Wolfgang Linden on How to Know When It’s Time to Take a Risk | EP 649

In this powerful conversation, Dr. Wolfgang Linden—renowned psychologist and relationship expert—unpacks the psychology of risk-taking in relationships, career moves, and personal change. Drawing on decades of clinical experience, he explains how fear, avoidance, and repeating old patterns can keep us stuck, and why calculated risks are often the catalyst for growth. Dr. Linden is the author of the new book: The Illusion of Control: A Practical Guide to Avoid Futile Struggles. We explore how to navigate anxiety and depression during major transitions, how therapy can become a safe testing ground for change, and how to build resilience when stepping into the unknown. Whether you’re facing a relationship crossroads, considering a career shift, or simply longing for more authenticity, this episode will give you the tools and confidence to move forward. Visit this link for the full show notes. Go Deeper: The Ignited Life SubstackIf this episode stirred something in you, The Ignited Life is where the transformation continues. Each week, I share behind-the-scenes insights, science-backed tools, and personal reflections to help you turn intention into action. Subscribe🔗 and get the companion resources delivered straight to your inbox. Catch more of Wolfgang Linden: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wolfgang-linden-12a68336/If you liked the show, please leave us a review—it only takes a moment and helps us reach more people! Don’t forget to include your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally. How to Connect with John:Connect with John on Twitter at @John_RMilesFollow him on Instagram at @John_R_MilesSubscribe to our main YouTube Channel and to our YouTube Clips ChannelFor more insights and resources, visit John’s websiteConnect with John Pre-Order The Mattering Effect: https://matteringeffect.com/Book John to Speak: https://johnrmiles.com/speaking/Keynotes, books, podcast, and resources: https://linktr.ee/John_R_MilesChildren’s Book — You Matter, Luma: https://youmatterluma.com/Substack: https://www.theignitedlife.net/Support the Movement: https://startmattering.com/. Every human deserves to feel seen, valued, and like they matter. Wear it. Live it. Show it.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00John R. Miles?

  Coming up next on Passion Struck.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  Every once in a while, you will run into a dead end. And the only solution is to try something you've never done before. Will you know ahead of time that's going to work? No, you do not. You have to take the risk. But given that everything else you've done so far hasn't worked, you have really no choice but to engage in the risk. And with marital partners, you may have a number of relationships that just didn't work. And if you leave one behind, there's no guarantee that the next one is better. But there is a chance that it's better.

• 0:41John R. Miles?

  Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries and athletes. Now let's go out there and become passion struck.

• 1:23John R. Miles?

  Hey friends, welcome back to episode 649 of Passion Struck. If you're new to the show, I'm your host, John Miles, and I'm so glad you're here. Passion Struck isn't just a podcast, it's a movement, a global community of world shapers, difference makers and intentional seekers committed to building lives of deeper purpose, lasting impact and inner strength. And if you've been with us for a while, thank you. Your presence in this journey means more than you know. Book update before we dive in. Our sub stack, The Ignited Life is growing fast. Every week I share insights that go deeper than the podcast, tools, frameworks and behind the scenes stories designed to help you live with courage and clarity. You can find it at theignitedlife.net or through passionstruck.com.

• 2:06John R. Miles?

  Before we get into today's episode, I want to remind you, we're right in the middle of our redefining wellness series, a deep dive in how we reclaim our health, purpose, vitality in a culture of burnout and distraction. Last week, we had two powerhouse episodes. Dr. Erica Schwartz, who blew the doors open on hormonal health, preventative medicine, and taking back control of your wellbeing, and Dr. Drew Ramsey, who gave us a masterclass in nutritional psychiatry and why you are quite literally what you eat and think. This past Friday, I released a solo episode on the absorption gap, why so many wellness routines fail to create lasting change, what to do about it. If you missed it, I highly recommend giving it a listen. Now today's conversation.

• 2:49John R. Miles?

  We often talk about stress like it's the enemy, something to fight, suppress, or escape. But what if we've misunderstood stress altogether? My guest today, Dr. Wolfgang Linden, is a groundbreaking psychologist whose decades of research have reframed how we think about stress, resilience, and healing. He believes it's not always the stress itself that matters most, but how we relate to it. In this powerful episode, we'll explore why stress isn't the villain, and how our response to it shapes our wellbeing, the healing power of structured emotional expression, the surprising role of spirituality and meaning in managing chronic illness, and what true resilience looks like in life, in therapy, and in the face of adversity.

• 3:32John R. Miles?

  This isn't just a conversation about mental health, it's a redefinition of what it means to be fully, fiercely human. So let's dive in to episode 649 of Passion Struck with Dr. Wolfgang Linden. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin.

• 3:57John R. Miles?

  I am absolutely honored today to have Dr. Wolfgang Linden on Passion Struck. Welcome Wolfgang.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Good morning to you.

• 4:05John R. Miles?

  I'm gonna get into your book, The Illusion of Control: A Practical Guide to Avoid Feudal Struggles, here in a second, but I just have to tell you, when I was a youngster in my twenties, I happened to go on this trip to Europe and we flew into Germany. I met some of the most incredible people I've ever met in my entire life in Germany. We were around Frankfurt and this group of kids about our same age took us in and ended up chaperoning us around. Then we went to the Netherlands, Belgium, down to France, and then all throughout Germany. And they ended up becoming our tour guides.

• 4:45John R. Miles?

  And I will never forget the generosity in this group of kids that I had never met before in my life. Just wanted to tell you how great of stories I have and memories of Germany.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  That's a wonderful foundation for connecting here. You know what, I've made similar experiences in lots of other places. And I keep being surprised at how many lovely people out there. There's some terrible ones too. But you gotta figure out who the good ones are and seek them out.

• 5:15John R. Miles?

  Today, we're going to be talking about your book, The Illusion of Control. And I think when it comes to control, we all have different definitions of what that word means. And I was hoping you might be able to give us your definition.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  It really is all about results, if you want, right? If I want to control another person, it's because I want them to do something that is for me and what were useful to me, or hopefully useful for the world.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  But I may not get what I want because I don't have direct influence over other people. In fact, it's one of the main thesis of the book, that you do not directly control other people. And on the other hand, the emphasis of the book is on what it is that you can do for yourself. And that people actually underestimate how much it is. And so it's really about results and realizing how much investment is worth it. And when you need to pull the plug, you clearly realize that this can't go anywhere. I have numerous examples in the book, but let's say weight control is one of those issues.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Or insomnia, at some point, you just have to change strategies because you don't get what you're targeting.

• 6:36John R. Miles?

  That's absolutely true. And as I was doing research on you, you've worked across everything from psychosocial cardiac rehab to childhood trauma prevention. Throughout those different experiences, how has your perspective on control evolved?

• 6:54Speaker 01

  I've been around long enough that I have no longer any idea what I learned, when, from, whom, where. So it all comes together in one big jumble, but beautiful jumble. And so really, when working with clients, because I'm trained as a clinical psychologist, I've been surprised at people not realizing that the bark and up the wrong tree sometimes. Because what you really can do, first and foremost, is engage in your own behavior. So you can be extremely anxious of, let's say, dogs. And you can go and pat a dog even while you're anxious.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  And when I work with clients, I use a triangle, and the triangle has three legs. One is behavior, one is thinking, and one is emotions. So the hardest to control directly is emotions, the easiest to work with is behavior. And the thinking process is a bit more tricky, but each one of those corners of the triangle connects with the other. It's bidirectional flow. So if you change your behavior, will have some immediate impact on your, your thinking and on your mood. Let's say if you're sitting on the couch and you're depressed and you don't know what to do, you can move your butt off the couch, get out the house and just walk around the block and realize, oh, it's a sunny day and I see some buds out after a long winter. Your mood

• 8:22Speaker 01

  is immediately going to change. It was a very simple behavior that was eminently doable. So that I find is the best starting point. And in terms of thinking, people can think themselves into horrendous knots that they just can't get out of anymore. And ultimately, if they're willing to listen to you, you can say, look, these knots are of your own making. You can undo them.

• 8:50John R. Miles?

  I want to go through with you different aspects of the book that were some of my favorite. And this starts with this idea of quicksand of control. You write, many people sink deeper into emotional quicksand, the harder they struggle to fix others. What do you mean by this emotional quicksand?

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Quicksand, by definition, is something where the usual strategy of putting in an effort to get out produces the opposite results, right? Because you sink in deeper. So it is meant to sensitize you to the idea that you need to figure out what is the nature of this problem and can this particular attempt at a solution work? And within the quicksand, if you start and you realize you're sinking, right, you absolutely have to stop. Otherwise, it just gets worse. And then there are other situations like it, relationships. You know, some relationships can be repaired and are worth repairing. And not every one of them

• 9:55Speaker 01

  is worth hanging on to. You will lose some friends over time and some marriages fall apart. Some of those might have been fixable with good therapy, but every once in a while you're just connected to the wrong person. You need to recognize this can't go anywhere and move on. So what most books, you know, that I've found are theories.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Think of other people as being largely the same, but they're not. Every person has their unique

• 10:26Speaker 01

  in terms of their thinking and their behavior. And we have people who are very troublesome to deal with. That's true in family, that's true at the workplace. And then when we talk about the notion of control, well, if you have a family member who's a lot of trouble, you stock family as part of your perpetual makeup, right? On the other hand, if you have a friend who is just very unreliable or exploits you somehow, you can make a choice.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  If you realize that this can't go anywhere, you don't owe absolute loyalty forever.

• 11:02John R. Miles?

  Well, I'm so glad you brought that up because one of the cornerstones of this whole podcast is the power of choice. And I think it's one of the most important things that has come out of behavioral science is that it's our micro choices that really influence the person we become. And so I love your quote where you refer to this, you say, you cannot suppress thoughts or control what not to think about, but you can choose what you do and what you are paying attention to. But I think people understand at a high level, this power of choice. But it sure is a lot more difficult to implement it than it is when you first hear it. Why do people struggle with this so much?

• 11:46Speaker 01

  It's a principle. It's not hard to sell as a principle. People can say, oh, that kind of makes sense. But the reason you have to do way more, either write a book about it or engage in a therapy process is you really have to practice that skill. There is a question of awareness. You have to be mindful of your own feelings, your circumstances, and trying to understand what other people around you going through. And then on that basis, you say, well, what's the best strategy that might work?

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Think about also, when and how do I know that something works? Right? So to have a goalpost somewhere, say, oh, if I get that kind of response, that probably means this is going to be a good friend or a good partner. As in, if I don't, then well, maybe I'll have to put this one in the gray zone and do a little more testing. Whether this person is the best employee or the best partner. And every once in a while, you just say, no, stop, move on. Step aside.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  That's the art, but as you put your finger on it, it's not something you can immediately implement just because you understand the principle.

• 13:06John R. Miles?

  Absolutely. And you referenced Daniel Wexner's famous white bear study to show how thought suppression backfires. And I like this because so many of us try to control our thoughts by force and the choices we make by force. How can we begin redirecting attention in a way that's actually helpful?

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Thinking is chooseable, the content is chooseable, right? Let's say, pick the example of trying to fall asleep. And you really need that night's sleep because you got big plans on the next day.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  If you can't let go of those ruminative thoughts that keep you away from actually falling asleep. Then you can package the change, the thinking with the behavior. And the standard advice for sleep is get up, get out of bed, do something else. And that something else makes it much easier to then change what you're thinking about. So if you get out of bed, go to another room, turn on the TV. Check something on your cell phone or watch something on Netflix, whatever it is. That behavior trigger makes it a lot easier to let go of the old thought that's not working.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  And also because you changed the environment, now you have different stimuli that get you to think about different things.

• 14:33John R. Miles?

  This got me thinking about something that I experienced a lot in work. I've heard so many people over the past two decades describe themselves when they ask, "What's your leadership style?" Almost every single interview I'm in, describe themselves as a servant leader. And what I've seen across many servant leaders is they say that is their leadership style, but a trait that comes out of them more than any other seems to be micromanagement. And you cite this whole phenomenon of micromanagement in the workplace. And we see this huge phenomenon now that we've been experiencing for about that same

• 15:17John R. Miles?

  time, where in most Western countries, disengagement of employees has been on the rise. And I think that there is a direct link, in my opinion, to over-control erodes morale. Why do you think leaders fall into this trap so often?

• 15:36Speaker 01

  I think in order to avoid that, you need to be able to trust. And so if you have really good employees or team members who you've worked with and you've got good experiences with, then I think you can delegate or let them do their thing and walk away and do your own. Obviously, if you're in business, you're judged by results. Those results are higher income for the company or greater efficiency of your service and the public image that's behind it.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  As you have those goalposts, those destinations, you can see whether the people you work with are actually progressing in that direction or whether they're going to fall.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Follows to the side and don't quite deliver. So I'll give you as an example, I've had 20 doctoral students over my lifetime. And they were very different people. They had clearly superb qualifications when they started. But what I tried to tell them from scratch was, I'll give you a leash. If you, the goalposts and their regular reviews in the graduate program, I won't yank the leash. But if I sense you're falling behind, then I will pull and then I'll become a bit of a micromanager. And then we might actually meet once a week.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Hammer out what is a very concrete piece of work that you can handle in one week. So that also you can learn to trust yourself that this amount of work is doable in this timeframe. And I have the comfort of knowing that we're actually going to move forward. But so you have to track.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  How well people are responding to this and whether they can carry their responsibility or not.

• 17:39John R. Miles?

  And one of the things about this area is I really think today we need a completely different form of leadership. Especially since so much of the workforce is in remote areas. So I had a book that came out last year myself. And one of the chapters, I explored this concept of gardener leadership. Meaning just like a gardener tends to their crops, but is also hands off at times. I think we need leaders who are eyes on, but hands off. Because you need to give people direction, but you also need them to bring out their own creativity and ideas. Or you're really suppressing the whole value system of why you even have people in the workforce.

• 18:23John R. Miles?

  And so like this metaphor of the gardener, because I think it's better for the leadership style that we need in the future. What are your thoughts of that metaphor?

• 18:35Speaker 01

  I think it's very much overlapping with what I described as the leash situation. And strikingly enough, too, my parents are gardeners and florists. So it's super easy to connect with the gardener analogy. And so I think we're very much on the same page in that respect. There are natural processes which will unfold. And it's often just good to let them unfold the way they're pre-programmed. And then, so why don't you got to get in there and fix something because it's not going in the right direction.

• 19:09John R. Miles?

  So, Wolfgang, you have this other great quote. Being taught that one has control. When it later turns out to be false belief is bound to translate into many repeated and ultimately exhaustive efforts. And you describe a powerful animal experiment where rats lose their ability to escape pain and eventually give up trying. And I think it eerily mirrors what I felt when I experienced burnout. In your experience, how does this illusion of control contribute to learned helplessness? And what are your thoughts on how we can reverse it?

• 19:47Speaker 01

  I'm not an expert in business administration and business leadership by any stretch. But I think all managers need to be aware of the fact that burnout occurs. And with it, you will have absenteeism. People might show up physically at work, but not contributing. And so you need to have a dialogue every once in a while about whether people are happy or not. Now, again, limited expertise in the domain. But human resource professionals in a company can see very clearly how many people quit or how many don't quit.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  And so if you have a very high quit rate, you just have to ask yourself the question, why do people leave? And you have other companies that, you know, have employees that stay lifelong and are very proud to work for employer X, Y, Z. So again, there is a reason for that. So the other thing that employees themselves can do is find the courage to move on. I've encountered a number of people in my life who simply will not leave the job they have. Because it comes with certain benefits and they're familiar with everything. But they're totally missing out on other job opportunities because they can't find the courage to try something new.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  And that's part of my thinking too, that every once in a while, you will run into a dead end. And the only solution is to try something you've never done before. Will you know ahead of time that's gonna work? No, you do not. You have to take the risk. But given that everything else you've done so far hasn't worked, you have really no choice but to engage in the risk. And with marital partners, you may have a number of relationships that just didn't work. And if you leave one behind, there's no guarantee that the next one is better. But there is a chance that it's better. There's a particular approach in psychotherapy that's behind it.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  It's called, it happens in commitment therapy. I don't know whether you follow the literature, but I found it extremely useful, very influential in my thinking to go that route.

• 22:11John R. Miles?

  Can you explain a little bit more about it?

• 22:13Speaker 01

  The number of major tenants to it, it's not a super easy one to explain. The first one is that, and that's not so bad that we shouldn't try, for sure. That you need to think of emotions as being your friends. You have emotions for a reason. If you're anxious, you're anxious about a particular outcome that has bad consequences. If you're depressed, there's a reason for it. And so in this particular approach, Stephen Hayes is a main proponent. You accept that you will go through a variety of emotions and they serve a point. And yes, if you're depressed for too long, you need probably professional help.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  But you could have mood phases where you're just not full of juice. And you have to accept that and work through it.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  So the attempt at avoiding any bad feelings creates a whole bunch of new problems. The attempt of avoiding an anxiety-producing situation is, becomes a problem. So if you're afraid of public spaces and then, or public speaking, well, then you're depriving yourself of opportunities, and that is a problem. So then you end up having to solve two problems. And so the second component to this is what I've already tried to describe to some degree, namely that oftentimes, we kind of program to use a particular solution for a particular problem, and we may become indiscriminate in how we're trying to use that same solution

• 23:49Speaker 01

  over and over again, and don't realize it doesn't work. And when it doesn't, well, then you have to go and try something new for, make new grooves, and see whether those are better grooves.

• 24:03John R. Miles?

  Thank you so much for sharing that, and I wanted to shift the discussion to your chapter on the toolbox shift, where you rightly go into the move from external fixes, which I think so many of us gravitate towards, to internal strength. And you quote one of my favorite authors, Rick Hansen, I actually was just talking to him yesterday, and Rick has this quote, "Your brain is like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones." And I think Rick's metaphor explains how early adversity shapes our neural pathways. And I want to ask, for someone who might be listening today, who feels stuck in negative

• 24:48John R. Miles?

  emotional patterns, which you were just talking about, what's the first step that they can take to rewire their internal narrative? And do you think neuroplasticity gives us hope?

• 25:00Speaker 01

  The short answer, of course, is yes, I very much believe in neuroplasticity. But that has to be up for these discussions. When you look at brain development over the entire lifespan, then the first two years of life are extremely important. Because that is where your neural system learns how the world interacts with you, namely whether you can feel safe, whether things are predictable, whether you get the nurturance and the care that are provided. And if you are given those qualities, and those aren't things that as a baby you can generate yourself. It's what the environment your parents give you.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  So if you have them, you're very well set up to handle a lot of stressful situations. Of course, a lot of resilience. On the other hand, if you had a truly catastrophic upbringing, whether that is mostly neglect or whether that is abused, emotional, physical abuse, sexual abuse, unfortunately, you carry that with you and you can't just shake it off. It's part of your experience. And one analogy that I like and I've used with clients is that all of your life experiences are a part of you. And that may sound incredibly negative, that you can never shake it. But, and this is a Stephen Hayes quote,

• 26:28Speaker 01

  "You can't think of yourself as a driver off the bus, and every experience you make is a passenger. You can decide where your passengers sit. Are they going to sit right behind you and tell you all the bad stuff that happened to you? What do you stick them to the back of the bus? You can drive with me, but I'm not going to pay any attention to you. And I'm going to put a number of people in between you and me that are much more constructive and nice people. And that is a choice you can make. And I really like that because otherwise people, again, trying to get rid of this person at the end of the bus, which will not leave. And let's say you're a parent who's lost a child. Running across the street and getting hit by a car at age four or six.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  It would be horrible to try to tell this parent, oh, they all want to forget about it. They're not going to forget about it. It's unbelievably

• 27:21Speaker 01

  terrible, tearing kind of a process and the grief will take years to get over and you will not forget that child. The child has a name, the child has photographs in the family album. And the child doesn't want to be forgotten.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  But it doesn't have to be taking up all your attention every day. That's the shift you can make.

• 27:47John R. Miles?

  Yeah.

• 27:49John R. Miles?

  For the listeners who are listening to this, I did a solo episode number 615 on a lot of this same topic where I was talking about our mental health is really an ecosystem. And I use this analogy that there was this recent JAMA psychology research that was done where they described this ecosystem like a lake and that typically when a lake is performing as it should, you're not getting a lot of cloudiness in the water and toxicity, but over time, similar to our mental health, that can change and it doesn't happen to change overnight, it tends to change gradually. And so

• 28:32John R. Miles?

  a lot of that gradual change has to do with, as you're describing, the bus that we're riding on and the ecosystem of people that we're surrounding ourselves with, along with the activities that we're doing. So I really agree with you on that whole concept. And I always advocate for people to do something that I call a mosquito audit. Meaning I have these three mosquitoes that I refer people to. I call them the pain in the ass, the invisible suffocator, and the last one is the blood sucker. And they're just three out of many mosquitoes that you can refer to, but each one is really destroying the boundaries that you're trying to set and your emotional regulation.

• 29:17John R. Miles?

  I agree with you. Do you have any more thoughts on it?

• 29:20Speaker 01

  I'd like to expand a bit more on it and that is when you go through psychotherapy, let's say depression is the key issue that's being presented. Then as a therapist, you can ask a person and say, well, what percentage of the time during any typical day are you typically in a gloomy mood? And a profoundly clinically depressed person will say eighty, ninety percent of the time. Occasionally, they forget it. But if you ask people who don't see themselves as depressed, whether they ever are in a bit of a gloomy mood, they will tell you they are and they're functioning people. So the switch is not perfectly gradual. There is a switch point.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  And that switch point, we've tracked it in therapy sessions by with each day, looking at what percentage of mood is of what kind. And the switch point is around sixty, sixty-one percent. So if you were sixty percent depressed and forty not depressed, it still feels very heavy. But if you get just a bit over that, all of a sudden, the whole mood flavor flips over. And you can hear it in the speech. If you track the words carefully. So people will tell you that there's no way I can get that situation ever solved. And they might come back two weeks later and they don't quite hear themselves necessarily.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  And they say, well, I've been looking at that situation. It is shitty. I think I can get through it. And that's a massive shift in the emotional quality behind it. And the sense of, oh, there's a little bit of empowerment here that you can get to the other side. So I don't look at it as just as perfectly gradual accumulation. There's a switch point.

• 31:15John R. Miles?

  I agree with you and thank you so much for sharing that. I wanted to go Wolfgang to the triangle that you introduce in the book of behavior, emotion and thought. And I am so often asked the question of people, how do you start the process of change? And I always say that it starts with you've got to make a choice, but the next thing that follows it is you have to take action. Now, for me, that action should probably be in the place that is the epicenter that's causing you the most grief, but a lot of, like for me, when I did a lot of internal change, it was because of some PTSD experiences that I had.

• 31:58John R. Miles?

  So for me, going through first CBT and then prolonged exposure therapy and some other modalities was the action that I ended up taking, but for others, it could be something else. But so often, people keep ruminating about the fact that they want to change, but they don't do anything to shift their behaviors. So I was hoping maybe you could share a real world story where someone changed their actions first and found that their thoughts and emotions followed.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  It's the preeminent first step in treatment for depression. The most just often described and effective one is cognitive behavioral therapy, but phase one routinely is what we refer to as behavioral activation. Because when you're depressed, typically it means you withdraw from the world, you don't interact with people, you don't get out of the house, you don't do fun things. So even though your mood is good awful, you keep, like I described this earlier, you can get out of the house and go and do your food shopping or do something with friends.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  I'll give you one example, which was great fun to watch. I had a fellow in therapy who was forty something and he had Crohn's syndrome, chronic bowel problems, and it made him want to stay home and it was all the time and it was really painful and all true, there's no point telling him that's not. So I asked him, I said, so what do you do for fun? And the guy said, what do you mean for fun? You're crazy? I've got Crohn's, I'm in pain, I don't do anything for fun. I said, well, would you be willing to make an experiment? Ah, he seemed open to the idea, I said, well.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  If you didn't have it,

• 33:57Speaker 01

  is there something you would like to do that you liked or used to do and enjoyed? He said, "Yeah, I like to go and shoot pool with my friends." And I said, "Is it physically impossible for you now to go and shoot pool with friends?" He says, "No." I said, "So next week you come back and you tell me you did exactly that." And he did. He came back the next week. He shot pool. Did he tell me that his pain was gone? No, but he had fun shooting pool. And at least during that time, he was nowhere near as aware of his pain and his symptoms as before. So he really got the idea of, "Oh, I can change my behavior, and it will change, move me in the right direction." It's not going to be, that one step isn't going to be all the answers.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  But you implant the sense of, "This is possible. Step by step, we can get you into a different sphere."

• 34:51John R. Miles?

  So I wanted to talk about something tangentially similar to that. I was struck in the book by your story of Felix and Julianne and the unintended consequence of one partner growing while the other stood still. And we just started watching, my wife and I, this new show that's about three different couples that are friends, that are coming together. And the one is growing apart from his spouse. And what this is really getting to is systems theory principle. You cannot change just one element of a system. How can couples, or if it's an organization, better anticipate the ripple effects of personal growth

• 35:35John R. Miles?

  so it doesn't fracture the larger system? Because I think what Felix and Julianne are going through is what a ton of people go through in their relationships.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  There are a number of phases to it, right? I have a section in the book which likely came across about at what age to choose a partner. Because if you choose a life partner at age twenty, you don't really know who you are. Your partner doesn't know who they are. So there's a high likelihood that you're going to develop in somewhat different directions, that you have different levels of ambition and investment. So as you get a little bit older, way better how much you fit in terms of those directions. So you can avoid some of that by clarifying your goals, for one thing, but also making a commitment to somebody

• 36:28Speaker 01

  when you know this person is moving on the same train as I am. So that's part one. Of course, if you've not done that, that doesn't mean you have to divorce. But then if one person makes this kind of change, then I think you need to alert the other one that this is going to have implications, that we should do changes together. And if I do this, you do something. You choose what it is. It doesn't have to be the exact same thing. But if you're going to invest in something, I also want to invest because, well, if I spend a lot of time learning a new hobby and you're going to feel left alone at home while I'm out there following my new hobby,

• 37:12Speaker 01

  that's not going to go well. So you could decide jointly that you want to grow a hobby and it doesn't have to be the same one. But it would then take equal amounts of time away from each other from home and you don't have to feel guilty or, you know, complain to your partner that your partner is never there. So mainly it is by making this visible and conscious that you could prevent the trouble.

• 37:39John R. Miles?

  So my wife and I just went through this and a decision that we were making. I've always been someone who loves boating and I've owned boats previously in my life, but we haven't had one since we've been together. And recently I've been talking to her about buying a boat and she felt that was a big commitment to make. So we made the choice together to join a boat club so we could still experience it without the risk of having to go full in on owning a boat and having a place to put it, et cetera. And then, you know, I took it a step further. She hasn't done a lot of time on the water, driving a boat. So I encouraged her that as we were going through the training, that she herself go

• 38:24John R. Miles?

  through it. So she starts getting more comfortable with driving the boat, getting used to being on the water herself for a number of reasons. One being so she gets more acclimated to it, but two, you never know what could happen out on the water and I could get hurt and the other person needs to operate the boat and feel comfortable with it. But I think this is an example where I could have just gone down and maximized my own hobby and told her, you can just stay at home. But more we talked about it and came to a common agreement about how we wanted to approach it.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  I think it was a good move involving, it may turn out that this isn't what she wants to spend her time on, but at least then she'll know and then make a conscious decision or she'll get to enjoy it as much as you do.

• 39:11John R. Miles?

  I wanted to move to chapter six of your book, which is really focused on relationships and the fantasy of control, since we're talking about relationships. And you have this great quote, "Trying to change someone's mind is like drilling holes in stone and sometimes the stone pushes back." I loved it. And you describe how oftentimes, whether it's an intimate relationship or maybe just a relationship you have with a friend or a coworker, we try to give advice and oftentimes it's well-meaning, but it often activates power dynamics implying, "I know better than you." Why is it such a common psychological trap to fall into?

• 39:54John R. Miles?

  And how can people become more aware when they're doing it?

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Ultimately, I think we all have our pride. I'm also a little bit biased and maybe you can, you will share that with me. I think men are a little more prone to pride-related decisions than women. I think there's a gender difference here. And we just like the world to believe that we're competent individuals. And if I get too much advice, then I'm tempted to interpret that as this person doesn't think I'm competent. And that's just not a thought that's appealing to people, right? The other thing is, why do you do it? Some people want to give advice because that is how they want to exert power.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  And no, I don't want to give you that power over me. And find another way to do this in your life. And of course, the rational part is if you can step back and think about what is this person who's giving the unsolicited advice trying to do here? Is look at what does this person know that I don't know? And so if somebody gives me advice, who knows even less about woodworking than I do? Then I'm insulted. But if I realize, oh, this is the person who's done some fabulous cabinetry work and I've seen the product and I know this person is good. Then yeah, it's smart to just say, please bring it on.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  I want to hear how you did this.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  And the person who is wanting to give the advice needs to be aware of, do I really have something to offer? That the other person doesn't have.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  And language matters. I will try on those occasions and say, look, you probably know this already. Right? So take a little bit of the sting out of that one. But have you thought about?

• 41:54Speaker 01

  I find that's getting you gradually through an open door. And if you sense that the other side says, hey, yeah, I've thought about this. So basically they tell you to go away. Another thing to do is go away.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  But say, no, but what do you think? And so then you might get that opening and they say, they actually want to hear what you have to say. But if you fall, the German is crushing this with the door into the house, just then people will take offense and back away. That's part of the systems theory. And that this, all of a sudden you propose a power shift that I'm better than you. And then you buck and say, no, I'm not better than you. We're both good, maybe, but you're not better than I am.

• 42:39John R. Miles?

  And then there's the other thing that you talk about, which is the backfire effect. And I think so many of us need to shift from using a sledgehammer type of approach to the power of using the behavioral science concept of a nudge. And when we want to move someone's opinion in a little bit of a different direction, I find the sledgehammer tactic, especially with my kids, never worked.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, kids is a special topic, of course, because they are yours and you have responsibility to equip them with the right tools for life. And up to a point, they're listening. And then you're going to have 10, 20 years where they reject everything you have to offer. And then they come back and say, oh yeah, you used to do that and made sense. Yeah, I remember one example, I overheard, my son was 16 at the time, talking to a friend of his. And he said, you know, my dad is a real pain in the ass. He's constantly telling me this and that. He says, what's even worse, some of the time he's right. And I said to myself, oh shit, you did it, you did it right.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  Walked away, never said a word. You have to celebrate that one silently, privately, but it was worth the celebration.

• 43:59John R. Miles?

  Thank you for sharing that. And I was also hoping you might be able to talk about the story of King Friedrich and the potato. And you were talking here in this story about creative reframing and cognitive dissonance. And how this tactic ends up working, real world persuasion, especially when we're like addressing an emotionally charged issue like politics, which is hard to avoid these days. Someone's health or even the dynamics of someone's relationship.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can imagine, while I wrote the book, there's been a huge amount of political change. And from where I stand, more so in the US than I see elsewhere. So you can't stop making analogies and connections between all of those. And I'm somewhat baffled that things have become as incredibly divisive as they have become. I've had political discussions with friends, with my dad, my whole life. But they've never been hostile and bitter. They were lively and disagreeable, but in the end, they strengthened their relationship.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  And right now, you have things happening that make all of relationships worse. You can't have a discussion where you separate the value of the person from a particular opinion. You're not allowed to have a different opinion. And there's just something incredibly threatening in that I don't really know what to do with. It has to change. It's awful.

• 45:38John R. Miles?

  Well, it absolutely is, for sure. Wolfgang, I wanted to shift the discussion to a different topic that I like to talk about. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the work of another Canadian named Gordon Flett. But Gordo has-

• 45:57Speaker 01

  Small world that it is, yes. It's been a lot of work together with one of my colleagues, so we met at conferences.

• 46:05John R. Miles?

  Well, great. Well, he's been doing a lot of work on what he calls anti-mattering and the science of mattering. And I want to ask, you've spent now four decades shaping policy, education, patients, outcomes. What does mattering mean to you?

• 46:22Speaker 01

  That particular aspect of Gordon's work I'm not so familiar with. I know more of his work with my colleague about perfectionism. And I think there's a connection that you obviously know this better from having interviewed Gordon. But that with perfectionism, you assign too much value. The details matter too much. And so ultimately, you get lost in the process and you really don't succeed. So somewhere you need to find the balance in what is valuable? What should I invest in? And how much should I invest?

• 47:05Speaker 01

  And it connects with the chapter three of the book where I focus on purpose in life. So in an interview of yours that I followed, you talked about people really losing out on life. They spent the whole time on autopilot. And when I listened to you on that topic, I said, true, when you're on autopilot, you don't really participate in life. You don't quite enjoy what you're doing, but you still have to set the autopilot in a particular direction. You have to say, where are you going to go? And then while you're on the way, maybe you don't enjoy it enough and don't participate enough. But you still have to point it in a direction first. There has to be a conscious process to some degree.

• 47:50John R. Miles?

  Actually have gravitated from the metaphor of autopilot because I think for better or for worse, we're pointing the plane in a certain direction. But as you articulated in the book, now that so many people are influenced by social media and influencers and other people around them, I think more people today are living like they're the pinball in the game of pinball and they are directionalists or they're following the direction of others instead of putting their autopilot on anything. And so they end up just bouncing from one thing to the next, directionalists. And what I'm trying to show people more and more now is that

• 48:34John R. Miles?

  Like a pinball game, I think is a great analogy to life because if you understand how to play pinball is actually pretty complicated because it's a game within many sub games. And it's like life, you've got to learn how to play the game to understand how to control the ball instead of the ball controlling everything about you. So that's how I'm trying to explain the way I think people are living today become less autopilot and more pinball like.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, if I would could rewrite chapter six on how to influence other people. I think the pinball analogy would work very nicely. How it might feel is hopeless. But if you play really well, you can get somewhere. But it just takes a lot of skill, a lot of effort to make that happen.

• 49:26John R. Miles?

  And I just wanted to go back to mattering for just one second with you because I'll explain to you how I think Gordon and I are thinking about it and how it differs maybe from Jeff Cohen's work on belonging. So I think we've all had that situation where we're back in school and we're hoping someone picks us to be on a team and they go down the list and eventually your name is called. So when they call your name, you now feel like you belong, you're part of the team. But that doesn't mean that the teammates are showing you that you feel valued, that that you feel seen, that they're passing the ball to you or making you feel like you're a part of the team.

• 50:10John R. Miles?

  So when I think of the difference between belonging and mattering, that's how I look at the two. And what really got me to start studying mattering is we keep hearing about the epidemic of loneliness, the epidemic of people feeling hopeless, people feeling burned out. And the more I started hearing about all those, I started to think of them as symptoms of something larger. And that's where I think Gordon's whole concept of antimattering takes place, because we've replaced so much of the connections that we've had in the communities that we were part of with digital means, other means, and it's now collapsing.

• 50:50John R. Miles?

  And when you don't have that sense of community, of feeling that other people feel like you matter, then you now are no longer making other people feel like they matter. And you get into this vicious cycle of unmattering that he's talking about. Just to give you context, that's what I mean when I'm talking about mattering and what he refers to as antimattering.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  I can certainly understand in a sense where you're going with it. And I think the more we have electronic means to avoid each other, the worse it gets. And I'm at a very subjective level. I don't know in how many ways I've told people explicitly when COVID was over, how much I enjoyed getting back together with them as real people. Have a beer and argue about politics, have a garden party, just have a lunch with somebody, and made an effort to make that happen. It's like I still, to this day, I cannot get myself to use a checkout cash at the store. I routinely go to a live person and I tell them, I enjoy

• 51:59Speaker 01

  interacting with you more than dealing with a machine. And I think we can fight this with the details where we connect.

• 52:06John R. Miles?

  You're absolutely right. But it's going to take conscious effort. And I heard this week that Satya Nadella made this statement that he's no longer going to listen to podcasts. Instead, He's going to take all the podcasts that he likes and he's going to plug him into Copilot and now have conversations with Copilot about the podcast. And I was like, Satya, you're like, I go back to Steve Jobs. When Steve Jobs came up with the iPhone, his whole purpose for doing it was to help people connect more, not get them to connect less. And you're basically now using AI in the way that every scientist who studies it is telling

• 52:47John R. Miles?

  you not to use it as a replacement for human interaction. And now you've got the CEO of one of the largest tech companies in the world saying and advocating that's exactly how he's going to use it. So to me, it sets the wrong sentiment out in the world, I feel.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm totally with you. Ultimately, if you look at connections, you don't need a thousand connections, but you need a handful of good ones.

• 53:16John R. Miles?

  That's the most important part. So Wolfgang, we've had a great discussion today. I wanted to ask if there's one idea from this book that you hope outlives you, what would it be?

• 53:27Speaker 01

  Make a continued effort to estimate the probability that something could work. Create an expectation and see, will this behavior give me that result? And if it doesn't, move on. So reconnects with neuroplasticity, constantly do something new. Look, if I told my kids, I do not want to become one of those old people who will tell you the same war stories because that's all I have to talk about. I will do all kinds of different things and we can talk about that some other times to make constantly new experiences. I'm not too old to make new experiences, so I can hear new stories. And I recommend that

• 54:12Speaker 01

  to everybody. Go to a restaurant and look at normally eat here. Don't pick it. Pick the other one. Pick the weird one at the bottom, the pasta in ink, or something you would never have tried. You may not do it again, but at least give it a try, break some habits and form some new growths and force your brain to practice plasticity.

• 54:33John R. Miles?

  Wolfgang, it was such an honor to have you today and congratulations on the release of your book last year, The Illusion of Control: A Practical Guide to Avoid Futile Struggles. Thank you so much for being here.

• 54:46Speaker 01

  John, it was fabulous and you really got the gist of it. So I very much enjoyed our discussion.

• 54:52John R. Miles?

  Well, thank you so much for that and I enjoyed it very much myself.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Take care.

• 54:57John R. Miles?

  And that's a wrap on my deeply thought provoking conversation with Dr. Wolfgang Linden. His work is a powerful reminder that stress isn't always the enemy. It can be a catalyst for growth, meaning and resilience when we learn to engage with it differently. As you reflect on today's episode, consider, how am I currently relating to stress in my life? Am I suppressing my emotions or giving them healthy expression? Where could I create more meaning in the challenges I'm facing right now? If this conversation shifted how you think about stress, I'd love for you to leave a five star rating or review. It's the best way to help us reach more people with these intentional life-changing discussions. And if someone in your life is navigating illness, burnout, or emotional overwhelm, share this conversation with them. It could shift their healing journey in ways you can't predict.

• 55:41John R. Miles?

  And if your organization is looking to elevate how your teams lead, live, and perform, I'd love to bring these ideas to your next keynote retreat or executive session. Just head to johnrmiles.com/speaking to start the conversation. You'll find all the resources we discussed, along with links to Dr. Lindon's research, right in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Coming up next on Passion Struck, we explore the vast, mysterious, still largely misunderstood world of the vagus nerve with Dr. Kevin Tracy. You'll learn why it's not just one nerve, but a network of 200,000 fibers shaping everything from our inflammation response to our emotional state and why the science is only scratching the surface.

• 56:23Speaker 02

  Your body and all its organs is connected, each and every cell almost of your body is connected to a nerve ending. And those nerve endings are receiving information about the status of your cells and your organs all the time.

• 56:40Speaker 02

  How much glucose is in your liver? How much carbon dioxide is in your lungs? How fast your heart is beating? How much pressure there is in your stomach or your intestines? There is an overwhelming amount of information in your body that is constantly transmitted through sensory nerves, many of them in the vagus nerve, not all, but many of them in the vagus nerve, up into your brain.

• 57:04John R. Miles?

  Until then, remember, stress can be a signal, not a sentence. Face it with courage, use it with wisdom, and as always, live life passion-struck.