Well with Arielle Lorre - 53: Dr. Sasha Heinz - How to Be Happy, Positive Thinking + Lasting Behavioral Change

Episode Date: April 22, 2020

In this episode I talk to Sasha Heinz, Ph.D., MAPP, Developmental Psychologist, Life Coach  and expert in Positive Psychology, about the five components of well-being; how to live a meaningful, purposeful life; how our thoughts dictate our lives & how to steer them towards positivity; the science behind confirmation bias; and lasting behavioral change. With so many of us finding ourselves struggling with a "new normal" this is an especially relevant conversation that will help you overcome negative thinking patterns. Produced by Dear MediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Auto-hue with Sunny Cars feels as if the children Not me's high. Giselsramble, Zand-Worda. Actis-verkeer, verdwine, Vacantzic can chaotic

but who'sorgalos an auto-hurt says, One dos, no stress. No, own-vervasted costs, always full-ledgiverts. So,

would auto-hure without your re-sadviseur or SunnyCars. The following podcast is a dear media production. Hey, welcome to the Blonde Files podcast. I'm your host, Ariel Lorry, and I'm here to talk all things wellness.

From how to achieve optimal health and well-being to the best beauty tips and everything in between, no topic is off limits and I'm bringing it to you real and unfiltered. I know there is so much information out there, so I'm here to help you navigate it all. Thanks for listening. Let's get into it. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show. I have absolutely nothing to update you on. Sometimes in these intros, I give you a little update on what's going on in my life. But, you know, it just feels like Groundhogs Day right now. I'm sure you're feeling it too. But that said, I really can't complain.

We are healthy. We have everything we need. And I know that we are so fortunate. I hope that you guys are all doing well, too. I did want to talk about something that a lot of people have been asking me before I get into today's episode. So I've been getting a lot of questions about how do I manage and maximize my time right now? So I'm actually still pretty busy because I'm in school full time and then I have my work for this show and my work for Instagram and relaunching my website, et cetera.

At the same time, while I'd like to say that I'm super organized and I'm keeping an airtight calendar, I just don't right now. But this is what I do to add a little bit of structure to my day and keep it from bleeding into one another. So I do these few things. The most important thing for me to do is to bookend my day. So that means I start and end the day a certain way as best I can. I'm not perfect. But that looks like in the morning, I do not get right on my phone because if I get right on my phone, it doesn't take long for me to

end up on Twitter feeling hopeless about the future of our democracy and the world or on Instagram, getting lost in cookies or whatever. So I don't get on my phone right away. Then I take Harvey out for a few minutes. I get some fresh air. I make my matcha. I meditate. I read a few pages of my morning books, whatever those are at the time. Right now, it's daily stoic, and then whatever else I'm reading. I'm doing a few pages out of how to think like an emperor still, and a few pages of Emmett Fox books. So I do that, and then I write down five things I'm grateful for, or I do my five-minute journal, and then I get on with my day. That's it. So that for me takes about 30 minutes. I know a lot of people don't have 30 minutes. But even if you have five minutes, you can try some version of that.

You can try to close your eyes and say so hum in your head for one minute. You can go outside and take five deep breaths. You know, you can condense it to whatever works for you. At night, I review my day or I do the nighttime part of the five minute journal. And then I also write a bulleted list in the notes of my phone of what I need to do the next day. So whether it's homework or important emails that I have to get back to or work, whatever it is. I do the bullets because I get so much satisfaction from checking them off the next day. So I do that. And then I read whatever I'm reading for pleasure. And then I put my phone in another room and I try not to get on it for, you know, a couple hours before I go to sleep. So doing those two things really helps me keep from falling off the rails,

so to speak, and just having each day, like I said, bleed into the next. So I hope that helps. Now to today's episode, this information would be so valuable at any time, but it's just so relevant given what we are living through right now. I am talking to Dr. Sasha Heinz, Ph.D., a developmental psychologist and life coach. She's also an expert in positive psychology, lasting behavioral change, and the science of getting unstuck. In her private coaching practice, She helps women cultivate greater psychological flexibility and mental fitness and helps people live a life that lines up with their values. Heinz received her BA from Harvard, her PhD in developmental psychology from Columbia,

and her master's in applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, where she also served as a faculty member. So she's really effing smart. And you know how much I love talking to really smart people. So you are going to love this episode. We talk a lot about our thoughts and how to get unstuck and not fall victim to self-limiting beliefs and fears. And we talk about our brains confirmation bias and just so much interesting stuff. So please enjoy Dr. Sasha Hines.

Hi, we're Carleen and Jill, hosts of Breaking Beauty Podcast, the show all about the breakthrough people, products, and moments in beauty. On our show, you're going to find hella inspiring guests like Emily Weiss of Glossier. and you'll get beauty tips galore from the top pros in the industry, like Kim Kardashian's makeup guru. And you'll hear skincare secrets from the likes of Dr. Pimple Popper. Plus, you'll get shopping help with our damn goods episodes where we review the latest products hitting store shelves to let you know what's actually worth your money.

Listen every Wednesday to Breaking Beauty Podcast. So welcome Dr. Sasha Hines. Welcome to the show. Hi, so happy to be here. So happy to have you here. and talk about happiness and positive psychology and optimism and all of the good things in this time where it seems like I just think it's very dark for a lot of people, a lot of fear and a lot of uncertainty.

And I know for me, that's like, you know, that's like the recipe for anxiety, right? Fear plus uncertainty equals anxiety. So we are living in an age of anxiety right now for most people. Yeah, and like fear plus uncertainty equals storytelling. I'm a storyteller and it's never good. Well, we just need to learn to tell ourselves stories that make us feel great on purpose. Yeah, and I can't wait for you to tell me how to do that. But why don't we start by just having you tell us about your education, what you studied, and how you kind of came to this area of study. Yeah. Really it was, I mean, it's in psychology or in social sciences, we call it me search, you know, when your, your research is really what you're interested in and why? Because it's relevant to you. So, I mean, I think my career, I look at it as like, it's this giant adventure, a me search adventure because I, you know, went through a period of time in my early 20s where I sort of felt like I was very much, you know, the good girl made, good choices and worked hard and was fairly successful in school and academically. And that path

was somewhat, you know, it was relatively easy, not easy, but I worked very hard, but I just, things worked out. And then I felt like my life went totally off the rails at the end of high school and college. Just, I just emotionally fell apart. I think, you know, all of that had felt, I think it was just so much pressure and, you know, so much feeling that just an enormous amount of pressure and need to perform. And so much of my identity was wrapped up in who I, you know, in how I did, not who I actually, who I was. I didn't even understand any of that, the doing versus being. And anyway, I think, you know, I didn't have any psychological tools at all, really, to deal with it. and my life kind of started to really fall apart.

And this journey of kind of getting my, pulling my life back together and, you know, recovering from an eating disorder and, and really getting my life, you know, back on track, but in a new way, which has been so much more exciting and fun. And so, you know, then my interest in my life really changed and understanding, like, I really wanted to understand these sort of existential questions of like, what is the good life? What does it mean to, what does it mean

to be happy? People that self-report and say that they're happy, what are they doing? What do they know that we, the rest of us don't know? You know, what is a meaningful life? What's a purposeful life? I kind of, you know, my interest really shifted to these asking myself these deeper questions, which then led me to the field of positive psychology, which is just one area. of, you know, in the larger field of psychology, it's the particular field where we look at causes and correlates of happiness and psychological well-being. So by and large, we're studying the, you know, I don't like to say positive end of the spectrum, but the more expansive end of the spectrum. So we are looking at, you know, exceptional talent and exceptional people that

are, you know, outliers and doing very, um, seem to be, you know, outliers in terms of their happiness or outliers in terms of talent and like what is it that they're doing or the way that they think. How do they think differently? And so understanding that, also looking at like what are the components of well-being? What does it, what does it actually mean? Like is the good life just happiness? Like I don't think so. I think there's something deeper than that. Something that we call eudaimonic well-being, which means more of living a life in alignment with virtue or with your values. This is maybe another way of saying it.

So it's a life that's maybe not so much about pleasant feelings and more about purposefulness and feeling like your life has value and meaning, something bigger than yourself that you feel connected to in your life. So we know there's like a lot of, you know, there's a lot of theoretical debate in our field about what everything means and what's more important than what. But that to me is like the most, you know, it's the most fun thing to geek out on are these topics. It's interesting when you were talking about the eudaimic. Am I saying it right? Well-being.

Eudaimonic, yeah. Eudymonic. I think my brain is atrophying in quarantine. I got sober six years ago and I'm in a program of recovery that has a large focus on being of service to other people and finding your purpose that way. And it's interesting because even in early recovery, when my circumstances hadn't changed much, I mean, I got sober and I had nothing.

Yeah. I had a really low bottom. But all of a sudden, I had this purpose. And I was, you know, I will talk about the definition of happiness, but I felt happy. Just having that. And it's so funny because we think that the car and the job and the money and the clothes and the relationship and all these things are going to make us happy.

and in my experience, at least, it barely moves the needle. Yeah. You cannot consume your way to happiness. That means like consumption in all ways, right? I mean, you can't acquire more things. You can't shove more things in your mouth. Like it's just, you know, shut the fridge people. It's not going to help, right?

It's just you can't drink more drinks. That's not the recipe. But your brain is wired to make you think it is. Right. That's the problem. Yeah. So what is the definition of happiness in positive psychology? Well, I would say, you know, it's hard to say that there's a definition per se.

But I think we would call it, you know, well-being. It's something more full-bodied than just saying I'm happy. Happiness would be under the rubric of positive emotion. And well-being is something that's just so much bigger than that. In terms of what we know from the research, there really seems to be five decisions. distinct components of well-being. We call it the perma model of authentic happiness. It's Marty Seligman's model, but the P stands for positive emotion. So there's an element of feeling good, right, that has to do with well-being, but that's not everything. It's only one of five

components. E stands for engagement. So that feeling of flow, when you are deeply engaged in your work or a hobby or something that you're like, it's skill development, really, because being in flow means that the challenge of the task is slightly above your skill level. So you're stretching yourself just enough where you're so focused that you kind of lose time and lose a sense of yourself, right? You kind of lose total sense of you lose yourself consciousness because you're so engrossed in what you're doing. You kind of merge into the thing that you're working on. But it's not so difficult that you feel anxious or stressful, which of course would make you self-conscious again, right? So it's that like beautiful sweet spot where you're so engaged

in what you're doing. And it's, and this is the process of skill development. So you're just every time you're getting a little bit better because the challenge is slightly above your skill level. So that's number two. So PE, the R stands for relationships or positive relationships, which is an, you know, absolute foundational piece of our well-being is our social capital. And our relationships with others, how positive are our relationships with our closest inner circle and also to the less intimate circles as well. Do you have a community where there's a high level of trust and there's, you know, good feeling and that you know that people would support you and help you if you needed something, you have that level of mutual trust? And also, do you feel

like you have a wide range of acquaintances and friends that you interact with on a daily basis, because those are all generating experiences of positive emotion, too. So positive relationships. And then, so that's P-E-R. And then M stands for meaning. So living a life that's full of meaning and purpose, meaning that, and again, it doesn't have to be a religious, you know, there doesn't have to be a religious connotation to this. It could just be, you know, you feel that there's a reason to be that's beyond you, that you are connected with something bigger than you. Like, and I see, you know, right now with all of us in self-quarantine, you know, I've seen videos of people in New York City and everybody's getting on their balconies or opening their windows and clapping at 7 p.m. at night,

and it just makes me cry when I watch it, right? Because it's just this, it's all of these New Yorkers together saying, I'm in this fight with you. We're all together. We're all in solidarity. Right. Everybody is having this swell of meaning, right? Their life is imbued with deeper meaning because their act of staying home and their act of isolation is not about them. Right? It's about the greater good. So even in these bleak, dark times that feel uncertain and, you know, and fearful, we where we may feel fear and uncertainty, there's also these like beautiful sort of swelling of all of these other positive experiences.

So there's, you know, positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning. And then the fifth one, which I think is, in my opinion, is the most controversial of the five. It's achievement. I think it's very important to understand what kind of achievement that means. So humans are, you know,

we are goal-oriented organisms. everything we do is to some extent a goal. Like we have an intention and we then fulfill it. We want to go eat something. We go get a snack. That's fulfilling a goal. But it's really important to distinguish between an intrinsically motivated goal and an extrinsically motivated goal.

Meaning is it a goal that you're doing for the sake of it, for your own sake? Or are you doing it because you think that the achievement of it is going to then make you happy? Right. So if it's an externally motivated thing, it's a you're doing, you're achieving the goal to get the accolade or to feel a particular to get some kind of external validation or external accolade, which you then think is going to

make you feel happy. And that is not what we're talking about. We're talking about intrinsically motivated achievements. So you just answered one of my main questions, which was how do we have goals? Because I think goals are natural and they can be healthy, but how can we have those and simultaneously not place so much expectation on outcomes. Yeah, I mean, I think that the way that I would describe it is that, because I love goal setting and I love going after goals. I think it's such a, it is such a fun part of life, kind of, you know, blowing your own mind.

Like, what's more fun than that? It's amazing. And you look at kids in throughout their childhood, we create a system for them where there are very distinct milestones. that they're achieving every year that's baked into the system, right? And then I think one of the things that happens as we get older is we lose that structure around growth and development and expanding ourselves. You know, I think one of our tasks as adults is to create that for ourselves. I think it's really actually quite important. That being said, it has to be on the bedrock of self-acceptance.

It has to be generated from a place of, you know, I like me. I'm just doing. doing this to see what I'm capable of, it's not coming from a place of I loathe myself and I need to accomplish these things or be these things so that I am likable. So I'm lovable enough. That's a great distinction. Yeah. So you say that we've learned to only deal with our psychological health when it's an acute problem. So what are some steps that we can all take to start tending to our psychological health regularly rather than letting it get to that acute issue? Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that it's, you know, there's, if you think about the way that the field of psychology has developed has been in sort of lockstep with the medical model. So the way that we

treat illness in the West has been you get acutely sick and then you go to the doctor, right? Like our medicine is, our medical system is really set up for dealing with acute illness and making sick people not sick. And there is, thank goodness for this. We've had enormous advancements in medicine and it's incredibly important that we do this. That being said, right, we have not, we have lost focus on helping people prevent, preventable illnesses, right? So taking care of themselves so that we have a proliferation of, you know, diseases of affluence because we, you know, America, like we have fast food on the ready and we don't really have to move our bodies as much. We have lots of new technology that allows us to move very little.

And this is what I mean by affluence, is all of these technological advantages that we have have made it so that our physical body is not as healthy as it could potentially be. And we're seeing this happen all over the place. And the same thing is true, I think, with the way that psychology is developed, which is, you know, we developed a psychological, sort of care system that was there to help you when you were having an acute psychological disorder and you were dealing with something really severe. Then you would go seek counsel or help

psychological help and treatment. And we have made big advances also in helping people with dealing with psychological disease disorder dysfunction, you know, psychopathology. But it doesn't help us identify, like really to become more psychological. fit, so to speak, right? And we've had a huge shift in the last 20 years in the way that people think about taking care of their physical health, right? Like, we now prioritize exercise and meditation and, you know, an organic food and the way, you know, people really thinking about, like, what am I, how am I feeling my body? How am I taking care of myself? Like, we've really changed the way we think about this. And I think that there's going to be another wave of this happening

with people beginning to ask themselves a question of like, hold on a second, I'm taking care of my physical body, but how am I tending to my emotional and psychological health, right? It's interesting that you, that you classify meditation as a physical health thing. Well, I mean, right. I think, well, I guess it could be both. It's both because we live in, I mean, that's the truth. And I think this is where I think you, you hit on an important point, which is psychology for the most part, you know, and I'm, this is all, you know, making gross generalizations here, but by and large, you know, we've cut off the head from the body. We're like, oh, we're just going to treat the head.

We're going to treat you mental health. But a mind exists in a body. They're one. It's mind-body, right? You can't treat one without the other. If research is showing us anything, it's showing that this is all, you know, that's just the profound interconnection of everything. So, you know, like our immune system, our autonomic nerve endings are in our immune cells.

We used to think that there was a separate immune system and a separate nervous system. And they didn't, they weren't related. That's not true. They're very related. Our feeling stress gives us signals to get our, you know, tell our immune cells what to do. And vice versa, you know, the neurotransmitters on our immune cells are telling our body to shut down and to feel tiredness and to feel a low grade depression and to get a fever when we are needing to fight off a virus. right? So there's this constant back and forth communication between in our body. So this kind of fiction that we've created of like, oh, there's the mind and then there's the body and we can treat them

separately. It's like that's just not true. So right. I mean, meditation, like the research on meditation, right? It's like it tones your vagal nerve. So it does have a lot of physiological effects. It was a lack of coping skills when I was younger, lack of the ability to self-regulate. And then it was some, you know, circumstances that were really hard to deal with. And that's kind of what led me to it. But then when I found it, it was like, I found this thing that I didn't even know that I was missing my whole life. And then looking back on it, I can see, like, it was just fear. Fear drove me right into it. And fear ran the show for 10 years while I was doing it. Yeah. Right. And so when you're, like I use this acronym or like I call it the cognitive coaching model, but it's the letters are,

it's steer, it's spelled incorrectly, but S-T-E-A-R, and each letter is what, you know, it's essentially breaking down. It's, you know, it's sort of a CBT model or cognitive behavioral therapy model, but really breaking down how your mind works. So the S stands for there's a specific situation, which is external to you, right? That's like the reality of life. other people's behavior, you know, geopolitics, the weather, the parents you were born to, where you, you know, whatever. Like those are things you don't control. You never had any control over them, right?

Your gender, whatever, right? And then that's the only part of the model that's not under your direct control. Just it's. All of the situations that we're in are neutral until we have a thought about them, right? until we have a cognitive evaluation, right? And that's then the T stands for thought. So you have a thought. Your thought then makes that situation not neutral anymore, right?

And then we then have an evaluation of it, right? And that thought that we have creates an emotion. That's like in stoicism, they say like nothing is good or bad until you make a judgment about it. Exactly. Right. So you have a thought and then that thought creates an emotion, right? So then, and again, like alcohol is neutral. And what I mean by neutral is that I don't mean

that it's good. I mean, it's neutral. I mean, there are some people that think it's like, you know, poison and there's other people that think it's like, you know, their best friend. Truly. So it's, everybody has a different opinion about what alcohol is and what it means to them, right? And over the years, your thoughts about alcohol have changed. And those thoughts changing, changing, your emotion, what you feel, and what you feel then generates what you do. So if you have a thought like, oh my God, this is something, I didn't even know, it was like, where has this been all my life, right? This thought about alcohol, I mean, early days of drinking, you may have been thinking that, which generates desire, generates an emotion of pleasure, like joy, right, or whatever the

emotion may be. And then those emotions, desire certainly, like, create the action, the A stands for action. The actions are you go drink. You pour yourself a glass, right? You continue to drink. And then the result, and then you get a buzz and the result is like, oh my gosh, this thing, right? This is, this is the missing piece of my life. And what, because of the way our brain is biased, and we call this confirmation or cognitive bias or attention bias. It goes by one of those three names. It's just the way your brain is wired. The thought that you think is what, you know, because it creates an emotion and the action then creates a result, the result that you get is going to prove your thought true. Right. Right. So, you know,

if you're like, oh my gosh, like alcohol really helps my anxiety, then you're going to create a pattern of drinking when you're feeling anxious, like having a drink, and then you feel a little buzz and you're like, oh, see, see, result, anxiety's now numbed. I've blunted my anxiety, so you give yourself evidence that's true, right? And the reason why it's so important to like actually examine the year, and, you know, I use this acronym as like to steer your mind, right? So you're in the driver's seat. The thought that alcohol is, helps my anxiety is going to steer. your mind to get one result or the belief that like alcohol actually makes my anxiety worse is going to steer your emotions, actions, and results in a totally different direction.

It did make my anxiety worse and it it steered me towards Xanax. And then I just threw that in the mix. But I told, yeah, I got what you're saying. Well, so the original thought for you is like, I need something external to fix my anxiety. Yeah. Right? that's the thought that's the problem there. Right.

Right? Yeah. So pick your poison. Doesn't matter what it is. Xanax, alcohol, you know, endless compulsively watching shows, non-netflix, whatever it is.

Like we can come up with emotional Novocaine however we want. It's readily available to us in all different forms. Okay, let me go to the pantry and have snacks. Right? But the original thought error for you

was A, my anxiety is a problem and B, there's something outside of me is going to fix it, right? The work, I think, the real work for us in becoming more emotionally and psychologically resilient is in this work of uncovering our thought errors. Is uncovering what are the thoughts that are the problem? What are the thoughts that are keeping us locked in the cycle of one foot on the gas and one foot on the break. It's a process of getting to know yourself in a profound way and understanding and really like digging, you know, it's like forensically going through the ticker tape in your brain and really trying to identify what are the thoughts that are getting me into trouble here. How do you think people

get the willingness to do that? Because I know like, I know for myself, I stayed stuck for so many years because I was petrified of what I would find. And, you know, you kind of alluded to it earlier. Like, we have so many ways to numb out and distract ourselves and not have to be with ourselves that I think it's just becoming so uncomfortable. So do you think that people tend to have to get in enough pain to then do that? Or is there a way to kind of bypass? I think it's right.

Is there a way to bypass? No, I mean, I think that it's a different pain point. for everybody, but I do think it gets to, people have to get absolutely sick of their nonsense. Like, that's where the change begins. You're like, I can't take, I'm done. I'm so tired of this. I'm this Sisyphian hell that I'm in every day. I can't bear it anymore. And then what's the first step? Right? Exactly. I mean, I'm, you know, I've written through a 12-step program. I'm assuming that's what you referencing. And it saved my life. Right. I think it was the beginning of that willingness of like, okay, I'm actually going to take both feet off. I'm going to take the foot off the gas and I'm going to

take the foot off the break and I'm just going to surrender. Right. And, you know, and be willing to look under the hood and be willing to see what is getting me in trouble here. Like, what am I thinking that's the problem? What's the, and you know, and I said, it's like a glitch in the system, right? It's a thought error. Yeah, and there's so much power in surrendering. I think people probably who haven't been through, you know, some kind of adversity and subsequent recovery or a 12-step program or whatever. It's a hard concept to grasp, I think, because yeah, it just has this connotation that you're just throwing in the towel and giving up. So, like, you were doing this work, but you didn't know you were doing it, right? Because in the beginning of your recovery, you had to

believe new things like it's possible I can survive without alcohol, right? That's a new thought. That might create like a little bit of hope. Right. That hope generates different actions. It might generate the action of you going to a meeting. It might generate the action of you getting a sponsor. It might generate the action of you being willing to not have a drink one afternoon or whatever, right? And then you create new results, right? And then what happens is this is why, you know, our brains are wired to confirm, you know, like we prioritize information that affirms our current belief system and we will ignore and dismiss information that disputes our current belief system. That's just the way that your brain is wired. It requires an

enormous amount of energy expenditure for us to question our beliefs. But that's what you started to do in the beginning of recovery. You're like, well, maybe it's not true that, you know, the solution to my anxiety is external for me. Right. Right. Maybe that's actually, it's possible that's not true. So all of a sudden you're beginning, your life is being peppered with these new thoughts that are generating new feelings and new actions. And if you think about in the 12-step program, like they're so great about having all these sayings. There's so many. like little kind of catchy sayings that you, you know, are, you remember. And what they're doing is they're teaching you new belief systems, right? They're teaching, they're training your mind to

think differently, to access different thoughts. And so without even unknowing it, you were doing this process of you were actively shifting your mindset, because there is no behavioral, like behavioral change is always an expression of a mindset change. Right. You're not going to be, be able to stay sober for six years if you continue to believe that the solution to your anxiety is external to you or if you continue to believe that the solution to your anxiety is alcohol. Do not have strong enough willpower for that. Right. Yeah. And even with the 12 steps, you know, the result of the 12 steps is a spiritual experience, which isn't like a necessarily a burning bush, you know, kind of thing. It's a psychic change. That's, that's,

That's how they describe it, but it's just this shift in your thinking and your attitudes. And it's very profound. Totally profound. It's impossible to make a lasting, permanent change in your life without changing the way that you think. It doesn't work. So, you know, what I do with my clients is exactly that, is that we are constantly working on shaping your mindset on purpose. Actively, like you're going to the gym, you're doing your reps, but we're doing reps on our

thoughts. And how do you, without giving away your whole practice, but how do you, how do you do that? How do you exercise that? Well, I mean, it's so funny. People are like, I want to change my mindset. And then like, why am I thinking the same thought I was thinking yesterday? I'm like, oh my gosh, right? If someone was like, I want to learn to speak French, they wouldn't have any expectation that

they were going to learn how to speak a new language in a day, right? Right. They would be completely fine with it being clunky and cumbersome and them getting the wrong words and it's not right. And it takes a long time, right? It takes some significant amount of A practice and be time and effort to develop the skills to be able to converse in another language, right? So you're training your reign to converse in another language and it takes and requires practice.

So, and most people are spending zero time practice. new thoughts, right? Like, I'm working with my clients to help them, you know, giving them feedback and support in this process. But, you know, like, thinking, like, this, what is the result that I want to create in my life? Like, what would I need to think to create that result? Actually, we're reverse engineering it and thinking about it backwards, right? What would I need to think to create a particular result? Like, if you want to give up, I mean, to stay on the theme, like, if you want to give up drinking, it's, I highly recommend that you work on. on thoughts that make you not want to drink anymore, right? Because if you're relying on willpower

to do that, it's going to be miserable. If you don't want to drink anymore, you want to be someone who genuinely loves not to drink. Right. Otherwise, life is going to be pretty grim, right? So this is the same thing with like if someone's trying to like clean up their food or whatever, right? If they're believing that like, oh, eating this way is depriving myself, like that is a totally toxic thought. Because it's not, you're never going to sustain the change. You have to actually believe like, oh, eating like this is life affirming. Eating like this feels awesome. Right. Not drinking is the best thing ever happened to me. That's how you need to believe. If you believe that thought, you're not going to want to drink. You're going to love your life not drinking. Right. So you have to

like what I call, I call this like mindware upgrades or like a mindware update, right? Like you're upgrading your software and your brain. So, you know, you're not going to go. from like, you know, I, I'm dependent, like, I need alcohol to make my life better. Like, I can't imagine my life. Like, I can't imagine my life without it to my life is so much better without alcohol. Like, you don't, you're not going to get from that one thought to the other in a day. But you can start with, you know, I'm looking for evidence that I can exist without alcohol. that's one upgraded thought right that's one mindware upgrade and then what your beautiful brain will do is it will go to work proving that thought true because of the way that is wired because of

confirmation bias or cognitive bias your brain will actually go to work finding evidence that it's totally true that you can exist without alcohol and then you're like oh that's interesting yeah I didn't really want alcohol for breakfast I seem to not need it then right so you begin your brain will start, it's like the aperture of your brain then expands, right? Your mind, the aperture of your mind expands and you begin to see evidence that that thought is actually true. Like, oh yeah, there are actually plenty of times that I don't even want it. Right. Don't even want alcohol. So telling myself that I just, I like, I just love to drink and I just want to drink all the time. That's actually not accurate. Right. So you're working on little incremental improvements in your

thought to get you to the goal thought of my life is better without alcohol. It's interesting. It's almost like you're tricking your brain. Yeah. Telling it what to believe. Well, of course, like this is like why I, you know, this is why I made the acronym to be steer. You're in the driver's seat. Like, you get to decide where you're steering your life. Otherwise, you're just at the mercy of, right, you're just reacting to life, constantly reacting to life, which feels so powerless. Yeah. Right. and exactly like you get to look at your life and you're using, you're thinking about like, you know, you're using your higher order brain, your neocortex to decide what's the life I actually really want to be living? Who do I actually really want to be? And your primal brain is going to freak out

and scream and yell and have a tantrum and not want to do it. Right. And so your job is to sort of like give it little thoughts that make it, you know, like, okay, well, we're just going to go here today. We're just going to look at, like, we're just going to do this. Like, you know, we're going to find one thought that maybe isn't taking me all the way to the other side of this, but it's just a slight improvement. Why do you think it is that we resist that so much, though? Why do we resist change? Yeah.

So much. Because it feels so threatening to the brain, right? because it's we are, we are absolutely wired to stay with what's familiar. Like we are, we'd rather just like little mushrooms in our own feces. We'd rather be in our little comfortable, humid little pile of, you know, excrement than change. I mean, really, that's how our brains are wired. We just, your brain, it's like it's, it's, um,

it's almost like it's addicted to the feelings that it's been generating, forever. So, you know, I think it really goes back to, you know, your childhood development. But if you grew up in an environment where you felt, you know, stressed and anxious all the time, life feels very strange when you don't feel stressed and anxious, right? So you will create lots of experiences. You will literally create the experiences that make you feel stressed and anxious. If you grew up in an environment where you feel threatened a lot, you will feel, totally comfortable in threatening environments and put yourself in situations where you are probably more likely to be or to feel threatened. So this is not for the faint of heart. Like this work is hard

and it's deeply uncomfortable, but it is the pathway to freedom. I love that. To close out, what is one piece of advice that you have for people right now? Because we are in this time that's, you know, very scary, very uncertain. I think we're all maybe a little addicted to like the outrage of it all. So is there some piece of advice or a tip or something that we could implement or internalize right now that might be helpful? Yeah. I love outrage is so good because it's just such a beautiful way of describing it's outrage, right? You're out you're externalizing your rage. It's something else, right? We're blaming something else for our feelings. It's like sticking your head in a quart of ice cream. It feels so, or a bottle of wine, it feels so good. It's like in the moment you're like

such a great indulgence because it means that we're completely abdicating any responsibility, right? And then you get on Twitter and it's confirmed over and over and over again. Oh, yeah. You're like, oh, and let me join like the throngs of people who are all like unloading their rage and thinking that their rage actually exists somewhere else other than in them, you know? So, you know, the one thing I would say is that you're really stepping into emotional adulthood, like you're really stepping into your adulthood when you are willing to take full responsibility for your thoughts, emotions, actions, and results, right? When you are recognizing that any emotion you're feeling, including your rage, is because of a thought that you're thinking.

And I'm not saying that being angry isn't a useful emotion. Like, yes, recognizing injustice and doing something about it that's useful is very important. But that's not, you know, jumping on Twitter and jumping on the bandwagon just to like unload and unleash and vent is not particularly effective or useful. Right. So really, I think the most important thing is this being willing to do the, you know, know the grown-up work of I'm taking 100% responsibility for my thoughts, emotions, actions, and results. You know, if I'm indulging in outrage, it's, I'm doing it to make myself feel better. That's it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And it's just another way to. It's just another

emotional novacane. Yeah. I love that. Well, how can people find you? How can they work with you? Yeah. I am on, um, at my, website, which is DRS-A-S-H-A-H-E-I-N-Z. And the same on Instagram. It's at Dr. Sasha H-R-S-A-H-E-I-N-Z. And I work with groups. I do group coaching, which is really profound, working with other women together in a group and watching other people get coached live. And it's just, you know, such a profound experience. When you're not in the hot seat, you can really watching somebody else get coached, it's so easy to, it's so much easier to see how their thoughts are causing their suffering, right? You can really see it. When you're in the hot seat, you're like,

no, no, my thoughts are very real. And, you know, I think it's just been such a, it's been such a wonderful experience for me to see this, you know, the alchemy that happens, this like special magic that happens when these groups get together. And, you know, the results that my clients are getting, it's just so awesome. It's just been such a fun experience. I'd still do one-on-one, but I primarily do group coaching. Yeah. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for coming on. And I'm going to have all of that in show notes. So people can just go there and find you that way. And I really enjoyed talking to you. Thank you so much. Oh, it's been so much fun to talk to you, too. I hope you enjoyed that episode. If you liked it. And if you

like the show in general, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe. It goes a long way, and it's actually the best way to support the show. Also, if you want to see more about each episode, you can head over to The Blonde Files podcast on Instagram. I'm always posting about each episode there or over on my personal page at Ariel Lorry.