The One You Feed - How to Find Your Way to Healing, Hope, and Peace with Seth Gillihan

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

Seth Gillihan, a renowned clinical psychologist and author, offers a fresh take on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Drawing from his personal journey of overcoming health challenges and embracing mindfulness, Seth explains how to find your way to healing, hope, and peace. Through his candidness about his own struggles, he provides valuable insights to life's common challenges. His work emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and acceptance, offering guidance and a path forward for navigating the complexities of lifeIn this episode, you will be able to: Embrace uncertainty to unlock new opportunities for happiness Reduce suffering through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and reclaim peace of mind Shift thoughts and actions with mindfulness Take effective action by embracing the “Think, Act, Be” approach Integrate mindfulness into everyday life for enhanced well-being and peace To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What stories am I telling myself? Well, one that often comes up is, you know, I have to get this done tonight. Like, well, do you? I want to. Yeah, but do you have to get it done? Well, no. What does it do to you to force yourself to get it done when you're just feeling spent? Yeah, I guess there's a pretty big cost there. You end up sobbing at the end of the night. 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. 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 and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Seth J. Gillihan, a licensed psychologist who specializes in mindfulness-centered cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety, depression, insomnia, and other conditions. Dr. Gillihan has written and lectured nationally and internationally on CBT and how the brain is involved in regulating our moods. He's a fellow at the Center for Neuroscience and Society at Penn and also hosts a weekly Think, Act, Be podcast.

Today, Eric and Seth discuss his book, Mindful Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, A Simple Path to Healing, Hope, and Peace. Hi, Seth. Welcome to the show. Hello, Eric. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm happy to have you on. We're going to be discussing your book, Mindful Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, A Simple Path to Healing, Hope, and Peace. But before we do that, let's start like we always do with 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 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. Yeah, I've always loved that parable. The first thing that comes to mind comes from my work with anxiety. I treat a lot of anxiety as a therapist, and I've dealt with my own anxiety. A lot of the

time, I think we have this feeling of, I just want to get rid of my anxiety or overcome it in a kind of once and for all way, which is understandable, of course. I get that. But it seems like what actually happens with our fears, we don't override it in the brain. It's like we can erase a fear memory and replace it with a safety memory or a safety association. Let's say we've been through a really difficult experience and we've, maybe as kids, we didn't feel safe allowing ourselves to be vulnerable emotionally. So as adults, we carry that forward and we keep protecting ourselves in ways that cut us off from intimacy. So we might then learn in a relationship like, oh, I can let my guard down and I don't get, you know, punished or hurt the way that I did as a kid. But it's not like that old association is gone. It's not like now I always feel safe in

relationships or it's always automatic. There are these two now representations in the brain. One is for vulnerability is dangerous. One is vulnerability is okay. And which of those gets expressed, as the parable suggests, has everything to do with where our attention is focused, how much we're facing the things we're afraid of versus running away from them. But like so many simple and memorable parables, I think it captures so much that's true on many different levels. There's one other level that I won't get into in detail, but it has to do with, in a more general way, the types of deeply held beliefs and assumptions that we bring into the world and, well, that we're

taught and that we internalize at an early age. And what I'm really interested in lately is how we can start to shift some of those in more helpful ways. I think in directions that probably are really consistent with the types of things you tend to talk about with your guests on this podcast. Yeah. I love that idea of we don't get rid of those earlier memories. We just now have a choice of different potential ones. The example I often use is like, I know now if I'm in a room with men who are about my father's age, and if they're slightly disproving, like even not smiling, I start to get anxious. And I know why. It doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. But I also know I've had lots of great experiences with men my father's age where it's gone very well and they've become friends and mentors. And so, yeah, like you're saying, I have to sort of in

that moment recognize what's happening and choose what kind of action I want to take based on my values, but also based on like, okay, there's examples of safety here. There's not only examples of fear. So I love the way you brought that up. And I think as we go on, that's going to tie to your main method that comes up in your book, which is think, act, and be. We'll get to that in a minute. But where I'd love to start is kind of the journey that brought you to this book, because there was a lot of personal things going on with you, I think, that brought you from being a CBT therapist, and that was kind of one thing, into viewing CBT in a different way and adding some things to it. And I'm just

wondering if you could share kind of that story or that journey. Yeah. Things seem to be going well in my life for several decades for the most part. And then around age 40 or so, health-wise, things just kind of seem to fall apart little by little and then all at once as the saying goes. It started with some vocal challenges. It's not having volume or stamina for speaking, which is hard as a, I was a professor and a therapist at the time. And then eventually it was just profound fatigue, horrible insomnia, and a lot of just kind of weird non-specific symptoms that were never fully explained by all the doctors and specialists that I went to and things like extreme sensitivity to heat or cold all kinds of stuff that just never been part of my experience I'd always been active

running and going to the gyms several times a week doing triathlons. So, I mean, it just laid me low in so many ways. And eventually, I was extremely stressed because I was having to cut back on my work in a major way, and it was leading to financial problems. Then I wound up depressed. And I just, I had this sense over and over that I've come to the end of myself. that I've come to the end of myself. I've just come to the end of myself. I felt suicidal a lot of the time. And then I had a background in mindfulness around that time. And I used it some in my clinical practice, which is mostly cognitive and behavioral.

So focusing more on traditional ways of changing our thoughts and our actions. behavioral, so focusing more on traditional ways of changing our thoughts and our actions. But I had never had an experience like this where I realized in this particular moment, one evening on the couch after dinner, feeling completely done, I realized that the end of myself was the beginning of something else. And it seems so obvious now, but you know those obvious insights, when you experience them in a real way, when they hit you in the gut, you're just like, oh my God, I've heard this a thousand times, but I've never known it in the way that I know it in this moment. awareness and awakening that continues, that realization that not only is the end of my kind of small self ego not the end, but it sort of has to end in a way for what's next or what's possible to begin. And so that really was kind of the outgrowth of everything that came from there. So something I'm going to be doing a little more often is ask you, the listener, to reflect on what you're hearing.

We strongly believe that knowledge is power, but only if combined with action and integration. So before we move on, I'd like to ask you, what's coming up for you as you listen to this? Are there any things you're currently doing that are feeding your bad wolf that might make sense to remove? Or any things you could do to feed your good wolf that you're not currently doing? So if you have the headspace for it, I'd love if you could just pause for a second and ask yourself, what's one thing I could do today or tonight to feed my good wolf? Whatever your thing is, a really useful strategy can be having something external, a prompt or a friend or a tool that regularly nudges you back towards awareness and intentionality. For the past year, I've been sending little good wolf reminders to some of my

friends and community members. Just quick little SMS messages two times per week that give them a little bit of wisdom and remind them to pause for a second and come off autopilot. If you want, I can send them to you too. I do it totally for free and people seem to really love them. Just drop your information at oneufeed.net slash SMS and I can send them to you. It's totally free and if you end up not liking the little reminders, you can easily opt out. That's oneufeed.net slash SMS. And now back to the episode. One of the things I think is interesting as you tell that story in the book is this idea that you felt a source of shame, right? That you were a psychologist and you were

battling many of the same issues you've helped others to overcome, right? And you also say, many of the same issues you've helped others to overcome, right? You also say, you know, I had a blind spot for my own needs. And I think that's an occupational hazard of being a psychologist or a teacher or a thought leader or teaching spiritual workshops like I do, or any of that stuff is that if we're not careful, we can feel like we shouldn't suffer or struggle. And if we do, we can't talk about that. And which of course, as we all know, not talking about what's going on is a sure way to almost reinforce it. Yeah. It's funny, Eric, because I had an assumption for a long time that I couldn't reveal those things about myself, that I, that I couldn't, that I had to be seen or had to present myself in a certain way as if because of the work that I do or the things

that I write and talk about that I should be able to transcend these things or not experience them, which is, I mean, I think it's arrogant on the one hand. Yep. And also, I don't think people are really under the illusion that therapists or other people who talk about or write about certain helpful practices somehow, like have it all figured out. I sort of laugh to myself these days when I'll hear someone, you know, who's talking about, I don't know, maybe a yoga instructor or a meditation teacher saying something like, even I struggle with this. What do you mean, even I? As opposed to not struggling, like, so on the contrary, it seems like the people who have

insights and realize things that are helpful to other people probably have to have experienced and struggled with those things themselves. And so it's almost like I don't expect someone who has insights to not struggle. I expect them maybe to be more messed up in a way than the average person because they need those things. They need the insights that they've come to and then share with others. I know it's true for me. Yeah. I mean, I think the thing for me is I'm always very open and vulnerable about my backstory. It's harder to be like right this very second or right this week, I've been battling terrible depression or, but I try really hard to talk about it. I mean, I've talked about on the show in a number of recent episodes, I've been

going through a difficult time in a number of ways and it feels important to the work itself. Like it continues to reinforce like, oh yeah, difficulty and wise response to difficulty. They're both there. Yeah, man, Eric, that is, that hit me hard because you're so right. It's so easy to say, I have struggled with these things in the past. And the truth is, as we're recording this, yesterday was like right back to how I was, that experience I described of just being done. Best I can understand it, it was a stressful day with good things, but some challenging things going on. My nervous system got kind of worked up in a way that used to be fine.

I just power through. But now I'm at a point in my health and my life when I need to recover from those things. Surprise. And I didn't. I just kept going like, okay, I need to do this. I need to do this. And then I'll rest. But by the end of the night, I was just, I was so disheartened and

physically done. And then I ended up, you know, when our kids went to bed, I was just sobbing to my wife saying, I just can't believe I'm back here. I mean, this was last night. So, which I guess technically is also in the past, but it's... Close enough for what we're describing. Yeah. Well, you talked about in the very beginning, right? People want help with anxiety. So it's just gone. Get rid of it. You know, I think people turn to meditation, mindfulness, all sorts of spiritual solutions, because what we want is the end of the suffering. And, you know, my experience is that that's not the way it is, right? We can dramatically reduce the amount that we suffer. Like my guess is with a little bit of perspective,

like you have now, you can look at last night and just be like, well, okay, I was way overtired. And, you know, I don't need to add up a ton of layers of meaning to this. I can just look at it and be like, all right, I was exhausted, you know? And I've learned how much being really physically tired to me feels like deep depression. Like I often can't tell the two apart. And so I've learned to just be like the end of the day, if I'm feeling what feels like kind of blue to be like, well, okay, let's not get all worked up about things. Let's just go to bed and see how things are in the morning.

So I think we can reduce our suffering around things, but painful events continue to happen. We get tired, we get discouraged, we get all the things that humans get. I've used this quote a lot on the show because it means a lot to me. And I was talking with the spiritual teacher Adyashanti, and he once said that a lot of awakening is freedom to, not freedom from, meaning freedom to feel it all knowing that i'm okay versus freedom from feeling things yes i love that and and i love adi ashanti wow i listened to some of his series a couple of them on the waking up podcast and interviews with him and listen to your first part of your interview yeah him. I'm looking forward to the second part, the more recent ones. Yeah, that is such a crucial difference. And I think it's really central to what I've moved toward in my thinking, you know, from a more kind of fixing

Western medicine type of approach with cognitive behavioral therapy, which is very much about here are your symptoms, here's an evidence- evidence based treatment let's tackle those problems and fix those symptoms which is is great and at the same time it only covers so much right i mean there's there's almost always something left even after the best treatment and also there's just that deeper level of contentment that we can find when we don't make fixing the only way to well-being. Yeah. You know? Yeah. The human condition.

I don't think there's an escape for it, nor would I want an escape from it exactly, right? I mean, there are moments I'm like, well, okay, human condition, you can just go F off, right? Like I've had enough. Right. But in general, I'd love to spend a little bit of time talking about CBT in sort of its classical way and some of the ways that you understand it, because it is a really powerful tool for working with our thoughts. And our thoughts are often the source of a great deal of our suffering and pain. So can you give people who aren't really familiar with that term

CBT an understanding of what are we generally talking about when we talk about cognitive behavioral therapy? Right. Yeah. And one of the things that I really appreciate about a lot of sort of Eastern spiritual teachers is their recognition of the importance of working with thoughts. Like even, you know, in your interview with Adyashanti, he mentioned something about, you know, not kind of trying to leap over these unhelpful beliefs that we have by, you know, some spiritual platitude that somehow just, you know, kind of glosses over them. The backbone of cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT is the realization that's been realized in a lot of traditions, you know, in many different places of the world and many millennia, that our perspective has a lot to do with how we experience life. So, it's not so

much the things that happen to us that shape our experience, but it's our interpretation of them. Simple example that's often given is you walk by a friend across the street, you wave to them, they don't respond. What does that mean? Well, your reaction to that has everything to do with how you interpret their non-response. You know, if you think like, well, my God, they just blew me off. You're probably going to feel angry, hurt. Or if you think, huh, they didn't see me. It's like, it's kind of a non-event in your day. Maybe you're slightly disappointed. So, that shift can be really helpful in getting us out of those, you know, stuck points when we're telling

ourselves all these stories about like, well, this is why my spouse is acting this way. And this is what my life means. And once we recognize that those are stories, then we have some flexibility to question, are they actually true? And if not, we can think about what's a more useful alternative. Maybe they're not being a jerk. Maybe they just were looking at their phone or something. So there are all kinds of applications, but that's sort of the backbone of the cognitive

part and the behavioral part is kind of in parallel to that. Our actions obviously feed back into our emotions, feed back into our thoughts and beliefs. And so you'll tend to see in CBT as a triangle with, let's say, thoughts at the top, feelings, one of the lower corners and actions on the other. And they're all interrelated and each one affects the other two. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the key insight, right? Is that, you know, I used to kind of wonder, do feelings cause thoughts or thoughts cause feelings or, you know, and you just suddenly realize after a little while,

like it's completely bi-directional. I even sometimes start to wonder whether to what degree are they separate things? We talk about them as if they're separate, but they always co-arise, right? You know, you never get one without the other. Very rarely do you have, you know, one without the other, but that's not really a key point. So with CBT, what you're trying to do is you're recognizing that we are meaning-making machines. We make meaning out of everything that occurs. And that some meanings are more close to reality and empowering than others. Yeah, exactly.

And we tend to fall into certain patterns of unhelpful thoughts. You know, like mine might be along the lines of I'm not doing a good enough job. I have to do better. This person is criticizing me. Someone else's might be more about being, like whether or not they're loved, whether people like them, maybe they're loved uh whether people like them maybe they're

unlovable i think of it sometimes it's like the songs or the the types of songs that our mind is playing quote unquote songs it's like listening to a radio station you know if you if you hear a few jazz songs you're like ah all right this is a jazz station, you know, or classical or pop or whatever. So, we can figure out, you know, what are our deepest assumptions based on the kind of moment to moment thoughts that we're getting. If there are thoughts around failure, maybe I have this deep-seated, what we call a core belief that I'm a failure or I'm going to fail, or if I see danger everywhere, maybe I have this core belief that the world is extremely dangerous. When you asked your question in the beginning about my interpretation or what the parable says to me, I've been interested for a while and I'm

really kind of focused on that area now of understanding those unhelpful core beliefs and starting to shift them in ways that are actually effective again, not to overwrite the old ones, but to develop new competing ones. Yeah. Because, you know, my experience of trying to work with my thoughts, you know, the first thing I know is that using some sort of structured approach is really helpful. It's very slippery inside here. Right? And so some set of questions or, you know, ways of working through it is very helpful. And then the second thing that anybody that tries that will recognize is that some things, even though on some level you're like,

well, that's probably not exactly true, but good Lord, does it feel like it is? And no matter what I tell myself, I can't shake that sense of like, I'm a failure. Well, what does that even mean? I mean, what is it to succeed? What is it to fail? Like all these ways of questioning it are good. And yet often they don't change. There's something else that's more persistent. And is that what you're saying is sort of these core beliefs? They're even a layer to underthought that they're so assumed and so core that we don't even know how to question those. you described so well that like, I know on some level it's not true, but darn if it doesn't just feel exactly true. So yeah, that's maybe one of the biggest challenges I think for CBT is what about those thoughts? And you know, often through repetition or deeper exploration, maybe getting

at the thought beneath the thought, maybe the initial thought is just one level and there's something behind that. Like, I'm afraid that I'm there's something behind that, like I'm afraid that I'm going to be late for work. I'm probably not going to be late, won't be a big deal, but beneath that there's a meaning. What would it mean if you were late to work? Well, it would mean that I'm not a good employee. So you get to something that's actually driving the person's sense of like it's not going to be okay to be late. On the other hand, I think we do reach a point, I mean, whether just in our day-to-day lives or, you know, often in therapy work I've done, where we've worked through everything. The

person sees, yes, okay, I know it doesn't make any sense. Yes, if a friend were in exactly my position, I would tell them, you know, what you're telling me and I would think they should believe it. I can't believe it for myself. That I think that's where more of a mindfulness approach can be so helpful is to see the thoughts in a more general way as not really signifying what we think they do. We don't have to necessarily wrangle with them anymore, like, you know, sanitize our thoughts.

Yeah. And say like, yeah, that's what my mind does. All right, I'm going to move on. Yeah. And this gets to a question I often talk to people about and try and get at a little bit more. And I don't think there's a clear answer, but it's kind of when to do which of those things, right? Because they are similar, but they're different, right? One is assuming our thoughts are more or less valid and we're going to try and change them into something that's more useful.

And there's absolutely a time and place for that. And as you said, there are times that those don't budge. So then you're into more of a mindfulness-based approach or more of an acceptance and commitment therapy type approach where one of the core ideas there is like some of those thoughts may just not go away. They may just keep going. I love the analogy I think Stephen C. Hayes uses about like, they're like a radio station in my neighbor's apartment. Like I can't turn it off. You know, it's not my radio. I can't turn it off, but I can focus on

other things or I can be like, all right, I just going to let it be there. I'm just not gonna make a big deal out of it. And it always seems to me that both those approaches seem like they have their time and place. And, you know, for me, it's often a matter of as I'm dealing with my own emotions, right. Or, or working with somebody, you know, a coaching client or whatever, and we're looking at is like, which of those approaches are going to be more useful when. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And there's no hard and fast rule as you probably suspect, but as a rule of thumb, I think it's usually not best to kind of, what's the expression? I mean, it's like leapfrogging in a way, like a bypass, like a spiritual bypass kind of thing. Like, okay, well, I know I'm supposed to get, so I'm just going to say that I'm there and all is well. Well, usually what ends up happening is it just comes back around because it hasn't been dealt with, hasn't really been acknowledged or addressed or worked through as much as it can be. And then over time, as we sort of see our patterns and often a clue is that the thoughts maybe start to lose so much of their charge, you know, like it doesn't feel like the neighbor's music is blaring.

It feels more like it's still there. It's annoyance i could live my life with it so i think that's when we can shift more to a kind of like all right these thoughts come and go there they are again yeah anyway what am i doing i'm just going to go back to what i'm doing I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No 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. 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. 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. 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 iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. or wherever you get your podcasts. On one level, I think, like you said, not leapfrogging.

So for me, what I've sort of realized, and again, this isn't always true, but that it's okay to start by acknowledging the emotion that's tied with the thoughts. Instead of trying to get past that, acknowledge the emotion and what's happening because that tends to be my way is I'll just try and think my way out of it. And so, you know, acknowledge the emotion. And then I think it's useful for me to try and,

you know, look at the thoughts and question them. The classic example that's used in a lot of Buddhist stories is, you know, you walk outside and you think you see a snake and you freak the F out, you know, and then you look a little bit closer in the moonlight and you're like, oh, it's a coil of rope, right? In that exact moment, it's all over. And now our thoughts aren't usually that clean and easy, but it does point to, if you can be like, oh, it's not what I thought it was at all. The situation disappears. You know, for me, there's a point of like, can we do that level analysis to start just so that I'm not spending time listening to the radio station in my neighbor's apartment when I could simply flip the switch and turn it off?

Yeah. You know, but again, it's all so nuanced. And I think people are different. I think some people need a different approach at a different time in a different way. But I do love CBT in its ability to give that process of questioning my thoughts some degree of structure and direction. Yeah, yeah. I think the structure and direction, I think really the added benefit that CBT added to things like, you know, you read the Stoics and it's basically CBT, but that structure I think is such a useful addition. You know, a metaphor that I like is, you know, removing snow. So, let's say,

you know, you're snowed in and let's say that represents unhelpful thoughts. One way to get rid of that problem is, you know, to go out with your hands and just start, you know, pushing the snow out of the way. I think of that as without any specific tools other than your hands. Having a snow shovel, I think of like CBT, it's much more effective, you have more leverage, it's less frustrating, and it can work really well. But I think that ultimately, if we can, we can get to a point where we don't have to go through like, okay, this thought, I'm working through it, you know, it's, oh, this means that, okay, here's an alternative, again, which can be great, like a snow shovel. But there's something else, which is just recognizing like, oh, it's all thoughts. And that I think of as like the spring

snow, you know, and it just, it thaws. And that's it. You don't have to go through one by one, and I'm shoveling myself out. And it's just like, oh, that's it. That's a great analogy, actually. And, you know, it's been interesting to me when I've had some relatively profound spiritual experiences, that has been what it's been like. It's been like the snow just all melted. Right. You know, and there's no need to mess with it.

But given that I can't always make the sun come out to the same degree of warmth, you know, sometimes I do need the snow shovel to kind of like, all right, we got to get a little relief in here. Yeah, it makes me think of the shift metaphors. The wind isn't always blowing. So if you have a sailboat, it's also nice to have a motor. Yeah. Maybe the motor there is CBT techniques. yeah maybe the motor there is cbt techniques i have to say though i just probably a couple days ago i had this experience and it was so it stood out so much because i could see both levels so clearly i was stuck in the drama in my head around the story my mind was concocting about

it had to do with me and my wife and like what she was doing or like my relationship with her and the family and you know for a few or like my relationship with her and the family. And, you know, for a few moments, it all just felt true. Just like, yeah, that's how it is. I need to work on that and change something. And then I had this moment where I was like, oh, wait a minute. So, that's a story I'm telling. And then I saw just like the whole thing is story. Like, I don't even have to go through and be like, well, maybe she's not actually doing that. And maybe I'm doing this thing. I was just like, oh, wait a second. This is all a fabrication. Like I've constructed this narrative that feels like this is the way it's happening. I was like, or maybe not. None of that actually exists. And that felt like the spring sun. That

was just like, oh, freedom. Thank God. So listener, consider this your halfway through the episode integration reminder. Remember, knowledge is power, but only if combined with action and integration. It can be transformative to take a minute to synthesize information rather than just ingesting it in a detached way. So let's collectively take a moment to pause and reflect. What's your one big insight so far and how can you put it into practice in your life? Seriously, just take a second, pause the audio and reflect. It can be so powerful to have these reminders to stop and be present, can't it? If you want to keep this momentum going that you built with this little exercise, I'd encourage you to get on our Good Wolf Reminders

SMS list. I'll shoot you two texts a week with insightful little prompts and wisdom from podcast guests. They're a nice little nudge to stop and be present in your life, and they're a helpful way to not get lost in the busyness and forget what is important. You can join at OneYouFeed.net slash SMS. And if you don't like them, you can get off the list really easily. So far, there are over 1,172 others from the OneYouFeed community on the list, and we'd love to welcome you as well. So head on over to OneYouFeed.net slash SMS, and let's feed our good wolves together. As you were saying that, I was thinking like there's that freedom and then there is, you know, the actual situation itself, right? Like there may be things with you and your wife that you need to talk about or work through, which is why I always sort of think of like thoughts, behaviors, actions.

And then the situation itself actually matters, right? You know, certain spiritual traditions will say that, you know, all of it is constructed and made up and that none of it's real and that everything is interpretation. And then there's, you know, the more normal Western side of things says like, what's happening out there is what's most important. And the phrase I've always thought thing is like, so most helpful, sort of like a co-creation, right? It's not one or the other, right? They both are there, you know, yes, on one level, I am making up all the meaning here. And on another level, there's actual real things that are happening, you know, that impact my wellbeing in my life, my socioeconomic state, my race, my, I mean, all kinds of things that are a co-creation, which is sometimes where I feel like spiritual traditions, if they're not careful, become calloused, right? They become like, oh, it's just all your interpretation of it. It's just your interpretation, which seems kind of uncaring to the realities that people

face in the world. And yet, our realities aren't the only thing, you know, because we see people like Viktor Frankl. We all love Viktor Frankl because you see even in the midst of terrible conditions, he was able to have some degree of choosing his reaction. And, you know, it's that co-creation. I think that's what you're speaking to. It is, yes. I think that's brilliant because it is easy to fall on one side or the other. It's all material or it's all spiritual. And I like that you said uncaring and callous can become part of the spiritual approach because I think it's important to call that out because I certainly fell into this myself when I kind of had this

spiritual revelation. Then I was like, oh, it's all spiritual. And spiritual seemed like the ultimate goal, you know, to the exclusion of other types of things that are equally real and valid. And I don't remember exactly the story, but I'll paraphrase as best I can. You've probably heard it. There was a spiritual teacher who had, you know, talked to students about how everything is illusion. And so, this one student had really kind of internalized that belief. Okay, now I can see everything is illusion. So, he's walking in the street one day and he sees this elephant running down the street and he said, well, everything is illusion. So, I'm going to stand in front of the elephant and I'll be fine because I've seen through,

I've pierced the illusion. So, he walks in the street and gets trampled by the elephant. So, he goes back, you know, hobbles back to his teacher and he says, I thought you said everything was illusion. And his teacher said, yes, but I am also illusion. And what I told you is illusion. It's all illusion. It's funny, I do remember so clearly that sense I had of like, oh, I just like the more spiritual I can be, more I can talk about spiritual things, the more kind of real it'll become. But I think it's just, it ends up just being so thin at that point. Yeah. As the least fun guy at a dinner party recently, I was at a dinner party where a couple of people started talking about the law of attraction and I just

couldn't help myself. But I actually wanted to ask. They seemed like they were intelligent people. Like I liked them and I wanted to ask. I wanted to have this conversation because to me, I'm like, but if you follow the logic of that, that's kind of fucked up, isn't it? Like are the people in Gaza right now attracting that to themselves? You know, right now there's probably a child being, well, not probably, certainly, absolutely a child being raped as we have this conversation. They attract that. And then one person was like, well, it's not really attracting bad stuff. It's that you attract what you really want. And I was like, are you telling me those people in Gaza aren't praying feverishly with a degree of prayer you and I've never had that this go away, you know? So, you know,

that's that aspect of where I think it just gets callous if we're not really careful. And it's why I've always loved my, the tradition I've been most invested in Zen, because we talk about the relative and the absolute. I feel like I talk about this on like every third episode, but it's so fundamental to me because they say like, you know, the relative is that it's all illusion. The absolute is I don't have money to buy food or I have this chronic condition that makes me sick, you know, like, and in Zen, they say they're one in the same and they're also separate. And that holding both of those things and the ability to integrate them has become so fundamental to me and having what seems like to me a mature spirituality you know a spirituality that takes into account the

things of the world it takes in compassion and kindness and it also takes in a big view and it holds those tensions somehow yeah and holding tension seems to be so much about what awakening or whatever we want to call it is about, you know, that middle way, which seems like it's so easy to fall on one side or the other. Yeah. We're discussing lots of weighty questions here, which I always love, but I want to get to your method in your book because I think it's very simple and also very powerful. So it's called Think, Act, Be. Talk to me a little bit about what those things mean and how that phrasing can be useful to me. Great. Yeah. So Think, Act, Be, three simple words that represent the cognitive, behavioral, and mindfulness parts of mindful CBT. So obviously

think for cognitive, act for behavioral, be for mindfulness. And I like them because, well, they're simple for one thing, which seems to be counter to what we tend to do as psychologists, which is make up big words for simple things. And also, to me, it shows how the three all hang together. And we really kind of need, I think, the three to act together, or at least we're most effective when our thoughts, our actions, and our sense of presence are all aligned. So, I like it as a reminder. I have three kind of starting points here when I'm struggling and need some tools or different reaction. And we can start anywhere, but I often like to start with the mindful part with the B. So let's say I'm, this happens fairly

often, you know, I get to the end of the day and I'm, you know, maybe feeling exhausted or I can feel, you know, my body has taken on a lot of stress during the day or I feel anxious. So I can, during the day or I feel anxious. So I can, you know, maybe take a moment like, oh, okay, B, I can just take a second, you know, take a breath with awareness, check in with myself. And even that, you know, it can be a bit of a reset like, oh yeah, right here. My mind is so many places, but just that act of grounding in the moment just kind of gathers up all those things. It feels like I recollect myself, like I remember myself, I recollect myself right in the present, right here. And then I might address my thoughts, like what stories am I telling myself? Well, one that often comes up is, you know, I have to get this done tonight. Like, well, do you? I want to. Yeah, but do you have to

get it done? Well, no. What does it do to you to force yourself to get it done when you're just feeling spent? Yeah, I guess there's a pretty big cost there. You end up sobbing at the end of the night. That's funny. So that's the downside. And then crucially, you know, act. What am I going to do about it? Like, all right, so I have this insight. Yes, rest is what I need.

What am I going to do? Well, I could push through and, you know, finish editing this podcast episode or writing this blog post. Or I could lie down on the floor for a few minutes and just let everything release. I can choose to act in a way that embodies mindfulness. So being mindful, as you know, isn't just about thinking a certain way or having certain kind of different experiences of consciousness, but we can act in ways that are mindful and then that reinforce kind of what's happening for us emotionally and physically and spiritually. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No 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. 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. Mr. Brian 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. 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 iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I love that idea of this think, act, be. You say that they form the head, think, the hands, act, and the heart, be, of the practices that are important. I love the idea, as you said, because you can enter on any of those levels, right? And a different level might make more sense certain times, right? Like I know for me, there are times where it's the action that is

like the only way forward for me, right? The classic example is exercising. Like, you know, I don't know why. I have no idea why it still sometimes feels hard to exercise given how unequivocally good it always is for me, but sometimes I do. And thinking my way through it is often very difficult. I can't really be my way through it. I just have to like, be like, go, go do it. Yeah. You know, like action, the act is the way to be, you know, there are times where I can think my way into it. I can be like, oh yeah, well, you really will feel better when you're done. So you're kind of doing all those different things. And I think of them as different levers to be able to pull, right? And grab the lever

that works in the situation. And that's why I love that idea. But I also love this is because you sort of say, let me, I want to find this. You say, conversely, we hamstring our own efforts when we ignore any of these three components. Thought without action is inert. Action without thought is disorganized. Thought or action without presence is mindless. But when applied together, these three approaches are mutually reinforcing and offer the right

tools for our work. these three approaches are mutually reinforcing and offer the right tools for our work and i love that idea that you can enter at any point but the more you have all three of those together the stronger your i guess approach to whatever it is is going to be i think of it kind of like a braid a cord of three strands is strong and you can have a thread you know or you can wind two cords together but three you know you really get yeah you can wind two cords together, but three, you know, you really get, but not just more is better, but to me, those three do encompass kind of our full being, you know, they don't omit or kind of overprivilege any one part of ourselves. Say all parts of you matter, like your body matters. If you're trying to meditate and you're, you know, in a physical state that gets in the way, for example, then you can't just say like, well, I'm just going to have this spiritual. I mean, you could, but it's probably going to like that one that might be helpful. So for think, are there a

couple cognitive questions that you really like that you've found useful for yourself or for your patients that, you know, are quick clarifying cognitive tools? Yeah, this one I like because it's really kind of a marriage of be and think in a way, or at least it definitely embodies a kind of mindful approach. Question I love to ask myself is, what is actually happening right now? What's actually happening right now? Because that can get under the story, you know, like, let's say somebody does something in traffic and my mind creates this whole story about like, well, they're trying to

do this and stick it to me and I'm going to, like, what's actually happening right now? Well, this person, you know, merged without using their turn signal or something like, oh, okay. It's so much less than my mind created. Any prompt we can give ourselves like that, that just reminds us that our minds are creating things, they're great at creating thoughts and stories. That alone is so much of the work. You know, we might not even need to go through the whole kind of rote thing of all this and this and evidence for and against. Even just like, oh, that's a thought. All right. I don't have to take it so seriously. Yeah. I reference this book a lot because it was really transformational for me. It was crucial conversations. It's about having good

conversations, but they talk about when you're doing what you just said, you have to describe it as if you were a video camera or as if you were an audio recorder, or as they used to say, the dragnet, just the facts, ma'am. Just the facts. That can be really, really helpful. You're right. Sometimes that, you know, what is actually happening can a clarify a situation like that. I find that a really useful B type of thing, right? Because my brain takes short, all our brains take shortcuts, right? Like my brain will be saying something about something that's going on in my body. When I actually check in with what's going on in my body, I'm like, all right, brain, you are being way overdramatic here, right? Like, you know, my back is killing me. I'm like, well, all right. That's what my brain will say. Every little back twinge, my back is killing me.

But when I actually stop and I feel the sensation, I'm like, what's actually happening? Oh, yeah, I've got some tightness in my left hip. It's certainly not killing me, you know? So I love that, you know, what's actually happening? Oh yeah, I've got some tightness in my left hip. It's certainly not killing me, you know? So I love that, you know, what's actually happening is a great question. You made me think of another one that I love, that idea of seeing things objectively. And it helps if we can take a bit of an outside perspective. So a question I like would be something like you could ask yourself, what is Eric thinking right now? Or what is Seth

thinking right now? Right? So I'm kind of looking from the outside, like what's the story? Okay. So let's move on to act. What's a thing or two that you want to say about action that you think would be useful? Yeah. Well, one big one, again, I use it probably every day is we often get hung up on tasks because they seem too difficult or they seem too hard in some way. But usually if something is too hard, it's just too big. So a primary tool in the behavioral approach is to break things down. It's so simple. You know, it's one of these obvious things, which I think is kind of CBT's specialty, you know, these kind of simple, intuitive approaches.

I use this, for example, like with making dinner. So I was anticipating, partly based on my experience last night, but also just knowing myself that, you know, after a really engaging interview, I'm probably going to be a bit tired. And so I did some dinner prep in the afternoon because I cook dinner each night. So once it came time to cook dinner, like what a nice gift, somebody already did some prep work for me. It's like having a sous chef. So breaking things down and then in general accountability, I think is just hard to overestimate the value of that. So either telling someone we're going to do something or maybe keeping a chart, even for ourselves, you know, some self-accountability. I can see like how many times have I done that thing I was planning to or, you know, what's my progress toward a goal that I'm intending to make.

And, you know, maybe setting up a, for example, if I want to start running in the morning, I'm much more likely to be out the door early if I know someone's going to be waiting for me outside at 6 a.m. versus like, yeah, whatever, just me. Maybe I'm more likely to sleep in. Yeah. These things are so obvious. I heard somebody said it recently, like it's common sense, but it's not common practice. And I've done behavioral coaching for years. I know you break a big task into smaller tasks, but how often do I have a task on my list that is like actually nine different tasks? And I'm like, I wonder why that thing just sits on my to-do list for two weeks. Oh, duh. You know, it's too big. But as you said earlier, blind spots, right? Like we all have our blind

spots often, you know? And so that's why it's just helpful to hear these things kind of again and again and be like, oh yeah, am I actually really doing that right now? I think there can sometimes be some shame around doing something that's so simple. Like, come on, that's why do I have to do this baby thing? Why can't I just do the task? One of the biggest signs of being a grownup, I should say, is being willing to do simple things that make it easier say, is being willing to do simple things that make it easier to do what you need to do. Yeah. I kind of turn it into a joke so that I don't have shame about it, but I am always amazed by like, how often do I have to just convince

myself to go, like I've got a Peloton here, go put on your bike shoes. Like that's all I'm able to do. Like how often do I have to do that? Well, apparently pretty damn often or the guitar on the stand versus in the case. Like, again, I joke about it so that it doesn't erode my sense of being a reasonable human being that the guitar sitting on a stand, I will play versus sitting in a case. I won't. I mean, it takes two seconds to open a guitar case. Again, I could just kind of make a joke out of it, but we're just humans, you know? Those things all work and we hear them all the time because they just happen to be really true and most of us need them a lot of the time.

I think we tend to overestimate the power of our will to just push through things because we'll think I just, I should be able to just take the guitar out of the case. I mean, come on, that's ridiculous. It's ridiculous that I have to put it on a stand or hang it up so that I'll play it. But I think we underestimate how much our actions are driven by these, you know, kind of non-cognitive behavioral associations that we have, you know, patterns of reward or punishment that we're not aware of, but that are shaping our actions, shaping our lives really in powerful ways. And so we can set our environments up in a way that make it easier to succeed. That's often so much more powerful than just thinking like, okay, I have to come up with a mental trick or convince myself to do it or make some grand promise or goal.

And that's going to push me through. Yeah. I've just come to believe eliminate every possible point of friction between you and the thing you want to do. I mean, just relentlessly look at what are the points of friction and how can I get rid of them? Because they all have the capacity to stop us, particularly if we're not feeling motivated. Right. So, okay, let's move on to B. And I just want to read something you write about it before I ask you for a tool or an idea there. And I love this line. You say, common portrayals of mindfulness can also make it seem very nice and peaceful and contained. We know our lives look nothing like those mindfulness magazine covers. In contrast, the actual experience of open-hearted presence is anything but tame and predictable.

It might be relaxing and peaceful at times, but real mindful awareness can also be raw and wild and unbounded. Say a little bit more about that, because I do think that mindfulness has become a cliche. It's become an overused term. Many people have a negative association with it because of those mindfulness covers. Say a little bit more about mindfulness and kind of what it means to you and what it doesn't mean. I have to come clean, Eric. There was a time many years ago, I guess this is the story about me in the past. I still find it

embarrassing. I was setting up my clinical practice, my own private practice for the first time. practicing i was setting up my clinical practice my own private practice for the first time and i just had this thought i was planning to include you know some mindfulness practice in it and i realized like it's so silly i have a shaved head and i'll be teaching mindfulness i thought like maybe people kind of think that i'm a guru or something i mean it's just it's like i think i actually blushed a little just now, just saying it because it's just, you know, it just seems so ridiculous, but people tend to experience me as someone who's like, you know, kind of calm. Oh yeah, it'll be great. You know, it'll be like a thing. But I think it's easy to fall into that idea of like, oh yeah, mindfulness

is this thing that involves, you know, talking in a certain way and a certain energy and all those things can be fine. But where I am now with my understanding is that we can call it mindfulness or whatever, like awareness or living fully. It's not about shutting out certain types of experiences. Like I'm only allowed to have this certain narrow band of quote unquote mindful experiences, but it's about opening to all of it. Steve Hayes has said like, now you want to feel all of it. Yes. So from that perspective, a thing that I'll often use in my practice or for myself is when I find myself shutting down, you know, like I'm pushing away certain experiences or, you know, someone comes to me with something really stressful and I'm feeling myself like tighten up, like, oh, I don't want to deal with this now, or it's too much, or I'm being overwhelmed by my own emotions. I'll ask myself, can I open to this?

Just a simple question. Can I open to this? It's not a command, you know, it's not making a heavy demand on myself, but it's just inviting myself like, there's another option here. Can I open to this? Even if it's anger or, you know, a fight or whatever. So listener, in thinking about all that and the other great wisdom from today's episode, if you were going to isolate just one top insight that you're taking away, what would it be?

Not your top 10, not the top five, just one. What is it? Think about it. Got it? Now I ask you, what's one tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little thing you can do today to put it in practice? Or maybe just take a baby step towards it. Remember, little by little, a little becomes a lot. Profound change happens as a result of aggregated tiny actions, not massive heroic effort. If you're not already on our Good Wolf Reminder SMS list, I'd highly recommend it as a tool you can leverage to remind you to take those vital baby steps forward. You can get on there at oneufeed.net slash SMS. It's totally free, and once you're on there, I'll send you a couple text messages a week with little reminders and nudges. Here's one I recently shared to give you an idea of the type of stuff I send. Keep practicing,

even if it seems hopeless. Don't strive for perfection. Aim for consistency, and no matter what, keep showing up for yourself. That was a great gem from recent guest Light Watkins. And if you're on the fence about joining, remember it's totally free and easy to unsubscribe. If you want to get in, I'd love to have you there. Just go to oneufeed.net slash SMS. All right, back to it. You had the basic idea, shaved head, talking calmly, guru, you missed an important thing. And Adi Ashanti taught me this, which was, he said when he changed his name from Steven, whatever, I don't remember his last name, to Adi Ashanti taught me this, which was, he said, when he changed his name from Steven, whatever, I don't remember his last name to Adi Ashanti was like, my number of students grew overnight. So you just missed the name. You know, you do have it all. I can see it. You just need that name. One last idea I'd like to kind of talk about here is embracing uncertainty.

You say one of the biggest blocks to our happiness is our relationship with uncertainty. We just don't like it. So what are some ways you've found to live with uncertainty in a better way? Because it is profoundly disconcerting. It seems like we can handle lots of things better than uncertainty. Right. And yet, life is fundamentally uncertain. So we all have to deal with it to a greater or lesser degree. Yeah. You know, an example that comes to mind for me is I had this several years ago, awful experience happened. I was teaching at a university and

something quite awful had happened with one of the patients who was going there that I had seen. And afterwards, I felt awful about what had happened. And then I had this fear of like, is something bad going to happen to me? Like, am I going to get in trouble because of that? Didn't seem to be because of anything that I had done, but there was that fear. And so, my mind was just going over and over that, like, what's going to happen? Is it going to be bad? Oh, what if? Trying to work it all out, like the mind tries to do, you know, tries to like live life in advance, prevent bad things from happening before they do. And then I had this moment, it just, you know, came to me like these moments of awareness often do, where I was just like, I can't solve that. And you know,

there's fear in that, but also it was such a relief to realize on a deeper level, like I cannot solve that. It's like realizing like, I can't make you believe me or something and realizing like, no, I can't make you believe me. Like I really can't. It's not my responsibility to. That's sort of the challenge, but also the antidote when we get stuck in that sense of, oh no, oh no, oh shit. And maybe move to a kind of eventually, this is glossing over a lot, but a kind of, oh well, or a kind of, okay, all right. Like I said to myself in that, I was in my dining room at the time, just kind of like, you know, thinking to myself, standing there, and then I was like, okay, something bad might happen. I might

get in trouble for this. And realizing that just I could accept that possibility was, again, so freeing. I don't have to fight that fight because you can't win. You can't beat uncertainty. I love that. It makes me think of a slightly different situation in my life. But for a long time, my partner Ginny and I were going back and forth from Columbus to Atlanta. Her mom was in Atlanta and had Alzheimer's. And my mom was in Columbus and had a variety of other things that needed some degree of care. And there was this constant, like when I'm in Columbus, Jenny's mom is unhappy. And when I'm in Atlanta, my mom is unhappy. And then I just had this moment where I was like, I can't make them both happy. It's impossible. It's impossible. The very nature of the problem is not solvable. Yes. That gave me a degree of relief, right? Where I just went, oh, okay, there's nothing I'm going to do that's going to fix this, right? And it's similar to what you're saying. Like when you really recognize I can't solve this, I can't know the answer to something that is yet to unfold.

when you can truly like get it on a deep level. Now it's easier with what I was talking about. And it's not to say that I didn't worry about it ever again, because of course I did, you know, as should we be two weeks here and two weeks there or three weeks here, one week there, of course we had to, you know, still deal with it. But I recognize that fundamental tension was never going away. Right. Yeah. It's such a challenging situation, even with one parent, much less both sides of the family. But I can feel that shift that you went through between, I can't make my partner's side and my mom happy at the same time to an acceptance of that. Oh, now I get it. I can't. I can't make them both happy. And you got to let yourself off the hook. I can't make them both happy. And you got to let yourself off the hook. Yeah. It's sort of like sometimes when you realize you just can't do something, like it's impossible, it's easy to let go of that to some degree, right? It's that belief that somehow we are going to figure it out. Or if we just think about it a little bit longer,

if we worry about it a little bit longer, there is a freedom in just being like, well, can't solve this. That's right. I can't solve tomorrow. I think that's a great place to wrap up on that line because that is a profound line. I can't solve tomorrow. Seth, thank you so much. You and I are going to continue in the post-show conversation about this idea you have of outsourcing happiness. And I love this concept. I'm excited to dive into why, again, this is a fundamental problem we can't solve. Listeners, if you'd like access to this conversation with Seth we're about to have, as well as ad-free episodes, an episode I do called Teaching Song and a Poem, and the pleasure that would come from supporting a podcast that deeply needs your support,

you can go to oneufeed.net slash join. Again, Seth, thank you so much. This was really enjoyable, Eric. Thanks for a great discussion. Yes. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support.

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