 So, Dr. Moran, welcome to the show, and we are very excited to have you with us. Michael, one of the coaches here at the Art of Charm is a big proponent with ACT, and he has turned AJ and myself on to it. And we have integrated some of the concepts into our own training programs. So to give our audience an overview of ACT, would you mind setting it up for us? Sure. Thank you, and I'm really honored to be here. So thanks for the opportunity. Acceptance commitment therapy is something I've been interested in since 1994. It was developed by a whole group of individuals, most notably Stephen Hayes and Kelly Wilson and Kirk Strozall. But there was a whole bunch of folks who were interested in this. And it comes from the natural science of human behavior, comes from something we might call behavior analysis. Behavior analysis is something that BF Skinner created, developed, and essentially, acceptance and commitment therapy is a blending of evidence-based approaches that embrace things like mindfulness, but also embrace empirically supported behavior change protocols. And it encourages people to build up their psychological flexibility, which we'll talk about in a little while, rather than just going after a reduction of their own symptoms. What ACT does basically is it invites people to be willing to follow through on what's important to them during their finite period of time on this planet, even when it sometimes becomes painful or difficult to do so. You only have one opportunity to have a life well lived, and acceptance of commitment therapy helps you become guided by scientific principles and applications to make that life meaningful. Now, we are huge proponents of behavior change, but we also know it's very difficult. And we'd love to walk through what are the biggest things that get in the way of behavior change and then how does ACT address them? Right. What are the things that impede behavior change? Oftentimes, it has to do with what we tell ourselves. It has to do with our language that we're taught, and we learn very fluently early in life. And this language is extremely helpful. Our language helps us describe and evaluate the world around us and how to problem solve. How do we get more good things in our world? How do we prevent having bad things in our world? And we language, we talk, we communicate with other individuals. And that's helpful, but it becomes so helpful to us to use language, it becomes so fluent that we talk certain ways that sometimes we get hooked by our language. Sometimes the things that we want to commit to, that we find important and meaningful can sometimes be thwarted by the things we tell ourselves. We might tell ourselves things like, I am not that good at being assertive. I am a weak person or I am too shy. So we don't go after certain things that are important to us because of our self-labels. We start to also use language to think about how things are going to be so much better in the future where things were so much better in the past and that language about the future in the past becomes so governing of our present moment that we miss out on opportunities thanks to language because it's imagining a future or it's reminiscing about a past and we miss the opportunities in the present moment. Sometimes we also use language to tell ourselves that some things that we feel are negative and not worth having. We tell ourselves because we learned it from other people in our culture that use language that certain ways of feeling are negative. We have a term called negative emotions like, I will ask my boss for a raise when I am less anxious because anxiety is a negative emotion or I will ask this person out on a date when I am not feeling so nervous or sad or depressed, I have to take these things that I am feeling and change them rather than just have them and we learn this rule of controlling our emotions early in life and all of that stuff is that hook from language that we get taught to think certain ways about ourselves and I don't think that's all that helpful and there are other ways that language impedes committed action but I'm wondering if there are any particular questions about what I just said that we should explore a little bit further. For myself, I've learned to view thoughts, emotions and language as a ball of yarn that has been thrown on the floor. It's all tangled up and because it's all tangled up, you can't look at it straightened out and see how each one affects the other and because it's all jumbled up, it's a mess, it's difficult and it's very sticky and it makes your view, your lens of everything more distorted. For myself, when I had learned that or at least saw it in that metaphor, I still do this to this time, spend time in mindfulness which is an opportunity to look at and begin to detangle but also other opportunities to look at thoughts, look at emotions, look at words, it's like writing and journaling and any time that there is an opportunity to separate those things or to straighten them out, you can start to see how they interact with each other a little bit more clearly and then you can start to take actions towards dealing with them properly so that you're just not throwing stuff at the wall trying to get unstuck which seems to only make you more stuck. Yeah, I'm even going to jump off some of the things that you just said, Johnny, and that's like there's a drive or proclivity, an attempt, a desire to, as you said, straighten them out or in some way like figure them out and deal with them in a particularly appropriate way. But I think you've used the phrase straighten them out as if the human condition were to be straightened out, that ball of yarn that's all over the floor, that is life, it is messy and to straighten that out is because we've learned from culture and parents and clergymen and teachers and culture that there is a straight path and it's supposed to go a specific way and oh my gosh what an abuse of language to give someone that kind of indication that life is supposed to follow something that parallels an ideal, that it's supposed to be straight, we can't straighten it out, we can have the ball of mess, you can just have it and I think that's what we're after at least that's my viewpoint, I'm not saying it's the right viewpoint but I think that might speak to an act consistent viewpoint, we might not be able to straighten it out to fit a narrow path but goodness gracious I hope I never conform to a narrow path. Perhaps it's to look at it in that mess and to be okay with it being that mess but at least look at where each part is intersecting with the other and how it might affect those parts that it's intersecting with and perhaps we were able with these methods in act to look at them separately and to look to see where they are intersecting and seeing how that intersection affects us. Johnny what you're saying right there is like we have to be okay with a mess if I weren't okay with the mess of me I would never be okay with me and we have to like try to see if we can encourage people to break that cultural training and conditioning that everything has to be straightened out What if it weren't even judged to be a mess? It's chaotic, my wife's chaotic, sure of course it is dynamic and I've got relationships and I've got emotions and I've got thoughts and proclivities and genetic influences so of course it's chaotic but it isn't a mess like that's judgmentalism and when Kabid Zinn defines mindfulness as paying attention to the present moment purposefully and non-judgmentally I think that's where mindfulness comes in Johnny it's like that like that mess it's almost and with all the respect like like that mess it makes me feel like I have to clean it up and straighten out I don't want to like I don't want to it's the trying to get on the straight now and clean things up in my life that have made a mess of it and I think that's the true way to think about my clients too it's their attempt to conform to fit in to have that normality that I'm supposed to have that leads to the problems I agree obviously that comes with the acceptance part right accepting all of it the total experience the totality not just seeking the pleasure seeking the emotions that you label as positive or society labels as positive and then the second piece is the commitment piece and I think many people struggle with that because they don't have the internal handled they focus on the external and we've all heard the carrot in the stick and trying to set these big lofty goals but the commitment piece has to come internally for you to actually follow through and in that struggle that we're talking about to actually change our behaviors right where we're wired and habitually building these patterns that become hard to break well many of us we instead of focusing on our values we look at well what's the payoff what's the external reward how are other people gonna view me instead of well what do I actually need inside of me and what are my driving forces that I could commit to and take action in that commitment so how do we get there if you're listening to the show and you find yourself falling into that trap where you have these great goals whether it's the New Year's resolution or some big event your life that's coming up we focus so much on the external and then we fall off and we can't keep taking that action that we know we need or building those new habits to change our behavior I think the thing that keeps people committed is clarifying what's meaningful and purposeful in their life and this goes back to the conversation I was having a few minutes ago related to language what I was saying a little bit earlier sometimes language can be an obstacle for us following through on what we care about but sometimes not being clear with our language to figure out or to be able to describe what's meaningful in our lives that is also an impediment to keeping a commitment so I think one of the critical aspects of becoming more psychologically flexible having a more meaningful life is being able to use language to declare and establish this is what's meaningful to me this is what I care about it's personally relevant to me it's vital and I don't think we are given a lot of opportunities to do this clarification what I prefer to call authorship to take some time in our lives and say I'm only gonna be on the planet for a finite period of time it can be about lots of different things and I can't control the things that happen to me but how I react to the things that happen to me it's someone under my influence when I can declare this is what I stand for this is meaningful to me I want to make my life speaking just very personally I want to make my life about rearing my children to live a full abundant flexible healthy life that's my family value I care about reducing suffering and improving quality of living on this planet even if it's just in my community that's my occupational values the question is for all my clients for anybody listening to us right now like what's yours what do you want your life to be about now what you want your life to be about is probably been influenced by your culture and your subculture and your education and your parents and your guardians and I get that but at some point you really get to freely choose that you do you get to say this is what I care about in my life and you don't a good act therapist or one doing it by themselves a psychologically flexible person says I'm not going to let expectations from my culture have that kind of influence on what I do I want to make my life about creativity and making the world more beautiful and I care about aestheticism so I'm going to you know not get a nine to five job and work in a cubicle I'm gonna pick up a saxophone and get into an improvisational jazz trio and I'm gonna create art because I only have 40 50 more years on this planet to do that so what the heck why don't I do that why don't they do that why don't we do that it's because we are in two ways governed we're governed by our genetics to go after instant gratification like you gotta you gotta make a paychecks this way you can pay for your food so you gotta do the thing that everybody else does and then we're also governed by conditioning in our culture that says you gotta live your life this way and we go okay Roger that I gotta listen to what everybody else does and we have to see an act see if we can transcend that can we get beyond that instant proclivity to get reinforced to get the next jolly like an animal like can you put off instant gratification and say I don't I don't care about like instant gratification I care about life's gratification I care about I care about this being vital to me because I'm only gonna be here for a short period of time and then like seeing if you can notice that you have a culture teaching you to live life a certain way but that might not be the way for you and can you accept the anxiety with making that kind of choice and still commit to doing the thing that's meaningful I know in my life taking that authorship view I felt my dad was authoring my life through my high school experience into college and even in my early adulthood career choices and it was a struggle for me to take over that authorship and I did and it was against family's wishes and certainly my dad's definition of success and it took a while for that relationship to heal because of some stubbornness on both sides but I know when I share the story and I talk to our clients and our audience members a lot of us are feeling that that pressure certainly from our parents and you can understand it they want us to be successful they want us to be safe and they want us to achieve more than themselves but that moment of taking over that authorship and saying you know this is me and these are my values is a very difficult time for young adults if someone listening is experiencing that exact thing and trying to look for that deeper meaning in their life you know what would you tell them as they're facing this challenge that's a good question because it would depend upon the relationship and my assessment of where they are in their life but put that aside I would try to highlight reality of you're going to eventually no longer have an influence on what you do because you've passed away and people are going to eulogize you people are gonna put a epitaph on your tombstone and the question is to you now as a youngster what do you want it to say you know what do you want that epitaph to say that you conformed but you're a good boy you're a good girl because your mom and your dad told you to do it this way you did good for you I don't know if I'd be that coercive or manipulative because we're kind of talking about this in shorthand right and if I care about my client I'm talking to you I might not be that much of a Weisenheimer I'm also kind of a Weisenheimer and like a New Yorker and my clients that I'm treating if I assess that they are also a New Yorker they might get it they might get that I'm kind of playing that game that they fit in with and I said do you what do you want that eulogizer when you're in the box someday and they're behind the pulpit do you want them to say they did their life just like the culture told them to and we're here to honor that kind of lifestyle and before I go any further if that is the way someone chooses to live their life if you come from a collectivistic kind of culture yes I care about doing what my family wants me to do there's no judgment there I'm not being judgmental about this at all this is sometimes what people choose to do with their lives that's why I was somewhat reluctant to give you a hard and fast answer it all depends on what the assessment is with my client but sometimes the answer excuse me the intervention is more along the lines of is this really what you want your life to be about and it's just provocative like I don't want to change them I don't want to shake up their whole entire world and have them leave a 45-minute session going I'm going to completely negate everything and taught me and I'm never gonna go a Thanksgiving dinner and I'm not gonna hold the nine to five and I don't care about a paycheck and I don't know let's see if we can do something manageable with your resources and your skills and your connections and your environment you made such a great point earlier that so many of us never take the time or have the space to even wrestle with these bigger questions of what do I really value what do I care about and we feel adrift whether that's culturally speaking of the influences or from our family's influences and you know we talk a lot on the show about values and how important it is to understand them and tie them to your purpose and then of course tie them to your goals so that you can find that motivation that willpower that goes beyond the obstacles that are inevitably in front of you and so many of our younger clients look at us sort of blankly around this idea of values and purpose because they don't even really know where to begin right they've just fallen in line with the flow that is set out for them and in that situation it can feel entirely overwhelming of where do I start how do I even pull this thread just to add to that for myself as a younger person and you had brought up this idea of I believe is mental flexibility psychological flexibility I know that in my past certainly most of my problems had stemmed from not being psyched not having that psychological flexibility right and trying to force what was going on into some sort of pattern that I had learned or I had picked up that had worked in the past but certainly doesn't fit this particular situation but because I my only experience is from a previous pattern I'm going to make this pattern fit and I'm going to make my emotions and my thoughts work with this and I'm going to be stubborn about it because because that's what I have and of course as you know the harder you try to do that the worse this the situation gets and I certainly had to learn to be okay with so many different things that were going on around me because I know that if I tried to do what I had always done in the past it's it's going to go wildly sideways right right you always do what you've always done you'll always gonna get what you've always got right I think that was Mark Twain like and and so we try to fit what used to work into a new environment and because it was rewarding to do it the way it was done in the past and you got the pats on the back and the gold stars and you might have even gotten the instant gratification and satisfaction yourself but change is the only constant of that's a pre-socratic philosophical idea right there and we don't necessarily always remember that like the things are going to change and what used to work in the past I hope it works for you again it probably won't forever you know so that's the whole idea of psychological flexibility it's it's the ability to follow through on what you care about even in the presence of obstacles it's doing things that are meaningful even when it's hard it starts with just a simple why understand the goal understand what you want to achieve but you need to answer the question why and if the why is to please someone else or it's coming externally you're not gonna find the motivation the willpower the discipline needed to achieve the behavior change that you're after the why is so important what what is meaningful about this why are you doing this particular behavior when we become super nerdy behavior analysts it's kind of like a geeky way to look at human behavior we're still always asking the question why what are the things that come after this behavior that make you want to do that behavior again or never do it again like what are the consequences why are you going to do this again why are you not going to do this again what's the purpose of this behavior to be able to ask yourself these questions and as AJ mentioned earlier a lot of us we ask one or two questions on the surface and it's usually wrapped in a lot of what you were mentioning certainly there's gonna be a genetic answer there's gonna be a cultural answer there's gonna be a anodonic what do I need right now to feel good answer but you know it's slightly behind those answers or where more thoughtful more caring more value driven answers lie and so how can we help our audience continue to go down that path to find out where the answers that they need to bring in more purpose into their life and waking up to to the values and that that that new narrative that's going to make life more purposeful for them that's the catch right in the 21st century we are our post enlightenment we are what I mean to say by that we've gone beyond getting our purpose told to us prior to our purpose being told to us our purpose was just to mate you know eat and mate and raise your children to carry that on and then there was a lot of religious dictates that told us what our purpose was and that wasn't fitting anymore and sometimes around the light and we started to really embrace science and now we're way further on in the 21st century and we're gonna say maybe it's just more than this what can be observed science we can see we can see this blending between what's scientific and what's also spiritual not necessarily religious but what I'm talking about is like what could the purpose of your life be without relying on science telling you what it should be and then that puts the youth now who deserve this kind of coaching what can you make your life be about if it could be about anything pro-social to make sure that you do help out human beings whether it's about procreating or not it's just like how do you contribute to a community that's well lived by everybody that you can be pro-social about it that you don't have to conform to certain types of governmental or religious rules but you can still be pro-social because it's meaningful to you and then you get to figure it out and we're not only gonna say accept the fact that you're going to fail and that's going to hurt but what we want to do is create a community that also accepts the fact that you are going to fail and go do things and mess them up and fall down and then stand up again and then what we hope to do is build a community that doesn't just say the old Japanese proverb fall seven times stand up eight it's we're all gonna fall down several times let's help up everyone even more than several times like let's work together at that fall down seven times during those eight times that you stand back up rely on other people because we're all in this together we all swim in the same soup don't make it all about like I have to conform what if it could be about how you can commune how you can be part of something and when you try to commune when you try to be part of a community you're gonna make your mistakes of course you are everybody in their teens and twenties does the goofy stuff and it doesn't carry on thank goodness I'm not living the life that I thought I was gonna lead when I was 20 years old but I'm proud I had those twenties and I had those mistakes and it wouldn't have I wouldn't be where I am today without the mistakes I don't think there's many of us who would want to take those times back or we those mistakes have certainly brought us to where we are and then of course you know in all the advancements of science has certainly unchained us the certain ideas of who we are supposed to be but yet the science also points out that you can't get any more fulfillment and satisfaction in your own life than serving your fellow man there you go right and then I'm going to put that back on the marquee you can't get anything more meaningful than serving your community that's important but then also a corollary to that is that you'll grow from pain I mean there's so much in spiritual literature doesn't matter what religion you're looking at is that not only do you help other people contribute to society and to community that it's also going to hurt sometimes and that pain is where the growth comes from and the connection yeah they go that's it unifies us yeah matter what your station in life is there will be pain it doesn't matter if you're at the high end of the stratosphere in terms of success or the low end there will still be pain and is completely relative I think you know jumping into the mindful action plan because it's such a powerful tool and we're gonna link it up the art of charm comm slash map check it out it's fantastic and really that that first piece of I am you touched on this earlier so many of us hold on to these labels and these labels are passed down through previous actions so something in our past that we got a negative response to that was tied to shame embarrassment and then we label ourselves and that creates this limiting belief around what we're capable of so we have to first notice if we're we're actually being held back by these unhelpful self descriptors and that is the start of us starting to let go and get more present moment awareness of who I am right now today and then take that next step of what matters so walk us through this mindful action plan and how we can use it in our lives because one Johnny and I absolutely love the tool and it distills down so many of the concepts that we've covered on the podcast in disparate episodes so it'd be really helpful for our audience yeah I appreciate you bringing up the I am piece first and then that there's a whole mindful action plan so the mindful action plan comes from acceptance commitment therapy and I was asked by clients that I was coaching can you take this acceptance and commitment therapy and just put it into a form or a checklist and it seemed a little strange because I'm like well we're about psychological flexibility and living a life in a flexible way and you want a checklist but I wanted to use a flexible checklist I want to add to that though you're also behavioral analysis and also looking at past behaviors of seeing how they're going to affect with future behaviors so there is some predictive abilities which are going to need to be able to be to be seen and and look that so you cannot get away with that psychological flexibility and this nebulous thing too much I'm going to hold you there good points Johnny that's cool so what what I wanted to hammer home in this checklist that I was giving up to my to my coaching clients is that acceptance commitment therapy has six components I didn't mean to go into them right now and I took those six components and I just colloquialize them what I mean by that is I made them simpler to understand and I turned it into a sentence I am inviting people with the mindful action plan to be able to say I am here now accepting the way I feel noticing my thoughts while doing what I care about so there are six components there and it's right there on the mindful action plan checklist that you can find on the internet and so those are the six components the first one that AJ started to allude to is that I am all of us human beings that are good at using language that don't have any language impairments we have an ability to describe what our self is and sometimes this self gets described in ways that makes us less flexible less successful if you will we say things like I'm a piece of crud I'm no good I'm depressed I'm obsessive compulsive you know I'm worthless and we get taught that like that language is stuff that you have learned from psychiatrists or teachers or parents or subculture I want to point out it it doesn't even have to be that that negative no I'm shy is when we hear all the time great and is used as an excuse right so that the ultra negative ones we understand that's loser think it's gonna impact you but we often self label with much softer terms that we don't realize limit us yeah yeah good points and then if I mail just a little bit further we can even go positive with it you know like I'm a board certified behavior analyst I'm not gonna go hang out with my girlfriend and listen to a psychic during our second day there it's like what like you just blew it man you got to be a little more psychologically flexible just because you think you're a shot board certified behavior analyst doesn't mean you can't go to cool things you know I'm good I'm already a good snowboarder I'm not gonna try surfing because I might not be good at that like you just reduce your your psychological flexibility and fun things you could do in your life because you're saying good things about yourself you know so you're 100% right AJ sometimes we say things to ourselves that could be subclinical super clinical they could be really good and they still in Paris because here's the thing you're not any of that stuff there's certainly utility in those little brackets and those labeling but there but that utility is also limited yeah oh giant don't get me wrong like I don't ever want to say I'm not certain things in my life like right when I say I am a dad you know like but but at the same time I might say I am a psychologist because that's helps me get paid by a third-party payer you know when I treat I am a psychologist that's what I am that's that's what I do there is a main point here is that at the core of every I'm a psychologist I am shy I am a snowboarder I am dad there's there's a point to that and it's there all the time and that is I am mm-hmm that's it and that's a hard thing to get across during an interview and in therapy and in coaching it's something that needs to be experienced you exist you are you are not the roles you play the emotions you feel the sensations you have the body you experience you're not those things you have those things but they're not you there is a core you an observing self that has been you your whole entire life that's unbroken unchanged unfractionated by all of the experiences you've ever had no matter how you can label yourself you will always be I you just are you it's hard to language about it it's more of an experiential exercise it's more of an experience to get to it like it's just that deep breath the exhale and noticing that you were the one that exhaled and inhaled but you just exist and you're not the stuff you tell yourself you are that's important to just be able to say I am then we go beyond that with the mindful action plan I am not I am a psychologist not I am a father not I am depressed not I am shy I just am I am here now coming in contact with time and place mindfully noticing what's up with that I am right here and right now I'm not gonna get caught up with there and then in the future or there and then in the past I am here now this is a profound thing for someone to say it's not like poetic but it is profound to be able to say I am here now to be entirely centered on your existence and where it is and when it is so many of us are distracted and unable to put our attention on the here and now and I think that's really an important part of this plan is yeah there are other ways that we can put our attention and focus to avoid the discomfort to avoid dealing with the tangled ball of string that Johnny described but when we center our focus in a mindful way on actually what's happening in front of us we can then start the next step which is notice right you can't notice if you are distracted if you're playing the PS5 and your social media is up and you got your browser you got seven things going on you can't possibly then get to the next step which is start accepting what's actually going on in your life right AJ you're right on the money there and both of things that we're gonna go on next is I am here now accepting the way I feel and noticing my thoughts because we have been taught to not accept the way we feel we've been taught don't worry be happy you know there there don't cry or if you keep crying I'll give you something to cry about like we get this message early on in our life that you shouldn't just accept or be willing to feel the way you feel you have to feel happy and when you chase happiness all the time and try to avoid the other natural emotions that show up actually what it does is it makes those other natural emotions worse if you will it makes them tenacious it makes them more intense you know when for instance when someone says I want to avoid that party because I am shy I'm getting away from the I am stuff but the non-acceptance of the fact that their heart is pounding and their limbs are shaking and their butt is sweating and you know I I I don't want to go because I I'm feeling anxiety and anxiety is a negative emotion when they don't accept the fact that they feel that way they never put themselves in the opportunity to shake people's hands look them in the eye and use their social skills and if you don't do that you'll never get good at those social skills and you know what happens then you're always afraid to meet new people but then I'm gonna go one more step beyond that and say you also don't and this is a nerdy psychology term but you don't counter condition you anxiety you don't face it let your heart pound and your limb shake and your butt sweat and do it over and over and again eventually that stuff drops off but you got to put yourself in the fear-provoking situation in order for you to counter condition that you would like put yourself in the face of discomfort so that you're comfortable with it then I'm gonna go yeah man once more step Johnny I'm sorry but then one more step beyond that not only are you learning social skills counter conditioning the anxiety you're going to parties now like that's more important than learning social skills and counter conditioning anxiety you're having a life but it doesn't happen if you're non accepting of the natural emotions not negative emotions natural emotions sorry interrupted John oh no do you know in fact your point was is was eloquently put I just wanted to add it as I've gotten older and I think for a lot of us when we get older we we start to realize how we learn we start to realize how how our emotions play out I call it emotional theater where there's there has to go through this set and and you can't shortcut it you just have to let it run its course you could step back you can observe it you could laugh at it you can market you can have fun with it but you cannot do anything to stop it and with that having a growth mindset I have to always throw myself into things knowing that it's going to be a mess it's going to be and once I create that mess then I'm going to go through the the emotional theater of everything comes with yelling at myself beating myself up laughing at what's going on the whole thing and then it's finally I could start picking up the pieces of the mess I made slowly begin to work my way through start learning start to feel better that oh hey now I have a grasp of what is going on and now all of a sudden I start to get happy that I can find my way through and then boom now it's hey I know how to do that I went through the effort and the painstaking work to do that and now I'm going to teach somebody else how to do that and I'm going to mentor them yeah I'm having people begin to do that mentorship I think is an important component like you've been through it help other people through it also sounds like a good idea I mean the way you just described it Johnny I mean it sounds to me like a life's well lived in a growth mindset yeah right on frustrating but yeah well I want to touch on that counter conditioning because it's counterintuitive yep quite honestly because the initial pain of anything we do the first time the second time the third time that discomfort and anxiety around the unknown the uncertainty and and it's not a pattern that we're used to so therefore our mind is going to go in all these different directions but exactly your point over time it will diminish but it never goes away entirely so we find that a lot of clients come with unreal expectations of you know I just never want to feel anxious again I just always want to feel confident and that also sets us up for failure because that unreal expectation that your body's not going to have a physical response to something that's new that maybe you've experienced before but let's be honest the social environment that we're talking about it's not a controlled environment it's other people interacting so it's always going to be there so we don't want to set the target or the goal on I want to overcome it and never feel that way again I don't I just want to go through it just a few times and then it's gone for good but realize that that anxiety is coming from a good place a place of growth and a signal that hey there there's lessons to be learned and the pursuit of my good life is through that it's not try to turn it down as fast as possible find the hack find the shortcut reshape our mind to avoid it in other ways but it realize that anxiety will wane it will never be as high as the first time or the second time or the third time but there's no reason that you shouldn't keep feeling it because if you're feeling it you're growing you're in a place where you are expanding that life worth living so let me think of a couple things and the way you're talking about is right on from an act consistent perspective the first thing I'm responding to or reacting to is that you're saying some people want to always feel confident but if you actually take the term confident and break it and break it apart it's con fidesz right so con like chili con carne it's you know chili with meat so the con means with and fidesz or fiddance is fake confidence is with faith you don't know you don't know that's what confidence is I don't know and I'm gonna do it anyway like so no hey like that idea I want to feel confident you just have faith that you're gonna do it but things can go horribly wrong and you do it anyway right and then the other thing I'm responding to and I'm just thinking about you know the fact that you might not be able to see it because I didn't light it up but there's a snowboard a skateboard and a surfboard right behind me this is my living room this is what I do for fun when you are doing any of those things oftentimes when you feel like you're going to fall a certain direction the worst thing to do is to overcompensate in the opposite direction if I'm snowboarding and I'm leaning this way and I'm about to face plant into the mountain do not go like this backwards because you'll catch an edge and then next thing you know you hit your butt you hit your head and you're doing yard sale on the mountain with all your clothes everywhere what you do is as you're falling this way lean this way wait I'm gonna lean the way that I'm about to fall and where the fear is and where the pain might be yep yeah lean into it like I mean that like not psychologically and right now we're talking about snowboarding lean into it and what happens is the snowboard goes down a little bit deeper in the snow you bend your knees the right way the snowboard bends a little bit and it like speeds you up and because you've got more speed you capitalize on the centripetal force just like water in a bucket when you spin it around it doesn't fall out your body is like that water in a bucket you lean the way it goes and then you pick up speed it's exhilarating it's totally anxiety-provoking oh my gosh I'm going even faster in the direction that I might fall you know what happens you pick up so much speed you don't fall skateboarding snowboarding snowboarding and surfing it's the same thing and I think it's the same thing with life lean into the pain and the anxiety and the struggle and the shyness and just say I'm willing to face this and when that happens you're totally open to outcomes you're totally open to experience and then that openness actually leads to a new way to process it I love it sometimes you might not be mentally ready for it and and sometimes you just have to be willing to do it anyway I'm not ready I haven't figured it all out I haven't been training though my heart's still pounding my limbs are still shaking my butt is still sweating and so I'm not I'm not ready and I'm willing anyway yeah I'm gonna go in but everything is not prepared properly so we were talking about like that mindful action plan and we were talking about how we've got this I am experience and we're now experienced and we're accepting our emotions and we're noticing our thoughts and we'll be mindful of them too and then the follow-up is I'm here now accepting and noticing while doing what I care about and we alluded to that but I just want to round out what the mindful action plan is about it's about doing some kind of overt noticeable measurable behavior you're doing things I mean all this act in mindfulness stuff is nonsense if you aren't doing some kind of behavioral change so what are you going to do and I hope it's being done because of what you care about you know find out what your values are we talked about it but I just wanted to round that out we talked about values and meaning and purpose and what you epitaph is going to say and what your eulogizer is going to talk about while you're in in the box I am here now accepting the way I feel noticing my thoughts while doing behaviors that I care about or find meaningful in my life and that word that's key for me is the while part because yes sometimes your emotions and who you are and the acceptance of it will be completely in line with doing what it is that you care about and want to do and that's great but we can't depend on that so it's important to realize that there will be times when everything you call flow state or whatever you want to call it is in sync and acting in line with your values feels good and everything is great but that while part is acknowledging that there's a large chunk of time when you're not going to be feeling like it and it's going to feel painful and the anxiety is going to be there like we talked about and reminding yourself of that like a mantra understanding that this is a part of the human condition is the important takeaway. Aji what you're saying is like when you're falling through on your values it feels good and then I'm glad you followed it up and what you said wasn't explicitly like this but you also said and sometimes falling through your values doesn't feel good and that's that's also what you said and I just wanted to highlight that and really clarify that but a sharper point on it you said that values sometimes doing that feels good and sometimes you got to do stuff and and if you care about it doesn't necessarily feel good and it's still what you value you know like not giving my kid his tuition money because he didn't work all summer and just goofed off what am I supposed to like just give it to you like no it's student loan time and you got to pay that back I can't like it doesn't feel good to tell my kids no but it's the right thing to do given the context so sometimes values based behavior doesn't always feel good look like let's just change it off of my son about something like that because that was kind of fictional right there my son's really a very productive and contributing member of society but like it doesn't feel good to wake up at 5 a.m. and walk 10 minutes to the gym and crank it out on the elliptical trainer for 45 minutes every time doesn't feel good but if you value health if you value longevity if that's meaningful to you then sometimes those are the things that you have to do sometimes values based behaviors are the lead to things that you have to accept rather than just sit back and enjoy I think that's what makes them so powerful and why we we connect to other people who share in those values because we know that if they're not doing the easy thing if they're if they're gonna submit to these values that they have chosen for themselves to to to do the hard things well then we know that how much they cherish those values and if you're cherishing the things that I'm cherishing well now I can have I could put my faith and not only in my values but in you yeah wow that that's right on the money right that's that's relationship building that's that is authenticity um that's intimacy you know um that's cool yeah we have that shared values really important but it starts with us we have to clarify those values all right and that's why this week's challenge we highly recommend you go through the mindful action plan with intention and focus on who you are now what it is you're feeling in the present moment and then defining what are the things you want to be doing in line with those values now we love wrapping every episode with a question about you and and what you believe your x factor is what you bring to the table that makes you unique and successful oh wow I didn't prepare this one um I guess that I am reverently irreverent I really care about science I care about my community I care about people I help but I'm always going to do it like a complete and utter wise ass because I don't think if you take it too seriously you're going to be as impactful so I'm surrounded by faculty members fellow consultants and an active community that lives their life a particular way and looks at things a certain way I agree with many of them on their values and their approaches and their applications but I just want to do it you know fun and irreverent kind of wise guy way I think that's what helps me work with the folks that I work with you know I mean I I work in safety I work in blue collar situations I work with for lack of a better term like a low SES clientele folks who probably aren't going to walk around their workplace and say like namaste to all of their fellow workers but at the same time I want to have taught them about situational awareness which is actually mindfulness but don't tell them that you know like I just I kind of want to just be a regular dude who knows this stuff pretty well and see if I can apply it to everybody you know I think there is something about a blue collar sense of humor that comes to your values what's important because you have to figure out what those are if you're going to do this drudgery work and when I say that my dad worked in a factory for much of my my upbringing and as much as he hated going into that job there was a reason that he did it to provide for the family what the job meant to him the the how he built it into his mind as contributing to society and when you there is a humor that comes out of having to do things that you do not want to be doing and I think that it is a very blue collar sense of humor that has always attracted me and I think that's that's you've you see that same sense of humor I know AJ gets it that's probably how we've been laughing and working together for 15 years cool yeah yeah I mean it's just it's the culture I'm from so I just want to take everything that I've been blessed and privileged to be able to learn and experience and spread it around to folks who might not have contacted this kind of stuff on a regular basis and we value that immensely and thank you for sharing with our audience AJ and Johnny this was a lot of fun I really appreciate talking to you folks you're adding a lot of really great content to the net and for folks you've got a great show and I'm stoked to be a part of it this is really rad so thanks a lot thank you thank you take care guys