How to Do an Integrity Cleanse — Martha Beck

if somebody wanted to do an Integrity cleanse or attempt what you did but with the Lessons Learned maybe they are not willing to go kind of Full Throttle yeah how would you suggest they do that uh because most people listening myself included have have never attempted something like this and just as a quick humorous sidebar I will say if if people want to read something very funny there's an article it's an old article from Esquire called I think you're fat by friend of mine AJ Jacobs and it's about his experiments with r radical cander and his wife was like how do I look at this and he's like I think you're fat and you can imagine it didn't go super well oh goodness he learned a lot but ultimately it was it was pretty tough experiment so what would you suggest to people and what is an Integrity cleanse and what's the kind of like white belt blue belt black belt version or however you would like to answer that let's do the white belt first take a smaller time period I said a year take three days a week and you don't have to say everything you think but you do have to be aware when you're saying something that you don't believe so have a little journal or something so that you can when you lie to someone else to and most lies are told to smooth social interactions for sure nobody says you look fat so just note in a little book okay I said this but what did I really what was I actually thinking so somebody said to me oh we'd love you to come out and visit and I said sure sometime but but you write down okay that was a lie I would rather die a thousand times than go to stay with these people whatever write the truth down in your little notebook for yourself that's the path of the truth everything else is the path of not there it's just mushy and I I wrote a whole book on this based on the Divine Comedy because Dante starts that book just saying in the middle of my life I found myself just wandering through this horrible dark Wilderness and I had no idea how I got there or where to go because I'd lost the true path and then he shows how you find the true path so most of us are doing that and the way you find the true path is to start writing down the things that are true after you've said the things that are not true just do that for 3 Days that's the white belt okay blue belt take a month and have a friend where you speak the whole truth to another person even if it's a therapist or a 12-step group or something you want to go black belt all in this is what I try to do no lying ever but you don't have to say much like consider if what you have to say is an improvement upon silence you for a month right no you end up finding out that you say it if it's true kind and useful very few things are all three don't lie even with your actions or with your facial expression or anything don't eat a bite of food you don't want that's a lie like I I get really I like to be tough on these things like I used to run 100 miles a week now I will be like I will never do anything false and it's fun and rigorous it is rigorous I would imagine and offensive all right so quick tactical question for people who want to maybe get somewhere between the blue and black right they're going to make an attempt at fewer lies more truth so not just becoming aware of it but actually changing some Behavior Yeah you mentioned offensive you mentioned rigorous some body who is being truthful is going to say no in some form a lot more than someone who's being untruthful a lot more what are some of your go-to phrases or language that you like to use that is not the equivalent of I think you're fat maybe it is in terms of saying no to the many things that would otherwise consume your time and your life most people when they want to say no and they don't know how to say it will try to become victim and say I can't because of this this and this which is horrible because the person always thinks of a way out of those things I love this quote from Julius Caesar Shakespeare's Julius Caesar where he plans his wife says don't go to the the Senate I had a horrible nightmare you're going to get stabbed so the guy comes to get him and he says go tell the council Caesar will not come that I cannot is false that I dare not falser still no go tell the council Caesar will not come boom like that is my model and there have been really good studies that show that to get out of depression one study had control group a group that had therapy a group that had meds and a group that did nothing but eliminate the words I can't and I have to from their responses instead they had to say I choose not to I choose to I will I won't and they came out of their depression faster than any of the other groups every verbal thing we say that is not true hurts our bodies hurts our psyches and leads us to anxiety and depression so in that case keep a book that says you'll have to deal with the people who don't like you saying no I've lost a lot of friends this way friends that perhaps needed losing but I always say just think know what you really know about something okay feel what you really feel say what you really mean at least to yourself in your notebook and then do what you really want and that sounds so self- serving but in fact it's quite stoical I know you follow the stoics and the hedonist they were weirdly similar like they'll do what is true because it's more felicitous to them in every way so have a notebook where you write down what you would do if you were being really honest and then after a while once you know what you're dealing with start to become that person in the way you actually conduct your life and as you make mistakes and as you don't keep your commitments forgive yourself because one of the things I found is that it's never true to hate yourself or to condemn yourself it's never true what do you mean by that we are such little monkeys you know I just I just got back from Costa Rica and we had a fabulous monkey encounter and they had this fear expression and and they were afraid of so many things and I just thought we are this far from them all we've got is shoes to differentiate us from them and we're terrified of everything all the time and most of us are really doing our best and we have all kinds of socialization weirdness and we our brains get reconditioned and rewired for fear if you're not in integrity and you didn't manage to pull it off and be honest in a hard situation kindness and gentleness are the truth and that's I actually wrote a book that's coming out next year after I wrote The Way of Integrity because I was so tough on myself in the Integrity thing and it was making people anxious and there's a level Beyond just telling the truth and it is called compassion and it's truer

Channel: Tim Ferriss

Views: 6,861

Keywords: tim ferriss, 4 hour workweek, 4 hour body, 4 hour chef, timothy ferriss, entrepreneur, author, writer, angel investor, ferriss, tim ferriss blog, timothy ferriss speaker, Tim Ferriss Podcast, martha beck, integrity cleanse, martha beck anxiety, anxiety tips, equine therapy, self help, personal development, martha beck books, life coach, living with integrity, the way of integrity

Id: CDhjVlCZDMs

Length: 8min 9sec (489 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 18 2024