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Break Free from Self-Limiting Beliefs with Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Hello, everyone. And good morning. I'm James Jarvis, founder, Creative Live and your host for the next 60 minutes, where I'm very excited to bring you a conversation with the fascinating human I've been looking forward to sitting down with for some time now. Um, but before we do wanna welcome you all from wherever you might be hailing and on whatever platform we're broadcasting Live to creativelive dot com slash tv this morning and across a variety of other platforms like, um twitter slash periscope, facebook, YouTube live, um, across a handful of different accounts. So I wanna welcome this global audience and do invite you to check out creativelive dot com slash tv where we are going live ever since cove it started into the living rooms, the studios, the home offices in kitchen counters of many of the world's top creators, entrepreneurs and thought leaders on dso in line with that, um, it gives me great pleasure to welcome our guests today. Dr. Benjamin Hardy is an organizational psyc...

hologist and best selling author of a book that I'm familiar with called Will Power doesn't work. Uh, blocks have been read by over 100 million people, has been featured on Forbes, Fortune, CNBC, Cheddar, thank Big and many others, is a regular contributor to Ink and psychology today. You all know if you're familiar with the show. I love psychology mindset, and that's one of the reasons I have been looking forward to having Dr Ben on this show from 2015 to 2018. He was the number one most popular writer in the world on medium dot com. And today we're here to discuss his new book, which drops today. As in this morning, I think it's 6 a.m. Eastern standard time you could get this book on. The new book is called Personality Isn't Permanent, which is something I think for a lot of us to be thankful for, as we all want to grow and improve, and especially in this time of learning and awakening, we all aspire to be better and to do better. And in this episode, we want to discuss the popular misconception that our personality that these consistent attributes and attitudes and behaviors we want to refute the idea that this is, um, in eight and unchanging. And in Ben's book, um, we're gonna have the around Ben's book today. We're gonna have this discussion How toe liberate us from these limiting beliefs that our true Selves or be discovered. And instead, Ben's gonna tell us how we can intentionally create our desired cells to achieve the results we want to see in our own life and in the world. So please join me in giving a warm, uh, clapping, tapping of the desk applauding high fiving Tap the heart wherever you are. Maybe on Instagram live. Welcome to Dr Ben Hardy. Thank you, man. Happy to be with you. Appreciate you being in the house today. Congrats on the book. It's a big day for you. I know. Pub Day, right. Congratulations. You know what I'm feeling? I dio ideo And again I'm I I revealed in the intro to the show. I love psychology and mindset. To me, mindset is the foundation of everything. It's the foundation. If if we are for lives, mirror the quality of our thoughts. Um, and we have the ability to control those thoughts. That's a great place to be. And if we see our thoughts as something that just happened to us or bobbing in the tide, um, then to me. That's a sad picture of the world in your new book deal specifically with this. And I think there's were reckoning right now. We're a lot of folks are, um, reviewing what they have thought in the past, what they think of themselves. Um, a lot of people want to make change at this time, So your book is well timed, and I'm wondering, what about like, these personalities that we believe we've locked into or that we somehow uncover as a young adult? And then we are stuck in that That seems like an incredible fixed mindset. And yet it's the popular, I would say, ongoing way that personality on mindset is discussed in our culture. So I'm wondering if you could tell us why we're wrong. Yeah, absolutely. Um, yeah. So I say the general view that people have is I kind of think about the three PS. There's passion, purpose and personality. Those three PS. They're generally, I think, from a common perspective, things that we talk about Is there things you discover or find? Um, I really like what Cal Newport says about passionate being, obviously the byproduct of effort learning investment. Um, from the purpose perspective. I really like Victor Frankel, who said, You know, excuse me. He says that life is not meaningless based on circumstances but a lack of meaning and purpose, which he basically says, It's, Ah, freely chosen task, you know. And so and then personality is kind of just the same thing. E. People think that it's something you discover, and once you've found it, then you can then live your purpose or find that perfect spouse or find that perfect career. And so it leads to more of a passive approach to life, less of an imaginative approach. And there's a lot of reasons why we do it that way. Um, there's a really good there's a lot of research from a guy named Daniel Gilbert. He's a Harvard psychologist, and one of the things that he's found in his research is that even if you think about who you were 10 years ago, you look back. You can see that you're a totally different person from who you were. Let's just say 10 years ago you don't see the world the same. You wouldn't make the same decisions as your former self would. As a rule, people think that who we are today is who are always gonna be we very much under predict the changes that they're gonna happen in the future. And we assume that the person we are today is who we're always gonna be because we spend very little time imagining who are future self is. And we also assume that that's who we're going to be in the future. What do you think about the again? We're in, Ah, time right now, where there's a lot of, uh, sort of reviewing of who we are or beliefs that we've held. And I'm hoping that not only that we can change, but that we can change quickly. So I'm wondering if you're if you're research, Do you feel like that? Points to our ability to change quickly, and if so, how quickly can we change in a moment? Give us some guidance on how we have to think about that. Yeah, we can change very quickly. It has a lot to do with the meaning we give to, you know, to what's going on now the meaning we hold to on things that happened in the past. So obviously, right now we're in a big state of change as it as it relates to Kobe 19 as it relates toe black lives matter. You know what I mean? And many other things. I mean, those air, you know, probably mostly. They're not purely us things, obviously covitz worldwide. But yeah, when you when you're having new situations and when you're gathering new information and you're in the in a state of, you know, learning ultimately you're gonna choose to view the current situation in the former former things from a different perspective, you're gonna give new meaning to the past. And that's obviously a big aspect of change. Is looking at the past from the perspective of the present, which is what we always do. But it's choosing different and better meanings. So I think that's what we're going through right now is we're choosing the view former things that maybe we didn't think were such a big deal. Now we're saying these air a very big deal, you know, um and so we're you know, that's how memory works. That's how history works. Is you always interpreted from the state of the present when it comes to like an individual, whether it be trauma or some other negative experience. We have to be very active in the meaning we give to our experiences, because negative experiences in the past can shape our identity, how we see ourselves. And so, yeah, I think that we we have to be very curious and active in choosing better meanings. But also, we then have to think about our future self and be very strategic about that. So, like whether it be for the U. S. Or whether it be for yourself as a human, you have to have a clear here version of the future to some degree to start walking towards in order to actually start making change on. Do you want to do that? Future is something that's different than the past and the present that your future self as an example. As an individual, you know it's really good for identity. It's really good for a decision making, and it also required for deliberate practice to view your future self as a different person and to start imagining what that looks like. Start telling people about the new story, which is where you want to go versus where you've been and that those steps even to changing out of an addiction cycle. You have to actually admit that who you've been in the past is not who you want to be in the future. Yeah, I have read a lot about, um this identity in addicts. Whether it's, you know, your whatever the substance you're addicted to, let's say, uh, cigarettes, because this is a story that I've heard repeatedly is the difference between people who have looked, who identify as a smoker and are trying to stop smoking. This identity that they have latched onto makes the transition to being, um not addicted that much harder. Is that in line with what you're talking about like this? The words that we call ourselves, how they have the embedded embedded meaning that makes change more difficult rather than looking at, um, a future where we don't identify that I'm kind of curious about this identity and locking into ah couple of words that we've used to describe ourselves in the past. Yeah. So identity and personality or two separate subjects. Identity is usually shaped through through experiences and through culture through, you know, through what's around you and also what what has happened to you. It doesn't have to be that way, though identity could very much be chosen based on a desire to feature self. But identity is that so. Identity drives behavior and behavior over time, produces personality, and so identity is the driver of personality. Personality is just how you consistently show up in the world where his identity is the story you tell about yourself. And usually people's identity is very either present or past focused on dure. Identity is often shaped by often negative experiences in the past, which limit how you view yourself and also limit the story you tell about yourself. But if you hear most people talking about their identity, it's usually very present focus and very definitive. So, for example, like this statement I am an introvert is actually not a statement about your personality. It's a statement about your identity. It's how you see yourself and how you describe yourself, which does lead to pretty consistently how you would behave and act. And yeah, you know the goal is actually your identity in the president's held more flexibly. Carol Dweck her research on fixed mindset first growth mindset, people with a fixed mindset are pretty definitive and who they are in the present, you know, they're defined by who they are right now, and that projects to who they think they'll be in the future. When you're very definitive about your current identity, then your your non flexible and on imaginative about your future self, you actually assume that your future self is gonna be the same person, or today, whereas with a growth mindset, you're not really that worried about who you are today. You're certainly not definitive about who you are today. You wouldn't be so obsessed about describing your current self. You're more interested in who you could be in the future and so who you are right now. It doesn't matter that much from the perspective of the like the growth mindset and also all the research on future self. So you just said a bunch of things like who we are, who we will be in the future. That's a way that a fixed mindset person might see and all those things that when I'm listening to you say them, they're very clinical. And, um, like they appear like, you know, scientific observations and me, the human is terrified when you're saying like those things of how people can view themselves as this just fixed entity that's ongoing. And you know, if, um, I like to believe that humanity ought to see itself as ever improving as progress ing and as growing. And so the magical question is, how do we do this, Dr Ben like, How do how do we shift from this? Um, this position that sounds like we're not in control of our destiny and our future. And again, if a if a cultures, thoughts and ideas are made up of all of the ideas or the dominant ideas of the individuals, you know, we ought to focus on changing ourselves and the people that are in our nearest sphere. And I love the world where this is something we can do, a problem we can attack or an opportunity to develop and grow. I just need you to tell me how. Yeah, I would say it's two major things. One is reframed the past, and we could make that super simple. The other one is be very first off, imaginative but then courageous about a desired future self. So it has a lot to do with choosing a different story about the past and also a different way of relating to your past, but also being very intentional about your future and aggressive towards the future. So, like we could go, I'm fine going with either of those. There's obviously steps for either. I don't know which one you would prefer to first. Yeah, I'm more passionate about seeing a future for ourselves where we fill in the blank and then I'll let you share of the science with me. We'll also there's a lot of research out of U. C. L. A. There's a guy named Hal Hirschfield who studies identity. The first step would actually be just to acknowledge that your future self is a different person than who you are today. Just like you're a different person from who you were 35 years ago, you actually see the world very differently than you did back then. You make different decisions. You can look at your former self and notice that you would make different decisions than your former self would make. Um, you know, whether that be and just how you eat or what you prioritize or who you spend time with, um and you want to view your future self as a different person. They're not The same person, is you? They're gonna be in a different situation. They're gonna have different knowledge. They're gonna be in a different culture to some degree with how fast culture is changing. And so, rather than assuming that who you are today is who will always be a first step is just acknowledging that your future Selves a different person. Next step would just be to actually take the time to imagine and think about who you want that person to be. I like I like usually like a year timeframe. Um, but obviously there's a lot of, like, both common wisdom, but also like research to show that you're how you view your future for yourself, determines what you do today. So, like people who are religious, who'd be like an afterlife, they use that vision or that purpose to shape what they do here and now. So, like from a very non like religious perspective, you would pull down like where do you want to be in three years? And ultimately you use that is the basis for your decision making today. Um, and you would make the decisions based on what you think your future self would want versus what you want in the moment. So obviously, the first step is just imagining and deciding who you want to be, which is an ongoing from my perspective, a drafting process. But it takes just, like, literally filling in the blanks. Like, what are the circumstances? You wanna have one of the characteristics you wanna have, what your relationships like. You have to decide who your future self is in order to actually make intentional decisions today and also in order to go into a process of learning. As so, I got an advanced copy of your book via pdf. And, um, I'm but I wanna be I wanna, uh, come at this question for you. Um, as if there's a reader who hasn't yet bought the book. What do you like? You talk about filling in the blank and drafting, but give me very, very tactically. What are your prescriptions to actually do this? Is it a recording and listening? Is it a making a list? Is it a vision board? Like what is it that you advocate for, um, as the mechanism, because right now I'm seeing, um, Seskoo says he's just been reading this book. Um, some folks timing in from Greece, Someone from the Netherlands. We got the UK Dallas. Um, and these folks want to know, like, give me, Give me some prescription. I like, I like First off, I like journaling. I think recording is fine. I know people who walk, and they record themselves talking about it. I personally like journaling with a pen and a pad, and I think it's good to journal with questions. So, you know, you could ask yourself, You know, basically, where do you wanna be in three years from now? How much money do you want to be making? Like what? Like literally, what type of clothing do you wear like, What is your purpose? What do you focused on in three years from now? What do you want your relationships to be like? Who do you want to be in a relationship with? Like I have lists, you know, these questions that you can fill out, but it's ah, lot of it's just taking the time questions or a really good way to get your mind going in more of a curious manner, but just, you know, I like journaling personally. Um, and I would recommend journaling. Usually people avoid journaling because it feels overwhelming. Eso If that's if that's the case, you could just recording, like right, you know, do it. You know, record yourself Doing it. I tend to, like, prefer journaling in short spurts. So you might even just answer one of those questions one day, take five minutes. Interest journal, bullet points. I often do bullet points. Very just brief, ugly bullet points. My journals air really sketchy. Really ugly, but just bullet points, Like five things you'd like to see happen in your life over the next three years. You know what I mean? One of the things that we did with our kids actually recently is we just had them as a group. We all went in a circle. We've got three kids that we adopted, which has been interesting, but like we asked them, tell us three experiences that you think have been the biggest impact on your life. Like one obviously being like adoption and stuff like that. But what if three experiences that you think like, have been important in your life. And then the next question was, What are three experiences you really want to have in the future? And usually when you're thinking about your future self, a lot of it has to do with the experiences you wanna have or the experiences that you hope will change your life. So, like, for us, my wife and I like when I was in my first year of my PhD program, we wanted to become parents like that was an experience that we knew would change us in certain ways and that we wanted to have, like, not not ever, obviously needs to want that experience. But you know, there's other experiences that I wanna have. One good thing to think about is like or an easy way to look at. This is what are some of the experiences that you hope to go through that may have an impact on you, Like those experiences in the future you could write about and maybe you could then think, Well, why? Why do you wanna have these experiences and what do you think that they're going to do for you? Want you go through those experiences. Um, because you can use, you know, Elon Musk as one example like he wants Thio colonize Mars. For some reason, that's an experience that he wants to have. But that future experiences the thing that's driving his current behavior. And and so, like the future experiences you wanna have, whether it's like running a marathon, writing a best seller, being an amazing relationship like those are the types of experiences that are more tangible. What your brain can hold onto like the brain really likes numbers like That's why goals that air new numeric really work or like tangible experiences like running across the finish line like the brain really likes tangible stuff. So those are some things you can do to start thinking about your future self, Thank you, and that makes me feel a little bit better because I'm I'm, I would say, growing my journaling practice. I haven't had a hard core discipline around, um manifesting rather than a regular visualization practice, and I find that the those were very ironically, those were sort of a fixed thing that I established at one point during the year, and I don't allow a lot of room for change and and, um, attacking and driving. Uh, you know, across time I tend to be rather goal oriented. And what I find is that I have day to day ambitions. Um, and what I find is the sum of my day to day ambitions actually contribute materially. You know, to your point to what actions I take and when I only have a couple of goals that I write down and sort of visualized on a regular basis that I haven't allowed a lot of flexibility. So I started journaling and, you know, for so many people there people chiming in right now about, um, how journaling has been helpful for them. Don l talks about being intentional. Um uh, group do Hitchcock says he's taking a break from listening to personality isn't permanent toe, listen to this interview. So we have get some fans in the audience. But, you know, my point is this journaling has been super helpful for me to, um, continue to hold on to a growth mindset where there anything is possible on a day to day, despite having you know, if colonized Mars is Elon's and you know mine is make the world more creative place. Um is this journaling? Ah, do you feel like this is a how how focused Can journaling be passive or is journaling always this active state? And I'm asking for a friend. I'll see that. But is this an active process for you and in the studies that you have, um, cultivated and rewrite the book like, what role did journaling play? Was it central? Was it parallel but not critical? I think journaling is is pretty critical. I think that, you know, if you go thio any clinical, you know, like you know, as an example, my younger brother is literally in a treatment facility right now for addiction and, like journaling doesn't have to be just like writing in a journal like what he's doing right now is he's doing the 12 steps, You know what I mean? Like, but But part of that is literally he has to write down all of the like resentment he has towards himself, like he has to go through a workbook which could be another form of journaling. But he is writing it down, and it's not enough just to have something in your head. You actually have toe, write it down, look at it and then ultimately presented it to someone in the case of Alcoholics Anonymous or whatever, like you actually have to, like, write down all these things, read it to someone else and get it out of your system. You know, like and so I think that it's journaling is only part of the process. But there's obviously plenty of research on journaling that taking the time to journal even about just what you're going through, what you're thinking about. First off, it clears the fog. It also turns your emotions into a story so that you can then actually comprehend your emotions rather than having your emotions just be fogging and overwhelming U. S. I think just eso it's both. It could be both passive and active. But if you're wanting to have what are called peak experiences, which are kind of ah ha moments which allow you to be more flexible is a person you want to be very active. Um, like you're not gonna have very many peak experiences or ah ha's if you're being passive, those type of experiences come from like an intentional mindset. You have to actually be thinking about what you want, then actually take steps in that direction. Uh, just like you're not gonna have a lot of peak experiences in a classroom. If you're being a passive learner, you have to be a super active learner. If you're like in a class, you know, maybe taking notes actually like trying to think about how that relates to you. Passivity usually isn't going to produce a lot of ah ha's, or or mind stretching experiences that allow you toe have different perspectives on former experiences or even on your future self. So I would say you definitely wanna be active in the process. Helpful. Thank you, Um, so I'm looking at, Julie says, are journaling is a daily practice for her very meditative. 3333 Harry 3333 says journaling helps me accept a difficult past instead of deny it so part of Yeah, that, and to me that's a really interesting transition, um, into managing trauma, and I I believe through my own review of my past and knowing just enough about these subjects to be dangerous, but not to be an expert in by any stretch is that we've all got trauma and it comes in different forms. Um, and I'm curious in your language. In the language of your new book, How do you reframe these traumatic and painful experiences into something a fresh narrative that will support the future that you want for yourself? Mhm. It's it's super important, like there's a few super important things to realize from the beginning. Number one is is that trauma can be huge, like we often think about it, you know, like could be some form of abuse or going to war. But trauma is also like it could be being told you're not good at math like and actually believing trauma is any negative emotional experience that shapes your identity and your identity is how you see yourself. And so if you if you know, if someone tells you you're not cool, you know, at school. And like, obviously that hurts, your feelings like that could impact your identity where, like you start to see yourself as not being someone that could have good friends, right? And so that's going to then impact. Over time, your personality is going to impact how you act. Maybe you're gonna be a more avoidant towards friends. And so traumas Any negative emotional experience that you've had that shapes how you see yourself and then ultimately shapes how you operate in the world. So, like, there's a really good book on the subject called The Body Keeps the score. And you know, that book is actually the thing that propelled me to write my book. Um, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That that book pushed me to write this book because he talked a lot about how trauma frieze is your personality. It keeps you stuck in the past. It ultimately leads you to being emotionally rigid, which means basically so, like personality and comfort zone are very similar subjects. To do anything outside your comfort zone is probably to do something slightly out of character or out of how you typically do things and trauma negative emotional experiences. If you don't deal with them, you're gonna become emotionally rigid, meaning you're not gonna be willing to deal with emotions. Instead, you're gonna kind of build walls around yourself and avoid hard experiences or hard conversations. So, like the more you can deal with uncertainty, be vulnerable, try new things. The more what's called psychologically flexible. You'll become often becoming more confidence. You gotta get used. Thio being open, honest, vulnerable, um, in order to move forward. But anyways, one other just quick thought and then we can obviously talk about reframing. It is that trauma isn't actually fax. It's a meaning like it's a meaning you've given to an experience and so on. That's how. So you have a negative emotional experience, and then you give a meaning to that experience. So I'll give, like a story. This is a story that is like an easy way for me to explain it. But I have, ah, distant relative, and I do share her story in the book. But she's someone I met. She's in her eighties, who's an amazing woman. Super intelligent, bright, just amazing woman. And when I was getting to know her a little bit, I found out. You know, we're talking about books and stuff because I was we were just talking About Me is an author, and she said that she'd always wanted Thio write Children's books, and I was curious. And so I asked her like Well, you know, have you written any? And she said no, She's like, I've always wanted to write and illustrate books, and I was like, Well, have you done that? And she said No and I said, Why not? And she said, I'm not good at drawing and so I just never I never did it cause I'm just not I'm not good at all. I'm a great writer, but I'm just not good at drawing. So I just didn't do it. And I'm like, Well, what happened? Tell me like, Tell me, why don't you get it drawing? And so then she recounted to me an experience that was 40 years prior and basically the experience Waas in her early forties, she started to finally like she had a few kids, and so she was going to start pursuing this career or actually just pursue the dream. And so she started taking private lessons, and in a single art class there was like four or five other people in the class who were paying for private instructor. They were doing one exercise, and in that exercise the teacher ended up correcting her kind of crossing off her like drawing on the easel. Patent was just just correcting her but for some reason my like my distant relative of sorts. She was very embarrassed by that. She was also kind of offended that he was correcting her in front of the others and that he didn't correct any of the others. And so, basically, in the heat of those emotions, a story was formed, like we call it a cognitive commitment because you commit to something in your mind. But the narrative was, I'm not good at this. I can't draw. And so, like, that was the last art class she went to. She never drew again. And she never reframed that meaning. So like that was the meaning that she gave to her emotions was I'm not good at this, and that's a meaning. That's not a fact. And so that the core point here is is that she couldn't have chosen a different meaning. It might have taken some work. It would have maybe taken journaling about it, or telling like a friend about it. Or maybe asking the instructor, Why did you do that? Maybe getting some alternative perspectives. Um, but she didn't do any of that stuff. Instead, she had an initial reaction, which was embarrassment, Maybe shame or or you know, some other thing. And then she created a narrative, and she never got a different perspective to choose a different and better meaning. And so as a result, you know, she never was. She still views the past the same way which you don't want. You want to actually continue to toe update your view of the past in the meetings of former experiences as you evolve as a person. But she never did that in this case. What's an example of reframing a past in order to be helpful for your future? Like pretend, pretend that you're going to council. Ah, you're distant relative. Yeah, So it's important to realize that meaning is based on context. So, as an example, we're in Covina. 19. Um, when Cove in 19 just started, I actually sent an email to my email list and I used the word viral in it. I said that this article went viral, just not thinking about it. And there was probably, like, 30 people who emailed me and just said, Ben, you know, given what's going on right now, we do not use the word viral, and I was like totally chill like that's fine. The meaning of the word viral meant something different during Cove in 19 than it meant five weeks before. You know, I mean so the meaning of content is shaped by context, and so the way to change the meaning is by getting a different context. So, like as an example for myself, um, well, I'll just use her is the example. In order for her to choose a different meaning, she would have to get more information. You know, maybe she would need toe, even just asking friends, you know, like So there's a quote from Peter Levine's book, and he's a big research researcher on trauma. But he says, trauma isn't what happens to you. It's what you hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness. So that's why having an empathetic witness or having having someone you can talk Thio even like regularly, I would recommend obviously everyone who's pursuing goals or things like that or just living life you need people to talk to about we're going to because they can help you see things, maybe from a different perspective. But in her case, you know, I would have her talk, even just to me about this, You know what I mean? Like, you know, given that she can't go back in time 40 years to go talk to the instructor. But let's just say that, you know, I'm having a conversation with her 40 years ago, and I'm one of her friends. I would have I would have said, you know, is it possible that he wasn't trying to, like, offend you? You know, like, literally just asking questions to get different perspectives. And you could ask yourself these types of questions in a journal, You know, like, what's a better way of looking at this? Um, I would encourage for if we're living 40 years in the past around this time, first off to think about, you know, what is it you ultimately want? You know, like, do you still want to be your a nart ist like is the is the idea that you can't do aren't going to stop you from doing that? In her case, it probably would. How can we look at this differently? Um, if she would have gone and had a conversation with that person with the with the art instructor and asked him what happened. It may have taken a lot of courage to say, Look. What? What? That what you did kind of hurt me or offended me. I'm just wondering why you corrected me in that way, she might have gotten more context. She might have understood. Maybe he might have told her. Look, I actually think you're really good, and I was just trying to help you see that I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that. That might have totally changed everything for her. She might have been let it go and said, Oh, like, Okay, I was being over overly sensitive. I can still do this. And so a lot of it just has to do with actively seeking a better meaning. Like if, for example, you know, as just one last example. Like, I actually failed a speech terribly, Um, probably like, three weeks ago, to a group of people who I consider very high profile And like people who I really wanted help from, particularly on this book lunch, to be honest with you and I gave a speech and just totally flopped. It didn't go the way I wanted to, and I was embarrassed and I was thinking about leaving the group I was a part of because I just in the moment the meaning I gave it wasn't that this group isn't good for me anymore. Like that was the That was the immediate idea that came to my mind because of how I was feeling after my failure. But I didn't really want that to be the truth. You know, I I knew that that was inflexible thinking. And so I actually just talked to the guy who ran the group. And I said, This is how I'm feeling I first off, I'm sorry for wasting your guy's time. Second off. I'm not sure if I should be in this group anymore, because I just flopped this speech, and I'm now questioning if I should even be in this group. You know, this was me being active about hopefully changing my own mind. And so he then told May. Yeah. Then you actually, your speech was totally fine, and ultimately, we could still turn this into something good. And in the end, I just had to choose to believe which I actually genuinely dio that what happened to me was the best thing that could have happened to me, because if I can learn from it, then my future is gonna be a lot bigger. And so ultimately, you have to choose that your past is something that you can use versus something that you can't use Your past is something that you can use. I think that's a really, really interesting tie to journaling. If you're journaling about things that have happened to you and you can go back and look at rewriting that history at UM, which just seems, it seems obvious now when you've, you know, you've given us, um, the context. Actually, there's it's it's interesting. There's a question from Facebook. Alex Bluemel wants to know. Do you ever go back and read your journal entries? Yeah, and it's fun because then you can actually see how much you've changed. As a person, you can see how much your thinking is different. Um, so I don't do it all the time, but I actually recently did it. I recently went back and read literally the art, like the journals that I had when I was, like, engaged with my wife, just for fun, you know, and it was really fun toe like See what I was worried about back then and what I was thinking about. And so I think it's amazing, you know, in the front cover of all of my journals, I answer five questions. First question is just on. I go through about one a month, but like the first question is where my right now. And I literally just put like five or six bullets like I could. And if I was writing a journal today, I'd say, like my book just launch. Do you know what I mean? Just like 55 bullets. The next question is what are like, What are my wins from the last 90 days, personal or professional? Like, What have I been up to the last 90 days? The next one is Where do I want to be in 90 days? And all of these were just e mean. Actually, since we're on video, I guess I could just show you what it looks like. Yeah, it's like this is what it looks like. I don't know if you can see this. Um, e it's pretty sketchy, Yeah, but it's like it's just it's largely bullets Yeah. So, like, here is like here. Yeah, basically, Here's where I am right now. Here's where I wanna hear the winds from the last 90 days here, my winds for the next 90 days that I want And then I've got, like, future self Where do I wanna be in three years and where do I want to be at the end of this year? And the reason that's cool is that I can look at any journal from four years ago and look at where I was at right now. Just by looking at that, I'm, like, interesting, you know, like, that's what I was up to right now, eh? So, yeah, I think it's very useful to go and look old journals because then you can actually see how much you've changed, which also gives you confidence that you can keep growing and changing as a person on Elizabeth wants to know on this topic of journaling, that's very helpful, especially those five prompts. Um, but Elizabeth wants to know my journaling often goes in circles. Is there any advice? And it sounds to me like I'm no no doctor, Dr Hardy, but that she's like part of the way that you would go in circles is to be holding onto the past. But, you know, help us understand it. Since you're the you're the expert in the hot seat. Dude, I don't know about I don't know about that, but assed faras going in circles, I'd be interested in her thoughts. Like, Is it that her journaling like she keeps repeating Lee writing about the same thing over and over? Or that she can't Actually, you know, I would say in that case because it's important not to just journal but also to have conversations. Um, that's part of what we call integration is like you want to not only not only think about it and ruminate on it but ultimately need toe like turn into conversations and then ultimately turned into a choice. You know, like, for example, with my failed speech, it was approved A. It was a choice that I framed it as I actually chose to frame it as this is the best meeting I've ever been to, even though it was probably emotionally the worst. Um, and the reason I was able to get to that point was because my mom literally thistle happened less than a month ago, But my mom told me that last Mother's Day like which was like a month ago, was the best mother's day of her life. And I'm like, Why did you like I'm like, First off? That's awesome. I'm glad that the best mothers they ever even though like my brothers, like in the treatment facility and stuff, why was the best Mother's Day? And she just said, because that Zatz how I felt and so we can actually choose, like I just then use that to choose the new story. But then you need to tell the new story eso I think when you're thinking about, you know, a former experience or a future experience, not only do you want to think about it, but you do want to start to experiment with actually telling people that that's now how you feel about it. So, like, I am now telling you guys that I genuinely believe that three or four weeks ago, when I flop that speech, that it was the absolute best thing that happened to me. That's the meaning. I'm giving, too. But that's also now the story I'm telling about it, and so you get to choose the meaning you've given. But you also then have to choose to proactively tell that new story. And so, you know, in going in circles, I think maybe try turn it into something more definitive. Like, what do you actually going in circles about? What are you struggling about? Maybe what's a different version? That you can look at it, You know how What's a different meaning you could give to and then maybe start telling people, you know, maybe this is a better way of looking at it and getting some different perspectives. And so I just think you need to then go to the next step and start choosing to look at it a certain way and start telling people about this new version that's directly related to Cynthia Florez Question, um, which is about traumas that have emotional and physical pain tied to them. Are those reframe a ble in the same way she wants to know? Yeah, actually, literally. The whole chapter six in my book is all about updating the subconscious literally, which is all about how unresolved trauma often creates physical pain. Um, so, like my aunt as an example. Jane who? I tell her story in the book. She had a negative experience. She had a water skiing accident. I think, like in the nineties, she's someone who's super physical. She's turning 60 next year. But you wouldn't believe it if you saw her like she's been in aerobics instructor her whole life. She is an amazing shape and stuff. But because of the water skiing accident, she was told that she was never gonna be able to run again. Eso like she never did run, even though she continued to teach aerobics and stuff like that. But fast forward, like a decade or two And, you know, she she then ends up having a lot of resentment towards her husband. Um, and all of a sudden the pain in her leg comes back, which she had not felt that leg pain. A lot of people have back pain or headaches. Ah, lot of this stuff, you know, memories are stored in certain places in the body. And so, um, you know, for her, because she started to feel so resentful and angry towards her husband, Crazy pain started showing back up in her leg where she stopped being able to teach aerobics classes. And ultimately she read a book called The Great Pain Deception, which is an interesting book by Stephen Ozanich. And you know, she actually end up having a couple conversations with Stephen. Um, and she came to realize that the reason that she was having the pain in her legs is not because there's anything wrong with her legs. It's literally because she is suppressing the emotions that she has towards her husband and that it took her literally a few months to actually accept the fact that her physical pain was the by product of emotional, you know. But she she read in his book, and ultimately she started journaling about it. Now she journal, she has what she calls her rage journal. But she started journaling about, um, just honest, you know, like Dancel and says all progress starts by telling the truth. And so she just started writing about her frustration telling people that this was how she was really feeling, and then ultimately she had some conversations with her husband that this is how she was feeling. But one of the really good things that came from all of this for her was that she didn't actually need to change her husband. It wasn't that her husband actually need to go get a job. It's that she needed to change how she felt about it, and in order to do that, she had to actually, like, form a clear picture of it. She had to start writing about it, start telling people about it, and she still does it. It's an emotional regulation technique. Every time she gets upset or triggered in some way, she just journals about it, writes about how she's feeling and ultimately tell someone about how she's feeling, so that then she can choose a better lens and a better meaning for it. And so now her relationship with her husband's amazing her leg pains gone. She's no longer doing all these expensive therapies, and she's running again. And now she's, ah, lot more healthy emotionally. But it's not something you just do once, like she's actively clearing her emotions actively, you know, actively not suppressing her pain and and and she can run and stuff like that. So, yeah, there's a lot of connection between physical pain and suppressed emotions because your body is actually literally your subconscious mind. Like the two are the exact same thing. Your body and your subconscious of the same thing. And you suppress, You know, you store your emotions and your memories in your body. Fascinating it Chapter six in the book about reprogrammed rewriting your subconscious. Um, I'm hoping you can keep talking about this, like in the in the chapter. Obviously, you go deeper than we could go here. Which is again, if you're just now joining, I'm sitting here with Dr Ben Hardy, Um, an organizational psychologist and best selling author of his last book. Willpower Doesn't Work. And today, literally today, his new book drops called Personality isn't permanent. Got folks coming in from all over the world. I've already shouted out to a handful. New new to our meeting here is now Central Virginia. We've got some from Seattle where I'm at right now. Memphis, Tennessee. We've got Brisbane, Australia. What time is it? In Australia right now. Go to bed. Um, just a couple of things. One. I'm hoping you can first recap for us a little bit more on this Reprogramming the psychology. If you're just tuning in this is one of the most what I think powerful chapters in the book because it's essentially a blueprint for, you know, defining your future. And, um, please just go a little deeper on chapter six for us, if you will, And I do think it e think it, um it ties in a lot to the question that we just took from, uh, from Cynthia about trauma. Mm hmm. Yeah, well, it's just important to realize that the experiences you have not only have an impact on your mind but literally have an impact on your body and that your body becomes accustomed to emotions. So, for example, when I look at my cellphone out of addiction, it's because my body has become accustomed to the regular dopamine hit. My my body literally wants the dopamine and my my body is my subconscious. And so I'm unconsciously acting. I'm grabbing my phone, and I'm doing a behavior that then produces the emotions that my body really wants. Emotions and chemicals being the same thing. Uh, you know, my brain then releases dopamine, and so what's super important realizes that your body has become accustomed to certain emotions. Like if you're generally an angry person. You know what I mean? Like, you're gonna create behaviors that are going to create anger, you know? And And that was where my aunt was at, like she and she wouldn't have admitted it because she's kind of a perfectionist. But she admits it now because she's a lot more vulnerable, Honest, which is honestly, one of the big keys, um, is that she would do things in her marriage and just in her work to create that feeling of anger towards her husband. Once she realized that that anger was producing literally physical pin her body, Um, you know, she had openly acknowledged that it was her anger and her her lack of being open and honest with other people about that that was producing extreme back pain and stuff like that. And so obviously one of the things you want to dio in upgrading yourself, you know, at the like in different levels is get your body and your mind accustom to different emotions on that requires actually doing new things. You know, like when you try new things when you're when you're pursuing a future self as an example, you imagine a future self, and you're actually trying something new. You're gonna experience a lot of new emotions. Um, you're gonna explains a lot of uncertainty trying new goals. Um, trying anything you like me If I'm wanting to, like, you know, be a better husband, I'm I might go and try something, and I might be like, you know, like, might take my wife flowers. You know, maybe if I've been out of out of that happened, and I might have no clue how she's going to respond. Um, you know, that might take a little courage to, like, be out of character a little bit if I've been kind of not so attentive to her lately. And so when you try new things, often our brain doesn't want us to try new things because our brain wants our behavior to be consistent. You know, like it's protective. You know, we want our life to be predictable and stable. Our brain is actually literally considered what's called a prediction machine. We for memory so that we can predict what's gonna happen. We want to know what the outcome is going to be. And so when you're constantly trying new things, you're going to deal with a lot of uncertainty because you're not gonna know what's gonna happen. And that's actually where you become more flexible and grow as a person. And that's also where you're gonna experience more emotion so you could become more flexible. Um, and that's what you want to do is you want to get better and better at holding your emotions more loosely, not being so defined by your current reactions but being flexible. If you if you if you have a teacher who tells you you're terrible, yeah, you feel it. You don't ignore the feeling, but you can be more flexible with the emotion. Ultimately, you can choose the way you frame it, Um, and you can also not hold it in. But you can let it out so that it doesn't become a part of your literal biology. So it's just a process of communicating more openly and honestly, choosing better frames for how you see things and ultimately actively trying new things. Your brain loves novelty, even though it would hold you against it like just continually trying new things and growing as a person. It's it's literally my 18 month old twins having swimming lessons are 18 month old twins. We want them to learn how to swim because we live in Florida. And, you know, four months ago, when we first started them in the swimming lessons, of course they hated it like we're putting their getting dropped in the pool. They were hating it. Now they're extremely good, and they're extremely confident. Now. They jump in the pool like these little girls who can't even talk. They jump in the pool, they can flip on their back and swim. But it was a lot of emotional experiences for them to actually learn how to learn, you know, and learn how to swim on. I think as adults we stopped doing that, you know, and a lot of it has to do with We're not very good at openly just sharing how we feel sharing our viewpoints, sharing that were frustrated or on the other end genuinely and openly sharing about who our future self is that we wanna be sharing our goals without worrying about other people's criticism. Just being a lot more of an open book with the right people allows you to not, you know, it allows you to not hold your emotions and and then have those emotions drive you? Yeah, I think there's sometimes it's good to be driven by emotion, but by and large that it limits. That's part of this limiting belief. These start to be stories that we tell ourselves, and we get these default neural networks and it makes me want toe. Take a question from Gwen Kaplan. Um, about being in a bad marriage, I'm wondering if you are you know how you would, um, what you'd recommend to her It It sounds like you used an example earlier of your aunt's relationship with her husband. And I don't know whether that would be called a bad marriage. You're just some resentment. But when Dana Caplan wants to know if I'm in a bad, bad marriage, can I reframe it and stay in it? Or what do you recommend? Well, my Aunt Jane did cause bad marriage can have many different meanings in the book. I literally tell the story about my wife and about how she was in an extremely abusive marriage for three years, you know, and we're talking all forms of extreme abuse. He would hit her sexual abuser like she became a shell of herself in that marriage. And so in that situation, just her reframing it wasn't really a good idea, like she needed to get out that situation. And so I'm not gonna tell you whether you should, like, leave the situation or get help changing the situation, because I don't know the depth of the situation. Um, but relationships just like people create patterns, you know what I mean? Like we all we all get into patterns and rolls and we just do things on autopilot, and in order to break those patterns, you have to kind of you gotta first off, like acknowledge the elephant, the room say that things were not going the way you want. Like, you gotta be honest about how you're feeling. So if you feel the marriage is bad, you probably need to go like seek help. If you want the marriage to continue and to change and improve, then you you can't hide any of that. You actually need toe like you have to stop the pattern that's currently happening, which is creating unhappiness for you and maybe even for the spouse. Um and so you gotta like, be open and honest and start telling your your husband or wife, um that this isn't working anymore that, like, things need to change, that you need help and also be empathetic towards them like the other person has their own perspective. And usually, if change is gonna happen in a healthy way, you've gotta not just believe that your side the only side that's correct and so like I would recommend if you want this marriage to improve in to transform, which I believe it can. I mean, there's some extreme cases where it may be just highly recommended. They just carried out a toxic situation. But, you know, in most cases you can go get help, but it requires a lot of honesty, and it's going to require a lot of work. I would actually genuinely recommend therapy. Excellent. Um, and for those who joined late, there's a lot of questions in the comments about the five prompts that you shared earlier in your journal. And I'm wondering, you know, for those who are gonna are listening to this recorded, uh, they have the ability to go back and rewind and press pause and write them down But for those folks on, we do have a lot of folks tuned in from all over the world. We just had Carrington and from Hampshire in the UK We've got whales. San Diego, Ireland. Um, Hi, Sean. I see you there in Ireland. Sean O Farrell, Um, restate, if you would. Those five prompts that you used to journal, and it sounds like you've been really consistent over a long period of time with them. Yeah, they're cool. And I'll kind of explain to some degree whether why they work. One is just Where am I right now? Just total just flat. Like, what is your current situation or what is like, what do you currently thinking about it working on? So, like, for me, one of the things I would say if I was writing it today is like, you know, I just released my book today. You know, I've got five kids like it's now summer. We're getting ready to go on a family vacation, like I would just like right about. Like, what am I doing right now? Um, just so that if I were to go, like, if I were to give that to someone someone who doesn't know me. And they were to read like the five bullets about me right now they'd have a decent snapshot on, Like what my situation is right now would be a very limited snapshot. But, um and then the next question is, What are my wins from the last 90 days? And I just write down personally and professionally, like what's going on? You know what I mean? Like whether it's like in this one, which was written in January of 2020 I wrote like I got personality isn't permanent Done literally. So this with this journal I finished personality isn't permanent The writing of it. I talked about just focusing on my wife and kids a lot more. Um, just bought a home. So, like I bought this place, which is my office, and re launched a program that I was doing so like that that those were some of my wins from the last 90 days. At that point in time and why Why, it's nice to like talk about your recent wins is because that gives you a sense that things are changing and improving and that allows you like a sense of confidence and momentum so that that can obviously propel future creative thinking. So it's good to actually wreck, and I find that people don't spend enough time doing this. They don't spend enough time thinking about the progress they've made. It's one of the most powerful exercise you could do is just look at your life over the last 90 days or even over the last year. And just look at all of the winds that have happened. Like all of the good things that have actually happened, you'll be I find that most people don't spend enough time thinking about the progress that they've actually made. And as a parent, I can actually end up having the same fixed mindset about my own kids where I don't it's well, it's easy to get locked into a certain perspective about yourself or other people where you think that you're the same person you used to be when in reality you're actually not the same person used to be. So like with my kids. Uh, it's easy for me to sometimes think that they're still the same people that they were three or four years ago and then with a little bit of like introspection or even just thinking about, like, the winds that they are making. I can then realize, Oh, my goodness, they're actually getting so much better and, like, you know, at their chores, or like, their school work that they're reading, you know, like holy cow, actually Look like he's now reading books like that, you know, like, and so it's just nice to take the time to, like, think about where you're at. So anyways, I'll go through the questions quick now, but basic, this is great. Just that people are going crazy. This is so, so helpful. And the context on why are choosing these things is and it also for those who haven't yet read the book, this is like the book is is embedded with, um depth around each of these topics. So sorry. Keep going on the, uh, journaling topics and why? Yeah, the one thing it's so nice just to be able to open the journal. Um, like, for me, I like waking up in the morning putting myself into a new environment from, you know, just by changing environment, you actually become more mindful. You become more aware. Um, you also increase your energy with more mindfulness. And so, like for me, I wake up jump in my car, drive to some location. Usually it's just outside the gym because I like waking up, give myself going and going to the gym. But when you when you read these questions of these prompts, uh, it allows you to get into the mindset of your future self so that you can then write from the perspective of your future self so that you can be intentional with your day because you can't actually make intentional decisions without a purpose or direction, Intention and purpose are essentially the same word or the same meaning. And so you need a purpose in order to have a direction or or an intention. And so for me, a lot of this is about framing what I want to do with myself versus just being reactive, thio my current situation on then by reading these things in the beginning, it actually literally allows me to write from the perspective of my goals from the perspective of my future self. So these are the four questions. Where am I right now? What are the What are my wins from the last 90 days. What are the winds I wanna have in the next 90 days? And then who is my future self in three years from now, literally for ugly bullets? And then where do I want to be in one year from now? And just like three or four ugly bullets? But I like this for a few reasons. First off, every month when I get to redo this, I get to just see progress every day. When I journal, I get to just look at it and to see where I'm at and feel confident about my recent winds and also just really clear on my goals. And then, you know, to the point before, every time I read back on super old journals, I get to see the extreme distance that I've traveled from my current self to my former self, which gives me confidence in my future self will be even more different. Say more about redesigning your environment. I think for many, this is, uh, seen as not a choice there in a set of circumstances where, either for financial reasons, for psychological reasons, for some set of reason, they are they are where they are, and much of that is is true. But even in the smallest way, is it is it moving to a different room? Is it moving to a different room in your mind? How do we redesign our environments to, to, say, pull us towards our future rather than hold us in in our past? E will say the entire book willpower doesn't work is on that subject. But but for this one, I will say, um, environment and situation. I kind of look at the same way situation like you're in a situation, but you're also an environment. You could design environments and you can design situations, so I'll explain both like so there's a quote from Marshall Goldsmith. He wrote a book called Triggers a couple Years Ago, but he said, If we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us. And so it's really important to realize that you're being shaped by external things, one being like, literally, the shape of the room. You know, like if you're on an airplane, you're not probably not gonna run very fast, you know what I mean. But the other one is just, um, the inputs coming in. So, like information is one form of environment coming in. Food experiences, people. These are things that are coming in that are also shaping how you live and so one of theirs. There's three strategies that I've given this book for environment design. One is strategic ignorance, which is about eliminating decision fatigue and decision fatigue, means that there's so many options that you don't feel like you can actually make a choice. And with the Internet, with media, there's so many options that you're going to burn out your willpower by just thinking about all of them. And so you wanna be strategically ignorant of most of the things going on out there, which you know are ultimately distractions. It's about making one decision that makes 100 decisions easier, like literally removing the app so that you don't have to think about it removing the junk food from your house so that you don't have to always be thinking about it. You make one decision, so you have to think about it ever again. Um, so, like, that's That's one And like, you know, I give a few examples, like Seth Godin as one example, he talks about how he used to read the Amazon reviews about his books and that it used to depress him because there would be all sorts of trolls now. He didn't ultimately decided one day that he's just never gonna do that again. He's just gonna strategically be ignorant of the reviews on his Amazon account because it just doesn't help his future self. So just thinking about what is the information you're consuming that's ultimately wasteful, or the experiences or the situations that you're in that you should probably just choose to be ignorant of. You don't need to be aware of any more. Make one decision and eliminate the options. Um, the other one would be strategic remembering, which is about designing your environment. And that's one of the like. This is that this isn't a way for me to strategically remember who my future self is. I've written about my goals, you know, we talked about vision boards. Um, I have what's called a culture wall in my house, which was designed by gaping void, their culture design company, and I had art made about, like my favorite ideas and beliefs so that I could then so that my kids could be influenced by my favorite ideas. You know what I mean? And like like ideas, like better prolific than perfect gratitude changes things like just some of my favorite ideas. I had those turned into art so that my kids could see them regularly. Um, you can design your environment to remind you of your future self or to remind you of who you wanna be like. A simple is turning it. Like having a, um, like a reminder on your phone. Go off and say, like, call your wife and tell your lover like That's a way of designing your environment to impact your psychology. Um, the third one, I'll say this will be the last would be forcing functions, forcing functions or how you design situations so that you can ultimately your yourself in a situation where you're removing your own internal impulse to sabotage yourself. Because we all it's like it's Sometimes it's hard to go to the gym. Sometimes you just don't freakin wanna go, but you can create a situation where you can bypass your own disease like your own private or your own current preference and so like one thing you could do is like hire a personal trainer or have like a workout partner. That's like they're waiting for you at 6 a.m. Like you've created a situation where, even though you don't really want to go, you, you're living up to the situation. So, like as an example, short timelines, deadlines. Parkinson's law, like that's one of the fastest ways to design a situation that forces you to be motivated toward your future self. So, like as an example, I've got another book that's actually coming out in October, which was a co authored book, and we purposefully only they purposefully only gave me three months to write the book. And so because I had such a short deadline, I was forced to wake up super early and writing stuff, not because I'm super motivated, but because literally the situation demanded it. And so there's a final quote. Then that will be my last thought is it's from Will Durant. He is the famous historian, but he said that the ability of the average person could be doubled if the situation demanded it and ah, a lot of people just aren't rising to situations. You know, my wife and I when we became foster parents of three kids, we went from 0 to freaking kids when I was a first year PhD student. Not because we're super motivated or amazing, but because we put ourselves in a situation that forced us to adapt. The situation forced us to learn how to, like, be patient, empathetic and so you can put yourself in situations proactively that allow you to become a better person or to achieve whatever goal you're trying to accomplish. Mhm, those three strategies are lasers. Lasers. Um, let's let's wrap up on one topic again. All of this stuff for getting folks, you know, Michael test Enas saying taking so many notes um, Hadley wants to make sure that they can listen to this over and over again, looking for locations. It's available on all podcasts or heard. Um, photo bang bang is saying, what a great example. Um, junk food is removing junk food from your house. Just removes the root cause, um, And again, I want to thank you for being a guest on the show. Ben. The Yeah. No, the psychology and mindset. Um, I'm a huge advocate for And, you know, going back to your willpower, your previous book on willpower, which was so powerful that makes me want this to be my final question about It's about motivation and how to tap into what psychologist this is a topic you touch in the book. Psychologists call pull motivation by narrowing our possibilities. Because in a world of infinite possibility, it's really hard to get started to go in any one direction. And I'm wondering if you could, um, as a tip of the hat to the book that you all ought to be reading right now, which is, um, personality isn't permanent. Talk to us about pull motivation and narrowing focus on, uh, compelling outcome for sure. Well, so there's pull motivation and there's push motivation. Push motivation means you have to push to do it, which means it requires a lot of will. Power means you're not. You don't really want to do it, or you don't understand how to do it. It's it's a push. It's difficult. Where's pull? Motivation means that you're literally being pulled forward. It means that like you put your and so like that, there's a good theory in psychology called expectancy theory. It's one of the core motivations on our story is one of the core theories on motivation and basically what it breaks motivation into his three things. In order to be heavily motivated, you need a clear goal you need, like a process to get there, which often requires education. You know, like as as an example, when I first decided I want to be a professional writer, I first had to conceptualize the goal. I had a future self. The future self was me as a professional writer, you know, writing books like this. But I need to turn that into a goal in order for it to become motivation. And so after getting enough, you know, information. Asking agents, bloggers, writers I came to conclusion that I want to get a six figure book deal. You know, that was a tangible thing that I could do. So you wanna You need a clear goal in an outcome like something tangible out in the real world. Um, and then you ultimately need to develop a process. Um, so once I had the question, or once I said, Okay, I wanna get a six figure book deal things before I'd ever written a block post. Didn't even know anything about it. I then had to actually study. How the crap do you do that? You know what I mean. But if you have a goal, you can then reverse engineer a process. And the goal always determines the process. A lot of people are looking for a process, but the process, without the context of a goal, makes zero sense. My goal is gonna be different from your goal. So my process is going to be extremely different from your process. Um, but a lot of people, they obsess on the process. Um, so But anyways, you need a goal. You need a process that ultimately you need to start taking steps in that direction, even small steps. And then motivation starts to kick in, just like confidence starts to kick in. So there's a quote, um, from Harvard Harvard psychologist. His name's Jerome Bruner. But he says that you're more likely to act your way into feeling than feeling yourself into action. And so basically, the idea is small steps. That's why I think first thing in the morning, putting yourself in the perspective of your future self and maybe even just taking a few small steps forward. Over time, it accumulates into an extreme amount of motivation. You know, like when I first started blogging back in 2015, I was the first year PhD student I had, class it eight in the morning. That was actually a forcing function, because for me it was like, Okay, I have only until eight in the morning, then after classes, probably at home, because my wife's tearing her hair out because we've got three new foster kids. And so if I need to write, I have to do it before eight AM and so you know, it only took like, an hour to a day, but and also educating myself on the process of my goal. But over time, your motivation becomes extremely heightened. It also heightens by making progress by watching yourself make progress. That's why I think it's so exciting to say, What are my winds from my last 90 days? Just looking at that can motivate you, and so motivation. You can't be motivated without a goal. I I recommend shrinking your goals down, you know, because complexity also kills motivation. So if you can really shrink it to like, what's the one major outcome you're looking for? In my case, it was a six figure book deal. This that was back then. If you could break all of your goals in tow one and say, What's the one thing you're really trying to get? It should still be tangible. Then you can create a really streamlined path towards that one major outcome. And that will really make motivation very easy for you if you don't have all the answers. If you're trying to pursue too many things, it's gonna be too complex. And you're going to just stop yourself from taking any action, which is going to kill killing your motivation wisdom. Again, there's all kinds of clapping and thumbs up in the double hand, uh, in the air. Emoji. Dr. Ben, thank you so much for being on this show. A few you're tuning in late. You missed it. Rewind. Go back to the beginning. Go back to creativelive dot com slash tv because we've just been limit liberated from the limiting beliefs that our true Selves need to be discovered and have rather been shown that we can intentionally create our desired Selves and achieve amazing things individually, Culturally is a solo or as a team. Thank you so much for being on this show. Ben. Congrats on your new book dropping today. I wish you all the best in this community is very passionate and are are book buyers. So for those folks out there, um, show some support for Dr Benjamin Hard in his new book. Ben. Congrats, man. Thank you so much for being on this show. I'm blown away. You let me be on it of all days today. Really generous of you. Very generous of human, Very excited. And we will make a quick turn on the audio because I know again there's folks. Uh oh. Donna says thank you. 333 Harry says, giving a shout out Bonnie Danielle Sufian Matthew Torben Susan People cheering, cheering you on from all of the world. Best of luck in the launch. And thanks so much for illuminating. Um, what's possible with this one precious life we've gotten? Thank you