The One You Feed - Dr. Aziz Gazipura on Transforming Your Inner Critic

Starting point is 00:00:00 Many of you might have heard me tell this story before. Last year when I went to New Mexico to interview Father Richard Rohrer, in his office there was a quote posted that struck me and has stayed with me ever since. Life doesn't have to be perfect to be wonderful. 2020 has certainly been far from perfect, and though we hope for better circumstances in 2021, we don't know what we will encounter in the new year. But the good news is there is so much that is in our control, and some of those things are among the biggest influencers of our sense of well-being. In the One You Feed personal transformation program, I work one-on-one with people to build healthy habits and achieve their goals through applied

Starting point is 00:00:42 behavior science. For example, when my client Janine started working with me, her focus was on regaining some balance in her life. Personally, I'm looking for overall balance in my life, which I have been for a really long time. If I was trying to implement a new habit or break an old habit, you just try to do too much at once. And I think taking on too much at once is difficult to make it stick. Janine's certainly not alone.

Starting point is 00:01:09 One of the biggest mistakes people make when trying to change things in their lives is to try and do too much at once. There's a real formula for meaningful, sustained change. And that's what I worked with Janine to implement in her life. My overall experience with Eric has been phenomenal. Eric has a way of helping a person come to their own solutions, you know, helping you dig deep. I would highly recommend Eric's program and I would highly recommend anything it comes out with in the future. 2021 will have its challenges. It won't be perfect, but it can be wonderful. If you'd like to start out this new

Starting point is 00:01:46 year restoring some balance and putting some healthy habits in place, or if you're tired of waiting for the right circumstances to make progress towards your goals, I as a behavior coach can help you. To book a free, no-pressure, 30-minute call with me to see if the program is right for you, go to ericzimmer.coach application. This new year is a busy time and my coaching spots fill up fast. So if you're interested, don't wait to look into the program to see if it's right for you. Go to ericzimmer.coach application. When we say we can't handle something like the loss of a loved one or the loss of a job, what we're saying is I'm not going to be able to handle the feelings that I imagine I'm going to experience. And if we don't fight it

Starting point is 00:02:29 and run from it, it actually is something that will powerfully transform us and deepen us. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living.

Starting point is 00:03:18 This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com

Starting point is 00:03:56 and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Dr. Aziz Ghazipura, a clinical psychologist and one of the world's leading experts on social confidence. After being stuck in shyness and social anxiety himself for almost 10 years,

Starting point is 00:04:24 he became determined to find a way to social freedom. On this episode, Aziz and Eric discuss his book, On My Own Side, Transform Self-Criticism and Doubt into Permanent Self-Worth and Confidence. Hi, Aziz. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to this. Yeah, it's a real pleasure to have you on. We're going to primarily be discussing your book called On My Own Side, Transform Self-Criticism and Doubt into Permanent Self-Worth and Confidence. But before we get into that, let's start like we always do with the parable. There is a grandfather who's talking with his granddaughter and he says,

Starting point is 00:05:00 in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second. She looks up at her grandfather and she said, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Yeah, I think it's so fitting for this idea of being on our own sides and that in our own minds, we have a voice or a perception that can focus on the good we bring, the value we bring, our wins,

Starting point is 00:05:47 what we can contribute. And then we all know that we have another voice in there that can dismiss us or just completely undermine our value, our sense of worthiness, and it can run a pretty active campaign against us. And that is the wolf that many of us unconsciously and almost as if we've lost power and influence in our own minds, that's the one we feed. That's the one we go along with and sort of submit to. And so I think in the service of becoming our most free, confident selves, we must start feeding that other wolf, the good wolf, as it were. Yeah. And I think what you're talking about, that voice is what we would often refer to as our inner critic.

Starting point is 00:06:30 Absolutely. Yeah. There's many different names for it. And as soon as you say that, people are like, oh yeah, yeah, I know what you mean there. And yeah, it's a whole stance. It's a whole attitude or orientation towards ourselves that can really determine our confidence and then ultimately how much we can thrive and succeed in life too. Right. And being on our own side, I love the title of the book, On My Own Side, because I think that's such a powerful idea to be on our own side, to take our self as important and worth supporting. Yeah. And even that can feel uncomfortable. Totally. For people. I mean, it's like, oh, that's selfish.

Starting point is 00:07:09 That's a bad thing. That's going to make you egotistical or arrogant or disconnected or uncaring about others. And I think that just shows the misconception of what being on our own side is, what being more loving and kind with both ourselves and others are, and all that. So yeah, the title is meant to, in itself, carry a message. So we'll get into how to do this in a minute, but I think you just touched on something that's important there, which is when we get into this stuff about being on our own side, loving ourselves, self-compassion is a term that's in use a lot these days.

Starting point is 00:07:46 When we hear terms like that, or someone will say, well, go a little easier on yourself, or variations on that, we often think, well, that's going to cause a problem. And as you mentioned, one of the types of things we think it might be is it might make us egotistical. Another thing that we often think is it'll make us soft, it'll make us not motivated. Another thing that we often think is it'll make us soft. It'll make us not motivated. So before we go into how to do this, let's talk a little bit about how not only being on our own side is a much more enjoyable internal experience, it actually does make us better

Starting point is 00:08:17 in the world. Oh, I love this, Eric. I mean, I feel like, okay, which part of the book do I talk about now? Because yes, there's this fear or mistrust of being on our own sides. And before we kind of make a case for it, I just want to zoom out a little bit and think, wow, okay, if I was in a relationship with someone else, a lover, a family member, a child, and I thought, I got to be really hard on this person all the time. I got to point out what they're not doing right, or else they're going to get complacent and lazy. And I got to be on them. If you just like sense

Starting point is 00:08:52 that in a relationship, it's like, is that, is that loving? Would you want to be in that relationship? Or you kind of maybe grimace or think, and so I want to use that comparison because so often we think it's different with ourselves, but it's not. And there's a way to be with ourselves that is loving and attentive and still can hold a standard and still can find motivation. And I think what it requires is an upgrade in our way of being. And we think, no, the only way to be is to use the whip and withhold self-worth, and then I'll feel so bad that I'll be motivated to do it. But if you look at that from a relationship standpoint, it's very dysfunctional. And so we can do better. Yeah, it's very dysfunctional. And you've got a chapter kind of all the way at the end of the book

Starting point is 00:09:40 that I love because you use the analogy of an engine burning clean or dirty fuel, right? And I think that that being really hard on ourselves or being motivated out of a place of pain is a certain type of fuel. But as you make the analogy, it's a kind of a dirty fuel that seems to burn okay for a while, and then everything starts to shut down. And I see a lot of people in the coaching work I do where that's happened. They shut down. And I see a lot of people in the coaching work I do where that's happened. They've been really hard on themselves a lot of their life and it actually worked for a while until it just all of a sudden stops and doesn't. Yeah, that's absolutely right. And I think that metaphor really fits as the source of fuel. And so

Starting point is 00:10:20 someone says, yeah, but it works or it got me to here. It's like, okay. And what is the quality of that? And is there just because something works, does that not mean that there could be something even better that allows you to move forward, allows you to achieve things or put someone else first, whatever you think you need to do in the moment, but to do that from a place of kindness. And, and I think what people don't realize is that not only does that better fuel feel better for you, for those wondering, the better fuel is to be on your own side, to find that optimal source of motivation, but it actually works better for others and for business and for

Starting point is 00:10:56 relationships. Because if you think about this, let's say, okay, I got to go do this thing, but I'm telling myself, do it or else do it. You're lazy. Come on. Like, are you tense inside? Are you resentful? Are you scared? Like, are you really going to perform at your best? Are you really going to give your most when there's that critic in the corner of your mind, just like waiting there with a, with a belt, you know, you better do well. And it just, it doesn't bring out the best in us. Right. And a lot of times when we start to think about this, being on our own side, being kinder to ourselves, the thing that most people think of often are affirmations. And oftentimes what we think of is we think of something like Stuart Smalley from Saturday

Starting point is 00:11:36 Night Live, you know, I'm good enough. I'm smart enough and doggone it. People like me, right? Sitting in front of a mirror and doing that, which is both makes us really cringe. And some people may have actually tried this before and found, well, that didn't really work. Why do these not work or not tend to work so well? Yeah, fantastic. I mean, I think affirmations are a tactic and there are thousands of different tactics on face value. They make sense. They're sort of logical, like, okay, yeah, talk better to myself, but we're not logical creatures. And the tactic and which tactic you use doesn't work. Nothing

Starting point is 00:12:12 will work because we need to do something much, much different first. And that's, we need to make a fundamental decision. And I call this in the book, the decision of a lifetime where you must decide, Hey, the way this is going, me being subjugated to this inner tyrant and living as if I'm a, on the bottom of the hierarchy of worthiness of life. And if I just achieve one more thing and just look a certain way and just get this approval that I'll be okay. Like when I really get how insane that is, how I'm living this life without fulfillment and love that I could be experiencing until some magical future

Starting point is 00:12:52 date, when you really get how bad that feels, then you hopefully have a sense of compassion awakening you, aversion that says, you know what? I'm going to do something different. I'm going to decide to be on my own side. And I don't know how to do it all yet. I'll figure out the tactics later. Just like if you decide to stop drinking or you decide to get healthy, you don't know the whole journey, but you know that something's going to shift. And to relate it to the parable, I'm going to decide to feed that other wolf. And then you might start to realize that the bad wolf, that thing's a beast. I've been feeding that thing a lot over the last 20 years of my life.

Starting point is 00:13:29 And so I need to make that shift. But once we've made that fundamental decision, then we can start to find tactics that work, specifically to affirmations and why I think those are problematic. Again, think of your relationship with yourself as a relationship with another person. And imagine you're in a relationship with another person and you're sitting there with your,

Starting point is 00:13:47 you know, say a lover or a spouse and you follow them around the house and you say like, I love you. I love you. I love you. You're great. You're so smart. You're so handsome. Okay. And you know, like mirror exercise, right? You get face to face with them and you say for 10 minutes, I love you this. I love you that. The person's like, it's a little much, it's a little weird. It's not the kind of communication that actually resonates and works. And so it's a bit mechanical, it's a bit insincere in a way. And I think what we have to do is we have to make that fundamental decision and say, okay, I really want to figure out how to sincerely treat myself better, treat myself like someone that I actually love and care about. Yeah, I love that tactics, aren't it? And

Starting point is 00:14:33 so let's dive into the real issue and the deep work here. But I think before we do that, it would be useful to talk about a concept that informs some of this work called internal family systems. And briefly just maybe explain to us what that is, because the inner critic is just one of the members of that internal family. And I think it's helpful to talk about that to frame up the rest of this discussion. Yeah, fantastic. The easiest way to think about that is that we are a collection of parts. You might think that you're a singular person because you have a name, like I'm Aziz, you're Eric. Okay, there I am. But actually it takes just a little bit of observation to realize that it's not the same. You're not the same person at every moment.

Starting point is 00:15:21 You know, maybe you are more courageous at one moment and more fearful at another moment. You are more loving and generous and giving. And another moment, you're a little bit more hard or withdrawn or other things. And we have these different parts that are moving through us. And so a way to think about those parts is to think of them as an internal family. There's different versions of you, different family members, as it were. And many of us have certain family members that we give all of the attention to. They drive the ship, as it were. And other ones we keep out. We don't want to listen to them. We don't want to deal with them.

Starting point is 00:15:55 And for many people, their inner critic is actually a dominant force in their life. It's kind of like a patriarch or the matriarch. dominant force in their life. It's kind of like a patriarch or the matriarch. It's the one that, you know, holds the most sway and makes the decisions, or at least it must be consulted with and must be placated and pleased. And so unfortunately, we have this inner family, and then at the head of the family is this force that's pretty toxic for us. You described the inner critic at one point by saying it has the emotional energy of a tantruming child, you know, but it's also like 10 feet tall and enormous. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:16:34 Yeah. It's, it's the, uh, Theodore Rubin, a brilliant analyst called the omnipotent screamer. You know, it's like, you should have known that. Why did you make that mistake? You're so stupid, you know? And it's like demanding these unrealistic things. And actually seeing that can be so helpful because it's loud. You've given it a lot of authority over the years. And so it seems like such a dominant force. But then if you really listen to what it's saying and its attitude and its petulance, it has much more similarity to a

Starting point is 00:17:02 four-year-old than some authority that you want to base your life on. What was that? The omnipotent screamer? Yeah. That's great. We've got these different parts of ourselves inside of us. This is obviously a model of looking at our psychological experience. We've got these different parts of ourselves, and one of them is the inner critic, which in some of us takes on a very outsized role. It's the most outspoken, loud member of the family. But this inner critic has something it's trying to tell us. And most of your work moving forward, and this is where the conversation will go, is about we have to allow that inner critic.

Starting point is 00:17:43 We have to see what it's doing and work with it more skillfully than either trying to agree with it or shut it up. You really summed it up very well there because, you know, at the beginning, perhaps someone's not even that aware. I certainly wasn't when I struggled with a lot of social anxiety and self-loathing. I wasn't aware. I was maybe even vaguely aware of an inner critic. My thoughts felt true. If I thought I'm a loser, that person's like, I want to talk to me. I can't speak up here. They're not going to like me.

Starting point is 00:18:11 It was like someone narrating reality. Then I became aware of, oh, there's an inner critic and maybe everything it says isn't true. Wow. Liberation. And then I think once people hear that, and some people discover that at different ages in their life, then there's a sense of like, okay, well, you just get rid of it. If you just get rid of that thing, then problem solved. And then you get the campaign of the affirmations.

Starting point is 00:18:35 People will just kind of get angry. Like, I want to kill this part. I want to get rid of this critic. It's awful. It's terrible. And that makes sense. Someone wakes up to something abusive and there's a sense maybe of wanting to leave or get rid of it. The thing is though, you can't just leave. Wherever you go, there you are. So it's not like a relationship with someone else you could get out of it. It's in your head. It's in your patterns of your psychology and it's serving a function. Great thing I love to do with clients is say, okay, where is the propaganda campaign of your critic? Where is it steering you towards? It's telling you, you know, you can't do that. You're not attractive enough. You messed that up.

Starting point is 00:19:13 What's wrong with you? And usually it's trying to steer you towards something. And when you start to get curious and say, what's going on with this part? Where is it trying to steer me? Then something starts to open up and you realize that the critics function primarily is to keep you starts to open up and you realize that the critics function primarily is to keep you safe from harm, safe from pain, safe from emotion. You know, because if it says you should have been more perfect, it was like, if I was more perfect, then I wouldn't have gotten rejected. They would have liked me more. Well, you shouldn't have made that mistake. Well, if I hadn't made that mistake, maybe I wouldn't be having to face this challenge in my life right now. And so it has this fantasy. If you just did everything perfectly, then you would avoid all emotional discomfort. And so it has this fantasy. If you just did everything perfectly, then you would avoid all emotional discomfort. And then from that place, when you really get to see that, then you can

Starting point is 00:19:50 start to work with that critic because then what it becomes about is about being able to tolerate a much wider range of emotions. The critic is just trying to stop it all. And one of the primary ways is also stopping all action stopping all risk And so then we can start to take real risks in our life Feel more emotion and to do that. We have to learn how to work with this critic So it doesn't just scream and throw tantrums and stop us in our tracks I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast,

Starting point is 00:20:54 our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts?

Starting point is 00:21:17 His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all.

Starting point is 00:21:30 Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, Really. No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com.

Starting point is 00:21:40 And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Before we go into how to work with that critic, let's talk about the two main ways that are not helpful in working with the inner critic. Sure. So one is going to be to just ignore it and say, you know what, it's whatever. It doesn't bother me. Or I don't even need to think about that or worry about that. And generally what's going to happen then

Starting point is 00:22:15 is you're going to be steered by it unconsciously. So there's that opportunity to put yourself out there or speak up in a group or do something that maybe feels risky socially or emotionally. And then you just, yeah, I just don't take the opportunity. I just don't feel like it. I just don't want to, I'm just afraid. I don't know. And we don't realize that behind the scenes, behind the curtain is the voice saying like, it's not going to go well. And then we just sort of follow it. So you can't just ignore it. And at the same time, sometimes people turn and try to say, you know, shut up, get out

Starting point is 00:22:45 of here. I hate you. I hate this part. And they create all this inner tension. And then any part of us wants to keep going, thinks it has a function, thinks it's going to try to keep us safe. And so it's going to get louder and it's going to get bigger. And then people get into these long battles with their critic, or sometimes people get super hyper intellectual with their critic, with their critic, or sometimes people get super hyper intellectual with their critic, you know, and this is, well, technically that's not true because I have this evidence that shows that. And sometimes that can work, but oftentimes no matter what evidence you bring, the critic just comes back with something else or just shifts topics entirely. So you're like, Hey, listen, actually I am going to perform well at this work project because look what I've done in the past.

Starting point is 00:23:24 And maybe you really stuck it to the critic. Then the critic goes, oh, yeah, well, it doesn't matter because you're never going to have love in your life anyway. And you're just like, oh, no, she got me. So I'd say that's kind of expanding to three, but it's ignoring it, just trying to shut up and get out of here with hatred, push it away, or trying to be super intellectual and rational with it as if you can just totally reason it away. Right, right. I think the ways we relate to it are interesting. You do a great job in the book of sort of making examples that when we hear them, we're like, yeah, that's absurd. You say, you know, one of the ways that we relate to the inner critic is we just agree with it. It's like, you're an awful person. You're never going to amount to anything. And everything you do is terrible. We go, yeah, I guess that's true. Jeez. I really feel terrible. Right? Like, which again, if somebody else said that to us, we'd be like, well, hang on a second here. And then the other, like you said, is trying to intellectualize with it, which, you know, is to debate it, which is, you were saying that it made me think about my partner's mother who

Starting point is 00:24:23 has Alzheimer's and she will start to get scared about something. And for a while, I thought, well, I'll just tell her that what she's afraid of isn't going to happen, and then we'll be okay. So winter is coming, and I am going to die of starvation. And I would say, well, no, you're not going to because, well, we're here every so often. And when we're not here, someone else is always here and they can go get food and we can always order food and we get food delivered. But what if there's a snowstorm? Well, you're in Atlanta. It won't last that long. with an increasingly bizarre scenario until like we are at an apocalyptic scenario. You know, the cell phone towers are all down, all our caregivers are dead, and there's no intellectual discussing this with her. I just have to do, and this is going to lead us to what you tell us to do. I sort of just have to turn towards her and go, ah, geez, I see you're scared. That must feel frightening. And boom, it vanishes, you know, or it doesn't vanish, but it changes. And so if we can't ignore our inner critic, if we can't argue our way out of it, and we know that just agreeing with it is crazy, what do we do?

Starting point is 00:25:38 Yeah, fantastic. I love that example. And just you sharing that because what you just described there is empathy. It's acknowledging the experience of another person. And the reason she keeps escalating or going down a more catastrophic imaginary scenario is because the reason doesn't eliminate the feeling inside of her. But it's like, but I still feel afraid. So let my mind's like going to come up with some other danger. Cause if I feel afraid inside, what's the dangers? And my, my, you know, brain's going to be scanning for danger. And our imaginations can be beautifully creative for pleasure and beauty or for immense pain.

Starting point is 00:26:15 And, uh, she's also pointing out something, which is like, there is no fundamental protection from all pain, danger, and loss. And I think that's kind of like just brewing right underneath the surface of our orderly society. And the fact that I can press a button on my phone and get something delivered, it's like, yeah, it's all, I'm totally safe. And at some level, we know like chaos is sort of just underneath the surface, right? And that's just a part of life on this planet. But there is something we can do, which is that humans, I mean, we're pack animals. We evolved to be together.

Starting point is 00:26:48 We're created to share and be in community. And so when there's another human that just sees us and you say like, hey, wow, right beneath the surface, there could be loss. There could be pain. And you say, yeah, I know. I see that too. I know that. All of a sudden, that moment of seeing, that moment of

Starting point is 00:27:05 connection actually can calm our nervous system. It can transform our experience as you described. And so that, just like we know, and I highlight this in the book a lot, this might sound really like, whoa, how do I do it? You kind of know already. You know, because how you want to deal with your mom, how you want to deal with your friend, how you want to deal with your kid, when you're at your best, when you're patient, when you're loving. And we just want to deal with your mom, how you want to deal with your friend, how you want to deal with your kid when you're at your best, you know, when you're patient, when you're loving. And we just want to bring that to ourselves. And that's going to be empathy. The critics coming at you, first things first, you got to start to become more aware of it and to differentiate you and your thinking from this part.

Starting point is 00:27:42 And so one exercise I have is for people just to start to name it. You can call it the inner critic. You can call it Jeffrey. You can call it any name you want. And you say, ah, that's the critic talking. Oh, that's the critic talking. Then you want to start to say, well, what's it saying? And let's say it's saying, you know, something bad's going to happen tomorrow. I'm going to lose my job. Something bad's going to happen in the environment. I can't handle this. Okay. So you're afraid of losing your job. Yeah. Because you're not performing well. You're, you're, you're terrible at work. Okay. So we're going to lose a job mainly because

Starting point is 00:28:11 we're not doing good enough. And you notice my pronouns get weird here. You, I, we, right. And you're dialoguing with the critic. It's just, whatever's coming your way. Sometimes it says I, cause it's fused. You know, you think it's you. Sometimes it says you it's attacking you. I generally like to start to relate to it like a we, like, okay, so you're scared that something's going to happen to us. I try to bring it in, but it's really just basic empathy. Like, let me get you here. What are you saying? What are you saying? And that's the first step is just to start to move towards it, become aware and move towards it with that empathy. Yeah. And I think that makes a lot of sense. It's just being heard. It needs to be heard. And when it's heard, it can relax a little bit. And I like that idea of naming it. The example I will give for myself is not for my inner critic.

Starting point is 00:28:55 My inner critic seems to have gotten relatively quiet in my later years. But what I do have is an inner Eeyore, you know? So I will imagine myself, you know, I'll just imagine Eeyore and talking in Eeyore's voice. If I find myself sort of being gloomy, which is a disposition I tend towards, I'll just suddenly be like, oh, there's my inner Eeyore again. You know, everything seems really hard today. And, you know, and all of a sudden my experience with it is I am, as you said, differentiated from it, or as they would say in acceptance and commitment therapy, I have cognitively diffused from it a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. And when you do that, especially when you do the voice, I mean, that guy's pretty adorable.

Starting point is 00:29:38 It's like, oh, let me give you a hug here. That's right. That's right. Yeah. That's funny. It's fascinating, too. Oh, let me give you a hug here. That's right. That's right. Yeah, that's funny. It's fascinating too. I just love to play with this stuff.

Starting point is 00:29:52 And this goes maybe a little outside of the critic conversation, but just, you know, one of my passions is confidence and how do we bring our best selves to each day and feel inspired and charged. Next, that's the next book I'm writing right now. And one thing that's so fascinating is just to start to see how off those predictions are from Eeyore, you know, cause he'll say whatever's the Eeyore or the catastrophe part or something. I give an example in the book of my son, you know, we just had this really fun day. We were out camping on a mountain and really great time. And then the next day we're waking up and he's like, nothing fun's going to happen today. Today is just nothing fun.

Starting point is 00:30:27 And we're like in this beautiful camp spot, you know, but that's his way of saying like, oh, I don't want to leave. I don't know what we're going to do today. It's going to be bad. And so we have this like super fun day. We hike, you know, go to this, we get ice cream on the way home, which they love, you know, it's like just fantastic day. And so at the end of the day, I was like, what was your experience of the day?

Starting point is 00:30:43 And he's like, oh, we did this and we did that. And it's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But nothing fun's going to happen tomorrow. And I just love playing with it and highlighting it with him and helping him see. But seeing that in him helped me start to work with my own inner negative predictions and just how repetitive it can be. But when we really start to see how temporary it is, it's just a passing thought. It's actually more of a reflection of our current energy state than it is any sort of reality. And we start to see it that way. And same thing with a critic. Critic is usually a reflection of an inner state of fear, almost always. The Eeyore is usually at some sort of lower we kind of maybe

Starting point is 00:31:25 we're feeling a little depleted we're a little tired we're you know so we start to see that then we can focus a little less on everything that that voice is saying and a little more on like oh eeyore oh i guess i'm a little tired right now or how can i take care of myself or oh critic i must be afraid of something right now i wonder what i'm afraid of which is really like the next step in the process is you start to dialogue with the critic, but you know, you have a little like decoder ring and you know that the critics coming at you, that means I'm afraid of something. The critics afraid of something. And my job is to, to go beneath the surface and help address the actual fear underneath. Right. And so I'm going to just

Starting point is 00:32:05 read these steps up to where we are just to sort of frame it for listeners. So you've talked about these five steps to tame your inner critic. And step one was identify when we're being self-critical. Step two is to move towards your critic. We just talked about step three, exploring the root fear and empathizing. And so step four, now we move on and we're regrouping and problem solving. So let's talk about what we're doing there. That's where you judo chop the critic and you say, oh, I get it. I get it. And then it calms down and then you strike it, strike hard, strike fast. So regroup and problem solve is to get to the root fear is actually a really interesting thing where you really want to be very curious and just be like, okay, I'm afraid of something.

Starting point is 00:32:47 Because the critic might not initially say that you're afraid. It says like, you're ugly. I don't like you. You're bad. No one will ever love you. It's like, okay, that just sounds angry and sort of denigrating. But underneath, you could say, wow, you are really angry sounding right now. you could say, wow, you are really angry sounding right now. And sometimes you can do it describing about yourself. That might sound a little strange. Let me give an example. So let's say the critic

Starting point is 00:33:12 saying, you know, you're unattractive. No one's going to want to be with you or love you, or your partner's going to leave you because you're getting older and all these things. You could say, wow, you're really afraid that someone's going to leave Aziz. Like Aziz is not worthy. Aziz is not good enough. And that's another layer of kind of cognitive diffusion, as you called it, like stepping back and sort of saying this thing play out. And so at first the critic might say, no, I'm not afraid. You're just ugly. It's like, okay, I know. So if, if Aziz is ugly, what are you most afraid might happen? And it's like, eventually, if you really are empathizing, there'll start to be a softening. And whether that's a critic or another part underneath, because, you know, internal family systems has all names, all these different parts.

Starting point is 00:33:52 But I sometimes find that that's a little complicated for clients. So just like, just keep connecting and seeing what comes up next. You don't have to know exactly who it's coming from, but something comes up next. And there's going to be a soft underbelly there. That's like, I'm afraid of my husband leaving me. I'm, I'm afraid of, you know, my sibling is sick, dying, whatever it is, right. It's something more raw and real. And in that moment, that's when we want to empathize with that. That's the step three. And then we're going to start to be able to problem solve with that. And sometimes there is a specific solution to that problem. You know, for example, like, let's say it's a fear about speaking up in a workplace situation and says, no, your ideas are stupid.

Starting point is 00:34:37 No one's going to, you know, don't share, don't share. And eventually you say, well, I'm most afraid of is I'm afraid of being judged. I'm afraid of people thinking I'm not smart or that I'm not worthy of speaking up. Okay. Well, let's solve this problem because we want to speak up and you're afraid of that pain. And the way that I love to think about problem solving is this idea of collaborative problem solving. And so it's really fun to actually ask the critic, what do you think might help solve this problem? And instead of saying, well, here's what we need to do, shut up, it's this, and say, well, what do you think? And then you start to actually work with these different parts of yourself and see what ideas come, see what solutions come. Is there a way to speak up

Starting point is 00:35:21 where we don't necessarily have to feel like it's such a risky thing? Is there a way? And another way is to also say, well, what if there's a way for you to feel totally held and safe as we do it? And you start to explore with this. And sometimes there's an active solution like, oh, we're now we're going to do X and more. It's just like, hey, we're working together. And all of a sudden it just shifts people's experiences. And a lot of that fear just dissolves. Got it. I love the idea of the problem solving. I love the idea of the internal dialogue too, because if you accept that the inner critic has a role to play, then you can accept that it might have solutions also. Yeah. And that's where we sort of,

Starting point is 00:36:02 I'm going to hate it away or just get rid of it is actually, we're missing something. We're missing some message, some value. Every single part of us has something valuable to offer. It's just a matter of, you know, are we the head of the household inside of there? Are we able to hear from each part? Because you wouldn't want the four-year-old running the household in a, in a real household, you know, so same thing, but you still want to hear from the four-year-old. And if you don't hear from the four-year-old and you say, shut up, your opinion doesn't matter, get out of here, you're going to have some acting out on your hands. That's right. And so I think it's worth at this point saying, well, in this idea, if I've got these different parts, who's the head of the household?

Starting point is 00:36:42 I love that. That's a deep question that we could take off the edge of the earth. I'm going to try and keep it within the realm maybe of inner critic and internal family systems and not the ultimate existential inquiry into who I am. Yeah. I mean, I think it all kind of blurs together in a way, but basically, mean, I think it all kind of blurs together in a way, but basically, okay, so you could think of on one level, which is ego has such a sort of a bad rap, you know, in the last, whatever, 20, 30 years, like get rid of your ego, man. And egotistical and all these things. But, you know, there's another concept of the term that's like a healthy functioning interface with the world. Like, you know, you can say I'm a cosmic consciousness, you know, and there's no self and, and on some spiritual level, these things are true, but okay, now I'm

Starting point is 00:37:30 going to talk to my boss. Now I'm going to go interact with my kid. Like, how am I going to, I got to go to the store and pay for this thing. Like there's some level of, we need to be able to interface and function with the world. We need some self. We need to take in the data of what's coming our way. Does this feel good to me? Does this not feel good to me? Do I want to be treated this way? What do I value? What do I love? What are my passions?

Starting point is 00:37:49 What doesn't work for me in a partnership or in a workplace? Like, so there's a very level, practical level. And so you might call it the real self in an IFS, internal family systems. I love the concept of a captain of the ship. Now I know we're mixing metaphors here because we just talked about the head of the household. I am the captain of my ship. It's a mantra that I do with people at my online and live events. It says, I am the captain of my ship. I determine my destiny. It's like a reclaiming of a healthy version of ego where it says like, I'm going to steer and it's the head of the household. It's the captain of the ship. And

Starting point is 00:38:22 it's like, I just visualize this part that can, that can hear all the other parts. That is some sort of arbiter and ultimate decider of what we're going to do and is able to, you know, hear a part, but also say, okay, okay, hold on a second, hold on a second. You're getting a little out of line here. Cause we're not able to hear from this person because you're yelling so much. So give me a second. We're going to hear more from you, but I want to hear from this part. So it's, it's got like a dominance. It's got an authority in the room. And that I'd say is one way to think about your, your real self. It's able to observe all the other parts. It's able to influence, it's able to steer, it's able to guide, it's able to listen. And I think that's a very practical sense of self that we can operate from on a day-to-day basis. we could go into the deep aspects of there is no self and i talk about that from time to time and

Starting point is 00:39:42 i've had some experiences of that and yet day to day, we have to interact with ourselves and with others. And I think what we call it is open for debate. I like captain of the ship in on my own side, you call it core self. But I think describing it can be helpful. You describe it as the witness, the watcher, and then you also say it is centered, present, curious, and grounded. And I love that idea of it's that part of us that's centered, present, curious, and grounded. And that grounded, I think, and centered speaks a little bit to the authority you're talking about as an ability to say, okay, this is what we're doing. The other thing that you talk about is that our core self is capable of handling any

Starting point is 00:40:25 experience in life. It can handle any emotion. You've got another sentence that already says, because your heart is vast and its capacity to feel is infinite. And I love those ideas because if that core self can relate to, in this case, the inner critic and all of its fears and all the ways it thinks it's going to be hurt and says, we can handle that. I can handle this. Again, mixing our pronouns. I, we can handle this. We can feel that we will be okay. All of a sudden we can really relax to a certain extent. Absolutely. Cause in every moment, uh, if we're living from that core self, and then therefore we're able to reside in those qualities of groundedness and curiosity is one of the fastest ways to become more effective with all these different parts. And what we're sending though, is a message of safety to our

Starting point is 00:41:21 nervous system, to all these different parts because the other parts you know the critic or a catastrophizing part or something it does not feel safe and it's actually disconnected from reality to some degree because it's usually taking something that's not a real threat and making it extremely threatening or even something that is a concern or a threat making a case that we're not going to be able to survive. Right. In all those cases, what we need is we need to be in that core self where then we can say, okay, we can handle whatever comes our way. That's a muscle to build that perception to be able to hold. And it's also something that's verified through experience. So the more you have experience in life and you don't shut down to, but you open to the experience and you say, bring it on. And that doesn't mean

Starting point is 00:42:05 just like you do something. It also means you expand your capacity to feel. I think there's such a flight from feeling in our culture. And I only want to feel good and I want to feel pleasure and I don't want to feel the bad stuff. And if I feel bad, oh my God, I'm going to get really depressed. And we just get so negative and depressive to avoid feelings. We get anxious to avoid feelings. We develop body pain to avoid feelings. And so much of my work with people is actually just increasing our capacity to feel from that core self and just let the feeling move. And this is sort of the basic, and of other guests you've had,

Starting point is 00:42:39 that talk about basic kind of mindfulness capacities, to be with feeling, to let feeling move through you as opposed to clench down. And when we do that, we really get to see. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

Starting point is 00:43:03 We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by.

Starting point is 00:43:23 Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really.

Starting point is 00:43:38 Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called really no really. And you can find it on the I heart radio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Ah, I can handle that because when we say we can't handle something, an event like the loss of a loved one or the loss of a job or, you know, something, the scary stuff, what we're saying is I'm not going to be able to handle the

Starting point is 00:44:10 feelings that I imagine I'm going to experience. And again, that is a story in our minds. The truth is our capacity to feel anything is infinite. And if we don't fight it and run from it, it actually is something that will powerfully transform us and deepen us and expand us and actually prepare us for the next stage of our life and what we're meant to give. Beautifully said. And I was talking with somebody the other day, and I think that sometimes we feel like we don't have the capacity to feel things because we're like, oh, if I feel it, it'll never go away. But it's actually our strategies to not feel it that actually never go away. Right? So the reason it feels like it never goes away is because our strategy to not feel it continues to reinforce and feed it.

Starting point is 00:45:06 You know, it's the thought patterns oftentimes that we're engaging in the mental spinning we're doing to avoid the feeling that just perpetuates it endlessly. And that's why we think, oh, I can't, if I go into that, it just lasts forever. But the reality is we're not going into it. And that's why it's lasting forever. That's right. We're thrashing around at the edge of a pool. Maybe we got our leg in there and then we're just thrashing and thrashing and thrashing or say, I'm in this pool forever. It's like, you haven't even gotten in yet.

Starting point is 00:45:33 You're in the water and it's a lot. People confuse like rumination and manipulation. Like they're trying to change it, trying to fix it, trying to get a different perspective. And then, you know, you throw some personal development in there and they got new tools to try to fix it and change it and get rid of it and slice it. And that's where I love the acceptance and commitment therapy stuff is so about cutting through that and just developing this. It's like a muscle.

Starting point is 00:45:57 It's a fortitude. It's a life skill to be able to go into that fire of feeling. And that's why one of the things I encourage anyone in my world and all clients to do is to get in a practice of being able to take a short cold shower every day, or at least end your shower with cold. Because it's like this physical training of stepping into the discomfort. And that is a metaphor for our ability to step into discomfort of emotion. And then when we do that, thrash around, try to get rid of it, and we say, okay, I'm going to go into it. Yes, bring it on. Then we get to develop our skills in navigating the waters of emotion. And most of us, myself included, did not have skills

Starting point is 00:46:38 because I spent the whole time with just one leg in the water trying to get out. But if you actually get in, then you get to learn how to navigate. And there are so many ways to work with emotion. And there's so much nuance and mastery of how to work with a feeling, how to observe it in your body, how to dissipate it out of your skin and let it move and go to the periphery of your body. It's all these powerful tools. But if we're in our head trying to get away, we don't have access to any of them and we never learn them. Yeah, that's great. I never know when these episodes are going to air, but a couple of weeks ago I interviewed Wim Hof. Oh yeah, I'm a big fan of Wim.

Starting point is 00:47:19 It's going to be a funny sounding interview. It's probably been out because Wim is all kinds of fired up. He's basically yelling through the whole interview and I've got my semi-Eeyore voice going the whole time. It's probably a funny combination. But I have been taking a short cold shower at the end of all my showers for years now, partially because I think it helps wake me up and I can use it. And partially because, yeah, it's a stepping into purposely saying, I'm going to do something uncomfortable right away here, purposely. But since I interviewed Wim, I have been increasing my duration of cold shower. He inspired me. So I am up to a minute and 45 seconds, which when I'm in Columbus, the groundwater temperature between

Starting point is 00:47:57 Columbus and Atlanta is different. So I prefer these longer cold showers when I'm in Atlanta. Yeah. I prefer these longer cold showers when I'm in Atlanta. Yeah. So the last step is called into the roar. So tell us about what that is, or the last step in these five steps to tame our inner critic. So, you know, the first four that we're talking about are kind of inner work. And people love that because it's like, oh, I could do that in the safety of my bedroom. But the critic and its predictions about what you're able to do and

Starting point is 00:48:26 its whole story to try to keep you safe and avoiding all risk in life, there's only so much you can comment, you can work with it, you can talk to it. And there's a lot more nuance too. Sometimes the best thing to do is empathize for a moment and say, you know what? I disagree. That's not how that's going to go. That's not how I see myself. And so there's all these different ways. But at the end of the day, you got to step into life. You got to go do the thing. And we were just talking about the cold showers, right?

Starting point is 00:48:50 You got to go into the discomfort. Discomfort equals freedom. Discomfort is the pathway to anything that we want to create or achieve or experience, whether it's a deeper relationship, you got to have uncomfortable conversations that you might want to avoid, whether it's creating a business or growing your career or being more assertive in a room full of people that intimidate you. It's all about capacity to lean into that discomfort. And so, you know, into the roar comes from this story that a friend of mine ran this gym, they called it training for warriors. And it's the story about in the Savannah, how

Starting point is 00:49:22 they'll have all the, generally the female lions that do the hunting in the in the pride and so they're like sneaking through the tall grass going towards gazelles or whatever creature they're gonna eat and then they'll have the male lion stand on the other side kind of in the grass as well and let out this intense loud roar that rips through the air and so the natural impulse in the animals is to run away from the roar right into the ambush set by the female lions. And the ones that survive, though, when they hear the roar, instead of running away from it, they run right into it.

Starting point is 00:49:56 Of course, they run right past the male lion, who he's not known for hunting very much. He just watches them go. That's the part of the story I need to know more about. Why is the male lion just lounging around letting gazelles run by? I know it's, it's an interesting system that they got, they got there. It's the lesson there is that we have to face that, the challenge. So it's basically defy the doubt. In fact, the full mantra that I guide people through is I am the captain of my ship. I determine my destiny. I defy doubt. In fact, the full mantra that I guide people through is I am the captain of my ship.

Starting point is 00:50:25 I determine my destiny. I defy doubt. I defeat doubt. I destroy doubt. And the way that we destroy doubt, the way that we defeat it is by defying it consistently. And it starts to dissolve. It starts to erode. It starts to have less and less power. And you mentioned that your critic has gone down over the years. And there's probably many reasons for that. But one of them could be the fact that you've consistently over the years, to be where you are, to be what you're doing, you must have defied what that voice said, you know, again and again and again and again. And so it starts to lose its power. And that's where the true liberation comes in. And that's where people, if they really want to be free of the critic, it can't just be done in the,

Starting point is 00:50:58 you know, in the room or in the therapy room or something like that. We also have to get out there and take bold action again and again and again. So the critic says, no, that person couldn't possibly want to talk to you. You're not worthy of their time. Well, you do whatever inner work you need to, and then you pick up the phone, you email them, you say, hey, I'd love to connect with you, or I'd love to take you out to lunch, or whether it's a business thing or a personal thing, and you just face that fear again and again and again and again and again. Yeah, and you saying that, it made me think about the fact that the other benefit there is realizing like it's not all binary. The inner critic is not always right and always wrong. So like that question of that person isn't going to have time for you, right? And you get up the courage and

Starting point is 00:51:40 you ask them, sometimes that person will have time for you. And sometimes that person won't. And so it's not that it's the inner critic is always right or always wrong. There's a more subtle nuance to it. It's that continuing to keep showing up that's so helpful. And that's what I like so much about this book and your work is there's a real focus on the inner work that we have to do and the inner empathy. And then there's also a focus on the outer work and that both those have to happen. And I really strongly sort of agree with that. And I would say, you know, so much of this show is about those two things, you know, what's the inner work that we need to do so that we can show up and do the outer work.

Starting point is 00:52:20 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one without the other becomes lopsided and less effective from what it really could be. Yeah. Now, you and I are at the end of our time for this. We're going to talk in the post-show conversation. I want to talk a little bit more with you about another part of the book that I found really helpful that we didn't even get time to talk about, which is something called value equivalence, right? Which is the things that we think we need to have in order to be valuable. You know, we all have our list of them. If I was just this, or I was just that. So I want to talk about value equivalence. And I also want to talk a little bit more about that. A lot of these things are reflections of, of an energy state that sometimes thoughts cause emotion, but oftentimes emotions and energy cause

Starting point is 00:53:04 thoughts and the bi-directional nature of that. So you and I will talk about that in the post-show conversation. Listeners, if you'd like access to that, as well as a extra episode I do each week called Teaching Song and a Poem and ad-free episodes, you can become a member of our community by going to oneufeed.net slash join. Aziz, thank you so much. This has been a wonderful conversation. Absolutely. My pleasure. I think these concepts are really helpful and I think you do a really nice job of laying them out in a really clear, powerful way. So thank you. Thank you. If what you just heard was helpful to you,

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The One You Feed - Dr. Aziz Gazipura on Transforming Your Inner Critic

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