3 Surprising Ways to Make Peace With Your Anxious Mind | Spotlight Convo

Three leading experts reveal how to transform anxiety from an enemy into an unexpected ally. Dr. Jud Brewer shares neuroscience-backed techniques to break free from worry loops, Dr. Wendy Suzuki (author of Good Anxiety) shows how anxiety can fuel creativity and resilience, and Emiliya Zhivotovskaya introduces her groundbreaking Mind Over Chatter framework for turning mental chatter into a tool for growth and greater awareness. Episode Transcript https://www.goodlifeproject.com/podcast/anxiety-overthinking-mindfulness-jud-brewer-wendy-suzuki-emiliya-zhivotovskaya You can find Dr. Jud at: Website https://drjud.com/ | Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dr.jud/ | Unwinding Anxiety App https://www.unwindinganxiety.com/ | Listen to Our Full-Length Convo with Jud https://episodes.fm/647826736/episode/NjVlMjE4OWZiODQ1NmMwMDE2YWQxZThh You can find Dr. Wendy at: Website https://www.wendysuzuki.com/ | Instagram https://www.instagram.com/wendy.suzuki/ | Listen to Our Full-Length Convo with Wendy https://episodes.fm/647826736/episode/NjNmNjc1OTAzOTdhZWEwMDExOTMwNTQy You can find Emiliya at: Website https://theflourishingcenter.com/ | Instagram https://www.instagram.com/theflourishingcenter/ | Mind Over Chatter Course http://www.theflourishingcenter.com/goodlife | Listen to Our Full-Length Convo with Emiliya https://episodes.fm/647826736/episode/NjYyYWE1NWU0MzdiZDcwMDEyMWE1MTVm Check out our offerings & partners: Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel https://jonathanfields.substack.com/aboutVisit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes https://www.goodlifeproject.com/sponsors/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  So what if the very thing keeping you up at night, those racing thoughts, constant worries, spiraling fears, could become your greatest ally? Nearly everyone experiences anxiety today. It's become a shared language of our times. But what most people don't realize is that hidden within this challenging emotion lies an unexpected gift, the potential for deeper awareness, heightened creativity, and profound human connection if we understand how to decode what anxiety is telling us and transform it into energy ease and fuel for impact and growth. Today's guests share three fascinating perspectives on transforming our relationship with anxiety and mental chatter. Dr. Judd Brewer, neuroscientist and addiction psychiatrist

• 0:45Speaker 00

  at Brown University, reveals how understanding your brain's habit loops can help you break free from anxiety's grip. Dr. Wendy Suzuki, professor of neuroscience at NYU and author of Good Anxiety, shares surprising research showing how anxiety can actually become a catalyst for positive change. And Amelia Jivatovskaya, CEO of the Flourishing Center and creator of the Mind Over Chatter approach, introduces a practical framework for turning five different types of mental chatter into tools for growth. And together, they reveal something remarkable. Uncomfortable as it can feel, anxiety isn't something to eliminate or endure. When we learn to work with it skillfully, it can actually become a pathway to greater resilience, creativity, and aliveness. You'll discover simple, science-backed techniques

• 1:30Speaker 00

  to calm your racing mind, powerful reframes that transform worry into wisdom, and practical tools to make peace with your mental chatter. So excited to share this spotlight conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project.

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• 3:30Speaker 00

  So, our first guest is Dr. Judd Brewer, a New York Times bestselling author of Unwinding Anxiety, neuroscientist, addiction psychiatrist, and a thought leader in the field of habit change and the science of self-mastery. He has developed and tested some really novel mindfulness programs for habit change, including treatments for smoking, emotional eating, and yes, anxiety. And Judd's groundbreaking work uses the latest neuroscience to help people break free from anxiety, and his wisdom has been pretty life-changing for a lot of people. I know it'll inspire you. I mean, what if you could rewrite your relationship with anxiety? What if instead of feeling trapped in worry loops, you could meet each moment with openness and curiosity? Judd will reveal some practical tools to help

• 4:14Speaker 00

  make this vision a reality. So here's Judd. Your topic is a topic of interest. It has been for a long time. And for anyone that has not been touched by some form of anxiety, I think, you know, the last couple of years have made it a relatively universal experience. I'm curious, from your lens, how have you seen like the depth and the scope of anxiety change over these last two or three years?

• 4:39Speaker 07

  Yeah, I'm just thinking about the, for anyone who hasn't been touched. And I was just thinking, find me that person. Who is that? Yeah, it's just seeing the rapid increase in anxiety societally is it's just like this unfortunate naturalistic experiment. To me, as a neuroscientist, my brain says, oh, wow, I wonder how this is going to go. This was two years ago. And then started thinking about the, our brains don't like uncertainty and boy, there's a lot of uncertainty and et cetera. And then the prediction says, wow, things are going to spike. And then things spiked and then things kept going. And then where these, with these multiple rounds of uncertainty, just with the pandemic,

• 5:22Speaker 07

  first round, then we get Delta, then we get Omicron, you know, and it just keeps coming with economics, schools. And so it's, it's like we've hit these multiple rounds of uncertainty to the point where not only has anxiety gone nuts, but I've also seen where people are getting this, I don't know if this is the perfect term, but this is how I think of it is it's learned helplessness. A lot of people are just, it's just like the, I give up, my brain is fried, just too much anxiety.

• 5:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, I guess here's what's spitting in my head. If in before times, anxiety was a pretty universal experience, but not entirely universal. And now basically like you can't talk to anybody who doesn't say, I'm living with some level of this thing. Does that in any way, shape or form, does the normalization of an experience that would normally be really difficult to deal with, does the fact that we're all in it together in any way change the way that we experience anxiety potentially for the better?

• 6:19Speaker 07

  Yes, two things come to mind. One is anytime we can work together against a common threat or enemy, let's say, it's always better. We really, truly, as humans, are better together. And the other piece that comes of that is just even knowing that we're not alone. There's a single condition that we all have. It's called the human condition. And there are variations on that human condition. And we all share in stress. We all share in anxiety. And so just knowing that we're all together in this can be the beginning of the healing there. And then also, when we can relate to each other, it's easier to empathize and bring compassion in when somebody is really struggling with

• 7:02Speaker 07

  anxiety. And we know that place. It just opens our hearts a little bit where, you know, even nonverbally, it's, oh, yeah, I've been there. I know what you mean. And that too, can be part of the process of healing.

• 7:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So we've used the word anxiety a whole bunch, literally in the first, like, 60 seconds of our conversation. I think it makes sense also to really sort of dive into, what are we actually talking about when we're talking about anxiety?

• 7:30Speaker 07

  There's a definition, I think, that that works relatively well. This feeling of nervousness or unease about an uncertain event or something in the future, basically. I think of it, another way to think of it is fear of the future. And the reason I like that definition is, as I was doing research for my own one anxiety book, I was really looking into, like, why do we have anxiety? Because it's, our brains are set up for immediate threat. Basically, our brains are set up to eat and not be eaten, right? And so, we're set up to remember where food is, we're set up to remember where danger is, so that we can find the food, go back to it, and we can remember where the danger is and not

• 8:11Speaker 07

  go back to it. So this big question is, like, why? Where did anxiety come from? And the best that I can gather is that, think of this survival part of our brain, help, fear, very helpful survival mechanism. We learn, don't go back there. But then also- More recently, our brains have evolved to plan for the future. So we've got the present moment, is there danger? No. Okay, now I can plan for the future. And planning for the future is also helpful. But when you mix those two together, fear of the future, not so helpful. And so that planning part of our brain actually can start to spin out, especially the more uncertainty there is. Our brain spins out in what if scenarios?

• 8:54Speaker 07

  And those what if scenarios make us more and more freaked out, ironically, making our thinking and planning part of the brain go offline. And when I think of anxiety as fear of the future, it's these two helpful survival mechanisms, fear and planning, that kind of get mixed together. And it's not like peanut butter and jelly. Peanut butter and jelly generally good together. This is, I don't know what the analogy would be, but mixing something that you would never eat with peanut butter and tasting it and saying, yep, I would never mix that with peanut butter. That's a bad idea. Our brains just haven't figured that out. And it turns out that anxiety is driven like any other habit. And so you say spinning. So for any habit to form, we need three elements, a trigger, a behavior and a result.

• 9:39Speaker 07

  So just as an example, you talked about survival, right? You see the food, there's a trigger, you eat the food, there's the behavior. And then your stomach sends this dopamine signal to your brain that says, remember what you ate and where you found it. So that's how, that's the general process for habit formation. With anxiety, the feeling of anxiety can trigger the mental behavior of worrying. And I say that again, because that's hard for some people to, you know, I never thought about it that way. The physical feeling of anxiety, that feeling of nervousness or that feeling of worry can actually trigger the mental behavior of worrying. And that worrying is where we start to spin. Because we can't predict, we're not very good at predicting the future. And the more we spin, the more we spin out.

• 10:23Speaker 07

  Because we start to think, oh, this could be really bad. Or here's another thing I didn't think about. And then our brains just get way out of control to the point where we didn't even get into panic, this wildly unthinking behavior, which is that far end of the spectrum of anxiety. Yes, what you're saying is absolutely true. And it's interesting. You mentioned the word spinning because that's exactly how these habit loops form. So worry gives us the the brain reward of feeling like we're in control, or at least that we're doing something. I can't do anything about this, but at least I can worry. We're occupying our mind and that is rewarding enough that it feeds back so that the next time we're anxious, it says, hey, why don't you worry again?

• 11:00Speaker 00

  You write about and you speak about, and this is baked into your technology. There's like the notion of three elements of awareness, curiosity and compassion. I want to talk about each one of those. Awareness, sort of like the starting point of what?

• 11:11Speaker 07

  Great question. So I would say certainly awareness is an endowed characteristic that we all have. We can be aware or we could not be aware for mine if we're lost in a story. So I would say awareness of everything, right? The more aware we are of our experience, the more helpful it can be for helping us live a healthy, happy life. So let's drill down on that because that sounds vague. In particular, when it comes to things like anxiety or things that are causing our suffering, like you were saying, there's a lot of suffering in the world today. If you look at the Buddha psychology, they talk about cause and effect. That's the essence of karma, basically, is cause and effect. If you frame that in terms of modern psychology, it's positive and negative reinforcement.

• 11:56Speaker 07

  Are another way that they're described is reward based learning. And that it's described that way for a reason. If a behavior is rewarding, we're going to keep doing it. If it's not rewarding, we're going to stop doing it. And so here with awareness, what I would say is it's helpful to drill down on awareness of the results of our behaviors. If we can see what the result of worrying is, then it helps us become disenchanted with it. If we can see if we're a jerk to somebody, if we can see what the result of that is, instead of just yelling at somebody on the internet and then turning our computer off or our phone and ignoring it. But really, if we did that face to face, we get to see the results of that.

• 12:38Speaker 07

  And just the results can help us start to change our behavior and become disenchanted with being a jerk. If we can see the results of being kind, having kindness bestowed upon us. We can start to see the joy that comes with that. So I would say awareness of cause and effect, or basically awareness of the results of our behavior, if we're looking specifically at behavior change, habit change, or anxiety. But in general, awareness is good. Looking both ways before crossing the street, very helpful. I think of this as, can we bring awareness in any moment and be curious, right? Curiosity is that attitudinal quality of mindfulness. And so there can actually be some joy and some reward that comes just from the noticing.

• 13:22Speaker 07

  And it gives us an opportunity to inject some curiosity. And curiosity itself, I think of it as a superpower because curiosity feels great.

• 13:33Speaker 00

  And that drops us into this space of, as you described, curiosity, where now we can inquire into it a little bit. Under that context, you also, you write about, and I know it's part of your work, this acronym that I'm, I again was familiar with originally from a Buddhist teacher, Tara Brock, and it's a shorthand, the acronym is RAIN. So it was interesting to see you bringing it in the context in a very like specific way in the work you're doing. Walk us through what those letters stand for and how it actually really plays into the curiosity and reinterpretation process.

• 14:06Speaker 07

  Yes. So first off, a shout out to Tara because she makes these practices so accessible for so many people. She is certainly adding light into the world in a much needed way. So this RAIN practices, this acronym, I think it was actually Michelle McDonald who had first, first come up with it, and then Tara's done a great job of helping people learn about it. R stands for recognize. We're lost, we can't, we're not aware. So the first step is that moment of recognition, like we've been talking about, gold star, boom, I'm aware. And it could be a craving, it could be worry, it could be anything, right? Whatever we're lost in, we're aware. The second step, that A stands for allowing or accepting, where if we notice something and we're like, oh, my mind wandered, we want to push it away, we don't want to face

• 14:51Speaker 07

  it, we run away or we push it away. What we resist persists, right? So here, instead of pushing something away, we invite it in. Oh, here it is. Can I just allow it to be here as compared to pushing it away? Already, there's less energy needed, right? Because we're not resisting. That I stands for investigate, and this is where curiosity comes in. So if we recognize, let's use craving as an example of craving for food. Recognize that craving, allow, okay, here's this craving instead of saying, I want to ignore, get rid of this. Oh, what does this craving feel like in my body? That I stands for that investigation where we're starting to get curious about what that craving feels like in our body. And then N originally talked about non-identification where we're seeing that it is not me.

• 15:36Speaker 07

  Like a thought, I have a thought, it's not me. That can be challenging for people who are first learning these practices. I brought this together with a practice from a Burmese teacher, Masih Said, I was the first one that popularized this noting practice, where you basically note physical sensations, thoughts, sounds, smells, tastes. You just basically note whatever's in your experience. And that noting practice is a really helpful way to help us gain perspective. In physics, they call this observer effect. When you're observing something, you're likely to affect the result. And in psychology, I think the same is true. When we observe a thought, we're less likely to be identified with that thought. So the N happened to be the same N, so I was like, okay, great.

• 16:17Speaker 07

  Let's use noting instead of non-identification so we can really get, keep it on the pragmatic level. And so if somebody has a craving, they can note, what does that craving feel like? Is it tightness? Is it tension? Is it burning? Is it heat? And note, note. And as somebody notes and they're having that perspective, they're less identified with it and they can notice, oh, this can come and go and I don't have to act on it because it is not me. It's just physical sensations. And the more they inject the curiosity that I part of the practice, the more you can be like, huh, what's going to come next? Oh, what's next as compared to, oh no, this craving, when's it going to go away? So that's what the RAINE practice is for. And again, we use it as a core practice in all of our digital therapeutics.

• 17:02Speaker 07

  In our Eat Right Now program, we got these gangbuster results, 40% reduction in craving-related eating. And that RAINE practice is really a critical piece of that.

• 17:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. And it's interesting we frame the sort of the non-attachment versus noting. It's almost, again, it's creating this kind of similar goal, but or similar sort of like state, but maybe more accessible language to different people. The last piece, the third element is for you, and you referenced it earlier, is kindness. I've seen you describe it as compassion or self-compassion. Not talking about being kind to other people when you're anxious. Not necessarily a bad thing, of course. It's about ourselves.

• 17:39Speaker 07

  Yes, absolutely. So think of a habit loop around anxiety. Anxiety triggers worry, which then makes us feel like we're doing something and control feeds back to anxiety. Shame, for example, or self-judgment, something we have a thought that could trigger us to judge ourselves or feel bad about ourselves. Shame is about, I'm a bad person. And then that shame can often, the reward there, because it's not very rewarding. If you just look at it, it doesn't look very pleasant to be in the shame spiral. But it, again, feels us, makes us feel like we're in control. I can beat myself up over who I am or what I did. Guilt is about what I did. Shame is about who I am. We can beat ourselves up over those things. And it makes us, that self-flagellation ironically feels, can feel

• 18:21Speaker 07

  better because we're doing something active as compared to not doing anything. And that's because we don't, we just don't know anything better. We don't know what else we could do. So here, those all share the characteristic of this contracted quality. Think of, we're feeling shame. We feel this closed down contractedness is where, whether we're beating ourselves up or not. Same is true for anxiety. We feel closed and contracted. Same is true for craving. We feel contracted. And that restlessness that in our lives, all of them, drives us to do something, whether it's to worry more, or beat ourselves up, or feel feel shame. So here, we can just compare, what is it, what does shame or self-judgment feel like compared to being kind to ourselves? And this isn't about roses and scented candles

• 19:06Speaker 07

  and unicorns. This is simply about like, thinking about the last time somebody was kind to us. What did that feel like? Oh, for me, it feels a lot better than somebody yelling at me. And then we can think about times when we've been kind to ourselves. Like, when have I truly think of a time, we've all Had moments where we've been kind to ourselves. For a lot of people, it's foreign because they're so used to being in these other loops. But then we can just compare. What does it feel like to feel shame or to be stuck in a shame spiral as compared to being kind to ourselves?

• 19:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. I want to zoom the lens out a little. We've been talking a lot about generalized anxiety, which we're all experiencing for a lot of different reasons. One of the other sources of anxiety for a lot of people is moment or event based. And the thing that I think, whether it's test anxiety, interview anxiety, it's around a very particular thing where they're anticipating how it's going to go and they're freaking out.

• 20:01Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 20:01Speaker 00

  Maybe let's take like, just as an example, test anxiety.

• 20:05Speaker 07

  Test anxiety, sure.

• 20:06Speaker 00

  Walk me through the process of like, how this unfolds in the context of trying to step into a better place around that.

• 20:11Speaker 07

  Yes. So with test anxiety, for example, and I'll just say, if it's been a while since somebody's taken a test, it could be, they have to give a presentation at work, or they, there's some event that's about to come up. So we use test anxiety as an example. So what can happen is that we have this thought, it's about the future. Oh, I have to take this test in the future. How am I going to do? Did I study well enough? Is there, are there going to be trick questions? Am I going to be up for it? So those thoughts, there's the trigger, they trigger us to worry. We start worrying, oh no, how am I going to do? Ironically, worrying doesn't help us study for our tests because we close down. We're not open. When you think of fixed versus growth mindset, growth mindset is where we can learn. So when we're worrying about the test, we're not actually in a good place

• 20:56Speaker 07

  to be studying for the test, ironically. So that worrying can be that habitual behavior that then our brain has somehow lodged in there or habituated to and said, yeah, worry about the test. And it could be a number of reasons, whether it's that correlation that we talked about earlier, where I worried and then I did okay on the test, so I assume that I need to worry for the test or whatnot. So the first step here is just map that habit loop out. We actually have a habit mapper that's free. Anybody can download and print it out. It's mapmyhabit.com. But basically, what I do with my patients in my clinic, or anybody that just wants to learn how their mind works, is I say, start by mapping it out. So if you have test anxiety, map it out. What's the trigger? What's the behavior, mental or physical? And what's the result of that? The second step, very simple, also includes awareness,

• 21:41Speaker 07

  right? Because you have to be aware to map it out. You also have to be aware of the result of the behavior, right? We talked about cause and effect. We talk about reward based learning. So what is my brain thinking is rewarding for this? So if it's worrying about a test, I would ask somebody not to think about it, but to really feel into their body because our feeling bodies are much stronger than our thinking brains. That's really where behavior is driven. So it's like, what do you get from worrying? Is it helping you study for the test? Is it helping you retain information? Generally, the answer is no, right? But just seeing that it's not rewarding is that critical step for helping us to become disenchanted with the behavior. And so instead of telling ourselves that we shouldn't worry and then beating ourselves up over the fact that we can't stop ourselves from worrying, we can actually go to the source

• 22:25Speaker 07

  where our brain is. In our brain, if it sees very clearly that something is not rewarding, it's going to become less likely to do it in the future. And that's where the process of change happens. Now, we can accelerate that process when in this third step, I think of it as finding that bigger, better offer. So our brains are relative, so they'll look for relative rewards. Is this rewarding, more rewarding than something else? And so if we can start to see that worry is not rewarding, that reward value drops, it opens up the space for some to find something that's more rewarding, that bigger, better offer. And here, we can ask ourselves, what happens if I just bring curiosity in instead of worrying? Oh, can I let me get curious about those thoughts, those worry thoughts? And does it help me notice the thoughts and not

• 23:10Speaker 07

  get stuck in them? And does it also help condition me to be curious and learn the material for the test instead of going, oh, no, I have to study for this test? Oh, what's this material? Oh, is it and see where we can find the natural curiosity to it's not that we're going to be curious about every single subject matter that we're ever going to be tested on, but it can certainly go a long way in helping us start to at least have that mindset, that curious mindset. So that's the three step process. Map out the habit loop, awareness requires awareness, ask ourselves, what am I Getting from this also requires awareness. And then ask ourselves, is that awareness, that curious awareness itself even more rewarding than getting stuck in a habit loop of worry?

• 23:52Speaker 00

  I guess part of my curiosity is, do you find that people are really capable of doing this to and for themselves? Or do you need someone else to help you through? Or some other technology, which I guess is part of what you've been building?

• 24:04Speaker 07

  Yes. So if somebody just listened to this conversation and said, and then they're freaking out before a big presentation and they've not employed any of this stuff. It's not like they can just flip a switch and suddenly they said to be curious. Okay, you go. Cause their brain's going to be freaking out and they're not going to be in a place where they can practice it. So here, this is, I'm as a practitioner of medicine, I want to figure out what are the systematic ways that we can help as many people as possible? To learn how to be aware, basically, because this is all about awareness and curiosity and kindness. And so we started developing these digital therapeutics. And what we found so far is that again, it goes back to these short moments many times. Can we give people bite sized training, like 10 minutes a day systematically for over the course?

• 24:48Speaker 07

  And we've, we've the core trainings for each of these apps is about 30 days. But then we have these theme weeks where they can build them over and they go back. And so we've set up the context for people to do the learning in a self paced manner. And I find our data are gangbusters. I never thought they would work this well. If you look at the studies, it works, they work pretty darn well. If you look at the process, I, if I'm trying to learn something, I want to be able to do it at my own pace, little bits at a time and be able to practice it over and over. So we've tried to set that framework up so people can do that. Now that's just one way to do it. Also, I think that like you're talking about having somebody help you with it can be very helpful.

• 25:28Speaker 00

  Yeah. And what you're describing also really takes us back to the beginning of our conversation around the normalizing effect. It's if you're experiencing something that's causing some level of suffering and distress. And then you start to realize that, oh, A, I'm not alone. And actually in this context, B, I'm like in the vast majority. I'm not the weirdo. I'm not broken. This is a part of the human condition that we're all experiencing together. And that alone has got to just be like change the nature and the quality of what you're going through. And then you add to it process and tools and ways to actually collectively integrate the experience differently. Yeah, super powerful and sensible. And I love the fact that fundamentally, we're talking about these interesting ideas and we're talking about peer

• 26:12Speaker 00

  reviewed research and we're talking about technology. And we're also talking about things that people have been doing for thousands and thousands of years that have worked and made them feel better. And it's just about making them accessible to a broader audience. And for the rationally brain people who need to know, prove to me that this works. Here you go.

• 26:29Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 26:29Speaker 00

  It's like these ideas actually work.

• 26:31Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 26:32Speaker 00

  Very super cool. Feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. I always wrap these conversations with the same question. So I'll pose it to you, sitting here in this container of Good Life Project. If I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

• 26:46Speaker 07

  Yeah, curiosity, kindness, rinse and repeat. That's what comes up.

• 26:52Speaker 00

  Love it. Thank you. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

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• 28:31Speaker 00

  So our next guest is Dr. Wendy Suzuki, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at NYU. She's a leading researcher on brain plasticity and memory, who's now revealing the unexpected upsides of anxiety in her book, Good Anxiety. And she makes a surprising claim. This emotion we desperately want to avoid can transform into a superpower. And she shares the science behind reframing anxiety, along with simple, accessible tools to shift it from enemy to ally. She'll through inspiring stories and a whole bunch of practical advice. She guides us to the sweet spot where just enough anxiety unlocks creativity, productivity, compassion, and more. Here's Wendy. You've had this really fascinating focus on anxiety and what happens in the brain, how that affects us.

• 29:16Speaker 00

  And you make a really provocative claim also in your recent book, Good Anxiety, which is that this thing that something like 90% of people experience and want nothing but to never experience it at all can in fact, explore differently, be turned into something of a superpower. Now, I want to dive into that, but before we get there. Well, let's just actually talk about the word anxiety and the phenomenon of anxiety, because I think there's a lot of ambiguity around it. So when we're talking about anxiety, what are we actually talking about?

• 29:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. So here's something that's really a huge take home message, that the emotion of anxiety is not a disease. It is a normal human emotion. Every single human experiences emotion. I don't know how many people have come up to me and said, oh, I have anxiety. I have it. Oh, no. Well, that just means you're human. And the premise that the book starts with is that evolutionarily, the emotion, the normal human emotion of anxiety, and that underlying physiological stress response that comes with it, you know what it feels like sweaty palms, butterflies in your stomach, heightened heart rate, sweats

• 30:32Speaker 03

  all over, that evolved to protect us from danger. Okay? Oh, that sounds good. I want to be protected from danger. And so how did it work? Well, it was obvious 2.5 million years ago, when a new mom was walking around with her little baby, trying to gather food, and she hears the crack of a twig. And that could be the, you know, the difference between life and death, the crack of a twig. What is that? Is that a raccoon? Or is that a big mountain lion? And so her body physiologically, like our bodies, got her ready to either fight the bad animal or run away. And that is why we are here today. People can usually

• 31:14Speaker 03

  say, okay, I get that. That sounds good. I buy that. But still, I'm not feeling protected one itty bitty little bit from my anxiety. And the answer is, no, we're not. Very few of us are, because the volume of our anxiety is turned up way high. So we're not quite at that. It's actually quite a razor's edge of the level of anxiety, where you can get the positive energy, where you can get that protection. And so the big part of the book, Good Anxiety, is about Providing science-based approaches to turn the volume down, not to get rid of it, again, it's normal human emotion, but to start to turn it down and we can start from there.

• 31:58Speaker 00

  But then your invitation is to say, but two things. One, anxiety experienced at a certain level actually comes with a myriad of benefits. And then how do we get to that place where like at the at a certain level, where we actually can experience those benefits?

• 32:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:16Speaker 00

  So I want to dive into what some of those benefits are right now, because I think a lot of people listening to this are probably saying, I cannot imagine how you could tell me this thing that I like, all I want to do is not feel it, actually has a whole bunch of benefits.

• 32:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:29Speaker 00

  Well, let's explore some of these. One of the things that you talk about is anxiety. One of the benefits is actually increased motivation. How does this work?

• 32:35Speaker 03

  Yeah. The word that I like to use for this particular superpower of gift of anxiety is productivity. I love using that word because usually people think, oh, anxiety just shut me down. I can't, you know, I'm, I'm done for for the rest of the day. But it comes from the idea that the anxiety that we've been talking about since the beginning of this podcast is really a form of energy. It's a form of activation energy because again, remember evolutionarily, it's getting you ready to do something. You're going to fight the line, you're going to run away. That is energy. It's cognitive energy. It's physical energy. It's like, oh, well, that could be, I could kind of start to see how that could be good. So here is how the superpower productivity works.

• 33:19Speaker 03

  So this uses a very, very common form of anxiety that most of us have, which is the what-if list. It strikes us at different parts of the day and for different, you know, projects. It's like, oh, what if I, what if I didn't send that email? And it wasn't written in the right way? Or I didn't send it to the right person or all these what-if? It happens to hit me still to this day, right before I'm going to try and go to sleep. And it's like, sleep is coming and bing, oh, God, I just remember all the what ifs. And so here is, and that is our anxiety, you know, rearing its head. So here is how to transform that. For me, the next morning. Do it at night because I still try and fall asleep. But the next morning,

• 34:01Speaker 03

  I can still remember all those things that woke me up for that moment. Each one of those, I write those down. Note, none of them are about watching Netflix or solo things. They're all about important things that you need to or you want to do. And after each one of those what ifs that you write down, you put an action on it. You do something about it. You ask somebody, you reread your email, you rewrite your email. You ask five people to rewrite it for you. You put an action on it. I must give credit where credit is due. This gift came from a lawyer that I met at a birthday party, who, when told that I was writing a book on anxiety, she said, oh,

• 34:42Speaker 03

  I'm a high paid lawyer that I am, New York City lawyer, because of my anxiety. And this is the approach that she told me about. And I've, I've since hired her, actually, because she is a great lawyer. And I've given her credit for, you know, you created the first superpower that I always tell everybody, because it's so easy to grasp. And literally, everybody out there, your call to action is do this anxiety hack today. Turn your what if list into a to do list, do it, and see what that does for both the, the feeling of anxiety, because it should go down. Putting in action on those worries, rather than just sitting there, it's like, oh, God, what's gonna happen?

• 35:24Speaker 03

  But doing something for it helps relieve that anxiety. And I find it so powerful, it's doable, it's understandable. And so I'm glad you started with that one.

• 35:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to me also, the way that you sort of like, it's almost like the alchemy part here, you know, like you're transmitting anxiety into actually output, right?

• 35:43Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 35:44Speaker 00

  But it also occurs to me, as you're saying this, you know, that anxiety is largely, it's an anticipatory experience. I think this negative thing might happen.

• 35:53Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 35:53Speaker 00

  And by doing it, you effectively take yourself out of the future tense and puts you into the present moment.

• 35:59Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 35:59Speaker 00

  Where you're actually just, you're making the thing that you're concerned happen, or at least you're testing your hypothesis in real time.

• 36:06Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 36:07Speaker 00

  And once you can re- Respond to actually like fact and doing. It makes it harder to then spin about the future because now you have sort of like your current experience to counterbalance it. Does that make sense?

• 36:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, it absolutely does. Although now as a administrator and dean at NYU, I think of all of our students who are just putting in their application now. They did that, but there's this waiting period. Now, what is the to do to do for that? There isn't a lot of action that you can do. And that's where you can go back and do the approaches. Exercise 10 minutes of walking will decrease your anxiety levels. Did you know that? That is my biggest tip of anti-anxiety tools. 10 minutes of walking, you don't even have to change into your sneakers. Just walk with whatever shoes you have on. That will turn it down.

• 37:01Speaker 03

  And remind yourself, once you've turned the anxiety down, that anxiety comes from this wonderful desire that you students are having out there to further your education. That is a great desire to have. And it's coming from a positive generative place. And so I'm sorry, I can't alleviate all of your students, you know, worry until you get that decision letter. But there are still lots of things that you can do to make that gap between submission and receiving of that news a little bit easier to live through.

• 37:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, love that. It's sort of what you described feels like a combination of exercise and a little bit of, you know, like cognitive behavioral therapy reframing mixed in like all as a blended experience. One of the other benefits that you talk about is increased creativity. And again, this feels so counterintuitive to me. And I'm wondering, as I'm thinking about some of the other benefits, and I want to talk to you about some of them as well. The part of the counterintuitive part is that when we are at a state of maximum anxiety, none of this feels accessible to us. But it sounds like what you're saying is if we use some of these other tools that you talk about, we can sort of down regulate the level of anxiety to this more manageable level.

• 38:20Speaker 00

  And once we're at that space where we're not on complete overwhelm.

• 38:23Speaker 03

  Right.

• 38:24Speaker 00

  That is sort of like this, there's like a sweet spot where there's a lot of benefit that comes from it. So before we even get into creativity, is that assumption right?

• 38:34Speaker 03

  Yes, you hit it on the head. It's exactly right. There is this combo of learning how to turn it down, being able to step back a little bit, and that is a really important key. Creativity, and it is counterintuitive because anxiety kind of nixes usual creativity. Flow is gone. Sorry, no flow, no creativity for you. But again, if you have some of these techniques, and here's the other thing that people don't realize, there's like, oh God, what anxiety is gonna come, come at me today. Well, I think you can predict 80 to 95% of your anxiety, because you know, our lives are not that uncertain. We know this person

• 39:18Speaker 03

  gives us anxiety. We know that situation gives us anxiety. They've given us anxiety for years, or at least several times before. So we can predict what that is. And so in a moment where you're not in heightened anxiety, here's where it becomes a wonderful tool to test your creativity. This just comes from, you know, typical approaches to diffusing difficult situations. Are there more than one way to approach this person or interact with this person that always gives you anxiety? I mean, ah, just the name of the person will spark anxiety. Well, are there other approaches? What, maybe you approach them with another

• 39:59Speaker 03

  person. You put a third person in there to help buffer that. Maybe you prep that conversation in a different way. Maybe you get a lot of information about that person's opinion so that that, you know, more difficult kind of confrontations are minimized because you know much more and you hadn't bothered to, you know, some meeting or, or encounter before. You know, 100 different ways. And so you start to get good at, oh, actually, maybe there are 10 different ways that I'm not doing to do this. And you start to go through it. And then you start to learn. What works better, what works worse. Maybe you'll find one that works worse. That that happens sometimes too, but then you know you never to do that.

• 40:40Speaker 03

  But you start to get this more systematic approach to your own anxiety, coming back to this concept of self experimentation. And what are you doing? You are being very creative in coming up with different. That is very hard to do because we are creatures of habit. We go into these situations, you know, I think of conversations with parents, our longest relationship, except for the relationship with ourselves. And ah, it's always, I'm always the little thirteen year old girl when I go in the conversation with my mom. I don't know what's going on. Well, maybe I come to that conversation as a fifty something year old adult. And see, what would I say if this wasn't my mother, but it was, you know, just a another person that I'm having conversation with.

• 41:23Speaker 03

  That is a creative kind of exercise that everybody can do. But guess what? It it helps our situations of anxiety. And the more you do it, the better you get at it.

• 41:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:33Speaker 03

  Ten minutes of walking immediately after will decrease your levels of anxiety. So you might have five anxiety provoking things.

• 41:41Speaker 00

  Got it, got it.

• 41:42Speaker 03

  Then I would recommend that you do, you walk for ten minutes, five times before those anxiety provoking things. Or right after those anxiety provoking things to decrease that anxiety level. But everybody just wants to know how little exercise they need to do to get any of these benefits. So finally I have this answer. So it's not ten minutes a day to solve all your problems. It is ten minutes has been shown to turn that volume down. So use that in your life because it's doable. You don't have to go to the gym and dress up in spandex. So that is the take home that people should have. And the other thing is breath work, meditation, very, very helpful immediately. I mean, here are two things I've just told you. They're both free and they both have immediate benefits.

• 42:24Speaker 03

  And both of them, you can find over a hundred free videos on YouTube to give you an example of, well, you don't need an example of how to walk. But breath work would benefit from a little bit of guidance and there's so many to choose from. So that's why I start with those two.

• 42:41Speaker 00

  And I love that. I love the fact that it's really. Widely accessible to a lot of people. And even if you have mobility challenges, we all actually have to breathe all day, every day to sustain ourselves. So in some way, shape or form, you know, it is an extraordinary level of accessibility. The one other thing I want to ask you about before we come full circle is in terms of, again, under the category of things that let us just kind of like get to more of a manageable state is the notion of like altruism playing into your experience of anxiety.

• 43:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, that is my favorite superpower that comes from anxiety. I call it the superpower of empathy. And I really kind of came about and discovered this superpower, thinking about my own, as we've been discussing, my own old anxiety of social anxiety. And this form of social anxiety that I think about still a lot is the social anxiety of raising your hand in the classroom and asking a question. And I had years and years of anxiety, oh, I wanted to ask a question, but maybe if I say something stupid, everybody will think I'm stupid. Everybody thinks that. And so it took me many years to realize that everybody thinks that and I should just ask the question.

• 43:51Speaker 03

  But now I'm at the front of the classroom and I realized that those years and years and years of struggle and, you know, dealing with that gave me a superpower of teaching, which is I know there's 10 times as many questions out there than are actually people raising their hands. And so I really try and go out there and answer questions and get them to ask me things, you know, one on one rather than in front of the classroom. And I realized that my own anxiety, social anxiety for asking questions, became a superpower of empathy. Now, that's just not for me. It's for every single person because what you can do, and this is your second call to action here, is to think about your most common form of anxiety.

• 44:36Speaker 03

  You know what it feels like. You know what it looks like. You know the situations where it comes up. And likely so many of the other people are having that same form of anxiety, even though their mask is saying, hey, I'm cool, no problem. Well, if you notice that and you notice somebody's mask crack, all you have to do is reach out and say a kind word. And I love this one because it is a superpower of empathy and the act of compassion that comes from your own, your own deep understanding of your own anxiety.

• 45:09Speaker 03

  And I love it because I can't think of anything that our world needs more today than higher levels of empathy, both for ourselves and for others.

• 45:19Speaker 00

  Hmm, I love that. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle. So in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase "to live a good life", what comes up?

• 45:28Speaker 03

  Love yourself, love your life, and love others.

• 45:33Speaker 00

  Hmm, thank you. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

• 45:39Speaker 00

  Good Life Project is sponsored by TinCan. So if you grew up in the 70s or 80s, you probably still remember your best friend's phone number and stretching the kitchen phone cord around the corner for privacy. Our executive producer, Lindsay, wanted that same freedom for her kids, 8 and 10. So in January, she got them a TinCan. Now, friends call the house to chat, make plans, and check in without borrowing her phone. They even keep a handwritten phone book next to it. I kind of love that. TinCan is the new school way for kids to talk with their friends. It's a secure landline that lets them call all their favorite people, but with parental controls to keep them protected. No screens, no algorithms, no texting, just a phone being a phone. Kids can only call or be called by people on your approved

• 46:24Speaker 00

  list. Calls to other TinCans and 911 are always free. And there's even an answering machine for messages that are, I'm told, gloriously ridiculous. Go to tincan.com/goodlife to get $10 off your first order, exclusive for our listeners. That's tincan.com/goodlife for $10 off. And when you use our link, you're supporting our show. tincan.com/goodlife. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Ah, fall, that cozy season where we swap the swimwear for sweaters and sunnies for scars. But before the Halloween decorations are put away or Thanksgiving table has been set, there's already holly jolly music playing

• 47:05Speaker 00

  in the grocery store, reminding you that the year is coming to a close. Time to kick end of year into high gear. When you use Apple Card with Apple Pay, you earn 2% daily cash back on all purchases. Including food, decorations, gifts and more. Get a head start on your end of year purchases. Apply for your Apple Card in the Wallet app on your iPhone today and start using it right away with Apple Pay. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 47:42Speaker 00

  Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a berry chantilly cake. Ready to cook pizza? No antibiotics ever chicken wings. And sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market.

• 48:12Speaker 00

  Our final guest is Amelia Javitasgaya, CEO and founder of The Flourishing Center, a New York City based B Corp dedicated to increasing flourishing worldwide. Amelia brings a unique blend of academic rigor and practical application to the science of thriving. I mean, what if you could transform your overthinking from an endless loop of worry into a powerful tool for growth and clarity? Most of us experience the weight of mental chatter daily, that constant stream of worry and second guessing that can feel impossible to quiet. Well, today Amelia shares her mind over chatter approach that has helped thousands transform their relationship with anxiety and mental chatter into pathways for growth. Here's Amelia. You have this sort of taxonomy of chatter

• 48:56Speaker 00

  where you look at it and you say, well, it's not all just one thing, but there are these five different types. So I think it would be helpful to maybe walk through the five different types and just, so we can have a sense for what these are and how to distinguish them. And then maybe we'll talk about some of the tools that would be relevant for each. So maybe we'll go one at a time defining and describing what each of these different types of overthinking chatter rumination are. Yeah, absolutely. And I should say that the way that this model got created is that we're looking at the five types. Types of chatter that need changing. These are the five types of overthinking and ruminating or the types of thoughts that people could have.

• 49:37Speaker 00

  That if you don't learn how to navigate these types, they're going to be more problematic. There are some types of thoughts that we have that are just factual thoughts like I'm hungry. I have to pee. How much time is left in this podcast? What do I need to go do next? You don't need to train yourself because those types of thoughts, even if you're having them, at the very least, all they'll do is stop you from being mindful. Then there's sort of dreaming thoughts like, oh, where could we go for vacation this year? Or I've heard that Bali is, you know, beautiful this time of year. All of that type of chatter, it's just thoughts about the future. It's sort of innocent. In fact, it's great to daydream and get creative and think that. So those kinds of thoughts are fine.

• 50:20Speaker 00

  Again, the worst that they'll do is stop you from being in the present moment, just being really aware of what you have right now. Empty mind, blank mind. But the five types of chatter, these are chatter that we want to be able to learn to work with. Because they can lead to weighing you down, stressing you. Or some of them could put you, if you don't learn to challenge them, at risk for depression or at risk for anxiety. And if you look at what are the highest maladies that people struggle with nowadays? It's some aspect of generalized anxiety disorder or some aspect of depression or the two going together.

• 50:59Speaker 00

  We could actually help quite a lot of people navigate this, these two major ailments that they're experiencing by teaching them this chatter. So I call it the mind over chatter approach and we start with the idea of worry chatter, judgment chatter, regret chatter, mindset chatter and motivation chatter. So worry chatter is anytime your mind has thoughts about the future that have a flavor of protection or fear. So it could be worry chatter, it could be anxiety chatter. And what's great about this approach and actually training it as a system is

• 51:38Speaker 00

  If you can hear the beginning of what your mind is saying or what you're ruminating or overthinking about, when you can catch that beginning part, you can know which chatter to apply to it or which way of reframing it. So worry chatter is anything that starts with what if? It's anything going into the future. So what if I don't get this job? What if I make a fool of myself? What if they think that I don't have what it takes? What if they call me out on it? What if they don't listen to me? What if I do get it? So it's any time that we're having that thought of what if something bad is gonna happen? Or it's anything future oriented. It could also be like, I'm gonna mess this up.

• 52:21Speaker 00

  I'm going to, I will, I'll end up, I'll never. Any of these future oriented thoughts. And the key about mind over worry chatter is that we wanna first start by having compassion for our mind as to why it's doing this in the first place. The only reason you're worrying is because there is the thought of a potential threat, which is not very likely, and your brain is trying to protect you from it. So the way to work with worry chatter is always first to say, thank you, brain. I know you're trying to protect me. And work with the worry. And in order to work with the worry, we have different processes, but I'll give you some shortcuts to it. The first one that you can use is understanding that

• 53:04Speaker 00

  the things that you're worried about, we're not actually worried about. You're not worried that something will happen to your health. You're not worried that you will lose your home, or your job, or your freedom, or all these other things. We're worried that these things would happen and that they would crush us. They would stop us from being able to move forward. You know, what if I make a mistake? You're not actually afraid of whatever that mistake is. You're afraid that you'll make this mistake and you will not be able to recover from it. So teaching people to work with their worry, we work with the helping them understand that they have handled it. The talk back sentences to, well, what if this happens and what if that happens? The short key is that you say to yourself, I've handled it before and I'll handle it.

• 53:48Speaker 00

  Again, or you catch yourself going to those worst case scenarios. And sometimes we take a process where we actually let the brain go worst case scenario. And you just go, okay, and then what happens? And then what happens? And then what happens? And actually get all those catastrophizing thoughts out. And then go to the unrealistically best case scenario. So what if the positive opposite happened? So it goes from, I'm looking for a job, haven't been able to find a job. I nail my ideal job right out the gate. And then you go down this unrealistically best case scenario. So that you can get to what's most likely going to happen. Because in that place of worry, we're not able to problem solve. So it's really important to be able to peel them apart.

• 54:31Speaker 00

  And as you said earlier, Jonathan, you're like, why don't we just do away with this? Why don't we just stop? Well, there's nothing like telling a high level worrier that they shouldn't worry. When you tell them that they shouldn't worry, they just worry more that you're not worried as much as they are. They worry for you that you're not worrying enough. And so they just dig their heels even more into their need for worry. So rather than working with the worry, we want to understand that the worry was just there to get your attention. So that you could work with the chatter, so that you could problem solve. So that if these, God forbid, things can happen, that you have a plan. So, okay, thank you, brain, for telling me about these worst case scenario things that can happen. I believe I will handle them. So let me take a look at them. You know, what if this happens?

• 55:16Speaker 00

  Can I actually plan for this thing? No, I can't. There's only so much I can plan for something that might happen 10 years out into the future. Of what if something happens to me in retirement and I don't have enough money for retirement? What can I do about it today? Is how we work with worry chatter. And all those future thoughts can all be handled very much in the same way. So that you're able to reframe it, catch yourself going, what if this happens? What if that happens? And you can say, if it happens, I will handle it. Or you take the thought and you digest it. You write it down and you go, okay, can I actually do something about this in this moment? If so, great. What can I do to prevent it from happening? But it's like with the banana peel. The banana is the thing you want to eat. The peel.

• 55:58Speaker 00

  Is the worry and most people don't understand that they can separate the feeling of worry, the the heartbeat, the ruminating from the actual problem solving. So that problem solving is what you want to do. But if you just stay in the worry and the ruminating about it, you're not going to be able to problem solve as effectively. And that makes a lot of sense to me. Let's walk through the other four. Great. So from worry chatter, we can go to motivation chatter. Motivation chatter, and I might have said this in a different order, but let's just don't go to motivation chatter. So motivation chatter is any time that your mind is weighing you down with, I have to do this, I need to do this, I should do this.

• 56:40Speaker 00

  And one would think that this is just perfectly innocent, just having the thought, I need to do this, I have to do this. But what it turns into is too much of that chatter makes you feel like you have the weight of the world on your shoulder. You feel burdened by everything you have to do and you need to do. And one of our core needs as human beings is for agency and autonomy. So we don't realize that every single time we're thinking like, I need to pick my kids up from school and I have to make dinner and I need to call this person back and I have to do this. That if it's just like, gee, I have to do this, it would be fine. But most people, when it's ruminating and their mind is just going, it's on a set cycle and I don't do enough and I should be doing more.

• 57:25Speaker 00

  So the reason we're do it, we're having that chatter, you should do this, you need to do this, you have to do this, don't forget, you have to do this, is because your brain is trying to motivate you to take action. But what often happens is it doesn't motivate you. It just makes you feel like you are overburdened or you do eventually do it. But when it's overthinking and ruminating about it, it's just on overkill. It's like, I wrote down, I wrote this down on my to do list. I will get to it eventually. I don't need to think about it. It's a misuse of energy to keep letting my brain ruminate about it. And so there's a quick turnaround for this. The first is just to remove the burden and reclaim agency. You don't have to pick your children up from school.

• 58:09Speaker 00

  You want to pick your kids up from school because you don't want them stranded at school by themselves. You don't have to do the laundry. You choose to do the laundry because you would prefer to wear clean underwear. You don't have to return your email. You want to return your email because you'd like to get back to people that are waiting for you. You don't even have to pay your bills. Really, you don't have to pay bills. And I would imagine that you would like to keep your wifi and your heat and your house and all these other things. But even that, it's like you don't actually have to. Without the control over the motivation chatter, it just starts to feel heavy and you just feel burdened by everything, by the world, by this world you've created,

• 58:50Speaker 00

  even when it's a really good things, like I have all of these things that I want to do. They're all so good, but they're not actually motivating you to take action because there's just too many of them. So with that one, the quick one is you go from I have to, I need to, or I should, to I want to, or I get to, or I choose to. Or you can take that choose to to I choose to blank because blank. I don't have to go to work. I choose to go to work because I like collecting a paycheck. I don't have to go to the gym. I want to go to the gym. But sometimes you don't want to go to the gym. And then you could just say, I want to want to go to the gym.

• 59:33Speaker 00

  But even I want to want is better than I have to. So this is one of the ways that in our mind, we don't even realize it. We we zap ourselves of our power. We zap ourselves of our agency because of the way in which are we're overthinking these things. Where the only reason your brain is saying it in the first place is because it wants to motivate you to go to the gym because it's good for you, pick up your kids. So motivation chatter, catching it and then replacing it. I get to. You don't have to make dinner. You get to make dinner. Little shifts like that can take something from it feeling like a burden and you can't turn your chatter off, can't turn your mind off, just just going, going to.

• 1:00:19Speaker 00

  Feeling grateful for the thing that you get to do. And this you can not just introduce to yourself, but it's really helpful to introduce your family to this idea or your colleagues to this idea. My team says this to me all the time. I'll be on a meeting and they'll say, okay, I have to go teach class right now. And they'll say, do you have to or do you get to? And I'll be like, you're right. I get to go teach class right now because no, really, I do. I'm so honored. That's the thing when they say it's like, yeah, I do. I get to, I'm grateful that I get to. But so often we forget that, right? And so that's motivation chatter. Got it. No, I love that reframe also. And what I love about like these interventions too, is the interventions themselves are not heavy. It's like they're not adding burden or complexity. They're straightforward. They're simple.

• 1:01:04Speaker 00

  It's just a matter of getting into the practice of noticing and then using them on a regular basis. We talked about motivation. We talked about worry. Let's walk through the, the other three. Yeah. So the next one that's good to know about is mindset chatter. And the reason I call this mindset chatter is it's intimately tied to the idea of fixed and growth mindset. And we know that research shows that people who hold more of a growth mindset are more successful. They're better able to handle stress, persist in the face of setbacks. Growth mindset is something that's really essential for resilience. And this is when you hear your brain thing, say things that start with, I can't or I don't. I don't know how to do that. I can't do that.

• 1:01:48Speaker 00

  I don't have what it takes for that. And again, that might actually be accurate in that moment, but there's a deflated feeling when we just say, I can't or I don't. And if it's just like, oh yeah, I know, I can't do that tomorrow. I'm not free at that time. That's fine. But what we're talking about is the one that actually ties into a mindset. Like, I don't have what it takes to do this. If we add the word yet to the end of it, like, I can't speak. I'm learning to speak Hebrew. I can't speak fluent Hebrew yet. I can't bake a cake from scratch yet.

• 1:02:28Speaker 00

  I don't know how to launch online marketing ads from scratch yet. I don't know how to drive a car yet. Any of these things that we can, by Adding the word yet to it is just a simple one where we can start to catch mind chatter. It's always really good for kids. Like, I can't do this. I can't do this math problem. To help them hold a growth mindset, we could say, you can't do it yet. And what that conveys is that change is possible. So just in the same way that autonomy and agency is really important for motivation for human basic needs. The belief that things can change, a sense of optimism for the future is also really important.

• 1:03:12Speaker 00

  So you had to be strategic around where you need this, but it's just if you can catch where you start saying yourself, I don't do this well enough, or I can't do this. It's same to, I'm not that kind of person. I'm not someone who can do that. I'm not like that person. Those are the types of thoughts that have this underlying mindset that may be more of a fixed mindset around, I'm not smart enough, or I can't do those things. And so just adding that yet at the end of it is a simple mindset chatter hack that takes something that would otherwise be a period. I don't know how to do this, period. And it just makes it a comma.

• 1:03:52Speaker 00

  It just opens up the, keeps ourselves open to change is possible, change is always happening. And that's an important way to deal with that type of chatter, to get it to stop, to get it to stop from ruminating. That makes a lot of sense to me also, because what you're talking about is acknowledging the reality of your current moment. It puts you into this possibility mode rather than this shutdown mode, which, and it acknowledges your reality rather than asking you to step into something that you know in your heart is not true. And just try and repeat it enough times so that like you fake your way into making it, you know, a truth which you will always know is actually not true. And that creates that cognitive dissonance, which just you kind of know it's not right.

• 1:04:38Speaker 00

  I love that simplicity. Talk to me about the final two types and how you handle them. And just to layer on to that, what you just said is you're in doing that, in staying solution focused and actually generating ideas. Is around what you do, you're actually using the chatter and the thoughts for what they're trying to get you to do. But without knowing how to, they're just on loop. It's like they're on loop to try to get you to take them and do something with them. But you don't know how to take them down from the cloud and do something with them. So they just keep going. Whereas when you catch it, you start to become creative. Okay. Well, what can I do about it? It opens up problem solving. And at the end of the day, that's what you want. You want that problem solving. So then next one, you actually just mentioned, it then becomes an identity.

• 1:05:22Speaker 00

  And when it becomes an identity, that identity, whether it be positive or negative, becomes some aspect of a judgment. So the next type of chatter is judgment chatter. Whether the judgment is positive or negative, it can still be a judgment. And so what is that form? What form does that take? This is chatter that starts with, I'm so, I always, I'm, she's a, he's a, he thinks, she thinks. It's anytime that we are judging ourselves, judging others, or judging the situation. And that type of chatter, judgment chatter, requires us to take our brain to court.

• 1:06:06Speaker 00

  Because when we can take on a positive identity that serves us, like, I am hardworking, I figure things out. So in that case, that's great. You're hardworking. You don't need to challenge that. But I'm not good enough is the kind of thought where I am and then fill in the blank. Oh, let me catch that. Well, how do I handle that? How do I get myself to stop thinking that? You can just say, stop it, stop it. What's wrong with you? You shouldn't think that. Well, all that does is just makes you ignore it for a little bit. Until you're trying to fall asleep at night and then pop, all the thoughts keep going again. But instead, we actually want to zap it. We actually want to transmute it. And that's what the talk packs do. And so we begin to say, okay, if my brain

• 1:06:47Speaker 00

  Wants to judge myself, others or the situation, I need to say, where is the evidence? Where is the evidence? What does it mean to be not good enough? We literally want to take our brain to court. So if you walked into a court of law and you were the defendant on a case and he said, you know, you stole the money. The judge would say, prove it. Where is the evidence? You don't just, you're just get away with these accusations. You have to back them up with evidence. So we start to look for evidence for or evidence against it. So actually be taking your brain really seriously. Starting to ask it, can I know that to be certain? Where is that evidence? And then you can talk back to it. You literally can say, that's not true because, or another way of seeing that is.

• 1:07:31Speaker 00

  So when I was healing for my eating disorder, I would catch my brain saying things like, you're so fat. You're so ugly. You're so gross. You're so this. And I would say, okay, that's not true. Or another way of seeing that is I'm not feeling so great in my body right now, but I'm not these things. And so the talk backs, I'm not smart enough, or they think, right? They think I'm an idiot. Well, can I know that to be certain? Can I actually know what they are thinking? No, actually I can't. And so it's like, basically you're saying to your brain, I'm not going to let you get away with that. And that process can just start with catching it anytime you hear there, uh, I'm, uh, he thinks, she thinks this is.

• 1:08:17Speaker 00

  You know, then you can catch it and you could say, can I know that to be certain? Or where is the evidence for that? And you start to challenge your brain. And then we start to choose a better feeling thought, choose a more useful thought, a thought that's not constantly looping. And reframing that perspective. Yeah, I love the idea of taking it to court. That makes so much sense to me. Which brings us to the final one, the final of the five. This final one, I think is actually the crux of what you're asking about, about overthinking. Because this is regret chatter. So a lot of overthinking is actually regret chatter. This is.

• 1:08:57Speaker 00

  When you just can't let it go and you're the actual regret is I could have, I should have, what if I had? And so it's the shoulda, coulda, woulda. And what is it about? It is a part of you that's still trying to get your attention to say, you might have made a mistake. And what it's putting you through is a replay of, well, what if you made a mistake? What if you made a mistake? What if you made a mistake? But it just sounds like different things, you know, I shouldn't have written that. Or how are they going to receive that? So this is regret chatter and the talk back to regret chatter is really coming to peace with your past. It's an element of self forgiveness. So the talk back to it is I can't change the past.

• 1:09:41Speaker 00

  Actually saying, thank you, brain. I hear you saying that I should have said this differently, but I can't change the past. Here's what I will do moving forward. Because the regret chatter is trying to get your attention so that next time you don't do the same thing or you don't do it similarly. And so being able to say, thank you. The past is history. The best thing I can do for myself is hold on to the lesson and let the let the rest go. So even saying, what's the lesson? What can I do? It can also sound like I wish I hadn't, or I can't believe I. Those are places that if you can, if you hear the beginnings of those sentences, it's very likely that you're going to be on a loop. I can't believe I did this. I'm such an idiot.

• 1:10:26Speaker 00

  So there you have regret chatter, judgment chatter. What if they all think I'm a complete bozo? Worry chatter, right? But you can start to catch them all together, but they start to now be familiar. And now they're just parts of you coming together, feeling bad over things that right now you can't change. But what you do have control over is can you learn the lessons and can you let go of the rest? So a lot of regret chatter is being at peace with your past. A lot of it is about forgiveness. One of my favorite definitions of forgiveness is letting go of hope for a different past. Right? The past is over. It's already done. Hoping that the past could be different.

• 1:11:07Speaker 00

  Is it gonna really help you catching the chatter and saying, thank you, brain somehow flagellating myself about this and beating myself up over it, making myself hurt through my stress or feeling bad, isn't helping me. It's not going to help me prevent this from happening in the future. What could I do differently? So I should have, I could have, what if I had, I wish I had it, I can't believe I, that's all a form of of regret chatter. And talking back to it by coming to peace with it, that is done. And I can't do anything about it, but I can take the lessons. And in doing that, I embrace more of that growth mindset,

• 1:11:48Speaker 00

  that learner path thinking, all of which will make you more resilient. But without the ability to catch the thought, pull it down from the cloud, be like, uh uh, I'm gonna dissect you, I'm gonna talk back to you. Then it feels like it just, these thoughts are all swirling around, and they seem like they just happen without you being able to do anything about it. But actually learning how to talk back to them in real time, what it does is it just, it just shuts them up, especially when you take your brain to court. It's like, all right, I guess I can't get away with calling you a bozo anymore, an idiot, and hence, it might show up in another form, and then you'll say, thank you, and you quiet it down. And over time, it does shift the relationship to thoughts.

• 1:12:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, that makes so much sense. I mean, the five different types and the interventions that are appropriate for each. But I do want to circle back to one phrase that you just said, which is sort of like, catch it and pull it down from the cloud, because it seems like that's sort of the meta skill that binds all of them. Like, before you can actually say, oh, like, which of the five is this? And then, how do I talk back to it? How do I bring it to court? Like, what is the appropriate response? You've got to first have the ability to sort of say, oh, this is happening. Let me pull it down, so I can actually see what's happening, and then figure out what what's appropriate. Is that right? Absolutely. The starting place for all of this, the capacity to have your mind be

• 1:13:13Speaker 00

  controlling the chatter, is to be able to be aware Of your thinking. And this is actually one of the things that makes humans the unique animals in the whole animal kingdom. Is that we have metacognition. We have the capacity to time travel in a way that other animals don't. We can think about the past. We could be thinking about the future. So you could be walking down the street and one would think that you are actually there now. But it's only your body that's there now. Your mind has time traveled into the past or into the future. And the capacity to catch your thinking and to actually think about thinking, that is that metacognition that makes us uniquely human. So that's why I call this.

• 1:13:55Speaker 00

  The most empowering, the most important skill that we all have the capacity to master. We're just not being taught it. And many practices such as meditation and mindfulness prepare you to be able to slow down your thoughts. And to create the space to actually be the witness and hear them. And so that's why meditation does make you a Jedi of your mind. So that you can start to hear those things and then being proactive with them. Sometimes just catching the thought and writing down the thought that you're having it also is enough to make it go away. What I'm then giving you is like icing on the cake because then you just like karate chop it up and it just no longer exists.

• 1:14:35Speaker 00

  But a lot of people find relief from the overthinking and from the ruminating just by writing it out. Just by getting it out of their mind. And in many ways, that's literally what we're talking about with. These thoughts are just there trying to get you to pay attention. Don't forget, don't forget, you might mess up. Don't forget, people might judge you. Don't forget. You might be ostracized, whatever that might be. And so when you write it down, you're like, okay, I got the memo. I'm not going to forget. But you turn off the alarm. Otherwise, it's just that beeping going on in the back. And it depletes you and it takes away from you being. Your fully vibrant self or as happy or as excited or as energized as you could be because literally.

• 1:15:19Speaker 00

  Your brain can weigh you down and it can also tire you out. And how do you make it stop? You make it stop by catching it. Writing it down, working with it. And then if you want, you can then re-upload them back to the cloud, changed with these new talkback sentences. I get to do my work. I get to figure this out. The most likely outcome is we would be okay and we'd figure it out. But then you put it back in the cloud and you're being conscious of creating your reality, conscious of the thoughts that you want to be thinking and how you want to show up in the world. So if anyone wants to learn more about this mind over chatter approach and how to work with thoughts and get a few more skills,

• 1:16:01Speaker 00

  there's other types of chatter that can also be considered. I call it sneaky chatter that you want to be aware of. I have a full course that I would love to gift to the Good Life Project community. It's usually a hundred and twenty dollar course, but if you go to theflourishingcenter.com forward slash good life, you can get free access to the Mind Over Chatter course, which will walk you through the whole process from start to finish and has a bonus section on different types of sneaky thoughts that we didn't get a chance to cover today. Hmm, so helpful. I'm gonna start trying to really actively practice these things myself. Feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. So in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

• 1:16:47Speaker 00

  Hmm. To live a good life means to live a life of alignment of who you are and what you feel like you've been put here to do, surrounded by people that you love, that make you feel like you belong and that you matter. And with the vital health to be able to execute on that aligned purpose of what you've been put here to do and to enjoy it with the people that matter most. Hmm, thank you. Hmm, thanks for the question.

• 1:17:22Speaker 00

  So thanks so much to today's guests for this spotlight conversation. Three just powerful approaches to transforming your relationship with anxiety. Understanding worry loops, reframing anxiety as a potential superpower, and working skillfully with mental chatter. These conversations reveal that anxiety isn't something to simply endure or accept. It's an invitation to greater awareness, creativity, and connection. And if you loved this episode, be sure to catch the full conversation with today's guests. You can find a link to each of those episodes in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Alejandro Ramirez. Christopher Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project

• 1:18:05Speaker 00

  in your favorite listening app or on YouTube too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did, because you're still listening here. Do me a personal favor, a seven second favor. Share it with just one person. I mean, if you want to share it with more, that's awesome too. But just one person even, then invite them to talk with you about what you've both discovered, to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter. Because that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.

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