0:00

When we put the achievement as the absolute

0:02

pinnacle of who we are,

0:05

and that's our happiness and our self worth,

0:07

that's when we completely lose perspective. Welcome

0:18

to the one you feed Throughout

0:20

time, great thinkers have recognized the

0:22

importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes

0:24

like garbage in, garbage out, or

0:27

you are what you think ring true,

0:30

and yet for many of us, our thoughts

0:32

don't strengthen or empower us. We

0:34

tend toward negativity, self pity,

0:37

jealousy, or fear. We see

0:39

what we don't have instead of what we do.

0:42

We think things that hold us back and dampen

0:44

our spirit. But it's not just about

0:46

thinking our actions matter. It

0:49

takes conscious, consistent, and creative

0:51

effort to make a life worth living. This

0:54

podcast is about how other people keep

0:56

themselves moving in the right direction, how

0:58

they feed their good will. Thanks

1:14

for joining us. Our guest on this episode

1:16

is Claire Booth and entrepreneur, author,

1:19

and speaker. She's the founder and

1:21

CEO of market research firm

1:24

Lux Insights, with two decades

1:26

of experience serving some of the world's most

1:28

recognized brands. Her book is

1:30

The Achiever Fever Cure, How I

1:33

learned to stop striving myself crazy.

1:35

Hi Claire, Welcome to the show. Hi Eric,

1:37

thanks for having me. I'm excited to have you

1:40

on. Your book is called The Achiever Fever

1:42

Cure, How I learned to stop striving

1:45

myself crazy. And we will get into

1:47

all the details of that shortly, but

1:49

let's start like we always do, with the parable.

1:52

There is a grandmother who's talking

1:54

to her grandson and she says, in life,

1:57

there are two wolves inside of us that are

1:59

always at bad at all. One is a

2:01

good wolf, which represents things like kindness

2:03

and bravery and love, and the other

2:06

is a bad wolf, which represents things

2:08

like greed and hatred and fear. And

2:10

the grandson stops and he thinks about

2:12

it for a second, and he looks up at his grandmother

2:15

says, well, grandmother, which one wins?

2:18

And the grandmother says, the one you feed.

2:20

So I'd like to start off by asking you

2:22

what that parable means to you in your

2:24

life and in the work that you do. So

2:27

the first time I heard that parable was

2:29

the first time I heard your show, and

2:31

I was listening to it while I was hiking, because

2:33

I often listened to podcasts while I hike, and

2:36

I remember hearing that parable and hearing the last

2:38

line, and it literally stopped me

2:40

in my tracks, because

2:43

only a couple of weeks previous

2:45

had I started to become aware

2:48

of this voice in my head, this

2:50

really loud, negative, incessantly

2:53

nagging voice in my head. And

2:55

so when I heard the parable, that

2:58

was my realization that it's

3:00

not just me. There's other people that suffer

3:02

from this and well, and in fact, here's a whole show

3:05

about it, here's a whole podcast about it,

3:08

and so as as you know, this podcast

3:10

has been a huge part of my personal

3:12

self transformation. So once

3:14

I became aware of this bad

3:16

wolf, the first thing I wanted to do was

3:19

just starve it out. I wanted to I wanted

3:21

to just watch it die. But

3:23

I soon realized it doesn't work that way.

3:25

Having a good wolf necessarily

3:28

means that we're going to have a bad wolf.

3:30

You can't have one without the other. The concept

3:32

of good needs the concept of bad um

3:35

And so what I had to do

3:37

was learn how to love my

3:39

bad wolf, which was surprisingly

3:43

easy because I started to realize

3:45

how much that bad wolf and those

3:47

feelings of fear and self doubt

3:50

and worry had brought me

3:52

success to that point in

3:54

my life, And it was only when I

3:56

learned to start loving and finding the gratitude

3:58

for my bad wolf that I was able to

4:01

start developing a relationship with my good

4:03

wolf. The bad wolf had been

4:05

so dominant up until that point

4:07

that I didn't really have a relationship with my good

4:09

wolf. So now my relationship

4:12

with my good wolf basically means

4:14

keeping my inner house clean. So,

4:17

for example, when the bad wolf

4:19

gets fed and it as

4:22

it will, I just watch the

4:24

feeding, so I try

4:26

to step back. I don't try to resist

4:28

it, I don't try to stop it, I don't necessarily

4:31

try to talk myself out of it. I just become

4:33

aware that, oh, this is happening right

4:35

now. And as I watch,

4:37

I become more aware of the words, more

4:39

aware of the thoughts. That

4:41

brings me into presence. And

4:44

once I'm in presence, those feelings

4:46

of gratitude and love, that kind

4:48

of higher elevated states starts to emerge

4:50

from that. Just to take the analogy

4:52

a little further, I get regular

4:55

reminders that I have overfed

4:57

my bad wolf for so long, because

5:00

sometimes he just kind of barfs up his food,

5:03

Like when I least expect it just barfs

5:05

it up. I don't think we've had that

5:07

analogy before. So

5:10

if I try ignore, you know, that

5:12

kind of pile of puke, right and pretend

5:14

it doesn't exist, then it really starts

5:17

to smell awful, and I get myself into this

5:19

emotional turmoil. UM. And

5:21

so now what I do is again try to bring

5:23

myself into presence and UM,

5:26

give that bad wolf a bit of a compassionate

5:29

pat on the head and say, oh, yeah, there

5:31

you are and uh, and

5:33

either get present or inquire into what

5:36

prompted, for lack of the better word, puke

5:38

in the first place. That's great. That is a new

5:40

analogy. I'll give you that, and it's a

5:42

good one. So let's go back a

5:44

little ways to what got

5:47

you to the point that you wrote a book

5:49

called The achiever Fever Cure.

5:52

Um. It's one I certainly relate with.

5:54

The achievement has been something that I have

5:56

seen as both the good and the bad

5:58

wolf in my own life, and so

6:01

so I'm very interested in, um,

6:03

how you did that. But let's set the stage

6:05

about what brought you to the point that

6:08

you sort of embarked on this new journey

6:10

of even trying to not

6:12

be an achiever all the time. Right,

6:14

So, being an achiever has

6:16

been my identity for as long as I can possibly

6:19

remember, and as a result,

6:21

it's brought me all sorts of success in

6:24

my business and athletics and

6:26

and um so I never really thought to question

6:29

it. What I didn't do

6:31

was make the tie between being an achiever

6:34

and these feelings of anxiety

6:36

and depression and

6:38

for me insomnia, um

6:41

and and you experienced that

6:43

enough that finally I started to see

6:45

the pattern. And it

6:47

got to the point where I was about five years

6:49

into running my business, and

6:53

you know, everything was going the way

6:55

I wanted it to go. We were profitable,

6:57

we were growing twenty percent a year. I was adding great

6:59

new employees. We were at in clients each

7:02

year. You know, everything in my my life

7:04

seemed good. But

7:06

I was miserable because

7:09

all of this was accompanied by this

7:11

anxiety and beating myself up, and this

7:13

constant worry and this needing to prove.

7:16

And uh so, five years in,

7:20

I had experienced this patterns so many times

7:23

that I thought I'm gonna be at risk of

7:25

being a liability to my own company

7:28

if I don't do something. My employees need

7:30

a confident, you know, a

7:33

confident, strong leader. They don't need somebody

7:35

that's constantly beating themselves up. And

7:37

so there came a point where I just had

7:40

to hold up my hand and

7:42

and say enough, I cannot live my

7:44

life like this anymore. I I can't go days

7:46

without sleep. There's got to

7:48

be a better way, right And your business

7:51

is market research. That's

7:53

kind of what you do. And one of

7:55

the things you did is part of this book, is you

7:57

did some market research quote unquote

8:00

on other high achievers, and

8:03

I did. And one of the things that you

8:05

found was that this anxiety,

8:08

depression, insomnia was certainly

8:10

not limited to you. A matter of fact,

8:13

it was relatively prevalent in

8:15

a lot of achievers. It

8:17

was prevalent. Yeah. Um, So I

8:19

did a survey of hundreds of other self reported

8:21

achievers, and one of the questions

8:24

I asked was, when was the last time you experienced

8:26

insomnia? Are really bad sleep?

8:29

And over a third of the of

8:31

the achievers that I spoke to or that

8:33

that did the survey, over a third said

8:35

they had experienced insomnia that week

8:38

alone. And then depression,

8:40

you know, fift within the past six months,

8:43

and anxiety within the

8:45

past couple of weeks, it was high.

8:47

Yeah, yeah, And it's one of those things that

8:50

I've noticed throughout my career

8:52

that achievers don't want

8:54

to talk about. Right, you wrestle with us

8:57

if you're leading a company, Right, you

8:59

don't want to reject anxiety

9:01

about how the companies do into your employees.

9:04

You know, there's been more writing in the last few

9:06

years about the incidents of depression

9:08

among entrepreneurs how high it really

9:11

is, because I think that part

9:13

of what achievers get

9:15

into they are seen as achievers,

9:18

and often that's the image they feel

9:20

like they need to project, so they don't

9:22

acknowledge it to themselves, let alone

9:25

anyone else. Right, we don't

9:28

acknowledge it within ourselves

9:30

because it's so important to us for

9:32

everyone to see us as strong and

9:34

powerful and and on top of things

9:36

and in control of things. Um

9:39

but the stats and my own experience show

9:41

that that's not the case at all, So we almost

9:43

double down on on trying

9:45

to prove ourselves.

9:48

Of my achievers say, they are trying to always

9:50

prove that they are the strong, confident,

9:53

powerful being, And

9:56

the ability to make oneself vulnerable

9:58

gets further and further us down and we know,

10:01

based on Burnet Brown and and uh

10:03

speakers and writers like that, how much

10:06

strength there is in vulnerability.

10:08

And this is starting to make its way into business

10:10

circles now, but it's still I mean,

10:12

it's still pretty quiet in terms of people

10:14

actually doing it right. Absolutely,

10:17

I think it is still a thing there. So let's

10:19

talk about achiever fever. What

10:22

is it? Because, um,

10:24

you didn't walk off and give up your business.

10:27

You wrote a book, I mean, so you continued

10:29

to achieve. What's the

10:31

difference between achieving and

10:34

achiever fever. It's a good question.

10:37

So achiever fever is the dark

10:39

side of achieving. There's nothing

10:41

wrong with achieving. There's nothing wrong

10:43

with having goals and working hard

10:45

and wanting to do your best. There's nothing wrong at all

10:48

with that. Achiever fever

10:50

is the dark side of achieving. It's when we tie

10:53

our our happiness,

10:55

our sense of self worth to

10:58

our achievements and get

11:00

away from seeing an achievement as

11:02

just another point in time.

11:06

So when we we put the achievement as

11:08

the abstule, absolute pinnacle

11:10

of who we are and

11:12

thus our happiness and our self worth, that's

11:15

when we completely lose perspective and

11:17

we enter into this delusion, the

11:20

spell of if I'm not working

11:22

towards my achievement, then

11:25

there's something very very wrong with me,

11:27

And it means I'm lazy. It means

11:29

I'm weak, it means i'm ordinary

11:32

average, you know, it means I'm

11:35

it means I'm dying or going

11:37

backwards. And it's a real kind of polarity

11:40

in our thinking. So I

11:42

continue to achieve in different aspects

11:45

of my life, but I don't have the fever

11:48

now like I used to. Yeah, there's so many things

11:50

I think in what you said there.

11:52

I think there's the tying of

11:54

our self worth to what we achieve.

11:57

You know, this very fundamental am

12:00

what I do. Right.

12:03

There's also the

12:05

idea of I'll be happy when

12:09

when I achieve this, then I'll be happy. Everything

12:11

up till then is just me getting

12:14

to that point. And what most of us

12:16

know, if we've had enough years

12:18

on this earth, is that we get

12:20

there and we're not really any happier.

12:22

Maybe we are for a day, a week,

12:25

depends, you know, three hours, and

12:28

then we just set the next goal. We

12:30

just how we get Now it's the next thing, and off

12:32

we go. It's this perpetual

12:35

I'll be happy when kind of thing.

12:37

And then the other thing that you sort of set

12:39

in there and you allude to in the book that uh,

12:41

you know, I'll just I'll bring up is

12:44

that we can do this with anything

12:47

if we tend to be achievers. It

12:49

doesn't tend to only be Oh, I'm

12:51

achiever at work. But at

12:53

least for me, it's always been, well, yes, I'm

12:55

achiever here, and then if I'm going to start

12:58

playing tennis, I have to be really

13:00

good at tennis. And you

13:03

know, if I'm going to meditate, I've really got

13:05

to be good at meditating. And it's

13:07

just everything gets swept up.

13:09

Right when I'm at my uh

13:12

let's say, less evolved mindset, it

13:14

sucks everything in for me. Well, what tends

13:16

to happen I find, at least in my experience

13:18

and the people that I talked to, is that

13:21

we tend to gravitate two things that

13:23

we are good at so that we can achieve

13:25

in them. Because you're right, it's not just work,

13:27

it's not just sports. It's anything else

13:30

that I put my mind to. I want to, you

13:32

know, I need to achieve at

13:34

it. So so much of what was interesting

13:37

to me previous, but I

13:39

didn't think I'd be very good at you

13:41

know, I let it fall by the wayside

13:43

um and just getting back to what you were talking about

13:45

earlier, this need to to to set the next

13:48

goal, because you're right that the elation

13:50

that comes from achievement can last anywhere

13:52

from ten seconds to thirty seconds.

13:55

Throw a bottle of wine in there. It can last in the evening,

13:57

but the next day. It's not just setting the next

13:59

goal. Goal. The goal has got to be a

14:02

little bit bigger, a little bit faster, a

14:04

little bit better, because now we're trying

14:06

to prove ourselves at the next level,

14:09

and it it brings us into the cycle

14:11

of craving, right like we crave these

14:13

achievements because we're convinced that that's what's going to

14:15

make us happy. And you know that when

14:17

we get into that craving mindset, we'll

14:20

never be happy. You know. It's it's we

14:22

will never get to where we think

14:25

we can be, and it's such a

14:27

limiting mindset. So when you embarked

14:30

on this journey, you engaged a guy

14:32

who is a climbing coach of yours to kind

14:34

of help you through this journey, and you had a line in there

14:36

I can't resist reading, which is this

14:38

is your husband would think I hired the dreaded

14:41

life coach, code for you can't

14:43

get your ship together, so pay a bunch of money

14:45

to someone else who can't get their shipped together,

14:48

which I thought was really funny, And

14:51

I guess in a way, I'm a life coach. So I read

14:53

it and laughed because I certain I've

14:55

always disliked that word because I think it has

14:57

that connotation. But you now use coach

15:00

is for a lot of your leaders in your business.

15:02

I do. Every leader in my business now

15:04

has their own personal coach. And

15:07

I know um that those conversations

15:10

that happened between senior staff and coaches

15:12

are probably just as much personal as they are business.

15:15

In fact, they're probably more personal than they are business.

15:18

And back when I was really suffering

15:20

with achiever fever, the idea of having

15:23

a coach, the idea of having someone

15:25

to help me hold my hand, was

15:27

something I resisted so strongly because

15:30

I thought, how do I need somebody to show me how

15:32

to live my life? Like, surely

15:34

I'm better than that. And

15:36

and now I see the absolute

15:39

importance of a coach, you

15:41

know, any professional um

15:43

for that matter, because we limit

15:46

ourselves and the questions that we ask ourselves,

15:48

the stories that we're in, and if we don't

15:50

have a coach, you know, to question us

15:53

of poke holes into our stories or show us

15:55

that we're believing our own stories, you

15:57

know, we we hold ourselves back. So yeah,

16:00

on the coaching. So

16:25

let's talk about some of what you

16:28

started to do to deal

16:30

with your achiever fever. And I

16:33

feel like one of the first things was

16:35

you recognized the

16:37

inner critic or you also called it

16:40

the judge. The judge. Yeah,

16:42

And that was one of the first things that my coach

16:44

helped me to do, was to become aware

16:47

of this voice that I just accepted on autopilot

16:49

for so long. I thought of the voice the same

16:51

way I thought of any appendage on my body.

16:54

It was just it was just part

16:56

of me. In fact, it was me. The voice

16:58

was me. I could not imagine

17:00

ever uncoupling those things. And

17:03

um, So, once my coach had drawn

17:05

my attention to how loud

17:08

and dominant this voice was, um,

17:11

the first thing that I do that I did

17:13

was name it. And for me,

17:16

the judge was it just kind of fell

17:18

out of my mouth. I didn't even have to think too hard about it.

17:20

And then the next thing I did was actually

17:23

find an image that described it. And

17:25

for me, it was just like this gnarled,

17:27

blackened tree stump. This, you

17:30

know, something that had been in a forest fire or something was just

17:32

bleak and dead. And once I

17:34

had a name and an image, I was

17:36

able to move that inner voice from the back

17:38

of my head right between my eyes where

17:41

I couldn't not see it, and

17:43

my awareness of it grew and grew and

17:45

grew until I learned how to start

17:47

disrupting it and questioning

17:49

it. And that was the game changer for me, was

17:51

realizing that that inner voice lied

17:54

to me, not through any fault of its own.

17:57

You know, it's it's it's evolved to keep

17:59

us safe and to protect us

18:02

um. And so it fills us

18:05

with fear and worry and self

18:07

doubt um, And so

18:09

I would just believe whatever that inner critic told

18:11

me to do on autopilot. And learning that it lied

18:15

with the game changer for me, and learning how to question

18:17

it a couple of different things there.

18:19

That leads me into a concept

18:21

you discussed in the book that I'm always so interested

18:24

in, which is what is this voice

18:26

that is talking to us all the time, because

18:29

most of us, if we stop, we noticed like it's

18:31

just going on on and on. I was on a

18:33

silent retreat recently and I just, you know,

18:36

nothing to do, but here the here the damn

18:38

thing, right, and I, you know, I walk away

18:40

just always sort of astounded, like if

18:42

I had a friend who talked

18:44

to me not only that negatively, but

18:47

just that boringly and repetitively

18:50

and and namely, I'd

18:52

be like I would I wouldn't like

18:55

four hours later, I would be like, I am never

18:57

hanging out with that person again.

19:00

But that's what we have going on

19:03

in our head. So let's talk about what

19:05

that thing is. You name

19:07

it the left brain interpreter.

19:10

Tell us a little bit more about

19:12

what is this narrative that's happening,

19:15

right. So that's that's not my name.

19:17

That's a name that comes from cognitive psychology,

19:20

the left brain interpreter, And it's the name

19:22

for that inner narrator

19:24

that, as you said, just goes on repeat. And

19:26

I love the way that you explain it, like it's so boring

19:30

and it says the same thing over and you're like, shut

19:32

up already. But it's called the left

19:35

brain interpreter, and it evolved,

19:38

um, you know, over the hundreds

19:40

of thousands of millennia of years to keep

19:43

us safe, and it's it is constantly

19:45

looking for threats. And

19:48

we live in a world where there's not really

19:51

a lot of threats anymore, Like, yeah, there's

19:53

some environmental wackiness going on, and maybe

19:55

some political wackiness going on, but in

19:57

terms of real threats, there's not much

19:59

out there are, so our left brand

20:01

interpreter tends to make them up. And

20:04

if it can't identify any obvious

20:07

threats, it will find those threats within

20:09

ourselves or or with other people.

20:11

So we start to look at other people as

20:13

as threats and if we can't find another people

20:16

will find it in ourselves. There's science

20:19

that explain how the left brand interpreter

20:21

works, and a science experiment

20:24

um that actually proves

20:27

that this left brain interpreter will

20:29

tell us lies because it

20:31

just bases itself

20:33

off the thoughts that we have, and when we

20:35

say things like oh, I'm you know, I'm

20:37

so depressed today everything is just kind of crappy,

20:40

it just will um narrate

20:43

our lives back to us with that same

20:45

theme. So we're stuck in that vicious

20:47

circle. Yeah, it's amazing because the studies

20:50

that you're referring to, among many other are

20:53

the famous split brain experiments,

20:55

right. And what it sort of shows

20:58

is that you know the science more more

21:00

and and a lot of spiritual traditions

21:02

tend to say that, you know what, there's

21:04

not this one self in there. There's actually

21:07

there's a lot of things going on in our brain

21:10

consciously, subconsciously, you

21:12

know. It's almost to think of it as a bunch of

21:14

different processes, right, And one

21:16

of those processes is this left brain

21:18

narrator who tries

21:21

to explain everything. That's

21:23

its primary job. I've also heard it referred to

21:25

as the press secretary. Right. It's trying

21:27

to explain everything. And what some

21:29

of these split brain studies show, and people

21:31

who have had their brain essentially

21:34

split in half to stop them from having seizures,

21:37

is that one half of the brain will decide to do

21:39

something. The other half of the brain,

21:42

that is, the left brain interpreter, has

21:44

no idea why that side of the brain decided

21:46

to do it, but it just immediately

21:49

makes up some crazy reason

21:52

that it is completely

21:54

unaware of. Right. And so

21:56

it's such an interesting thing to me that

21:59

that brain is just going along

22:01

trying to explain lots of stuff

22:03

that it simply can't explain. It

22:05

doesn't know, but it has to make a

22:08

coherent story out of it. It has

22:10

to like, for example, um, I

22:12

remember going into

22:14

my hotel room and I

22:16

told my team, look, don't call me, don't don't

22:19

text me. I want to have this private weekend

22:21

with my partner and uh,

22:23

you know, just let me know if there's an absolute

22:26

emergency. And that I remember getting into my hotel room

22:28

and looking across the room and seeing the

22:30

red light on the hotel room phone

22:33

lit up, and my

22:35

first thought was like, oh shit, something's

22:38

happened. You know, there's a cash flow thing,

22:40

like a client has freaked out, something

22:43

really bad has happened. And

22:45

my whole body was consumed with

22:48

that thought. Right it was, It was totally

22:50

true. In that moment, my stomach

22:52

sees, my hands clenched, my jaw

22:55

clenched, and I walked

22:57

over to the desk, feeling that's

23:00

rests you know, grow and grow and heighten

23:02

and heighten. And I leaned over the desk

23:04

and I saw that that red light indicated

23:07

that the phone was charging, so that nobody

23:10

had called. But had I not gone

23:12

over to factually ascertain why

23:14

that red light was on, I would have stayed

23:16

in that that that heightened, you

23:19

know, fearful state. And so

23:21

often in our lives we are in that

23:23

state, and we don't think

23:25

to actually check factually

23:28

whether what we believe is actually true.

23:31

Right. And when you said earlier, you know that

23:33

left brain interpreter will say I'm so depressed,

23:36

right, and then off will trigger these things.

23:38

And I have started to really

23:40

notice that phenomenon in me.

23:43

It will say I'm so depressed, or

23:45

another one that happens, my back hurts

23:47

so bad, and then from there it'll be like, I

23:49

don't know if I can take it? How long can I Everything

23:52

hurts? I mean, it's just and if I

23:54

stop and go, well, hang on a second, like,

23:57

how do I know I'm depressed? Right?

23:59

How I actually know I'm depressed?

24:02

Or how do I know my back hurts? What

24:04

does my back feel like? I almost

24:07

suddenly realized, particularly with the back,

24:09

that it doesn't hurt that bad, that

24:12

there was this automatic sensation

24:14

that arises, and then

24:16

all of a sudden, that left brain interpreter takes

24:19

off. My back hurts so

24:21

bad, Poor me, I can't stake everything

24:23

hurts. What am I gonna do? I'm I just

24:25

I'm like, whoa hold, honest, I'm like, it's

24:28

really interesting. So let's talk

24:30

about a big piece for you

24:33

that you said of dealing with the inner critic. The

24:35

judge will start to question those thoughts

24:37

because noticing them is very

24:40

important, right, Not resisting

24:42

them is very important, which

24:45

is tough sometimes but critical, And so

24:47

is checking them for veracity,

24:51

right, like actually checking them

24:53

to see if they are true. Um,

24:55

you know, I often think it's it's you know, it

24:58

makes sense to like allow the thought

25:00

the emotion to be, not not forcing

25:02

it away, but then actually take a look

25:04

at it pretty closely. So talk

25:07

to me about how that worked for you. Well,

25:09

I think the first thing is to

25:11

actually understand that you

25:14

are believing a thought. You got

25:16

to identify what that thought is. And

25:19

the way that I do that is it will creep up

25:21

in my body, something will go tight and

25:24

I will fall out of that ease state,

25:27

and that's my queue to know that, Okay, I'm

25:29

I'm believing something. I'm I'm I'm caught

25:31

with this thought. And often what I used

25:33

to do was whenever I felt in that state.

25:36

Um, I thought, you know, well, this is uncomfortable

25:38

and I want to be comfortable, so let's

25:41

go and eat something, or let's go and drink something,

25:43

or let's fall asleep or watch something on Netflix,

25:45

anything to have to deal with this thought, which

25:48

of course never worked at all because

25:51

I would just take that thought into the eating, of the drinking,

25:53

the Netflix, and then it would be doubly bad.

25:56

So by identifying it and writing it

25:58

down, what I then learned to do

26:00

was inquire into it. And the way that I

26:02

learned to do that was through this woman,

26:04

Byron Katie, and

26:07

she has the system of self inquiry

26:10

called the Work and you can find

26:12

that online the work dot com. She's very free

26:14

and open with it. Yeah, there's also

26:16

a previous episode of US with Byron

26:19

Katie if listeners, if you want to look for that

26:21

where I interviewed her son

26:23

way I couldn't encourage listeners

26:26

to do. Yeah, go and find that episode.

26:28

For sure. I had the privilege of going

26:30

to UM the Nine Day School,

26:33

the School for the Work, which is where I learned

26:35

how to do the work. And just quickly

26:37

to paraphrase how it works is it's

26:40

taking that stressful thought asking

26:42

ourselves is that true? And

26:45

usually that first response will be yeah,

26:47

Yeah, of course that's true, because it's

26:49

just a natural kind of habit, like, yeah,

26:51

of course I believe what I say. But

26:53

then we say, is that

26:56

absolutely true? And

26:59

I add to that, in a court of law,

27:01

can I say

27:03

that that is true? And usually

27:06

in that question I can find something

27:08

just a sliver of a

27:10

doubt, and that is enough

27:13

to start shedding some like to let some light

27:15

in. I think of that Leonard Cohen line,

27:18

there's a crack in everything that that's how

27:20

the light gets in. We have to find that crack,

27:22

and that question alone helps us identify

27:25

that crack. And then the third question

27:27

is, um, how do you react what

27:29

happens when you believe the thought? Which

27:32

is a really easy question to answer, right Like, I'm

27:34

if I'm believing the thought that I've done a bad job

27:36

on a presentation, I'll think, oh,

27:38

well, I feel like I didn't try hard enough, and I feel

27:41

like I'm being judged, and i feel like I'm gonna lose that client,

27:43

and I feel like really angry with myself, And it's

27:45

really easy to answer that question. And

27:47

then the next question is who would

27:49

you be without that thought,

27:53

and that can be a very difficult question to answer

27:56

because you're so hooked onto that thought. And if it's

27:58

really difficult to answer, it just shows

28:00

you how in that thought

28:03

you are. And when you're in that thought,

28:05

you can't see anything

28:07

else. You are completely blinded. So

28:09

then you answer that question and you realize

28:12

as you answer it, how at

28:14

peace and happy and and um,

28:16

you know, full of joy you could be if you weren't

28:19

believing that thought. Now

28:21

you can't magically like let

28:23

that thought go. There's no kind of magic that

28:25

allows you to do that. And so Byron

28:28

Katie gives us these three turnarounds

28:30

where we take that thought and flip it

28:33

to the opposite to the other. And once we start

28:35

working that thought through different lenses,

28:38

um, usually we get to a place where it's like

28:41

that thought is like a complete lie. What

28:43

was I thinking? And there has

28:45

been nothing that I've done the work on thus

28:47

far that I wasn't able to find

28:49

some kind of cracking And

28:51

Byron Katie argues, there's really nothing out

28:54

there they won't completely dissipate once

28:56

you do the work on it. Yeah,

29:30

you were doing interviews for your book, and I think you asked

29:32

me, what do you think of Byron Katie, and I said, I actually

29:35

think it's a very useful framework. It's sort

29:37

of like cognitive behavioral

29:39

therapy in certain ways. It's a it's a structured

29:41

method of of inquiring

29:43

into our thoughts. Um. My question

29:46

for you is, sometimes

29:48

it seems that thought

29:50

causes emotion, and

29:53

if it's a thought that's driving, it's nice to unwind

29:55

the thought. But a lot of other times it

29:57

seems like emotion just spring

30:00

out of, you know, out of

30:02

something that you can't really

30:05

identify. Do you have a method

30:07

of working with when or does that

30:09

even happen for you where it's like,

30:11

well, I'm feeling this and I can I'm

30:14

not even sure I can find a thought for

30:16

it, or I can see the

30:18

thought and I know it's not true, and I still feel

30:20

terrible. That is something that I'm continuing

30:23

to learn to do, which is to drop into

30:25

my body to feel that

30:27

emotion as opposed to staying

30:30

up in my head and trying to tackle it through

30:32

you know, what is the thought, doing the work on it, doing

30:34

that kind of surgical, precise thinking on it. Learning

30:38

to identify an emotion requires

30:41

an ability to just kind of dropped down into

30:43

one's body. And often we think we've identified

30:46

that emotion, only to find

30:48

that there is another emotion behind

30:51

it. And for me, whenever

30:53

I the way that I know I'm

30:56

an emotional state as I'll feel it in my

30:58

body, right, I've learned to under stand

31:00

the difference between mechanical pain, so pain

31:02

that's come through, uh,

31:04

you know, if I've if I've worked out too hard that day,

31:06

or if i haven't eaten properly or you

31:08

know, that kind of mechanical pain. Most of the

31:11

pain I feel is emotional. So

31:13

when my toes curl up when I'm in traffic,

31:16

or you know, my lower back starts

31:18

to hurt if I think that somebody's not listening

31:21

to me or whatever the cases, um,

31:23

and I'll drop into that and really

31:26

just kind of be with that pain and

31:28

see what emotion comes up in my chest.

31:31

And I've learned not to take

31:34

that first emotion you know, I'll

31:36

be able to identify it, but I've I've come to understand

31:38

there's usually an emotion underneath

31:41

that, and for me, the emotion underneath that

31:43

tends to be fear mhm. And

31:46

once I've identified that as fear, then

31:48

I can say, well, what is it that I'm fearful

31:51

of, and then I can do

31:53

the work on it. As you learned the work,

31:55

you also learned about cognitive

31:58

biases. And there

32:00

is We've talked on the show a bunch about them,

32:02

but there's one I don't know that we've talked about

32:04

before. So I wanted to touch it, and it

32:06

was the power of the default. Tell

32:08

me what that is. So the power

32:11

of the default. The way that I know cognitive

32:13

biases is through my work and market

32:15

research, you

32:17

know, twenty years like my the past

32:20

two decades of my career is trying to understand

32:22

human behavior, which is really ironic

32:24

when you think about it, because here I am with two decades

32:27

of experience and I can't understand my own behavior.

32:29

But anyway I can now at least um.

32:32

But remembering that uh,

32:35

people's brain activity is not

32:37

based on rational thought. It's based on all

32:40

sorts of weird filters and norms

32:42

and and um and cognitive biases

32:45

and so this particular bias, and there's hundreds

32:47

of them, but this particular bias. The power of

32:49

the default is when we default

32:52

back to behavior or habits

32:55

that are just so ingrained we don't think

32:57

to question them. So for

32:59

example, UM, my

33:01

default thought was

33:04

wine will take my

33:07

pain away. Wine at the end of the day

33:09

after a long day of work is gonna

33:11

make me feel better. That's its job in life.

33:15

And so getting home and grabbing

33:17

that glass of wine, um, which

33:19

would have been fine if it had just been one glass, but

33:21

often, you know, you have dinner and that becomes

33:23

to wine two glasses, and then oh well, we may as

33:26

well finish this bottle off so it doesn't go bad. And

33:28

whatever else you want to tell yourself. That

33:30

was just that was my routine. Um.

33:33

And once I started to understand

33:35

the power of the default, I looked at different aspects

33:38

of my life and thought, what behavior

33:40

and my defaulting to that

33:43

don't really work for me anymore.

33:46

And back then, UM, I didn't

33:48

see wine as something that

33:50

was distracting me from dealing

33:53

with painful thoughts. I saw it as something

33:55

that was giving me extra calories. So

33:57

that was the key reason, you know,

33:59

a few years ago, why I identified wine

34:01

as a default behavior that I wanted to change

34:05

and so rather them then rip all the wine out

34:07

of my fridge and force myself to drink

34:09

tap water. When I got home, I

34:11

put new beverages into the fridge, so you

34:14

know, kombucha or diet

34:16

sodas or or um you know, Stevia

34:18

based type stuff, So that I knew

34:20

that my natural bias was

34:22

to put my hand into the fridge because it was usually

34:25

white wine that I drank put my hand on the fridge,

34:27

but this time I just grabbed something else other

34:29

than wine. UM. But it wasn't until I understood

34:31

the power of the default that I was able to see

34:33

that that was just default behavior, it wasn't truth.

34:37

And and now I don't I don't drink

34:39

at all. Actually now I stopped in December, which

34:41

is just kind of a new interesting practice for me,

34:43

and when I'm still learning about

34:46

UM. But I realized now that not drinking

34:49

is helping keep me

34:52

in that awareness,

34:55

you know, it like just just taking

34:58

myself out of the awareness for this simple

35:00

you know, for the for the hangover

35:03

that it often leads to, or saying something really

35:05

stupid to somebody. It's just not worth it. I'll

35:07

take the awareness. Thanks. So it's

35:09

just something I'm playing with. I don't know if it's a forever thing,

35:11

but it's working for me right now. So it's been about

35:13

seven months then, so that's not a it's

35:16

not a short period of time to do it by

35:18

any straight It's not. No, it's not. It's

35:20

funny. I noticed the other day there's a book called

35:22

Sober Curious.

35:25

It's not just me. Yeah, no, it's

35:28

not. It's not. Yeah, yeah, I

35:30

I know more and more. I'm not a millennial im gen X,

35:32

but I know more and more millennials. I think the

35:34

numbers among millennials are um

35:36

uh, you know, not not drinking

35:39

or wanting to see what life is like without alcohol.

35:41

It's it's becoming a thing. I

35:43

think we've grown up with a narrative that says

35:46

like, well, if you're alcoholic, you need to stop.

35:48

But if you're not alcoholics, so what right?

35:50

And I think that this speaks

35:53

to a growing awareness, which is a

35:55

good awareness that there are certainly stages

35:57

along the way. And we've had Catherine

36:00

Gray on a couple of times, and she wrote a book

36:02

I cannot remember the name of it, The Surprising

36:05

Joy of being Sober, perhaps something like

36:07

that you should read it, you would

36:09

love it. Um. But she says,

36:12

here's a simple question, would your life be

36:14

better if you weren't drinking. That's it. You

36:16

don't have to get into and do

36:18

I have a problem? Am I drinking too much? Would

36:21

your life be better if you weren't? And And I

36:23

thought that was such a powerful way of

36:25

just sort of looking at that thing very

36:27

simply without any of the cultural baggage

36:30

that comes with addiction and sobriety

36:32

and abstinence and all of that stuff. Yeah,

36:35

there seems that seems a very useful

36:37

question. I was just talking about it this weekend

36:39

with friends of mine, and we were talking about

36:42

how drinking and talking is just default

36:44

adult behavior when you get

36:46

together, Like what else do you do

36:49

besides have a glass of wine in your hand and talk?

36:51

Like we never did that as kids, you know, kids sitting

36:53

around with a glass of kool aid and just shooting

36:55

the ship like no, And

36:58

so what would we be doing if we didn't alcohol

37:00

in our hands? What what would these social occasions

37:02

look like? Just an interesting thought experiment.

37:05

Well, as somebody who doesn't drink for

37:08

very important reasons, I'm happy

37:11

to see more adults not drinking because it is

37:13

sort of the default behavior, and you just, you

37:15

know, sometimes you feel like I'm just the odd person

37:17

out here all the time. But and

37:19

that's why finding people that are also

37:22

uh sober is really helpful if you're trying

37:24

not to drink all the time. Anyway, that was

37:27

a slight distraction. So I want

37:29

to get back to the

37:31

concept of worry. And

37:33

I'm just gonna read something you wrote because I thought this

37:35

was so good and I just experienced it. This

37:38

feeling of worry had been my normal for

37:40

so long that I would even worry about worrying

37:42

on vacations. I would worry about how much

37:44

time I had left, anxious to make the remaining

37:47

days worry free. Then I would recognize

37:49

that, being consumed by the worry, I wouldn't enjoy

37:51

the actual vacation. Then I would worry

37:54

about not enjoying it, and then worry

37:56

about worrying about not enjoying

37:58

it, which makes me laugh. I was recently

38:00

on vacation. I get myself into the like how many

38:02

days left, how many days left? How soon

38:05

you know, and the same thing, I'm like, Oh,

38:07

the vacation's half over. So I start worrying about

38:09

the vacation being half I mean, that's that's no good.

38:12

I just had a wonderful vacation anyway,

38:14

Um, I just thought that was so instructive

38:17

of the way worry works. It just

38:19

consumes us. It consumed me um.

38:23

And so that was not something that

38:25

happened on every second vacation. That was something

38:27

that happened on every vacation. You

38:30

know. I left the house and within two hours,

38:32

you know, my first thought was like, did I turn the stove off?

38:35

Did I turn the stove off? Oh? Great, I'm worrying already

38:37

about this vacation. Oh. I thought, this is gonna

38:39

be a different vacation. And then I, you know, kind

38:41

of go down into that vicious spirals.

38:44

And then I'd wake up and I'd be happy because

38:46

I was on vacation, and then I would search my mind

38:49

for like, oh, wait a second, I'm missing something. There's something I

38:51

should be worried right that, Yes,

38:53

I only have four more days left. And then it would kick

38:55

back in and yeah, it

38:57

was exhausting. What are some of your tools

39:00

for working with worry worry?

39:03

I think of all the things that I've learned

39:05

to do, not worrying

39:08

is a big one. And

39:11

I mean if I added up all the hours of my life

39:13

that I that I used to worry, I who

39:16

knows how many it would be like way too many

39:18

to even look at. UM. And worry

39:21

is something that I have let go

39:23

of because um,

39:26

and I don't mean a d percent. But let's say if

39:28

I was a warrior a hundred percent of the time, I'm a warrior

39:31

maybe maybe

39:34

five percent of the time. Now it is

39:38

achievement. Wait

39:40

a second, I couldn't resist

39:44

And this isn't um. This

39:47

is something that's kind of developed

39:49

itself because

39:51

I'm used to pulling

39:54

myself back to being present and

39:56

I have a number of ways of doing that. And

39:59

whenever I see whenever I catch

40:01

myself veering into that worry stage,

40:04

I my first thought is, there's

40:07

nothing I can do about

40:10

that, because I don't have any control

40:13

over any of that. All I can

40:15

control is what is how I react

40:17

to what's in front of me right here, right now. And

40:20

that thought is enough for me to

40:22

let the worry go. So it's

40:24

no longer, and it's it's hours

40:27

of my life. Hours of my life that

40:29

I get back, both when I'm asleep or

40:31

trying to get to sleep and during my day

40:34

that I can now pour into things

40:36

that I find really fulfilling and inspiring

40:39

and engaging. UM.

40:41

You know, So when people ask me, if I

40:43

lose my achiever fever, does that mean I won't

40:45

perform anymore? Does that mean I'll lose my lose

40:47

my competitive spirit. And the only

40:50

thing that we lose when we lose our achiever

40:52

fever is worry,

40:55

self doubt and fear, and

40:58

losing that worry has allowed

41:00

me to gain so much

41:03

more. Yep, that's wonderful. Well,

41:05

we are at time here all of a sudden,

41:08

um, so you and I are going to continue a

41:10

conversation in the post show conversation.

41:13

I think we'll talk about some more of the practices

41:15

that you did, and uh, we'll explore

41:17

a line that I loved, which is I could see these

41:19

things as irritating or I could see them as practice.

41:22

And that's a wonderful line. So we're gonna explore

41:24

that in the post show conversation. Listeners

41:26

if you are interested in getting those, as

41:29

well as a weekly mini episode and other

41:31

bonuses, go to one you Feed dot net

41:33

slash support. Well, Claire,

41:36

thank you so much for coming on the

41:38

show. It was a pleasure.

41:40

It was a pleasure to have you on and talk to you. I

41:42

really enjoyed the book. I got to give a

41:44

blurb for it, which was kind of fun. So I'm

41:47

happy to have happy you have gotten

41:49

us to finally have this conversation. So

41:51

thank you, thank you all right bye

42:00

m. If

42:10

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