How to Reinvent Yourself (in 2023) | Being Well Podcast

hey everyone welcome to being well I'm Forrest Hansen if you're new to the podcast thanks for joining us today and if you've listened before welcome back I'm joined as usual by Dr Rick Hansen Rick is a clinical psychologist he's a best-selling author and he's also my dad so Dad how are you doing today I'm really good forest and as I said you before we started recording here I just appreciate how kind you are to me in general and also you know giving me feedback like don't lean in too far to the mic or you know I'm sure you're recording or are you late again Rick or Dad yeah I'm sorry I am late again anyway thank you for being kind of well you know I try to be nice about it and I also appreciate uh that you're often a very good sport about all of the buttons we need to push and wires that need to be turned to get this particular Plane off the ground over here yeah um and I don't know maybe it's kind of a way into thinking about what we're going to be talking about today which is how do we want to how do we want to be in the world and how do we want to change in the ways that support us because we're coming to the end of the year here and it's that time of year that people start thinking about how they want their next year to be and for a lot of people that can take the form of resolutions and it's normal for Resolutions to be about our behavior and we can think about Behavior a lot of different ways right like being nice to somebody is a behavior um and a lot of people are trying to both give up maybe more problematic behaviors and embrace some more positive ones and that is great there's nothing wrong with that I'm sure we'll talk about that a little bit but today I'd like to really focus on this and kind of an inside out way really thinking about how we can reinvent ourselves or step into new ways of being in the world um that support the parts of us that we really want to lean into a little bit more these days so big picture I'm wondering about how you think about this time at the end of the year kind of period and and how you think about maybe New Year's resolutions or things like that and are there any like Frameworks or models for you that you found useful yeah well for example for a long time uh I think even before you were born I was regularly leading an annual Workshop I think it was called Golden intentions for the coming year and we would do really structured standard stuff we would bring in some playfulness we'd bring in some imagery alongside the words that people would use and then we would fool around in a workshop context with Act acting things out so right there are three practical things that are you know worth doing and we may come back to it again and again you know stating your intentions your goals in some verbally clear way adding imagery to it maybe with pictures you kind of cut out of magazines or just imagining things in your mind and then playing around with moving your body or even saying things out loud that would be consistent with that so I did all that did a lot of it and I'm way forward it's all good we may talk about more and this topic has prompted me to just reflect more I think along the lines you're wanting here and so what's come there for me is the combination of two seemingly two combinations of two seemingly paradoxical things the first combination is the recognition that on the one hand it's always now there never is a future in reality it's always now and we can really deepen in our sense of just being in the Eternal present which is continually changing and continually renewed anointing on the other hand there will be a future and say we will live into it you know uh you know as they say God willing and the creek don't rise and so how do you want it to be right so it's this combination of being in the present while also influencing the best possible future in the next breath the next week the next year for yourself and other people that combination the second seemingly paradoxical combination is intentionality and mystery in other words is I you could readily say about me I'm captain intentionality I'm definitely an intentional person to a fault and there's a place for being determined being diligent blogging away and being deliberate about it I see a lot a lot of people they just drift right they drift especially in the most important parts of their life well the least important parts of their life are well structured right but the most important parts expressing themselves fully healing from the past Awakening and some broad sense finding true love whatever it is the days go by and the days become yours and then you look back and those ships have sailed those doors are now close to you all right so there's a place for intentionality well at the same time especially if you're a fairly intentional person like me openness to mystery not knowing and in in fact inviting influences into your life that come outside the frame of the status quo like for me recently I've gotten involved in this Global Coalition for compassion and I'm eagerly interested in inputs that come to me from perspectives I have little background in such as from the First Nations people indigenous people around the world from the global South and from cultures and ages that I've been out of touch with for a while you know it's the invitation to mystery and an openness to it combined with intentionality what do you make of all that I think it's a great way to think about it because we we spent a whole episode a while ago and it ended up being one of my favorite conversations we've had on the the topic of integration the sort of thought exercise I'd been playing with at the time about how a lot of personal growth is about bringing together seemingly opposing things on the one hand we do want to have freedom and openness in our lives and on the other hand we do want to have structure that moves us toward um toward more of what we want and I was actually just going to ask you in a second what are some of the the kind of put you on the spot and what are some of the ways that you're looking to change over the next year but I'll just volunteer myself because it actually completely connects to this huh my Big Goal over the next year I think to put really simply is more freedom and less constraint so as you know if you've listened to the podcast for a while I am not a clinician I do not have clinical trading but I think that if I were I would have a pretty developmental sensibility and a lot of my life I think has been about reconciling various developmental experiences when I was pretty young I lived on the edge of my skin for a long time and I was essentially punished for that in various Ways by authority figures other kids whatever and it caused me to really withdraw into myself and become much more rigid and constrained extremely over thoughtful about my behavior overthinking what I should or shouldn't be doing uh really repressing my own impulses with other people in ways that I probably didn't need to uh being quite controlling about the ways in which other people Express themselves because as we've talked about in the past those things triggered my own material so I needed to solve my problem by controlling other people and uh that's never a good spot to be in by the way and you know I definitely lived that life for a minute would not recommend it um maybe that's a chapter in your autobiographical Memoir I don't know yeah you know it could be a business titled rude licely maybe if only you would change right yeah seriously seriously that's that was the life I was living for a minute if only you would change yeah um but yeah that was my life for a long time and I I think as I've as I've aged I've aged out of some of those behaviors and I still have some of them and I'm trying to age out of the rest of them that's sort of the simple way to put it so my my goal over the next year is feeling more more free and in my in myself in my behavior and the way I am all that stuff hmm so it's weird to have my my focused goal be more freedom to bring together those opposites you were talking about earlier right well this this is great for us I super appreciate your candor Candor right and um as we talk about qualities we want to increase in the coming year cultivate Express more and we think about qualities also that we want to disengage increasingly from we want to withdraw fuel from them really really good right one uh way to frame all that a little bit is in terms of evolution personal Evolution psychological psychospiritual Evolution even what are we developing including levels of development and as part of that I just find that it's it's really helpful to here's another combination to integrate the profound and the mundane in other words in the mundane maybe it's you know for many of us it's 80 20 90 10 99 to 1 mundane to profound just the mundane business of a checklist every day knowing some things you always want to do every day knowing some things you want to not do every day so forth but then profound so when you raise the question of Freedom if I may ask do you have any sense of a ground or a space of unconditioned possibility if only in your mind let alone in Ultimate Reality yes but I'm not that's good could you connect could you connect the dots for me here Dad in terms of how you how you get from one of those to the other yeah well what I mean is um so you're talking about inner freedom and maybe I'll report it for myself and and I think for people in general first when you're aware of the field of awareness itself just awareness just an ordinary human you know vertebrate awareness let's say who knows what spiders are aware of but anyway uh that the field of awareness is full of possibility it itself is not yet implicated in anything it's just a field it's like a whiteboard right or a TV screen let's say a through which stuff flows and the more that a person can just have a sense of awareness and even increasingly with some experiences of this identifying with awareness or abiding as awareness being more and more the ground and less and less identified with the figures moving through it you know the figure ground metaphor that immediately gives a person more sense of freedom if there's a spaciousness a less contraction and identification with any particular that's interesting part of the mind yeah just per se you know tuning into awareness and we're still aside the natural rep the natural frame of the big bang universe we haven't even touched you know transcendental unconditionality like whatever we haven't gone there at all all of the preferred dad topics yeah for sure yeah yeah that's right well try not to indulge my hobby horses I don't mind them yeah they're not my own either they're they're the classic ones yeah um anyway so I just kind of wanted to ask that and even name that for other people as well because I'm sure you're not the only person me included honestly I mean part of my wishing notes for the year is to rest more in a certain way of being and I think that's a way for a lot of people to think about their goals for the year to put what you're saying kind of maybe into a a framework that's that's accessible for me um I think that that whole idea that when we're when we're right now we are not as burdened by other things it's just true and I think that's a great way to think about it that like and and maybe part of what you're speaking to is something that I wanted to talk about a little later but we can start to wander into it now which is like what are the things that support us in changing and what are the things that can strain us because I think that this idea that like life is full of possibility to put it into kind of like a little bit of a trite phrase yeah is is itself such a supporter of our ability to change because a lot of the time we stay away because we think that that's the way it needs to be like this is the way reality is this is the way I am and to stay safe I must be this way but that's just not true like that is an untrue statement most of the time for most people in most situations of course there are times where we do need to be a certain way in order to preserve our safety there are situations we can be in that might like enormously constrain our Behavior that's all real but big picture like that sort of um broader field of like what's possible for us in our lifetime unconstrained from situation yeah having the belief that like things can be a different way I think is immensely powerful and that's part of what you're pointing to you're here it's like a little piece of what you're saying I think um and getting into more intimate contact with that to use a phrase that you use sometime that kind of like emergent edge of now like a feeling of like oh this moment you know it could be different from the last one like that's actually really cool and very useful very practical wow that's really great and then I I kind of Wonder for you for us in addition to you know this um kind of tossing in a snowball here I haven't heard you mention this and since we're going all head shrinky here and feel free to turn about is fair play um you know you don't tend to talk about encouragers or mentors mentors or Allies or benefactors you don't use that language very much at all in the Pod or elsewhere and I just wonder are there you don't even have to name them if you kind of want to protect her privacy or not get too revealed here but aren't there people in your life or imagined figures or energies that um feel very encouraging to you of Breaking Free from old constraints and opening into more spontaneous and unregulated ways of being yes but I think you're actually pointing to something that's kind of cool that I haven't really thought about very much and I hope that this is interesting to people listening because I did not expect us to just go into four psychodrama over here but but hey I'm here for it and hopefully we didn't lose everybody it's such a good sport always too I hope it's okay you know I'm fine with it I just hope it's interesting for people um to relate to to talk about this in a way that that might be broadly applicable yeah um I think that I'm really self-referenced I I think that I'm very much about hey Forest end of the day it's you changing you and other people are either hard to change or not yours to change or on their own individual Journeys and so it's kind of your job to walk up the mountain um and I think that that mentality is a double-edged sword to your point and you're pointing to an edge of it that I don't think is necessarily obvious which is that if you have that mindset it becomes a lot more um you're just less likely to orient in a way toward which you're getting a lot of outside help and and I think that that's true I think that I'm kind of like self-determined kind of to a fault I don't know if I'm using that word quite right but I think you know what I mean oh yeah um and I really view it as like Forest it's your job to change yourself if you're going to change and that's like really my my internal commentary and maybe that's untrue and I think that a huge resource for everyone is their situation which includes the people that surround them it includes the environment they find themselves in I mean if you want to really make a big change over the next year one of the most effective ways to do it is to step into a new environment or to try to surround yourself with different kinds of people and I think you're maybe pointing to your dad where you're sort of saying hey Forrest if you wanted to do these in this way a really effective way to do that would be to shake the snow globe a little bit in terms of what you're surrounding yourself with is maybe a way to interpret what you're saying and to answer your question I do have people like that but I think I could lean into that even more and I think that it's not my natural tendency to find external supports that's great I appreciate your your openness to that um I look back on my own life including key episodes uh when I was a teenager in which different people I'm thinking of a social studies teacher I had uh in passing and I didn't have a lot of contact with him but there was some way in which he saw a different me he saw more of a real me than the artificial extremely constricted Persona I presented at West Covina High School and he had a he was a benefactor he opened doors for me just by what he saw in me he didn't give me any formal advice he didn't say stuff like oh Rick you're fine lighten up nothing he just he related to a person I wanted to become which was latent within me and that alone was really influential so I you know it's me I definitely self-determine to a fault you know I've def I've had numerous people who've really opened up possibilities for me and I think one thing that can happen for someone is if they're overly object referenced when they're young they can be under object referenced as an adult what I mean by that lingo is that if a person was overly sensitive to the reactions of others and overly involvement with what they thought was going on in the black oh I love about that this is great this is really good yeah yeah and then there could be naturally we swing back and forth a correction that goes too far the other way and um yeah yeah and the other thing is that we're you know more and more I as I get older and read about biology and so forth it's more more clear we're just profoundly tribal creatures we just are biology and we live in community we survive in community we cannot survive outside a community or without the supports of community and so um it just is kind of unhuman it's substance to turn away from the potent the potential the the valuable influence of of others including others who say Hey you really can't cut loose your natural less regulated more spontaneous ground of being as who you are is just great as it is and you can afford to pop the lid on it more like that that voice that influence those people uh even just imagining them like I'm doing it right now because I tend to be pretty uptight actually even if I can get a little weird sometimes as you know but um yeah just like um remove the gag it's okay that's a great thing totally and and I love that point you made about the ways in which we tend to rubber band over the course of our lives and how a lot of the time what happens that idea of being like if you were a little too externally referenced maybe as a way to put it or you know like object focused out in the world when you were younger you had some bad experiences around it well how do you correct you correct by protecting yourself by withdrawing by making it about you with you all that stuff and I I think that that's actually pretty insightful about my experience also to do a little cultural commentary for a second it's like the the myth of rugged individualism a little bit here like it's a great fantasy to feel like it's just us doing us like I believe me that fantasy appeals to me like I get the draw but it but it's not attached to reality as you were saying we are such tribal individuals so our growth takes place in community a lot of the time our change takes place in community and if you're really interested in changing in these meaningful ways a great place to look is like the five to ten people that you spend the most time with and that's of course a very common piece of advice but I just think it's really true like we are so affected by our important relationships yeah and is there one person maybe that you want to open to more influence from like in my case for example uh a couple years ago I started reaching out to half a dozen really top meditation teachers because I felt that um there were things I could learn and so I opened to their influence I kind of opened my mind to them put the cards on the table and said hey what do you think and each one of them had some really good influence for me so if someone comes into the new year 2023 they might want to uh you know reflect on his or a person or two you could open two or maybe deliberately read a book that's another way into it or check out the YouTubes from a certain person or sure multiple people cultural even cultural influences I've been reading braiding sweet grass lately and a lovely lovely book about um indigenous wisdom entwined with the natural world especially the world of plants and that's been a great influence for me for example so opening to positive influences another one to build on is to step away from negative influences you decide what they are it could be just disengaging from your brother-in-law's Facebook feed look you know I especially at these days Dad yeah yeah that's pretty tough my brother's name you know just fine they're just fine you know they're all good um but yeah or um just thinking about how rapidly you disengage from certain kinds of interactions they're very scripted you know what's going on you say this they say that and that makes you say this and they react like that it's very predictable much of the time and you just say you know no Moss I'm out and no need bless you um I just don't want to do that anymore so that's another thing and people you spend time with even do you really need to spend time with that person does it add to your life you know that's another thing to think about what are you disengaging from totally and I think that environments and situations that um particularly ones that were significant for us back then whenever back then is for you exert just this extremely powerful psychological hold on us that I don't really totally understand but maybe somebody who's more versed in this than maybe we'll get offer some commentary on it like going to a high school reunion how quickly everyone just falls back into their old ways of being and relating and doing you know like the system the power of the shared system just reasserts itself so quickly to give again like as long as we're doing personal story time with Forest here um you know just for us for Thanksgiving like I live in my own condo now Laurel my sister lives in her own apartment now you guys live in your house we go back home for Thanksgiving and within 10 minutes of walking in the door I'm feeling these like slightly odd old feelings come up where I see myself get like a little constrained or a little tight or a little judgmental or a little whatever and I'm like what on Earth is going on here because nothing is happening to make me feel this way it's just the system is reasserting itself and so those like old feelings started to Bubble Up and I had to do like a pretty deliberate process of being like yo bro relax a little bit you know because that just that stuff has such a powerful psychic hold so again if you're looking for a way to change big thing to look at is your situations like what are the situations that are trying to keep you the way that they are because all of our relationships all of those systems seek to maintain their homeostasis they do not want to change because change is hard it takes energy it disrupts the system we just don't like it um and often it's very difficult to maintain our positive change when we step back into Old systems even if they're like by and large very healthy systems like our family system you know as family systems go we're doing it okay and even so this stuff just becomes so hard it is true and I think as well there's a place for keeping things in perspective and being kind to yourself about it in other words we're we are multitudes as Walt Whitman put it about himself we are archipelagos psychologically we are villages we are you know mosaics Etc pick your metaphor yeah and so there you are you go home and let's say for the holidays or you step into a familiar situation and a part of you gets called forth gets triggered gets engaged and maybe it's not so happy for you maybe you do stuff that's not so happy for others and then you are finally out of that whole situation you you're driving away from where you were let's say or you're out of that business meeting or you're no longer being scolded by that person and you just kind of feel bad about yourself maybe oh man I'm such a jerk that part of me came out eyes why I've done so much therapy on that why am I sucked back in brother the truth is it was just a part of you it was just a part of you that understandably slotted into that very familiar hole shaped Hole uh yet again that's okay but you're out of there now you're out of there now give yourself some spaciousness so I think about that part the other thing I want to just mention and kind of ask about is with regard to not being so trapped in familiar forms one of the most powerful things people can do is just to step off the wheel for 20 minutes sit outside at night look up at the stars just get out of the familiar script if you can go to a park and just stare at the trees for an hour eating your lunch or sit on a beach or take a day or some part of a day go for a drive get on the subway get on the bus just get out break the routine yeah and if you have the you know capacity the privilege perhaps to do it for a longer period like a you know a three-day weekend Workshop of some kind or maybe meditation when I came home from my first Meditation Retreat I remember saying nothing is as powerful as nothing because you're just there that's a very Zen co-ann of you there dad that's true he was a papasana style Retreat you know with very little Direction but long periods of sitting walking sitting walking meditation with very mindful chores in between anyway so you might think about what would be a good um opportunity for you whoever's listening to it's like a mini retreat a micro retreat to step off the wheel let the dust settle in your mind let the natural clarity of the inner Pond that you are you know emerge has the sediments in it subtle that's a good thing to maybe loop back to what you were saying about the at the very very beginning about the integration of opposites here uh one of my favorite lines is from Carl Rogers and it's the Curious Paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am that I can change yeah and I think that that is just like such a fantastic commentary on all of this right because we're talking about change but the funny thing is that change is really supported by seeing things clearly and being like yeah this is the way that I am right now or being like yeah this is the way that this situation is right now and I am what I am and the situation is the situation and if you can being able to hold those things is true without judgment um and then that just carries us so powerfully into being able to do something about it um without being as kind of cruel to ourselves in the process of it I think that a lot of people have a pretty cruel mentality when it comes to setting resolutions or things like that they're oriented and through this like very self-punishing kind of framework of I've been doing all these bad things and now I need to change all this stuff and uh um and it just feels like tight and that constrained feeling I was kind of talking about um and I think that the acceptance piece is a really great way to avoid falling into that particular hole Yeah it's beautiful yeah there is that Paradox uh Suzuki roshi had this line you know it already I'm sure you are perfect as you are and you could use a little Improvement on the combination very sad yeah that's right that's right and so we accept ourselves beautiful and gently there's things we want to encourage into being and um I find it's really helpful to you to build on uh what Buckminster Fuller pointed out some years ago as the trim tab on a giant ship and as you may know you could have a tanker that's a third of a mile long maybe close to half a mile long carrying all kinds of stuff weighing tens of thousands of tons and that enormous tanker is Guided by a big Rudder that's maybe 30 feet high and 20 feet deep whatever the dimensions are sorry but the rudder in turn can be guided by this strip of metal called a trim tap that might be something like six inches high and four inches deep relatively tiny compared to the rudder which is Tiny compared to the ship but by adjusting that trim tab you can get this enormous tanker to you know turn around for example and so it's useful to think about what are the trim tabs in our own lives yeah what are the long levers to maybe use a different yeah what are those small doable daily things that are highly leveraged partly because they sort of raise our level of being very simple like for example um what happens if let's say a person deliberately takes about 30 to 60 seconds each morning before they get out of bed to Center themselves in a good place whenever that might be the green zone comment for themselves maybe a line out of scripture that they just rest in it's really helpful to them maybe they bring to mind someone who's like their buddy their friend and like what it feels to be with them remember they Center it just that 30 seconds would make a difference over the course of their day for many people it life a lot boils down to one really simple thing don't drink today whenever tomorrow brings don't drink today you can think of all the complexity and substance abuse treatment and Alcoholics Anonymous and all the rest of that and at the heart of it is a really simple trim tap don't drink today don't drink today so what might be some trim tabs some small highly leveraged steps that could really make a difference in a person's let's say well-being and quality of life and also and also perhaps separately make a difference in their in their work in their career you know and that's just for people to think about totally yeah I can tell you um one that always makes a difference for me is to commit to doing something contemplative every day could be a minute or more but that's a real commitment I have all right um well I'll tell you another one um that I really try to do is to cop to my as fast as I can I'm using all the Lebanese lingo but in California I was a little SoCal no lingo but just cop to my stuff as fast as I can when I realized yeah I kind of you know got a little Haram for rumpy with your mom last night as we were driving to dinner and when she asked me to essentially drive a little more slowly just for her comfort and her arm but you know got a cop to it I don't know so how about you one two or three things that are little seemingly little yet make a big difference well I think this is a great way to think about it because it makes it nice and boring and I mean that in a good way like a lot of the time we turn change into these like big grand gestures or these huge things that we need to transform when the truth is that most of the time it's like five to fifteen minutes a day yeah of doing something thoughtful or doing something a little different one to five even yeah or not not flying off the ski jump the wrong way so that you break your ankle you know um and I think that your example is like don't drink today is a great example of that uh for me there are two categories that stand out to me the first is a really basic behavioral kind of little things uh one of my not quite resolutions but ways I'm thinking about the next year is accepting that I'm majoring of particularly physically I've had a variety of physical health things that have popped up over the last couple of years with my hip I had hip surgery and just this whole stuff and it's just the reality of like I'm 35 now I'm you know wandering toward or already in middle age depending on how you want to interpret that phrase um and I just gotta come to terms with the fact that I'm I'm not 22 anymore uh and so in terms of the little trim tabs I have a stand desk I don't use it as much as I probably should so just being deliberate about for 20 minutes an hour I'm standing at my stand desk you know just making it a practice that little thing again and again um doing a little stretching routine before I go to bed in terms of the trimmest of the trim tabs maybe it's getting out of bed in the morning and doing a little five minute stretching routine I think that could be really really good for me long term um and I think that five minutes day after day would could really make a very big difference by the time that I'm 65 or 70. uh then I think more of a relational one kind of like you were talking about Dad where um I live with Elizabeth Elizabeth's my partner and so much of my quality of life comes back to like are we in a good place or not thankfully we are in a good place of most of the time you know we're doing perfectly great uh but nonetheless it is such a a running indicator of like how my day is going to be is how do I feel about my relationship and so I just think like a little moment in the morning as we've been taking more regularly to even if we're about to go about our day in like very different directions just a little 30 to 60 seconds of connection where you go hey it's you know it's great to see you really love you have a nice day wow what a big difference that can make for somebody that's great well do things come to mind and I I know we're going to be kind of wandering toward a a close pretty soon here and I wanted to get the man the first is just the general matter of diligence uh all the openness and spaciousness and self-acceptance that you know we've been talking about wow there's just no replacement for effort there's gotta you gotta wash the dishes every day you just gotta do it yeah it is what it is putting points on the board booking wins as you would say uh just getting it done consistently consistently and really what it boils down to is how do you use your time and what's that sweet spot where you're not pressuring yourself around it you're more just simply surrendering to the exigencies the requirements the Dow you're surrender to the Dao of what is flowing through you and giving over to it so instead of making yourself do those dishes let's say um you just kind of relax go hey we eat we have dishes they get dirty they need to be cleaned and then we eat again and create even more dirty dishes and I'm in the flow of that you know it feels really different so one thing people can do is to once they set their goals or know kind of what their intentions are operationalize it bring it down to earth how many minutes a day doing what how many days a week and work with whatever gets stirred up for within you about addressing that question your inner step parent yelling at you your inner baseball coach yelling at you try to you know work with that in ways we've talked about and other people do too so you can face it squarely all right you are the author of your life and you are the owner of your future as my friend Tom as you know famously said to me when I was you know whining and moaning about turning 40 soon and being nowhere with my career I think it was like 37 or six at the time and he said Rick dude you plan on being 40. I was like well yeah he said how do you want it to be hopefully you'll be there to enjoy it how do you want it to be so diligence really really important and operationalizing it breaking it down into small pieces and taking refuge in the small steps you can take but take them every day last thing you know this when we really step back and ask ourselves what constrains us which is where you started what constrains US um actual and perceived threats to needs and the brain is highly biased toward operating from a deficit model in which there's a deficit of the Fulfillment of our needs so that even if in the previous minute our needs were fulfilled we tend to come from from scarcity and anxiety and uh will they be fulfilled the next minute yeah yeah and even anticipatory frustration and anger right about them so it's really important to do two things as best you can for their own sake and for the ways in which they will free from constraints two things number one in whatever ways you realistically can address deficits actual deficits in the meeting of important needs is there a deficit in your need to be with people who think you're pretty cool who like you that it feels good to be around that's an important thing is there a deficit in your health as you age are there nagging conditions that are wearing you down and constantly generating a kind of you know yellow light or orange light or even red light signal inside yourself which of course immediately constrains us is there a real deficit there is there even a deficit in your need for uh self-expression full self-expression is something blocking you are there people in your life who are blocking you um are there things you can do in your schedule and your time that would free that up more important deficits you know address them and in particular address delusional deficits perceived deficits that are just not true and one way into that is to give yourself a lot of reassurance over the course of your day when it's true reassurance and relief oh I did accomplish this thing oh the upset I feared with that person has not happened oh good I'm still here heart's still beating still breathing still here reassurance is way underrated and it's an important way to help yourself experience again and again when your needs are actually fulfilled in the present and it's a great way to undermine the delusional negativity bias of the brain which keeps broadcasting um inaccurate messages to us that oh we got to stay on our toes oh the threat's going to come around the corner oh needs unmet in the moment I think that's great advice and it speaks to kind of a bigger picture thing that I was just thinking about when you were talking which is and this is not necessarily easy to do but doing what we can to relax around inevitability yeah to come back to the dishes example you're gonna have to do the dishes you're just you're just gonna have to do the dishes eventually you can put them off as long as you want but unless you're using paper plates for the rest of your life you're gonna have to wash the dishes distance is so it resistance is futile so then the question is how much pain do you want to feel before you wash the dishes yeah that's it that is the only question it's not about are you gonna wash them or not it's about how much you're going to suffer before you get around to doing that and I think that that is such a microcosm of so many different things in our lives like to use Tom's example I'm gonna turn 40. how do I want it to be do I want to thrash around a lot about the fact that I'm going to turn 40 or would it be more supportive of me to get to a place where I accept it and then I can do something about it maybe in the form of a nice little stretching routine every morning who knows but like you know what I mean and I think that that is just like so much of life right there oh it's totally true and and yeah I got to say I got to set this in too go ahead yeah there's a key element too where we let go of being who we have been yeah it takes a lot of courage to basically let yourself change let the old die in a sense to make room for the new and it's really important to to see yours to you know sort of see yourself as more as a process unfolding that's it can you see yourself as a pro as a process and can you let go you know into whoever you are becoming and then Delight Delight into the the Undiscovered Country of the future as the proverb puts it you know like wow Delight play whoa what what can my life hold what can be you know um that is implicit and possibility yeah exactly there's maybe a way to think about it like the fun parts of what could be possible oh is it it's exciting that there is something else that could be different totally yeah that's right I thought this was great I really enjoyed this conversation this was awesome as we get toward the end here I do want to make a formal plug if you are looking for uh something to maybe give a little bit more guided structure to your next year encouraging you to change in positive ways I would just love to let you know about my dad's wonderful foundations of well-being online program it is a program that's been around for a while but this year it has been pretty much totally overhauled and reshot by wreck he's spent something like 40 to 50 hours recording this sucker uh so it's an awesome piece of content it is very deep it is very broad if you're interested in learning more about it I've include added a link to it in the description of today's podcast and you can also use the code beingwell25 to get an extra 25 off the purchase price and that's on top of any other promotions that we currently have running for it it is a fantastic program do you want to take a minute to say a few words about it dad to let people know what you're doing with it oh you said it really well and the title is a little ponderous but it's accurate in other words these are the 12 fundamental psychological foundations of resilient well-being in a changing world and so we in effect set the program up so that you can take a year to go through it each month one of these 12 strikes 12 foundations or you can kind of speed your way through it if you like whatever you want and it combines really the best of um what I've learned in 50 years really of working with the mind on both in the human potential movement and then more formally in Psychotherapy and then also a lot in terms of mindfulness and contempt a practice informed by brain science so it's highly accessible it's really practical there are many many points of entry into it and we've had at this point just about 20 000 people already go through it uh register for it and so you're in good company and the praise for it has really touched my heart I kind of am surprised that people dig it so much but yeah there's good stuff there well it's it's a totally deep offering and it's really I mean sometimes we talk on the podcast about how you are you are detailed to a fault and I think that this is where the detailed parts of the personality come through in a really positive way that like it is such a rich program and I just to say again it has been totally reshot thoroughly reorganized um all of the talks and practices that are in it have been re-recorded by you and if you're somebody who took it in the past and you would like to take a look at the 2.0 version that's also great um and if you just follow the link again you can learn everything that there is to learn about the program thanks heaps and as we look to the new year it's really important to reflect on how do we want to give to others how do we want to affect them how do what do we want to restrain so that we're not landing hard on them what great causes in the world do we want to serve in our own corner of the world right what's our what's the outflow the unfolding of our own generosity and compassion and kindness toward other people that's a very important guiding principle and when I do try to remember myself and want to be better at remembering in 2023 and I'm recalling advice to myself after a Meditation Retreat cling less love more and I'm gonna try to foreground that myself as I go into 2023. and then that's just a perfect way to end today's conversation so today I had a fantastic time talking with my dad about how we can step into new ways of being the things that support us in changing maybe the things that can strain us a little bit and then how we can make 2023 a little bit different a little bit brighter and a little bit better for us and those around us in a variety of different ways I started today's conversation with Rick by asking him if he has any big Frameworks or models that influence how he thinks about growth and change in general and particularly the ways that we can step into new ways of being in the new year and one of the comments that he made ended up guiding a lot of the rest of the conversation and it was this bringing together of diligence and pursued and those more top-down functions that we have where we can really Orient our Behavior towards the way that we want it to be with also this sense of freedom and openness and possibility because it's the combination of those two things guidance on the one hand and freedom on the other that when they come together support us in changing in positive ways and it's pretty typical for most people to be a little over referenced toward one or the other a little over reference towards guidance a little too top down or a little over referenced towards Freedom a little bit too oh yeah I'm loosey-goosey I just do what I want and my tendency probably to this surprise of absolutely nobody here to listen to this podcast for a while is that I'm a little over referenced toward guidance I can be a little tight a little constrained a little um too regulated in a variety of different ways and that's one of the reasons that one of my my kind of big picture resolutions over the next year is more freedom less constrained uh stepping into a version of myself that's less tight less over regulated regulated to a fault and this took us down a really interesting rabbit hole that I I was not really expecting that we would wander down and my dad made this great point about how it's normal for people to swing back and forth from one extreme to another particularly based on maybe things that happen to them developmentally when they were younger and the example that he gave is that people who tend to be too object referenced maybe or not even two but just very object referenced when they're younger in other words they really put a lot of um value on the ways in which other people react to them or maybe they're very sensitive to the reactions of others that that can then swing back when they're older to being a little bit too constrained self-guided tight and so on and that was definitely my personal story and this was in reference to him asking me if I had any other people in my life or any other big picture things ways I thought about the world that were going to support me in being more free and I really thought about it and the truth is that yeah I've got some friends that I lean on in that way but I'm very self-referenced maybe self-referenced to a fault in terms of my my internal belief that it's really up to me to make the changes in my life and while I think there are aspects of that view that that are useful and and maybe even admirable on some level the truth is that we are so affected by our relation ships the people we surround ourselves with all of that stuff and so it plays a huge role and if we're able to change or not and there are ways in which I've probably been you know a little excessively just me on my own team and maybe I could change in even more useful ways to me um if I kind of looked outside of that narrow lens and thought a little bit more about huh are there ways in which I can lean into other people or take on different kinds of teachers or whatever that looks like for you maybe that could support my change in positive ways and this then took us into a conversation about what tends to constrain people and what tends to support people in changing and a huge variable in all of this one that both constrains us and supports us depending on the way that it is is our environments and those other people we talked for a while about how systems are very resistant to change and how you can feel inside of yourself when you go back to your high school reunion or you go home for Thanksgiving or whatever it is how those old says systems have an incredible power to move people into old ways of relating to each other and this moves us again into not a paradox and the formal definition of that word but something of a a tension between opposites which is that for one we are deeply communal creatures we are so affected by and influenced by the situations and people that we surround ourselves with and the the myth of rugged individuality is just a myth it's not true it's a nice fantasy but we we make it through based on our relationships in a lot of different ways so that's true on the one hand and then on the other hand what's true is that our systems themselves are very resistant to change um they they seek to maintain their homeostasis they don't want to change because change is hard the known as safe change takes energy all of these different things so we are both Changed by our systems and our systems don't really want to change and that's part of the reason the change is often really difficult for people because they're putting all of this energy into something that doesn't really want to move and then they're also kind of Trapped in the mud of their environments so one of the most effective things that we can do if we really want to change is to see how we can shake the snow globe a little bit and mix up our environments surround ourselves with people who are really in support of the best parts of us or look for ways to break the pattern of our everyday life even if that's just by taking an extra 60 seconds to start the day to really Orient ourselves towards something that we truly care about and then we come to the last little little tension that we talked about over the course of the conversation which is this tension between acceptance and change there's this great line from Carl Rogers to paraphrase that it's when we accept ourselves then we can change and this runs underneath so many of our episodes it's something we've talked about over and over again and it's just a fundamental tension in Psychology and I don't totally understand why it is but I know that it's true it's that when I really meet myself where I am it's then that I can move and meeting ourselves where we are can be an extremely uncomfortable process it's been very uncomfortable for me in the past um but that doesn't change the fact that that's what allows us to move forward in a lot of ways and I just really enjoyed this conversation today I got a lot out of it personally I hope that you could tell that as you were listening and I hope you did as well um it's also good to know if you're kind of into these episodes that are a little bit more uh talking about our own material and bringing it to the front and if you are please feel free to leave us a review or a comment if you're not please feel free to do the same and you can also reach us at contact beingwellpodcast.com it is always great to get some feedback on how we're doing and what you would like to hear more of if you've made it this far and you are somehow not subscribed to the podcast it would be great if you could do that that really helps us out you can also find me on YouTube if you would like to watch episodes rather than listen to them I think you can find a link to my YouTube in the description and summary of today's podcast on whatever podcast player you're listening to this on and hey if you would like to support us in other ways you can find us on patreon it's patreon.com beingwell podcast and for just a few dollars a month you can support the show and you'll get a bunch of bonuses in return Thanks again for supporting the podcast for listening to us over the last year it has just meant so much to me and we'll talk to you soon [Music] thank you

Channel: Forrest Hanson

Views: 9,968

Keywords: Mental Health, Personal Growth, Self-Help, Psychology, Forrest, Forrest Hanson, Being Well, Being Well Podcast, Rick Hanson, Resilient, How to Reinvent Yourself, How to Reinvent Yourself in 2023, How to Reinvent Yourself (in 2023), new habits, resilience, key skills, new year's resolutions, new year, new year's resolution, resolutions, new goals, accomplishing your goals, reinventing, reinventing yourself, personal change

Id: PdOfbefsgzA

Length: 55min 46sec (3346 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 26 2022