The One You Feed - Escape the Goal Trap: Embrace Curiosity and Tiny Experiments with Anne-Laure Le Cunff

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

In this episode, Anne-Laure Le Cunff, discusses how to go from procrastination to action using the power of tiny experiments. Most advice about self-improvement assumes you know where you’re going, but what if you don’t? Anne-Laure suggests that’s not a flaw, it’s actually the starting point. Her new book, Tiny Experiments, offers a way to explore change without chasing outcomes. In our conversation, we talk about curiosity as a guide, how to stay engaged in uncertainty, and what it means to choose persistence.For the first time in over three years, I’ve got a couple open spots in my coaching practice. If you’re a thoughtful business owner, creator, or leader feeling stuck in scattered progress or simmering self-doubt, this might be the right moment. Through my Aligned Progress Method, I help people move toward real momentum with clarity, focus, and trust in themselves. If that speaks to where you are, you can learn more at oneyoufeed.net/align.Key Takeaways:Importance of curiosity and exploration in personal growthConducting small experiments to challenge the status quoEmbracing uncertainty and learning from emotionsDistinction between passive and active acceptance of challengesThe concept of “field notes” for self-reflection and observationUnderstanding and labeling emotions to reduce anxietyAddressing procrastination through curiosity and explorationThe iterative process of growth loops and adjusting one’s trajectoryThe significance of taking actionable steps in the presentDeveloping mini protocols or “pacts” for personal experimentationIf you enjoyed this conversation with Anne-Laure Le Cunff, check out these other episodes:The Power of Visualization to Achieve Your Goals with Emily BalcetisWhy We Stop Noticing What Matters and How to Feel Alive Again with Tali SharotFor full show notes, click here!Connect with the show:Follow us on YouTube: @TheOneYouFeedPodSubscribe on Apple Podcasts or SpotifyFollow us on InstagramSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

you actually don't need to overhaul your entire life in order to reconnect with curiosity, with exploration, with being open to uncertainty, with those liminal spaces. You just need to conduct very small little experiments where you question the way you've been doing things and you try a different way of doing those things. 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. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf. Most advice about self-improvement assumes you know where you're going. But what if you don't? Anne-Laure Lacombe suggests that's not a flaw, it's actually the starting point.

Her new book, Tiny Experiments, offers a way to explore change without chasing outcomes. In our conversation, we talk about curiosity as a guide, how to stay engaged in uncertainty, and what it means to choose persistence. I'm Eric Zimmer, and this is The One You Feed. Hi, Anne-Laure. Welcome to choose persistence. I'm Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed. Hi, Ann Lor, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to have you on. We're going to be discussing your wonderful book, which is called Tiny Experiments, How to Live Freely in a Goal Obsessed World. And I mentioned

that I have followed you online for a while, you've been writing for years, and I've always found what you do really interesting. So I'm glad we get to have this conversation. Before we get into the book though, we'll start like we always do with the parable. And in the parable there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, 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 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 grandchild stops and they think about it for a second, they look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent 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. I find it fascinating because it is kind of based on the idea that some emotions are inherently bad while others are good.

And I think that any emotion is just data. It's just a signal from your brain trying to communicate something. And so, I agree that you should not feed the ones that are going to make you feel worse, but you can still learn from them. And if you start being curious about those different emotions that you feel, including the very uncomfortable ones, including the ones where you might have a little bit of shame around them, you can actually learn a lot and grow a lot, I think. Yes, yes. As you were talking, for the first time, something crystallized in my mind, which was that we talk about them as emotions, greed and hatred and fear, and they are, but they're

also ways of acting. And the distinction there, obviously, is you're gonna have all kinds of emotions. It's what you choose to do with them, right? It's which ones do you choose to say, all right, I'm gonna work with this in my little container, and which of these am I gonna project out into the world? And I think that's where the more conscious choice and the ability to pause comes in.

Absolutely. This is fundamentally the difference between living a conscious, intentional life versus living a life on autopilot. Yeah. Yep. OK, the place I want to start is entirely selfish for me. So it's this.

You have often talked about ways of managing all the information that we come across. I think you might call it gardening, digital gardening, and I'm curious, I've used, I mean, all kinds of tools, Evernote, Notion, Rome Research, right? Like right now I'm looking at Rome, it's the best book prep way I know

how to do things. And AI is upending all of it. And I'm curious, what for you, have there been any new tools that you've been like, oh, wow, this really changes the game in the way that I organize information that I've got and put together. I still use wrong research to capture all of my information and knowledge and anytime I'm reading something, I wanna save information, but it's become more of a quick capture tool for me and the way to connect those different pieces

of information. I do a lot of my thinking in one or two different AI tools these days because I feel like I can actually have a conversation with the information, you know, in a way that you can't quite do it with a note-taking tool. I'm going to share one fun tool that I discovered recently that was created by Stanford University that's called Storm and the way it works is that you ask it about any topic you want, and it will create a custom Wikipedia-like page for you around this topic. And what I love about it is that you can basically create

your own rabbit holes to fall into. Instead of falling into- Like we need more. Yes, exactly. But instead of falling into random ones, you're falling into your own highly decorated rabbit holes. And so that's an AI tool that I found incredibly helpful. It's fun to use. And it's a way to be more curious and creative at the same time.

Yeah, because I think listeners, I promise this is just going to go on for another minute or two, then we'll get into the rest of it. But I'm sure all of you, all of us think about what do we do with all the information that we get? How does it become useful to us? And, you know, Rome is a tool that was intended to sort of connect to disparate ideas on its own. And I don't think it fully realizes that promise. But I think AI, at some point, I mean, already to a certain degree, But I think AI at some point, I mean already to a certain degree, does and can. The question is how do you expose everything that you're thinking about and consuming and reading to AI so it can make connections that you don't see? And I think that's the question I'm still trying to figure out.

And that's the problem at this stage is that although for a lot of the pro versions of these tools you can actually connect them to your documents and your drive. So you can do that. We are still currently at a stage where you need to prompt AI and ask it questions in order for it to do something useful for you. And so it is not necessarily going to help with the kind of emergent knowledge and exploration where you don't know what you don't know.

And so in that way, to me, it is still more of a thinking companion that is helping me explore things I'm curious about versus doing a lot of the thinking for me, which it cannot do, although at least for me if I ask, hey, I'm giving you three or four different things here. Find connections between them that I may not be seeing. And it finds connections. Some of them are garbage, right? I mean, they're not any good, but every once in a while I'm like, oh, wow, okay. I treat it sort of like you do, like as a thinking companion. It's just, I just assume I've got a really smart,

an incredibly smart person next to me that will be infinitely patient with all the questions I wanna ask it, you know? And away I go. So anyway, okay, now let's get into the book. The heart of the book is about how our way of thinking about goals up till now is not the best approach for us moving forward in today's day and age. Share why that is. So I describe the types of goals that

we've been using so far, the traditional way of doing goal setting as linear goals. And a linear goal is a goal that is based on the assumption that in order to be successful, you need to have a clear vision and a clear plan. And then if you work really, really hard, you're going to get there. The problem obviously is that we know that in this day and age, this doesn't really work because the world keeps on changing. You keep on changing. Maybe in the first place, you don't really know what you want and where you want to go.

And so this idea of having a very clear vision of where you want to go kind of breaks down in today's modern world. So I advocate for replacing this very linear approach that gives you this illusion of control and this illusion of certainty with a more experimental mindset where you embrace the fact that you don't really know where you're going, things are changing all the time, and maybe that uncertainty is not such a bad thing. Maybe you can actually learn from it. So you started your career at Google

and you made the decision after several years there that you were on this locked in path at Google. It was very clear where you were gonna go, what you needed to do to get there. You had your blinders on and you were just charging full speed ahead. And that for you, that didn't work, right? That wasn't the right thing.

So you left, and then you started a did what, you know, everybody does when you leave something like Google, you start your own company. And so you created a startup and found yourself in essentially the same boat again, right? It's just, you know, it's your boat this time, but you're still pointing in one direction going as hard as you can with the blinders on And from there you then launched the next phase of your life, which has been a lot of different things a question I have for you is How does this idea that we're going to explore more in the book around these tiny experiments and a curiosity based? Explore, curiosity based exploration approach.

Work for people who don't do something as radical as you did or as I did, like leaving a career to mess around out here in the media world or whatever. I've got a career goals. I'm in an organization. I'm putting my time in. I have somewhere I think I want to go, but I also recognize the blinders are on. I'm in an organization. I'm putting my time in. I have somewhere I think I want to go. But I also recognize, you know, the blinders are on and I'm not growing. I'm not learning. I'm bored. I'm, you know, how do we take your model and put it into that? Yes. Two things. First, I don't think, looking back, that I had to leave Google in the way I did,

where I was just like, I'm done, I'm going to do something different, and now I'm going to build my startup. And I'm very aware that, unfortunately, this is a very common discourse that we get in the media where people say, quit your job, do your thing, follow your passion, which I think is actually quite dangerous, and I was quite young at the time.

And so I thought that's what I have to do. So that's one thing. Don't necessarily do what I did. And I don't say in the book, and I never say do that, because I think it's actually quite risky to do something like this. Turned out to be okay for me, but it's not always the case. One thing.

The second one is, this is why the book is called Tiny Experiments, because you actually don't need to overhaul your entire life in order to reconnect with curiosity, with exploration, with being open to uncertainty, with those liminal spaces. You just need to conduct very small little experiments where you question the way you've been doing things and you try a different way of doing those things and where you stay very open to whatever the

outcome is going to be. So instead of having that linear goal where you say this is what success looks like and I need to get there, instead you start from a hypothesis. You ask yourself, huh, I think this might work. I think I might enjoy this. I think this could be interesting. What kind of tiny experiment could I design around that question, that hypothesis, so I can find out? And if it turns out that it's not for me and I don't like it, that's not failure.

That's just data. Hey everyone, I haven't had an open spot in my coaching practice in over 3 years, but right now I've got a couple. But I work best with a certain kind of person. So if you're a thoughtful business owner, creator or leader, and you're ready to move from scattered progress and simmering self-doubt to aligned action, strategic clarity and real momentum, this might be the right time. Through something I call the Aligned Progress Method will turn inner alignment into real-world results so you can grow your revenue, reclaim your time and finally trust yourself as much as others already do. If that speaks to

where you are you can learn more at oneufeed.net slash align. That's how this podcast started. I had a solar energy company that ended up failing and I was back in the software world doing consulting and I just got the idea to do this thing and so I just did it. I mean without a whole lot of thought. I mean once I had the idea then I put work in steadily you know a little bit but there was there was no expectation that this was anything more than let's try it and see if we like it.

And when I was doing coaching work with people, sometimes we would do exactly what you said, which is they would think they want to do X, Y, and Z. So we would start doing X, Y, and Z, and then they would find out that that's not what they wanted to do. And that in some ways feels like a loss. And it might be if it's been this cherished thing you've thought you wanted to do but ultimately it's freeing because now you can point your energy towards what is actually for you and I just love the idea of tiny experiments you know just try something I always think about this idea of like if you're standing at the edge of the woods and

there's a path going in and about five feet down it curves and you're like what's around that path what's around that path you'll never know by standing at the edge of the woods you only know by taking a few steps in and that's I think kind of at the heart of your book. I love that and I love how you mention how freeing it is because that's why the subtitle of the book is how to be free be in a goal-obsessed world it's really the subtitle of the book is How to Free Be in a Goal Obsessed World. It's really the idea that once you free yourself from all of those what ifs that you treat

in a more of a paralyzing way, where a lot of people might think, oh, what if I change jobs? What if I did that thing differently? What if I explored a different city, a different way of being and of living? But because they see it as this very big change, they end up not exploring it at all. Yes.

And there's always a tiny, more experimental version that you can explore this question and actually find out. And as you said, if it turns out this is not for you, you're actually freeing up mental space, creative energy that you can direct towards something else. Yeah, my partner and I, we live in Columbus, Ohio today. And there were reasons that we had to remain in Columbus up till about a year ago. And now we're in the, where do we want to live? We could live anywhere in the world dilemma. Right? And so part of our process

though is just like, let's go somewhere that is on the list for a couple of weeks and most of the time we end up just crossing it off. Well, nope, nope, nope. We're overly picky, I think. That's probably part of the problem and there's no right answer, which is I think the other thing that ties into kind of your book is that I think we get paralyzed because we think we need to make the right choice, the right decision, when that's not really the way reality works. Exactly.

And very often this obsession we have with making the right decision actually gets in the way of ultimately making the right decision because we're not allowing ourselves to iterate. Yes. Okay, so you recommend or you talk about in the book going from this idea of linear goals to growth loops. Describe a growth loop. So if you keep on conducting the exact same experiment without learning from the data you're collecting, you're just going to go in circles. without learning from the data you're collecting, you're just going to go in circles. A growth loop is when you take the time to reflect on what you learned

and you adjust your trajectory based on all of these lessons that you had from the previous cycle of experimentation. And for each cycle, you don't know where you're going. You don't have that fixed destination, but you can trust that you're going to grow. And this is why they're called growth loops. Each loop you complete, each time you ask a question, you say, I'm going to give it a try,

and I'm going to learn from this trial, and then decide what to do next, I'm going to grow. The next thing in the book that ties to this is this idea of instead of goals or habits or New Year's resolutions or huge projects that we make packs. It's P-A-C-T-S not like packs of wolves but packs. Just for listeners so there's not confusion. What is a pact? A pact is a mini protocol for personal experimentation. It's a very simple format

that allows you to design tiny experiments. And it's based on exactly the same format scientists used to design your experiments. So if you think about an experiment, you only need to know two things. And I'm obviously giving you a very simplified version of that, but you need to know what you're going to test and the number of trials. That's basically all you need to have the essence of what the experiment is going to be. A pact, very similarly, is deciding what action you're going to explore for what duration.

And so it follows this format. And so it follows this format. I will action for duration. So for example, I will write a weekly newsletter for six weeks. I will meditate every morning for one month. I will meal prep every Sunday for two months. I will action for duration. And this is a pact. I call it a pact because it is really a commitment. It's a commitment to complete the experiment, to perform that action for that duration and to withhold judgment while you're conducting the experiment, to perform that action for that duration,

and to withhold judgment while you're conducting the experiment. Yeah, there's so many things about that framework that I really love. You talk about it needs to be actionable using current resources rather than like elaborate preparation. And one of the phrases I've always loved and it's been attributed to everybody from, you know, Snoopy to God is something like, use what you have, do what you can, you know, with what you have. I'm butchering it, but that's it basically, you know. And I love that idea of doing what we can with what we have right now, right? Versus, because how many of our dreams get deferred

by when X, when I have this, when I have that and I think it's so important. And I love this idea of time bounding it because you're not making a commitment for the rest of your life. I'm a recovering heroin addict and alcoholic and we had a concept of one day at a time, which is an extreme time bounding, but it's an extreme problem

when you're first trying to come out of addiction. But it's a way of not getting overwhelmed by the fact that like, is this really the right thing for me to do for the rest of my life? What am I going to do when I get married? What about like all these things? You just go, well, today. And I love that idea because the pact does that on a more reasonable level. But it also allows you, since you're committing for a period of time, to find out about it. Because meditating for two days, you don't have enough information to make a decision about whether meditation is for you or not. But that's where most of us live. We live either like, I do it and if I don't get immediately good feedback, I give up. Or I chain myself to the idea that I have to do this thing forever.

And I love that you're painting this middle way with these pacts. Yes, and what you're talking about reminds me of habits where I find it fascinating and a little bit crazy that so many of us decide to commit to new habits for the rest of our lives without having ever tried them before. And so I also think that having this experimental approach and saying, I'm just going to do a tiny experiment first, as you said, it's going to be short enough that you can actually do it, long enough that you can actually collect data. And it's a way to figure out, is there anything

I might want to turn into your habit that I can try it first? And it's not because everybody around you, all of your friends are raving about running, for example, that this is something you're going to enjoy. So you can give it a try. And then if it doesn't work, it's okay. There are so many other forms of healthy body movement. It doesn't have to be that.

And so you can try something different. So I think it's also allowing yourself to figure out what actually works for you instead of copy pasting what the majority is saying is good for everyone. Yes, and it keeps you pointed in a direction long enough to be useful. Because that's the opposite of the commitment to everything

is I just bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce between lots of different things all the time. So what you're saying is having a long-term goal way out there doesn't make sense in the same way that it used to. And there's lots of things that happen when we do that. And having no direction is also a bad idea, right? And so I'm a big middle way kind of guy. It's one of my,

you know, it's part of my brand, I guess. And this is such a middle way approach. Yes, very often in life, the middle way is actually a pretty good answer. And I think in this case, that is the case. Long enough that you can figure out what works for you and short enough that you can actually do it. And as you said, having a sense of direction, but also not having the illusion that you actually know exactly where you're going. Precisely. You know what you're going to do for a period of time. You talk about them also being continuous involving repeatable

actions, right? That's again, back to the book I'm writing, how a little becomes a lot, right? It's that sort of thing. So I love this packed idea. I wanna ask about field notes. Tell me about what field notes are and how you use them and how they're useful in this overall framework.

A question I often get is how do I even come up with an experiment that's interesting to explore and how do I make sure that this experiment is something I'm actually curious about and not something I'm copy pasting from other people around me. And so for people who ask me this question, I recommend a little exercise that I call self-emphropology because I invite them to pretend for just one day that they are an anthropologist but with their own life as the topic of study. And so what was an anthropologist good? They go and they study a new culture and they know nothing about this culture. And so they have no preconceptions, no assumptions.

And they take a notebook with them and they take field notes, observations. Again, no judgment. They're just taking notes and asking questions like, why are these people doing these things like that? Why do they care about that? Why does this thing is, why is this thing so important to them?

You can do the same thing with your own life, asking yourself, why do I spend my time like this? Why do I use my energy like that? Why do I care so much about this? Just like an encroach is just taking little field notes and asking yourself, why are things done the way they are in my life currently? No judgment, just observation.

Those observations, I guarantee you, I've worked with lots of people using this little tool. I guarantee you, you will notice things that you've been doing in a certain way just because, because routine, because habits, because that's the way things have been done around you, whether it's in your company business or in your personal environment. And where you start questioning the way you've been doing things, when you know how things are, you can start imagining how they could be, what could be different. And this, this is the seat for a tiny experiment.

What I love about your field notes, I love the idea in general, and I think many of us have heard some version of this, which is you've got to be reflective or you keep a journal. And so I was like, well, what does she mean by field notes? So I went out to your Nest Labs website and I looked up your field notes and I found an example of field notes. So I just want to read a couple of these to listeners because this is different than the way I imagine being reflective. 1004 I'm gonna finish the first draft of the combinational creativity article.

1046 I fell into a Wikipedia black hole again. Who knew so many inventors got killed by their own invention? I didn't read that clearly until now. God, that's good. I just lost half our listening audience. They're gonna be like, whoa, okay, I gotta check that out. Chris, my editor, I guarantee you, 100% is just not gonna edit now

until he looks at how many inventors got killed by their own invention. 11.45, made good progress, need to get ready for my workshop. I'm not gonna go through all of these, but between the public speaking and getting VA, I feel like I'm starting to increasingly value investing in good tools and systems. So it's just these, it's not this grand sitting down and puzzling out everything that's happening and trying to make meaning out of it all.

It's as you say, it's observational notes about what happens during the day. What did you do? In what ways did you not do what you thought you were going to do? How did you feel as you were doing X, Y, or Z? And I just think this is a great approach, an easier way to approach being reflective than sitting down and having to puzzle out meaning. Yeah, and the reason why it works so well for a lot of people is that a lot of the reflective tools

that people recommend require you to sit down every day for a month or for the rest of your life, again, to do this. What I like about this little exercise of filled notes is that whenever you feel a little bit stuck or whenever you feel like you might want to do things differently or something is not quite right but you can't put your finger on it, you can do this for just 24 hours, 48 hours at most and you take those little notes throughout the day and then you look back at them and you will see patterns emerge.

And so it's also a form of reflection that is very action oriented in the sense that you're capturing these observations so you can then decide what to experiment with. But it works for people who haven't really had success with maybe daily journaling, morning pages, those kinds of formats. It's a little bit more surgical where you can do it for hours, 48 hours, and you get what you need out of it. And then you go on to experimenting. Do you have any recommendations for how people could remember to do these? I think that's the, for me, I feel like I would take, without consciously designing

this, I would take one field note at the beginning of the day, and I'd take another at the end of the day, and that would be it. It would be all the in-between where I forget to do it. That's the key word, in between. So the idea of having timestamps was actually inspired by an existing journaling method that is called interstitial journaling because you actually write in between. And so the technique, and that's why you only do it

for 24 hours or 48 hours, is that you write something every time you switch tasks. So anytime you go from one thing to another, or anytime you notice you've been off task. So that's why you have one in here where I'm on the Wikipedia rabbit hole. So and that's it. And so if you just apply this I'm switching tasks, I write one line or I notice that I haven't written in a while because I'm actually doing something else I should not be doing right now, you write something. That's it. Wonderful. There's so many more things in this section that I could actually doing something else I should not be doing right now, you write something, that's it. Wonderful.

There's so many more things in this section that I could talk about, but I wanna move on to the idea of disruption and uncertainty in our lives. Certainly there are big and little disruptions that we all go through, right? The big disruption is you lose your job, your relationship ends, or you have several of

those things happen, what Bruce Feiler calls like a lifequake. So there's those. But then there's also just smaller disruptions. And then there is, in many cases, a lot of uncertainty that we exist with. Tell me how you think about working with those things. For me, the most important step, and the first one, before you do anything when you're faced with that kind of uncertainty or disruption is just to understand

that the instinctive response that we have, the response of fear and anxiety is completely normal. And that from an evolutionary perspective, our brains are designed to reduce uncertainty as much as possible, because this is what helps with survival. And so, removing a little bit of the self-blame that we might be experiencing when we have fear and anxiety, and when we say, why am I reacting like this? I should be able to feel in control, I should be calmer. I think it helps to just accept the fact that it's just your brain trying to do its job

and it's completely okay. Once you've done that, then you can start actually applying some of the more practical tools that will allow you to actually deal with disruption. So you talk about moving from a response one to a response two. I think that's what you just sort of alluded to there, but talk to us about how.

So when you think about any kind of disruption, they have two kinds of effects on you. The first effects are subjective. They're your actual response. As I said, fear, anxiety, worry, not feeling in control. And so it's important to start with these. For this, there is a tool psychologists called effective labeling.

And it's a fancy word, psychologists love their jargon, but really what it means is just naming your emotions. It's really putting a name on the emotion. And that could be, I'm scared, again, I'm worried, I'm stressed. I did not include that in the book because it's so easy to find if you look it up online, but there are lots of those emotion wheels that you can use if that's helpful for you to name those emotions. For some people, a bit of journaling can be helpful. But that's the first part. And there's research showing by when we just name those emotions, where we just

label them, we already reduce a lot of the anxiety around that and a lot of the negative impact that it has very often is just a lot of the anxiety is around not really knowing what we're feeling. So that's the first step, which is dealing with the subjective experience. Once you've done that, and only once you've done that, you can then move on to the second step, which is dealing with the objective consequences. And you can only do that if you're in a state where you're calm enough. They can actually look at what is happening. Sure, again, what's quite

interesting is that sometimes we try very, very hard to fix whatever problem is happening when in reality doing nothing is the best solution. Which is very hard to admit because we're in a state of panic and we feel like we need to fill in control. So I want to ask you a neuroscience question and it is really about whether an oversimplification that I tend to think about makes any sense. And it's basically similar to what you just talked about, which is that when the more emotional parts of our brain, the limbic system or the fighter flight system, I'm not quite sure the best way to refer to

it, but when that part is super activated, it takes resources away from the prefrontal cortex where we're able to think through and come up with creative solutions and put things in perspective and do all that. Is that a reasonable oversimplification of the way things work? It's slightly different and I think it's helpful actually to make the distinction. Please. So the problem mainly comes from the fact that when the amygdala is over activated, it also reduces connection with the prefrontal cortex.

And so it's actually okay to experience stress and anxiety if you're also still connected with your prefrontal cortex that is able to recognize that anxiety for what it is and to still make rational decisions. And so it's not so much that it's taking energy from the preecloptoidal cortex, it's that it's really just not listening to it and almost like shutting it down and making all of the decisions. And so to me, that's why,

the reason why I make the distinction and I always try to really communicate it in this way is that it is not about shutting down that I makedala response because again it's such a natural deeply ingrained response it's a survival response it's more about reactivating that connection with the pre-printable cortex so you can see it for what it is and still make rational decisions even though you will still feel a little bit of anxiety. So that's sort of the effective labeling then that That's what that is intended to do, right?

It's connecting, it's re-establishing that connection. And however, what I find interesting though is that in some cases, when the emotional activation is really, really strong, I guess it's the same thing you're saying. What I have also found is that in addition to something like effective labeling, that sometimes some sort of somatic practice, whether that be movement or self-soothing touch, or there's, I mean, there's a lot of them.

That also helps. And the way I've thought of that is it turns down the over-activation back there so that that communication can start happening. And in both cases, what they have in common, affective labeling and any kind of somatic processing practice that you have is that you're not trying to repress the emotion, you're not trying to solve anything. You're reopening that door, actually.

You are letting the emotion, with a somatic practice, you are in effect letting the emotion move through your body. And with affective labeling, you're recreating that connection with your prefrontal cortex. And this is why those practices work, because you're not trying to shut down that emotional response.

You're accepting it. You're integrating it. Yeah, I really love that because emotions don't just shut down. It doesn't work that way. I mean, I've often said that like, I feel like in any situation, there are like a few different things you, that, you know, you've got thought, you've got emotion, you've got behavior. And emotion just doesn't have a lever that you can grab and pull, is my experience. Thought does, right?

I mean, I can't stop what pops into my brain, but I can work with it. And behavior has a lever also. So those are the things that we have to use because we can't just turn off the emotion. It just doesn't work that way. Yeah, absolutely. because we can't just turn off the emotion. It just doesn't work that way. Yeah, absolutely. And we can actually learn a lot at a cognitive level from our emotions if we decide to listen to them

and to work with them. And so as you mentioned, there is the somatic processing that we can use if the emotion is very strong. And so that's a way of processing it. But if we feel like we're in a state where we can do that actually being curious about your emotions can be incredibly powerful as well. Yes, curiosity seems to be the the the wonder drug that I you know keep hearing about again and again and again.

But it makes sense. It makes sense. Let's talk about, since we're talking about neuroscience a little bit, let's talk about the neuroscience of procrastination. Yeah, so it is actually related to what we were just talking about. And when we're procrastinating, there is actually this lack of communication happening in between your prefrontal cortex and the more emotional center. So let's just go back to what is procrastination. In effect, procrastination is not doing the thing that you feel like you should be doing. And what happens when you procrastinate?

You blame yourself. You feel like, why am I not doing this thing that I should be doing. And what happens when you procrastinate? You blame yourself. You feel like, why am I not doing this thing that I should be doing? And so, it's the opposite response to what we've just described, right? You're not curious about the emotion, you're not curious about the procrastination, you're just blaming yourself. And so, in this chapter in the book, that's really the question I ask, what would it look like if instead of having this response of self-blame and shame and trying to push through using willpower whenever we're procrastinating, we actually looked at it with curiosity instead?

What would happen if we just asked, hey, hello, procrastination, what are you doing here? What are you trying to tell me? What are you trying to communicate to me? And I share a very simple tool in this chapter that people can use to have this conversation with their procrastination. So the tool is called the triple check.

And what you're asking is, where is my procrastination coming from? Is it coming from the head? Which means that there is a resistance at a rational level where you don't think that you should be working on this in the first place? Is the problem coming from the heart, which means that at an emotional level, you don't feel like this is going to be fun or interesting or exciting? Or is the problem coming from the hand, which means that although at a rational level you think like,

yeah, I should do this, at an emotional level you feel like this looks like fun. At a practical level, you don't believe that you have the right skills or the right tools or the right support network in order to complete the task. Yeah, I've not heard that framework and I love it. I think about this question a lot, which, I mean, we can call it procrastination, but the question I think about is a little bit broader, which is why do we not do the things that we think we should do? And obviously the first problem is in that sentence, right?

Should, we need to be clear on why we're doing what we're doing and be doing the right things because if we're not then everything's going to be challenging. But I've always broken it into two sort of components that I think you're deconstructing into a third. And the first is sort of structural. Like do I know what the very first thing I should be doing is? Like my tendency is I put something on the task list like do taxes, which is like a 12 step process, right? So have I deconstructed this thing to a small enough thing that I know what the right thing to do is, is my

environment set up and structured, you know, like there's a lot of structural things that we can do. But then there's the moment of doing. And in that moment, I've referred to it more as emotional, which is there's something that's happening in your, I think you're calling it mind and heart, right? There's some thought process you're having, or doubt or fear or whatever that is happening. And I think part of the benefit of at least trying the structural method is that it gets you to a point

where you are at a choice point. Because then if you're at a choice point, you can explore what's happening. If we never, if we just let, if we stay out in Vaguesville, right, and things remain vague, we never get to really zone in on, we ask big questions like, why do I procrastinate? Instead of, why do I procrastinate this thing

at this time? Yeah, and I love how you're really focusing your attention on this thing at this time, because you're already in problem-solving mode when you do this. You're also decoupling your sense of self work from the fact that you're procrastinating. And this is really the most important part is really again, seeing that it's almost as if you, you know, instead of saying I'm procrastinating, saying

procrastination is happening. Why? I've been trying to figure out. Yeah, yeah. And you talk about the Buddhist parable, the second arrow, right? Where like the first arrow is we're procrastinating and that has its own suite of problems that come along with it. The second arrow is that we now feel bad about procrastinating. And if we think about the discussion we just had, one of the things that I think that that self-blame and that self-criticism does is it stirs up the emotional energy and then breaks that connection that we've talked about or lessens

that connection. And so it's why curiosity is so useful because it turns, again, turns that emotional temperature down. And one of the things that I always think about this too is like I think about this stuff is like a puzzle. People tend to be like I'm just the sort of person that procrastinates or I always procrastinate or why do I always do this or I'm always going to be this way. And I look at it more as we just haven't arranged the various pieces in the right way that works for you. And I just think

that's a much more optimistic and hopeful way that works for you. And I just think that's a much more optimistic and hopeful way to look at things. Absolutely and just a kinder way as well. More self-compassionate way. Yes, absolutely. You talk about a listening failure in that chapter. Is that what you mean about that disconnect between the the prefrontal cortex and the more emotional parts of our brain? Is that the listening failure? Yes, exactly. One of the parts of the book that I was telling you before we hit record that really caught my attention heavily is around acceptance. I mean I write a lot about acceptance in the Wise Habits course that I've taught. We have a

whole module on acceptance. But I'd never come across the framework that was in a study that labels it this clearly, which is active versus resigning acceptance. Help me understand what those two terms mean. So you will hear a lot of people say that whatever happens, they accept the situation. What scientists found is that there are actually different modes of acceptance that we have in difficult situations. One of them is the one that I think most of us think about when we say, oh I'll just accept whatever is happening, which is the resigned version of it, which is very passive and where

you just, you know, you accept whatever is going on and you know, it's going to have negative consequences and it might be a bit challenging and difficult and you're just waiting for it to go away, hopefully, whenever it does. The active version of acceptance, active acceptance is where you actively accept that there is a problem, there is a challenge, that's completely fine. You're not going to, you know, brood on it or feel like there's anything wrong with you or with the way you've done things, but you're

also going to try and shape what happens next. So you can accept what is right now and also actively say, okay, that's the current situation, this is fine. It doesn't mean I don't have any sense of agency in terms of shaping what might happen next. And so this is the active form of acceptance, which is linked to better mental health, better well-being in general, and so which is the one that you really want to practice whenever you're facing a difficult situation. Yeah, I love that. Listeners will be probably, we've heard this a thousand times,

but how can we hear too much about this question that I think sits at the center of our lives, which is, you can call it the serenity prayer, you can call it Epictetus' doctrine of control, you can call it Stephen Covey's circle of concern and influence. It's all about recognizing what you can do something about and what you can't. And it just occurred to me that engaging with that question in an honest and heartfelt way is active. I'm actually really thinking about, okay, what can I do here? Is there some influence? I may not be able to control the outcome, but I can have an influence. Or I can work on how I'm going to respond or what I'm going to do.

But even the process of getting into that framework of the serenity prayer is an active form of acceptance. Even if you come out the other side with the, okay, I don't think I have much choice here but to work on acceptance. Yes, exactly. And another step to this, which can be really interesting to explore and very empowering also, is asking yourself, what am I best placed to do in this situation? Me with my experience, my knowledge, my current situation? What is one thing that I could do and that may be more difficult for someone else to do but that is something that is easier for me to do.

And so not only do you reconnect with your sense of agency but again it's very empowering to think and to feel like you can actually do something very unique that only you maybe can do. Yeah, I mentioned that I was in 12-step programs and there used to be a page in the AA big book. It used to be page 449. It's changed now because there's multiple editions. This is 30 years ago, probably. But people used to always say like,

449, man, you need to do 449. They get bumper stickers with 449. Well, on page 449 was the phrase, acceptance is the answer to all my problems. And it used to drive me crazy. Because I was like, no, it's not. No, it is not. It is the answer to some problems.

But for many problems, the actual answer is that there is something you can do and will be, you will feel better when you do. So I've always been sort of, you know, against the active resistance, you know, and one of my core like life strategies is if I'm worried or upset about something, I try and just say, instead of sitting here and being worried and upset, what little thing can I do that makes that situation better? Like, what thing can I do now, instead of spending the energy worrying, what thing can I just do this minute? And I always find that when I turn some amount of my energy and attention to solving the issue,

if there's something I can do, I feel better. You know, because I'm back in a place of agency to some degree. And it's a very powerful question to you, especially if you decouple the outcome of what you do from what you actually do, right? Yes. It's the idea that you can just do something and if it doesn't work, if it doesn't change the situation, you've at least done something. And very often just just as you said,

doing something going from being stuck and paralyzed to being in movement again, is enough to feel better. Yeah, like I remember in the past when I didn't manage money well at all, and I would start to get stressed about it. Because my main problem was I just didn't open any bills. stressed about it, because my main problem was I just didn't open any bills. I just let them pile up. This was back before electronic bills, right? And I'd let them pile up and, but just going and opening the bills helped. Right? It wasn't that it solved the problem.

I still owed the money, but it was a step. I did something. Right. And so I think that speaks to what you're saying. You got to decode. It's not about the outcome. It's about something in us as humans that feels good when we don't avoid our problems,

but we do something where we face them to the best of our ability in whatever little way we can. It goes back to that balance, that middle ground that you described earlier in the sense that human beings don't really well with full stagnation when they do nothing. There's also on the other end of the spectrum when we start having this kind of hecticness running around because we're anxious.

And so having this intentional kind of, again, active acceptance where you do something not running around like a headless chicken panicking because you're really worried about what's going on but also not being completely stuck paralyzed and doing nothing. This middle ground is the healthiest reaction you can have. Yes, I agree. Tell me about steering sheets. So when you're done with an experiment, you'll probably ask yourself, okay, what's next? The steering sheet is a way to answer that question. So there are three different routes that you can take when you're done with an experiment.

The first one, which I think is quite interesting how a lot of people resists that option, is to just keep on going with your experiments the way you've been doing it, because if it's working, why not keep going? And I call this option persist. And I chose this word very intentionally because I feel like it is persistent.

It requires a little bit of courage in today's society to say, I'm not going to scale this up, not going to go bigger. This is working for me. I'm not going to scale this up, not going to go bigger. This is working for me. I'm just going to keep going as it is. So option one persists. Second option, pivot. That is when things are kind of working, but you feel like it's not perfect yet. So maybe you've been doing daily meditation in the morning, but you feel like it's hard for you to do it in the morning. Do you want to go for another cycle of experimentation where you do it during your lunch break or in the evening?

And so you tweak things. And this is where you can actually, if you want, scale up, scale down, change the parameters and try something slightly different. And the last option is pause. And I call it pause, not quit, because you might want to come back to that experiment in the future, but it's really just acknowledging the fact

that based on your current circumstances, your current priorities, your levels of energy, your other commitment, whatever it is, at this moment in time, this experiment is not working for you. And so you can just park it away, put it on the shelf, and perhaps go back to it in the future. But for now, you're going to pause it. I love it. I love it. That's a great way of thinking about it. And you made it alliterative

to the three P's. Oh, yeah, I did work on that. Yes, I think as authors, we're always like, all right, I gotta, I gotta tighten this idea up a little bit. Well, thank you so much for joining me on the show. I've really enjoyed talking with you. As I told you before, I thought your book was outstanding and it opened things in me that I hadn't seen before, which is rare in my line of work. So thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure. Thank you so much for your amazing questions.

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