The One You Feed - How to Overcome Overthinking with Jon Acuff

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

In this episode, Jon Acuff explores how to overcome overthinking and shift your mindset to start taking action. You’ll discover surprising solutions to breaking free from the negative soundtracks that hold us back. You’ll discover practical strategies for rewiring your mindset and creating a more resilient, positive outlook. In this episode, you will be able to: Master overcoming overthinking with practical action steps that yield real results Discover the profound impact of isolation on mental health and strategies to combat its effects Uncover the power of setting goals as a tool to combat overthinking and create a positive mindset Reap the benefits of physical activity for mental clarity and improved overall well-being Learn how to develop positive thinking habits that promote resilience and a more optimistic outlook on life To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I was constantly predicting negative things that never happened. So I said, what if instead I just went ahead and predicted positive ones? Like, I get a choice. And again, it was that idea of my brain going, this is going to be a disaster, this is a disaster. And then I would do the thing and it wasn't a disaster. 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. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We hope you'll enjoy this episode from the archive. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is John Acuff, a New York Times bestselling author of seven books. He's also an INC Magazine Top 100 leadership speaker and has spoken to hundreds of thousands of people at conferences and companies around the world, including FedEx, Nissan, Microsoft, Lockheed

Martin, and many others. Today, John and Eric discuss his new book, Soundtracks, The Surprising Solution to Overthinking. Hi, John. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me today. I'm looking forward to it, Eric. We're going to talk about your new book, which I really enjoyed called Soundtracks, The Surprising Solution to Overthinking. But before we do that, we'll start like we always do with the parable. There is a grandfather who's talking to his granddaughter and he says, 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 kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.

And the granddaughter stops, she thinks about it for a second, she looks up at her grandfather, and she says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well, I think for me, it means you don't become who you want to be accidentally. I always tell people no one accidentally gets in shape. I've never met a single person that said, you know, I was just binge watching Netflix. And then I looked up and I was doing burpees. Like, I don't even remember doing them. Or I was managing five fantasy football teams. I looked

up and I had finally finished writing the book I've always wanted to write. So I think of that parable and go, okay, the choices you make, make you. And so you've got a choice. And the more you make certain choices, the more you become the person you're trying to become. That's how I look at that parable. And that's how I think about even my book. I think part of the book is about mindset ultimately is that a lot of people don't understand they get to choose what they think. They get to choose their thoughts. And so this story, to me, this parable is ultimately about the power of choice and the book. And you say, if action eliminates overthinking, then inaction breeds it. And your book is about overthinking. It's about the negative soundtracks we have. But I love that line. If action eliminates

overthinking, then inaction breeds it. And boy, does that feel true. Yeah. And I think we see that. I mean, especially in the last 18 months, it's been interesting. A lot of people have asked me, did you write the book during the pandemic? And I always say, no, like it was finished long before. It's just been accidentally well-timed. I'm not smart enough to time something like that. But I think a lot of people in isolation, in action, had so much more space to get stuck in overthinking. And I think, you know, sometimes even that's why the power of something simple, like a walk around the neighborhood can clear your head. You go, there's nothing magical about that. You wouldn't say, okay, it was the perfect walk or I executed

it just right. You'd say getting outside, vitamin D, a little bit of endorphins, those things, that little bit of action can actually help you fix a problem. It has nothing to do with walking. I mean, it can be a relational problem that you say, wow, I got this idea for this relationship I'm stuck in, and it happened because I was on a trail run. And it wasn't that the trail run had, you know, books about being in relationships on it. It was that you gave yourself a little bit of action. And in that moment, we're able to go, okay, I could see how I could get unstuck from this situation. Yeah, I love that. Listener, as you're listening, what resonated with you in that? I think a lot of us have some ideas of things that we can do to feed our good wolf. And here's a good tip to make

it more likely that you do it. It can be really helpful to reflect right before you do that thing on why you want to do it. Our brains are always making a calculation of what neuroscientists would call reward value. Basically, is this thing worth doing? And so when you're getting ready to do this thing that you want to do to feed your good wolf, reflecting on why actually helps to make the reward value on that higher and makes it more likely that you're going to do that. For example, if what you're trying to do is exercise, right before you're getting ready to exercise, it can be useful to remind yourself of why. For example, I want to exercise because it makes my mental and emotional health better today. If you'd like a step-by-step guide for how you can easily build new habits that feed your

good wolf, go to goodwolf.me slash change and join the free masterclass. When we are not in action, oftentimes we don't feel good about that because we know we should be doing something. And so then of course the overthinking starts to sort of crank up. It's sort of an example would be like if I know I need to work out that day, but I haven't been specific about when I'm going to do it and it's just floating out there. And the longer it goes on, the more overthinking starts, the more I'm thinking about where I don't know if I really want to, just all that overthinking gets spun up because I don't have a clear plan, or I just haven't done the thing that needs done. For me, I love the idea of like, decide as few times as possible. So if you, you know, and so many smart people have written about that concept, it's by no means an original concept to me, but just the idea of if I have to decide every day to do the thing, I have now created five different moments if it's, or seven different moments a week to talk myself out of the thing.

Every bad decision you've ever made, you talked yourself into. And if you say to somebody, why did you do that? They'll go, I thought it would work out. Like very rarely do you hear somebody go, I wanted to ruin my marriage. Like I was just like, I want to have a terrible marriage. I wanted to get fired. I thought being homeless would feel good. Like you have these things that you talked yourself into. This will feel good. This will help. And so I think if you allow yourself lots of decision spaces, there's lots of room for overthinking to come in and go, I mean, it's really kind of cold outside. Do you really want to get out of bed? You don't even know where your shoes are. You can run tomorrow. Run double tomorrow. And you have all this space

versus going, no, remember on Sunday, I decided I'm going to run three times this week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So the decisions already happened. Like, I'm sorry, overthinking, you missed the meeting. We decided like the gavel has struck, like you can complain during the run. That's fine. You might do that, but we've already made the decision. And so I think that's part of that not allowing overthinking kind of the room to fester and grow. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. That idea of sort of separating our decisions from our actions, you know, deciding ahead of time. So let's kind of circle back to the beginning of the book. And you talk about overthinking being a problem in our lives. Let's talk a little bit about why is overthinking a problem,

although most everybody listening to the show is going to be like, well, I know exactly why overthinking is a problem, because it hurts. It doesn't feel good. But say a little more. Well, what was interesting, whenever I write a book, I look for three things. And I think this is true of anybody who's going to launch a business, do a podcast, anything you create, I look for three things. I look for a need. Do people really need it? Are friends talking to me about it? Is my audience online talking about it? When I go to a speaking client, are they asking about it? The second thing I look for is a personal connection. Am I personally connected to it? This podcast wouldn't be as successful if you

weren't personally connected to the parable. You've talked about it for years and it still rings true and fresh and authentic because you're personally connected to it. The third thing I look for is, okay, is there a spot for me in the marketplace or is the marketplace already overcrowded? So we really jumped on need first. And this PhD, Mike Peasley, who does research with me, we asked 10,000 people if they struggle with overthinking and 99.5% of people said yes. So it's this massive need. And I think the real problem with it kind of lies in how I define it. I define it as when what you think gets in the way of what you want. So you have something you want, you have a desire, think gets in the way of what you want. So you have something you want. You have a desire,

you have a hope, you have a plan, a goal, whatever. And then all this extra thinking gets in the way. For instance, according to the New York Times, 81% of Americans want to write a book. 81%. It's one of our most popular goals in our nation. And every year, less than 1% do. 1%. So 81% say they want to do it, less than 1% do. So there's a huge gap. And I think the real problem when you overthink and you don't end up pursuing the desire, using the talent you've been given, is that it doesn't go away, it turns to bitterness. The way I say it is the goals you don't finish don't disappear, they become these ghosts that haunt you. Scientists call it the Z effect. You remember incomplete goals more than your completed ones. Your incomplete actions have a heavier weight, a heavier residue than the ones you completed. So I think that's the real cost of

overthinking. I say it steals time, creativity, and productivity because it's this really sneaky, greedy form of fear. I'll give you one specific example. Every listener that's listening has done this thing where before you even write down an idea, you judge it as dumb. You go, okay, somebody's already done that. That's silly. People won't like that. Before it's even made it from your head to a piece of paper, you've self-edited. I just think, imagine the works of art, the cures for diseases, the businesses, the relationships we've lost because somebody overthought something and didn't even pursue it to the next step of just writing it down. So that to me is just kind of an example of the cost of overthinking. Yep. And you refer to our thoughts as basically a personal soundtrack to our lives. Why did you land on that metaphor? It happens to be one I love, but curious what it was that brought you to that? Oh, thank you. Yeah. So there's been so many smart people who've written about mindset and thinking. I mean, I saw you had Carol Dweck on the podcast. I mean,

talk about a mindset genius. So I certainly wasn't the first person to explore the concept, but I've heard people say a thought is like a leaf on a river. It's like a cloud in the sky. It's like a car on a highway. But for me, it's a soundtrack because a soundtrack has the power to change an entire moment. And often we don't even notice its impact. So for instance, you see a movie and there's a little house with a white picket fence and some kids frolicking. And then all of a sudden, if they play an ominous soundtrack, it changes your whole view of that scene.

You go from what a quiet street to be careful. It's quiet. It's too quiet. And so that's what a soundtrack does. And every repetitive thought, the thoughts that you repeat again and again, the ones you listen to become your personal playlist. So you have a soundtrack for every relationship, every city you've lived in, every boss, every dream, every hope. And so I really wanted to give people an easy handle for them to go, oh, that's right. I do have a soundtrack.

I'll give you an example. oh, that's right, I do have a soundtrack. I'll give you an example. Everyone listening has a friend or an acquaintance or a coworker that when they see their text message, they don't even have to read it. Just the notification fires off broken soundtracks where they go, oh, this person, they're reaching out again. You've built up a soundtrack that played immediately.

You haven't even read the text, but you've got all these repetitive thoughts that are triggered the second you see that person's name and it plays this automatic soundtrack. And so that's why I picked that particular metaphor because it really, for me, captures the power and the potential of a soundtrack. Yeah, I love it because I've often talked to people about the thought patterns in their lives that are really prominent. And I refer to them as sort of like your greatest hits, you know, but they're like a song in, in the way that like a song just keeps playing and it stays with you and it keeps going. The more you listen to it, the easier it is for it to get triggered the next time. So the reason you can be

three minutes late to the car rider pickup line as a mom and feel like I'm the worst mom is because you've played that a thousand times and it's so powerful and it's so fast and it immediately erases all the good stuff you did that day. You got your kids out the door, you worked a full-time job, you did soccer pickup, you did everything. And then one three-minute late ride to the pickup line and you go, I'm the worst mom ever. It's because that soundtrack has been playing a thousand times. And so that's to me why they're powerful. I want to explore some of the things in the book specifically, some of the techniques. But before we do that, I want to bring up a thing that has sat in some ways at the heart of this podcast kind of all along in some ways. And it's really this distinction between we hear different messages in the personal development, self-help psychology space, right?

the personal development, self-help psychology space, right? One message is very much on point with your book, which is, hey, the thoughts that you are thinking are really, really important, and you got to get them right. The negative thoughts are going to be problematic. You've got to work with those, right? The other school of thought is a little bit more about you need to feel the feelings that you're having. You're having emotions and just trying to shove them down or get rid of them doesn't really work. We have to allow them space and we have to feel them or we have to not resist them. And so I'm just kind of curious how you think about that piece of it. So my example of that would be one of the ideas in the book is about pulling the thread. That you should ask the thought behind the thought behind the thought.

There's always a thread. pulling the thread that you should ask the thought behind the thought behind the thought. There's always a thread. So my version of that, when you feel the feelings, process of feelings is think about that thought behind the soundtrack. So for instance, if you said to me, John, I've got this really difficult person I have to deal with. And I'd say, well, let's talk about that. And if you said, oh, Mike is the worst, Mike is the worst. There's not much we can do with that. Mike is the worst, but what's behind that? And I'd say, why do you feel that way? And now we'll start to process kind of the thoughts, the feelings. And you might say, you know, he only bothers me when he wants something. He only bothers me when he wants something. And that's a soundtrack we can start to kind of pull the

thread on. And it might be what's really going on if you process that feeling is you don't feel like you get to say no to people, you know, and you feel like when that person asks you for stuff, you feel powerless and that doesn't feel good. Maybe the family of origin you grew up in said, always serve people, always put people first, always put, and that became mutated into, I don't get to have boundaries. So we might say, wow, that's what's really going on. We can't change Mike. You're a hundred percent of the people you have 100% control over. But what you can do is write yourself a new soundtrack that says,

I get to have boundaries. I get to tell people like Mike, no, I get to do self-care. And so that to me is my version of, okay, let's feel the feelings. Let's see what's really going on versus going like, just do it. Just do it isn't a complete solution. If you don't really spend the time going, okay, well, let me talk about what's behind the thing, just do it. Like just do it isn't a complete solution. You know, if you don't really spend the time going, okay, well, let me talk about what's behind the thing, behind the thing. You keep repeating the things over and over again. My favorite book about kind of exploring your feelings, Chip Dodd wrote a book called The Voice of the Heart.

And it really talks about how anger, you know, is really about passion and how loneliness is really about community. And so it's funny, it's a list of eight emotions and seven of them on the face. You'd go, seven of them are negative. There's only one that's positive. And he would say, no, no, no, no, no. Like anger when it's appropriately expressed is an act of passion. Is you fighting for somebody or for a car is like, we've over labeled that negative and we over label emotions negative. But if you'll sit with them and process them, they'll really teach you.

Even fear, like I would say that, like I don't like when motivational people say, be fearless, be fearless, be fearless. Because one, I think it's impossible. Two, I don't think it's true. When I spoke for the first time to 10 people, I'd never been a public speaker. I had 10 person size fear, but I worked on it. I processed it. I got over it.

Then when I spoke to 100 people, I had 100 person size fear, but I worked on it. I processed it. I got over it. Then when I spoke to a hundred people, I had a hundred person size fear. At each new level of each new thing, I found fear waiting for me. And so I never would tell somebody you have to be fearless because I think that means you're stuck. I mean, yesterday I spoke to 8,000 people. That was a different fear than a hundred people, but I worked on that. I got over that. And so what I like to say is fear gets a voice, not a vote. I'm going to hear it. I'm going to listen to it. I'm going to learn from it. Fear is trying to teach me a lesson about myself. You don't get self-awareness if you say to yourself, I have to stop all fear. And so fear gets a voice, but it doesn't get a vote in that. It doesn't get to tell me what to do or what not to do because it's overcautious. And I've learned

that over the years that if it's at the head of the table, I'll never write a book. I'll never go on a podcast because what if I say the wrong thing? What if I look dumb to Eric? All of these things that fear is worried about. So that's kind of how I look at processing your feelings. Yeah. That idea of underlying the emotion. There's a phrase from acceptance commitment therapy where they say your vulnerabilities and your values kind of are poured from the same vessel. I love the alliteration of it, but it's the idea that my vulnerabilities or my emotions, the things that I'm feeling, tell me something very important about what I care about. Yeah. They're educating you. I, you know, one of the activities I give in the

book is this idea of how do you identify a broken soundtrack, the soundtrack that's not helpful. And so the, the 32nd activity is write down a dream, write down a goal, write down a wish. So if you say, I want to write a book, I want to start a podcast, I want to get married, I want to ask that person out, I want to move to Columbus, Ohio, whatever, write down a wish. And then listen to your first thoughts after. Listen to your first feelings after. Listen to your reaction because every reaction is an education.

And so if your reaction is smarter people have already done that, nobody wants to hear from you, it's too late, it's too late, or you're too young, you don't have enough experience, listen to that. And you might need to sit with that as a broken soundtrack because if your first response isn't, let's do it. I bet we can learn that. I could try that. People do podcasts all the time. I could figure that out. If you're not getting pushed forward by your thoughts, you're getting held back by them and we can figure those out. Yeah. You say when you're looking at a broken soundtrack, you can ask it three questions. Yeah. So the three questions, I like to think of these as Trojan horse questions because on the face of them, they're very simple. There's not a single

listener today. It'll be like, I've never heard those words. Like John found a word in the English language that's so unique. But if you'll sit with them for a minute, there's deep truth hidden in them. So the first question is, is it true? This thing I'm telling myself about myself or about this situation or about this conversation, is it true? One of the greatest mistakes you can make is assuming all your thoughts are true. That just because you've thought it, it must be true. Despite the countless times your overthinking has lied to you, everyone's thoughts at some level, at some point have told him, oh, this is going to be a gigantic disaster. And you know what? It wasn't. Your thought got that a hundred percent wrong. The second question you ask is, is it helpful? Is it helpful? When I listen

to this over and over and over again, does it push me forward or pull me back? And the reason you ask more than one question is that sometimes there are things that are true, but they're not helpful. So my favorite example, I interviewed a manager who said, John, I got fired 12 years ago for my job. And in that moment, I started to overthink this idea that if I wasn't included in a meeting, maybe they were about to fire me again. So I got another job. And every time I see a door close at a meeting, I think, oh, and I spend five, 10 minutes, you know, who's in that meeting? Should I be in that meeting? Was I not invited to that meeting? Did I miss that meeting? So let's say he only does it, you know, one time a day, five days a week, that's 50 minutes a week, which doesn't feel

like a lot, but then you go over 12 12-year period. That's 62 eight-hour workdays. We try to save time with apps, but imagine the time he's donated to that. Now, again, is it true he could be fired? 100%. We could all be fired at any point. That is true. But is it helpful for him to donate that creativity, that time, that effort to the thought? Of course not. Third question to ask is, is it kind? If I said this to a friend, would they still want to be my friend? That's what's been fun about doing these podcast interviews about the book is that it often turns into a hard conversation. I had a podcast host get quiet during this question.

I said, what? And he said, well, I've been the number one podcast in my category for nine months. And the soundtrack I've been listening to is you're just lucky. You're just lucky. You're just lucky. He said, if a friend of mine came over and they had worked really hard for nine months on something,

I'd never tell them you're just lucky. You're just lucky. So if I wouldn't say it to them, why am I saying it to me? And if you can't answer yes to those three questions, it's true. It's helpful. It's kind.

You then have to say, well, why am I accepting that I'm listening to this? Why am I letting this be my soundtrack? And if I don't want it to be, what can I do about it? Yeah, I love those. Those questions show up in a lot of different areas, but I love the package of the three of those together is really true. And I love the, is it helpful? Because sometimes thoughts that we have that are, just use the word negative because it comes to mind, that's not really what they are, but they're not positive. Sometimes they actually are helpful.

I'm solving a problem. I'm thinking through a difficult situation. I'm processing something in a way that actually is helpful. But then there's very often for most of us, we'll recognize we sort of cross a point where it no longer is helpful. So for example, if I just got in a fight with my partner, there's a period of time that I'm going to be thinking about that, that I actually think it's helpful because I'm learning. What did I do? What could I say? What could I do? And then there's a certain point that it crosses over that I just circle the same ground over and over and over and over and over again. It's no longer helpful. Well, and the other thing is you're 100% right, because it might also not be completely true. Eventually your brain distorts reality. So what happens,

let's go right to this specific example. You have an argument with a partner. You're working on that. Is it helpful for you to think that own the things you need to own? Of course, like, you know, figure out your words. What was my tone? What was my meaning? But then on some level, because of how your brain works, it tends to distort and add things to situations that weren't really there. And so then you've moved into territory of it's no longer true. I mean, one of my favorite people in the planet is this guy named Al Andrews. And he and his wife had an argument in the morning, and he thought about it all day, thought about it all day. And then when he came home that night, he

said, I need to apologize because I've been lying for you all day. I was telling myself things you didn't say and didn't do. I was adding words, adding, and that's what we do in arguments. And so we add tone and all this. And so is it helpful? Yes. There's a point where it is. Is it true? There's a point where it's no longer true. And then you go, is it kind? It's probably not kind to you or your partner. So that's, that's why there's more than one question. And that's why they work together to kind of give you a leg to stand on so that when it's true, you know, okay, is it helpful and vice versa. 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 tonight. 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.

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With alliteration. You and I like alliteration. We do. We do. Retire, replace, repeat. Yes, very nice. We just talked a little bit about retiring. So, you know, retiring your broken soundtracks. But what else do we need to talk about with retiring our broken soundtracks beyond the recognition of them, which we just sort of talked through? One way to recognize them is to ask these three questions. Is there anything more you'd want to say on retire? I think it's always good to do it in community too. I think 100% self-awareness is

a myth. Yes. I think we stand so close to our own painting sometimes we can't really see what it is. And sometimes that's in the context, we've mentioned relationships. You're in a relationship, a dating relationship, and you're so close to it, you can't really see what it is. And you break up and then three months later you go, wow, I've got some distance. That wasn't healthy. Why was I okay that they talked to me that way? Why was I okay? And you'll say to your friends, hey, why didn't you tell me? And often if they're good friends, we tried, we did because they had the distance. Yes. And so sometimes, you know, when you think about broken soundtracks, having a friend you trust to go, hey, do you ever see me hold myself back from opportunity? And a friend who knows you, who actually you have a relationship with, might be able to say, yeah, you know, I noticed that when you get certain types of opportunities, you say no before you've even tried. And I think that people see something in you you don't see in yourself.

And I think that might be a broken soundtrack. And it might be that in college or maybe even high school, you had a teacher or a professor or a parent say, you're not a great leader. You're not a great natural leader. And so now you're getting all these leadership opportunities at your job.

And as soon as you get to a certain level, you jump to another job because you don't, you know, I'm not a leader. And a friend might go, the last three jobs you've had, you all jumped right at the time where they said, okay, we want you to manage people because we see something. I wonder if there's a soundtrack there. So sometimes a great way to work on the retire process is to have somebody who can reflect

back to you what's going on. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Discernment is a word that's used a lot in spiritual communities. But I think discernment, half the battle is having people to help you discern. You know, we're not supposed to do it alone, whether it's recovery, whether it's your faith, anything like we're not supposed to carry it alone. Yeah. I was just reflecting on something you may have heard of this before called Solomon's Paradox. Solomon's Paradox is named after King Solomon, who, you know, wise King Solomon, we all know how wise he was. Well, apparently not in his own life. So people would

travel from around the world to see him to get his wisdom, but for himself, couldn't do it. And that's known as Solomon's Paradox. We don't see ourselves. Yeah, it's so true. I mean, he had some very clear tenets and broke just about every one of them. Right, right. Yeah. So, okay. So three actions to change your thoughts, retire our broken soundtrack. The next is to replace them with new ones. So let's talk about this process. Yeah.

So this one really came from, there's a lot of kind of mindset approach or overthinking approach that says, stop it, stop it, stop overthinking, stop thinking. And one, I think that's impossible. We're amazing thinking machines. And two, why would I ever turn off this amazing machine? What would happen if I just fed it with good thoughts? And so I really believe that if you can worry, you can wonder. If you can doubt, you can dominate. If you can spin, you can soar. It's kind of the, you know, a plane can drop food or a bomb. And so really where the book came from was going, what if I could take all this thinking and actually figure out a way for it to work for me, not against me?

And that's where replace comes in. So it's not just stop it, stop it, stop it. Like, why do you keep overthinking? It's okay. What do you want to overthink that's in a good way? Like for me, that's really where my career changed dramatically is in 2008, I had a blog that started to get some readership and I started to grow things and an event planner out of nowhere said, hey, would you come speak at our conference? And I'd never done that.

I had no real evidence I could do that. All I had was one thought. I think I can be a public speaker. I think I could be an author. Now I turn that into a thousand different actions and thousand different results over the years, but it started with a thought and it started with repeating that positive thought. So that's what this part of the idea is. Okay, we retire some of these, but you're going to think, you're going to keep thinking. And in a vacuum, good thoughts don't show up on their own. The phrase I use sometimes is fear comes free, hope takes work. You don't have to go look for negativity. Negativity will find you in the grocery store and remind you of a stupid thing you said three years ago or a mistake you made. I mean, my brain the other day was like, hey, remember that surprise

party you ruined? And I was like, oh yeah. And this woman that I worked with, she sent an email and in my defense, she buried the lead. You got to say in the subject line, surprise party, don't tell my husband. But I skimmed the email. I told her husband. I ruined his 30th birthday party. When we went to the party that night, my wife and I walked in and I swear to you, she stopped the music and said, this is John Acuff, the guy who ruined the party. And I was like, hey, everybody.

And that happened 19 years ago. And the other day, my brain was like, hey, are you feeling too good right now? What if we thought about a party you ruined 19 years ago? How is that helpful? So the part about repeat is, okay, now that we know we have the power and permission to change our thoughts, what are we going to put there in place of the broken ones? And I would say 99% of people don't understand they get to choose their thoughts. Most people think they just show up on their own. Even my most type A friends who lay out their clothes the night before they go to the gym,

very rarely do I meet people that say, I've got a big negotiation coming up on Thursday. And the last one, like a month ago with a different client, went kind of south. And I know I'm going to go in with clenched hands if I'm not careful. So I'm going to have these soundtracks playing so that I have the right attitude and the right approach in this meeting. I'm going to choose what I'll be thinking in this moment versus just hoping that it's okay. That phrase, choose your thoughts is an interesting one, right? Because on one level, we don't choose what shows up. If you sit down to try and meditate for 10 minutes, you see this right away. You're like in the grocery, it's like, boom, there it is.

So they just appear. So in that sense, we don't choose them, but we do have the ability to then say, what do we want to respond? We also have the ability to say, what do I want to insert? And then that retiring and replacing processing that you're describing actually causes us to be, in a way, choosing our future thoughts. Because what we're doing is we're rewiring those automatic thought patterns. We've got automatic thought patterns, our soundtracks, our greatest hits that keep showing up. And we're like, well, I didn't choose it. There it is. And so you can't choose what shows up. But by choosing what you focus on in the moment and working with them, you're actually working on sort of making it more likely you're going to choose your thoughts in the future by

what you choose now. A hundred percent. That's a, that's a great point. Um, and which is why retires the first step because, you know, I think you might not be able to choose what shows up, but you choose what you entertain. You choose what you dance with. You choose what you give the rest of the day to. So you're right. You know, I might be walking down the street and all of a sudden I remember something terrible I did or something that, some negative thought. I don't in that moment beat myself up going, I can't believe I'm still thinking about that. Instead I go, oh, I see it. Oh, that's... Or let's say I'm online and I see another author, another speaker, whatever, and they're really successful. And I feel this groundswell of jealousy. Now I can choose to

entertain that and to go, oh, they're so lucky. They have better opportunities. They live in the right city, whatever. I can spend a lot of thought time around that. Or I can go, wait a second, I think that's jealousy. And I know that when I'm jealous of somebody, I no longer get to learn from them. And I really like learning. So I'm going to say, instead of going, I hate that person. I'm jealous of that person. I'm a failure because I don't have what that person has. I'm going to deliberately work on, and it's work. Like it's not automatic. I'm going to work on going, what can I learn from that person? Or maybe even like, how can I celebrate them? Maybe celebrating them is my shortcut to cut the jealousy off. Or maybe even it's an invitation to gratitude.

But now I've got three other options versus going, oh, people suck. Like I'm so mad at everybody. Like that's a really hard way to go through life. And it happens to me. Of course. Every industry has some degree of competition or it's hard to see. And so I had a counselor say to me, one of the true marks of friendship is when you can celebrate somebody getting something you didn't get. Yeah.

And that's the kind of friend I want to be. And so but it's a process and it's not, you know, it's not always easy, but it's always worth it because I get to walk around celebrating people grateful for what I have and learning or I get to walk around bitter and jealous and upset. 100%. There's a Buddhist concept called mudita. It means sympathetic joy. And it is something to be cultivated, but it means I take joy in the joy of others. And the Dalai Lama said something along the lines of like, well, you know, if you do it the normal way, which is you get to celebrate your joy, you've got one chance at joy. One of 7 billion odds. That's right. If you can do it for other people, all of a sudden, right? All of a sudden. And so, yeah, I agree 100%. I think that's a beautiful way to think about it. And I also very much agree

with what you're saying about replacing, right? I know this from addiction recovery stuff. You get rid of something, you've got to put something in its place. Yeah, because something positive won't show up on its own. Like something negative. Like when you work on the one negative thing, like seven other are waiting in the wings and they're like, let's go, dude, let's go. And if you don't have something in that spot, sometimes they're stronger than the first one. And so you have to go like, no, no, no, no, no. Like there's a void and I know in the void, good things don't show up. So let me deliberately put something good in the void. I think that other point you make about like, it's not like we're going to stop thinking. It's not like the brain is going to turn off. I mean, it just doesn't.

No. And it's, and it's a beautiful thing. I, you know, the joke I do in the book is that like the two things that separate us from the animals are overthinking and Netflix. Like, why would I, you know, like, it's a very human thing. Like we're good at it. And so I just thought, okay, what if I could learn how to be good at it and where it actually helps me versus hurts me? And there's a lot of freedom in that when you go, okay, I'm not a failure for overthinking. I actually have a tool I can use for my good versus going, I must be the one person who can't turn all my thoughts off.

And everyone else has it all together except me. I mean, there's a lot of joy just in admitting that, that, okay, I overthink. I wanted to pause for a quick good wolf reminder. This one's about a habit change and a mistake I see people making. And that's really that we don't think about these new habits that we want to add in the context of our entire life, right? Habits don't happen in in a vacuum they have to fit in the life that we have so when we just keep adding i should do this i should do that i should do this we get discouraged because we haven't really thought about what we're not going to do in order to make that happen so it's really helpful for you to think about where is this going to fit and what

in my life might i need to remove if you want a step-by-step guide for how you can easily build new habits that feed your good wolf, go to goodwolf.me slash change and join the free masterclass. One of the ideas in the book you talk about with our thinking is that it's a dial. Say a little bit more about that. Yeah, so I was having a conversation with a guy named David Thomas who runs a counseling center here in Nashville called Daystar for Children, which is absolutely amazing. It's so fun to see this generation of kids get tools that will help them in adulthood. Yeah.

Because I think my generation, very few people knew about counseling. They didn't know how to interact with kids. And so David Thomas and I were talking about this and I was telling him the concept of the book and soundtracks and negative thinking. He said, well, the challenge is most people want there to be a switch. They want to find one switch that forever turns off all stress, all negativity, all anxiety, all concern, whatever. He said, so they go and they look for a switch and it works for a week. Maybe they get into yoga and they're like, yoga is my new thing. I'll never feel bad again. And yoga works for a week, maybe even a month. But then life gets stressful again,

because that's what life does. And he said, so it's not a switch. He said, it's a dial. And when you think about life like a dial, you recognize, wow, I'm at an 11 today. What are some things I could do to turn that dial down versus going, oh, I blew it. I found the wrong switch again. I better go look for another switch, which becomes this act of perfectionism, of constantly being on, you know, this will be the book. This will be the guru. This will be the exercise. This will be the...

Yes, yes. And you put a ton of pressure out on things. One of the jokes I sometimes talk about, we studied how much fun impacts performance. So we did this big research study about does fun matter to performance? And we looked at two factors, satisfaction and what you actually accomplished. And when you're deliberate about adding fun to things that are challenging, your satisfaction goes up by 31%, your performance goes up by 46%. But what I often say in it is that you have to raise both factors because if say I only raise your satisfaction, but your performance fails, you're smiling all

the way to last place. That's not helpful. But if I raise your performance, but not your satisfaction, you become every rich, miserable person you've ever met. And I'll ask the audience, have you ever met somebody who's really successful and really unhappy? And you think those two things shouldn't go together, but they do because they only care about their performance. And their plan was, I'm going to be miserable for 62 years, but then I'm going to retire and move to Florida and get a golf cart. And I would say, you're putting an awful lot of pressure on a golf cart. Like Florida is amazing. Don't get me wrong, but like that's an awful lot of pressure on Florida. It's same way, you know? And so I think

anytime we have a switch mentality, we put this amazing pressure on a book, on a thing versus going, wow, I'm at an 11. And that's not because I'm a failure. That's because life sometimes raises everybody to an 11. So what do I do to turn it down? And what are my, what I'd call, turn down techniques to go, okay, let me get the dial down to four. And it's going to raise again. My oldest daughter's in high school. She's a senior. She's going to college next year. I know there's going to be stressful moments. If I have a switch mentality and go, no, Eric, I've already figured out negative thinking. I no longer have it. Guess what happens when she does or doesn't get into the sorority she wants to get into?

And I feel this stress and my dial goes to 11. I'll know to go, okay, what are those things I use to turn it down? Yeah, let me make sure I do a bunch of those right now because this feels stressful. That's a completely different way to live life. 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.

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on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I love that concept of moving it a few degrees. I often talk about this formula I love, which is that suffering equals pain times resistance. And I talk about like, we're not going to turn off resistance. You're not going to get rid of the things that you resist, but can you go from like a five to a two? If you do... Which causes a huge change. That's right. It causes, yeah. And so, yeah, I love the dial idea. So you list some of your favorite things for turning down the dial. You want to share a couple of those? Yeah. So, I mean, I love to run. I love to get out. You know, this morning I ran 3.1 miles,

got some great endorphins, felt like I had finished something. I love to get out. You know, this morning I ran 3.1 miles, got some great endorphins, felt like I had finished something. I could check something off a box. That felt great. I love being outside. Another one of mine that's kind of, some people would say on the dorkier side of things is I love putting together big Lego sets. You know, a lot of my life, because I'm an author and a speaker and a consultant and, you know, I'm online, doesn't have clear steps. Like being a podcaster. I have a podcast called All It Takes is a Goal.

And so being a podcaster, there's not 100 exact steps to do. There's so many options. So doing a Lego set for me, like a big 4,000-piece Porsche, I have this instruction manual and I get to follow it step by step and see this thing get built. And that's very meditative to me. Like some people it's knitting. They go, you know, when I knit, I can turn my brain off and I can, I can think, you know, some people say, I don't like to run, but I like to walk. If I can go walk in the woods without headphones, without distraction, that's relaxing. Fiction is that way for me. If I can kind of crawl inside a good book and,

you know, I always tell people the reason you have your best ideas in the shower, it's the only time you've allowed yourself to still be bored. And so sometimes like allowing myself to be bored on a neighborhood walker, and it can be something like as simple as clearing the top of my desk. That can be a turndown technique for me where I go, wow, it feels out of control. I'm going to just clear that. I'm not going to organize the whole office because that gets into overwhelming. I'm going to clear the top of my desk. That's what it is. Or we got a bird feeder on the outside of our house. It attaches to a window. And that was a COVID lifesaver. That became bird TV for me where I was like,

oh, how's the woodpecker going to get in there? And he had to hang because he was so mad. So, oh man, that finch is being a huge jerk to that other finch. So little things like that. I always tell people it has to be related to you, not to me. So if you heard those and were like, man, none like Legos are for children. You're weird. That's cool.

I a hundred percent get that. But as long as you have some in your own life that you're cultivating, I think you're in a really good spot. Well, it's funny that A, we got a bird feeder. I don't know. It's probably been a year ago. And same thing.

I love it. I just can't get enough of it. You know, same thing, watching them. Now we have a cardinal who shows up at the same time every night. It's just like right on time. I hear it. I can recognize the call now. I'm like, actually, my partner is better at it than I am.

She's like, the cardinal's out there. And sure enough, you know, shows up every night. Yeah, yeah. Well, I heard somebody once say, you know, shows up every night. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I heard somebody once say, if you want to be connected to the idea that there's a bigger world than you, get a bird feeder because it connects you to migratory patterns of thousands of miles. Yeah.

And so that idea that, wow, they're like, I'm now connected to that. And like, they go somewhere at night. They have a plan. And like, it's amazing. I often have thought about where are they during the evening. And then that led me to find out this incredible fact. And then we're going to move on from birds. But some birds are capable talking about like turning off the brain, how we as humans can't do it. Some birds can, they literally shut down half their brain. Oh, yeah. And half of their senses. And that part rests and

sleeps. The other part is perfectly awake and alert. And then I'm like, that is incredible. And that's how they can fly across the Atlantic. So birds that can fly across the Atlantic are doing that. They're turning off one part of their brain so that they can still fly and still wake up rested on the other side of the Atlantic. It's crazy. It's incredible. Sounds like it would be a great feature to have built in, but we don't have it. Okay. As we're talking about this replacing new ones, there's another one that you have called flip a coin. Yeah. So it was interesting when I would tell people, Hey, do you ever overthink? Everybody go, yes, I overthink. It was a very easy question to answer. But then when I go, Hey, what would you like to think instead?

Blank stares. It felt intimidating to go because we've never thought that. So the idea of like, what are good thoughts you'd like to have in place that feels intimidating. So I realized I need a really easy way to give somebody an ability to think of a good thought they'd ever had. I would make myself work weekends. I would work through the night. I was doing all these terrible things. And I had just come home from a trip where I had spoken. And it was a really stressful day. And the car on the way to the airport broke down. It was just this crazy day. It was 4 p.m. on a Friday.

And I thought I should go back in the office for a few more hours. And I thought if I had a boss that did that to me, I would hate that boss. And I realized, wait, I'm my boss. So instead of going on this long vision quest to figure something out, I said, if I'm the worst boss right now, what would the best boss do? Like, what would the best boss do? And I just flipped the coin in my mind. And I've had good bosses.

Like, you know, I'm 45. I've had bosses that I go, wow, she was inspiring or wow, he was encouraging. So I made a list of the things a best boss would do. And so then the next time I was attempted to go back into worst boss mode, I was like, wait a second. No, no, no. My boss, we celebrate victories by taking the next day off. That'd be an amazing boss. Great. And so that's what I meant for people is that, okay, if you say to yourself, okay, I'm the worst mom, what would the best mom do? And chances are you've bumped into some other moms that you'd go, wow, they're so encouraging

to their kids. And you go, okay, the best mom would be encouraging to her kids and herself. Or like, wow, that mom takes time for self-care. She doesn't believe self-care is selfish. That's a broken soundtrack. I'm going to allow myself to have some me time, or I'm going to allow myself to do an orange theory class or whatever. So that was what the exercise was, is taking these broken ones, flipping them upside down and going, what would the reverse of that look like as an easy way to enter in to the idea

of coming up with new soundtracks? Yeah. There was one you had in there that I immediately plucked out and I thought, I'm going to take that one, which is my predictions are positive. of my brain going, this is going to be a disaster. This is a disaster. And then I would do the thing and it wasn't a disaster. And I finally looped back around. I was like, oh, brain, all your predictions are negative and they're never true. So I'm just going to choose positive ones ahead of time and lean into those.

And I think that one comes from a really common broken soundtrack people struggle with is prepare for the worst and be pleasantly surprised when it doesn't happen. Now, I think you should prepare for situations. You should have contingency plans, all that. But where it gets dangerous is where all you're enjoying is the tiny bit of surprise when this terrible thing didn't happen. And I think it was Michael J. Fox that said, when you live that way, you experience the bad thing twice. You experience it how you think about it, and then you experience it when it does really help. You've doubled your sorrows. And I'm not a fake positive person. I love the reality of dealing with hard stuff. It's not that. It's just of the two, I'd rather choose to be positive. I agree. I think that's one for me. I'm generally pretty

positive. But when it comes to things about this business and growing it and all that, we're making plans, we're setting goals, and my brain is always like, that's not going to work. And I'm sort of like you, I've really had to work on like, okay, positive prediction. Because most of the time, yeah, it does work. There's a time for, as you said, sitting down and thinking about, well, why might this not work? Okay. Yeah. What's our backup plan? Yeah. What's the backup? But beyond that, it's all the other minutes that i'm not actively really improving anything i'm just worrying yeah you're just you're just kind of ruminating on it chewing on it yeah um yeah and for me i just i would say i'm not naturally a positive person like i work

like i'm i'm naturally a fairly melancholy person like the example is we went and saw the counting crows in concert the other night and i loved it my wife my wife was like, oh, that's so mopey. I loved it. I was like, yeah, it makes me want to write poetry in my mom's minivan. I'm in high school and around here. And so I'm naturally pretty negative, but I just see the benefit both to my heart and the people I'm around and the results I get of positivity. So I work at positivity and I enjoy getting to do that. Yep. So let's talk about the last step, which is repeat them until they're as automatic as the old ones. It was interesting when the book came out about 48 hours after it came out, people would come up to me and go, Hey, or they'd email me or DM me. And they'd say, John, my new one hasn't worked yet. Like the old one's still showing up. And I would go, well, it's only been out 48 hours. So I know you haven't had a ton of time.

And so you often see this happen in any type of goal. People say, this exercise doesn't work. And I'll say, well, how long have you tried it? I'll say 10 days. I'll say, how long did it take you to gain the weight? I'll say 10 years. So you gave the problem 10 years to develop and the solution 10 days.

It's so unkind to you and the solution. And so that's what the process of repeat is about about is that, okay, I truly believe there are times when learning something new can change your whole perspective. But you know, an example that would be, I had this guy I worked with that was really difficult. He was belligerent and angry and always late. And I learned that his wife had stage four cancer and that changed everything that I knew about him instantly. There's times when that happens. I believe in that. And that changed everything that I knew about him instantly. There's times when that happens. I believe in that.

But there's other times where you've been carrying around some broken soundtrack for years that's going to take some time to replace. And that's where repeat comes in, is that you're giving the new one a shot. You're giving the new one a chance to survive, to get stronger, to believe it again, to repeat it again. And so that's why it's not just about retiring or not just about replacing. The repeat matters. Makes me think of like getting sober.

And yeah, there's moments in there, a moment of clarity, say, for example, like if we were going to make a movie of it, I could give you a couple moments. It would be like the movie moments, right? But there was still the countless thousands and thousands and thousands of times of taking the thought about using and reframing it. Or reaching out to a sponsor or going, okay, hey, here's this, all the daily stuff. Exactly. Yep. So there are big insights. And every once in a while, like you're right, they change everything.

But most of the time, the insight, I would say it's sort of that you recognize, oh, boy, I've been thinking this negative thought all this time. My goodness, what else could I say? Okay, great. Now comes the work of installing it. So let's talk about how people can do that. Because one of the biggest challenges I see in personal development, work, spirituality, any of that, is we know a lot of things. But our day starts, maybe we have a morning reflection where we reflect for a few minutes in the morning, we get things off to a good start, maybe we meditate in

the morning, and then the day starts going at 100 miles an hour. And the next time I think about any of those ideas, those concepts, these new soundtracks is 10pm that night. So I'm very interested in how do we get these ideas into the flow of daily life more? You're right. It's a great challenge. I try to get them into the flow of my daily life in as many ways as possible. I like to do what I call stack the odds. I'm trying to be the house in the casino. I'm stacking the odds in my favor. So if I have something I'm really working on, I'll just, I'll grab a note off my wall. So this note says, ask for more. I wrote it on August 27th, 2020. So over a year ago. I will not pay you for this podcast, John. Do not ask. Well, exactly. But

what I wrote it for was I found myself undervaluing my work and negotiations. So I'd be in these business meetings. I would underprice, undercharge, undervalue. So I knew I needed a reminder of that. And again, this is a soundtrack for me and it's not sexy. It's not hooky. So I knew I needed a reminder of that. And again, this is a soundtrack for me, and it's not sexy. It's not hooky. Sometimes when I talk to people about soundtracks, they'll go, well, I'm not a writer. I'm not creative. You don't have to be. Ask for more. Those are three very dull words. But I needed a reminder to go, okay, that's helpful for me to see that, to remember that. So I try to get people to come up with as many creative ways as I can to say, no, I want to remind myself of this truth. I've got a new thing that I'm trying to put in place

and some of it might feel cheesy. I mean, we studied affirmations for the book and I didn't want to. I was really hoping I didn't have to because I grew up with Seinfeld, like Serenity Now and Serenity Live. I'm good enough. I'm smart enough. Doggone people like me. But so many people that had successful lives and I mean, across all the channels of their life, not just really successful business, but they had seven wives or, you know, something crazy, but had really full lives. I'd go, Hey, what do you think about like affirmations or mantras? Or, and they'd go, well, I give myself a pep talk every, every afternoon. Cause I kinda, I wane a little bit or I've got some words I repeat to myself or all I got. And so I realized, wow, there's value there.

And we, and we tested it and it was really fun to see the results. But yeah, so I think you do as many things as you can. And, and maybe, you know, one of your questions was going to be about, well, let's talk symbols because there's a whole chapter in there about the power of symbols. about, well, let's talk symbols because there's a whole chapter in there about the power of symbols. And I think that's another way to repeat it is to tie your new true thought to a symbol that's easy for you. And the way you do that is there's three different ways. You make it personal. It's something you care about. You make it visible. It's easy to see. And you make it simple. It's simple to interact with. And my favorite example of this in the history of mankind is the Lance

Armstrong, Nike Livestrong bracelets. They were personal. You never met somebody who said, I wear this bracelet because I hate diseases. I have an eczema necklace. I just wear jewelry about diseases. It was always my mom had cancer, my partner had cancer, my sister. Second thing, it was visible. It was bright yellow.

Nike could have made it beige. They could have made it light gray. They made it bright yellow. Third, it was simple. Everyone knows how to use a bracelet. No one was like, how do I put this on? The arm part goes in the hole part. So I think too, like having, and again, like I'm just grabbing stuff off my desk because

this is how I really live. This is a pine cone. So I got this pine cone in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and I picked it up the street because three weeks before I was about to release a book and I was going to Jackson Hole and I knew I'd be physically present and mentally absent. I'd miss the entire trip if I wasn't careful under the pressure of the book. And so I wrote a new soundtrack that said, don't miss it, don't miss it, don't miss it. So now I have a soundtrack and it's in place, but it's not strong.

And so I'm there and I'm saying it and I'm thinking it. And I was so present, I was able to notice, wow, these pine cones on the street are different than the pine cones we have in Nashville. That's really interesting. So I picked it up. I took it home with me so that now the next time I'm tempted to miss something, I've got a symbol on my desk that I can remember. And so I try to make it as easy as possible. I think a lot of people make the mistake of holding their breath and trying to change their life. In recovery, you'd call it white knuckling. And so I want stuff around me that makes it easy for me to remember this new truth that I'm trying to make automatic. Yeah, I really like that. So listener and thinking about that and all 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? Remember, little by little, a little becomes a lot. Change happens by us repeatedly taking positive action. And I want to give you a tip on that. And it's to start small. It's really important when we're trying to implement new habits to often start smaller than we think we need to. Because what that does is it allows us to get victories. And victories are really important because we become more motivated when we're feeling good about ourselves and we become less motivated when we're feeling bad about ourselves. So by starting small and making sure that you succeed, you build your motivation for further change down the road. If you'd like a step-by-step guide for how you can easily build new habits that feed your good wolf, go to goodwolf.me slash change and join the free masterclass. I love that idea of stacking the odds, right? You know, I talk about my depression at points and I'm like, I throw the kitchen sink at it. Like literally every possible, like all of it, just stack it all up. You know,

I want you like the matrix, like when Neo's getting the weapons, like he wasn't like, you know what? One gun will be enough. He was like, give it to me all. So yeah, we're on the same page. Totally. Well, John, thank you so much. This has been really fun. I feel like I could do this for like two or three more hours, but totally. Yeah. Alas, we are at the end of time, but the book is wonderful. We'll have links in the show notes to where people can find you find the book. It's called Soundtracks, The Surprising Solution to Overthinking. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me, Eric. 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. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a member of the One You Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. 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,

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