 Welcome to the show, Jessica. We're so excited to have you on to talk about how to calm our busy mind. And I feel now more than ever, my mind is going crazy. And Johnny actually has a move coming up. So he's been stressed a little bit. His mind is racing. So we're so excited to actually dig into how to call down these thoughts that are keeping us up at night. Oh, yes, I'm so excited. And, hey, I've done those moves before. I know how stressful they are. Absolutely. When it comes to obviously a busy mind and your mind is racing, your mind is running, why is it that we find ourselves in these situations? For me personally, oftentimes I have trouble falling asleep because my mind is racing so much. And we were laughing a little earlier. Johnny going through all the logistics of a move has now sped up in his mind is racing. What's the evolutionary reason behind this? And why do our minds race like this? So your mind's a threat detection system. We don't like to think about that because we're like, oh, it's creative and I'm innovative and all this wonderful, beautiful stuff, which is definitely the case. But at its core, our mind is a threat detection system. Its entire job is to look for threats and to keep you alive. And surviving is very different from thriving. So what ends up happening is we try to, if we don't have anything going on right in this moment, right? There are no like lions and tigers and bears, no like strange sounds outside of our door. Our mind's going to go, hey, you know, it's not important to pay attention to this conversation I'm having with a friend. I'm going to go pay attention to all the things that could go wrong. And while we are tied to things like time and space and reality, our mind isn't. So it can time travel to the future. It can time travel to the past. I mean, I've lived out maybe 100 different lives in my mind. And I imagine you guys have had the exact same experience. Yes. And I remember the first time that I had noticed my mind racing and it was probably my mid-20s. And I remember at the time I was a little bit, I was going through some work transitions and I decided to see a therapist. And I remember coming in after staring at the ceiling, mind racing, and trying to find any sort of reason that I could get this to stop. And it was the first time that I had noticed it. And I would also say that during this time, social media and computers were now being more widely used than they had been. And specifically, I'm talking about there was my space in Friendster and all these, the blossoming of social media. Social media wasn't even a thing I'd fully blown open yet. It was just the idea of what was going on. And I had remember seeing a lot of advertising and a lot of culture seemingly slipping through my fingers at this moment where I was like, is this just me getting older where I can't keep up with the changes? But also we had this bust of blooming technology that was little did we know about the speed up everything. Absolutely. So I had a MySpace account. I remember trying to find, I'm like, I'm old enough to remember that. I had a MySpace account. I remember when I first discovered that my phone had email on it, which sounds absurd now, but I'd had like my stepmom's old Blackberry Pearl. She gave it to me. She had gotten a new phone. I was in college and it took me like four months to even realize that it had email on it. And now I have to set intentions to specifically not check my email like a million times a day. And that actually goes back to that evolutionary reason that our minds race and our minds go hunting for problems. In today's society, we don't have a lot of things that are kind of external threats for the most part. Obviously there's still stuff that goes on, like don't go walking down dark alleys or anything like that. But for the most part, we're a lot safer from lions and tigers and bears. And so our biggest threat to survival is social exclusion. We need other people to survive, not unlike our caveman ancestors. Like we need other people. And so your mind is going to be looking out for all the reasons that you could be embarrassed, that people will think you're boring, that you could mess up something or hurt someone. And so it tries to find all of these ways to make you as kind of average and boring as possible so that you fit in because fitting in is the best way to survive. But it's not really conducive to actually thriving and being your authentic self and having the kind of life that you want. It's interesting that you should say that because the thing that I remember that was sort of pushing me in that direction with the new technology that was coming out was I had a lot of friends who were experiencing it and using it and enjoying it. And there had now been a split where I had a group of friends who were carrying on different lives and different social activities that were online. And so there was this part of am I missing out on something and what's the big deal? Why can't we just do these things in real life? And of course, anyone who has tried to stop technology has been rolled over by it. And when you see it, of course through the years I've learned now that you have to allow these things to take their course and adapt to them rather than trying to control them. Yeah, I always tell people actually I got two points to that. So the first in terms of social media is it depends how we use social media. So there's a difference between using social media to compare or using social media to connect. So the people who really thrive like on Facebook are joining Facebook groups. They're joining communities or they're connecting with people on Instagram around a shared purpose and they're using it to connect and to bring people together and create this kind of digital community or family as opposed to going on social media and comparing yourself. Oh, you know, that person's life looks so great. How come it's so easy for them to get up and exercise or for them to reach out and say something to someone? So paying attention, it's not just like social media is good or bad or right or wrong. I hate using any kind of like good or bad, right or wrong label for anything because unfortunately the answer is it depends and we don't like that answer but the truth is as you were saying it depends on the environment. We need to stay focused on the things we can control which at the end of the day is the stuff that comes out of our mouth and the stuff we do with our body in this moment and even that has limitations on it but we don't really like that answer too much. I think it is certainly a tool and we're still adjusting to this new tool and this technology that's evolving and I think a big part of what Johnny was talking about and what I've sensed over time is growing up that social exclusion was really the people you knew in real life. Now there is social exclusion happening virtually. So you can be cut out of groups online because of your online behavior and it's created a new layer for our mind to worry about to stay up at night. Was that photo liked? Why wasn't it liked? Why did my friend in real life not like it and we have all these other inputs now that are stimulating our mind to worry about that social exclusion. Whereas I remember as a kid before I was on my phone I just had to worry about my best friend across the street and maybe the neighbor who I was arguing with a few doors down but it feels like now the world is watching us. We put out content and everyone has an opinion about it and of course then our mind starts racing. Did I do it right? What did I do wrong? Can I improve? Why does this person not like me? And I think those inputs have certainly led to a bit more of this anxiety that we're feeling. Do you think this has changed in recent history? Do you think technology has made our minds busier? There are so many opportunities for our minds to be interrupted. For us to get dragged into thinking about what happened later, what we post something on social media and our mind thinks about it all day. Are people gonna respond well to it? Oh well I used this word or this phrase maybe someone's gonna interpret it the wrong way. And the more input we have, the more our world expands, the more chances for problems. Now the more chances for opportunities as well but our mind doesn't really stay focused on that. It likes focusing on all the things that could go wrong. If we're in a tiny little community and we're going to school with 30 other kids and we never leave that little bubble, well there are only so many social opportunities for us to mess up. And chances are we're not gonna mess up all of them. But when you add in the entire world and you add in the entire world who has different beliefs, different opinions, there's definitely someone out there who hates everything you stand for. Not just like doesn't agree with you but is gonna take you down. And so that's scary. And that's why a lot of the times my focus is less on like having a certain number of followers or having that external validation. And instead turning to yourself and saying who do I wanna be? What are the characteristics or qualities that I wanna be about? And if I can continue to be authentic and be true to that, well yes I'm gonna get that negative feedback still but I can always fall back and think you know what, I stand by what I said instead of always trying to like please everyone like me, everyone like me all the time. That's never gonna work out in our favor. Is there a nature, nurture component to this because I feel like I got the worry gene. Everyone in my family worries about things that are completely out of their control and I often find myself late at night not being able to sleep worrying about these same things but then I have other friends who seem a lot more chill and would not worry about the same things I'm worrying about. And I wonder you know how much of it is genetic and how much is it the way your family raises you to react to these stimuli? So it is a little bit of both and not to get too nerdy on the science but it can be hard to parse that out because oftentimes you are growing up in the same environment as the person who gave you your genetic makeup. So we would need to take you out of your environment and be raised in a different one in order to kind of parse that out but absolutely there think about it this way if our ancestors needed to survive they were the worriers they were the ones who freaked out and were like, oh my God, is that a sound? Is that a lion? What's happening over there? Those are the ones who didn't get eaten by lions those are the ones who didn't get eaten by rival groups or killed by rival groups maybe eaten, I don't know. And so over generations the people who kind of were a little bit more anxious or who worried or who analyzed and planned and use all of these great powerful skills that our mind has were the ones who survived. So honestly, we are today probably way more anxious the paranoid and all of that kind of stuff just naturally then not even counting our environment. But yeah, there are some people like I come from a worrying family and I think of it more not so much that we have a tendency to worry but that we have a tendency to go search for solutions. People who tend to have strengths in problem solving which is a great skill to have that tends to be their default. So if you have a worry your default is okay, this is a problem now let's go find a solution. The issue is though that that's not really how our minds work. We can't problem solve our way out of a future situation. Johnny might be moving in a couple of days and he might be running through his head about like okay, did I pack this? I have to set up the internet I have to do all of these things and figuring that out one time, super helpful. It allows him to have a smoother move less chance of things to happen though. Sorry Johnny, things will definitely show up that are unexpected. That's how moves work. But the 10th time you spend staying up at night worrying about it doesn't actually help you solve the problem. It just helps you feel comforted or feel safe but all it's doing is draining your energy and draining your time and attention. So I think it's less a worry issue and more people who tend to problem solve as their default. Interesting. Well, I would certainly say I fall into the problem solving camp and I spend a lot of time thinking about problems that don't exist and then trying to solve them. So it's almost like the cart before the horse. So let me ask you this AJ when you have a problem and you think about it let's say more than once do you ever come up with new information that helps you solve the problem better? Rarely. Certainly not on my own. I feel like that tends to happen with interaction with someone else who's asking me to talk through it or bounce ideas off of. But I find like rarely I will if I just ruminate on it and ruminate on it and ruminate on it come up with a second or third option to solve it. I kind of end up falling in the same camp every single time I worry. So that's a great test. If you're asking yourself like, well, am I just super efficient and a great analyzer or problem solver or is this a problem? Is pause and ask yourself, am I coming up with any new information or any new solutions or am I just going through the motions over and over and over again? I would say like 99% of the time you're just going through the motions and all it's doing is making yourself feel more stressed out but it's not actually helping you in any way. It's fascinating. The one other problem that I'm hoping that you could help me solve here since we're talking about problem solving is as an introvert, I find myself exhausted after long periods of socialization but at the same time, I find my mind is often racing, especially in today's environment where my opportunities for socialization are so few and far between. So for example, I had a friend over that hadn't seen in a while and we were sitting outside having a drink and after he left, I found myself with this like burst of energy and I could not quiet my mind even fall asleep and I thought it was a little ironic because I find myself to be typically physically drained but not mentally drained after socializing as an introvert. And I was wondering how is it that I don't really enjoy going out into big crowds and socializing, it doesn't energize me but I can't seem to turn my mind off afterwards. It sounds like, and one of your former guests, Adam Grant who I love, used the term social introvert which is exactly what I am and it sounds like a little bit of what you are as well. And if we think of introversion as stimulation, so introversion, extroversion, we like to think of it as like shy versus outgoing but at its core, introverts have a lot of internal stimulation. They tend to have busier minds usually. Extroverts tend to not have as much internal stimulation so they go and seek it out but all humans need connection and so even if you don't like being in big crowds because it feels overwhelming, having a conversation with someone can be very stimulating. A lot of introverts get stimulation because they're in their head thinking thoughts. So if you can have that kind of connection with a friend it's one-on-one or it's a very small group and you're in a low stimulation environment. What comes out of that is a lot of excitement because you're giving your brain more fuel for thinking thoughts. So stimulation isn't just interacting with other people, it's also the environment. So I get very overstimulated going to concerts for example or even being in a space that's very visually stimulating. Like I like a kind of more clean minimalistic space because if there's just like stuff all over the place it's very overwhelming to my senses. And so if you're in your home which you're comfortable with, you know what it looks like, you're used to it, you're able to be at a level of stimulation where you can really take in that great information and be stimulated by that conversation and then like run with it as opposed to if the two of you went out to a brunch or something which I don't think people are doing right now but if you did in a faraway land you might have come back from it more drained without being able to think through all of those great thoughts. That's so fascinating and I definitely think that rings true. I feel socializing right now because it happens in these like short bursts. You know, we go long periods of time here in quarantine and stay at home orders in California and then all of a sudden I'm having a great conversation with a friend that I haven't seen in a while and hours disappear and then I just can't sleep. I find my mind is racing. So what can we do? I know we can't turn it off. I wish at times there was an off switch or an off button but what can we do to calm our busy mind and give them a bit of a reboot because I also feel with the uncertainty going on many of us could use that reboot. Absolutely. So first of all, thank you for pointing out that we cannot delete all of our thoughts because that's everyone always comes to me and they're like, how do I make sure I'm never stressed out ever again? And I'm like, die? Like, I don't know. That's actually medical advice, by the way. Yeah, don't listen to me on that. But like literally that's the only way that we just kind of shut off our mind. And so what we're actually looking for is a way that we don't get as entangled with all of the stuff that's going on in our head. I like to think of it as kind of like if we're just setting aside physics for a moment, the difference between being in the middle of a tornado versus being just outside of it. If we're in the middle of the tornado, it's all we see. We're feeling the full impact of it. We're trapped, we can't go anywhere. Whereas if we're 10 feet outside of the tornado, we can still see it. It's still impacting us, but we're able to notice that there's an us who's observing our experience, observing the tornado. And it gives us more options for what to do next. A lot of times our mind is so loud and so strong and so overwhelming that our immediate reaction is just to get away from that. So we do things that in the short term help. So AJ, you were saying like, you got so many thoughts in your head, you're staying up at night. What do you find yourself doing in those moments when you're feeling overwhelmed with your mind? Well, what I try to do is put in my AirPods and listen to some music or something to distract my mind from all of those thoughts that are racing. And I will be honest, I don't often win that battle. Yeah, of course not. Because it's kind of like trying to plug your ears and being like, la, la, la, I can't hear you except your thoughts are inside your head. Yeah, that's certainly the problem. So it's not going to be that effective. And honestly, that is completely normal. When we experience something uncomfortable, it is natural to want to move away from it. Whether it's, you know, if we're afraid of spiders and we see a spider, we want to run in the other direction. If we have a thought that's uncomfortable or a feeling that's uncomfortable, we want to get away from it. So often we do things to try to distract ourselves. We go on social media, which generally ramps it up. We go to sleep, we eat, we watch Netflix, we work more. We take substances to kind of try to dull or make those thoughts grow away. And those things work in the short term. And I think it's really important that we recognize that because what ends up happening is AJ gets super pumped up. He's got a billion thoughts running through his head. He's overwhelmed. He puts in his air pods and he tries to distract himself and he's like, oh, it's not working. Everything I try to do doesn't work and you get more sucked into it and you blame yourself that you're not doing the right thing. You're not trying hard enough. There's something wrong with you. When your mind is operating perfectly normally, your mind is not affect, it's not effective to try to stop something from feeling or thinking a certain way. And your mind is doing this behavior or you're doing this behavior because it works in the short term to escape for a little bit. So why are we punishing ourselves over all of this? So I know I've gone over what not to do. So what do we do in this moment? The first thing is we have to notice that thoughts are there. And I know that sounds silly, but oftentimes we don't notice until things get super overwhelming or super overstimulating. And at that point, we don't have a lot of impacts. We're fighting against a much bigger opponent. So the first step is just get better at being aware. And I don't mean get more mindful. You don't have to listen to mindfulness, meditations or anything like that. Just pay attention. Notice what your mind says. Notice how thoughts pop into your head. So AJ, I'm gonna use you as an example. When you have thoughts racing in your head, are they words that you can see? Are they, is it like your own voice in your head? Is it just like a swarm of bees? How do you experience racing thoughts? I would say swarm of bees is probably a very good metaphor for what's keeping me up at night. And it's bouncing back between past events, which I obviously can't control and then trying to foresee the future. So I find it's like this constant pinball of, oh, but that happened and then, oh, this might happen. Well, and what's happening in that moment is you come to this end point of, let's say you go to the past and you come to this resting point of like, this isn't helpful. I can't do anything about it, but you're still very stressed out. And so you're laying there and your mind's like, well, let's go to the future then. Those are things you might be able to impact. So you're noticing a little bit where your mind's going, but it's like, it's buzzing so fast that you only kind of get maybe impressions of it. Right. All right. So the first thing that we wanna do is pause and recognize that like they're still in us who's experiencing that. And I know it sounds a little odd or a little meta, but it's this realization that like, there's a me who is thinking thoughts, right? I'm thinking things. And if we can recognize that we're not our thoughts and that our thoughts don't have control over us, well, they become a little bit less threatening. They still feel a bit overwhelming, but in the same way that like if we had a giant, like, do you guys have any pets? I do. And he's quietly moping around in the bathroom right now to keep from barking. Is he a big pet? Is he a big dog or a tiny dog? He's a little cockapoo. He's a fluffball. Okay. So let's say we gave him a magic spell and he was a little bit bigger than he is. If he came over and curled up on your chest and he was weighing you down, sometimes that's what it feels like when we're overwhelmed by our thoughts. We get this like pressure, this weight on us. Now we can pick him up and move him off of our chest, but we don't get to like throw him out the window. Very true. He's still our dog. We still love him, but we just don't want him that close to us. We don't want him sleeping on our face. I used to have a cat that would like in the middle of the night try to climb onto my actual face. But I'm like, this, I love you, we got to have some boundaries. So we try to set those same boundaries with our mind and what that looks like is noticing what the shape of our mind is. When we have those thoughts, what sensations are showing up in our body? Where is our mind going? So is it going to the past? Is it going to the future? Is it this buzzing sound? Can we get certain images from it? Can we get certain thoughts? And I don't mean wrap yourself in it, right? This isn't like we're taking a sad blanket and we're burritoing ourselves in it. This is simply noticing. But if we can begin to see it for what it is, well then then we can say, okay, this thought is really juicy, right? I just want to like bite into it. But I know that when I do that, I get super distracted and it only winds me up worse. And my goal right now is to sleep so that I can help my good friend, Johnny move in a couple of days. And I can't do that if I've had no sleep at all. So we can acknowledge what our mind wants us to do where it's trying to pull us. And we can say, hey, you know what? Not super helpful. Thanks, mind. I get you're trying to protect me. I get you're trying to help me like look out for all the dangers that come. But this is not actually helping me in the moment. And then redirecting to something that is important to you in the moment. So a lot of times it sounds like distraction, but it's slightly different than that. Okay, I'm actually trying to think my way through this. I feel at times when I have calmed it, I've probably stumbled into that solution without even realizing it. And the issue is we can't all of the time distinguish what happens. And so we're like, okay, I know I can do it. Why isn't it working this time? Right. So let's say you're laying in bed, you got your airpods in, your mind is racing. You're trying to listen to something. I would turn that off and just lay there and notice what are the thoughts feel like? What do they look like? Give them a shape, a color. If you kind of feel them in your body, right? If they feel like you're your cute little pup lying on your chest, right? What does that actually feel like? And then notice like those are thoughts that I have. I like to call them hooks. So hooks are things that when we bite, when we bite them, they pull us off in a direction that we wouldn't otherwise have chosen for ourselves. We don't get to choose whether we have hooks. We all got hooks, but we do get to choose whether we bite them or not. And so the distinction can often be there's an initial thought that happens when that bee storm happens. And so like what would that first thought be for you? Yeah, I think that first thought for me is I didn't get enough done. So it's a productivity fear that then leads to the whole rabbit hole. Let me guess, you're a person who has 18 million things on their to-do list. They do 17 million things of those things. And at the end of the day, you call yourself a failure for not getting enough done. Yeah, that extra one million is really killing me. Absolutely, absolutely. Which makes sense. Our mind is gonna focus on the problems instead of focusing on the solutions. I actually, at the end of every night, I have a gratitude practice that I do in my journal, but I also write down three things I'm proud of myself for at the end of the day. And I'm not allowed to repeat it for 30 days. And it really helps you recognize all the things you do during the day. And it could be like I'm proud I put away my laundry. It doesn't have to be profound, but it helps you kind of balance out the scales a little bit. So you have this initial thought. I didn't get enough done today. Right. What do you feel after having that thought? So the first feeling is regret. Okay. Because I can't get those hours back. And then immediately I zip to the future and I start to feel anxiety because I don't know how I'm going to then be productive the next day because now I have these carryovers. Yeah, despite the fact that I imagine you've never like gotten so behind that you've just like failed miserably at life. Would that be accurate? Not yet. Hope John asked you. Not yet. See what your mind just did? It went like, but what if tomorrow? All right, you see, you triggered me. Okay. So we have this thought and then immediately afterwards this regret shows up. And then your mind, this regrets like I wasted this time today. What if I waste this time tomorrow and I just keep wasting time and I don't get things done? Correct. How does that feel? The best way to describe it is kind of the sinking sensation. It definitely feels sort of weighted like a heavy blanket's been put on me. Okay. So you feel it over your whole body or like your chest and your stomach? Like a gravity blanket just sort of thrown over top of me. Yeah. Those make me anxious. Yeah. I know they're supposed to help with anxiety but they freak me out. I feel like, I feel like I'm trapped. I feel the same way that because that sensation is tied to my anxiety I can't imagine wanting it for comfort at night. Yep. So as soon as that weighted blanket gets thrown on you where does your mind go next? Well then it reaches that panic state of what is tomorrow gonna be? I'm gonna let Johnny down and I'm not fully prepared as I wanna be for this great interview with Jess and all of a sudden, you know, 7,000 things pop into my head. Okay. I had a feeling. So what happens is you're able to, it almost sounds like kind of process those initial thoughts. I imagine their thoughts that you've had for a really long time. Yes. I'm just taking a wild guess here but I'm gonna go with that. You are a professional. That weighted blanket comes over you and that's what triggers all of these racing thoughts. And so what I would recommend to you is practice when that weighted blanket thought or when that weighted blanket feeling shows up. It's uncomfortable. And so your mind immediately wants to get away from it and because your mind tends to problem solve that's where it goes. And that's when you get caught up in all the thoughts. So the way around this isn't to like solve the problem better or isn't to like distract ourselves from the weighted blanket feel. The purpose is to sit with that weighted blanket feeling and really get to know it and prove to yourself that while this is uncomfortable it's not a thing to be afraid of. I think that's very helpful. Now I'm excited to experience worries so that I can put this into practice. Well, and that's a lot of times what I do in a therapy is we're creating these new connections. That's a new connection. All of a sudden that weighted blanket feel is now connected to an opportunity to practice. Like how cool is that? I'm like geeking out about it over here. But I... Well, let's take another one that I know a lot of our listeners and clients feel at times and with conversation and walking up to strangers and especially now with what's going on in the world there's a lot of anxiety around that. And what I talk to with a lot of our clients what we hear from listeners is their mind goes blank in those social situations. And that for them leads to not being able to follow along in the conversation and not hear what the other person's saying and not even find the words themselves. So if I was laying on your couch struggling with this problem my mind actually going blank in social situations how could I work through that to become more confident? Excellent question. Also I have no couch in my office. Okay. We're not laying down, we're sitting up. It's just a funny image. So I think again we wanna understand what the function of this is because a lot of times where like my mind's against me it's trying to like hurt me if it's trying to help me be normal and fit in why is it messing with me right now? That first step is just noticing like what's important to you about this moment and it might not be like I'm hoping to make a profound connection with this person it might be I'm just practicing. I wanna practice introducing myself to people so that when it like really counts and I'm using air quotes here that we're prepared, right? Preparation's important. So that's the first one. Be aware why it's important to you. The second is learning a couple of skills to help just bring yourself down a little bit. And that might be a breathing exercise. I tend to not like using breathing exercises because some people if they focus on their breath too much they end up actually inducing panic attacks because they try to do not try to breathe deep and slowly when you're stressed out. It increases the CO2 levels in your brain and you actually start to hyperventilate. It's a little counterintuitive but good tip. Absolutely, but if you're breathing in really deep like if you guys paid attention right now to how you're breathing how much air are you sucking in do you think? Like are you like filling your lungs all the way? No, that's only in a Barry's class. Johnny, are you like filling it to capacity? I am not, and I've, being a musician and also have taken singing lessons and working with my voice and breathing techniques I've noticed that I am a, for the most part in default a light breather. But if you tell me to think about it or to pay attention to it now a lot of a sudden I'm taking a longer, fuller breath. And I would say that the lighter, quicker, default breathing is certainly goes along with the pace of which I'm thinking and trying to do things and go through thought. And of course, when I do spend some time to have a five minute meditations session where I am going to be focusing on breath how much better I feel as a whole for allowing that to happen. And of course wanting to get my default closer to that than where it's at at the moment. The important part in that is the default, right? If your default is not taking slow deep breaths I'm the same way. I'm like kind of a, I'm a shallow, slow breather. Which is very odd, but I'm a shallow, slow breather. But if your default is not taking these deep breaths well, if you start doing that to try to calm yourself down in a stressful situation, it's gonna work against you. So it's kind of like learning your body, knowing what your body is like at rest. How tense are your muscles? How do you position your body? What is your breath like? And if you get to know what that's like in rest if you can mimic that in social situations and it's gonna take practice this isn't like a one and done kind of thing then it can help you slow down and not have that brain blinking experience. The third thing is recognizing like it's okay to have your mind blank. And I know it's not pleasant it's never gonna be uncomfortable, but it's okay. And ironically, the more that we create space for the fact that like, yeah, my mind might blank out the less likely it's going to happen because you're not like fighting with your mind over it. So kind of coming to the conclusion that not only it's okay, it may even happen and then you're less worried about it happening. Exactly and go out and practice like go out and practice and I know you guys are all about this but like go out and practice when you're in like different types of stressful situations and practice like I'm gonna make my mind blank and I'm gonna see what happens. Exactly, right? I'm gonna try to be so stressed out and so freaked out that my mind just completely blanks and then see what happens. I mean, don't do this on like a big job interview, but. On my TEDx talk, I'm gonna try to draw a line blank. I will say that this was your advice. Well, what do you do for a TEDx talk? You practice, you practice on your own, you practice in front of your friends, you practice in front of people you don't know to create that anxiety to get the experience of it and then you go out and do it. I always say like, you're not gonna try like a new move during the championship game. You're gonna practice it during practice and mess up a lot so that by the time you get there you don't have to use your brain, your body just does it and your mouth does it the same way. Most importantly is getting comfortable with practice. You've mentioned it so many times and I think it's easy to get into a mindset of just consuming all the time because the technology at a hand allows for such easy consuming when an actuality to be practicing all these things is to be creating and creating in any way that you were able to express yourself whether it's doing a podcast, whether it's making memes, whether it's performing and taking the opportunity to find ways to express yourself through many different mediums will get you more comfortable with that process and getting better and seeing your progress. And I think the last piece is being authentic and let's talk about authenticity and calling it out and saying, oh, I just drew a blank because it's so relatable. We've all been there, every single one of us have experienced our mind going blank and it's typically in situations where we care about something, we care about the outcome and in that experience that's shared that vulnerability leads to authenticity which leads to people feeling more connected to you. And the best way to make connections is to be yourself. You need to be genuine in order to connect with another person. You need to be willing to be vulnerable. And I don't mean like disclosing your whole life's history the first time you interact with someone but maybe just a little bit of it or to say, my mind, I just totally lost that train of thought, my thoughts flew away and people get that. Absolutely. Now, I feel that we hear that advice, be yourself, be authentic and many of us may struggle to know what our authentic self is, especially our younger audience members. And I've heard that advice from my own family and it hasn't always helped me and I know even now listening to it that people are gonna go, duh, I know that but how can I let that authentic self out if I don't even know what my authentic self is? I love that question. And I don't know if you saw me, I did like a little jump. Yeah, very excited to answer this one. Well, I am at my core, what I like to call like an incurably curious person. It's one of the things I value most about myself that balanced out with empathy. But I actually think this is a great place to be in and I actually encourage everyone to pause at different times in their life and ask themselves like who am I instead of just defaulting to who we've always been because who we are changes. It's not static, it doesn't say the same over time. And so the best way is to go out and try things. Go shopping at a store that you've never been to before and try on clothes and just, I mean you don't have to buy all the clothes but just like try on the things that draw your eye or draw your attention. Try new hobbies. Go listen to music that you've never listened to before. Read a book that someone recommends that you don't think you're going to like and then also pay attention to what the outcome is. You might notice your mind making comments about it. So let's say a friend invites you to play D&D with them to play Dungeons and Dragons and you go, you don't tell anyone and you're like, I had so much fun. But then you're like, I can't be like a person who plays Dungeons and Dragons. That's like super uncool. Screw that. That's like our minds. We're not listening to that nonsense. You can notice it and then like crumble it up into a little ball and throw that stuff in the garbage. Right? All the, you should be this or should be that. Anytime a should shows up, I want you to pick it out of your brain, crumble it up into a ball and throw it in the garbage. But if we can practice and go out and try different things and then pay attention to the results, you find out what you like. You find out what your styles are, what kind of environment you like being in. That's why when people go away to university, it's so transformative because you're no longer around the people that you grew up with. So you're allowed to take on any identity. It's why teenagers go through like, I'd like my emo phase and it's like teenagers go through so many different phases and outfits. They're trying on different personalities until they find the one that sticks and I think adults should continue to do this. One of the interesting things that we've encountered and I see it a lot with our clients where they're in this phase, they're trying to discover of who they are and what their likes are, what their dislikes are. And when I bring up, we'll go investigate, be curious, go to a concert. There is this wager of, well, I know I could just binge this movie that I've seen 500 times on Netflix and I'll be satisfied rather than risk the money and the time that I would waste going to see this concert that I don't know if I will enjoy or not. And I'm like, let's break that down because thinking of it in that manner is so flawed because what exactly is entertainment and can entertainment be something that you don't like or that you're critiquing or you found fault with or did not hit you emotionally in the way that you wanted to be, but that is still entertainment. It was just all what you were expecting and now you have something to discuss that you've experienced and you could say it wasn't for me, here's why. And now you've learned something about yourself that you don't like, which is even that much more valuable than the things that you do like which you already have a good beat on. Yes, treat it like an experiment. Yes. Right, we can go out and we can test these things. If you have a theory, you can go out and test it. And I would ask yourself in that moment because what's happening with those clients is they're scared, they're nervous, they're like, I don't know what this crowd is like, I'm not sure. I last year went through a really dark depressive episode, I was struggling with PTSD and music didn't sound the same to me anymore. And that was heartbreaking because music is this thing that I love, like I love sounds. I love words, I don't know how else to describe it, but it just, it fills my body and it brings me joy. And so I went out there looking for different music and I found Machine Gun Kelly, which is like, if you go look up what I look like, if you looked at me, a picture of me, you would not be like, oh, this is an MGK fan. You know what? I don't know what that is, but go ahead. So he's, Machine Gun Kelly is, he's like a mix between Blink 182 and Eminem. We'll just go with that. This is exactly why I don't know who he is. But go on. Hey, Johnny, I think you have to take your own advice here. I think you have to go to a Machine Gun Kelly show and tell us why you didn't enjoy it. Or go to YouTube, go to YouTube. I know what I'd like to wager on and what I don't. And Blink 182 and Eminem is not what I'm wagering on. But you know how you know that because you've put yourself out there and you've experienced those things before. And so now when you experience, when you come in contact with new things, you can use that past experience, that past memory of vault to go like, this is like, you know, 90, 10, I'm not gonna like it. Which is okay, you're not supposed to like everything. That's not a stance. But what's happening with those individuals is, and we all fall into this, is we don't wanna be uncomfortable. We don't wanna be in an uncertain situation. We don't want to waste time, quote, unquote. And so they hesitate and they fall back into something that feels safe. But growth never happens in comfort. Growth never happens in safety. And that's a hard realization to have because we like our little safety blanket. It feels good and we can always go back to it. Like you could go out to that concert and you can come right back to your couch and your Netflix. You don't have to give it up forever. But be willing to pause and notice and learn how to sit with or acknowledge that discomfort and then ask yourself, what am I doing tonight? Is this gonna serve me a year from now, 10 years from now? Because in the short term, stay at home watching Netflix, that's a sure win. In the long term, are you any closer to being the best version of yourself that you wanna be? Probably not. I wanna add to that as well, is a lot of our influences and the things we like for a lot of those things were handed to us by our parents or by our friends. We didn't particularly find them. Myself, I love, there's a festival that I go to in Vegas every year. I may know, it's a very fringe music festival. So I might know 10% of the artists that are playing. The rest, no idea. But I go because it's going to be a discovery. It's a full weekend. I'm immersed in this music discovery process. There's lots that I don't like. But the ones that I have discovered, the ones that hit me, it wasn't a friend told me to check them out or borrow the record. It was, I went, I put myself in front of this act, this band, and I've been exposed to it and my body has taken over emotionally. And now this was a find that I have scraped through the, and found the needle in the haystack and it affected me this much. And so I would guess much like Machine Gun Kelly, it is this sacred thing now because it's mine. I found it and they're my favorite band. And it brings out, it just makes it that much more special. Yeah, yeah, you like reach out and you're like, mine, this is mine, this is my thing. I like, you know, I'm going to buy all the merchandise or I don't know, whatever showing your pride for your groups is. Absolutely, and that's why I think adults should continue to go out and test new things because you've only been exposed to a small part of the world. Everyone grows up in a bubble and your bubble might be a little bit bigger than the bubble that I grew up in probably was. And yet if we step outside of that bubble, we might find, we might find our people. Like our people might be out there and everyone's got people. If you're listening to this and you're like, I don't have any people, you haven't put yourself out there to go find them. And they're trying to find you. Discovery. And you haven't authentically shared what you truly enjoy. I think a lot of people who would say, oh, I don't have my people have been afraid to be vulnerable about what they truly enjoy, what inspires them, what their values are, what excites them. You could have two people interact. They could be like the best of friends in the entire world if they both were just willing to open up a little bit and share a little bit of their true selves. But they're both putting on this front and being this like average born person. And as a result, neither of them will probably even remember that interaction a year from now. But if they open themselves up a little bit, they have the opportunity to connect. I'm a very loud and excitable person if you haven't figured that out yet. And growing up, and especially even through like my early 20s, I got a lot of messages of like, you need to be quiet or like you're overreact. Like you're not overreacting like a dramatic way, but like you're too excitable about things. And it never made any sense to me because I was like, no, I love these things. I'm gonna be excited about them. I felt sad for people who felt like they had to suppress or hide or dim or dull the things that they love. And the things that you love might not be the things that I love, but I am definitely gonna connect with you over how much we both love things. Exactly, that emotion, that shared emotion is more important than the fact that Johnny's not an MGK fan and the fact that he wouldn't go to that concert with you. Exactly, yeah, and you know what? The more excited he is about the bands that he listens to, the more curious I'm gonna be to learn that because I might have never been exposed to it before, but if he's excited and he opens up and he's like, yeah, you have to listen to this, like you'll either love it or hate it. Like I love things that you either like you love or you hate because they're great. I don't like things that you're like, meh, I can listen to this. I call those 10 friend testers, like, well, let's see how cool you are. Exactly, exactly. So I know after this, Johnny's gonna send me a bunch of YouTube videos and he's gonna be like, well, we're gonna see what Jessica thinks of these and either, you know, I'm gonna tell her where I live in Vegas when I move or I'm gonna pretend I left the country. And then please send him 10 Machine Gun Kelly videos. I will. That would be my day. I won't send 10, but I'm telling you, after this, you're gonna get an email. With at least like one or two. Now we love having a challenge for our audience to improve each and every week. And a little birdie told me that you have a really cool tool called a LifeMap that you personally use and you also use with your clients. I'd love if you could share that with the audience and we could map out our lives. Absolutely, so the LifeMap is a great tool for stepping back and seeing the patterns that show up. So in all of these examples we gave, like these are just one or two examples, but they represent a larger pattern of how we respond to things. And sometimes we get too stuck in the details that we miss these behaviors that show up or these actions or these reactions that show up over and over and over again and keep us stuck and keep us away from the life that we wanna live. So the LifeMap is a worksheet, but it's very similar to the things that we were doing here. It's literally just a sheet of paper with a horizontal. I always get these wrong. A horizontal line on it. I'm like vertical, horizontal. See, I can mess up and it's totally okay. A horizontal line on it. And the stuff on the right are the things that you're moving towards. The things to make you happy, excited, all that good stuff. And then the things on the left are the things that you are, that are painful or uncomfortable or scary. So if I could, could I use one of you as an example to briefly walk through it? Yeah, I think it's time to put Johnny under the microscope. Johnny, yes. Sounds good. So can we use your move as an example? Sure, I'll try to follow along. Okay, well, if you have something else that's popping up in your head and you're like, no, let's do this, throw it at me. Let's focus on the move. See, that's on my mind. Okay, so you're getting ready to move. What is important to you about this move? I guess for me, all the anxiety and all the insanity will calm down once I am in the new place and all of my stuff's there and I can begin to put it in and organize and get settled. Okay, so let's like fast forward through the settling and all of that kind of stuff because you're not moving to Vegas simply to not be anxious about moving to Vegas. So what do you hope that your life looks like once you're there? Considering everything else that is going on, I am once settled to slowly get social again. I haven't been able to do that as much as I would like to here in Los Angeles. After talking to a few people that I know in Vegas, they've been going out, they've been having dinners, they've been very safe and cautious, but they've been more social than I have been here. Okay. Consider I live on Hollywood Boulevard, things have just been a little crazy. So I am looking to get back to, having somewhat of a functioning social life again. Okay, and what's important to you about a social life? Like is it deep conversations? Is it going to concerts with someone and like doing fun activities together? Is it just getting out of the house? Like what about social connection do you really love? When everything was normal, it was concerts was my biggest favorite social gathering. Now, to be able to be with people, friends, having dinner, having a connection and having regular in-person conversation is incredibly important to me right now. Okay, so if we were looking at the life map, the bottom right is who and what are important to us? What are the kind of the qualities or characteristics we want to be about? So just from that brief piece, I got concerts are important, connecting with friends, like being able to go out, maybe try a new restaurant, so kind of be a little bit adventurous. That connection being heard, listening to other people, sharing stories. And then how would you want to show up in those moments? Like do you want to be distracted? Do you want to be kind? What kind of adjectives would you use? Present, and that's- Present. One of my favorite things to practice, considering where we're at with technology, and just fully engage, because it's such, it's so rare nowadays, people instantly notice it and they comment on it. And that's very fun for me. Also, we do a lot of work at The Art of Charm with emotional bids. And when you're present, you're able to pick out plenty of emotional bids and pick the threads and where you would like conversation to go. When you're aware of those things, and you're using that tool, once again, people take notice. Why? Because the conversation is spirited, it's fun. There's a lot of engagement. Whereas without that knowledge, without having an understanding of those tools, we all know what superficial small talk looks like. And it's humdrum. You're holding a drink, you're just kind of aimlessly looking around. Yeah, huh? Yeah, that's, oh cool. Yeah, you're doing that thing, right? Like you can hear the dullness in my voice. Like I would rather be anywhere else, but I need to be polite, quality. Okay, so being engaged, being present, awesome. What thoughts, feelings, memories, or physical sensations show up and make it difficult for you to be your present, engaged, connected self? The square rock that is in my pocket that we all carry everywhere that we go, that is constantly making noises, buzzing, wanting to me answer tweets and Instagram messages. That's a fancy rock, Johnny. It's an expensive rock that we towed her out. You got this rock that might as well be surgically attached to your hands. So that's an external thing, right? When it makes a sound or it's been a while since you've checked it, what does your mind say? Oh, you gotta check your messages. You can't believe who's probably trying to get in touch with you right now and what is blowing up on Twitter. I mean, you're going to miss out on the latest political scandal. Okay, so those thoughts run through your head and how did they make you feel? Incredibly anxious, wrapped up and upset because it's, I find it very easy to get consumed by it because we all know that the political marketing now is so incredibly adapted to human psychology that they know exactly what buttons and levers are possible. Yes, psychology for evil, absolutely, absolutely. Well, so that's interesting, right? So you haven't, there's this thought, oh, I need to check my phone. I might be missing something. It makes you feel anxious and you have that self-awareness to then be pissed off about that because you're like, damn it, they got me again. They got me again. Okay, okay, so that's the bottom left, right? So this is the stuff that's getting in the way of us being connected with what matters to us. And so then we move to the top left and the top left are the ways that we try to avoid or escape those feelings or thoughts. So like going back to AJ's example before, it's putting in the air buds and trying to think different thoughts or trying to analyze or plan or problem solve. So it can be stuff that happens in our heads or stuff that we do with our body. So when you're feeling really anxious, when you're thinking about this move that's coming in a couple of days, what would I see you doing in response to that? Pacing and sweeping my floor. Okay, awesome. So you're a productive procrastinator, right? Yes. Okay, okay. So I love, I'm a productive procrastinator. I love it. Like, well, this floor really needed to be swept right now. So, you know, I need to clean out my fridge. Okay, so in response to this stress anxiety, you start doing this kind of like busy work because your body's full of energy and it just needs to like do something. Yes. Okay. What are, do you find yourself making to-do lists in your head, repeating like plans in your head or analyzing stuff? Anything that's happening up there? Well, I have gotten in the habit of I, to pull up my phone and start writing down the thoughts that I'm having. I have an open pages scroll that is conscious, stream of consciousness. Yeah. Which is an opportunity that I can go back later and flesh out if I'm interested in or just to write it out and then get rid of it and never have to deal with it again. I also have a war board which if I'm at home, those ideas go on my war board so they could be fleshed out or negated. Or also I'll pick up my guitar and I start playing and noodling. Okay, so you have some kind of functionally adaptive ways of responding to this that you kind of developed over the years of life. I know if this thought stays in my head, I'm gonna be worried, I'm gonna lose it. So I'm just plucking it out, dropping it somewhere and then moving on. Also, not only to, I might lose it, but in order to get it to shut up because of now that I've written it out and I've looked at it and then it is now somewhere else and I can come back to it when I'm more ready to examine it, to flesh it out or to just get rid of it. So this is the true test. Does it actually leave you alone afterwards? Most of the time, when it's written out because it is, especially if it's on my war board because I see it all day and I'll look at it and then I'll start expanding on it or like, that was just silly, I'll move on to something else. Okay, so what I imagine is happening is you have this thought, so you have this thought, you take it, you put it on a notebook and then whenever it comes up again, instead of being consumed by it, you go, nope, it's in the notebook, I'm gonna look at it later. Or I'll go over to the notebook and just start fleshing it out. Yeah, okay, awesome. So what that is right in that moment is you're interrupting getting hooked. So if you were to get hooked, you would bite that thought, you'd spend time thinking about it and then you'd get frustrated with yourself because like I came up with this whole system to write things down so I wouldn't keep doing this. So that behavior would go in the top right and so the top right are steps that we're taking to move towards the things that matter to us, right? So you have developed a method, a strategy to not get sucked in because like you have a million different ideas, you get curious about them, they're very enticing and so it helps you be like, okay, I could be distracted by ideas, left, right, center all day long. This is how I'm choosing to respond to them. And what's great about it is those ideas, they get fleshed out and then they end up, I go live every morning, weekday morning at 8 AM Pacific, just a half an hour and those thoughts are what goes in the show. So they get written down, they get talked about and then I get to discuss them with the little audience who too tunes in to hear what daily musings are going on in my mind, which is pretty interesting but that's making use of the technology for good. Oh, that's wonderful. You're taking something that otherwise would have been a distraction and you're saying I'm gonna set boundaries around this so that I get to control how I respond to it and now I'm using it to actually connect with people or I'm using it to share around a passion to be engaged in present. Which are the things that are important to you? I imagine in the past what would happen is this thought would pop up so that'd be in the bottom left and in the top left, you would go off into your head down a little rabbit hole and you'd think about it and whatever you're supposed to be doing was just forgotten. And then whenever you came out of this rabbit hole, you poked your head up for air, you would be pissed off or frustrated with yourself because maybe you wasted the whole day, maybe you're like AJ and you have those thoughts of like, man, I didn't get anything done and that's how we get stuck in that cycle because then we beat ourselves up so we start back at the bottom left and then we feel bad so we do something to make ourselves feel better. Maybe we watch TV or we eat something delicious and then we get stuck in that cycle. And so what the LifeMap helps us do is take a step back and go, okay, what I'm doing to try to get this immediate relief to try to escape, avoid, hide from this stuff that's uncomfortable isn't actually serving me in the long term. In the short term, it helps me pull the covers over my head, plug my ears, sing a little tune and escape, but it always comes back. And so what we wanna be able to do is develop some of these strategies so that I can feel uncomfortable. I can feel that heavy weighted blanket on myself. I can feel anxious, I can feel my phone in my pocket pressing against my leg and I can think, oh my God, how many emails do I have right now? What am I missing? What's trending right now? I can be in a social situation and my mind just goes blank and I just start thinking, oh my God, my mind's blank, oh my God, my mind's blank, which are thoughts in your head, but that's a whole other story. And I can notice all of those things and I can choose to do one small behavior that's in line with what's important to me. And that's why that awareness piece is so important. And if I know it might be a little hard to follow along with the LifeMap while I'm talking it out, if folks wanna go over to busymindpsychologist.com, sign up for my mailing list, you can get the worksheet, it's a fillable PDF, it has the questions to walk it through. I think I'm gonna be throwing up some videos soon about that. But it helps you take a step back and notice, okay, what am I doing that's getting me stuck? And then what are the thoughts and feelings and sensations that I have to learn to come in a little bit more contact with so that when they show up, they don't shut me down. So when they show up, they don't keep me stuck. So when they show up, I can acknowledge them and say like, I don't like you. And ask myself, what's important to me in this moment? What can I do in this moment? One teeny tiny step that moves me towards what matters to me. And then I can go and do that. So for Johnny, I'm just gonna write this down on my war board. I'm just gonna write this down in my notebook and I know I can come back to it. Or, oh, that thought popped in again. You know what? I've already written that down. What's important for me to do? What has to be done next so that I can pack and move and be connected to the people that matter to me? And that's what that process looks like. It's a beautiful exercise. And one more time for audience. Where can they find that in your amazing podcast? Yes, so my website is busymindpsychologist.com. So you can sign up there, get worksheets, videos, all great tools and tips. And then I'm most active on Instagram at busymindpsychologist. So busymindpsychologist all around. Super easy to remember. Yeah, excellent. Thank you for joining us and helping both Johnny and myself tame our busy minds. We really appreciate it. It's my pleasure and good luck on your move. I hope it goes well, Johnny. It will. And I'll be sending you to the MGK. Just heads up. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Be free.