The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - Don't Accentuate the Positive

Episode Date: October 29, 2019

We often think positive thinking is the best way to achieve our ambitions - but the science shows it holds us all back. Dr Laurie Santos hears how champion swimmer Michael Phelps imagined the worst to help make his Olympic dreams come true. It's a mental habit that you can learn too.For an even deeper dive into the research we talk about in the show visit happinesslab.fm Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin. Now what I want to talk to you about tonight is why positive thinkers get positive results. And they do, too, that's for sure. Pastor Norman Vincent Peale officiated Donald Trump's first marriage, but that's not his biggest claim to fame. Take charge of your thoughts. You can do what you will. Peale is famous for his 1952 book, The Power of Positive Thinking. Peale was one of the first to argue for the power of positive thought, the idea that if you get rid of your negativity and crush all your worries about the obstacles in your path, then things will work out just the way

you hoped they would. The concept was simple and really appealing. Simply visualize a great job or the perfect marriage and it'll happen. You think positively in order to send out positive emanations to reproduce themselves in kind in positive results. But, Peale says, if you think about the pitfalls you could meet along the way, then they'll appear. You'll be punished for your pessimism. You can destroy yourself, or you can create yourself by the manner and quality of your thoughts. Peale's idea that the path to happiness was in our heads took a troubled post-war American public by storm. The power of positive thinking remained on the bestseller list for 186 weeks and was translated into 15 different languages. And on this basis and by this method, positive thinkers always get positive results. But the notion that negative thinking could bring you down didn't end in the 1950s.

But the notion that negative thinking could bring you down didn't end in the 1950s. That same punished-for-pessimism idea continues in the rhetoric of self-help gurus today. Everything we think and feel is creating our future. So wrote Rhonda Byrne in her 2006 book, The Secret. She argued that the power of positive thought was a basic physical law of the universe. Her theory became a favorite subject on daytime talk shows and most importantly won the Oprah seal of approval. All of my guests today say they have uncovered the secret to bringing love, to bringing happiness, even wealth into anybody's life. The secret is

the law of attraction. It means that the energy you put out into the world is always going to be coming back to you. Think good things and good things will come, drawn to you like a magnet. But, as Byrne warned, if you're worried or in fear, then you're bringing more of that into your life too. Even if you don't fully subscribe to the law of attraction, I bet you agree that thinking positively is probably a good thing. Human thought may not work like a magnet, but a little optimism is presumably still useful for meeting our goals. And it seems obvious that too much negative thinking could bring us down.

But is that really the case? Does envisioning a positive future actually help it come about? And is it helping our happiness in the way we think? Our minds are constantly telling us what to do to be happy. But what if our minds are wrong? What if our minds are lying to us, leading us away from what will really make us happy? The good news is that understanding the science of the mind can point us all back in the right direction. You're listening to The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos.

His world records in swimming, I think it's 48. I keep losing track of it. It's 40-something world records. I think the next closest person is 20-something. You know, he's just obliterated the record books. This is Bob Bowman, the man who coached swimmer Michael Phelps to 23 Olympic gold medals. 20 freaking three. I think the next closest person is nine. And that's Mark Spitz, right? And Lassie Varon and Carl Lewis. Bob was the first person to spot Michael's immense potential.

He knew it the instant the fifth grader entered the water at his Baltimore swim club. Michael stood out. He was head and shoulders above the rest of the group. Then I went home and I could not sleep that night because I was like, wow, this kid is something and I better step up my game because he's way ahead of me right now. As the youngest pupil at Bob's swimming practice, 11-year-old Michael would be placed at the back of the group, behind boys three and four years older than him,

as everyone set off for their daily laps. And I remember by the end of it, he had worked his way from last to first and was swimming times that no 11-year-old would swim in practice. And the first thing I remember doing was like, don't act like you're excited. Just act like it's normal. I was like, okay, nice job. See you tomorrow. Even in those first practice sessions, Bob could see that Michael was a very raw talent. What I saw was someone who had rather undisciplined strokes. So he wasn't very efficient. He just used a lot of energy. disciplined strokes. So he wasn't very efficient. He just used a lot of energy.

He had an incredible mental capacity to want to compete, to give his best effort when it was needed. But in practice, he was very sloppy and sometimes he wouldn't pay attention to things. Michael was particularly resistant to altering his front crawl rhythm due to the so-called six beat kick. Which means you're going to take six kicks for every two arm strokes. This is a critical thing. Michael only took two. So he just moved his arms like a madman and didn't kick at all. And doing that, he was the fastest 11 year old in America. Nevertheless, Bob wanted to fix this stroke problem, but it meant engaging the young Phelps in a battle of wills. If Michael

stuck to the six-beat kick, all was well. But if he fell back into his bad habit, he got pulled out of the pool. So the first practice, he made it about five minutes before he didn't do it, and I kicked him out of practice. Next day, about 20 minutes, kicked out. The next day, about 40. Made it an hour on about the fourth day. But after that, he never had to go back, right? That's what made Michael Phelps Michael Phelps. But Michael's physical training could only take him so far. To get to the next level, Bob had to introduce his pupil to mental training. Oh, you have to have the software and the hardware, right?

Nobody just gets a Mac with nothing on it. So you have to work on the software too, and you have to constantly be upgrading it. And that's where I think the mental training comes in. It just makes everything you do more meaningful. When Bob talks about mental training, he sounds a little like a positive thinking guru. One thing you need to have is what I call your dream goal, your vision, right? And I say, you know, Michael, what's your dream goal? Think about it. And he would always say swim in the Olympics. But Michael didn't just want Olympic glory. He developed a list of goals for his career, a list of goals for the year, and even goals for his next training session. And I had him put it on his refrigerator because that's where he went most of the time, right?

He'd see it a hundred times a day. He was eating nonstop at this time. Michael had to focus on meeting all these goals during swim practice, which took a lot of hard work. You know, one of the things that my swimmers hate hearing me say is, you know, it takes what it takes. You don't get to make up what it takes. This is what it takes. So you can either do make up what it takes. This is what it takes.

So you can either do it or not, but realize this is what it's going to take. Bob also taught Michael a very advanced form of mental training, the art of visualization, competing for a gold medal in his mind. Let's see yourself swimming the race and the time that you want to swim. See yourself swimming at the tempo, you know, make it as vivid as you can. Smell the chlorine. You know what a lot of these pools are going to be like. So, you know, make sure that your mental picture is very, it's like a movie, but it's very detailed. And he would start doing that. Bob's visualization technique is based on

the latest science of what researchers call mental practice, a form of practice that you do not in the physical world, but inside your head. It turns out that simply imagining a behavior—say, swimming an Olympic race or practicing the violin—can train your mind in some of the same ways as hopping into a real pool or picking up an actual instrument. Mental practice works because our minds aren't all that great at telling the difference between something that's really happening to us and

something we just imagined. Envisioning an activity vividly, it turns out, recruits the same brain circuits as experiencing that event in real life. Which means our minds can learn from imagined events in a lot of the same ways as we learn from real events. Scientists have done some clever experiments to show the power of mental simulation to influence what we learn in the real world. The psychologist Kerry Morwidge and his colleagues wanted to see if simply imagining eating lots of bad food can have the same consequences as actually eating a lot of bad food. Morwitch had his subjects imagine one of two activities, either putting 30 quarters into a laundry machine, slowly, one by one, or eating 30 pieces of M&M's candy, slowly, one by one. Afterwards, he made both groups of subjects sit in a room with a real candy dish. Did simulating eating the M&M's affect how many real M&M's people ate? Morwitch

found that people who imagined eating M&M's ate about half M&Ms people ate? Morwidge found that people who imagined eating M&Ms ate about half as many as people who imagined popping quarters. Mentally eating a food feels so much like you're actually doing it that you eat less chocolate in real life. Merely imagining causes enough of the same cues and physiological signals that we can learn from a behavior we just saw inside our heads. Mental practice, it turns out, can also make perfect, or in the case of Michael Phelps, more than perfect. We used to call it the movie, right? Like back then there wasn't, you know, digital. We had VHS tapes. So I would carry it into practice. So let's say we were doing a series in practice where Michael was swimming 100 meters freestyle. I would say, put in the videotape and run your rehearsal of your race right now. See the movie right now as you're doing this last 100 meters and hit the time.

Was the kind of thing Michael was envisioning in his head always positive, like the perfect race, everything goes perfectly? Well, you know, I used to think it was until after the Beijing Olympics. Yes, the 2008 Beijing Olympics. That year, Michael was hoping to smash the record in the 200-meter butterfly final. It was his best event. And quite frankly, he and I were both hoping for a performance that would last forever. That butterfly final was definitely a race that fans would remember, but not for the reasons Bob expected.

A real-life disaster struck during that race, one that challenged the tenets of positive thinking right to the core. The Happiness Lab will be back in a moment. Ugh, we're so done with New Year, New You. We'll see you next time. More of you dating with intention because you know what you want. And you know what? We love that for you. Someone else will too. Be more you this year and find them on Bumble. Michael Phelps was about to begin one of the biggest races of his career,

the 200-meter Men's butterfly Olympic final. Coach Bob Bowman was poolside when the race suddenly went wrong. After the dive, he noticed in the first 50 meters that his goggles were filling up with water. But he knew he couldn't stop and take his goggles off because that would be disqualification. He would have broken stroke. So he was stuck with the goggles. And by the time he was halfway through the race, he could not see anything. Think about this for a second. You're Michael Phelps. You've trained for this moment your entire life. You've been reminded of how important the gold medal is every time you went to the refrigerator. You've played mental videotape after mental videotape of the perfect race. But when you dive into the pool, your goggles fill with water and you're swimming blind. What did Michael do? Well, even though his coach didn't realize it,

Michael had a tape for that too. It turns out Michael had gotten so bored with all those think positive perfect race visualizations that he threw some not so perfect mental simulations into the mix. And I had no idea he was doing that. He did that on his own. Very important. The importance of this is clear when we cut back to that butterfly race. How did Michael deal with the tragedy of swimming blind? He played back a mental movie.

So what he decided to do was revert back to what he had seen and worked on so hard mentally. And he's like, I hope at 19 strokes I'm going to hit the wall. He did. And then he made the last 50. He's like, okay, at 20, I really hope I'm going to get this done. And he did. The result was a world record gold medal. And if you ever watched the video of it, Michael takes off his, throws off his cap and goggles. And he looks like somebody who got last place, right? And he went into this tantrum like he used to have when he was like 12. He was like, you know, my goggles filled up. I didn't know what to do. I just counted my strokes. I could have gone 150.5. I went 152 flat. I'm like, you know, we're kind of in front of a few billion people right now, gold medal, world record. let's just smile. And he did. But that's a perfect example of him taking what we had rehearsed so

many times and putting it to practice under incredible pressure, right? And my first thought about that is who does that? What kind of freak is this that does that? But when you go back and dissect how he got there, he had been prepared for that for a very long time. Yeah. I saw an interview with him where he was asked, what was it like to swim blind? And I think he said, just like I imagined it would. Exactly.

Exactly. Michael didn't just visualize all the positive stuff, the perfect race when everything went well. He also simulated what it felt like to swim blind. And so he swam perfectly in spite of the awful situation. And in the end, he won the race, got the gold, and even took the world record. Bob reckons things would have been very different if Michael's visualizations had used purely positive thinking.

Your brain is a computer, right? That's what I say. And you're giving a computer, right? That's what I say. And you're giving it input, right? So you're giving it, on the one hand, the input of the things that you want to do. On the second part, you're rehearsing a database of scenarios so that you're ready for whatever comes up. If you dive in and something doesn't go well, you can immediately call on these other scenarios. But if you haven't put those in your database, you don't get to call on those. You have to consciously start thinking about what to do. And we all know that's not the best way to be in competition, right?

You want to shut your brain off and just let it automatically happen. Michael Phelps is a one-in-a-million, maybe one-in-a-billion athlete. But science suggests the strategy he used, focusing his mental energy on the worst possible outcome, that nightmare scenario, is one that all of us can learn from. Despite what shelves of self-help books say, it turns out that negative thinking is really, really helpful. In fact, new research is beginning to show that positive thinking, focusing only on the good outcomes, can be a recipe for disaster. What we find is the more positive people think about the future, actually, the less well they do in reaching the positive future.

I'm talking with Gabrielle Oettingen, professor of psychology at NYU and author of a book entitled Rethinking Positive Thinking. We need to listen to our positive fantasies and daydreams because they are an expression of our needs. So we know where to go. The only problem is that these positive fantasies and daydreams, they sap our energy. They are actually an impediment to our actual successes. Gabrielle's work has documented lots of cases where more positive thinking leads to worse outcomes.

The more positively people enrolled in a weight reduction program fantasized about their success in the program, the fewer pounds they shed or the more positively university graduates fantasized about success in transferring into the work life, the fewer dollars they earned two years later, the fewer job offers they had gotten and the fewer job applications they had sent out. You name the goal and research shows that positive thinking makes it less likely you'll reach it. Those who fantasize about starting a romantic relationship are more likely to remain alone. People who dream of an ideal future get more depressed. Carefully imagine getting good grades, and you risk flunking the class. The downside of positive thinking even extends to

physical outcomes. Elderly individuals who dream of a full recovery after their hip surgery are the ones who can walk the fewest steps afterwards. Simply put, positive thinking alone doesn't work. I asked Gabrielle if people are shocked when they hear about this work, whether she gets a lot of pushback. I do, but on the other hand, people are sometimes grateful because this positive thinking alone did not work for them. And they always think something is wrong with them. And they feel kind of relieved that they're not alone where they

experience that they can think positive and positive and positive and still things don't rain from heaven. The coolest thing about Gabrielle's work is that she's figured out why positive fantasies are counterproductive. The reason? Mentally simulating our desired outcome makes us think we already got there, like we just ate all the M&Ms we need. In their mind, they experience this desired future already there, and therefore they relax.

So it's almost like the simple act of experiencing this positive fantasy. It's like it confuses our mind. Our mind thinks we've already gotten it, so we don't have to put energy in. Exactly. You can measure that by lowered blood pressure, for example. And so how do we actually get the energy back we need to realize our goals? Oddly enough, we need a burst of negative thinking. Just like Michael Phelps visualizing swimming blind,

getting to our own personal goals requires thinking about the obstacles that block our path. It's kind of counterintuitive that the obstacles in our way are actually the trigger for overcoming them and getting to implement our positive fantasies, but it's exactly what we found. We need to ground our positive fantasies in the gritty reality. It's a strategy Gabrielle calls mental contrasting. Every time we have a positive ambition for ourselves, we need to directly contrast that goal, mentally, with the reality of the situation, the actual obstacles in our way. And we need to simulate all of the obstacles, both the physical ones, like a pair of goggles falling off, but also the mental obstacles, our dumb habits, fears, and bad tendencies. That's a critical point in mental contrasting. Identify the inner obstacle and get rid of the excuses.

Then we get the energy to overcome these obstacles. Mental contrasting is not just negative thinking or simply ruminating about all the bad stuff. It's making sure you factor the obstacles you're facing into your plans. It's contrasting the harsh realities of the world with what you'd like to see in the future. And that helps you determine whether your vision is really achievable or worth it. If the obstacle is just too formidable or too costly to overcome, we can then say, okay, I can let go without having a bad conscience. And then I am free to invest my energy to more feasible wishes. So it is a strategy to set priorities and to let

go from wishes that are simply not feasible or too costly. Mental contrasting can help us get our goals in line with what's actually doable, what's really worth our effort. But that doesn't mean that mental contrasting causes you to give up when the going gets tough. In fact, this strategy can be essential for getting through the toughest physical and mental challenges a person can face. Check, check. This is Kristen Beck with Laurie Santos. All right. Kristen Beck is a decorated veteran

of one of the most elite military forces, a unit where even if you're lucky enough to try out, the chances of you making the grade are tiny. It's probably like 7%, I think. Back when I joined, it was like the late 80s, early 90s, and there was really no publicity for the SEAL teams. But there was a really crappy movie called Navy SEALs. And after I saw that movie about the Navy SEALs, I was like, I want to do that.

Nowadays, the Navy SEALs are famous. They're the unit that killed Osama bin Laden, and their extreme training techniques make great television. They're shouted at, made to carry heavy logs, and thrown into the freezing ocean with their hands tied. And that's just the warm-up for the real challenge of joining the SEALs. Hell Week. You start training, all they're doing is just beating the heck out of you. You're going to be awake for six days. You're going to be working out constantly for six days.

They're making you do, you know, a thousand sit-ups and hundreds and hundreds of push-ups. And then you swim for seven miles. Then you run four miles. And it's just like a constant physical abuse. And what they're trying to do is they're trying to make you break. They're trying to make your body break or your mind break. You know, one or the other. The attrition rate for wannabe SEALs is insane during Hell Week.

Recruit after recruit just gives up. It's even ritualized. To drop out, recruits need to walk over to a brass ship's bell, assuming they can even walk, and ring it to signal their surrender. But part of what makes Kristen such an incredible person is that she never hit that bell.

You never quit. You still keep going. And so you're barely walking, but you're still going. You know, you're doing push-ups, and you're like, your knees are on the ground, and you're barely moving, but you're still doing it. And they kind of have to train you that hard physically because that's what you're going to deal with physically when you're actually in the job, right? Exactly. I mean, the physical is a huge part of it, but I think the mental is bigger. Why do the SEALs make their recruits train so hard?

It's the old military adage, train hard, fight easy. Having survived Hell Week, Kristen had the confidence that she could meet even the greatest mental and physical challenges and still succeed. But once becoming part of the SEALs proper, Kristen found that the unit doesn't just practice in the real world. They also practice in their heads. And this elite unit takes the simulations Michael Phelps and Gabrielle Oettingen recommend to a whole new level. We practice all the bad stuff to make sure that when we do get there, we go, wow, this is easy.

I've already seen something like that, or I've already been there, so that you're not quite as shocked when, you know, it really hits the fan. Just like with Michael Phelps imagining a race, thinking of every stroke and every detail down to the smell of the chlorinated water, Kristen would painstakingly plan every facet of her missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. So we do sand tables, and they're actually these big tables with sand, and we we shape the sand into the terrain and so if it's a mountain over there and a valley here and there's a stream here we'll make it as close as possible to what that terrain is going to look like if we encounter enemy forces

here then this is gonna be our our way out if this doesn't work and we go back to here we're constantly nitpicking and constantly saying what if if this happens? What if that happens? And then we throw in all the wrenches in the machine to make things break down. And this happens. This happens. So just like Michael Phelps. Maybe a little harsher and more weird stuff happens. Except when you guys swim, it's like legit and with big bags of mortars and things like Yeah, you're carrying 100 pounds through the water for seven miles.

So I'm not sure how much of this is classified, but I'm wondering, like, if this kind of simulation... This is all classified. All classified, no. Was there, like, you know, or maybe in vague terms you can tell, was there one time where those simulations really paid off? I mean, I could probably tell you that every mission goes that way. It never goes according to plan. I didn't push Kristen to tell me any more of her war stories. There's a good reason her activities are classified. I deployed 13 times overseas. I did a lot of work

behind enemy lines, like in deep. I was kind of sneaky peeky, so I did a lot of the stuff that you would do like in other agencies. But Kristen's most important role in the SEALs was as a planner, the person charged with predicting the terrible obstacles. She's trained role in the SEALs was as a planner, the person charged with predicting the terrible obstacles. She's trained more in the okay, what could go wrong next thought than nearly anyone else in our nation. I do it out of habit because I did it so many times. And because it's a habit, Kristen really gets that the kind of positive thinking we're often told to adopt by well-meaning friends and self-help gurus, it isn't all that helpful when the bullets start to fly. We always plan on all the negatives and all the bad stuff

happen. Hope is not a course of action. If all you have is hope, then you don't have very much. Kristen's training in the SEALs made her the human embodiment of mental contrasting, thinking through all the possible obstacles before they happen. But there's a second reason I wanted to interview Kristen for this episode, and that's because she's also faced a different kind of battle, one that she began speaking about publicly only after leaving the armed services. Right after I retired, I knew who I was. You know, born Christopher, but Kristen was part of my life since I was like a very young age. I knew who I was.

Kristen is a transgender woman and the author of Warrior Princess, a U.S. Navy SEAL's journey to coming out transgender. After she left the military, she made the courageous decision to live in accord with her gender identity, not the sex she happened to be assigned at birth. She has now gone on to become one of the country's most celebrated trans activists. But like many trans people, Kristen has also faced a number of harrowing challenges in the process of her transition, from daily harassment and discrimination to acts of physical violence. I wanted to learn how Kristen's expertise in mental contrasting helped her navigate this difficult personal challenge. Her honest answer blindsided

me and taught me that the lies of the mind go way deeper than we often realize. The Happiness Lab will be right back. Ugh, we're so done with New Year, New You. This year, it's more you on Bumble. More of you shamelessly sending playlists, especially that one filled with show tunes. More of you finding Gemini's because you know you always like them. More of you dating with intention because you know what you want.

And you know what? We love that for you. Someone else will too. Be more you this year and find them on Bumble. else will too. Be more you this year and find them on Bumble. Unless we understand what the obstacle is, we will not have the energy to overcome the obstacle. And we will also, when we don't imagine the obstacle, we will not be creative in finding solutions to overcome the obstacle. Gabrielle Oettingen's work on mental contrasting has shown just how powerful thinking about our obstacles can be. Her studies have shown time and again that simulating the barriers to our goals

can give us the motivation we need to solve them. The blood pressure goes up, it provides the oxygen to get going. But there's one more feature of mental contrasting that makes it such a powerful strategy. It gets our minds to start planning. When we think about obstacles, our brains naturally want to search for solutions to those obstacles. Very often the solution comes already when you think about the obstacle,

when you imagine the obstacle happening. You will suddenly understand, oh, this is what I could do in order to overcome the obstacle happening, you will suddenly understand, oh, this is what I could do in order to overcome the obstacle. Why didn't I discover that years ago? Thinking through all those inner and outer obstacles drives our mind into plotting mode. We turn on our inner navy seals. We hunger down at our mental sand tables to work out a plan that can successfully overcome the barrier we've identified. But Gabrielle has found a new way to put this planning process into overdrive by adding one additional form of mental practice. In addition to simulating the obstacles, Gabrielle recommends also taking time to imagine, very intentionally, what it would feel like to implement our plan

whenever the obstacle comes up. Kind of like what Michael Phelps did in his training. If goggles come off, then take exactly 19 strokes. This intentional simulation of an if-then plan is a strategy that researchers have called implementation intentions. The practice was developed by Gabrielle's husband, the psychologist Peter Golwitzer. The couple has now teamed up to study the power of using these two mental practices in parallel. They've even tied the two techniques together into one convenient package.

It's even got a handy acronym. WHOOP, W-O-O-P, that's right. That's right. WHOOP, which means wish, outcome, obstacle, and then plan. So it is identify a wish that is dear to your heart. Find the best outcome and imagine it. Find the inner central obstacle, meaning the obstacle in you that stands in the way, and imagine the obstacle, and then form an if-then plan. So wish, outcome, obstacle, plan.

So that's then what we call WHOOP. Let's try it now really quickly. What's something you wish for? What's a goal you really want to achieve in life? Now take a second to think of the outcome, what your life will really be like if you actually achieve that wish. But what are the obstacles? Non-judgmentally think of what's really in your way. And now that you know the obstacles, what's your plan? How will you actually overcome the barriers to realizing your goal? That only took a few seconds, and Gabrielle recommends taking a bit longer to boop,

but you get the general idea. It's a simple technique, but one that's really powerful. Research shows it helps people eat healthier, lose more weight, study more effectively, and even procrastinate less. It can help depressed people exercise and be more social, and even helps patients recover faster and take their medications more regularly. When you ask people, how did whoop work for you? They say, well, the obstacle didn't appear. So they can't even remember that the obstacle appeared because they just automatically somehow did it.

And that's why whooping is so powerful. It harnesses the processes we learned about in the first part of this episode. One of the most awesome features of our mind, our brains can automatically learn from mental practice. Imagine eating a bunch of M&Ms and you've learned what it feels like. You're done eating them. Imagine swimming the perfect race and your brain knows what to do. And imagine the solution to a tough obstacle,

and your brain has already figured out how to overcome it automatically. But there is one small challenge to whooping. Like all other good things in life, we actually have to do it for it to work. And that can be tough in reality. Not just because it takes time, but also because doing it well involves taking a long, hard look at yourself and your circumstances. Whatever the obstacle is, it needs to be identified honestly, without excuses,

and then you can see whether you will be able to overcome it or not. Whooping works because it forces you to ask some tough questions. What are my inner obstacles? What am I afraid of? What are my real priorities? What are my insecurities? Are the people around me preventing me from doing what I really want? People who employ techniques like whoop know that this part,

the unfettered honesty, can be daunting. Remember what Bob Bowman told his swimmers every day, it takes what it takes. Some obstacles require a lot of work, and that can be tough to come to terms with. So tough that we sometimes would rather put on blinders and just think positive instead. Even people who understand the power of mental practice aren't always able to put the work in for goals that really matter. Our most personal ones, the ones that involve a really long hard look at the inner obstacles we face. It's worse than combat because combat is very cut and dry. But this is, this is, you don't know.

When Kristen left the Navy SEALs and began her transition, she found enemies on all sides. I'm one of one. I'm the only transgender Navy SEAL. I'm the only female Navy SEAL. I'm the only, however you want to explain it, I'm a very small minority. I went to the inauguration of Donald Trump and people were angry at me for doing it. He says, why would you do that? I said, because I was being visible because I was sitting there amongst all of these people and all the supporters and everyone that

loves our president. They automatically have all the respect for the military and patriots and all the stuff that they talk about, but they don't respect transgender people. But now they're in a weird conundrum where they're, what are they going to do? They're not going to walk up to me and start yelling at me or disrespecting me because they can't because that's against the uniform. So they're in a really weird spot that I force them into. I'm going to force you to be with me and talk to me and be respectful. And they are. Kristen has been made to feel like an outsider on the other side of the political aisle as well. Some liberals are suspicious of anyone who's served so long in the military

and Kristen says people make assumptions about her all the time. So it kind of bums me out, you know. It makes me feel like I'm not worthy or valid even amongst the LGBT community and I'm not worthy or validated amongst the women's groups or the civil rights groups

because they never invite me in. But Kristen's new identity also brought more intense challenges than feeling misunderstood on both sides. Like many transgender people, she also faced physical violence. In 2012, I was out in Florida and I was walking down the sidewalk and I was alone, which is a mistake that I learned the hard way. I was ignorant to the fact that I had to

always protect myself and always be on guard. So I'm walking down the sidewalk and four dudes, I don't want to call them gentlemen because they definitely weren't, one of them ran up behind me real fast and he was yelling, fag, and hit me in the back of the head. Total sucker punch and I was knocked out. I went down like a sack of potatoes. I'm on the ground with four guys stomping me, you know, trying to kill me. So I gained my consciousness back and I was getting up and one of them kicked me in my head just like a football. Boom, I got knocked out again. How do you bounce back from something like that? Or how do you survive knowing that this is the world that you're going to live in? And so at that point, I started really looking at my life

and looking at the world around me in a whole different light. And that's kind of when I started becoming an activist. After Kristen recovered, she made a film about her story, set up her own charity, and even ran for a seat in Congress. She has now dedicated her time and energy to the biggest fight of her life, making the world safer and more inclusive for trans people. And as you might imagine, a challenging goal like that faces lots and lots of obstacles. And that was why I wanted to talk with Kristen so badly for this episode. Do you use the same process that you use as a SEAL?

You know, do you get out the sand? Do you think through all these negative scenarios? It's a great point, and I wish I did. But I don't. And maybe that's one of my problems. I'll be honest. I was pretty shocked by this reply. Kristen has years of training in the power of

negative thinking. She knows better than anyone that hope isn't a replacement for planning, but even she has trouble thinking about the obstacles when it comes to the goals that are most dear to her. Especially when those obstacles aren't just personal, but societal as well. Looking head-on at the real barriers can be scary, but it's a necessary step for making big changes. But Kristen's not alone. We all find it tough to look directly at the hurdles that stop us from achieving what we care about most deeply. And even once we're ready to face those obstacles, we sometimes have trouble taking the time we need to practice these techniques. Kristen's military training required hours and hours of practice at those sand tables.

The SEALs also gave her the structure she needed to take the necessary time to imagine and plan. But Kristen can't do that nowadays because her many forms of activism keep her really, really busy and famished for time. So you talked about the whoop and the planning. And if I planned, I don't have the luxury to plan because I feel like I'm always playing catch up. The science shows the many benefits of mental practice. You increase the chances of achieving realistic goals. You can discard the impossible fantasies, which make you feel defeated and a bit guilty. which make you feel defeated and a bit guilty. You can even harness your brain to work with you

rather than against you, pursuing your objectives with greater energy and self-confidence. But as we've seen in this episode, mental practice and whooping takes work. Successfully getting to our goals requires an honest look at the real challenges we face. And doing it right takes time. It might just be five minutes of quiet reflection, but even those

few minutes can feel prohibitive when we're already feeling overwhelmed by the challenges ahead. But there's hope for all of us. Kristen told me after our interview that our discussion changed her, that she's planning to bring whoop and other techniques into her activism despite the hard work it takes. I've had a lot of goods and bads, and I do find that the balance that we can find between the goods and the bads, between seeing life as positive, but also knowing that negatives exist, and a plan for those negatives, and to try to understand that, you know, life is not always going to be perfect, and it's not going to always be fun, that you're going to run into some hard

times and some difficult situations. Taking a long, hard look at the struggles ahead is not as enjoyable as fantasizing about how amazing it would feel to simply have achieved our goals, to have learned that new language, run that half marathon, or created a more inclusive society for people of all identities. Often it feels easier to put on our rose-colored glasses and ignore the challenges ahead. But that's not the way we become our best selves or our best societies. Even a podcast about happiness recognizes

that sometimes we gotta look on the dark side. The good news is that once we take the time to do that, once we face the obstacles head-on, our minds give us the power to harness the automatic energy that comes from mental contrasting and planning. It comes really easy once we do the work. We've just got to put the time in. It only takes a few minutes a day, and the benefits of that work can be impressive. I had to go through 40-something years of denying who I was and

looking in a mirror and kind of hating myself. But I made it, and I'm here, and now I'm happy. So just put your head down and be good to yourself. The question is, when will you finally be good to yourself? When will you actually put your head down and take the time needed to whoop it up, play that mental obstacles videotape, and move toward the goal you've been fantasizing about. When you're done, you can come back and learn more concrete strategies for meeting your goals. Ones that we'll cover in the next episode of The Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos. If you enjoyed the show, I'd be super grateful if you could spread the word by leaving a rating and a review. It really does help other listeners find us.

And don't forget to tell your friends. If you want to learn more about the science you heard on the show, then check out our website, happinesslab.fm. You can also sign up for our newsletter to get exclusive content. The Happiness Lab is co-written and produced by Ryan Dilley. The show is mixed and mastered by Evan Viola and edited by Julia Barton. Fact-checking by Joseph Fridman. And our original music was composed by Zachary Silver. Special thanks to Mia LaBelle, Carly Migliore,

Heather Fane, Maggie Taylor, Maya Koenig, and Jacob Weisberg. The Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and me, Dr. Laurie Santos.