The One You Feed - Thomas Sterner

Episode Date: May 31, 2017

Please Support The Show With a Donation   This week we talk to Thomas Sterner Thomas Sterner is the founder and CEO of The Practicing Mind Institute. He is considered an expert in Present Moment Functioning. He is a popular and in-demand speaker who works with high-performance individuals including, athletes, industry groups and individuals, helping them to operate effectively within high-stress situations so that they can break through to new levels of mastery. He has been featured in top media outlets such as NPR and Fox News. He is the author of the best seller The Practicing Mind. His latest book is called Fully Engaged: Using the Practicing Mind in Daily Life In This Interview, Thomas Sterner and I Discuss... His newest book, Fully Engaged: Using the Practicing Mind in Daily Life How you can't change anything that you're not aware of That most of us spend our day as someone in their thoughts as opposed to someone who is having thoughts Meditation being the vehicle for growing in self-awareness Learning to recognize the truth that "I am not my thoughts, I am the one who has thoughts" The strengths of being observer oriented rather than in a state of reactivity That people who think they've had a "bad meditation" have actually had a very good meditation That meditation is never a done task The value of thinking of meditation like you do exercising The innate sense in us that is misinterpreted That the desire to expand is built into our DNA The power of the question, 'And then what?" That real perfection is the ability to expand infinitely It's the interpretation of the experience that makes it feel the way it does Making decisions about how to handle a "road block" beforehand How we can control our emotions and doing so is a skill The difference between a feeling and the truth The importance of setting goals with accurate information How you have to be in a situation to learn how to function in that situation That struggle is a sign that we are expanding and learning and up against our threshold     Please Support The Show with a DonationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you want to learn how to extract the most from a situation that you interpret as struggling, you have to be in the situation. 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 reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Thomas M. Sterner, founder and CEO of the Practicing Mind Institute. Thomas is considered an expert in present-moment functioning. He's a popular in-demand speaker who works with high-performance individuals, including athletes, industry groups, and individuals, helping them to operate effectively within the high-stress situations so that they can break through to new levels of mastery. He has been featured in top media outlets such as NPR,

Fox News, and he is the author of the bestseller, The Practicing Mind. His latest book is called Fully Engaged, Using the Practicing Mind in Daily Life. If you value the content we put out each week, then we need your help. As the show has grown, so have our expenses and time commitment. Go to oneufeed.net slash support and make a monthly donation. Our goal is to get to 5% of our listeners supporting the show. Please be part of the 5% that make a contribution and allow us to keep putting out these interviews and ideas. that make a contribution and allow us to keep putting out these interviews and ideas. We really need your help to make the show sustainable and long-lasting.

Again, that's OneYouFeed.net slash support. Thank you in advance for your help. And here's the interview with Thomas M. Sterner. Hi, Tom. Welcome to the show. Thank you. It's great to be here. I'm excited to have you on. Your latest book is called Fully Engaged, Using the Practicing Mind in Daily Life. And there are several things in it that are very much right at the heart of things that we talk about on this show over and over. So I'm really looking forward to getting into those.

But before we do, let's start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. 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 greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops, and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up up at his grandfather and he 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. I think that what talks to me the most about that is the need for

awareness. What I mean by awareness is because this goes into everything in life, everything that we're going to talk about today. You can't change anything that you're not aware of. So if we look at this parable and we say, okay, it's the one that you feed. Well, you can't feed the one that you want to feed if you're not aware of the one you don't want to feed. And I think that that's a really important point to make. Most of us spend our day, what I'll call in our thoughts, instead of from the perspective of someone having a thought. And people ask me sometimes, you know, how do I become more patient? And my response is, well, you have to know when you're being impatient. And that sounds like a silly response.

But in reality, most of the time when people are impatient, they're just feeling impatient. They're not aware that they're having an impatient thought. And they're very different places to come from. The one offers the opportunity to make a conscious choice to go in a different direction. Opportunity to make a conscious choice to go in a different direction The other is more of a reaction to a situation and also being a puppet to the emotional content of the situation So looking at this parable, I would say that we we first need to be we recognize this is the truth So we now need to know

We need to be aware of when we're feeding whichever wolf, and then what are the mechanics of changing how we react to that situation? How do we become more aware? How do we get ourselves to a place where we enjoy the process of becoming more centered towards the wolf that is the good wolf? Yeah, I agree completely. I think awareness is such a critical baseline for everything that we have to do. And I know that I can be aware that I am being impatient or that I'm irritable. And I can't always change it sometimes. But at least if I am conscious of like, I am in this place, and I can observe it and learn more about it versus like you said, I use the

term autopilot all the time on the show. Like I'm just kind of going on autopilot and that awareness is such a key piece of that. So what are things that people can do to build awareness? Well, the only way that I have found, and it seems to be backed up by empirical research, is with some form of meditation thought awareness training because what happens to us is that particularly in this culture that we live in today you know they're finding that our attention span uh is i read one study where it's less than that of a goldfish for most people uh which is i don't know how they know that but i don't either and of course they don't mention

that all of the goldfish in the study had PhDs. But, but the point is, I think that what we do know is that we are constantly connected to digital devices. Our faces are always in them. So we're being overstimulated all the time, our brains are being overstimulated, and our brains are being asked to think at a higher rate of speed. And in order to answer this, the brain is evolving to do that. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But by the same token, we're losing the part of our brain that works to focus on something for any length of time is atrophying. And that's why you see people are having more and more trouble paying attention for any length of time. And, you know, it's in all different ages.

It's a real problem with young people because they're growing up in this era where, you know, very young kids. My older daughter is a kindergarten teacher. And she said, you know, the attention span of these kids is just not existent. And it's a real issue. And they're trying to do all these things to change that. And it's a real issue. And they're trying to do all these things to change that. But I think that we need to realize that this is the side effect of the culture that we live in and what is happening all around us. So we difficult to do because we feel like if we're not doing anything, we're not doing anything, which really isn't true. You know, when we're doing nothing, we're actually doing something. And, you know, by sitting quietly for even if it's just 10 minutes a day and observing your body breathe or saying, hearing a short phrase

in your mind, what happens is that you begin to separate yourself from your thoughts. And this awareness that I am not my thoughts, I'm the one that has thoughts starts to grow. And when you do that, that's when this awareness starts to happen. And the other thing that happens is that you begin to develop a stamina and a strength in pulling your mind back to task. Because anybody that has ever tried any sort of thought awareness, what I call a thought awareness training, it's just a label, or meditation knows that it only takes a matter of 10, 15 seconds into it when your mind takes off. It just doesn't like being still. It's a problem-solving machine. It wants to find a

problem. And if you don't give it one, it will go into search mode. So it takes off. and because you have always followed it in your life you go with it and you're not even aware that you've done that and then there's a brief moment where you wake up and you realize that you know you're thinking about something else other than following your breath or saying a short phrase in your mind and when you do that that's when everything happens in that microsecond. Number one, you've become aware of what your mind is doing without your permission. And then by pulling it back, your ability to do that on demand becomes stronger. So those two things are really everything. As you said earlier, you know, we can be aware that you're being impatient. That doesn't mean it's going to be easy to pull your mind back.

But the more you do it, the more repetitions you go through in a meditative state, the stronger you get and the better you become at that. And then you begin to become more observer-oriented and less of a reacting entity in the situation. And that's where all the strength comes. So, really, I'd like to answer your question directly. you have to practice something like that. And the benefits, besides the fact that all the lowering blood pressure and equalizing blood pressure and all these sort of things that it does, that's probably one of the most significant things that it does. And I just really haven't seen anything else that accomplishes that. You've got a line in the book where you're talking about meditation. It was in my notes here that I wanted to talk about. And since you just brought it up, I thought I'd hit it.

I'll just go ahead and read what you said. You say, I'm always amused when people interpret the fact that they are chasing their mind all the time as an indicator that they are not good at meditation. What they are missing, and this is very significant, is they wouldn't be chasing their mind and bringing it back to task if they weren't noticing that their mind was running off.

I've commented many times that what many people interpret as a bad meditation is really a good one. in their mind and bringing it back to task if they weren't noticing that their mind was running off. I've commented many times that what many people interpret as a bad meditation is really a good one. That's right. I think it's amusing. You know, when people say that, they talk to me and they say, I try meditation. I'm not very good at it. And when I say, why do you say that? I said, there is no such thing as not being good at meditation. And they say, well, because all I do is chase my mind. And I said, well, that means that you're noticing what your mind is doing. And also, in many ways, that could be interpreted as a very good meditation because it would be similar to saying, you know, when I go to the gym, I'm not very good because all I do is a bunch of repetitions. I mean, every time you repeat that, noticing the mind and pulling it back, you're getting stronger and your awareness is growing, which is what you're after. I think everybody, even the monks in saffron robes that meditate all day will tell you that some days your mind is extremely active and you're going to be in chase mode the whole time you're in this meditative state.

Other days, you're going to just be, for whatever reason, more relaxed, laid back, and your thoughts are going to be thin. You're going to have so much thinking going on in your mind, and it won't be as arduous of a task. They're both normal, they're both a part of it, and they're both good. Right. And I think some people settle into a quiet state easier than others, but I don't think that that really has much to do with whether meditation is providing the benefit that we want it to provide. I'm one of those people, my brain is not very prone to being quiet. And you know, I've meditated for a long time. And I still find like that, for me, that is a that is a consistent challenge. But I still feel like I really get the benefits of it. Because I'm just doing it And I am, like you said, I'm just recognizing there goes my brain. I bring it back,

no judgment. And you're right, it strengthens that muscle over and over. It does. And I think people enter this thinking, when I achieve a quiet mind, that's when I've succeeded at this. And that really, the quiet mind is just the target. You have to have, in archery, you need a target to aim at. And what are you doing? You need something to aim your energy at, so something to execute towards. And so the reason we say a quiet mind is it's totally opposite of what our mind normally is. So when we say the target is a quiet mind, that's to give you something to aim at.

give you something to aim at. And choosing a breath-based meditation or a phrase meditation, all you're really doing there is giving your mind a single task so that you can really measure whether it's doing that. If you said to your mind, well, I'm going to sit here quietly and just let my mind do whatever it wants, well, then you would have no idea whether you wouldn't be controlling anything, you wouldn't be going through repetitions. But when you give your mind a single, simple task, and that's why if you choose a phrase, it needs to be two or three words. You don't want a long, long sentence that you have to repeat over and over again. You want something that's very simple. It just gives you a baseline.

You're telling your mind, this is all I want you to do right now. I don't want you to be working on the report for later. I don't think of what I need at the grocery store or when I'm going to pick the kids over. You don't want any of that. You just want a very simple task. And that's so contrary to everything else that we do during the day where we're overtaxed and trying to do so many things. I also think that one of the things that people struggle with, with the concept of meditation, is that it's never done. And what I mean by that is we're not comfortable with open-ended tasks. You know,

we have so many things, too many things on our plate. So we want this feeling of closure. You know, we want the report done. We want the kids picked up. We want the house clean. We want to be able to say, this is done, and now I can take it off my plate. We're not real comfortable with things where you say, you're going to do this every day for the rest of your life, or at least you're going to try to. That seems, when you approach it like that. And I think that's one of the reasons why people feel frustrated and overwhelmed when they start a meditation practice is because they feel like, I never get to some place where I can say I'm done with this. And I tell people, you need to look at it like exercise. I mean, there really is no point in physical exercising that you get to where you can say, I'm done exercising.

I've mastered it. I don't need to exercise for the rest of my life. I mean, it's a part of maintaining a healthy body. And meditation is a part of maintaining self-power and increasing self-power and the ability to be the conscious choice maker. 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.

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feed slash support and make a monthly donation if you can. And if you cannot, just please keep listening. And here's the rest of the interview with Thomas Sterner. One of the other major themes from the book that I want to bring up, and it's one that I have wrestled with my whole life and, and listeners of the show will know about it because I bring it up often because it's been such a challenge for me. And that is this sense that I'll be happy when. I'm going to read something again that you wrote because I think you say it very eloquently. In the old paradigm, happiness, a sense of real contentment is always outside us, a place we have to get to before we can experience it. Whenever we are in

this moment, we are incomplete, and the nectar that will quench our thirst lies outside ourselves and in some time frame other than the present moment. This feeling can burn within us our whole life, pushing us on in a state of exhaustion, like some poor soul stumbling through the desert trying to get to the water, which turns out to be a mirage. We have an innate sense in us that is misinterpreted. And I will say that the marketing media nurtures this sense as a feeling of being incomplete. And if you look at marketing, which is all the marketing people the media have a connection to us 24 hours a day seven days a week because of all these digital devices uh you know no matter where you are you've got a screen in your face that we're one that's very accessible and that's why you see this disease that is overtaking us where people you know they're walking down the

street they're always have their their face in the phone there's advertisements on there there's uh whether they're audio or video so this feeling of being incomplete is marketed in a way that your life is passing you by you can't be happy with where you're at you have to have this that this you have to achieve this you have to get to this state all these things are outside of where you are right now. And personally, I think that that feeling is something that we're supposed to have, because it's what drives us to expand spiritually as human beings. It's the reason that we have the Sistine Chapel. It's the reason that we have the classical composers. All these accomplishments that we have come from this feeling of there's more. I can do more.

I can be more. That's what makes people push the envelope in whatever they're trying to do, whether it's some small thing that means only something to them personally or whether it's on a global scale. It's that feeling is there to drive us to work at executing that into manifesting it. What happens is it gets misused and misinterpreted. And so something that is really this tremendous blessing turns into this uncomfortable feeling, which makes us feel incomplete and makes us run on this treadmill constantly trying to get someplace other than where we are right now. And even though we repeat that cycle over and over again in our life, we can all look

back to the time we were kids and there was this particular toy we wanted. There was this bike and then there was the prom dress and then the first car and it just goes on and on. And we get all those things through our lives. And as soon as we get them, we immediately, it might last a day or so, and then we replace it with the next thing that we need to feel happy because we're always trying to quench that thirst inside, which is not meant to be quenched. It's there for a reason other than making us feel incomplete.

That's one of the fundamental questions I think that I have tried to put right at the heart of this show because it's right at the heart of my own journey, I guess you would say, is that idea of, you know, what's the right balance between the striving and the ambition that you talk about? You say that we have it built into our DNA, the desire to expand, and I believe that totally. And then, so I believe that to be completely true, and then I also believe to be very true that the spiritual ideas that say it's this constant craving for things that is the source of a lot of suffering. And how you reconcile those two opposing desires and truths is a very big part

of what I'm looking for and what I strive to try and do in my life. Well, and I'll go back to what we spoke about earlier. You can't do that if you're not aware of what you're doing. You know, when you can notice this feeling of incompleteness and you notice that you're interpreting it in a way of feeling like, I'm not happy here, I have to get someplace else, then you can have the opportunity to analyze that and to come up with a strategy, you know, some sort of a procedure, a trigger, all these sort of things that, you know, I've talked about in the book, but then you have the opportunity to say, you know what, this is not serving my happiness. The way I'm feeling right now is an interpretation that I know is not going to serve

me, and I can interpret it in a different way, and I can shift over into that interpretation. So this stuff is always, it's all woven in. Everything just, you know, weaves itself in between and through each other. So, you know, you need this awareness so that you can be aware of when you're interpreting things incorrectly, and then you give yourself the opportunity. Once again, that doesn't mean that it's going to be effortless to do that, but there are things that we can come up with to make that not only effortless, but more joyful. Yep. And you have a practice in the book for working with this that I think is really Yep. And you have a practice in the book for working with this that I think is really wonderful. And I've kind of stumbled into something similar, but I

think you say it so well. And you basically say, when you notice that you're not enjoying this moment because you are craving the moment when you reach your goal, ask yourself, and then what? I mean, it's something that I learned myself where I would notice I was having that feeling and then I would stop. That feeling would be the trigger. When I had that feeling, I noticed, you know, I would say I would that would trigger me to say and then what? And I would review and I would say, OK, let's put myself in the future. So now I own that car or now I'm making another ten thousand dollars a year, whatever it is that I seem to be so attached to in that moment, am I going to feel fully realized for the rest of my life after that? How am I going

to feel two days after that, a week after that? Am I going to feel satisfied for the rest of my life or am I just going to start another cycle? And then I try to remember how many times have I done this before? What are some of the other situations where I've done this same type of thought process, the same cycle I've repeated in the past? I know where this leads. I know it's not the answer. I know that this is, it helps me to change my perspective and look at what it is that I'm feeling so attached to and to use it more as a target, a rudder to steer my efforts and not something

that is there to remind me of what I have yet to do. I mean, that's really where, you know, I talk about in the practicing mind. I mean, what we do is we misuse our goals. We set these goals and then we feel like, you know, when I have this goal, then I'm going to be happy. And then we become so attached to the goal. The minute we do that, we put ourselves at war with this moment. Because in this moment, we don't have the goal. And we've already decided that we can't be happy until we do have the goal. So now the whole process of achieving the goal becomes something that we have to endure, rather than something that we can enjoy. You use these words and multiple guests we've had on the show have used similar words, which is moving away from the result and focusing on the process. The process is where all of the joy exists. I mean, when you run a race, it only takes a second to cross the finish line. Why does it feel so good? It so good because of ever the process of running the race all of the the um you know all the preparation work that went in the the mental stamina the discipline the reason it feels like such an accomplishment is because of the process that it took to go through

to step over the the finish line if we're standing on a cinder's track and i draw i take a stick and draw a line and say there's the finish line, go ahead and step over it. It means nothing. And that's one of the things I think that we really miss is that everything that we have that's effortless doesn't mean anything to us. The things that mean the most to us are the things that we had to put our energy and our focus into and our discipline into. That's why they feel so good. You can look at this in a very simple way. If I put somebody on the stage and I hand them a tennis ball and I say, throw it out there in the audience and they go, where? Just throw it out there. And well, that means nothing. But if I take a small, like an 18 inch diameter trash can and put it out in the floor in the middle and I say, I give you a hundred bucks if you put the ball in that trash can, all of a sudden everything changes

because now it's a challenge. We like a challenge. We need a challenge. I've lectured to kids and I ask them, what do you do with a video game that you've mastered? They say, I get rid of it. I said, that's right, you do. Why do you do that? Why don't you go back and play one that's easier? I said, you always want something that is beyond your threshold. This is across the board with arts. As a musician, when you work on a very difficult piece and you master the piece, you don't go back and play the first piece you ever learned. You go to a more difficult piece. Why is that? We're always looking for this perfect state. And I have said that perfection, it's not a number. It's not a place that you get to because all of those things have a limit to them. When you say, when I can do this this good, I'm going to be perfect at it. No, that doesn't exist.

Real perfection is the ability to expand infinitely. is the ability to expand infinitely. So when we accept that and we really grasp that, we realize that the process is where we live our life. If we're not experiencing this moment and the process of achieving our goals, we're losing all the joy that makes the whole effort worthwhile. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. 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 cranson is with us how are you 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. And that is one of those things that is fairly easy to intellectually understand and very difficult sometimes to emotionally implement. How do you get there? Because I can imagine a bunch of people thinking that sounds exhausting. Well, it's interesting, you know, you use the word difficult because difficult words like difficult and struggle, they're labels that we apply to a feeling inside. So I always feel like what we're really describing is the process of learning. I mean when I say to someone, would you – they say, well, there's this – I've got to go through this interview and I hate interviews. I don't do well on them.

I dread them. And I say, well, if you could be anything you wanted to be, how would that be in terms of interviews? They say, oh, I would like it to be effortless. I'd like to enjoy it. I say, okay, well, how do you think you get there? And, well, I don't know. I said, well, you have to do interviews, don't you? I mean, you have to.

You want to sing in front of people and be comfortable. You've got to get out and sing in front of people. Now, the feelings that you experience when you do that are normal in the process of learning to do interviews. It's normal when you're in a state of gathering information and gathering experience to feel off your game because you have these uncertainties. And I think where the problem comes in with what you're describing there is it goes right back to that feeling of, you know, when am I going to be good at this? You know, this is not fun. You know, when am I going to be good? Those are interpretations

of the moment, of the actual experience. But the experience is just the experience. We attach all of these interpretations to it that make us experience that moment in a certain way. So, for example, the living room needs painting. One person says, I absolutely hate painting the living room. I hate everything about it. I don't want to do it. The next person says, I love it. I can't wait till the weekend when I get to paint the living room. Painting the living room is just painting the living room. It's neither of those two things. It's the interpretation of the experience that makes it feel the way it does. So I find that in terms of getting better at this, there's a couple of things that you need to do.

Number one, you need the awareness that you're interpreting it that way. That gives you the opportunity to interpret it a different way. And then you need, you know, some procedures. You need some things that you can fall back on that you, so you're not making decisions about difficult moments. So, in other words, when you feel, because you said it sounds easy to do this, but it sounds exhausting. Well, that's a feeling and that's an interpretation of it. So when you get in that situation where you say, okay, I'm going to work at being more present, whatever, the next day, there's going to be a moment in that day that you're going to feel like not doing that.

And you need, if you come up with a decision as to how you're going to handle that before that feeling, before you get into it, when you're out in this space here, this safe space where you've decided this is the direction I want to go in. But I know when I go in this direction, I'm going to come up against this roadblock. Well, make your decision as to how you're going to deal with that roadblock before. And then the roadblock becomes a trigger and you just fall back into this procedure. It's, you know, this is what they teach like EMTs, you know, like so that when they come up on a dangerous situation or a situation that's very upsetting, they have something to drop back into. And I can tell you as a pilot, this stuff is drilled into your head over and over again. It's procedures. You have a procedure for everything so that whatever, hopefully, whatever

happens in the air is something that you have anticipated at some point and you've made a decision as to how you're going to react in that situation. And then it just becomes this routine that you drop back into to help you move through that. And it really is that simple. The emotional part is all an interpretation. And you have a choice. If you're aware, you have a choice as to how you interpret it now some people would say yeah but it's an emotion i was taught you know your emotions you can't you can't control your emotions when i was growing up that was what i was always taught but that's not true at all i i have found in situations that at one point in my life i would have reacted

way over this way getting very upset and full of anxiety and maybe angry and all and i don't react that way anymore because i've learned that i can control my emotion. It is a choice that I have. I'm aware of it. It's just a thought. It's a thought or a situation and I'm interpreting it in a certain way that's making me have a pull towards a certain reaction. And I can change what my habitual response is to different circumstances by being more conscious, more of an observer of how I want to be and how I am currently acting in that particular situation. That's a long answer. I hope it makes sense. It does. And I mostly agree with that. Are you in control of your emotions? Because I think there are things people suffer from mental illnesses of different types. But what I do

believe is it's very difficult sometimes in a moment to control my emotion. But over a period of time of systematically trying to reinterpret things and look at things a different way and take different perspectives, I agree with you 100%. You can make huge changes in the way we react to certain situations. Well, I think what you just said, it's difficult in a moment to control your emotions. But again, Well, I think what you just said, it's difficult in a moment to control your emotions. But again, that's a skill. What we're talking about here is a skill. It is a skill.

Some people are better at handling their emotions than others. So for me, it is a skill. Now, I'm not talking about someone who has a clinical situation, which could be impeding that. But I'm talking about the average person. It is a skill. Difficult. It's difficult to do that is, to me, that's an interpretation of the feeling that happens when you do that, when you don't, you're not good at it. You know, what you're interpreting, I'm not good at this. This is difficult. That's your interpretation of the feeling that you're having. And when you begin to recognize that as a feeling and not the truth, something that you do have control over, where we get bogged down is when we start to set

these standards. One of the chapters in Fully Engaged is set your goals with accurate data. Well, what happens is, okay, we sit back and we say, well, you know, I'm not very good at handling this situation. I want to change the way I handle it. Well, the problem that we come into is we almost immediately say, well, that ought to take about a week. I mean, you know, we set these goals without any information, and then we begin judging our progress based on this timeline that we've set up. But if I said to you, look, do you want to be better at handling interviews? Yeah. Well, that should take you about two years. Well, if I tell you that, and I tell you that in two years, you doing this, you're going to be really good at it. Well, if you don't do well in an interview two weeks later or two months later

you're not going to feel bad because you're going to feel your interpretation is going to be different than it is if you think it's only going to take you three weeks you know so i think that these are these are all there are some mechanical issues here that we can look at that change our interpretation of that moment that you're describing. Yep, I agree 100%. I mean, I think that's such a big piece is that understanding how long something should take. And everything takes far longer than we think it should. I mean, that has been proven to me over and over and over again, that we almost consistently or almost constantly underestimate

the amount of time things will take, whether it's a software project or learning to play an instrument or learning to handle our anger better. It's almost always longer than we think it would be and certainly longer than we would like it to be. That's right. And the example that I use, because it's absurd and everybody can relate to it, is someone says, I want to lose 30 pounds. That should take 10 days. Well, we can all say, no, that's never going to happen. But if that's what we do with these other things and what happens to that person that says, I want to learn, lose 30 pounds in 10 days. Well, five days into their diet and exercise program, they could be doing extremely well working at an accelerated pace but they step on the scale and they've lost seven pounds and they what's their interpretation of that their interpretation is

i'm not very good at this their confidence goes down they feel miserable when in reality they're doing really well but because they have said they've chosen this time frame that's completely unrealistic and inaccurate they're judging their their progress in relationship to that. And it sets up all these feelings and experiences that happen from that, that are completely false. Well, they're not false, but they're based on false information. Yep, exactly. And those things are all variable. So it's hard to know whether, you know, how long something should take for you versus different people. And it's, I agree, having having accurate data about how long something's going to take can be very, very helpful. We're near the end of time here. But I want to hit one last phrase that you use that I'd like to talk about briefly before we wrap up. And you say there's a paradox here,

difficult changes require inner strength, but at the same time, they create inner strength as we experience them. There's a story in the book about a young girl golfer that I work with, because I've worked with golfers, young athletes and older athletes. And when she came to me, she said, what I want to work on is the way that I handle difficult situations in tournaments. She said, if I'm playing well, and she was very, very highly regarded physically as a gol tournaments? She said, if I'm playing well, and she was very, very highly regarded physically as a golfer. She said, when I'm playing well, she said, I do very well. She said, but if I start to play poorly, she said, I really begin to struggle. And then my game starts to implode. So it came to the biggest tournament of the year that she had.

She asked me if I would carry the bag for which wasn't normally allowed but it wasn't this particular situation and um i could see she was when i pulled up to the the course that she was she was on the range and i could see from a distance that she was so attached to winning this tournament and doing good she'd been planning for a year and actually all the work she had done with me was for this event so that she could move on to a higher qualifying round and i knew it was going to be a problem but i didn't want to say anything to her because I didn't want to start this internal dialogue and put doubt in her mind. So I thought, let's just see how this unfolds. Well, it was a disaster. She went way right off the tee. She just compounded one error after another. And by the time we were on, I don't know, the fifth or sixth hole, she had shot herself completely out of the tournament.

There was absolutely no chance she was going to even place in the tournament. And at that point, she was so dejected and heartbroken. And I thought, well, I have to say something here because that's what she's paying me for. And I wasn't really sure how to approach it. So I just asked her, I said, you know, why did you ask me to work with you? And she said, I wanted to learn how to deal with this situation better. And I said, well, so how do you think you do that now? And she said, I honestly don't know. I've tried everything I know and nothing is working.

And I said, well, I think the thing that you're missing is you have to be in the situation. She said, what do you mean? I said, well, if you want to learn how to play in the rain, it has to be raining. If you want to learn how to play in the wind, it has to be winning. If you want to learn how to extract the most wind, it has to be winning. If you want to learn how to extract the most from a situation that you interpret as struggling, you have to be in the situation in order to execute everything that you have practiced for that situation. And I said, you're here. This is where you wanted to be. I said, so forget about the tournament. Just see what you can do

with everything that you've worked on and see if you can turn it around. If you can turn it around and start playing your game, then you've won, which she did. So my point is that we have to go through struggle in order to learn to deal with struggle. And that is the paradox. We can't sit in a comfortable situation all the time and learn how to deal with struggling. That's one of the reasons why, you know, I think what we're taught and what's on television and everything is, you know, if you're not happy all the time, you need this drug. It's like we're supposed to be happy all the time. And I don't believe that. I said to a bunch of golfers one time, what makes a good shot feel so good? And they gave me all these ridiculous answers. I said, no, it's because you've hit so

many bad ones. It's a real simple question. And I think that one of the things that we gain from reinterpreting, being able to change our interpretation of struggle is the feeling of accomplishment and control, you know, self-power. But in order to get there, you have to be in it. So when you are in it, if you have this awareness, again, it gives you this opportunity to go, hey, I'm feeling this feeling that I usually call struggling. That means I'm in a process of learning how to do this better because that's the only way I can do it is if I'm in it. The stuff that I'm good at, I never think about because it's easy for me. This is my opportunity here. It's not a bad thing.

It's an opportunity for me to expand myself. And the people that want to grow personally are always going to be up against that threshold because as soon as they master something, they move on. So it's very important to learn to interpret that feeling, what it feels like to be up against your threshold as not a bad thing. You're there because you're growing. And I think that it's a very important point to make because your interpretation of it determines how you experience it. And you can experience that as an opportunity and a chance to grow. And then your performance goes up because you're not looking at it as just a horrible

experience. That's a sure way to get slugged, though, is if you tell somebody who's in a great deal of pain that this is a wonderful learning opportunity. Yeah. Well, you have to do it at the point. But no, I agree with what you're saying 100%. I mean, it's like I will think that I figured out how to behave in relationships well until I get into one, right? When I'm outside of one, I got it all figured out. I know exactly what to do. And then you put you in it. It reminds me of that old Ram Dass saying, right?

If you think you're enlightened, go visit your parents. Well, you make a really good point. I think it's important. You know, with this girl here, that was the reason why I didn't start the tournament out that way. She had to have exhausted everything and realized that what she was doing wasn't working. And I think you have to be in that state of mind. You know, when you get into the state of mind, then you become, it's like the Zen thing, you know, then your cup is empty and you're open to receive information. If I had talked to her about that before, I don't know that she would have had that reaction. But when I said that to her during the tournament, she was very receptive to the idea. Yep, exactly. Well, Tom, thanks so much. I really enjoyed the book and I've really enjoyed this conversation. I think there's been lots of really useful practical things in it and I love episodes that are like that. So thank you so much.

Thank you. It was a pleasure being here. It was a pleasure meeting you. I really appreciate the opportunity. All right. Take care. Okay. Bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to oneyoufeed.net slash support.