it's a very conscious effort to say, Hey, wait, wait a minute. Wait, wait, look, look where my mind is taking me. Um,

and, and question it rather than just let your mind take you where it takes you and accept it as reality. And boy, it really does help when you can put the brakes on and say, well, no, wait a minute. I don't know that to be true. I don't know that that's the reason this person's acting this way or they haven't called me back. Or where am I coming up with this?

This is just fantasy. Yeah. You and I can talk about this and be thinking about it for the next few minutes, right? But then we're going to go throughout our day and be caught in another story. And then how do you remind yourself to get good at this? And it's a skill that you develop. I mean, I'm, you know, I've been doing this for almost 20 years. I'm still getting good at this and getting better at it. It's definitely a skill that you have to hone in. And sometimes I'm doing it really well. And sometimes I'm, I get stuck.

You've been doing it 20 years and you're still trying? Well, that's discouraging, because if you can't nail it, then how the hell am I going to nail it? Well, you know, at the same time, I'm a human being. I would say that, you know, if I had to give a, if I had to say how I was doing 20 years ago compared to now, if I rated myself on a scale of 1 to 10, I probably would say that I was, you know, a 2 or a 3 on awareness of this. And the better I, the more awareness I got, the more skilled I got at this, the more training I do with this, I'm probably at a seven or eight, maybe even a nine at times. You know, there's, and so it's certainly something you can improve on, but you know, as

human beings, we're, it's development and change is something we do for the rest of our life, you know? You know, so it's, it's something you've got to, to keep working at. But I would say there's folks that out there who, you know, they'll, you know, they'll put a rubber band around their wrist and they'll, you know, keep it on there or a bracelet of some kind that reminds them, you know, to tell themselves a different story or to pause that story. You know, what's interesting is that when this happens and then when you go find out what the real story is, and most of the time it isn't what you've been thinking. We don't use that as evidence for the next time. We discount it and say, well, yeah, but that was last time. But now this is really what's going on.

Yeah, you think you would. Yeah, you think you would. Yeah, you think we would build on that past experience. If you keep that in the forefront of your mind, that could be helpful, or that could be a reminder. That can be one of the conversations that you can have in your head in the moment is a, okay, I'm getting myself stuck with this. Remember last time it was this.

Let's see if that can help in this moment. From the research I did, a good 90% plus, I mean, it's 90% plus at the time, these stories that we tell ourselves aren't true that I found in the research study I did. The work that I've, you know, there are times certainly that these stories are true. And the reality is we don't have any control over what other people's behavior is. But we do have control. If there's an element here that we could say, hey, if a good part of the time I'm making myself miserable with these stories and I'm allowing this to happen,

that I've got to do my part individually to change this, to make my life better. I can't control what other people do, and if they do something that's causing me a lot of pain, I'm going to have to work through that pain and go through the grieving process. I can't. You know, this is not a recipe for avoiding pain from other people's behavior, but it is a recipe for turning down your own pain and causing your own self-harm. Well, I think the simplest advice you gave is the best advice, which is to just be aware that you're doing it,

that you're making up these stories, filling in these blanks, because, you know, we don't like a vacuum. We don't like the unknown, so we make up our own reality, and usually it does us absolutely no good. Scott Gorto has been my guest. He is a therapist and author of the book, The Stories We Tell Ourselves, Stop Jumping to Conclusions, Free Yourself from Anxiety, Transform Your Relationships. There's a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks, Scott.

You bet. Well, I enjoyed it and always enjoy talking with you. If your goal is to save as much money as possible at the grocery store, and why wouldn't that be your goal? Because you don't want your goal to be to spend as much money as possible at the grocery store. So if saving money sounds like a good idea to you, there are a few items you should seriously consider not buying at the grocery store. Organic onions and avocados, for example. These two items are naturally pesticide-free. The same goes for most produce with non-edible skin, including banana and garlic. There really isn't any reason to buy organic versions of these,

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for using Spongebob or whoever else on those products. And that is something you should know. A reminder that we have great sponsors on this podcast. If what they sell sounds the least bit interesting to you, I hope you will check out their products and services and buy them. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Do you love Disney? Do you love top 10 lists? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. The parks, the movies,

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