 So today we have the author of an article that John and I really enjoyed from the Huffington Post. And we're going to talk about the concept of self-esteem and how artificially inflating self-esteem is actually detrimental, which is counterintuitive to a lot of us when we're talking about negative thought processes and how to overcome some of our negative beliefs in ourselves. And we're so excited to have Dr. Stephen Hayes with us today. Another of, is self-compassion more important than self-esteem? And in the prep for the show, Johnny and I were laughing because we really grew up in the age of the self-esteem boom, where in schools we were taught even going to pep rallies as Johnny was saying about self-esteem and trying to inflate everyone's self-esteem to get high performance out of children and ultimately later in life. What's so interesting about it is science is showing we may have been wrong in that movement. And the research that we're going to dig into today is a fascinating look at self-compassion is something that maybe a lot of our listeners may not have even heard of or thought about is actually the key to success. Now, Dr. Stephen Hayes with us, professor at the University of Nevada. He's one of the most distinguished and impactful psychologists of all time. He's written over 40 books and published nearly 600 scientific articles. He's one of the founding fathers of acceptance and commitment therapy and a huge part of our training programs here at the Art of Charm. And Johnny and I have been giddy to have this interview because. Well, I just wanted to say that in doing this podcast and doing the work that we do, there are opportunities when we get to meet somebody that we look up to so much. And and for us to do this and to have Stephen Hayes here today is is an honor and a thrill. And it is one of the most effective therapy forums out there when it comes to dealing with social anxiety. And we've been trying to incorporate as much of it as possible in our programs for those students of ours who do suffer from social anxiety. And obviously, we all have those negative voices in our heads. We're going to talk about the bully in upstairs and also how we can start the practice of self compassion. But first things first, it's great to have you with us here in the article. You write about self-esteem, a term that gets thrown around a lot these days. And everyone seems to be fascinated with gaining more self-esteem, especially in the self development field. However, science is starting to look at it in a little more critical way. And I think some of our listeners may not even be up to speed on the science behind it. But before we get to what the problem is, could you explain to our listeners what self-esteem is? Well, the way it's usually thought about is just those positive judgments that you make of yourself and holding yourself in high self regard. And we know that people who are successful in life and are moving ahead very often have more positive opinions about themselves and their role in life, their relationships, how they're doing at work and so forth. And the psychologist grabbed on that and said, OK, that's why they're successful. Let's just see if we can drive that thing up and then people will do a lot better. Turns out that's not true, but it wasn't deliberately wrong. It just turned out to be catastrophically wrong. Yeah, I think they were coming from the right place and obviously looking broadly at success, you would think that if you hold yourself in high regard, you're going to be able to accomplish great feats. Yeah, it would look like that. The problem is you can get that in artificial ways. But every parent, every teacher, everybody's looking at a young person when they see the voice within begin to come in and wag a finger and criticize. And you've been looking from the outside and say, no, no, you're you're kind. You're you're able. You're and the idea is, well, let's fix that. Let's get the right voice within. The problem with that is it leads to what we see just even cartoons. Very young kids understand this, that the devil on one shoulder and the angel and the other, you know, goofy with horns and go through to the halo. You know, what you're feeding is this kind of idea that you'll be a powerful, whole, effective person when you have that clear, positive vision of yourself that never waivers. That's a fantasy that doesn't exist in anybody. If you know anybody well from the inside and you know yourself pretty well from the inside, you know, that's not true. And the only way to get that even close to true is unhealthy. But from the outside, man, look at that person. They're so confat. They never show anything like what I'm feeling. And you feel alone in that. Right. And you go for what you think would get you that. Turns out it's not what's going to get you that. And of course, you can put even more pressure and judgment on yourself when you're like, well, wait a second, I can't seem to quiet this negative voice. I can't seem to get this side to go away. I can't turn up the volume on the positive voice. What's wrong with me? Exactly. And the thing that draws you into that is the immediate effect. Let's say you're really into a spin where the voice within is getting pretty critical, et cetera. And you bring that kind of self esteem training that you've got to it. You're going to get a little pop there. You're going to feel a little better about yourself for a little while. And everything we know about how human life works and life on the planet works is smaller sooner is more important and larger later. And you get pulled into this like narrowing fish trap of I'm doing better. No, I'm not doing better. And then you almost I'll do it again and do it again and do it again. You're almost shouting at yourself to try to produce the consistent, positive self evaluation that will wipe out and eliminate a race and push away. All of these other negative thoughts, feelings, memories, bodily sensations that any human life is going to collect. So as that amplifies, you're getting drawn in, just like you would with an addiction or any other kind of unhealthy habit. The long term outcomes are poor, but the short term outcomes seems like it kind of works when you deflect your attention and you try to reassure yourself, you get your friends to actually tell you nice things to yourself, you set it up. So how many, you know, you deliberately kind of manipulate your environment to get these positive voices. Meanwhile, your capacity to really be a whole person and to focus on something you deeply care about, which very often be the exact places where things are hard, precisely because you care so much about that. Probably means that's a place where you can be hurt, gets foreshortened and just start taking the cheap throes of positive self statements and the emptiness that that produces long term. Yeah, we can create unhealthy habits to distract ourselves from the negative voice, to avoid it at all costs, not set ourselves up to fail, to live completely in this little bubble of positivity. But that doesn't lead to long term success. Well, you can see why, in a sense, if a negative voice that you notice, if you had to reassure yourself that's really positive and push yourself, you probably notice something negative, otherwise you wouldn't do that in the first place, right? So, but if the deep message is that negative voice might be true. That might be real. I've got to get rid of that. Well, what are you saying? You're saying it's really important. It's really big. It deserves a lot of attention. That's the exact opposite of what you'd want to do. And so you're drawn into this thing by the the process can't possibly give you the outcome because what it's what you're buying into is that those negative thoughts themselves are true or they're bad or they have to be eliminated or erased. No, they're not. They're just the voice you'll catch yourself, for example, saying things to yourself that if you slow it down to wait a minute, that's like what my mother said. Well, you think you learned it somewhere or if not, your sibling, your friend, the girlfriend who dumped you, you know, whatever echoing for the rest of your life, you're ever going to not remember your own memories. How are you going to do that? As Joe goes sort of a frontal lobotomy or a bottle in front of me, there's no way to do that. And so you're taking it more seriously, you're building it up and you're sort of buying into the truth of it. That if you have a negative thought, it means there's something wrong with you. And therefore you have to replace it with a positive thought. That's kind of a negative thing to do. It looks positive. It looks sweet smelling, but it's based on something that buys into the negativity. And I'm with people that negative self-concepts do need work, but you don't do the work by first buying into them and then trying to kind of erase them. There's a very good alternative that we know about and is far more powerful in delivering what you really wanted anyway. And I think for a lot of us that can become like whack-a-mole, right? It becomes all-consuming now. We're constantly fighting every negative thought any time it pops up and it can so quickly distract us when a lot of what we're going to dig into in a little bit here about self-compassion is let it run its course, just move on. The more we hold on to it, the more damage we do in the first place. Yeah, if you find a place in which you can take it a little less, seriously get a little space, a little distance, not to eliminate, not to erase, but just get perspective. I mean, if you stood right in front of a painting, put your nose on it, you wouldn't be able to see anything. And sometimes when we disappear into our negative thoughts, it's like that. They keep us from seeing what's possible. People to love, things to create, people to help, shows to put on podcasts to organize, whatever's there, you know, what's there for your life. So there is a need to do something with a negativity. The problem is that the short term pop of pushing yourself towards this artificial list of the positive statements, self-esteem of that sort, actually creates a self-amplifying loop. And we've seen that in the, you mentioned the the rallies at your school, the self-esteem rallies. Absolutely. And what I wanted to talk to bring that up, we were all laughing earlier. And AJ mentioned it in the introduction. And what it was was I remember going to these things and it's like they seem to be every couple of months. And I remember asking, what is this about? Why are we doing this? And I remember hearing it's a self-esteem pep rally. Now, as a young adult, you're 13, 14 years old, sure, some children are growing up in an environment that is unhealthy, toxic, they're being abused, and they're having a lot of issues. But for where I grew up, it was a middle-class neighborhood and middle-class school. And for the most part, everyone had a two-parent home. And I remember thinking, going to those things, well, I don't need this, I feel great. And I think for all the other children who had a normal upbringing, I put that in air quotes for that time, they were in the same position. So it's like, well, this is useless, who needs it? So then we have to understand, we have to start looking at, well, who needs this pep rally? So now there's, we now find out there are some kids who do need this pep rally. So now, all of a sudden, they become targets of why we have to go do this thing. So not only are we, we're now learning that these thoughts are bad, so we're setting ourselves up for failure and a very hard time growing properly. And now we're signaling out kids who this pep rally is for, and all of a sudden, they become a target. Did that actually happen, did you see that in your school? Oh, absolutely. That's pretty creepy, isn't it? Yeah, it's a sad outcome of this. Yes. And obviously, when we think about low self-esteem, it does have some negative impacts on your mental health and well-being. So they were coming at it from a place of, hey, if you have low self-esteem, we see a lot of impact on your mental health and poor outcomes in children, so let's try to amplify it. But I think what's really interesting, and I may be wrong on the concept of imposter syndrome, but it feels like now that we've all gone through high school and we've graduated from college, some of this artificial enhancement of self-esteem is coming home to roost. And now people are like, I feel like a complete imposter when their self-esteem runs out and all of a sudden they're getting results beyond what this artificial self-esteem allowed them to feel comfortable with and it all comes crashing down. I'm not worthy, I don't belong here, people are gonna find out that I'm a fraud, people are gonna find out that this negative voice is the truth. And those thoughts are really impactful on young adults and into your adulthood. There's actually controlled studies on this. So if you teach people to think sort of positive self-statements, it has that short-term pop. The problem is, as soon as you need them, as soon as something happens in your life where you actually need them, they actually have a negative effect. And it's exactly what you're talking about. You apply it, it's inert, it's not moving anything. Next thing you know you got a whole number of a wave of brand new self-criticism. How come you can't do it? Other people can do it, you were told you can do it, you even saw the pep rally. And while it wasn't needed, it kind of actually sort of worked. It didn't really do what you hoped because it really didn't produce a kind of wholeness or self-confidence. It didn't really enhance your ability to be yourself with yourself as a whole human being. But it kind of seemed okay. When you really need it, it no longer even seems okay. People go ahead towards anxiety, depression, et cetera, in the side of the very attempt to try to talk themselves into feeling good about themselves. So that's almost cruel. I mean, you're gonna give people tools that work as long as you don't need them. I mean, what kind of a tool is that? How about if we do something that will be there when needed? And there are times you're gonna face things, you're gonna face betrayal, you're gonna see death, you're gonna have failures, people will not always be your friend, et cetera. And you better have the tools to step into pain, including this pain that's self-imposed by self-criticism and do something healthy with it that will orient you towards the kind of life that you wanna live. And it's like this artificial insurance, right? You think that if I just think positive and I keep these positive thoughts, it's gonna be there when I need it and it's gonna work. And it actually is more impactful the opposite direction. And we were laughing about this earlier. Think about this artificial enhancement of self-esteem and its impact on narcissism and entitlement and feeling that because I have high self-esteem, the world owes me everything. Well, that's almost the creepier outcome. I mean, you feel badly for people who when they really needed it, abandoned them. But then you look around and you see some folks who it looks like that doesn't happen to them because I've climbed into the clown suit of I'm the greatest of the great, the grandest of the grand and nobody greater than me. Have you ever been around people like that? Yes. Do you want them as your friends? No. Do you wanna spend time with them? I will. And yet, that clown suit feels to the person who's doing it, this kind of artificial narcissism as though, you know, this is really special. You will want me because I'm special. No, that's not true, dude. You're not gonna be wanted because in a clown suit, nobody wants to hang out with people in clown suits. How about the person behind those eyes? How about the person who's a richer, more interesting kind of mixture of positive and negative and not this artificial on the greatest of the great thing. So I think we're feeding narcissism and we've seen it in the programs you talked about for the first time on the planet. You produce people who are a combination of incompetent, aggressive, and have high self-esteem. That didn't exist on the planet until psychologists got involved and artificially started ballooning this thing up. Blame it on the psychologist. At least they're working to fix it. I'm not gonna do it. Listen, we've caused the problem, we're here to fix it. To go along with that, you mentioned it and here it is now coming home to Roost and we're seeing, let's go to the obvious culprit, like media, so we're seeing these reality television shows where there are these people, we just gotta do it, you gotta do it. We're hearing this and then we're so surprised when these people who sell this idea of self-esteem and confidence and all this, we find out or need to go to rehab because their lives have spun completely out of control and we're like, well, they had everything going on for them. They were so confident, they were so self-assured in all these moments and then we're like, how is this person so fragile that they're a heroin addict? We're like, wow. Let me grab that word, Johnny, that confident word because I like slowing these things down and looking at them because actually our culture, our history, our language is wiser than the way we apply it. That word confident, con means with and Latin, fedent is from the Latin fides. It's the same as faith, same root, and the same as fidelity. In other words, how would you act with fidelity to yourself? When you put on a clown suit, that's the exact opposite. When you try to erase what's true in order for something else to be formally there but not really there, not really what you want it to be about, that's the exact opposite. It's absent of faith, it's absent of fidelity. So could we empower people to step into keeping the faith themselves as whole human beings to have that kind of self-fidelity? This is me and this is my history and given my history, if for example I've been abused and I'm now in an intimate relationship, I'm gonna feel insecure. There's no other way that's gonna come because we're historical beings and you got a half a billion year old processes that allow emotions that occurred earlier every dog and cat and human being on the planet has. It's been around half a billion years, we know that, brings it into the present. We want that because I wanna remember this might be a dangerous situation. Oh yeah, this happened, I want that. But it's painful, it's difficult. Could we keep the faith for ourselves? Could we have that kind of self-fidelity that we get to have a history that isn't always sugar soup, it isn't always sweet? The option, the alternative to that is this delusional kind of clown suit that we're presenting to I think our children and to young people as an image of health and it's anything but. Yeah, we had a guest on recently, Alex Benayan, who wrote a book, The Third Door, where he essentially sat down with really successful people and time and time again, to his dismay almost, he found out that they also suffer with lack of confidence, doubt, this negative voice. And I feel like society rewards the solution. So everyone chases the solution and they've seen this is a problem, this negative self-talk is a problem. So give me a solution to this. And when you look at Eastern philosophy, the solution is living with it, understanding it, not removing it. And it's in the process of trying to remove it that we've done all of this damage to young people and not allowed that self-doubt to actually propel you in the right direction. It can often propel you in the wrong direction and now we're even seeing the clown suit, so to speak, on social media. Everyone picturing themselves in the clown suit, the most confident version of myself, well, that's what gets posted. That video is what gets posted. It's not the follies, it's not the mistakes, it's not the out of focus or the real you, it's the artificial you. And to go along with that, I think that when this wave started with the selfless team and we started pushing, I think at some point, the psychologists realized, okay, we screwed up. However, the regular public is not caught up to the advanced science and they doubled down, why is my kid having problems? We need to cover them in more bubble wrap. We need to protect them even more from these terrible thoughts. And it's, as you called it, it's catastrophic. And the only thing I could think of when I was reading the article is that I don't think America, the public is aware of just how catastrophic it is. Yeah, they're living it out in their lives, but they're being told it's not true. And you have that media pop thing drawing you in, so you seem to kind of works for you. But we have contradictory things in the culture too. We have wisdom traditions showing up. We have on the media, for example, there's a really sweet piece of people doing act exercises that involve digging down to a self-critical thought and putting it to a single word. And only doing this when they're really fed up, you're done. I'm not buying into this anymore. Writing it out in big bold letters and sticking it on your chest. And so it's this piece of social media where you get to see people's insights. And it's profoundly moving. I mean, I defy it and look at it without tearing up. And what you see is that the person next to you, someone so confident, et cetera, has this I'm unlovable thing inside, or I'm a liar, or nobody wants to be with me, I'm alone. What would happen if we allowed our insights to come out? Could we create a community in which people could be whole human beings? I think that's possible. We could create a safe place where that's possible. It doesn't always have to be the, here's the picture of the beach and the date and the car. And it could also be, here's the picture of what it's sometimes like to be inside my head. Yeah, I mean, these things go viral. I was just reading about a Victoria's Secret model who had a breakdown and was like, I can't do social media anymore because internally is completely in conflict with what I am forced to post so that people view me like me, they book jobs and they think highly of me. And you see it time and time again with the youth and their use of social media. And we're gonna get into, after this commercial break, what we mean by self-compassion, I just wanna point out that what's interesting about that is in almost to get people to be more self-compassionate, they have to follow someone else's lead, right? So we need people at the top, the successful ones that we look and hold in high regard and say they have it all together, they're perfect to bear those imperfections, to allow us to become more compassionate of ourselves. So apparently self-esteem is not what many of us believe it is. Sure, low self-esteem is very detrimental to the quality of our life, but trying artificially to raise your self-esteem has a number of negative impacts on life. So apparently trying to boost our self-esteem by changing our thoughts or even actively fighting it is not the way to go. So if it's not changing our thoughts, then what is it that you believe is going to help us? You can change your relationship to your thoughts. Very much like if I put an object on the table here in front of you and say, okay, I don't like that object. If you moved around to the other side of the table and look back, do you have a different relationship to it? And it might work in a different way. So what would happen if you took the parts of your history that you don't like when that evaluative part of you, that problem-solving part of you gets involved? I don't like that feeling. I don't like that memory. I don't like that urge. I don't like that sensation. Okay, cool, I get that. What would happen if instead we then took that move of confidence, fidelity, faith, whole person to stand with yourself kindly as you feel, think, remember that and to connect with the fact that you're doing what everyone else around you is dealing with. They're just not talking about it. You're part of a common humanity here. And then to kind of open up your attention. So instead of kind of keeping the lid on and trying to hide, we take the lid off and gradually, don't do it all at once, begin to feel those more subtle things. Some of what you're positive, some of what you're negative. And one of the things we've found in this is that when you begin to do that, it isn't, the fear would be, oh, I'm gonna let all the monsters out from the basement. Next thing in a while, I've got like some sort of horror show of all these. Well, A, you're not feeling or thinking anything you don't already feel and think already. Nothing's gonna really surprise you. What, you weren't alive when that happened? You didn't know that was there? Yeah, you kind of hid it. But B, there's other things that are hidden. Like for example, positive feelings. Take the issue of social anxiety because I know your podcast has a history of really focusing on that. If you're doing the push out version of self-esteem, if you're, you know, I only get the positive things. As you do that, you get less and less capacity to actually feel genuine happiness, joy, and connection. And you can see why. This has been done experimentally where people are socially anxious and they're trying to, you know, make sure it's only the positive things. Well, if somebody compliments them, they invite them to come to a party. It's a genuine kind of connection or something. Initially, it's like, ooh, that's, but then it's scary. What if I go there and I, so, you know, I'm not able to, but if I, you know, I don't know those fears so often that if I'm not able to, you know, interact with people in a way that they want to continue to be with me, what if that feeling goes away? And so you get this kind of roller coaster thing. So self-compassion is this stance of with kindness and openness and connection to common humanity. Can I feel, think, and remember what I feel, think, and remember? And as you begin to be able to do that of the so-called negative things, it turns out who knew you're better able to do the positive things too, because you hurt where you care. And yeah, you know, the reason why that portrayal really hurt is because love is important to you. The reason why that failure really hurt is you were trying to do something that made a difference and be successful in it. So the, that both sides, the both and quality of self-compassion gives you a way forward with the whole of you instead of trying to turn yourself into a cartoon that only has one kind of thing. And at the cost of, you don't get any of it. What you get is a clown suit. You know, if we go back to the pep rally and replace the self-esteem pep rally with the self-compassion pep rally. You imagine. Like now we have children learning about empathy. We have children learning that those bad feelings everyone has them. And we're gonna work on replacing them with getting some victories and some better stuff. And now I could see that there's more accepting of the children who are having a hard time in understanding their situation. And that's at that level. What does that move forward in then say 15 years for those children we saw the other way that he goes so well. If we're celebrating people who have high self-esteem in a way we're artificially enhancing the self-esteem to create the narcissist, we're celebrating narcissists. Which is not a path that we need to be elevating. And we've taken that to the hill. Yeah. And you know, I look back on a lot of my formative years and I was protected in a way and things came naturally to me in school. And then it wasn't until I really got to graduate school that things didn't go so well and I didn't have the tools. That's when the self-esteem ran out. And when it ran out, then I had all these other negative feelings that I'd never felt before. And the wave of emotion that hit me through imposter syndrome was I don't even wanna go out. I don't even wanna hang out with my friends. The world is ending. And that level of depression is tough for people to fight out of. It is. You know, we now have done the studies where we've followed thousands of people over four, five, 10 years. We know what happens if you are more open, accepting, mindful, self-compassionate. Is that you're putting yourself on a positive life trajectory. Not because it's all flowers and, you know, sweet smelling things and, you know, the music plays. No, it's because you have the flexibility to take a punch, to learn from it, to orient your attention to what matters in your life and to get your feet linked to that. And you start building a life worth living one step at a time. You never finished, you don't get an award. You know, there's not a certificate at the end. This is a journey, but it's a positive journey. And I think you can define that positivity this way. Are you over some reasonable period of time because your mind will trick you with the immediate pop over just a matter of hours and minutes and so forth when you do these artificial things? Over weeks and months, are you getting a greater sense of a space within which you can live your life, focus what's important and actually move towards that with the whole of your history? No subtraction, no deletion, with the memories you've got, the feelings you've got, the thoughts that you've got and the ones that will be created as you create a new journey, you may have relationships that work in a way that relationships never did before. And that may be a kind of sense of intimacy and love that you haven't experienced before. I'm not saying, you know, you should just accept what you've got, period of start. No, it's a matter of the message that's inside the word acceptance, which was meant to receive, is just to receive a gift and we still have it in English when we say, here will you accept this? Life is asking you, here will you accept this? And this is your past. If you can say yes to that, well then you can accept what's ahead of you in the future too. And that means you can afford the risk to care, to love, to connect, to create, to do new things, to take new trajectories in life. And so this isn't just kind of a dream. There's too many studies now, too much data. I think we can bring something to the table as psychologists, so we can, for my profession, a lot wiser than the self-esteem movement. Yeah, there's just three years ago, a study done by Sarah Marshall that followed almost 2,500 ninth graders for a year and we all know, to the self-esteem pep rally, ninth grade is not an easy year for us. Oh, absolutely not. Starting high school, we're getting introduced to probably new people that we haven't met before who might not think highly of us, so our self-esteem is gonna be taking a hit here. And the study found that low self-esteem had very little effect on teenagers that had high levels of self-compassion. So when we are practicing that acceptance and have self-compassion, that trumps self-esteem across the board. Yeah, because when you notice a difficult thought, for example, here's something I sometimes tell people, what if I could eliminate that negative thought completely, so profoundly, that when you have a friend, you have a family member, you have a kid later on, whatever, who comes to you and talks about that thing, something similar, you'll have no idea what they're talking about. You're gonna take that deal? And I'm not anybody who wants to take that deal. They wanna have the wisdom from having dealt with negativity in a healthy way, carrying it forward towards a life worth living, without the emotional and intellectual and psychological flexibility that it takes to do that. Well, it doesn't come in that package, but the positive message is these things are not that hard to learn. When you learn them, they can apply to many, many different situations. And you can do something that allows you to understand what other people in pain, when you see others suffering, that you can connect with them, but you also can put your own life on a trajectory that allows you to live the kind of life you wanna live without any necessary, without first having to have that magic delete button or eraser that's gonna take away your history, that almost self-attack as if I only get to be me when I start out being somebody else. Good luck with that. You were mentioning like, I heard that study was ninth grade, right? And for the boys at that age, they're a little bit slower in developing. They're not gonna, puberty is not gonna start wreaking havoc on them for a couple more years, but the girls at that time are dealing with so many developing issues that are really impossible to comprehend everything that is going on at that age. And to set up with the self-esteem issue, now that you're completely confused to everything that is going on in your mind, in your body and all around you, and you cannot question any of these things because everything's all right and you're a champion and you're good and you're golden. Right, unless you have inflated self-worth, however you're getting it, unless you have inflated self-worth, you're not as valuable as the other people in the room. And that rat race can lead to damages. We talked about it in your article, you mentioned Dr. Kristin Neff, who's a leading researcher in the field as well. And she says self-compassion has three concepts, three components. Being kind to yourself, number one, realize that everyone is dealing with these struggles, number two. And number three, be present in the moment with what you feel. Don't exaggerate the experiences and don't play them down. Sounds very easy in practice, right? Oh, just those things, just check those three boxes, I'm golden. Obviously it can be difficult to implement. So acceptance is the A in act, it is the first act. And now we have to actually commit to something to get the change to really happen. So it sounds to me like as we mentioned earlier, Eastern philosophy has been big on this concept for thousands of years now. Science is catching up. And being on the forefront of working with clients and patients who essentially have these anxieties, have these really negative thoughts, what's one of the first things that we're gonna ask them to do to really start this self-compassion route? If some of our listeners right now are understanding, hey, my self-esteem has been inflated, AJ, that imposter syndrome story is what I'm feeling right now. How do we start the change? Well, I think first we have to kind of create a space for it. And part of that is just enough is enough. I mean, if you're getting away with it, if you think everything's just moving along just fine, playing it the way you're playing it, well, you're not gonna be very open to doing something different. So let's just sit and sit down and what does your actual experience say? Not those as your mind say, because your mind's gonna say a little more of the same thing you're doing will give you different outcomes than it's ever given before. That's likely not true, but your experience is saying, no, I've played this thing out. So start with your own experience and if it's not paying off to move in that direction, let's do something really different, not just moving the decked chairs around the Titanic. Then the next thing is you gotta bring some awareness to it. You're gonna have to start learning to catch that voice within that tells you, you're a problem to be solved. And life is not a process to be experienced. It's a problem to be solved and there's something wrong with you. If we can catch that voice, then if we can take a little step back and realize there's other things you can do with it. So one of the things that that act folks bring to the table in the area of self-compassion is teaching people what we call diffusion skills or essentially being able to look at your thoughts as thoughts. Metaphorically, it's like the difference between your hand being right in front of your eyes with a statement written on it where that's all you can see is this negative statement versus moving it out in a way enough that you can still see the statement over there but you can look at the people around you, you can have a conversation, you can do things. I have actually a TEDx talk, people search for it. They'll find it, one done at the Davids Academy which is where people who are at the 99.9th percentile can go to school. They're in Reno, the University of Nevada campus. And I walk through about 12 different methods one after another and I start off with things that are very simple. I'll give you one. If you get a really negative thought that's sort of sticky, try singing the thought. I suggest a happy birthday. If not, pick your favorite tune, whatever, like Songify and some of these apps that are out there. Not be careful, not too ridicule but just to notice. This is just a voice. I actually suggest people give their mind a name and literally, okay, so mine is called George. What does George have to say? And noticing these thoughts because if somebody outside of you said a thought like that you'd have enough distance that whether or not you did what they said would be up to you. Some thoughts are really helpful. You gotta do your taxes. This is how to fix the car. You haven't done your laundry. Other things, not so much. Depend on something wrong with you. You're a really bad person. Maybe it's a different way of dealing with these different thoughts. But in these methods and in the TED Talk I come back to one that I wanna mention now because it kind of cements in. This is not self-critical. You're not a ridiculous person. As I ask people to picture how old were they when they first ever had a thought like that. And most people when I'm working with a client I actually do it by height and they'll say, how tall were you? And they'd start saying about there at like four, five, six, I mean little ones. We were worried about whether or not we're welcome, lovable, able. We're gonna be successful when we were quite young. And now they're projecting into our adult lives. And I ask the person to picture what you look like from your school pictures, the goofy hair, the silly clothes, et cetera. And then even remember what you sounded like and take that thought that you're ridiculing yourself with and have it come out of the voice of that child at that age. And what it will pull from you is something you can do with yourself when you're looking at the person in the mirror. You don't have to be seven or eight to be kind to yourself. You don't have to be a kid for it to be okay. But for that life is hard and sometimes we don't know what to do. Or that you've sometimes had experiences that'll be painful and will be remembered and echoed through the rest of your life. But can we at least treat ourselves with a kindness that we would bring to a child? Just because we grew up, that means we're not deserving of it, really? So that you could look at that person in the mirror with those negative thoughts, but have that little element of kindness and being able to attend without judgment to what it's like to be you. Yeah, if your four-year-old version of yourself said, I feel unloved, you wouldn't make fun of them, you wouldn't ridicule them, you wouldn't say, what the heck is wrong with you? You would be very supportive and empathetic in your response to them. We have within us this wisdom. It isn't just the Eastern traditions or the wisdom traditions of other kinds. We have it by our own experience. And it's easy to show. I mean, if you had a spectacular sunset tonight, you're gonna look at it and you're probably gonna go, wow. You're probably not gonna go, man, that's too much pink. More blue over there would be good. Look at how that cloud is shaped, oh, God. It could be a lot better if it was, you're not gonna do that. If you had a crying child in front of you talking about some horrific experience and crying it right in front of you, I bet you the very first word out of your mouth is the same one, wow. You're probably not gonna say, could you talk about something a little nicer? You're bumming me out here. That's not gonna happen. Well, that means we know how, both with sweet and sad things, to appreciate, to observe, to describe, to notice. And not have to immediately get in there and race and change. And that'll happen over time, fine. We can do something about the crying child, et cetera. But so one way I like thinking about this is not just treating your life as a math problem, but treating it more in the wow of just appreciating life as it is and how it's unfolded for you, sweet and sad. And that little space of compassion allows you to do new things, things that you've never done before. Like, I'll give you an example. You could write out that word and stick it on your chest. I mean, you can do things that break the rules. You can share with others what it's like to be you. People who are safe on that sand walker. And don't do this until you've done your homework. Don't expect just putting it out there is gonna eliminate it. There's not another version of a racer. I'm just saying that it's very, very new things that are possible, like carrying your anxiety with you the way you carry your wallet. And doing bold and interesting things that really push out the limits where you don't know if you can do it. Let's find out. That's cool. One of the things that we focus on on the show and that we're trying to bring to light is that with these tools, with these tactics, self-development doesn't have to be a terrible thing. It can actually be quite a fun thing. And if you're focused on the wrong things, such as these nasty, these bad thoughts and to do self-development, you would have to admit that you have problems and you're broken and all these other things. And we go to the self-compassion realm is that you can enjoy this process. And even after 35, 40 years of running in a certain direction of that self-esteem train, to now use act, incorporate it into your life. And all of a sudden, your days become much lighter. Your days become fun. I can now start to correct some of the damage that is done. And of course, with that compassion, you're going to be looking to help others around you. And all of a sudden, what previously had seemed like, why should I wake up today? It's just gonna be another shit day like yesterday. All of a sudden it becomes tomorrow is gonna be even better than today was. And that cycle now perpetuates itself in that direction, which is why I love self-development so much because the moment that I discovered it, my days have completely changed. And not only was it a challenge to make it better, it just happened by default of using these techniques. Yeah, they flow out naturally because I think what you're doing is you begin to focus on what you care about, what you value, what you wanna build, what you wanna create, what you wanna add. There's no deletion, there's no subtraction. You don't have to stop and wait. Life can start now and move in a positive direction, not in a way to fight a war or eliminate something, but because that's what you came here to do. I got stuff to do, really cool stuff. To create, to learn, to connect, to have fun. I think that values journey is the one that really makes sense of self-compassion. We're not talking about wallowing, we're not talking about, oh, just tears per minute is the measure of psychological health or something. We're talking about being open in such a way that we can then shift our attention towards what brings meaning and purpose to our life and chasing that. A metaphor for it might be like if life has given you salty water. There's this stuff in it, man, this just doesn't taste right, like, wow, I've got that painful memory, I've got that judgment, I've got that, you know, my mother was so self-critical and my dad was an alcoholic and I saw this fountain, whatever the thing was, right? And you have this idea, if I can just get rid of the salt, this thing would be a lot better tasting. Well, you try to grab those salt grains with tweezers and take them out one at a time and then you're gonna live, you're never gonna get to the next stage, you're never gonna start. What if you just start putting water in there, clean water? What if the next day was about building your business or making a connection with somebody you love or creating a space in which you can be more intimate and open with somebody? You're adding fresh water to it pretty soon, turns out that salty thing, I mean, you ever tasted sold water versus water with a little bit of salt in it? I think it's pretty clear which one you like. Sugar soup is maybe what your mind thinks you'd need, but it isn't really what a human life needs to have. I mean, you've got kind of like a variety of flavors here and it humanizes you that you know something about pain. You can connect with others because of it. It makes you more able to connect with others that you know something about self-judgment because they have it too. And so if we could come together in community as real conscious whole human beings, power people to move towards what they really care about, caring with them the whole of their history, that's kind of an awesome thing and it can start now. You don't have to wait. If you have to wait for the delete button, you're gonna wait a long time. If you're gonna wait for your life, how about this next moment? How about this next day, this next hour? What's there for you to do? Well, I don't know. What do you wanna do? And can we put that into people's lives and empower them if people come to you when you do it? I'm sure you've seen it, John. You said as you get that space, people who see that, they wanna be part of that. Like, wow, I want that. Of course. And it goes to the show. You had given an example of do we wanna hang out with the braggy, narcissists? They're like, of course not. We wanna be able to hang out with somebody who can understand our pain and who's been through it and can give a helping hand when we're in it. And when we look at things through the lens of doing all this work, it can seem all this work on ourselves. It can seem daunting and frustrating. Like, I have to go through another shit day where I have to go through all these thoughts, but it gets better. It gets lighter. It gets brighter. More better people come into your life. And I think this answers that question of when people see, so let's, and I don't know Anthony Bourdain's reasons for him doing what he did, but when people look at people like Anthony and they see somebody who went through a battle, who does all the things that healthy people should be doing, going to the gym, working out, getting involved in BJJ, getting healthy and then focus on a career and then it blows them. How could he still do that thing? Well, if you're in that train of thought where every day is going to be a fight and a battle for you to feel good, and eventually it gets so bad that there isn't. Yeah. And if we can shift the agenda here, so instead of trying to feel good, we do a good job of feeling, that's something you can start now. Even if what you have there to feel is difficult, it's not gonna stay that way. Emotions come and go, you get emotions that get sticky that hang around yourself, judgments that get sticky and hang around the single biggest way to do it is you try to grab them and throw them away. It's like grabbing fly paper and you try to throw it or grabbing tar paper. You know, it's just gonna, instead, could we notice them, bring our kind of sense of self-compassion and kindness to it, get a little bit of perspective, notice that there's a human being noticed them, you're not just what your mind says you are, you're much more complicated and more beautiful and able person than that and then move your attention towards what you care about. Now start getting your feet moving in that direction, not to run away from this other thing, but to move towards what you care about. It's not distracting, it's attracting. And when you're doing that, then you start attracting people to you, energy to you, success to you, opportunities to you. Life unfolds, not in a simple, easy way. I'm not gonna do an aversion of the secret or something here. I'm saying people who are growing and expanding, experiencing, that draws energies to you because people wanna be partners with you on that journey, they wanna support you on a journey like that. Yeah, and we just naturally surround ourselves with like-minded people. We form groups and tribes, we look for people to identify based on behaviors and their thoughts and their words and a lot of us don't even realize that we're either collecting positive people or negative people in our lives. And that's one of the first lessons that we talk about on bootcamp, is a lot of us have gone through life, maybe not having the tools to make new friends, so we haven't been as selective with the people that we invite into our lives. And sometimes, circumstances come into play, but now we've collected this wolf pack of people who they have their views and we're adopting their views, but through osmosis. We have problems, we share them and then we get their solutions. And all of a sudden, if we're surrounding ourselves with people who can't diffuse from their thoughts and emotions and project those onto us, well then we're gonna have some really negative consequences and impacts on our personal well-being. And I think what's so great about the sea and all of this is the commitment to it, the moving through it, right? And whether it's committing to a half marathon, committing to get better socially, committing to that career promotion, when we commit to things as humans, we give ourselves more power to actually move forward, right? And it's not wallowing in it, it's not giving up. Oh, I have these negative thoughts, so this is just life and tomorrow's gonna be harder than the next. It's saying, there are other things in my life that are really important to me that I'm gonna work towards and I'm not gonna let the bully, I'm not gonna let George keep me from those things. The thing that happens in the way that you were just talking about it with things coming towards you from the people that you've drawn around you, that's also true of you towards them. And we know if you change your behavior in some way, the research on this has been done, your friends will move, the friends of those friends will move and the friends of those friends will move. There could be a person sitting here listening to this podcast that literally has like 15,000 people sitting next to him. The choices that that person make is gonna flow out through the culture in ways. And we've done the research on this, like if you have a business or a clinic or a family, if you're a parent, when you're doing the, out with the bad thoughts in with the good kind of versions of self-esteem and avoiding difficult emotions, when people around you now face challenges, they are much more likely to traumatize themselves, much more likely to have anxiety, depression, substance abuse, less likely to be able to orient towards their values and build their life out. So we all have a stake in each other's development, we're on a journey together. I like that. We're not alone, we're not cut off, we're connected. And so could we, not in some narcissistic way, but in a responsible way, what that word means, the ability to respond in a responsible way, take advantage of our own capacity to create a life with a direction and put things into the communities around us, the people we love and care about that are sustaining and supporting of them. How do we know that? It's sustaining and supporting of us. And so this, we're in this weird conspiracy where you support me and what doesn't work for me and I'll support you and what doesn't work for you. You know, where we compare our other people's outsides to our insides, but we never tell the truth. We never actually say, you know, that doesn't, that isn't how it is for me. If we flip it the other way, the same social processes that are leading to the problems you only have to open your eyes to see, now can build out this kind of development in a way that will have an impact on the world really. I mean, it really will. One person, one moment, one life, one opportunity, one step forward at a time. And that's a kind of cool. We get to be part of something a lot bigger than, which is, you want a very simple way to say it, putting love into the world instead of fear. What if we just did that, if our lives are about that? It would move the world and I think you open your eyes and look, we need it. Yeah, absolutely. We don't have to get into too much of a world view to know that most of our listeners are exactly what we're talking about here. I think the one thing that I know listeners are thinking and they're in their minds going, okay, self-compassion, that's great. But if I become too self-compassion and I just accept, okay, this is what it is, then yeah, I can have all the junk food. I can make really poor decisions. I can drink all the sugar soup, right? So is there too much self-compassion and is there a governor in your mind that we need to keep on our compassion so we don't just wallow away? Well, the reason why ACT has that C in there, it's acceptance and commitment. If it were just acceptance period and the story, if it really was just about, if you just were open and well, in the service of what? Why? Why would I do that? Well, because you have a life to live. Well, what kind of life do you want to live? And superficially it may look like, gee enough, I just was eating ice cream from morning to night and not going to the gym, et cetera. That would be really cool. No, that's not true. If you went to the gym yesterday, you probably are still feeling it today. Of course. You feel better. And anybody can do it and sense it very quickly. Have you been through that? You go like, oh my God, I've been exercising for this period of time. I do it and immediately my body says yes. Well, that tells me that somehow we're getting in the way of stuff that we know works better. And there's certain kinds of things. I mean, belonging and connection. Loneliness is not good for people. That's not the kind of monkey we are. We're the kind that wants to be with others. Can we figure out how we can be with others in a way that's not some sort of parody or clown suit but is real, that opens you up, does it empty you out? Same thing with feeling. We want to feel, but if you just try to feel good, eventually you can't feel it all. So instead, could we do a good job of feeling and support ourselves in doing that? And competence, learning how to get out there and actually do things that make a difference and being able to have meaning and purpose by choice. So if you don't put values into the conversation and all the wisdom traditions that work on this openness, mindfulness, they all have a values part. Now in a religious context, they get to do that. The monk can say, here's the right action. Well, if we're not doing it that way, you better look at that person in the mirror and do the much the same thing. What am I up to? What do I really care about? What are the qualities of being and doing? I don't mean the things I'm grasping at and holding onto. I don't mean the car and the money. And I mean, what are the qualities of your life that you want to be manifest in the world by what you actually do with your feet, with your behavior, with your moments? And you'll have them. You have them in your heroes. You have them in your sweet moments. You have them in your pain. Take the pain and flip it over and you'll see you cared about something. And you have them just in the story that you're writing about your life. If you could just sit down and write the next chapter and you don't get to choose the exact elements and the characters, but you get to choose the theme, what's the theme that you want in this next chapter? It's up to you. So I think we have that capacity for authorship, for genuineness, for openness that's connected in this rich way to our own life. And sue me if you don't like it, but this is what I care about and this is what I'm up to and this is what I'm putting in the world. And my guess is you put it through that. It's not gonna be sugar soup. I've not actually met anybody who puts them through themselves through that kind of gut check, person and mirror. What do you really care about, dude? What are you gonna put into your behavior? And I don't see people going through that and say, you know, I just wanna lie better. I wanna pretend more. I wanna pretend so well that no one's ever that knows that I'm pretending. I don't see that. What I see is people wanting love and connection, contribution, community. They wanna see a healthy mind and body. They wanna be living. That gives energy, not takes energy, right? The clown suit takes energy. It's exhausting. Anyone in the clown suit, you can see the pain in their eyes. They are exhausted. They are tired of it. It sucks that they have to get attention because of it, but that's the card that they know how to play and it's worked so far, so they're stuck with it. In that moment, John, you talk about when you wake up in the morning and there's that kind of wow. And they're like, wow, here's what I get to do this. And it may be a challenge. It may be like, wow, I'm not sure I'm 100% able to do this. Absolutely. And wow, I get to, yeah. I mean, so if love doesn't land as a way of talking about it, vitality would be pretty close. And if even that doesn't work, just being would be pretty close. That space of being present and then this loving way moving towards what brings vitality and purpose in your life is what the whole point of self-compassion, acceptance, diffusion, mindfulness, attentional flexibility, that's the whole point of it. Just so that the next foot can hit the ground of start moving towards what you care about. It's interesting, because we, in the Bootcamp program we've been running for over a decade, we have a section around defining your values. And the number of guys when we get to that section who can't put pen to paper and are just kind of stumped, right? And when we started to ask that in our challenge group, we have a Facebook group where you can sign up for free, the articharm.com slash challenge. And I believe it's, challenge number two is defining your values. And some people don't even get to challenge two. They quit there. As someone who now has defined my values, wow, that commitment to them, right? The compass in the right direction. Is that wake up in the morning with no alarm clock? Is that okay? I know that what I'm doing is meaningful and can propel you through all of this other stuff that we talked about, right? The negative feelings, all this emotional stuff that we're dealing with, those thoughts that come up. And we have an entire class in core confidence. This idea of understanding your values and putting some actual time to define them can empower you to work through these things. It does not have to be this mental exercise that we put off till, well, I'll get there when I'm 40. I'll get there when I'm next job, when I'm retired. That's when I'll start thinking about philanthropy and values and all that stuff. Your whole life takes shape at that moment. And I always laugh because for the, there's the people who can't put pen and paper because they're like, what? And then there's the people who are like, oh, that's easy. And then they get to three and they realize they only have two more choices for the values that are important to them. And all of a sudden they start to bug out and they'll even quit. We've seen it in our analytics of people stopping because they haven't finished that challenge. And they get caught up in this idea that what I put is now stuck. And of course it doesn't. It changes as your wants change, right? And I always use this example of, I think everyone can say that being a good father, if you have children, there's a wonderful value to have. Well, I don't have children. So that value doesn't go on my five. Of course I think it's an incredible value to have. For some of us children. So as your needs change, those values can change. And then being able to wake up and engaging in those and knowing that this comfort of wasting your life or floundering, filling loss is now gone because you're engaged in the things that matter most to you. There's a way that might help folks if values are of importance, which is to hold them lightly and pursue them passionately. And what happens when you bog down is this judgmental thing comes in like this is gonna be the set list. Oh no, it starts immediately feeling oppressive. Well, it's not the accident. I mean, this word evaluation and the word values has the same root in there. And you can turn into another stick to hit yourself over the head and ears about, oh, I didn't lift my values. Slow it down, dude, what are you doing right now? What is that about? What is the values reflected in what you just did there? And it's right back to the same old, same old. I can start living when I get all that thoughts, feelings, memories lined up in a row. Instead, think of it more like you would picking a destination or picking a game. Have you ever seen kids play? Like, I can get to that tree over there before you touch me. And as much life energy as they have to give is in that moment. And they're laughing and running and they're going for it. What if values are like that? Like, not because there's gonna be a prize or applause or not, no, because it's just in me, I can do that. I can be about that. I can go in that direction. Watch me. And putting your life energy into metaphorically, like running towards that tree, it could be creating this podcast that will change hundreds of thousands of lives. Think about how important that could be on the planet. You do the multiple. It doesn't just those hundreds of thousands, there's millions of people. So I'm not saying that I haven't had the conversation with you. I don't exactly know all of what's inside what you're doing right here. But that opportunity is there with every single person listening to us right now. So hold it lightly, pursue it passionately. And thinking about it more kind of like you would like a game. You know, there's certain rules. Like if you wanna play the game of being a good dad, there's certain rules. You wanna play the game of being a good partner in a business, there's certain rules. And okay, within those rules, and I've actually put that into my behavior. It's fun, it's recreation. I mean, in other contexts, you pay money to be able to do it. You don't have to pay money to be able to do this. You can just do it. This is what I'm up to. And sue me if you don't like it. We've found time and time again that when you get oriented on those values and you're running towards that tree, the people that wanna join you in that journey can empower you. When you don't have the values, you're unclear, you're wishy-washy, you're not sure, you'll take whatever you can get. Well, it's a very empty life. You have acquaintances, you don't have friends, you don't have that vulnerability, you don't have that ability to connection. And last month's theme around connection flows from that empathy and that vulnerability. That's what we're talking about here. And when you define those values, you commit to those values, and sure, they're gonna change. You don't have to beat yourself up if they shift. But, wow, you're really cooking with gas. Now you're welcoming in the right people into your life, you're taking steps to actually accomplish what matters to you and not feel lost at sea. That space of shared values and vulnerability is creating intimacy and connection. You think about it, the people you feel close to, you know something about what they care about, you know something about their vulnerabilities. And so that theme we were talking about earlier, people come to you if you're on a values-based journey and you're doing it in a way that's open and flexible and kind of out there in not this clown suit way. The people who come to you will be people who wanna be on that journey with you and they're very often exactly that kind of people that you wanna be with anyway. And so you get this kind of gravitational force in which community begins to support you and your connections with others are part of a larger part, pattern of building that life worth living. I love it. Thank you for joining us today. It's not often we have the actual author of the article in studio to join us. Fantastic. I love the audience as a takeaway to think about this one question. Where in your life do you wanna be more compassionate towards yourself? Let us know by sending us an email or through social media at The Art of Charm or by leaving us a voice message, questions at theartofcharm.com is a great place to submit those and where can our audience find more about you, Steven? Well, if they wanna get a little seven lesson mini course on act that they're going to stevensihays.com and I'll be happy to send it to them. Highly recommend it. Absolutely. Thank you for joining us. Awesome.