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Your Goals Aren't Yours—That's Why They Don't Stick (ACT for Lasting Change) · The Virtual Couch

• 0:23
  Might actually make somebody a little bit uncomfortable. But if I were to tell
• 0:27
  you that most of your goals, they're not actually yours.
• 0:30
  You didn't choose them. You most likely inherited them from magazines,
• 0:34
  from social media, from your parents, from your church, from your community,
• 0:37
  or from that version of yourself that you think that you're supposed to become.
• 0:41
  And that is why most of them don't stick. Hey, everybody. My name is Tony Overbay.
• 0:46
  I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist.
• 0:48
  And welcome to the virtual couch and potentially a bonus episode on waking up
• 0:52
  to narcissism, because I think this is some really important stuff that we're
• 0:55
  going to talk about today.
• 0:56
  Do me a huge favor and follow me on social media at virtual.couch on Instagram,
• 1:00
  at virtualcouch on TikTok, Tony Overbay licensed marriage and family therapist on Facebook.
• 1:05
  I think Tony Overbay, maybe just that, maybe an LMFT over on LinkedIn,
• 1:10
  but Substack, oh my glorious Substack, go find me on Substack,
• 1:15
  substack.com, I believe slash the virtual couch.
• 1:19
  There's a lot of a lot of content there and getting back to doing a lot more
• 1:23
  live question and answers in the new year.
• 1:26
  And if you have questions, if you have, I was going to say answers,
• 1:29
  I'll take your answers as well.
• 1:30
  But if you have questions, relationship questions, marriage questions,
• 1:34
  emotional maturity questions, narcissism questions, faith crisis questions,
• 1:38
  you name it, please send them through my website, Tony overbay.com. And I will answer them.
• 1:44
  I'm going to be doing a lot more with the question and answer episodes.
• 1:47
  And I want them all. And I really, I really appreciate when somebody sends me
• 1:52
  their marriage related questions because I would love to weigh in on that.
• 1:55
  But let's get to today's episode.
• 1:57
  So I've been a therapist for well over 20 years now, and I have noticed something
• 2:00
  that is pretty consistent.
• 2:02
  Every December, people come into my office with anticipation or dread.
• 2:07
  They're already thinking about New Year's resolutions. Some are excitedly planning
• 2:10
  what they're going to do differently this year and others, and probably the
• 2:13
  majority are feeling guilty about not wanting to set any resolutions at all.
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  And some are asking my opinion, should I even bother because they never stick anyway.
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  And then by February or March, or maybe for some mid to late January,
• 2:26
  they're back and not celebrating their success, but beating themselves up again
• 2:30
  for failing, which is such a strong word. And they'll say things like, what's wrong with me?
• 2:36
  Why can't I just do the things that I say that I'm going to do?
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  And here's what I've learned. Nothing is wrong with them.
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  Their problem isn't their willpower or their discipline or their character.
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  I think the problem, and maybe my New Year's resolution for 2026 is going to
• 2:52
  be calling it a challenge.
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  But the challenge is that they're
• 2:55
  setting goals based on what they think that they should care about.
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  And yes, I am required by therapist law now to say no one likes to be should on.
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  But what they should care about, not what they actually care about.
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  And a lot of times, I don't even know if we know what we think that we're supposed
• 3:12
  to care about or what we really truly care about.
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  And that's why we're asking people, what do you think? What do you think I should
• 3:16
  care about? Or what do you think I should do?
• 3:18
  So I am releasing this episode just in time to either inspire you last minute
• 3:22
  to do something New Year's resolution-y related that has a better chance of sticking.
• 3:27
  But probably, and more importantly, I'm hoping you listen to this after you've
• 3:32
  already either not declared New Year's resolutions, if you are avoiding them,
• 3:37
  if you are protesting against them, or if you're a day or two in or maybe even
• 3:42
  a week or so in and you kind of already know,
• 3:44
  but you don't want to admit it, that this is not going to stick.
• 3:47
  Or bless your heart, you've already given up on them and you're starting down
• 3:49
  that path of self-deprecation and beating yourself up and doing the old what's wrong with me story.
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  Because if that's where you are, I want you to know you're not broken.
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  You're a human and you're not weak. You're not lacking discipline.
• 4:00
  I think you're just using the wrong framework.
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  And I know this oh so well because I have done it for years myself with something as simple as pushups.
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  So I would like to introduce to you my pushup story.
• 4:14
  And if you are a client of mine, unfortunately, you've probably heard this many times before.
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  And I'm pretty confident that this started in elementary school or maybe middle
• 4:23
  school. And I don't even know if this man, the muse to all this is still alive.
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  I believe his name was Mr. Johnson and he was a vice principal.
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  And if you're already picturing, because I am a 56 year old human being,
• 4:36
  so if you do the math, that was a long time ago.
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  If you're picturing a short sleeve, white button up shirt and truly unfortunate,
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  somewhat yellowish tie that looked like it had lost a fight with a highlighter
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  kind of vibe, that was Mr. Johnson.
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  And one day in the lunchroom, a group of middle school boys were doing what middle school boys do.
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  And one of them said something like, you know, I'm tougher than you.
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  I could beat you up, whatever.
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  And instead of escalating, Mr. Johnson calmly said, all right,
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  drop down and give me some pushups.
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  And I would just watch with amazement. And a couple of boys got down and they
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  cranked out a respectable number of pushups. And I remember thinking,
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  I don't know if I could do a lot of pushups myself.
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  And then Mr. Johnson got down on the floor and he started doing pushups and he just kept going.
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  And it was like a scene from a movie. There was a whole circle around him and
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  we were all chanting and cheering Mr. Johnson.
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  I think somebody was counting and I don't even remember what the number was.
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  It felt like minutes passed and he didn't rush and he didn't strain and he just kept doing pushups.
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  And I remember thinking, I will never look at this man the same way again.
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  And we would talk about Mr. Johnson in hushed tones from that day forward.
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  And I'm pretty sure that's the exact moment that my pushup obsession was born.
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  So fast forward through high school and into college, and I started hearing
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  about this thing called the 100 pushup challenge.
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  And if you did a certain number of pushups in various sets on different days,
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  the promise was that you would be able to do...
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  A 100 push-up set all in a row. So I bought the magazines.
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  I downloaded PDF files when computers became a thing. I even got the app where
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  you put your phone on the floor and you're tapping the screen with your nose
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  and pretty much every year.
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  And I'm talking every single new year's, I would set the goal.
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  This is the year that I actually follow through on the 100 push-up challenge
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  and I get to do sets of 100 push-ups.
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  And every year I would start somewhat strong until I would forget and I wouldn't
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  do it any longer. And I really don't think I ever lasted more than a few days.
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  And here's how my brain worked pretty much every single time.
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  If I started the program and I realized later in the day that I didn't have
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  time to complete all the prescribed sets and reps, my brain would say,
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  you know what? We'll just do it tomorrow.
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  Then tomorrow would come and then it would be later in the afternoon.
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  And my brain would say, okay, honest to goodness tomorrow for real this time.
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  And if it got to be Wednesday or Thursday, well, obviously at that point.
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  I am starting on Monday. And as a matter of fact, what I would probably do is
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  not do anything between then and Monday because I really had to take advantage
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  of this downtime because starting on Monday, oh my gosh, I'm a machine.
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  I'm going to be a push-up machine.
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  And if it was the middle of the month, say the 16th of the month, 17th, you know what?
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  Honestly, the first of next month sounds more official. I'm sure that I'll give it my all then.
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  And if it was July or August, well, that's basically New Year's resolution season.
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  So I might as well kick the can down the road until January 1st.
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  And I did this for years. And I genuinely believe the story that my brain was telling me.
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  I just really wasn't disciplined enough. And I just had to try harder.
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  And what's wrong with me?
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  Then years later, I started learning about my beloved acceptance and commitment therapy.
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  As I've mentioned so often on my podcast has changed my world and changed my life.
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  And so push-ups became my muse within the world of acceptance and commitment therapy.
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  And throughout the remainder of this episode, I will use the shortened version ACT.
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  Because ACT helped me see something different. The problem was not the push-ups.
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  The problem was that I had turned 100 push-ups into this goal instead of noticing
• 8:01
  what actually mattered to me.
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  What I eventually learned or what mattered to me was fitness.
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  Fitness is a core value of mine. As somebody who has run now a hundred or more
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  ultra marathons and other races and needs to work out to feel somewhat alive
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  at this point, it's a value. It's a core value.
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  So pushups stopped being the goal and they actually started becoming the vehicle to get there.
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  So instead of asking how many, I started saying, okay, well,
• 8:27
  we'll do these and we'll see.
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  And at first I still would forget. Days would go by. Then I remember to do 10, maybe another day, 20.
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  And eventually I got to the point where I could do a set of 25.
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  And some days that was it. just one set and that was okay because my value was
• 8:40
  fitness and push-ups were the vehicle to achieve my value.
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  And then one day without planning it, without chasing it, I just passed a hundred.
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  101 set, but 100 in the day. And it didn't happen all at once.
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  But I realized that old goal didn't even matter anymore. Most days I was probably
• 8:58
  doing 150, some days 200.
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  And I knew that there were days where I also did well over 300.
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  And the wild part was that the less I obsessed over this goal,
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  the more action I tended to take.
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  ACT taught me something that I still use constantly, and especially with clients
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  called expansion, which is making room for my thoughts and feelings instead
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  of fighting against them. I'm learning how to accept them.
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  So now I'll have a few minutes in between clients and I'll think,
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  oh, okay, now's when I should do some pushups.
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  And immediately, several times a day, my brain says, I don't want to.
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  And instead of arguing with that thought, instead of saying,
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  okay, I need to not think that or what's wrong with me for thinking that,
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  Now, this concept of expansion allows me to say, cool, you're cool, I don't want to thought.
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  Why don't you just come on down to the ground with me and do push-ups with me?
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  I literally invite not wanting to do push-ups to get down on the floor with me.
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  And regularly, sometimes more than half of the sets that I'll do during a day,
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  I am telling myself I don't want to be doing these and I'm acknowledging absolutely
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  don't want to do them while I'm doing them.
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  And every once in a while, a day or two will go by and I'll forget and I'll
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  notice that my brain starts to beat me up again.
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  And then I'll notice those are just thoughts and I'll start again.
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  Then last December 28th, right around the time of year that I'm recording this
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  episode, I felt a strange pain in my back after a Peloton arms and intervals bike workout.
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  And then numbness started radiating down my left arm.
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  And that moment ended up leading to a spinal fusion surgery three months later.
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  And now almost a year after that first incident, I'm doing pushups again.
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  And it feels like starting over and I still forget for days and then I'll remember
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  and I'm finally up to sets of 20.
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  And it's so funny because my brain is still fighting hard telling me we'll do
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  it later. But this time I know something that I didn't know before. This is a value.
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  Fitness is the value. Push-ups are just the vehicle.
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  And because of that, I have a deep confidence, not an urgency,
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  not pressure that this is going to work again.
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  So that difference between setting a goal because it sounds impressive and then
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  choosing an action because it connects to something that actually matters to
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  you, that's at the heart of what I want to talk about today.
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  Because as we get closer to the end of the year, I've been thinking a lot about
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  New Year's resolutions as I do every year at this time, because I was once a
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  very, very big New Year's resolutioner and not one who kept them very long.
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  And in previous years, I've done episodes where I've had the fun facts about
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  what the most popular resolutions were and how long people keep them and the psychology behind why.
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  This year, I really just want to talk about what I think is a healthier way
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  to go about looking at any kind of behavior change.
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  And also, if I'm being a little bit podcast host selfish, I've been taking on
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  a few more new clients recently, more than I have in quite a while.
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  And that has been energizing because I really, it just proves me how much I love this work.
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  I genuinely love it. And I think that matters because it's a lot easier to do
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  meaningful work together when we're already speaking a similar language.
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  And that language for me is ACT.
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  I've been this unapologetic ACT fanboy for well over a decade now.
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  And even though ACT is still considered this new kid on the block in therapy
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  terms, because it's only been around for about, I don't know,
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  25, 30 years, it honestly still surprises me that it hasn't taken hold more
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  widely in the therapeutic community.
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  So before I get into comparisons between, I will call it traditional therapy,
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  CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy and ACT, which I have been a CBT therapist
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  for a large part of my career before I found ACT.
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  I want to talk about something that Dr. Stephen Hayes, and he is the founder
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  of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, what he writes about in his book called
• 12:29
  A Liberated Mind, which is a perfect title, the more that you learn about ACT principles.
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  He introduced this concept that just made so much sense to me,
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  and it's this idea of socially compliant goals.
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  And I do think this is so relevant right now, heading into New Year's resolutions.
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  Socially compliant goals are goals that we pursue because we feel like we have
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  to or we're supposed to or because somebody we care about expects it because
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  society says that we should because we'll potentially be disappointed in ourselves
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  if we don't do these things that we think we're supposed to do and here's what
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  the research shows socially compliant goals give rise to motivation that is weak and ineffective.
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  We may try to drive our own behavior with these external goals,
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  but we also secretly resent them because they undermine our own process of becoming, of unfolding.
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  If you think about your classic New Year's resolutions, losing weight,
• 13:17
  get to the gym, quit drinking, eat healthier, journal every day,
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  read my scriptures, say my prayers.
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  I'm not saying that those things don't matter, but what I'm saying is, do they matter to you?
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  Are you choosing them because you genuinely value health and vitality and longevity?
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  Or are you choosing them because you think you're supposed to because everybody
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  else is, because it feels like what a responsible adult human being would do.
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  Because I promise you that distinction changes everything.
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  When I was chasing a hundred pushups, I wasn't doing it because fitness mattered
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  to me in a deep way at that time.
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  I realized now in hindsight, the reason pushups began as this socially compliant
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  goal was number one, the Mr. Johnson story that I told you about.
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  And then because in that time of my life, I walked by enough muscle magazines
• 13:59
  at local convenience stores that I decided, oh, I just want these gigantic arms
• 14:03
  because I was a teenage boy.
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  And I thought that that would lead to me having to find a very polite way to
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  turn down the thousands of girls who would be vying for my attention and affection
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  hanging off the aforementioned giant arms.
• 14:14
  And I was a little bit of a comic book reader back then. And there were typically
• 14:16
  these ads in the back of those, first of all, for x-ray glasses that I never
• 14:20
  saved up the money for, which I guess in hindsight, I'm probably better for.
• 14:25
  They also had these ads that showed a scrawny kid getting sand kicked all over
• 14:29
  him at the beach and then coming back the next summer with girls,
• 14:32
  here we go again, hanging from his ginormous arms and he's kicking sand now in the bully's face.
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  Now, who cares that I lived in Utah and my parents' vacations consisted of camping
• 14:40
  in the woods and I would not be on a beach anytime soon. That didn't matter.
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  That image was planted. Mr. Johnson and how cool that was and these muscle magazines
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  and I don't want to get sand kicked in my face if I ever do happen upon a beach.
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  So that goal was set not by me, but by the culture around me.
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  That was a socially compliant goal.
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  Dr. Hayes says that when we're operating from socially compliant goals,
• 15:02
  we end up in a pattern called experiential avoidance.
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  Experiential avoidance is this process where if we don't want to do the thing
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  that we think we're supposed to do already, then we are going to avoid this
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  by a number of different experiences.
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  There are so many things that we can use for experiential avoidance rather than
• 15:19
  do the thing that we already don't want to do that we think that we're supposed to.
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  You can see how the game starts getting, we run from or we attempt to control
• 15:25
  all of our personal experiences and our thoughts and our feelings and our sensations.
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  And we do it because our mind tells us this is an easy way to avoid pain.
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  The pain of not wanting to do the thing that we think that we're supposed to.
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  And then we kick this can down the road because we think, well.
• 15:40
  Be able to feel free only when we feel good. So I want to do these things that
• 15:44
  make me feel better before I have to do this thing that I know that I'm supposed to do.
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  But avoidance typically only compounds our difficulties and it restricts our
• 15:51
  capacity to even feel at all or to be present in that moment.
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  Let's talk about what experiential avoidance actually looks like in real life,
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  because if I already truly didn't want to do the goal because it's socially
• 16:01
  compliant, let's give a better example, organizing my room or starting some
• 16:05
  side business or learning a foreign language.
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  That was one that I had put on my bingo card every year.
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  I used to travel to Japan for business a lot, so I was going to learn Japanese.
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  But if I really don't want to organize my room, start a side business or learn
• 16:17
  Japanese, then I am going to turn to experiential avoidance like a champ.
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  I'm going to watch one more video on YouTube.
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  I'm going to do one more episode of whatever series has my current attention
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  on Netflix, or I'm going to play another game, or I'm going to scroll through
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  social media just a few more minutes, or I'm going to clean out my email inbox
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  because, hey, that feels like I'm doing something productive, right?
• 16:34
  I'm going to reorganize my desktop files. I've done that a time or a hundred on my computer.
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  I'm going to research the perfect productivity system instead of actually doing
• 16:43
  the productivity thing.
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  And there are so many things to use for experiential avoidance these days that
• 16:48
  you darn well better find out what matters to you or doesn't before you start
• 16:52
  basing your confidence and your self-worth on not doing the thing that you already
• 16:57
  don't want to do that you think you're supposed to do.
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  Because here's what I think happens. You tell yourself, okay,
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  I'm going to organize my room. You really don't want to, but you think you should.
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  So you sit down to start and immediately your brain says, you know what?
• 17:07
  I'm just going to check my phone first. And then a couple hours later,
• 17:09
  you haven't organized anything.
• 17:11
  Now you feel worse because not only is your room still messy,
• 17:13
  but you also feel like a failure for not doing the thing that you said that
• 17:16
  you were going to do that you think that you're supposed to do that you set
• 17:18
  the goal of doing. But the problem wasn't discipline.
• 17:21
  The problem was that you were trying to force yourself to do something that
• 17:23
  you didn't actually care about and your brain knew it.
• 17:26
  It did what brains do. It found literally anything else to focus on to avoid
• 17:30
  the discomfort of doing something that you felt was meaningless.
• 17:33
  I heard a quote recently, the author is unknown that said, you can't add more
• 17:37
  time to life, but you can certainly add more life to your time.
• 17:41
  That one hit me. That one gave me all the feelings because when you're spending
• 17:44
  your time on things that don't matter to you,
• 17:47
  when you're organizing your room because you think you should or chasing goals
• 17:50
  because they sound impressive or scrolling through TikTok to avoid the discomfort
• 17:53
  of admitting that you don't care about the thing that you said that you would
• 17:55
  do, you're not adding life to your time.
• 17:57
  You're burning time. But when you're doing something that actually aligns with
• 18:00
  the value, when you're reading because you genuinely love learning or knowledge,
• 18:04
  or you're moving your body because you value vitality or having a hard conversation
• 18:07
  because you value honesty, that's adding life to your time.
• 18:11
  That's the difference between getting 10 more rounds of Candy Crush under your
• 18:14
  belt or building a life that feels more like your own.
• 18:17
  One is experiential avoidance. The other is living.
• 18:20
  So, if I go back to the push-up example, when I missed a day or I didn't complete
• 18:23
  all the sets that the program told me, I used to feel bad.
• 18:26
  I felt like I was failing. I felt lazy and undisciplined and weak.
• 18:29
  And what did I do with those feelings? Well, I avoided them.
• 18:32
  I told myself, yeah, no, but I'll start fresh tomorrow. Rather than say,
• 18:35
  is this even something I want to do?
• 18:37
  Or we'll start next month. I wasn't moving toward fitness.
• 18:40
  I was moving away from the discomfort of feeling like I wasn't good enough or
• 18:43
  I didn't know what I was doing. And here's the trap that the more I avoided
• 18:47
  those uncomfortable feelings, the more power that they had.
• 18:50
  And the more that I reinforced the idea that I couldn't handle them,
• 18:55
  that I needed to wait for these perfect conditions, the perfect Monday,
• 18:59
  the perfect month, the perfect motivation before I could take action.
• 19:02
  This is what Hayes means when he talks about the anxiety trap.
• 19:05
  He also refers to it as the monkey trap. Because in some parts of Africa,
• 19:08
  people drill these small holes and gourds. They fill them with banana chips
• 19:12
  and they tie them to trees.
• 19:13
  And the holes are just big enough for a monkey to insert its hand.
• 19:16
  But when it grabs the banana chip, the fist is too big to pull his hand out.
• 19:20
  And the monkey is trapped. Now, you would think that the monkey would just let
• 19:23
  go of the chip, but it doesn't. It hoots and it hollers and it struggles and
• 19:26
  it fights all the while clinging to the chip.
• 19:28
  That was me with my push-up goal. I was clinging to this prize of being someone
• 19:31
  who could do 100 push-ups. Somebody disciplined, somebody fit, somebody impressive.
• 19:35
  And in clinging to that prize, I was trapped.
• 19:38
  It was only when I let go, when I stopped chasing the goal, and I started connecting
• 19:43
  to the value that everything changed.
• 19:45
  Stephen Hayes writes, It was only when I abandoned the attempt to control my
• 19:49
  anxiety that I began discovering how to heal.
• 19:52
  It was only when I gave up on that false vision, when I dropped that mental
• 19:55
  banana chip, that my mind was free. It was only when I gave up on that false vision,
• 19:58
  And I really think that's what happened for me with push-ups.
• 20:00
  When I stopped trying to control the outcome, when I stopped avoiding the discomfort
• 20:04
  of not being perfect, I was just free to do push-ups.
• 20:07
  Some days 10, some days 50, some days none.
• 20:09
  And then paradoxically, the less I fought with my feelings about it,
• 20:14
  the more consistent I became because I wasn't running from the discomfort anymore.
• 20:17
  I was moving towards something that mattered.
• 20:19
  And this connects to something I think is really important about why a lot of
• 20:23
  New Year's resolutions don't succeed. lead. We tend to focus on what researchers
• 20:27
  call lag measures instead of lead measures. A lag measure is the outcome.
• 20:31
  It's the thing that you want to happen. But here's the key though,
• 20:34
  you don't always have control over the lag measures.
• 20:37
  There are a thousand variables outside of your control that could impact whether
• 20:40
  or not that outcome happens. Now, the lead measure, that's the action. That is what you do.
• 20:44
  And you have much more control over that.
• 20:47
  So what this might look like in practice, a lag measure would be lose 15 pounds,
• 20:51
  a lead measure, eat vegetables with every meal, move your body for 20 minutes daily.
• 20:55
  A lag measure is I'm going to read 12 books this year. A lead measure,
• 20:58
  I'm going to read for 15 minutes every morning before checking my phone.
• 21:01
  Or maybe even better, I'm going to find authors and topics that I enjoy reading
• 21:05
  or learning about to set myself up to actually want to read.
• 21:07
  A lag measure is run a marathon.
• 21:10
  A lead measure is to start movement. Run three times a week.
• 21:14
  Gradually increase my distance. Find a running group. Talk to a friend who's run marathons before.
• 21:17
  A lag measure might be saving 10 grand. And then a lead measure is start transferring
• 21:22
  money into savings every paycheck or pack a lunch three out of five days a week.
• 21:26
  A lag measure is have a better marriage.
• 21:29
  And then a lead measure is try to have one meaningful conversation with your
• 21:32
  spouse at least a couple of times a week or practice my beloved four pillars
• 21:35
  of a connected conversation out in the wild.
• 21:38
  A lag measure might be I'm going to grow my business to six figures.
• 21:41
  But a lead measure is reach out to potential clients each week or create one
• 21:44
  piece of content daily or sit down and write out a pros and cons list about
• 21:47
  your job. Do you enjoy what you do?
• 21:49
  Lag measure, learn to speak Japanese. I can't even remember how to say,
• 21:53
  Nihongo suko shi wakare masu.
• 21:55
  I think that's something about Japanese. The lead measure, practice with a language
• 21:59
  app for 10 minutes every day.
• 22:00
  Watch a Japanese language show with subtitles or be honest with myself.
• 22:05
  What do I want to learn Japanese for?
• 22:09
  A lag measure, I'm going to get promoted this year at work. Lead measure.
• 22:13
  Start taking on one stretch assignment per quarter or have monthly check-ins
• 22:16
  with your manager about your development.
• 22:18
  Be proactive about where you are at work, what you're doing.
• 22:21
  A lag measure, and I hear this one often, people want more friends.
• 22:24
  They want to expand their social circle. But the lead measure would be saying
• 22:27
  yes to a social invitation, maybe each week, join a group or a class that meets
• 22:31
  regularly, find a community of people that like the same things you do.
• 22:36
  Be afraid to go do something once a week and then do it anyway.
• 22:38
  So do you see the pattern? The lag measure is the outcome and outcomes are affected
• 22:43
  by the things you can't control.
• 22:45
  Your metabolism, your genetics, the economy, other people's decisions,
• 22:48
  unexpected life events.
• 22:50
  But the lead measure, that's what you do every day. I remember talking with
• 22:53
  a client once and her goal was she was going over to Hawaii and she was going
• 22:58
  to skydive and that was her life's ambition and she had gotten herself in a
• 23:01
  good mental space to do that.
• 23:02
  And then she got there and she had a small window that she was going to be able
• 23:06
  to do this and the weather was horrific and no one could skydive.
• 23:10
  And she came back and she was sad and was kind of beating herself up,
• 23:13
  but she did enough of the lead measures to...
• 23:16
  She did things that were of value and the lag measure of actually going skydiving
• 23:20
  didn't happen. And that was okay.
• 23:22
  When you focus on the lead measures, when you consistently take the actions
• 23:25
  that align with your values, the lag measures often take care of themselves.
• 23:29
  Not always and not perfectly, but I think often enough. And there's a decent chance.
• 23:32
  And I think this is what is so cool about ACT is understanding that the lag
• 23:38
  measure may not even be what you anticipate.
• 23:40
  I once worked with a client who started reading regularly, truly for the first
• 23:43
  time in his life, which led him to think, man, I actually could write better
• 23:46
  than some of the things that I'm reading.
• 23:48
  And now that client is world-renowned author, Stephen King. Not really,
• 23:51
  not at all, actually. I'm kidding.
• 23:53
  I don't know if he kept writing or not, but it was such a fascinating thing
• 23:56
  that he became a very good writer over the time that we worked together.
• 23:59
  And he began journaling every day. And that started because he wanted to read.
• 24:03
  And even when and if the lead measures don't necessarily result in the lag measure
• 24:07
  that you intended, it can still be such a growth opportunity.
• 24:10
  I did work with someone once who, when training for their first marathon,
• 24:13
  discovered that any training run longer than 10 miles resulted in some serious
• 24:17
  pain in a hamstring, which then led her to getting the hamstring check,
• 24:20
  which eventually led her down a larger fitness and physical therapy path.
• 24:23
  And I can report that we're years down the road now.
• 24:27
  And that lead measure didn't result in her original lag measure of running a marathon,
• 24:31
  but it did lead her to a career and eventually a life partner that she met in
• 24:36
  that new space that slowly became more of her identity because this becomes
• 24:40
  so much more about the journey than the result.
• 24:42
  When I moved out of the computer industry, quite frankly, I tried to be a financial
• 24:47
  planner, a pharmaceutical sales rep.
• 24:49
  I still have my rejection letter and I made it a few rounds through interviewing
• 24:53
  with Apple for a marketing position.
• 24:55
  And I also went back to school because there was a chance that maybe I could
• 24:59
  become a therapist. Yeah.
• 25:01
  And I love the fact that I didn't know. I just knew that I needed to try to
• 25:05
  figure things out or figure myself out.
• 25:07
  When you start figuring out what matters to you, it becomes so much more about
• 25:10
  the proverbial journey than the result because you learn what matters to you.
• 25:15
  You learn to take action in a direction and over time, trust that you're going to figure it out.
• 25:19
  Because while expectations and goals and resolutions, I think are wonderful
• 25:22
  things, I really think that they need to be held somewhat loosely,
• 25:25
  not gripped to the point that they're going to break.
• 25:28
  Their directions to start heading toward. But when we have it so deeply ingrained
• 25:32
  that I need to say that I am going to do this thing that I possibly never done
• 25:36
  before, and then I need to hold myself to doing it at all costs or else I'm
• 25:40
  going to deem myself a failure and doggone it,
• 25:42
  I better enjoy it when I get there too, because I don't want to admit to myself
• 25:45
  that I did all this stuff that I didn't want to actually do.
• 25:48
  Maybe I was doing for other people, probably to get people to tell me how awesome
• 25:52
  I am really only to get here. And now it's not all that it's cracked up to be.
• 25:56
  Think about that. Slow that down. Break down that game film.
• 25:59
  You thought doing something would make you happy or get you validation.
• 26:02
  I think about clients that I'm working with now, one who did say that they wanted
• 26:05
  to write screenplays and they finally were able to clear off all the time in the world.
• 26:09
  And now that they're writing them, they realize, actually, this is not what I thought it would be.
• 26:14
  I'm very proud of them for recognizing that this thing that they had held in
• 26:19
  such high regard, and they had told themselves, if only I had time to do that, then I would be happy.
• 26:23
  Then we figured out how to find that time. And now they're realizing,
• 26:27
  oh, wow, I'm glad that I did get to see that this wasn't the thing that I thought it would always be.
• 26:32
  I want to coin this term so bad when somebody says that they want to do something.
• 26:37
  Don't you be the one that says, I don't think that's a good idea.
• 26:40
  No, don't you be the one that knocks the wind out of their sails.
• 26:43
  Let life do it if it's going to do it. I have another client that went back
• 26:46
  to school and got an advanced degree, we'll say, for protecting the confidentiality of this person.
• 26:51
  I won't tell you in what field, but now that they got that degree,
• 26:55
  they realized that it isn't everything that they thought it would be.
• 26:59
  This person is able to now acknowledge the fact that this was not a waste because
• 27:02
  had they not gone down this path, they would not have known themselves as well as they do now.
• 27:07
  And they would have still clung to this idea that if only I could have done
• 27:10
  this thing, I'm thinking of some movie with the, it was, if only I could have
• 27:15
  been a farmer, then I would be happy.
• 27:17
  Well, if that's the case, go plant some things, farm some things and figure
• 27:21
  out, is that the thing that I really like?
• 27:23
  Before I go any further, I want to make a crucial distinction that I think trips up almost everybody.
• 27:28
  Let's talk about values. Values versus a goal because values are not goals.
• 27:32
  And this is where most, I think, New Year's resolutions tend to fall apart because we confuse the two.
• 27:36
  You think about it, we spend more time researching which Netflix show to watch,
• 27:40
  which is something I did a couple of nights ago, than trying to really understand
• 27:43
  the internal compass that guides my biggest decisions in life.
• 27:46
  But that compass affects everything from how you handle conflict to what hills
• 27:50
  you're willing to die on.
• 27:51
  Your values aren't just these lofty concepts, these ethereal things that we
• 27:55
  continually are in search of, they're the beating heart of how you show up in
• 27:59
  your life every single day.
• 28:00
  Your values are basically your life's GPS system. They're not the destinations themselves.
• 28:05
  Those are goals, but rather the internal navigation system that helps you determine
• 28:09
  what roads are actually worth traveling.
• 28:11
  And most of us have never actually sat down to program this internal GPS.
• 28:14
  We're just driving around sometimes bewildered or confused about why we keep
• 28:18
  ending up in places that don't feel right or worse.
• 28:20
  We're constantly asking others to plug in the coordinates for us,
• 28:23
  essentially saying, hey, will you tell me where I should go and who I should be?
• 28:26
  It's no wonder that we feel lost a lot of times.
• 28:28
  Let me clarify this with some hopefully concrete examples.
• 28:31
  Goals are checkboxes on your life to-do list. Get married, buy a house,
• 28:35
  have kids, maybe make six figures, lose 15 pounds, read 12 books.
• 28:38
  Those are all fine things to pursue. Once you achieve them, now what?
• 28:42
  It's part of the old, I'll be happy when. Oh, I'll be happy when I get married
• 28:45
  or I'll be happy when we finally have a house.
• 28:47
  But then you get there and it's like, okay, not bad. But apparently that wasn't the secret to life.
• 28:51
  You check the box and you look around and say, okay, now what?
• 28:54
  I thought I would feel a whole lot different than I do now.
• 28:57
  Values, on the other hand, they are this continuous way that you want to show
• 28:59
  up in the world. They are how you want to be, not what you want to have.
• 29:04
  Values are never finished. You don't complete them and move on. They're ongoing.
• 29:08
  Instead of the goal, get married, the value, I want to have a connection.
• 29:11
  I want to be in a partnership. I want intimacy, verbal, emotional,
• 29:15
  cognitive, intellectual.
• 29:16
  A goal might be lose 15 pounds, but the value, health, vitality,
• 29:20
  self-care, good eating.
• 29:21
  A goal might be read 12 books, but a value might be knowledge,
• 29:25
  learning, growth, curiosity.
• 29:27
  A goal might be to make six figures, but the value behind that is maybe financial
• 29:31
  security or providing for the family or financial freedom.
• 29:34
  A goal might be running a marathon, but a value might be challenge or discipline
• 29:37
  or physical strength or connection through joining a running group.
• 29:41
  Hopefully you can see the difference. The goal is more like an event.
• 29:43
  It's a moment in time. There's a finish line there and they're great.
• 29:46
  The value is the direction. The value is the way of being. It's a compass heading.
• 29:50
  And I think most of us are walking around then with values that we've never consciously chosen.
• 29:54
  We've picked them up like lint on a sweater or from our families,
• 29:56
  friends, churches, schools, social media, the one teacher who made a throwaway
• 30:00
  comment in third grade that we've never forgotten.
• 30:02
  So we set goals based on values that we don't actually hold,
• 30:06
  that we don't actually clarify. And then we wonder why we can't stick with them.
• 30:08
  So remember, you're not broken if you haven't figured this out yet.
• 30:11
  You're a normal human being. A lot of people, I don't think,
• 30:13
  truly figure out their core values.
• 30:16
  At all. The good news is though, once you start clarifying your values,
• 30:19
  then the decisions become a little more clear and motivation becomes a bit stronger
• 30:22
  in that sense of something's missing, tends to fade, and it is never too late
• 30:28
  to recalibrate this GPS.
• 30:29
  So when you're thinking about your new year's resolutions this year,
• 30:31
  don't start with the goal.
• 30:33
  Let's start looking at the value. Ask yourself, what do I really care about?
• 30:36
  What kind of person do I want to be? What direction do I want my life to move in?
• 30:39
  And then let the goals or these lead measures kind of flow naturally from that.
• 30:43
  Because when you're clear on your values, the goals become a little more obvious.
• 30:47
  And more importantly, the motivation to pursue them becomes more sustainable.
• 30:50
  I think back to the story often of, as I have worked on clarifying my own values,
• 30:55
  I have a strong value of fitness.
• 30:57
  I have a strong value of curiosity, genuine curiosity.
• 31:00
  I want to know things and knowledge and adventure and authenticity.
• 31:06
  And that can sound like something that people will often say, well, I have that too.
• 31:10
  But if you have a value of authenticity, now what follows, I want to introduce you to the yeah, buts.
• 31:16
  If I have a value of authenticity and somebody asked me my opinion on something
• 31:19
  and I want to be authentic, then I need to express my opinion.
• 31:23
  Now the yeah, but is yeah, but they might not like that opinion or yeah,
• 31:26
  but they may think differently of me.
• 31:28
  The reason I like framing this with the yeah, buts is because,
• 31:31
  oh yeah, they might, but that's not a productive thought toward my value of
• 31:36
  authenticity. So I'm not even arguing that.
• 31:38
  When people now ask me my opinion about anything, whether it's political or
• 31:43
  religious or therapeutic, I have discovered that I feel alive when I am in alignment
• 31:48
  with my values, my core value of authenticity.
• 31:51
  So I will share my opinion and I have to accept the fact that.
• 31:55
  The person I am interacting with may not appreciate the things that I'm saying
• 32:00
  because they most likely have thought of me in a certain way,
• 32:03
  or, oh, I always thought you thought this, or from the content you've created,
• 32:07
  I have made it mean this, which I am so grateful for. I want to hear all of that.
• 32:11
  I'll give you another example, summer league for the NBA in Las Vegas.
• 32:15
  Some of my most fun times are going with my son, Jake, and my son-in-law,
• 32:19
  Mitch, and we go and we golf and we watch lots of basketball.
• 32:23
  And one year, we got some pretty decent seats and I'm exploring my values and
• 32:27
  I'm figuring all this out.
• 32:28
  And we're on maybe the third game of four in a row.
• 32:31
  I got my guys here. We played golf that morning. This should be the most amazing thing ever.
• 32:36
  And I'm noticing that I'm kind of feeling bored and I'm thinking,
• 32:41
  okay, I should be more excited.
• 32:42
  And as I started to notice that I'm feeling a bit down, this is where your values
• 32:47
  become so important because I don't tell myself what's wrong with me.
• 32:51
  And I don't tell myself I need to stop thinking what I'm thinking because I
• 32:55
  try to stop thinking about a white polar bear right now. There it is right there in our mind.
• 32:59
  You turn toward your value. I have a value of curiosity like nobody's business.
• 33:04
  So I immediately pull out my phone and I start looking up NBA players that are
• 33:08
  trying to make these rosters at the NBA Summer League.
• 33:11
  And I start learning about one, I believe his name is Luka Garza who is still
• 33:15
  playing in the NBA now and I find that he has a I believe it was a nine pound.
• 33:21
  Tumor on his spleen and that's a funny thing now about memory because I was
• 33:25
  very confident about what I saw at the time and all of a sudden I'm talking
• 33:28
  to Mitch and Jake about that or there was another guy who his name was Timu.
• 33:34
  Like the app where you buy things from. But he was, I believe,
• 33:38
  a former Finnish dunk champion who had a very, very strong tan and bleach blonde hair.
• 33:43
  And so, I looked at that guy and all of a sudden I'm reading about he's won
• 33:46
  these dunk contests all over Europe.
• 33:48
  And so, I'm talking about these things. I'm being genuinely curious.
• 33:52
  That's a value of mine. And now we're having a conversation.
• 33:55
  Now, I did not stop thinking anything. I didn't beat myself up,
• 33:59
  but I turned to a value of curiosity and I took action on this value.
• 34:03
  And the yeah, but might've even been, but yeah, but you aren't paying attention
• 34:06
  to the game. It's like, totally.
• 34:07
  That's not even a productive thought though, if I'm really trying to turn to this value.
• 34:11
  And I like giving the example of honesty here because a lot of people are going
• 34:16
  to say that honesty is a core value and that can be an amazing thing.
• 34:20
  I used to do some volunteer check-in work with a lady in my neighborhood named Sister Warner.
• 34:28
  She was an older lady. She was from the South, as I was early in my life,
• 34:33
  being born in Tennessee, and she could make biscuits and gravy.
• 34:36
  And I would go over to her house once a month, early in the morning,
• 34:40
  and she would make me biscuits and gravy before I would go to work.
• 34:43
  And I loved being able to serve Sister Warner in that way.
• 34:47
  But the older that she got, and the more her memory started to fade,
• 34:51
  the more salt she tended to put in the biscuits and gravy. And there were mornings
• 34:55
  that I would go there and she would say, oh, it's all ready for you.
• 34:58
  And I would take a bite. And I think of a cartoon where my mouth would pucker
• 35:03
  up so much that my face would cave in on itself.
• 35:08
  And she would say, how is it? And I would say, it is amazing.
• 35:12
  Because in that moment, I valued compassion more than I valued honesty.
• 35:16
  So, when I had this value of compassion, then the yeah buts are,
• 35:20
  yeah, but you're not being honest. Like, totally.
• 35:22
  Oh, I am not. That's not a productive thought toward my value of compassion
• 35:25
  in this moment. Now, if I had a core value of honesty, and that's okay.
• 35:28
  I know people that do have a very strong core value of honesty.
• 35:31
  Then the yeah but is, well, yeah, but you're going to hurt this lady's feelings.
• 35:34
  And then the same thing would be, oh, totally.
• 35:37
  But I'm not even arguing that. That's not a productive thought toward my value of honesty.
• 35:41
  So for me, it became a adventure, which is a core value of mine in and of itself,
• 35:47
  as I would enter each day ready to see, is this a major salt day or a minor salt day?
• 35:53
  And you can reach out to me through my website, contact at TonyOverBay.com.
• 35:57
  And I do have a values worksheet that I'll be happy to send you because I think
• 36:02
  one of the first steps to try to figure out is what are my core values?
• 36:07
  And I can't say this enough. When you start to recognize that it's okay to have
• 36:13
  different values than your parents or your community or your church or your
• 36:16
  friends or the things that, again, you think that you're supposed to value.
• 36:21
  Almost unlocks a door because then people will find two, three,
• 36:25
  four core values, and then they start to live by them, but they still hang on to those very rigidly.
• 36:30
  You didn't even really know what your values were just a little earlier,
• 36:33
  and now you've got these three or four core values.
• 36:36
  So in reality, start test driving them, and you may find, oh,
• 36:40
  actually, this isn't something that I value as much as I thought I would,
• 36:43
  even though now I'm allowed to pick my own values.
• 36:47
  And there's a pretty funny, little bit cheesy exercise to figure out your values in a very quick way.
• 36:53
  Now I highly recommend you can use an AI assistant, a chat GPT,
• 36:58
  a Claude, a perplexity, something like that, or reach out to me.
• 37:02
  I'll give you my values worksheet, or think about what you would want somebody
• 37:07
  to say at your funeral or not quite on your tombstone, but what they would write in your obituary.
• 37:13
  Again, might sound a little bit morbid, but he was a very curious person who
• 37:17
  was always there for others and was running with his grandkids right up until the day that he passed.
• 37:23
  So you can see there's some values there of curiosity or knowledge or adventure
• 37:28
  or fitness, and that might just give you a start.
• 37:31
  I did a training once about values and I loved the ACT clinician who gave the
• 37:37
  training, although I cannot remember their name, but she said that when a client will often say,
• 37:43
  okay, now I know I need to figure out my values, but I don't even know what my values are.
• 37:47
  That is still just a story that their brain is hooked to that keeps them from
• 37:53
  going out and figuring out their values.
• 37:55
  And she said that you can literally tell your client, okay, that's a,
• 37:59
  we're not even arguing if that's true or false. You haven't picked your values yet.
• 38:03
  So just go outside and start interacting with the world and walk by a flower
• 38:08
  and smell it. and you might realize that you like it or you don't.
• 38:12
  And this is why I think it's so important to do things because you're going
• 38:17
  to learn more about yourself as you do things and you're not doing them wrong.
• 38:21
  Every moment that you're interacting with the world, with a person,
• 38:25
  with a burrito, with a song, with a podcast is the first time that you've ever been you in that moment.
• 38:30
  And it's going to bring up some things, some questions, some thoughts, some feelings.
• 38:33
  And that is a wonderful you thing, something for you to take in and do a little
• 38:40
  self-confrontation and think, why does this bring up feelings or emotions?
• 38:44
  Why does this motivate me?
• 38:45
  Why does this not? Why do I want to turn this off now? Why do I want to listen
• 38:50
  to more of this person's stuff?
• 38:51
  So let's move on. This next part is fascinating.
• 38:54
  Perceived value versus perceived capability. And the first time I heard about
• 38:58
  this concept was with my friend Neil Hooper,
• 39:01
  who I brought on and I've rerun that podcast episode several times around this
• 39:06
  time of year because Neil is a big goals person.
• 39:10
  And he works with a lot of high achieving professionals.
• 39:15
  And he brought me into one of his courses to add the therapist flavor to,
• 39:21
  to the work that he was doing.
• 39:23
  And it was one of the most fun times that I've had of working with Neil.
• 39:27
  So Neil came on my podcast and he talked about goal setting.
• 39:31
  And I threw this act. I want to say at the time, it probably felt a little bit
• 39:34
  like a wet blanket over some of the things that he was talking about,
• 39:37
  but boy, we came to some powerful resolutions,
• 39:40
  but he brought some really interesting things to that episode.
• 39:43
  And I'll link that in the show notes because I still think it's one of the classic
• 39:46
  virtual couch episodes.
• 39:47
  But he talked about this fascinating research from Clemson University that looked
• 39:51
  at hundreds of factors to determine what actually impacts our drive toward goals.
• 39:55
  And he said they narrowed it down to two key ingredients, perceived value in
• 40:00
  the goal, and then perceived capability in achieving it.
• 40:03
  So in other words, do you actually care about this, kind of what we've been talking about?
• 40:08
  And do you actually believe that you can do it? And when either of those is
• 40:11
  missing your motivation, your drive to do it.
• 40:15
  Goes into the toilet. And this is exactly, I think, what ACT addresses.
• 40:20
  Values work is about clarifying your perceived value. And then acceptance and
• 40:24
  expansion are about addressing your perceived capability.
• 40:27
  So let me give you some examples of what this looks like when one or both of
• 40:30
  these ingredients is missing. High perceived value, but low perceived capability.
• 40:34
  That will lead to discouragement. So if somebody says, I want to lose 50 pounds,
• 40:38
  and they genuinely want it, maybe their doctors told them their health's at risk.
• 40:42
  They now have of grandkids. I know this one now also well, having an actual
• 40:46
  grandkid that you now all of a sudden want to be around and see this little
• 40:50
  guy grow up and do all kinds of cool things because he's awesome.
• 40:53
  Or maybe they just want to feel comfortable in their own skin again. So the value is there.
• 40:57
  There's a reason why they want to do this that matters to them.
• 41:00
  They care deeply, but then they think about what that actually requires,
• 41:03
  changing their entire relationship with food, cooking differently,
• 41:06
  exercising when they haven't moved their body in years.
• 41:08
  Maybe they've tried and failed before multiple times and their brain says,
• 41:11
  yeah, but we've never been able to do this. Why would this time be different?
• 41:14
  So that's a low perceived capability.
• 41:16
  So when you have the high value, but low capability, again, you'll end up feeling pretty discouraged.
• 41:21
  You may want something desperately, but if you don't believe that you can get
• 41:25
  it, that's a pretty painful place to live.
• 41:28
  And this is where people often give up before they even start.
• 41:30
  I'll just wait until I'm more motivated or I'll start when things calm down at work or next year.
• 41:36
  Because the discouragement feels like too heavy of a load to carry.
• 41:41
  So I guess that's another reason why they need to go to the gym.
• 41:44
  Old man pun intended there.
• 41:46
  So now flip that low perceived value, but high perceived capability that can lead to disengagement.
• 41:53
  So let's say you work in corporate America. I've actually had this example a
• 41:56
  couple of times this year. So it's really fascinating to work with people that
• 41:59
  are struggling with this.
• 42:00
  So your boss hands you some sort of new thing, a new initiative.
• 42:04
  Maybe they say you need to increase our social media engagement by 30% this
• 42:08
  quarter. There's a metric there.
• 42:09
  And the thing is, you know how to do it. You've got the skills.
• 42:12
  You've done this before.
• 42:13
  You also know that this is just another metric that this executive cares about
• 42:17
  so they can look good on their quarterly report.
• 42:19
  And you don't even really care so much about maybe the product that your company makes.
• 42:24
  So there's not a lot in that for you. Now, yes, honest days work,
• 42:27
  honest days pay, those sort of things are wonderful, but we're talking about
• 42:30
  you as a human and what you truly care about. Not the cliches.
• 42:35
  So you may struggle to see how this connects to anything meaningful,
• 42:38
  because I think we really do want purpose.
• 42:41
  So the value isn't there. So that's disengagement. You're going through the
• 42:44
  motions. You could even probably accomplish the goal because you can,
• 42:47
  but you're not driven. You're just showing up.
• 42:49
  And I think this happens a lot with New Year's resolutions. Somebody says,
• 42:54
  I should go to the gym. Well, why?
• 42:56
  Because everybody says it's good for you. Okay, but do you care?
• 42:59
  Maybe I guess so. That is a low perceived value.
• 43:02
  And even if you know how to go to the gym, let's say that there's a gym in your apartment complex.
• 43:07
  Let's say that your company offers you a free membership to a very nice gym
• 43:11
  that is literally on the way to work.
• 43:12
  And they even give you time to go to the gym. So even if it's that easy,
• 43:15
  you're not going to sustain it because age from the why, the why it matters
• 43:19
  or why do I really want to do it?
• 43:21
  So then think about the classic New Year's resolution. Somebody says something
• 43:24
  like, I'm going to go to the gym five days a week. So let's now check in with
• 43:27
  both of those factors. Perceived value.
• 43:29
  Why do you care? Is it because you genuinely value health and vitality and strength?
• 43:33
  Or is it because January 1st is a day on the calendar? It is now here.
• 43:38
  And now this is what I'm supposed to say.
• 43:41
  Because if it's that one, your perceived value is pretty low.
• 43:44
  You're disengaged before you even start.
• 43:45
  Now let's look at the perceived capability. Do you actually believe you can
• 43:48
  go to the gym five days a week? Do you have childcare?
• 43:51
  Do you have the time? Can you afford it? Have you had much success sustaining
• 43:55
  that level of consistency before and something that you haven't necessarily
• 43:58
  wanted to do? If the answer is no, then it's okay to admit that your perceived
• 44:04
  capability might be a little low.
• 44:06
  And so we need to acknowledge that you're possibly setting yourself up to feel
• 44:11
  very, very discouraged.
• 44:12
  So here's what's brutal about most New Year's resolutions. They're often low on both factors.
• 44:18
  A lot of times when people are setting these, you can maybe now check in with
• 44:22
  yourself and even see that you may not actually deeply care about the goal itself.
• 44:27
  And you don't find value in it. And you don't even really believe you can do it.
• 44:30
  So you start the year discouraged and disengaged. And that is a recipe I was
• 44:34
  going to say for quitting by February, but by second week of January,
• 44:37
  and then you beat yourself up.
• 44:40
  That's why, again, I will fanboy for acceptance and commitment therapy all day,
• 44:44
  every day, because it's this different path.
• 44:46
  Instead of starting with the goal of I'm going to go to the gym five days a
• 44:49
  week, let's find a value. What do you actually care about? Maybe it's the longevity.
• 44:53
  Maybe it's being able to play with the grandkids. Maybe it's feeling strong in your own body.
• 44:56
  That's perceived value. And then instead of demanding perfection from yourself,
• 44:59
  you practice expansion. I don't feel like going to the gym today becomes a thought.
• 45:03
  You have lots of thoughts and you can notice it. You can invite it to come along for the ride.
• 45:08
  You can even sit with it a little bit, mull it over. Where do I feel that?
• 45:11
  Do I feel my chest? Do I feel it in my stomach? What's the story my brain's telling me?
• 45:15
  That builds perceived capability even before you get to the gym,
• 45:19
  not because you suddenly believe you're Superman, because you learned that you're
• 45:22
  learning how to do things, even hard things, even when your brain is fighting you.
• 45:28
  And that is the difference between a socially compliant goal that sort of fizzles
• 45:32
  out and then a value driven life that sustains you, that helps you find a purpose,
• 45:38
  a sense of purpose and sneak preview for when you've lived that way for a while.
• 45:43
  Everything is pretty much figureoutable.
• 45:46
  And you'll notice that you have a lot of thoughts and emotions and feelings.
• 45:49
  And why do I hook to certain ones and not to others?
• 45:52
  And you get really good at the yeah, buts. Whenever you want to do something,
• 45:55
  almost every time you get a little bump of dopamine, oh man, that sounds good.
• 45:59
  And then I will sit back and say, all right, welcome aboard boys,
• 46:03
  meaning the yeah, buts, what do you got for me?
• 46:05
  And I can even acknowledge that that's a good point.
• 46:08
  Is just a story that you're telling me. And okay, I will acknowledge this other
• 46:13
  yeah, but over here, that's probably even correct.
• 46:16
  Jump on board. Let's go see if we can figure this thing out.
• 46:18
  So let me talk about how this shows up in therapy and why I moved from being
• 46:22
  a cognitive behavioral therapist to becoming an unapologetic act fanboy,
• 46:26
  which is I think the third use
• 46:27
  of the phrase fanboy, the word actually the fourth now in this episode.
• 46:32
  I started my career as a cognitive behavioral therapist. I was trained in CBT.
• 46:35
  I practiced CBT for close to 10 years. I saw people feel better with CBT.
• 46:39
  And I want to be so clear about this upfront.
• 46:42
  CBT absolutely has value. It's not wrong. It's not broken. And it helps a lot of people.
• 46:46
  At a very simple level, CBT starts from the idea that our thoughts influence
• 46:51
  our emotions and our emotions influence our behaviors.
• 46:53
  So if we're feeling bad or acting in ways that we don't like,
• 46:56
  the work often focuses on identifying unhelpful or distorted thoughts and then
• 47:00
  learning how to challenge them or reframe them.
• 47:02
  And again, to be fair, it can work, especially in the short term.
• 47:05
  Let me give you a really common example.
• 47:07
  Somebody comes into therapy upset because their girlfriend hasn't texted them back all day.
• 47:10
  Now, as a CBT therapist, I might say, okay, what's the automatic thought that
• 47:13
  you're having? And they might say, well, she obviously doesn't like me.
• 47:16
  We would label that as an automatic negative thought or an ant,
• 47:20
  A-N-T, automatic negative thought.
• 47:22
  And we're going to stomp out those ants, or we're going to call it your stinking thinking.
• 47:25
  And then we're going to challenge it. Hey, what's the evidence for that?
• 47:28
  Or what are some other possible explanations?
• 47:30
  And because the client, I think, here's where I'm inserting a lot of my opinion.
• 47:33
  I think that the client wants to be good at therapy. They want the validation
• 47:37
  of the therapist and I want to feel like a good therapist.
• 47:40
  So they might say things like, maybe she fell asleep. Maybe she lost her phone. I will validate that.
• 47:44
  I will validate the heck out of that and they will feel better and I will feel
• 47:48
  helpful and they will leave calmer than when they came in and I will pat myself
• 47:51
  on the back and then I will go out to the waiting room and bring the next client in and repeat.
• 47:56
  And again, that's not nothing. That absolutely matters.
• 48:01
  But then something might happen later that same day. So she still hasn't texted back.
• 48:06
  Suddenly to the client, the thought pops right back up and he says,
• 48:10
  no, it isn't that she doesn't have her phone. She genuinely doesn't like me.
• 48:15
  Only now there's a second layer. Okay. Why am I still thinking this?
• 48:18
  I should be better at this by now. I just went to therapy.
• 48:20
  I just paid a lot of money. He comes back the next week and we do it again and again and again.
• 48:24
  And over time, as I sat with people longer, not just for one session,
• 48:27
  but across several weeks, maybe even months, started noticing a bit of a pattern.
• 48:31
  Not that CBT wasn't necessarily working, but for many people,
• 48:35
  the work quietly shifted from living their lives to managing their minds.
• 48:39
  They became very good at spotting distorted thoughts, but then they became very
• 48:43
  frustrated that those thoughts didn't stop showing up.
• 48:46
  At one point, I was keeping little tally marks in my notes about how often people
• 48:50
  were saying, I know I should not think this.
• 48:53
  What is wrong with me? I keep thinking this. And thank
• 48:56
  goodness I was exploring acceptance and commitment therapy at
• 48:59
  that time because people can really have
• 49:02
  this internal negative dialogue which yeah those are your automatic negative
• 49:06
  thoughts but let's talk about why i think it's okay to acknowledge that they're
• 49:11
  there and to not beat yourself up and to not think you're doing something wrong
• 49:15
  and if i'm gonna go find my soapbox in my office here for a second,
• 49:20
  this is where i do i do believe that cbt has such a wonderful place in the mental health world.
• 49:27
  And I also am fairly confident that a lot of motivational speakers and life
• 49:31
  coaches and most therapists are trained in cognitive behavioral therapy right out of the gate,
• 49:37
  out of school or through their coaching certifications or when someone wants
• 49:41
  to become a public speaker.
• 49:42
  Because you can find a tremendous amount of video out there where you have some
• 49:48
  cool images and some nice music, maybe a bald eagle flying by and a mountain and the rushing water.
• 49:55
  And then there's these motivational words today.
• 49:58
  Today's the day first day the
• 49:59
  rest of your life Maybe a nice little guitar riff going in the background,
• 50:03
  And you are going to grab the bull by the horns and you're going to just show
• 50:06
  up and you're going to just take charge of your life And take charge of this
• 50:09
  day and it feels so good and you just are going to do it Then you go outside and you had a flat tire.
• 50:15
  No problem That that's an automatic negative thought that the universe is conspiring
• 50:20
  against me I'm, just gonna gonna pump this thing up and that you might even
• 50:23
  do it Now you're running a little late to work and then you miss a couple of
• 50:27
  lights and then starting to get down on yourself.
• 50:30
  And now all of a sudden there's traffic because you started a little bit later
• 50:33
  than you normally do. Now you're stuck in traffic and now you're just like, you know what?
• 50:38
  This sucks. And I can't even believe that I'm doing this again.
• 50:41
  And why couldn't I have just gotten up a little bit earlier?
• 50:43
  And I should have known that my tire would be flat.
• 50:45
  And then we just go down this path of beating ourselves up again.
• 50:49
  And in reality, that just happened. It's the first time that you ever were you in that day.
• 50:55
  So check that out. Had a little flat tire, started a little bit later.
• 50:58
  So you're not thinking wrong. Those are just thoughts.
• 51:01
  And so I find that often...
• 51:04
  Okay, and true confessions of the therapist. And I'm talking here about this value of authenticity.
• 51:10
  And I've got a lot of just really, I think, fun, amazing content coming in 2026
• 51:15
  around this about being my more authentic self.
• 51:18
  I get to work with some phenomenal people. I get to be a lot of therapists therapists.
• 51:24
  I have worked with motivational speakers. I've worked with a lot of life coaches
• 51:27
  where I am their therapist.
• 51:29
  And it's fascinating to work with people who will be putting out this kind of
• 51:33
  content or putting out this image who are struggling with this in their very own life.
• 51:39
  And so I worry often about this concept of projection that people are projecting out to the world.
• 51:44
  No, this is really who I am. See, look, I say these things.
• 51:47
  I can put these videos together. I can tell you to change your thoughts,
• 51:50
  change your life and stomp out those ants and don't do any more stinking thinking
• 51:54
  and choose this day that you're going to be happy.
• 51:57
  And if I put that content out, then maybe people will assume that that's the way I'm living my life.
• 52:03
  Versus acceptance of I'm having thoughts, I'm having feelings,
• 52:09
  this thing is happening.
• 52:10
  And that's where I often worry that while something like CBT is such a wonderful
• 52:16
  thing when somebody is coming into you and they have zero idea what to do and
• 52:21
  they are spiraling and they're thinking some pretty dark thoughts,
• 52:25
  then I will start from a cognitive behavioral therapy lens and say, okay,
• 52:29
  that's the wrong thought. What's the right thought?
• 52:32
  Let's just get you identifying that this is some distorted thinking.
• 52:36
  That's absolutely fine.
• 52:38
  But then we may want to quickly move into, but you're just thinking thoughts. You think a lot of them.
• 52:44
  If you allow yourself to not get stuck or caught or hooked on that thought of
• 52:48
  the, I'm a piece of garbage, there's probably another thought coming next,
• 52:52
  which might even be, I'm also thinking I need to go to the bathroom.
• 52:55
  Now I'm noticing that I'm wondering, is the latest season of Stranger Things
• 52:58
  all that is cracked up to be?
• 53:00
  Oh, but wait, I forgot. I'm also a piece of garbage. So, making space for having
• 53:05
  all the thoughts that you have, having a position of sitting back and being
• 53:09
  able to observe the thoughts is a pretty powerful place to operate from.
• 53:13
  Back to this narrative, again, not that CBT wasn't working for a lot of people,
• 53:17
  but you would watch people start trying to manage their thoughts and their minds.
• 53:23
  And they would get frustrated that they were still thinking certain things,
• 53:27
  even though they had this new tool and you can't not think something and nothing's
• 53:31
  wrong with you for thinking things because things pop up in your brain.
• 53:35
  And that's where I think my own curiosity really started to change the way that
• 53:39
  I practice because I began working with more and more people whose thoughts
• 53:41
  you start to acknowledge. They're not distortions at all.
• 53:44
  They're just there. They're learned. They're shaped by real experiences,
• 53:48
  by other people's judgments, by rejection, by humiliation, by lost opportunities, by trauma.
• 53:53
  And that's where ACT didn't just give me new tools. It changed the questions that I was asking.
• 53:58
  Now, one client in particular stands out, and I will tell the story every chance I get.
• 54:02
  He had been significantly overweight for a lot of his life, and when he lost
• 54:06
  weight, instead of feeling free, he more or less felt exposed.
• 54:09
  And he came into therapy saying, all right, I want connection with other humans,
• 54:13
  but everywhere I go, I feel like people are looking at me funny,
• 54:15
  and I think they're judging me.
• 54:16
  Now, from a traditional CBT lens, we could have worked on challenging that thought.
• 54:20
  I might have said things like, Like, what evidence do you have that people are judging you?
• 54:23
  And he tried to come up with alternative explanations. Okay,
• 54:25
  yeah, you're right. Maybe they're just curious. Maybe they're not actually looking at me.
• 54:28
  Maybe they like my outfit. Maybe he's misreading their expression.
• 54:33
  And he would leave feeling a little bit better. The anxiety would go down and
• 54:35
  we would both feel productive till later when he's back in public and somebody
• 54:39
  glances at him and the thought pops up again and he says, nope, they're judging me.
• 54:43
  And then that's where that second layer, why am I still thinking this?
• 54:46
  I should be better at this by now. I went to an ACT training while I was working with him.
• 54:51
  And it was almost like we had a before ACT and then an after ACT therapeutic experience.
• 54:58
  Because after learning acceptance and commitment therapy, then we were able to slow things down.
• 55:03
  And I was able to ask him, hey, tell me what your life had been like before
• 55:07
  the weight loss happened.
• 55:08
  And he had been heavy his entire life, even as a little kid.
• 55:12
  And then the picture changed completely.
• 55:14
  People had stared at him. People had mocked him.
• 55:18
  People had absolutely judged him openly to his face around his family.
• 55:22
  He told me a story, painful, humiliating, about an experience on an airplane
• 55:26
  that had led him to avoid flying for over a decade.
• 55:28
  So from an act lens, the question wasn't, hey, is that thought irrational?
• 55:32
  Is that an automatic negative thought?
• 55:34
  The question was, how could your brain not think this way? That is what it has felt like to be you.
• 55:39
  And that's where acceptance enters, not as a resignation, but more as realism.
• 55:45
  Acts starts by saying, you're not broken. Your mind learns something based on
• 55:49
  your real human experiences, and you're the only version of you that's ever
• 55:51
  walked the face of the earth. Here's where I love to insert my take on that.
• 55:54
  You're this unique combination of your nature and your nurture,
• 55:57
  your birth order, your DNA, your abandonment, your hopes, your dreams,
• 55:59
  your fears, your rejections.
• 56:01
  All of those things make you, you. And that is why you think and feel the way
• 56:05
  that you do. So, instead of trying to eliminate the thought for this guy,
• 56:09
  we acknowledge that, oh, that is a thought and I can even validate that makes a lot of sense.
• 56:15
  Then if he were to say, well, how do I get rid of it? Then I can confidently
• 56:18
  say, oh, that is not what we're here to do, my friend.
• 56:21
  How do we accept it? How do we make room for it? Because yeah,
• 56:24
  it's going to show up again.
• 56:25
  So we ask a different question altogether. If the thought is here, well, okay, it is.
• 56:31
  But tell me what kind of life you want to live. And for this client,
• 56:34
  the answer wasn't confidence or comfort. It was about connection with others.
• 56:38
  He wanted friends. He wanted belonging. He wanted to find his tribe, his people.
• 56:41
  So the work shifted not toward controlling his thoughts or managing his emotions,
• 56:45
  but toward changing his relationship with his thoughts and emotions.
• 56:48
  So now when those thoughts show up, they're judging me. We don't argue with it.
• 56:51
  We don't debate whether it's true or false. We simply notice it.
• 56:54
  And then we ask, okay, is following this thought helping you move toward your value of connection?
• 56:59
  And if the answer is no, then the work becomes about making room for the thought and continuing anyway.
• 57:05
  This is where ACT can really start to feel different as well.
• 57:07
  There's a lot of metaphors in ACT.
• 57:09
  And one of my favorite ways to explain this comes from a classic ACT metaphor
• 57:12
  called passengers on the bus.
• 57:14
  So imagine you're the driver of a bus and the bus is your life and your values.
• 57:19
  Things like connection and friendship and honesty and courage.
• 57:22
  And authenticity and fitness.
• 57:25
  Those are the destinations that you are driving toward. Again,
• 57:29
  they're not a, I'm going to get there, but I'm just, I'm moving toward them in that direction.
• 57:32
  Now on this bus, you have passengers. Some of us have a whole lot of passengers.
• 57:37
  Some of them are great and they're nice. And some of them are very encouraging.
• 57:40
  And a lot of them are very loud and aggressive and deeply unhelpful.
• 57:44
  So in this situation, one of the passengers stands up and starts yelling,
• 57:47
  Hey, you suck at driving.
• 57:49
  Everybody's judging you. They also think you look pretty weird that you don't
• 57:52
  even belong here driving a bus.
• 57:54
  And then here's the key part. That passenger, some of the things might be telling
• 57:58
  the truth, or they might be exaggerating, or they might be completely wrong.
• 58:02
  Act doesn't require you to figure that out. What matters is this,
• 58:06
  that passenger is not driving the bus.
• 58:09
  In most of our lives, what happens is we'll pull the bus over and we'll stop
• 58:13
  moving toward what matters and we'll turn around and we'll start arguing with the passenger.
• 58:17
  And we try to reason with them and we try to prove to them and we try to get them to understand.
• 58:21
  We try to throw them off the bus. We try to not hear them.
• 58:24
  And the irony is the more that we engage with the passenger,
• 58:27
  the more control they get and the further from our value we're moving toward.
• 58:34
  So ACT offers this different move. It says, oh, I hear you. It would be wonderful
• 58:38
  if you take a seat, but you don't let them touch the steering wheel.
• 58:43
  So now that thought, they're judging me, gets a seat. It's uncomfortable.
• 58:46
  It's probably sitting right up in the front. It's loud. It's annoying.
• 58:48
  But you're driving and you are still looking in front, looking ahead.
• 58:53
  And you still show up to where you need to go. And you still move toward connection.
• 58:57
  And this is the part that people don't always love at first,
• 58:59
  but it is so freeing once it lands.
• 59:02
  You don't have to wait for the passengers to quiet down before you live your life.
• 59:07
  You don't have to get rid of fear to be courageous. You don't have to eliminate
• 59:11
  your anxiety to do things, to be connected.
• 59:13
  You don't have to feel confident to take a meaningful step.
• 59:17
  You just have to keep driving the bus in the direction of what matters.
• 59:20
  And over time, something very interesting happens.
• 59:23
  The passengers are still there, but they kind of get quieter.
• 59:28
  But it's not because you silence them.
• 59:30
  You just stop letting them run your life. they become repetitive acoustic stimuli or white noise.
• 59:38
  Why is this so liberating? So this client in this situation learned that he
• 59:41
  could feel anxious and seek connection.
• 59:44
  He could feel exposed and also still be courageous.
• 59:48
  He could hear the old story that his brain is trying to tell him,
• 59:51
  but also know that he's creating a new chapter through the action that he's taking.
• 59:55
  And sometimes the connection landed and sometimes it didn't.
• 59:58
  And that's why it isn't necessarily this outcome independent.
• 1:00:02
  I made it to the destination because either way, he left feeling something deeper
• 1:00:06
  than relief from his anxiety. He felt integrity.
• 1:00:11
  He felt his own agency. He felt aligned with who he wanted to be.
• 1:00:14
  He never even exactly knew who he wanted to be.
• 1:00:18
  And over time, interestingly enough, the thoughts soften, not because we fought
• 1:00:22
  them, but because they stopped running the show, because you expanded your capacity.
• 1:00:27
  You made more room for them. And this is why ACT became home for me as a therapist.
• 1:00:33
  Not because CBT was wrong, but because ACT matched what I kept seeing again
• 1:00:36
  and again in real people's healing journeys and what started to truly heal myself.
• 1:00:42
  People don't heal by becoming better thinkers. They heal by becoming freer humans.
• 1:00:48
  And ACT gave me a language and a framework from that freedom.
• 1:00:51
  And here's another thing that Neil Hooper had helped me with.
• 1:00:55
  Something practical you can do with this. And on this podcast,
• 1:00:59
  we developed what we called the Get Back on the Saddle Plan.
• 1:01:01
  Because the reality is, you are going to have off days. That's to be expected.
• 1:01:06
  You're going to forget to do things. You're going to skip going to the gym.
• 1:01:10
  You're going to have days where you don't eat perfectly and
• 1:01:13
  that is not failure that's part of being a human being because every single
• 1:01:16
  moment every day is the first time you've ever been you in
• 1:01:19
  that moment so instead of waiting for the shame to kick in we
• 1:01:22
  created a little five-step plan for what you'll do when you notice that you've
• 1:01:26
  gotten off track first notice without judgment let's do the push-up example
• 1:01:31
  i notice that i have not done push-ups in three days that is a thing that is
• 1:01:36
  fascinating it is interesting and it is definitely something I've noticed,
• 1:01:41
  notice there there is no what's wrong with me I'm such a piece of garbage I
• 1:01:45
  knew this was going to happen none of that is welcome in this dojo.
• 1:01:50
  So step one, notice without judgment. Step two, name the thought that's showing
• 1:01:53
  up. Oh, my brain is telling me the old I'm lazy story.
• 1:01:57
  Okay, period. I'm not even arguing that. That is the thought. That is the story.
• 1:02:03
  Step three, invite that story to come along with you.
• 1:02:07
  Hey, you think I'm lazy brain story? Why don't you come with me?
• 1:02:10
  And then step four, get just one little quick win.
• 1:02:13
  Something small, five push-ups, 10 push-ups. or if it's about the value of knowledge
• 1:02:19
  and reading is the vehicle, read a sentence, a paragraph.
• 1:02:23
  If it's about fitness, take a walk around the block or walk to the bathroom
• 1:02:27
  in your building or go up a flight of stairs and back. Get one quick win.
• 1:02:31
  Step five, keep going because the goal is imperfection. It's continuing.
• 1:02:36
  It's doing. That's it. And you can write those five steps down.
• 1:02:40
  Reach out to me. I'll give you those as well.
• 1:02:42
  Because when you wobble and you will, you'll want to reduce the friction to getting back on track.
• 1:02:47
  Because what you're also training your brain to do is that when I notice that
• 1:02:52
  I am not doing the thing that I wanted to do or that I was pretty sure I wanted
• 1:02:56
  to do, first of all, I can do a quick check-in.
• 1:02:58
  Is this truly something that matters to me? And if it is, okay, thank you, brain.
• 1:03:03
  And now I can do the thing again, even if my brain says, yeah,
• 1:03:06
  but you might not even keep doing it.
• 1:03:08
  It's like not even arguing that, not a productive thought for right now,
• 1:03:11
  because you want to make things as figureoutable, as doable,
• 1:03:15
  as easy as possible to just start again, to get back on the saddle.
• 1:03:18
  That's the work. It's not never falling off. And it's certainly not telling
• 1:03:22
  yourself that something's wrong with you.
• 1:03:25
  You're just doing it. It's a thing. It just is. So get back on the saddle.
• 1:03:29
  Now, from an ACT lens, I would say you don't necessarily become what you think.
• 1:03:33
  And thank goodness for that because our thoughts can be pretty harsh.
• 1:03:36
  But instead, ACT will say you maybe become what you do in response to what you think.
• 1:03:40
  The thought I'm not good enough doesn't make you not good enough.
• 1:03:43
  But if you believe the thought and then you pull the bus over and refuse to
• 1:03:46
  drive toward connection or toward growth or toward what matters,
• 1:03:49
  that's when it impacts who you become.
• 1:03:51
  I do think it's really important to talk to yourself kindly.
• 1:03:57
  And I'm convinced because it's been a big part of my own life is that as you
• 1:04:01
  take this journey that I'm talking about today through acceptance and commitment
• 1:04:05
  therapy, that when you can start to recognize that I'm not broken, I'm human.
• 1:04:10
  This is the first time I've ever been me going through life.
• 1:04:12
  So I do and think and feel the way that I do because I do.
• 1:04:16
  It's a lot more easy to just check that out, to look at it as data.
• 1:04:20
  And then what do i want to do with that as i move forward if
• 1:04:23
  you can really commit to this that it takes a
• 1:04:26
  fair amount of time i think it does take it can take a
• 1:04:29
  year it can take a couple of years till eventually all of
• 1:04:32
  a sudden the internal monologue in your brain your implicit memory or what it
• 1:04:37
  feels like to be you which again is based off of the very slow residue of your
• 1:04:40
  lived experience starts to be okay you notice that it has been quite a long
• 1:04:46
  time since you've told yourself that you are broken or not doing things right.
• 1:04:51
  You're just doing things and now check that out.
• 1:04:53
  It's learning how to change the relationship with your thoughts,
• 1:04:57
  with your emotions, which will impact how you speak to yourself.
• 1:05:01
  When your mind says you're lazy, don't argue with it. You don't have to replace
• 1:05:04
  it with, no, I'm hardworking.
• 1:05:06
  Although if that is something that helps you, then please do continue to do that.
• 1:05:10
  But what I found very effective is you notice, oh, there's the I'm lazy story again.
• 1:05:15
  And that's just a passenger on the bus. I'm still driving. Because the truth
• 1:05:19
  that ACT keeps coming back to is you're not broken. You're human.
• 1:05:22
  And nobody else knows exactly what it feels like to be you, regardless of what they think or say.
• 1:05:26
  So therefore, you are never doing you wrong. You think what you think and you
• 1:05:31
  feel what you feel because you do, because you're the only version of you to
• 1:05:34
  ever walk the face of the earth.
• 1:05:36
  I genuinely believe that change will come, but you need the right tools and
• 1:05:42
  you need to be somewhat consistent, but also incredibly forgiving.
• 1:05:47
  And by consistent, it really boils down to trying again when you realize that you aren't doing.
• 1:05:54
  That's the work, not perfection, not never wobbling. just noticing when you've
• 1:05:59
  stopped and starting again and being able to check that out.
• 1:06:04
  Is this something that really matters to me?
• 1:06:05
  Here's something else that I think ACT does such an amazing job and makes really clear.
• 1:06:10
  Your emotions are not problems to get rid of. They're signals to pay attention to.
• 1:06:14
  But most of us, since we were young, we're told that our emotions were incorrect or not welcome.
• 1:06:18
  Things like, don't worry about it. Calm down. You're fine. Stop crying.
• 1:06:21
  We learn to avoid them, to push them down, to distract ourselves from our emotions
• 1:06:25
  and to think that, wow, I thought that it was a big deal, but apparently I'm
• 1:06:28
  being told right now that it's not.
• 1:06:30
  So my emotions and my feelings must be wrong.
• 1:06:33
  But Acts says, what if you could feel anxious and still be courageous?
• 1:06:36
  What if you could be uncertain and still take action? What if you could feel
• 1:06:40
  exposed and still choose connection?
• 1:06:43
  That's expansion. It's making room for the feeling and moving forward anyway. And fear.
• 1:06:47
  Fear actually exposes some amazing growth opportunities. Because if everything
• 1:06:52
  ultimately is a me thing, and it is, then why am I afraid right now?
• 1:06:56
  Why is it that I'm scared? Or what am I scared of? Is it embarrassment?
• 1:07:01
  Is it doing something wrong? And yes, I'm using air quotes. Is it this expectation
• 1:07:06
  that I should already know how to do something?
• 1:07:07
  Well, says who? That's a passenger. It's a loud one.
• 1:07:10
  Maybe it's one that's been on the bus for a long time, but it's still just a passenger.
• 1:07:14
  And this leads me to something I find very liberating and important.
• 1:07:19
  And I believe this so much.
• 1:07:22
  What if I were to tell you for right now, let's make right and wrong hindsight principles.
• 1:07:29
  Because if I say something and somebody likes what I said, does that make it right?
• 1:07:33
  Because somebody else may hear the same thing and say, I actually don't like
• 1:07:36
  what this guy said. Oh, no. Is it wrong?
• 1:07:39
  ACT doesn't ask you to figure out if you're doing it right. ACT says,
• 1:07:42
  are you doing it in alignment with your values?
• 1:07:44
  Is this something that you are doing that moves you closer toward purpose?
• 1:07:52
  That's a question only you can answer, not your parents, not your spouse,
• 1:07:55
  not your church, not your friends, not society, just you and the person in the mirror, which is you.
• 1:08:01
  So let's wrap this thing up. As we head into this new year, I want to leave you with this.
• 1:08:05
  You don't even need a perfect plan. You don't have to have it all figured out.
• 1:08:07
  You don't need to wait until you feel confident or motivated or ready.
• 1:08:10
  You just need to know what matters to you. And that is a journey to begin.
• 1:08:16
  Not what should matter. Not what matters to everybody else. Not what sounds impressive.
• 1:08:20
  What matters to you? And it's okay if most of you listening are going to think, actually, I don't know.
• 1:08:27
  That is the number one answer of the Family Feud version of this game.
• 1:08:31
  And then be willing to take one small step in a direction. I was going to say
• 1:08:36
  that direction, but who knows what that direction is?
• 1:08:39
  Any direction. And you're going to start interacting with others and life and
• 1:08:43
  things that will help you know, I like this, this I'm not a fan of,
• 1:08:46
  and this is going to help you start figuring out what you care about.
• 1:08:50
  So taking that small step in any direction, even when your brain is screaming
• 1:08:53
  at you to stop and giving you the yeah buts, even when passengers on your bus
• 1:08:57
  are loud and obnoxious and telling you all the reasons this isn't going to work.
• 1:08:59
  Or even when you forget for three days or three weeks or three months to do push-ups.
• 1:09:04
  Because here's what I know after 20 years of doing this kind of work,
• 1:09:08
  people don't heal by becoming better thinkers. They don't even necessarily heal
• 1:09:13
  by eliminating anxiety or fear or self-doubt.
• 1:09:16
  People heal by accepting that they are a human being going through life for the first time.
• 1:09:22
  Carl Rogers, great psychologist, has the curious paradox.
• 1:09:25
  Once I accept myself as I am, then I can change. And I even wonder at times,
• 1:09:30
  if you throw an act lens on it, it's maybe that once I accept myself as I am, then I am.
• 1:09:36
  And now, if I want to change, well, I can figure out what that looks like.
• 1:09:42
  It starts from a place of acceptance. People heal by becoming freer human beings.
• 1:09:46
  They heal by learning that they can carry discomfort and still move toward what matters.
• 1:09:50
  That they can sit with their emotions and they aren't always these terrifying, scary things.
• 1:09:56
  They can actually be messengers telling you things to move toward or things to be aware of.
• 1:10:02
  People heal by discovering that a little uncertainty and some wobbling isn't
• 1:10:06
  failure. It's part of the process.
• 1:10:07
  And they heal by realizing that the goal isn't to silence the passengers on
• 1:10:11
  the bus. the goal is to keep driving even when they're loud.
• 1:10:13
  So forget the lag measures. Maybe don't worry as much about the 12 books or
• 1:10:18
  the 50 pounds or the impressive sounding goals that you can tick off and then
• 1:10:22
  post on Instagram or things that you think you should care about.
• 1:10:26
  Ask yourself, what's the lead measure? What's the daily action I can take that
• 1:10:29
  aligns with something that I actually value?
• 1:10:31
  And then do it today. Not perfectly, just do it.
• 1:10:34
  And then if you forget to do it, because you probably will, remember to get
• 1:10:37
  back on the saddle again.
• 1:10:39
  Notice without judgment. Name the thought. Invite it to come along.
• 1:10:43
  Get a quick win and just keep going. That's it. Rinse and repeat.
• 1:10:47
  That's the whole thing. You don't have to wait for perfect conditions.
• 1:10:50
  You don't have to wait until Monday. You don't have to wait until the next semester.
• 1:10:54
  You don't have to wait until you get the new house, till the kids are out of
• 1:10:57
  the house, till you have the six-pack abs or the raise.
• 1:11:01
  And you don't have to eliminate the fear before you act courageously.
• 1:11:04
  You don't have to feel confident before you take a meaningful step.
• 1:11:07
  You just have to be willing to drive the bus. And I promise that if you do that,
• 1:11:11
  if you keep showing up to what matters, even when it's hard,
• 1:11:15
  even when you don't feel like it, even when the passengers are loud,
• 1:11:17
  again, you won't just achieve goals, you'll find purpose, you'll build a life,
• 1:11:22
  a life that feels like yours, you'll know what matters to you,
• 1:11:26
  a life where you're not running from discomfort and you're not continually...
• 1:11:30
  Experientially avoiding things. You're moving more toward meaning.
• 1:11:34
  And then as you find more meaning, you will find more opportunity for growth.
• 1:11:37
  You'll find yourself having a life where your worth isn't dependent on outcomes
• 1:11:41
  or the validation of other people.
• 1:11:43
  It's more grounded in integrity and purpose.
• 1:11:46
  And that, to me, is what makes this all worth it. Here is to the new year.
• 1:11:52
  Not as if it has to be this big, dramatic, fresh start or a clean slate or a
• 1:11:57
  chance to finally get it right, but more as another opportunity to drive the
• 1:12:02
  bus in the direction of what matters, passengers and all.
• 1:12:06
  Thank you everybody for your support this year. I hope that you have an amazing
• 1:12:10
  new year, taking us out per usual.
• 1:12:12
  The wonderful, the talented Aurora Florence with her song, it's wonderful because
• 1:12:16
  man, you're not really seeing that life can be wonderful.
• 1:12:20
  That is an indication from your emotions saying, well, then do me a favor and
• 1:12:26
  figure out how to make it wonderful.
• 1:12:27
  Figuring out what really matters to these values and learning to take action
• 1:12:32
  on them is going to be a big part of figuring out how to make things a lot more wonderful.
• 1:12:39
  We'll see you next year on The Virtual Couch.