Clint Murphy 00:03

Welcome to the pursuit of learning podcast. I’m your host, Clint Murphy. My goal is for each of us to grow personally, professionally, and financially, one conversation at a time. To do that, we will have conversations with subject matter experts across a variety of modalities. My job as your host, will be to dig out those golden nuggets of wisdom that will facilitate our growth. Join me on this pursuit. Two of my favorite topics for improving our lives are cognitive behavioral therapy, and mindfulness and meditation. Today’s guests, Seth Gillihan combines those in his most recent book, Mindful CBT: A simple path to healing, hope and peace. This is a great lesson for anyone who wants to take meaningful steps in creating a healthier or peaceful life. Enjoy the show. Good morning, Seth. Welcome to the podcast. For our listeners who don’t know much about you. Can you start off with giving us a brief bio of your history and then we will dive right into your book.

Seth Gillihan 01:31

Sure. Good morning Clint, nice to be with you. So I’m a clinical psychologist. So I do therapy. I do that part time now. I used to do full time therapy for many years. And before that I was a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania doing research on anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder. So in recent years, I’ve transitioned kind of away from doing as much therapy and more toward creating books and card decks and other resources to try to bring effective psychological and behavioral techniques to people right where they are so more kind of direct to the public types of applications, rather than doing as much of the one on one therapy.

Clint Murphy 02:19

And so the book we’re talking about today is Mindful Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is two of my favorite subjects. Really looking forward to diving in there with you. Actually, short digression, I got in trouble in a little bit in my mindfulness course, on my practicum. Our teacher said, it seems like you may have done some reading on cognitive behavioral therapy. Because when I listened to your q&a session, it sounded like you were speaking more from that lens. And that’s not technically what you’re supposed to be doing in this course. But it was quite fun.

Seth Gillihan 02:58

Interesting. Wow. Yeah, I’m interested to hear more about that maybe about what was I think there often is, there’s often considered to be a kind of a contradiction, I guess, or a conflict between mindfulness and CBT. So that’s, that’s interesting that you kind of got called out for that.

Clint Murphy 03:14

And the conflict is minor, but where it may have been is I tend to try for me personally, if I’m talking to someone, and we’re talking about negative thoughts, from the mindfulness aspect, from the, we would simply just let those thoughts drift by and not grasp onto them. From the stoic or the cognitive behavioral therapy aspect, we would question those thoughts, and not give a cent to them. And that the delta is, well don’t even question it. Don’t even tell it, it’s wrong. Just let it go. Just don’t grasp it. And, you know, if someone’s having that many negative thoughts per day, I’ve found more success. And we’ll talk all about this today in questioning the thoughts, in challenging the thoughts and then reframing them so they don’t happen again. So they don’t stay in that feedback loop versus just not grasping every single one that goes by.

Seth Gillihan 04:16

Right. Yeah, I completely agree with that, that often, it seems like there is you need that kind of deliberate practice of recognizing, oh, I’m having a thought. Is it true? Let’s look at the evidence. Okay, I can let it go and think of, you know, an alternative way of seeing things. And just jumping ahead to just let all thoughts go. It gets pretty hard when the thoughts are so charged. They’re so barbed to just let that go. Oh, you think you’re a loser? Just let that go. Things should in your life. Just let that go. I think we can get there to that point. But I think it takes it does take I think I think it’s helpful to have that more focused, cognitive type of practice.

Clint Murphy 04:53

All right, let’s dive in on that. So we’re talking about Mindful Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is the title of your book and where I’d like to start is you have a line in the book “Our spirits provide the will, our efforts provide the means. We need both spirit and effort to live the lives we know we are, are waiting for us through our thoughts and actions we join our spirits and co creation of our lives”. Can you tell us more about that opening tidbit and where it’s taking us?

Seth Gillihan 05:25

Yeah. And this really for me gets it when it came to with the integration of mindfulness and CBT, that not only were the two not not fundamentally in conflict, but that they, they really enhance each other, that mindfulness can elevate CBT. And that CBT can kind of in a way, I guess, maybe give legs to a mindfulness practice. So that way of the kind of language, that imagery came to me, I mean, probably from talking to my wife about, you know, had this same idea in mind, this collaboration between this kind of this deep part of ourselves, it’s drawing us to life, it’s drawing us to the work that we need to do. And then our, our meeting that in action, the kind of collaboration between that what really feels to me like a deep spiritual connection and pull, which I associate more with the mindfulness end of things. And then, you know, what do we do with that, where, what is the work that we’re being called to, and that is more of the working on our thoughts and our, our behaviors. It came to me just through my own experience, largely, that’s not really kind of hit me, but then I can see how it is applied within so many of the people that I’ve worked with, in my therapy practice. Even the fact that somebody shows up in my therapy office, to me, feels like so much of the work has been done, that even if the person feels, you know, beaten down, overwhelmed, kind of just like they’ve not given up, but they’ve maybe they’re losing hope. But there’s a part of them that drew them to do this work of therapy. And so I don’t think like, oh, okay, now they’re here, now we can get started. But wow, they’ve already started this journey toward healing. And then I’m meeting them where they already are, in that having already kind of taken that crucial step of being drawn from within to what needs to be done.

Clint Murphy 07:17

And part of arriving at that is well, was yourself went through a bout of depression and challenge and realized that you needed to take your own medicine, which is when you started to craft the idea of Think, my mind needs to change my thoughts. Act, my body needs to take action and Be, my spirit needs to find presence and acceptance. What did that look like for you in your journey before you realized, wait a second, I’m seeing in myself what I’m seeing in my clients. When did you realize you needed to take your own medicine?

Seth Gillihan 08:05

Yeah, it can be surprisingly hard to really recognize these things in ourselves, even as a therapist who treats these things and thinks about them all the time. So I had developed a chronic illness that I’m still dealing with, in a lot of ways that started probably, gosh, now I guess, six or seven years ago. Wow. But it really kind of, there’s a saying about what is it like how people go broke little by little, and then all at once, or something like that. And that was how it felt I got sick, little by little, and then all at once. It was like, huh, I don’t have as much stamina. Hmm, my sleeps not as good as it had been. And then it felt kind of like falling off a cliff, like, Oh, my God, something is really, really wrong here. And so that went on for many months. And I was in gradually in the process, my life was shrinking, I wasn’t able to work as much our finances are suffering, I couldn’t really get together with friends, because I was having so much difficulty, vocally just couldn’t talk that well. And I had to save a little voice I had for my therapy sessions. And so not surprisingly, then a pretty deep depression descended on me and I often just wanted to die. And so in that place, I was doing what I could from a CBT perspective, you know, doing as much activity as I was able to and trying to adjust my thinking. But then when I really kind of reached the end of my own resources, that was when I was just kind of I wasn’t trying to do it. But I was just hit all of a sudden with this realization of like, oh, I reached the end of my own ability to cope with this, but that’s not the end. And that’s not the end of me, that there was this deeper part of myself that was still there. And that was was, I guess inviting me into a connection, that then from that connected place, like I talked about that joining that deeper part of ourselves with our spirit. Then from there, it’s like alright, so what do you need to do, what needs to happen now and feel like I was being drawn, then to the work that I needed to do. And I mentioned in the book that at least a couple of friends said, you know, we thought about the antidepressants, you know, there’s no shame in taking them. And I agree, there’s no shame. But it was so obvious to me that on, first of all, just knowing how effective these treatments can be, for so many people, and there were such obvious targets for the treatments. My thoughts weren’t helping me out, my life had just shrunk so much from all the kinds of rewards that keep us feeling well had been cut out of my life. So yeah, that’s when I knew I needed to, as I said, take my own medicine. So I can pause there, I can describe more about what that looked like when I actually kind of jumped into the work.

Clint Murphy 10:39

Yeah, let’s dive right into the work that you realized you needed to start doing, which is going to inform a lot of our discussion.

Seth Gillihan 10:47

Yeah, well, there was a lot, you know, there are a lot of things that needed to change in order for me to feel better. But where I really started is where I tend to start with most people who are, are deeply depressed. And that’s when I mean, the treatment is called behavioral activation, it really just means doing things that bring some type of reward into your life, either because they’re fun, or because you need to do them, because they give a sense of accomplishment. So for me, that was things like, on the accomplishment and stuff I’ve been putting off, like, oh, this garage door that’s been broken for a while, and I just keep looking at it. And, you know, feeling vaguely guilty that I haven’t done anything about it, but feeling like I just can’t even, I’ll do that later. But putting it off just makes it more likely that I would keep putting it off, because I got that little relief from not doing it. So doing those types of things, just scheduling in, alright, what’s the first thing I need to do to take care of that darn garage door, and then taking care of that it was like, ah, like, it’s a nice sense of satisfaction that I did that. Every time I walked by now, it’s not partway open, you know, I get the electric, open or enclosed works again. So number of those types of things and then use it to do more enjoyment, things are more enjoyable, too. So a big one for me was getting back to my garden. And I created quite an expansion of the kind of little bit of gardening I’d done in our backyard. And we have a fairly small yard, but I had one or two beds back there, I might grow some tomatoes or zucchini or something in the summer, but I started all these seedlings. In the cold winter months preparing for the early planting. I built eight raised beds, and I don’t really know where I found the energy to do it all. But again, it felt like I was being drawn to just what my body and my mind and my spirit needed. And so I was I was answering that call that poll. And in the process, I really like my mood lifted, I recognized how those thoughts that I had about like, oh, you know, your kids would be better off without you, and you should just end your life. There was a part of me that knew like, okay, that probably doesn’t make sense. But God, they felt so true in the moment, like it truly felt like it would be better for my kids, if I were just out of the picture. So it wasn’t an automatic or instantaneous process. But through that work, even though a lot of the physical symptoms continued, the kind of the emotional fallout from it really lessened. One more thing, I’ll add Clint just about the you know, the mindfulness part of this, I think the mindful awareness really helped me to notice the types of thoughts I was having, you know, that, that just awareness of like, oh, that’s a thought. All right, and not necessarily getting in and doing all the kind of discursive like, well, what’s the evidence for what’s the evidence against, but just realizing like, Oh, that’s a story. That might be true, but that might not be true. And that, you know, changes our relationship with our thoughts, which, as you know, so much of what mindfulness is about. And also when I was doing activities, that mindful presence really helped me to be in them as much as possible. So I was getting the full benefit from, you know, being in my garden, or from the taking a walk or from spending time with my kids. So yeah, depression is really such a beast, and such a relief, that it’s not a part of my life anymore.

Clint Murphy 14:02

And when you were in the garden, something that came to you was, wait a second, when I look at these packages for my plants and my flowers, they have these little care instructions on them, how to care for this plan. But we don’t have care instructions for ourselves. What was that discovery like for you? And what did that tell you your care instructions needed to be for Seth?

Seth Gillihan 14:28

Yeah, this is something that I spoke actually on my own podcast with Dr. Omid Naim, about a few years ago, and it really stuck with me this idea of care instructions, because I think we often, especially maybe as psychologists, and therapists, we focus on technique, we focus on, oh, here’s a way to change your thinking, here’s a practice to try out and maybe don’t kind of look far enough upstream or don’t maybe we’re not kind of simple enough to just ask like, what does your life look like? Oh, I mean, do you have just the basic things that we need to feel well, like human connection with people that we love, like time outdoors, like regular exercise and nutritious food. And so to me, it felt like we were living kind of out of true in a lot of ways. We just weren’t aligned with what our basic needs are, I think is we’re used to more of a medical model where it’s like, Oh, there’s the symptom, I need some kind of remedy for that symptom. So here, here’s a pill, or here’s a mental hack, without kind of asking, again, like, what’s upstream that’s creating this disturbance or this unease? So I think the kind of guiding question for me became, like, How can I live in a way that’s true to my human nature, that’s true to my fundamental needs, your needs haven’t really changed that much over the past, I don’t know, 1000s of years, even though our lives look so different, like being on social media, I mean, I was spending too much time doing that, and realize, like, wow, or not even so much on social media, but just on my phone, and realizing like that is not nourishing my body or my mind in the way that I could be if I were doing things in three dimensional world. That’s a lot of what kind of guided my own approach, I think we can all ask that. Actually, that was the original working title for this current book was going to be Think Act Be: something about discovering your care instructions, or something like that. That was kind of the general idea I got changed in the process, obviously. But I think that idea is still is, is throughout the different chapters on rest, and sleep and nutrition and those kinds of things.

Clint Murphy 16:34

Well, yeah, I was going to fast forward, because later in the book, you talk about it, we can go there and come back. We don’t have to go chapter by chapter is, you’re not the first guest that as you started to approach your 40s. And this is myself included. All of a sudden, you find yourself in a state of burnout and a state of issues, your body’s breaking down. And that’s when you always start to realize, well, wait a second, what have I been doing? How have I been running? How have I been living? And you talk about what I’ll call the Big Three, sleep, diet and movement. And I don’t know if enough people realize how big of an impact those three things can have on our mental, emotional and physical health. Do you want to dive a little into those three? And how changing those helped you with your life? And how we can all adopt those as part of our care instructions?

Seth Gillihan 17:29

Yeah, definitely. You know, it’s interesting, because I was always very active. I did a number of triathlons, before we had kids, I run three times a week and go to the gym with friends, I would do like HIIT workouts in my basement and yoga. And so that all got cut out when I got sick, gradually. And then, you know, again, kind of all at once. My nutrition had always been pretty good. But there were probably some things that could have improved. I was drinking too much. That was definitely not helping me. I mean, throughout my 20s 30s and into my early 40s. And not always slept okay, so I took my sleep for granted, but that fell apart too. So yeah, took a lot of conscious effort to attend to those things, which really does tend to pay off. There’s a lot of research showing that exercise by itself can be an effective antidepressant. I think we tend to downplay those types of things, because we’ve been sold this model of depression is a medical illness, and you need medication to treat it. And again, nothing against medication. But there are lots of other things that can be effective, too. And not just as a kind of, like, cute add on, like, oh, yeah, do some exercise if you want, can’t hurt, but studies showing that for a lot of people, it can be effective in and of itself. So exercise is crucial. I just saw a study yesterday. Actually, I haven’t read it yet. But the headline was about adding regular physical movement to trauma treatment, and how I believe that can enhance the outcome for trauma therapy as well. The nice thing about exercise too is there are so many kind of knock on effects, like you know, okay, I’m gonna go get some exercise. But as you do, then, often you’re gonna be more motivated to eat well, to support the physical movement that you’re doing. It can help to regulate sleep, which I’ll talk a little bit about. There’s the time outdoors and the sunshine in nature, which we’ll learn more about all the benefits of that. So exercise. Yeah, crucial sleep, seems like every week there’s a new study on lack of sleep has a negative impact on some new outcome that we care about. So prioritizing sleep is really crucial, man talk about like relationships, you know, you’re not sleeping well. It tends to make you irritable, which doesn’t endear you to the people in your life. And then nutrition. That’s this one is really interesting to me, because, again, I think there’s you know, for a long time there was this idea of like, yeah, just eat whatever you want. You know, as long as your diet is, as long as you’re not starving yourself or eating way too much then diet has very little to say about your mental and emotional health, but there are lots of studies coming out in the past. In a decade or so, showing that your dietary interventions can be like a serious treatment for conditions like depression. And there’s this one trial acronym is SMILES, where they found shifting people to more of a Mediterranean type diet, where, again, you’re eating things that look like stuff that your ancestors might have eaten, you know, not this hyper processed food that’s sort of unrecognizable as food unless someone tells you that it is, but things that look like, you know, ingredients like nuts, fish, vegetables, that can actually have a significant effect on depression. So, so yeah, those three I think are such a crucial foundation, we shouldn’t neglect those, sort of think that, you know, the real work is about, like, in tricking yourself into feeling better with these mental tools or something. Those are important. But there’s a metaphor that I can almost think of. But if we neglect those things, it’s not going to be whatever we’re working on probably isn’t going to be quite as effective.

Clint Murphy 21:04

And so someone that comes to you, and you’re going to work with them and say, Hey, we need to for your care instructions, we need to improve your sleep and your exercise or your movement, what might you prescribe for someone? What’s a reasonable prescription for a daily basis, or maybe even not daily, maybe a weekly basis that we should be focusing on?

Seth Gillihan 21:29

Well, I mean, for changing these things, I always aim for relatively small incremental changes. So if you’re going to improve your diet, you know, maybe aim to start with shifting one meal, like maybe eat more vegetables, you know, at lunch on Wednesday, or something and see how that goes. And then make these changes, bit by bit. But there are I’m not a nutritionist, but there are guidelines, you know, about types of things, that’s basically how your plate should look, you know, probably more vegetables than anything else, really limit your processed foods, like white bread and cookies, and those sorts of things and, you know, get enough fiber and protein and fat. So that’s, you know, on the diet end of things. With exercise, you know, find something that you enjoy doing. That’s why I prefer to call it movements, but you know, it is exercise. So maybe that’s dancing, you know, maybe for someone that’s having a, you know, regular dance class, or, you know, doesn’t have to be running. If someone hates running, then don’t run, do something else then. The best type of exercise is the one that you’re going to do consistently. Sleep is its own whole thing, man, I mean, sleep is for something that basically involves doing nothing, there’s so many parts that go into it, because we tend to complicate it by trying to do more in order to sleep better. We end up chasing sleep, which is kind of like chasing a butterfly, you know, it’s not going to land long as we’re moving. If we come to stillness, and then just wait, then eventually, it’ll probably a light on us. So we can get into sleep more if you’d like. But one thing I will mention is that we don’t need eight hours of sleep per night, necessarily, some people do, but there’s a range. And so the idea is to find what’s your amount of sleep that you need, and the name to get that consistently,Clint Murphy 23:12

And aim to get that quality sleep. Depending on how you might be tracking, itcould simply be how do I feel? But are you getting quality sleep for the amount of time that you need for your body? That’s a wonderful one, in something you talked about, that I’d love to dive a little deeper on is you said, just that incremental improvement. And one of the challenges for a lot of people that are depressed or stressed is we start to look at, oh, I’ve got these tasks that I need to do. But they’re so big, they’re so hard, they’re so long. I’m overwhelmed. I’m just not going to start. So you talked about the process of working backwards. And I love that a lot of this stuff comes right back to Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is we’re chunking that down into what’s the smallest possible step, you can take on that path to action. What does that look like Seth? And why is that so important for people when they’re in that dark spot?

Seth Gillihan 24:11

Yeah, it is so hard to get moving for different reasons, either because we’re afraid of things or we find tasks overwhelming, or we don’t know how to do them, or we just don’t have much motivation. So usually what I find is that the things we need to do aren’t too hard. They’re just too big. And so if we can break things down as small as we need to, to get started, it’s really hard to overstate the value of momentum. I mean, we have momentum when we’re doing nothing. It’s zero momentum. It’s the inertia of non movement, but that has its own kind of momentum as well. You know, we tend to not do things because we’re not doing things so we can just someone else’s described it before. Just break the seal on the package, so to speak, just open it up. And then once we’re moving, it doesn’t matter how small the step is, as long as you’re moving then we’re more inclined to take the next step. And the next step, and steps make it bigger. At some point, I’ve used this with kind of ridiculous frequency myself where there’s something I need to do on just like I need to begin nutrition. For a long time, I was making these broccoli sprouts at home, they’re supposed to be extremely nutritious. They’re filled with sulforaphane, which is good for things I forget what for but that Rhonda Patrick talks about sulforaphane a lot. And they’re really expensive, and highly perishable if you buy them from the grocery store. So I was sprouting to myself. And it’s not a long process, if you want to do it at home, it’s really easy, probably takes like, couple minutes a day, and then maybe five minutes to get them started. But I’d often sort of put it off, like, I don’t feel like doing that right now. So I would do things like I’m just going to set out the jar, and set out the seeds. So I just set them out. And then later on and be like, Alright, now I’m just gonna pour him in the jar and add some water. That’s how I got that far as like, I’m just gonna finish it. But I had to sort of provide that kind of like an on ramp, in a way, you know, so I’m not just plopped down in the middle of 70 mile an hour traffic, but I have that way of kind of easing into the task. And when I did that, you know, I had these broccoli sprouts consistently. But we can end up putting things off for so long, because I think I alluded to this earlier, but when we don’t do something, you know, it’s like, oh, yeah, I could fill the bird feeder. I don’t feel like doing that now. Our brain gets a little reward. You know, it’s like, Ah, all right, yeah, you don’t have to do that. You just dodged a bullet there, buddy. But then, that means next time I see the bird feeder, and think like, I should do that, then I’ve already been rewarded for not doing it. So I’m more likely to put it off again. So we just fine I am gonna set out the bird seed, take that first step, then eventually, we’re sort of rolling downhill, it’s easier to keep going.

Clint Murphy 26:51

And when you’re in that situation, and you look at it, we can have high motivation, one day, low motivation, the next. And often what people try to do in that situation is say, I’m just going to muscle through this with willpower. The problem being that your willpower is an energy system, and at some point that’s depleted. And now you’re not doing it through will, and you talk about this concept of using think act be to leverage ourselves. What does that look like?

Seth Gillihan 27:23

Yeah, that’s one thing I’d like to emphasize. Because there can be a tendency, I think, to think of CBT is just like, it’s advice. It’s telling people what to do. Oh, face your fears. Oh, be more active. Oh, you need to add rewarding activities into your life. But I think most of us know what we need to do. It’s not like, oh, yeah, face my fears. I never thought of that. Or yeah, maybe I should get off the couch, like, Thanks for the advice, man. But it’s about providing a systematic way of doing these things that does offer that leverage. So if I tell someone you know, in therapy, like, oh, you need to, you know, face that thing you’ve been avoiding your whole life. All right, well, that’s why I came to you. Because if I could just do that, I would have already done it, I wouldn’t need therapy. So the work of therapy, or the work of this approach is to, again, break things down. That’s a huge way of finding leverage and working with our whole selves. So mindfulness, I think, offers enormous leverage. Like if I’m like, again, silly task, emptying the dehumidifier in our basement, you know, to prevent mold from growing down there. I’d often walk by and it’s, you know, the lights flashing, because the buckets full? And I’d be like, Yeah, I just can’t. But the underlying assumption there was that it’s going to create, it’s going to be an uncomfortable thing to do, you know, it’s going to be a little aggravating, and I shouldn’t have to deal with that aggravation. Or I can’t stand to feel uncomfortable, but with mindful acceptance, we can realize like, wow, yeah, might be a little uncomfortable, or I might not love doing it. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe instead of asking, like, what do I feel like doing right in this moment, I could ask myself what needs to be done right now. And that was such a relief because it’d been such an automatic assumption of mine to base my actions on like, what I feel like doing now. And so yes, that’s a big form of leverage. And then our thoughts too, you know, if I’m telling myself it’s going to be overwhelming or you’re going to hate it, those are thoughts that are gonna lead me away from doing things that would move me toward my goals. But if I can think instead alright, I’m gonna do this one step at a time. I don’t have to do it all today. And you know, other types of thoughts that are helpful instead of pushing me away from doing that task. Then I’ve got my you know, the mindfulness helping, I’ve got the task broken down so that small with my behavior, and then I’ve got my thoughts working as well. So that’s the full think act be approach.

Clint Murphy 29:51

And going in a different direction. I love quotes. And so if we look, you have a couple of great quotes from Marcus Aurelius and Benedictine monk, David. And Marcus Aurelius said, “If you’ve seen the present, then you’ve seen everything”. And the Benedictine monk said “by attuning ourselves to the call of each moment, listening and responding to what our situation brings”, which both speak to the principle of mindfulness and coming to the present moment. When did you start to focus on mindfulness itself? And what does that look like for you, in bringing yourself to the present moment?

Seth Gillihan 30:35

Yeah, I was really introduced to mindfulness probably back in maybe mid 2000s. But at that time, I had a lot of resistance to it. Because I come from a very religious, Christian background, which I left and there are real, what felt like to me are just my own issues. But it felt like real echoes of that in the kind of what I sensed, as you know, as super sensitive to this kind of thing, but kind of moralizing around it, like you should meditate, it’s the right thing to meditate. How’s your meditation practice going? Which kind of just made gave me like, give me the creeps kind of throwback to questions been asked about, you know, how’s your spiritual life, how’s your relationship with the Lord? Have you been spending time in prayer and with the Bible? So anyway, I got over myself a number of years later. And when I learned how helpful mindfulness could be with, especially with conditions where you can’t necessarily, it’s harder to change the thoughts like with chronic worries, you know, generalized anxiety, where it wasn’t so much about, like, let’s try to convince ourselves, what we’re worried about isn’t unhelpful, which does tended to contribute to all that kind of over activity in the mind, and instead accepting that, you know, alright, these worries are going to come and go, and I can be present. I don’t have to let them control my actions. But at that point, and this was maybe 12 years ago, or so, I was really using mindfulness as a kind of add on, they’ve got some cognitive techniques, behavioral techniques can be helpful. And maybe some people could benefit from some mindfulness, you know, sort of throw some of that in, if needed. But what I recognized in more recent years is that so there’s a triangle in Think, Act Be, or in CBT, which shows the relations between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. So those you know, each one is kind of a vertex of a triangle. And they all are connected to each other and influence one another. How I’ve come to think of mindfulness now is, in that model, it’s the depth dimension that shows our relationship with our thoughts, feelings, and actions. So if you picture a three dimensional triangle, which is the triangular prism, but it’s close to like a slice of cake. That’s a triangle if you ignore the curve of the cake, a triangle with depth. And so for each of those aspects, our thoughts, our feelings, our behaviors, we’re going to ask how we’re relating to them. What’s my relationship to my thoughts? Like we’ve touched on the very beginning? Like, do I take them seriously, try to get in there and wrestle with them? Or kind of recognize them as mental events that may or may not be true, and don’t really require my engagement. With my behaviors, am I present while I’m doing them? Or am I acting more on autopilot? With my emotions, my open to them? Am I accepting of my emotions? Or am I pushing them away? Or chasing certain emotional experiences, or allowing them to dictate my actions? So that’s the model and I’ve forgotten what the original question was,Clint Murphy 33:26

Where we can go with that, because you just hinted at it there. When we think of that mindfulness, a couple of key concepts for people are being open and aligned with reality, as well as decentering. As a couple of concepts, can you share with our listeners what those look like?

Seth Gillihan 33:47

Yeah, and this gets back now to your original question, which I remember now about how I apply these things, and including in my own life, so with decentering, I’ve tried to take my thoughts less seriously. In my emotions, for example, when I was writing, not my current book, actually, I think maybe three books ago, my first CBT book, I had a lot of anxiety about writing it, you know, concerns about how it’d be received, I was still at that point, kind of imagining my CBT supervisors like looking over my shoulder and judging, you know, why did you say it that way? Why didn’t you include this? And so my feelings about how things were going with the writing would vary day to day, you know, some days I would feel like, I think this is going to be alright, I think this is going to turn out well. Other days, I would think, like, I just have like this all sudden be gripped by this wave of anxiety, and be like, Oh, no, this is gonna go badly. It’s gonna people are gonna think it’s terrible. No one’s gonna like it. No one’s gonna buy it. And I recognize like, oh, that’s just noise. That’s just my mind doing stuff. You know, maybe because I am a little more tired one day or maybe I had a good writing session the next day. And so rather than taking this thing so seriously as actual information and really identifying with them, oh, No, I book is going to be terrible. Oh, good. My book is going to be okay. I can just recognize like, yeah, that stuff my mind does, it comes it goes, I can just observe that all right now I’m having a thought about this is gonna go badly. All right, what needs to be done? Well I’m gonna get back to writing. So the decentering part has been really helpful man opening to my experience, too because actually it was a stoic, a contemporary stoic writer. I’m blanking on his first name. Ferraiolo I think is his last name. But anyway, do you know him?

Clint Murphy 35:29

No, but I love Ferraiolo stoicism?

Seth Gillihan 35:33

Yeah. He’s got some great books. I got an email. Okay, we will find this. Yeah, yeah. And I can send you a link for him as well. But he sent an email about a new book that he had, an excerpt that was based. I mean, it was kind of classical, stoic ideas.

Clint Murphy 35:48

Is it William Ferraiolo?

Seth Gillihan 35:50

Yeah, he has some really great books on stoicism. And the quote from his book was all about is about suffering. And I was having such a difficult night that night, really feeling feeling lost and hopeless. And the quote was about like, you will suffer in this life, you have suffered, you will suffer as a part of human existence. And if you can receive all this with gratitude, and you’ve lived well, I mean, something to that effect. It was such a relief, such a relief to realize I didn’t have to fight, you know, I could just, yeah, you’re suffering. That’s what’s happening. It’s not that life is screwed up. It’s not that like, someone sent the wrong package to my address, like, this doesn’t belong to me, like, Yeah, this is you’re suffering, you’re a human being, you’re going to suffer, this won’t be the last time, everyone suffers at some point. And there, it’s such a paradox, as I’m sure you know, that it’s so powerful just to let down our resistance to stop fighting our experience, because obviously, you can’t win a fight against reality, it’s still going to be real. That’s just what it is.

Clint Murphy 36:54

And that’s the beauty in both stoicism and Buddhism is just that recognition. I mean Buddhism takes it a step further, all life is suffering. And then there’s a path to end that suffering, and that is our mindfulness and our meditation and our practice. And that brings us to meditation. So when we think of mindfulness, what we’re talking about is the practice of living this in our daily lives. When we when we look at meditation, meditation is a means of practice, that then helps us be more mindful in our daily lives. But for a lot of our listeners, they may not know put in quotation marks know how to meditate. And they get lost in this thought, Oh, I’m not supposed to think but I have all these thoughts so I’m not good at it. And you highlight in the book, something that’s very important from meditation is the recognition that we’re going to drift. And then we need to become aware of that. And then we need to return, drift, aware, return. And that cycle will repeat endlessly for anyone, even the Buddha, even the Dalai Lama, they’re going to have that same cycle when they do their meditation. So can you talk our listeners through what that cycle looks like? And for a beginner, what are some of the things that you recommend to them for a meditation practice that they can build into their daily lives? To help them with mindfulness?

Seth Gillihan 38:30

First, Clint, that’s a really astute of summary you gave there of how meditation and mindfulness are related to each other. I’m so glad you you describe that. Because we often do think mindfulness is the same as meditation, that the only way to practice mindfulness is to practice meditation. And we forget about, as you said, a couple times, it’s about bringing it into your daily life, even though the meditation practice is about bringing that awareness, that quality of attention and presence into your daily life. So I’m trying to think the best way to introduce this idea. I mean, we could even do this for a minute now. If a person wherever they’re, they’re listening, if you set an intention to focus on the say, the breath, I’m just gonna focus on the breath for the next minute or so take a breath in, you don’t have to breathe in any particular way. Just breathing, focusing on the breath. Noticing the inhale as it comes in. Notice the sensations of exhaling as you breathe out. And as you do this, even just for a minute or less, it’s basically inevitable that your mind is going to drift to something else. You’re going to be wondering, like, why is he doing this? How long is this going to last? Or I think I’m meditating. I think I’m doing it. Yeah. It’s been harder to do it before. I always struggle with this. Whatever lots of thinking mind loves to chatter, maybe especially when we try to pause to like, I think if it kind of like a line of kindergarteners walking along, you know, and like our thoughts, and then sitting down to meditate. It’s like when the first one stops, and then all the kids just kind of like tumble into each other because they’re all looking around on them. And they just start, like, you know, bumping into one another. And our thoughts often do that, they start piling up when we, when we pause. And that’s fine. We often have as you suggested, we have this assumption that I need to meditate or come and make my thoughts stop, how they keep coming. And the more we try to make our thoughts stop, then the more insistent our thoughts are. So really, the there’s not really a trick to meditating. But if there were, it would be recognizing that mental activity is not going to stop. And what we do instead is we shift our relationship with that mental activity. So if you’re focused on your breath, or sounds or whatever you’re focusing on, and you notice that the attention has drifted away from it, and you just come back, I come back to the breath. Now I’m with the breath. And then it drifts away. And you notice, oh, wait a second, I was thinking about my trip to San Francisco, 1000 miles away, and you come back. It doesn’t matter how long you drifted, or where the mind went, you just come back to the breath. And that is meditation. It’s not like meditating, focused on the breath. Oh, my mind drifted, oh, alright, I stopped meditating, I’m going to start meditating. Again, it’s all part of the process, I do want to point out, because this has been something I’ve learned more recently, but the real idea with meditation, it’s not to exert a lot of effort and really get good at it. Like, okay, now I’m focusing, I’m working hard at it. But it’s fundamentally about letting go of effort, and finding ease. And that, and this is something I’ve learned probably most clearly from a meditation app that I really enjoy called the Waking Up App, that a great, great introduction and practice of what’s called non dual awareness. So not the sense of I’m a medit, I’m a meditator, noticing my experience, but more of kind of breaking down that sense of separateness between ourselves and our experience. So letting go of effort and realizing that awareness is already present, that focus is already or consciousness of our experience is already present. It’s not something we create with our minds. But it’s more about doing less, and allowing that awareness to arise. I love that idea of effortlessness and meditation. Something like we sit down to meditate. Do some yoga, how many reps of meditation am I going to do? It’s just noticing that what I think of is kind of like a stream, like a cool stream that’s running alongside of us, that it’s always there. And at times we sort of stumble upon it, oh, yeah, I can just really have a more intimate awareness of this moment. And other times we do deliver practices like meditation, make the awareness of that stream, more obvious, but it’s not something we have, you know, hike a mountain to find or do hours of arduous practice to come into. It’s just, it’s right there. It’s right here. Wherever you are, right now. It’s right there. It’s right here with me. That’s another way that I like to practice. Mindfulness in my daily life is just remembering from chopping vegetables, like, Man chopping vegetables, it’s like kind of blow your mind if you’re really in that experience, not because it’s a particular experience. But just because connecting with your actual experience is kind of a trip, you know, sort of far out to have any experience at all.

Clint Murphy 43:38

Especially when you’re bringing yourself right to that moment and saying, I’m not going to focus on anything. But what I’m doing right in this moment. When you talk about the importance of meditation, here’s where I see a great tie in to CBT. Because when we look at CBT, we look at one of the central tenants is our core beliefs, firmly held assumptions about ourselves in the world. Some of them are useful, accurate, a lot of them can be negative. And that’s what we want to work on when we’re doing the therapy is those faulty assumptions. And the first key is we have to notice them, we have to catch them. We have to hear that voice that says, I’m a loser. I’ll never be good enough. I suck at x. And that’s where that awareness that we’re building in the meditation with the drift, aware, return. Now CBT is a little different. This is what we talked about fundamentally at the start of the show. We’re not just going to return, we’re going to challenge that thought. And a question for you because that brings up the concept of negative thought auditing. When you’re doing that, what does that look like for you, for someone who doesn’t have as much practice with it as you, does that look like a journaling exercise? Does that look like the exercise of oh, I’ll write down that negative thought I’ll write down two or three more logical thoughts and then I’ll revisit them five minutes later and say which, which is more like, what does that process look like for the beginner? That you’re counseling? And what does it look like for you at this stage of your practice?

Seth Gillihan 45:24

Yeah, yeah, fantastic question, yeh, we do tend to be more deliberate about it. And more explicit when we’re starting out, again, because it’s so easy to just assume that these beliefs are true. You don’t really get in there and examine them. So the person has the thought like I never do anything, right. Then yeah, first you want to notice that thought, so I bring in the being component of this with things like you know, when you notice that your emotions have taken a sudden downturn, pause, if you can, or, you know, as soon as you’re able to maybe take a easy breath in and out, kind of check in with yourself, and then ask yourself, you know, what just went through my mind? Is there a thought there that could be driving that downturn in my emotion, there won’t always be. No, maybe a person just ran out of caffeine in their system or something. But but check in, what’s that thought? And then, so usually, we write these things down, especially in the beginning to really make it to literally make these thoughts in black and white, so we can look at them and weigh them. So write down like I never do anything right. All right. That’s the thought. And then the next part isn’t that there’s an acronym here that I use, sometimes TEA for thought, evidence and alternative. So the second step is evidence. What’s the evidence for that? Maybe it’s true you never do anything, right. So let’s be honest, write it down, you know, what are some things you’ve messed up over the years? So you might write down like, I sent the wrong email to my boss, I messed up that cake, my parents birthday, my dad’s birthday, and make a list. And then you know, is it true you’ve never done anything right? Is there anything you’ve ever in time? You’ve not screwed something up? Well, yeah, of course, the guy, you have sent 1000s of emails to the right person, I’ve bought a nice gift for my brother for his birthday, et cetera. And then based on the evidence, we kind of look at both sides for and against that automatic thought. And then you can come up with an alternative, if there is a more realistic alternative belief, like, I make some mistakes in my life. But you know, most of the time, things I do turn out pretty well, some kind of realistic alternative. So we’re not BS’ing ourselves. We’re not just replacing the negative thought with the kind of fantastical positive thought like, I’m the most amazing human being ever, or, you know, I’m perfect. The mind is just going to know that’s false, and is going to dismiss it. And it doesn’t really get at that original belief. Like is it true that you always mess things up? Well, no. So that’s kind of the drawn out process. What this can look like with anyone with practice is eventually recognizing like, yeah, my mind does that thing where it says, like you’re screwing up, or, you know, it has that theme of like a radio station that plays predictable songs. Like, of course, it’s playing jazz, right? It’s a jazz station. Of course, I tell myself these things at times, because I have this negative core belief, so you can recognize that oh, there goes that thought again, and then let it go. Or you can even have a kind of sometimes I’ll work with person like I’ll brush off phrase, you know, sort of like, like you’re brushing your shoulder off, like, yeah, I really have to buy into that, or yep, there it goes again, or, like, Ha, yeah, right. You know, whatever, whatever works for the person. And then you keep going, I think that is where the mindfulness and, and CBT really dovetail which is recognizing the thought and then just sort of sort of moving on, not getting involved in much of a kind of wrestling or a deep relationship with that thought. But seeing it as something that doesn’t have to carry a lot of weight.

Clint Murphy 48:59

The And, this is something that I’m a huge fan of. And I would say bar none had the biggest impact on changing my own personal life is this simple exercise of thought auditing. And when you first start the practice, I don’t know if especially but I’ll use in my case, someone who has a fair amount of ADHD, not self prescribed diagnosed is just the thoughts are wild in my head. And that first time I actually ever realized, well, wait a second, I’m not my thoughts. I can actually question these things. I can stop and I can look at them as an independent observer and say, Are these real? And like you said, it didn’t take long before I stopped needing to write anything down, but rather a thought comes in. Wait a second, as a stoic, as the human, I have the right to say, Well, stop. Are you real? Are you right? Am I going to let you in or and you mentioned doing triathlon back in the day. So you may have known the cyclist, Jens Voigt, he had the wonderful line Shut up Legs. And so my brush off was Shut up mind and just that power Seth of saying, I will never be a slave to my mind again. My mind will be something that I use, how I want to use, when I want to use, and otherwise I can shut it off. Like it’s for people who are listening to us who have just been slaves to their minds their whole lives. And just those swirling thoughts, which I think we both, you’ve written, I’ve read and written, upwards of 90% or more of our 35,000 thoughts in a day are negative. And they’re recurring thoughts that we repeat to ourselves over and over and over. And so when we’re first able to shut those off, it’s just mind blowing how different our lives can be.

Seth Gillihan 51:14

Yeah, it really is. Someone else has described, you know, our ability to direct our thoughts is because it really kind of our human superpower. I do want to mention a couple of things. One is that for some people, the thoughts may not come as statements, they may be more like images, or impressions. So they may look sort of see themselves as weak or pathetic, or maybe just have kind of a gut level feeling of like, this person meeting me is like, somehow bad or deficient in some way. So we can recognize those types of almost more like a valence than a statement and deal with them in the same type of way in a sort of notice them, and then question them, you know, what’s the reason? Is there a real reason for having this sort of negative impression of myself, for example. And then, I also just want to note that I don’t know of anyone who is able to shut these thoughts off entirely, you know, to make them stop completely. But it seems like it’s more for most people, it’s more a matter of just getting more practiced at recognizing them, not buying into them. So don’t want someone who’s working in this area to feel bad, like I can’t make the thoughts stop. Some of them will probably be less in their frequency or their intensity. But I don’t want someone to feel bad for not making the thoughts go away, or thinking they should have this sort of pristine mind that never thinks these types of things.

Clint Murphy 52:37

100%. Now I’ll clarify, when I say shut off, I don’t necessarily mean they disappear. Because that’s the same concept we talked about with meditation, we’re still going to have the thoughts, we’re seeking simply to not grasp to them or not identify with them or not accept them. And to recognize that to your point Seth, the more we question them, the more we challenge them, the less intense. And so if I say to myself every day, Clint, you suck, that first day that I recognize that I say that, Oh, that hit me really hard when I heard it. But do ?, And I do your TEA exercise, which I love. And I don’t recall reading the book, but it’s an absolute beauty is I do that exercise. The next day when it comes Clint, you suck, do my TEA exercise. Well wait, I don’t. And so each day, it’s successively less daunting. And at some point, that thought may go away, and another one’s there. And then two years later, Clint, you suck comes back. Oh wait, I caught you. I’m going to do my TEA exercise. And so it’s always coming. They’re always coming. They’re always different, but trying to have the exercise so that you can lower the intensity. And so that you can have in your toolkit, I don’t need to do my journaling. I can do that when the thought comes in, I can do my TEA exercise in my own head, or I may not have to do the E and the A because I’ve done it so many times. I can just this will sound strange, but when I first started doing it, I chuckled right there. But separating from the thought, I would hear the thought and I would almost laugh to myself at Clint like how could you, a week ago, you would have just accepted this crazy thought. Like, let it go, like that’s a real. And Seth, I don’t know if when you started doing CBT if it was that big of a difference to you to be able to recognize how irrational some of these thoughts you were having were, but just that ability to divorce yourself from it and look at it from an outsider. You can often find that these thoughts are so comical in nature that before you learned this, you were accepting those into your daily life.

Seth Gillihan 54:56

It’s really striking, isn’t it? The things that we can buy into for so long. Like when I survived my previous episode of depression, wasn’t nearly as severe many years ago. And when I finally realized what was happening there, I realized, you know, some of the stories that I’ve been telling myself as kind of core beliefs about I think it was really around I’m a failure. Like, that was the core belief. And yeah, just when I finally recognize that and all the like the many faces that had ways that it had shown up, it was like, these waves of realization is kept washing over me, like, Oh, my God, like, I realized how you know, I’d gotten a job at the University of Pennsylvania, in this beautiful office overlooking the city of Philadelphia. This gorgeous view, nice position, Assistant Professor position. And yet, because of my thought processes, I’d managed to change that into somehow, like the fact that I had that job meant I was a failure. And when I saw through that, I was like, what? Like, this didn’t even make any sense. And now still, yeah, I get these types of thoughts, like these quick ones. And I’ll recognize that and, yeah, really, it’s gonna make you laugh sometimes like, no, that’s not what’s happening here. That’s because, you know, there’s some like benign explanation for something that I was taking really personally is seeing as like, this deep flaw in myself. So yeah, it’s not an overstatement. What you were saying before about is how much it can revolutionize our lives to have these shifts, not like these little kind of like tweaking thoughts. But these things that go deeper, we’re like, oh, and it kind of transforms your whole relationship with life at times.

Clint Murphy 56:37

And one of the things that can get us in a lot of trouble with this, is you talked about it earlier, technology and social media. So when you look at that, I’m a loser feeling or I’m a failure. Social media can often play into that. Did I get enough likes on my post today? Did I get enough listens to my podcast? And we become so focused on that dopamine hit or that rush of results, that we forget the process? Did I put out content? Did I publish an episode of the podcast? That’s all I can control. I can’t control how many people hit the like button, or how many people listen today. And one of the things you talk about is this concept of technology fast. And so when did you first start doing those? What is the technology fast look like to you? Do you still incorporate that into your routine in for our listeners? What might it look like for them when they’re first starting to do a technology fast?

Seth Gillihan 57:43

Yeah, I have to say Clint, it is a little funny, because, you know, we’re obviously we’re doing this on technology, and this will be posted online. I’m not down on technology in general. But I do think that there’s no real, as far as I know, there’s not really a control group for what’s happening to us right now. Here’s the ways our lives have changed in the past. I mean, I based on what you said earlier, you know, suggesting what your age might be. And I’m 47. And so it’s, you know, I can think back to a time, you know, there was no internet that I was aware of, there’s this weird dial up thing that people did some times like, I don’t know, play chess online or something. But there was no, not even that Netscape Navigator for people who can remember that, you know, early internet browser, and life was really different. And I remember, I don’t know, a couple of years ago, just feeling heartbroken that that life didn’t exist anymore, you know, weekend where there was just no demands of internet texting, you know, we live life, it feels like to me like so much closer to our actual experience. Because we didn’t have this nearly constant filter between ourselves and our experience, this screen kind of reduces everything to two dimensions. So again, not totally down on this, but I think there are costs that we often don’t recognize, because we’re so busy on our phones, they don’t recognize the cost, like when someone walks into you, you know, and they’re on their phone walking down the sidewalk, and they get to get out of their way. And they don’t realize what just happened because they’re so engrossed in what they’re doing. So a fast, I think, you know, a break can be really helpful. I remember the first time I did this, I suggested it to my wife, thinking she’d be like, Nah, I said, you know, how about if we left our phones and computers at home when we go on a week’s vacation with the kids? I thought she’d be like, Well, no, we can’t for this reason or that reason. And she said, Okay, and I was like, Oh, all right, I guess we’re doing this. And I thought it was gonna be hard. It was great. I just left my phone and computer at home, you know, told people I wouldn’t be available, wouldn’t be reachable. Not everyone can do that, if you can, can be pretty cool. And there was some downsides. You know, like, we went to the library in the little town we were staying and you want to get some books for the kids to read during the week. And because we didn’t have any, you know, computers or that kind of entertainment and the kids love to read. So we went to the library, they’re like, Oh, yeah, you can get a library card. We just need to see your rental agreement. We said, Oh, we don’t have her with us. And he said, I’ll just put up on your phone. I was like, Yeah, funny story.

Clint Murphy 1:00:09

We’re on a technology fast.

Seth Gillihan 1:00:11

I think we went home and got it and you know, brought it back the next day. So it wasn’t convenient. But it wasn’t the end of the world. And it was interesting conversation, you know, talk to these people about oh, wow, that’s interesting. And why are you doing that? Oh, I’d like to do that some time, we had to refill our meter one time and we didn’t have any change. So it could have used a little app just to add more money on your smartphone. But we didn’t have a smartphone. But a guy who was walking by ended up saying, Oh, you need quarters here, give us a couple quarters, like, super nice. It was a connection we wouldn’t have made, if not for that for being without our phones. So we’re going to still have a smartphone, obviously, still have a computer. But what that experience led me to do is to remove from my phone, the apps that were always kind of pulling me in, you know, the ones that have a kind of addictive quality. Like, for me, it’s things like Twitter, YouTube, I even removed my internet browser. So basically, I have a smartphone, now have kind of the equivalent of a flip phone with, you know, a nicer screen, better texting ability. And I can use Uber,Clint Murphy 1:01:14

Yeah, email and a calendar

Seth Gillihan 1:01:16

No email,

Clint Murphy 1:01:17

No email, even? Oh, that’s paradise.I have a friend online who’s a creator. And he was just so tired of emails that he said, I’m just not doing email anymore. And we’re like, Well, how will people reach you? He’s like, they can DM me on the one social media app I’m very present on. I’d rather deal with DMS than emails. I am never emailing again.

Seth Gillihan 1:01:49

And he doesn’t email at all?

Clint Murphy 1:01:53

Well, I don’t know if he doesn’t. He just made that declaration of statement about two months ago. And it’s interesting, because he has an email list. He sells product to his audience through email. But he said, I will not reply to emails ever again.

Seth Gillihan 1:02:12

Wow, never gets high on his own supply. Hmm,

Clint Murphy 1:02:14

yeah, he’s just like, No, I’ll send it but I won’t touch it.

Seth Gillihan 1:02:17

Wow. No I definitely still have email. But I realized, and this is a real behavioral principle, I love the idea of binding yourself to the mast, I knew that if I just decided I’m not going to use my email on my phone, I’m not going to check. We’re only gonna check once a day or something. I try that on previous vacations, yeh, I’ll bring my phone, but I just won’t use it. But inevitably, I would. And so we can’t rely on our willpower. In the future, even if our willpower is high. Now, like I’m so motivated, I’m just going to do this, I’m just going to stop drinking, I’m just going to decide, I’m just going to stop using social media on my phone, not going to access that on vacation. For most of us, if we have the ability to do those things we will. So binding ourselves to the mast comes from the Odyssey by Homer, where Odysseus had his, his fellow sailors bind him to the mast of the ship, when they were going to sail past the sirens, his sailors plug their ears, but he kept his ears unplugged. So he could hear the song of the sirens without piloting the ship into the rocks and crashing like sailors typically would. And he told his men, whatever I do, if I curse at you, and please don’t untie me. So the principle there for me is, we can import our high motivation in the times when we know our motivation is going to be low. So that we can stick to the goals that we have for ourselves. So I know I can’t rely on willpower with my screen stuff. So I had to put these things in place. So now I spend so much less time on my phone, and it’s great, you know, because I would never be able to resist that urge, I could see my phone and be like, Oh, it’s just like a conditioned response, I should check my email, I should check my email, I should check Twitter, but I’m not necessarily going to get on my computer every time I have that urge. So I have a bit more time in the rest of the world these days.

Clint Murphy 1:04:05

And so similar examples to that is also the concept of priming our environment. So if we look at well, I don’t want to eat junk food. Well, don’t keep junk food in your house. I don’t want to drink alcohol, don’t have alcohol in the house. So remove that product or items that are the vice you’re trying to stop.

Seth Gillihan 1:04:29

Yeah, this is where I think leverage really comes to mind. So it’s so much easier. You know, leverage is about making something easier, making the thing you want to do easier. So I can make one decision at the grocery store. I’m not going to bring that stuff home, or I can bring it home, bring home you know cookies or beer or whatever. And then every time I see it, I have to make a decision about whether or not to use it or to consume it. So it’s so much easier to make a decision once, but then you know I’m home I’m not going to go out and buy cookies every time I have the urge to have a cookie. I’m not going to go out and buy cigarettes every time I have the urge. It’s not foolproof, obviously, we can still do those things. But it tips the odds more in our favor. If we can make those decisions in advance that make future decisions easier, or that just eliminate the need for future decisions and future willpower,Clint Murphy 1:05:14

somewhere, I’d love to pivot with you. So me personally like you for a period in your life. And like a lot of other high achievers have always viewed self care and stress management as a nice to have. And if I have more time, I’ll do that, but not a must have, which it has some good consequences. It has some bad consequences, and it has some absolutely devastating consequences. What are some rest prescriptions that you give for your clients and for our listeners, that we should move more into the must have category versus nice to have?

Seth Gillihan 1:05:52

Well, I think like pausing during the day, and stepping out of the frenzy of activity, even for a few minutes can be really helpful to kind of check in with ourselves and see how wound up our nervous systems are. And if we need to take some time to kind of let things kind of cool down a bit. And just pausing I think gives us like rest tends to lead to rest. So if I pause and realize, like, wow, I’m really kind of over stimulated right now or like this, like hyper arousal state of my sympathetic nervous system, then I can go for a walk, or do something that’s going to help drain away some of that excessive energy. Because on the flip side, activity tends to lead to more activity, like I’m busy, so I’m stressed. So I’m, I need to do more, because I’m feeling a sense of stress and urgency. And that just winds us up more and more. So I think in terms of nuts and bolts, building things into our day, they’re going to help to relieve stress, I think is crucial, which can start with waking up in the morning and checking in with our minds, you know, what types of thoughts and expectations do I have? Am I starting the day thinking today’s gonna go badly, unless you really kind of outdo yourself? Or can I think, you know, how, how can I be present today, and things are probably gonna go pretty well. I just lost my train of thought because my I thought I put do not disturb on but my phone started ringing and I tried to dismiss it and accidentally hit except I had it and that. But yes. Okay, decline this time and do not disturb. Sorry about that.

Clint Murphy 1:07:21

No, it’s perfect timing, given what we’re talking about. It’s absolutely perfect.

Seth Gillihan 1:07:27

Right? Yeah, yeah. So build things in, no stress is coming, we know we’re going to be busy. So let’s build in some downtime in our lives, even like a 15 minute walk at lunchtime can be a real reset, that then has positive effects through the end of the day. And this is a bit more subtle, but we tend to do more than we need to do. And I don’t mean, in terms of like the volume of activity, although I think that’s true. But like when I’m chopping vegetables, I often find this is a common example, I find that I’m doing more than I need to. Like I’m really chopping those vegetables. And like my shoulders might kind of be up and I’m like bringing a lot more energy and effort to it than I need to. So I noticed that I can realize like, Oh, you don’t have to work that hard. It’s kind of you know, you’re just here chopping vegetables, it’s really not that big a deal. So we can do the same thing that we’re already doing. But just do it with less, sort of over kind of without adding more to it than we need to. One last thing I’ll say about this, Clint, is there’s a constant drive, I think that the most of us have to improve our situation. Like, I want to feel better, I want to do more, I want to like is there there there’s this this may be background hum about like, Is there something I can do to improve this moment. And I’ve started to find the deepest rest that we can find is letting go even have that sense of wanting or needing anything to be different than it already is. Just resting in this moment exactly as it is like I don’t need to change anything about it. I don’t need it to be different than it already is. And that even now I can feel that letting go, that like, yeh, things are okay, just as they are. And that can be deeply restorative,Clint Murphy 1:09:08

And part of what that brings up is this idea that we outsource our happiness. So we think like, regardless of what we’re doing, we’re thinking of that next thing or needing more, I’ll be happy when I get a promotion. I’ll be happy when my kids are done class or I’ll be happy when they get accepted into a sport or make a team or I get a raise or I make more money instead of just being happy right now, in this present moment. And what is that idea of outsourcing happiness that you write about? What does that look like for you? And how can we challenge that idea?

Seth Gillihan 1:09:56

Well, yeah, it’s such a fundamental assumption that it’s I think it’s kind of society wide. And this idea that my ultimate happiness and well being depend on things working out in a certain way, of having certain things, doing certain things, and material possessions and the activities we do, those can certainly, you know, bring us enjoyment, and satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment in life. So I’m not suggesting that the none of those things matter. But we tend to tie our ultimate well being to them in a way there, there’s this kind of assumption that can be okay, if this or if that or I can only be okay if this or that. But if we can see, they recognize that assumption, see through it. Again, just powerfully liberating, no, just completely transforming our experience and renewing our minds by recognizing like, oh, gosh, I don’t have to make that person agree with me in order to be okay. Or I don’t have to have another helping of dessert in order to feel right emotionally. It’s, again, it feels like one of these subtle but profound shifts, where it’s not denying that things affect us. It’s not saying like, Oh, yeah, you lost a loved one. Well, if you were just mindful enough to knew you would be indifferent to that. But it’s more about even when we’re grieving, for example, maybe relating to that experience a bit differently, or even when things go really well. We’re celebrating, not seeing that as like, I am okay, because this happened. It’s like, what a nice bonus, this great thing happened, because I was already doing okay, or you know, relationships, relationships affect us so much, for better and for worse, to not pretending that our relationships don’t have any impact on us. But again, finding that peace that transcends our circumstances, that’s always available. And I think a real path for realizing that is through mindfulness is through whether we call it mindfulness or not think it’s just being in the lives that we already have.

Clint Murphy 1:12:01

I love that, and where I’d love to end. A question with you, Seth, is the idea of purpose and work, which is that to know our purpose in life and pursue it combined with that importance of having healthy challenge and achievement. For each of us, what are some of the things that the listeners should think about when it comes to those two areas?

Seth Gillihan 1:12:28

Well, number one, I would say, to look for alignment, I think we all have a sense of the types of things that are a good fit for ourselves, whether it’s work or volunteer work, or education, or whatever, and things that are misaligned, because they’re for someone else, or we’re doing it just to, you know, for external validation. So finding that internal alignment, I think, is key. And then whatever we’re doing to bring our full presence to it. I mean, that was a realization that I had in writing this book that, that also, ultimately, I think our purpose is to be present to be that presence is our purpose to be fully present. And again, I don’t say that to mean, what does really matter what you do, just do whatever, because just be present, maybe that’s true on some level, but I think there are, if we’re doing things that are well aligned with who we are, I think it’s going to be, we’re going to have an easier time bringing our full selves to it is going to be easier to bring our full presence to things that are good match with what we’re doing, or with who we are like for myself, I imagine if I were working in it, at some point, someone told me I should you should go to law school. But I looked into it, it just didn’t seem like the right fit. And I can imagine forcing myself to do that. But I wouldn’t be able to bring my full self to it because it wasn’t didn’t feel like what I was meant to do, I guess. So in a similar way, I think the more we can more present we are the more we’re going to be connected to the people around us, which provides a sense of meaning, and purpose. So whatever a person is doing, I would start with presence and then ask what helps me to bring more of myself what types of things helped me to be more fully who I am.

Clint Murphy 1:14:01

I love that. Seth, we have a final segment called the Final Four. Do you have a minute for that?

Seth Gillihan 1:14:08

Sure.

Clint Murphy 1:14:09

All right. What’s the book that’s been most life changing for you?

Seth Gillihan 1:14:13

That’s a great question. You know, I’d have to say Shambala the Sacred Path of the Warrior. I think that’s what it’s called. The Sacred Path where I show you I’m Trungpa really opened my eyes to mindfulness,

Clint Murphy 1:14:14

And I believe that one may be in my iBooks. I’m going to do a quick I was taking some courses in that area at one point in my life. Yes, Shambala the Sacred Path of the Warrior. I’m on chapter seven, The Cocoon. Okay, so the next question would be what’s on your bookshelf right now? What are you reading?

Seth Gillihan 1:14:48

Let’s see right now. I’m reading. I just finished Conversations with Tom Petty. That was awesome. If you’re a Tom Petty fan, it’s so good.

Clint Murphy 1:14:57

Oh, wow. Beautiful. Oh, Yes, who can? Oh, yes.

Seth Gillihan 1:15:02

Did you see his Live with the Fillmore album that just came out?

Clint Murphy 1:15:04

No, I didn’t. But you and I are similar vintages. So there would have been a lot of Tom Petty in the cars growing up for both of us for sure.

Seth Gillihan 1:15:13

Yeah, yeah, I would definitely check that out. But oh, I’m reading a book. It’s funny. I went to the library, and I said the librarian, any book recommendations, because I was sort of out and she said, Do you like fantasy? I was like, I haven’t read a lot of fantasy. But anyway, make a long story short, she recommended this book by Terry Brooks, I think is his name. Child of Light. I’m really enjoying that.

Clint Murphy 1:15:33

Child of Light. Is that a newer book by him?

Seth Gillihan 1:15:35

New. It’s his newest. Yeah, I haven’t read any of the apparently, as you know, this whole world of like, 40 books, these.

Clint Murphy 1:15:41

Shannara

Seth Gillihan 1:15:42

Yeah, you know it. Yeah. So I’m enjoying it and thinking about maybe reading the Game of Thrones books. I haven’t seen the movies series.

Clint Murphy 1:15:50

Before you go Game of Thrones, check out a book called The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. All right, write that down. He is an artist with words. That first book, The Name of the Wind, is I always listed as my favorite book I’ve ever read. .

Seth Gillihan 1:16:11

Right on. All right, I’ll definitely read that.

Clint Murphy 1:16:13

And it’s just his ability with words. It’s like poetry. It’s just beautiful. So for you, what’s something that you may have purchased in the last 12 months under $1,000 that you’ve thought to yourself afterwards, I wish I’d bought this sooner. It’s had a good impact on my life.

Seth Gillihan 1:16:30

Yeah, I love this question. I think about this. Looking around. What have I bought lately? Even in the past year, I’ve had my microphone for a while. I know. Oh. And probably something in the kitchen. Instant Pot, but that was more than 12 months ago.

Clint Murphy 1:16:51

Have you done an airfryer?

Seth Gillihan 1:16:52

You know, my parents actually sent me one. But I regifted it. I think back to them, because I didn’t feel like I had room n my counters. You’d recommend it though?

Clint Murphy 1:17:03

My wife has two. My wife has two, We have two. Yeah. Yeah. They do everything. Like you cook your eggs in there. Like it’s so for her it’s the ultimate parent tool, kids lunches and breakfasts and getting ready for school. And they can throw in a quick little pizza for a snack when when we’re not around.

Seth Gillihan 1:17:26

Oh, wow. That’s so cool.

Clint Murphy 1:17:28

Yes, it’s a beauty.

Seth Gillihan 1:17:29

Yeah, I’m sure something will occur to me once we get off this call. So here’s a really simple one for now. Lids for our mason jars. We have a bunch of mason jars, we put all our bulk stuff in there, beans, nuts, rice, and over time, some of them rust so I was throwing away the rusty ones. But they did not have lids sort of a jar but no lid. So I’m just gonna buy a pack of 12. Amazing. Now I have more leads than I need. I need more jars.

Clint Murphy 1:17:56

You just gave me an idea for something? What if you could come up with a lid for a mason jar that somehow based on the way you built, it could remove the oxygen that was in the mason jar.

Seth Gillihan 1:18:08

There’s something like that. It’s not I don’t think it would exactly work for what you’re after. But there are these fermenting jars that have a valve on the lid you can suction the air out with it’s a one way valve but I don’t think it would be completely airtight and wouldn’t last you know for as long as a canning, you know life.

Clint Murphy 1:18:27

No, but it would give your beans more life. The because we all have mason jars. So what if we just make them better? Just a simple little lid that people can have for their mason jars. Okay, that’s my idea for the day. And for you in the last 12 to 24 months. What’s one mindset shift habit or behavior that you’ve changed that’s had an outsized impact positively for you?

Seth Gillihan 1:18:53

Yeah, I think it’s really been this has come through working with a voice therapist of mine who does just amazing work, Diane Gary, but it’s this idea of doing less so that even if I’m doing the same thing, I’m talking to Clint, I’m writing a paper. I’m not doing it as with as much force, not forcing it. I’m just sort of allowing it to unfold, that just has endless applications, you know, with relationships with cooking with exercise with writing. So I think that’s the biggest one doing less.

Clint Murphy 1:19:26

I love it Do less better. We’ve had a pretty wide ranging conversation and multi directions. Is there anything we didn’t cover that you want to make sure the listeners get?

Seth Gillihan 1:19:36

Well, you know, I didn’t answer one of your questions now and remembering about how to start a meditation practice. So for that, I would just end by saying, you know, choose something that they think you might enjoy. You know, maybe you want to do a body focus meditation or breath focused or sounds focused or a walking meditation. There’s no wrong way to meditate. So I think start with something you think you’ll enjoy, try it out and start brief. You know, maybe do two minutes, three minutes, five minutes, whatever, and get a sense for it. And just remember, you can’t mess it up. Right, you’re not gonna be bad at meditating. Just try it out, see what you like, there. Obviously, there are good apps for getting involved in it as well. But those are some things to think to get started.

Clint Murphy 1:20:21

I love it. And where can our listeners find you, Seth?

Seth Gillihan 1:20:25

Probably the best place the most central place is my website Sethgillihan.com.

Clint Murphy 1:20:29

Excellent. Thank you for joining me today. It was a pleasure to talk with you.

Seth Gillihan 1:20:33

This was great, Clint. Thanks so much.

Clint Murphy 1:20:37

Thank you for joining us on the pursuit of learning. Make sure to hit the subscribe button and head over to our website, the pursuit of learning.com where you will find our show notes, transcripts and more. If you like what you see, sign up for our mailing list. Until next time, your host in learning Clint Murphy