Latest / Total Barnage / How To Quiet Your Inner Critic - The Psychology Of Non-Judgmental Awareness

Transcript

How To Quiet Your Inner Critic - The Psychology Of Non-Judgmental Awareness · Total Barnage

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Every circumstance and every person you encounter is here to teach you and help you.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's all working for your good.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Your life is a reflection of your beliefs.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Self-centeredness is the root cause of fear.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: We all have the same deep needs and desires.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone does the best they can with what they have in their hearts.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: The map is not the territory.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: You are not your mind.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is not the problem.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is the way you're thinking about it.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: There is no failure, only feedback, and the person with the most control of their inner world has the most power.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the ten empowering suppositions that will form the basis of the mindset you'll develop as you read the book Inner Excellence by Jim Murphy.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now I read this book, listened to it a few months back, and along my kind of journey of researching and learning more about myself and my understanding of psychology, sports psychology, and getting the most out of ourselves in whatever capacity, whether it be uh high-level competition or just day-to-day and enjoying and interacting, connecting with people um around us.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, yeah, this is the book that that I read, and I thought I would do an episode just going through the main things.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's a monster book, so it would take hours for me to go through every single little thing, but I'm going to go through these key points that he talks about, these mindset shifts, which presuppositions, previous presuppositions, you have to drop to take up these 10 empowering suppositions.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, who is Jim Murphy?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and why is you know, why has he come to this idea of in excellence in the way that he has?
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, Jim began his career as an outfielder in the Chicago Cubs organization.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he was forced to retire due to injury.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: He coached one year of high school baseball, and the team went undefeated, and he found an unknown love for coaching.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: This inspired Jim to go to graduate school to study coaching science at the University of British Columbia, and then there he started a baseball team which launched varsity baseball across Canada.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um he then did a master's degree, talking to uh MLB GMs, field managers, university coaches, interviewing all of them and investigating how they built championship teams.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: This became his first book, Dugout Wisdom, uh 10 Principles of Championship Teams.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Then he got a job for coaching uh Texas Rangers after graduating from UBC, and then he soon left to become the hitting coach for the first South African baseball team ever, which had one of the greatest upsets in Olympic baseball history.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh then Jim gave away the majority of his possessions and moved to the desert to live a life of relative solitude, and despite his successes, he felt empty and was torn by the question if I'm not an athlete, not a coach, what is my true purpose?
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Over the next five years, Jim researched and wrote full time in search of the answer to a question that perplexed him as he worked with world-class athletes.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: How can an Olympic athlete train for four years for an event that may last less than a minute and have peace and confidence under that kind of pressure?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: And this research became the foundation for inner excellence, which launched his life work.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: So Jim now helps people from all walks of life to find poise under pressure, purpose, and fulfillness of life.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: That is from the website Inner Excellence, where you can then go and buy um buy the book to read.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: I guess this is my um this is my bid to encourage you to seek more about this perspective of excellence and this perspective of performance, which is a lot more about embodying emotion and being selfless than toughing it out and being gritty and disciplined and just grinding.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so what is the mindset of inner excellence?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Jim defines it as I compete to raise the level of excellence in my life to learn and grow in order to raise it in others, which you know is quite broad, but at the core of it, it is competition meaning to better yourself and to grow, but not necessarily competition just for athletes.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you're listening to this and you're not necessarily an athlete of a of a sport, um, and you are someone that might just be a you know member of the gym that comes down and works on your strength training, um enjoys the community and can take it into their own own life, um, this idea of competing is for absolutely everyone, um, from athletes to those that aren't competing in competitions to those that don't think that um they are competing.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: It is just an approach day-to-day life of awareness, of improving yourself, being aware of um your thoughts, your feelings, emotions, and how you can interact with others.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a it's completely accessible absolutely everywhere.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in this book, Jim gives yeah, these uh a lot of unpacking of um fears, of limiting beliefs, of the potentially negative thoughts, emotions that we come across, and how we can work through them.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: The old presuppositions to drop, Jim says in this quite pre-introduction.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is I am my thoughts, which is a really fascinating one.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think it is probably at the core of our existence, and it's also the one thing that I would say if it is worth paying attention to and working on anything, this is the one thing that's going to bring you the most change in your life in your training.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the thoughts that we have, if we don't acknowledge, first of all, we can't control what thoughts we have coming into our head.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: We might have completely crazy thoughts, intrusive thoughts, and it might lead us to believe that the reason why we're having these thoughts is because we are some type of person.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: If we have intrusive thoughts about uh driving into someone in traffic, we might conclude that just because that thought has pops into our head, then we are an aggressive and terrible person.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but there is really no control over what thoughts come into your head, and the only thing you can really control is how you engage with those thoughts, your relationship with those thoughts, and then yourself, and then how you can either let the thoughts go or absorb them or maybe use them to your advantage, or as I would like to say, with some negative thoughts, is just call bullshit out on your thoughts.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: So having a an understanding of distancing yourself, going from I am my thoughts to I am not my thoughts, Jim says, you know, that it that is the biggest shift that I would say going forward, and that is going to unlock the train, the ongoing vehicle for improving yourself and growing.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because as soon as you distance yourself from the thoughts that come into your head, you can have a much greater awareness of first of all, you can have you have freedom from something that you can't control.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: You and you can then focus on what you can control, and you can use it not as a judgment of yourself, but as an awareness moving through and to take things a little bit more light-hearted, um, not everything, not attaching yourself to to everything.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: And Jim goes into depth about attaching yourselves to outcomes, which I'll get on to in a bit, with the three um the three kind of antagonists of the of your thoughts, being the monkey mind, the trickster, and the critic.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, moving from I am my thoughts to I am not my thoughts to cultivate something which is called non-judgmental awareness, which is just paying attention to your thoughts and not judging them, not judging yourself as you are experiencing those thoughts, whether it be day-to-day, literally just taking a breath, seeing around you, slowing down a little bit, if you are going into a bit of a spiral or lots of things are piling on top of each other, just to take 30 seconds to a minute, maybe five minutes if you have it, to slow down and to acknowledge the emotions, the thoughts that you are having, and to not always see them as a value of your self-worth, but to be able to um allow them to pass through you, acknowledge them, let them go, and maybe you know, determine and choose what information you would like to engage with to live the life that you want to live.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's the key one.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: The next one that he says is the presupposition that we need to drop is my value is based on my results.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is kind of talking about measure of success, what we determine as success, and where we derive our value in life from.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of I guess one thing is being brought up in a an education system which is predominantly yes, there is a lot about just learning and enjoyment of learning and understanding how best you can learn, but at the core of it, maybe there's just much more of a fixation on exam results, testing, and some sort of measure of success that is that is fixed that can tell us about how good or bad we are, and then going into the world of work as well, and having promotions based off of how much value you give, which is results-based, rather than effort-based or connection-based, or things, it's more things that are measures of success based on quantity rather than quality of experience, and decoupling that and understanding that your value is not based on your results and that you are loved and valued as a person regardless of what you do.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: At the core, it's we are human beings, not human doings, but we treat ourselves a lot of the time, and I have as well.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: And if I get caught into a cycle of just seeing myself as just this machine or robot that is just doing things, um, then I need to take a step back and and just be in the moment, be with others, and be with my pursuits and what I am trying to achieve.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so the the the one that you drop is my value is based on my results.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: The one that you pick up, maybe from that, is that we all have the same deep needs and desires.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Jim says this is to be loved and to be accepted.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Our deepest need is unconditional love, and our greatest desire is being fully known and fully loved.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty hard task, if I'm being honest, um potentially, you know.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh of course, this podcast is about is about the gym, um, but at the same time, with especially with my with my clients, you build a connection, just getting to know the person, and of course, I am there to support them in their um fitness, physical fitness, strength, goals, but also that you know if they don't achieve those goals, it doesn't mean they're any less of a person.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: However, there is the this idea coming back to the mindset of inner excellence, which is to learn and grow in order to raise it in others.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it is although your value is not determined by your results, there is still a great value in trying to understand yourself better, try and learn and grow, and then also to infect others in a positive way with the stuff that you you learn and to go out into the world, um, like that.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: The next one is that the best performers were born that way.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is an old presupposition we need to drop.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: There is a there is always talent and genetics in when you look at elite-level sport, and there is a certain level of talent and genetics which allows people to get a bit of an advantage initially.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: However, after a while, and I've seen this especially through teenagers of people that have been really talented but not necessarily hardworking, and then other people that aren't necessarily you wouldn't label them as being super talented, but through hard work, and as Jim says, through hard work, deliberate practice on specific skills and learning to direct and control your desires, this is how you can perform like the best, and this is how you can get the most out of yourself.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that idea of agency and understanding that it is not the circumstances that we find ourselves in, it's how we respond to the circumstances, it's not the thoughts that we have, but it's how we engage, attach, or detach ourselves from the thoughts, and it is not the situation, it is the response to the situation, the response, and the it's not necessarily you know the outcome as well, it is how we respond to that outcome.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's less about controlling what is going on, but more so how we engage with that in life, and understanding that you can achieve more than you could ever imagine, despite what you might see as shortcomings or disadvantages, through hard work, deliberate practice on specific skills, which he goes into into the book, and learning to direct and control your desires, the amount of energy that you free up when you can simplify things and really work on what you want to work on and separate the signal from the noise, the unbelievable results, not just uh you know those quantifiable results, but the feeling, the energy you have day to day, the enjoyment, the connection with others, the detachment from the outcome that you learn through it.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: So those are the three presuppositions to drop.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: I am my thoughts, replace it with you know, I am not my thoughts, um, and the greatest freedom is where you place your thoughts.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: Drop the idea of my value is based on my results, and that we all have the same deep needs and desires, which is to be loved and accepted, to have unconditional love and to be fully known and fully loved.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: And the best performers were born that way.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: We can achieve a lot more than we think we can through hard work, deliberate practice on specific skills, and learning to direct and control our desires.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the thing I'm going to talk about in this episode is actually only one of the chapters of Jim's book, but I think it's worth going into a little bit of detail about what it is and how we can use it day to day in our lives to improve our well, first of all, it's improve our enjoyment in the process and to learn as much as we can down at the gym and in our health and fitness pursuits, but also then this will unlock results much quicker than you uh than you think and have thought.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: So the three great adversaries we all face in our efforts to be focused and confident are the critic, the monkey mind, and the trickster.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what are these?
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: So the critic judges everything and reacts emotionally to it.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, these adversaries are within our own minds.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: There is a a certain element of we need to get out of our own way with the obstacles that we face and where we want to go in life, is a lot of the times, and it's it's not all the time, but it is worth acknowledging and maybe entertaining the idea that sometimes we are getting in our own way, and if we got out of our own way, and I know personally this is this is just my life of coming back from from injury, is if I got out of my own way with a lot of things, that would guarantee pretty much and get me on the road to success, and it would also allow me to enjoy it, which is part of the success, is enjoy the process even more.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: So these are labels of types of thoughts that come into our heads that we can understand and we can make the most of the knowledge of.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: So the critic judges everything and reacts emotionally to it.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: These are the thoughts in your head that are obsessed with and attached to our circumstances.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: It'll always question are we on track?
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, am I getting close to my goals?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: What if I lose this game?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: What if I fail this lift?
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: What if I can't show up to the gym on as many days as I want?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: We get enslaved by the moment-to-moment feedback from the ego and how life is going in comparison to others.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: The practice here with the critic is letting go of our attachment to results.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I am preparing and gonna bring to Guy and Charlotte, if they're both free for the episode, a an episode about uh goal setting and how we can create truly important goals and then succeed in achieving them.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Spoiler, 90% of it is going to be determining what the goals are, finding out what we actually truly desire, and then 10% of it is going to be application.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: And in the same way, if we can spend our time working out the right process to get the results that we want.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: For example, down the gym, this is great when you have a when you have a coach because they can pretty much do it do it all for you, and you don't need to go and into all of the the research and the rest of it, you just need to trust that they know what they're they're talking about.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Is let's say you want to go to the gym, you want to get strong, and you want to uh lose body fat.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is kind of a very common thing that we have at Barn Gym.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um then undergo having the process of achieving that, and you might you know there might be a training phase of six to eight weeks that will you know progressively overload the lifts and will focus on consistency, look at the nutrition, make sure everything is in line with exactly what goal you want to achieve.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Once there is trust in the process, all that it is worth focusing on is doing the work, enjoying the process, and there will always be this comparison of okay, am I am I on track?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a good it's a validation to be like, am I putting my money where it's worth being put?
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, am I getting a financial return?
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Am I getting a good ROI on that investment?
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: But then also, you know, kind of predicting and saying, like, okay, what's the chance what's the what's the possibility I'm gonna hit my goals?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: And because we want to hit our goals because it gives us a value of of self-worth, but it is much smarter to allocate our energy to engaging with our efforts rather than always considering the results.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: As I said in there's uh there's an episode on trusting the process and when to trust the process rather than and then where to let go of the process, is that most of the time you just need to push through and keep going with the process, and then over three or four months, if there is really nothing, if you're doing absolutely everything you can, and then Is nothing that is shifting, then re-evaluate and and go again.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: But this is a bit of a longer timeline than a day-to-day.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, what's happened with my scale weight?
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's up.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I need to change something.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it's something that I learned from Matt Seddon in the episode with him as well.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: Is with elite athletes, those that do the best don't think, oh, what should I uh what should I change?
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: They think, Oh, what should I keep in that is working?
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: So keep putting in the work, the critic will come about when we are attached to our results, and they'll always try and enslave us with this feedback.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: How this how's life going in comparison to ourselves, to our goals, in comparison to other people, how we how we're perceived by others.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: And once you can understand when the critic comes about, then uh then you can you can work through it and say, Oh, this is a judgment about me failing this lift, or this is a judgment about me not turning up to the gym when I said I would a couple of weeks ago.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's the critic.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: We can move through with it, we can let go of our attachment to the results, but then we can focus on being diligent with the process itself.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: The second is the monkey mind.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: The monkey mind overanalyses and gets cluttered with too many thoughts.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this is this is the biggest obstacle for most performers that Jim has found, especially with Olympians and high-level athletes, is overanalysis, number one, but number two is caring too much and getting almost obsessed with having to be successful.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's a fine balance, I feel, with with these ideas, with these thoughts that come in.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's a fine balance between doing everything you can and being disciplined and getting the stuff you need to get done.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um basically caring enough that you're going to get it done.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't care, you'll have no motivation.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: You will also maybe not have the uh the anxiety that comes along with putting a bit of pressure on on yourself.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's a balance between not caring much and then not caring too much, that you are then overwhelmed by this overanalysis, you get paralyzed, and too many thoughts come in.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: The and obviously there's a middle ground within it.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: The solution is to filter the signal from the noise.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: I guess it's probably good to give an example of maybe how this monkey mind comes into our day-to-day, and the overanalysis might be the scale weight has gone up, and you're thinking, okay, why why did the scale weight go up?
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: And you've got all of these ideas of every single thing that could potentially contribute to it.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: It could be what you ate last night, it could be that you didn't train here, it could be because of your hormones, it could be because of what someone said about oh, you're not doing a uh a detox tea, you've got all of these things.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh, did is it because I did 10 minutes in the sauna instead of 20 minutes?
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Is it because I did overdid it on the other day, or whatever reason it might be to contribute for you being seemingly off track?
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Is you have all of these really complex things that come about, you get clutter cluttered with too many thoughts, and you've got to find the signal from the noise.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, if you've got a coach, having someone, or even anyone, really, and sometimes they don't even need to have too much expertise, and and it is just finding getting an objective opinion to get you out of your own head, uh, getting someone that is not emotionally attached to the thoughts to talk about it and to filter the signal from the noise in that case.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: There is also a an importance of having a clear goal because this happens, the monkey mind comes about where there is no not necessarily a clear goal or you've lost sight of the goal, and having a very, very simple goal to come back to can quieten all of the noise that is trying to drag you to any single comparison or metric or cause and effect scenario.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: There's also an idea called Occam's razor, which is named after William of Occam in the 14th century A.D.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, English Franciscan friar and philosopher.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: William of Ockham came up with this idea.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, a razor razor, literally just like a shaving razor.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's a psychological term for just shaving off unnecessary assumptions.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just a little heuristic, a little idea that you can use to simplify things.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: And Occam's razor says that when presented with competing explanations for the same phenomenon, you should prefer the simplest one that makes the fewest assumptions.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: The example is if you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: So there is, of course, there are certain things which are very complex that would require a uh a real investigation into what is the root cause of whatever you're going through.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: However, when the monkey mind takes control, it wants you, it's kind of my view of it, it wants you to meet its complexity with more complexity.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: The thoughts that come in, all this chatter, as Ethan Cross would say, all this chatter in your mind is vying for your attention and vying for validation and solving each thought.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it is up to you through awareness, non-judgment, and being able to understand that you are not your thoughts, and not every thought needs as much attention as you feel like it does in the moment.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and some thoughts you can pay attention to more than others, it is up to you through maybe a meditation practice, awareness practice, literally just paying attention to your thoughts day to day and seeing which ones come up more often than not.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can direct how you respond to your thoughts and how you use them.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, this is yeah, Ethan Cross calls it chatter.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's you've got to have a circuit breaker.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: So all of these thoughts that come in do not necessarily need to be dealt with in the complexity that they arrive, and you can very much quell with this Occam's razor all these thoughts coming in, and you're like, is it that one little thing that I did, or what is the most simple solution for it?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it might be a lack of knowledge with let's say the scale weight, and this is the importance of just education on fluctuations in in body weight and water retention, is it it may just be that you've retained a little bit more water in your body, um a little bit more carbs the night before, and they come along with a bit more water, and that is the simple reason why it why it happens.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and you just say, Well, you know, progress isn't linear in the moment, and let me just stick with the process and then weigh myself in a few days' time.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: There are things just as simple as that, and really thinking, yeah, what is the thing that requires has the least amount of assumptions that is the least complex?
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: More often than not, that's probably the answer you're going for.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: With my return to running with injury at the moment, I had a setback this week where my quad tendon flared up after a little bit of run walking, and there's lots of different things that I could in the moment try and attribute it to.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: Is it like, oh, if I haven't got enough sleep, if I haven't uh if I'm thinking too much about it, if I've done a an extra rep of two and a half minute run, which is pretty much like it's really not much.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: The overwhelming simple answer that I would come to the conclusion is, especially with tendons, is it's all about load and load management.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so, on whatever level, over the past ten days, there has been some sort of load that has been increased too much, and then it's led to a flare-up.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's not magic, it's not mystical, no one's got a voodoo dull of me in their cupboard.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: It is simply that at some point and I can look at my training, I have overdone it.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: Not necessarily then a you know the the critic then comes in and it's the he says, Oh well, you know, you've you've you've overdone this, so you know you must be uh why why are you not caring for yourself?
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: Why are you why are you overdoing it again?
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's simply that I've overdone it compared to what I thought was the right level and what I've worked to my physio as the right level, and we just sometimes get things wrong.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the best thing I can do now is to work out if there was anything that I've added into my program that is a bit unnecessary and that I could just reduce the load on.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: It is having that clear goal of running pain-free and then adjusting my training accordingly, taking enough time off resting and then treating the load and adjusting the load to see what was what as a bit of an experiment.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: So it's having a circuit breaker, having a circuit breaker with thoughts.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: Ethan Cross has this idea which is just about third person naming.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: He's got a book called Chatter, and it's just third person naming, or it's maybe even maybe even second person, depending on how you use it, and it is cutting through all of this chatter in our mind with saying our own name out loud.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: So if I have all of these thoughts racing and I'm starting to spiral, I can cut through all of the noise instead of saying I, it's Charlie, and I will use my own name, and immediately it brings my awareness back to the moment it cuts through the noise, and it's almost like someone else is talking to me, and it allows me to have distance from my thoughts.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it's noticing, paying attention, and having that non-judgmental awareness once you've then had that circuit breaker.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: Another circuit breaker, again, think what is the language that the thoughts are speaking, and how do you add fuel to the fire?
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: You add fuel to the fire with more thoughts that with greater significance, cut through with with using your name or something that can distance you from the moment, but also not trying to control your mind with your mind, but trying to control your mind with your body, and this is by doing some sort of breathing practice.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, practice is literally just breathing.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: Think three deep breaths when all is and this is where the awareness in the moment sometimes it's really tough because when you first start doing it, you completely forget because the thoughts are spiraling so much, you completely forget that breathing is the circuit breaker.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: So keep it super simple, loads of thoughts going around in your head, take a deep breath in, and a deep breath out, three deep breaths, and you can slow down and bring your attention back to the moment.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: One thing about the monkey mind that I have found is that a lot of things with overanalysis and too many thoughts is at the core, it is governed by expectations of how things should be.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um Expectations of how things should be.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'll probably do a whole episode on this at some point about the role of expectations and the trade-offs that we have by having certain expectations.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, the the monkey mind might get cluttered with too many thoughts.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you expect everyone on the road to have as much courtesy as you would like to have on your best day, if you expect someone to say thank you for you letting them pass, compared to if you expect them to do nothing, you're gonna have a very different response.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe asking ourselves, what am I expecting?
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: How is this different from our expectations?
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Is that why I want to get back on track with the expectations and manage it?
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: Is a good way to start.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: So questioning what are the expectations, the assumptions I have in the moment of how my life should be.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, when it comes to awareness, it is non-judgmental awareness of the moment as it is, and the judgment only really comes with expectation.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: So if you can let the expectation go as well, then it will also give you a clearer path to not attaching any sort of judgment to the thoughts that come through your head.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think when if you are new to any sort of meditation or breathing practice or mindfulness practice, there is there's always stuff that comes about at the start of it, which is that you you have a thought, you get distracted by the thought, you then go through it, and then a couple of minutes later or moments later, you're like, damn, I got distracted by that thought.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'm really, I'm really bad at this.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is I'm terrible, I'm terrible at meditation, and then it spirals, and then you're like, I just you know, I really want it to go well, and it's that expectation of that you're gonna either gonna be good at it, or it's gonna be some type of way, or it's gonna the thoughts are gonna arise in some type of way.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's a amount of time that you think is optimal for being mindful or embodying some sort of mindful spirit.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, the practice is not a get good at this, it's not something that you can say, whoa wow, today was good because I only had five thoughts that I attached myself to, and the other day I had eight, and then the day after that, you're like, Oh, I've got ten, which means I must be getting worse at this.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's nice for motivation to be like, I like making progress, I like you know, reinforcing this idea that I'm putting in effort and getting results, and it's leading you to the life you want to live.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, when you come back to it, especially with something which is just about being present, because that there's no good or bad in the present moment, it just is.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: So there is not a being the best at it that almost then creates a little mini-game within something which isn't even a result, it's a process and experience.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: The final one is the trickster.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the trickster is fuelled by the critic and the monkey mind, and the trickster is as states, tricky, it tricks you into believing your insecurities and accuses you of being a fake.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you're attached to your results or what people think or say, the trickster is going to give you trouble, is what Jim Murphy says.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the trickster has two components to him or her, and that is deception and accusation.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: The trickster might come about and say, Ah, look at all your failures.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: You're not the type of person who achieves lasting success, or you're a fraud, or there's you know, there's not enough, there's not enough to go around for you.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you gotta self-protect, you'll get rejected if you try.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, oh I told you so.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I told you it never you never be, I told you you were gonna fail at this this six-week programme.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: I knew you weren't gonna be, you know, successful at it.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: And this this trickster as said it's fuelled by the critic and the and the monkey mind, deception and accusation is its two two things, and the the really thing why it is so tricky is because the when the trickster comes about, it is so logical.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: If the trickster says to you with this prophetic voice, that you know it sounds like there's some sort of um oracle speaking prophecy to you that has complete conviction and says, like, you know, of course, of course you're you weren't gonna do this because you're not that kind of person, it then incorporates confirmation bias, which is a bias which is uh puts more significance on things that you want to confirm about the belief.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you are driving day to day and or you're walking in the high street and your belief is that everyone is out to get you, you are going to look for the information that confirms that belief.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: So the trickster uses confirmation bias from past experience, and also knows, so it's going to only select the failures and the times that you said that you've failed.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: The trickster is a like has a fantastic way of just putting smoke and mirrors, a blanket over all of the good things, and he's only going to look at the things to confirm this deception and accusation of what you're going through at the moment.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: The trickster also knows all our weaknesses, um, which is like, yeah, great.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the trickster might also embody as we go back to the start, is embodying the idea of being you and being on your side.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: But as Jim says, as I also believe, you know, that we are not our thoughts, is that you can understand that you're not your thoughts, can understand then in the moment that you can label the trickster as the trickster and to distance yourself from from it.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what's the biggest thing on the trickster is that it's about settling for less.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: So the trickster might stop you from achieving or aiming for really high goals, and then confirm all of the times that you won't reach those goals, and think about it like fueled by the critic and the monkey mind, lots of lots of thoughts over analysis, and then judging everything, it's saying, Are we on track?
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then it will come along and say, No, you're not on track, you should probably you should probably extend the time that you're trying to achieve this by by you know six weeks to six months, because then you're more likely to to get the the goal.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: And although I think that increasing your time horizons, lengthening your time horizons, you will achieve more.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: There is a fine balance between uh still putting in the effort to achieve more over a longer period of time and extending the goals to make slower progress and settling for less.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: David Koppel, Jim mentions, has got this idea called the D slide.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: So it's the downward slide of when the trickster comes about.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: A downward slide goes like this: you have some sort of failure, and it doesn't happen in this order necessarily, but it is some sort of failure.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: There is disappointment about the failure, there's then devastation about the failure, you feel defeated about the failure, and then you feel defective.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: So you go from not achieving something from expectations to being sad about it, being distraught about it, being completely defeated and helpless about it, and then there is the thought of oh, there must be something wrong with me, and it is that is the whole idea of attaching your self worth to outcomes, is that it sometimes does lead you to point the finger at yourself and say, Well, there's obviously something wrong with me if I can't do it and someone else.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Can one other thing that Jim talks about in this book Inner Excellence is the affluenza virus, and the affluenza virus is something which is kind of a Western a Western idea, a Western phenomenon called Palms, P-A-L-M-S, which is that we are way too focused on our possessions, our achievements, our looks, like our physical appearance, our money, and our status.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: And those are the false measures of success that we go for, but they are quite addictive if we get into that cycle.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: So obsessing over possessions, obsessing over achievements to validate ourselves, trying to play the comparison game maybe of looks, uh upholding or aspiring to specific beauty standards, money, status, all of those, if not questioned and used in the right way, are all finite games.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: They're all games on the whole, potentially obviously not necessarily money, but if you look at status, it is a uh it's a zero-sum game.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: So status is a pecking order, and so for you to have more status, someone else must have less status.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh now it's a whole other idea, which is shifting a zero-sum view of the world to a positive sum view and saying, well, we can actually all win rather than if I win you lose, and if I lose, you win, kind of thing.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, he talks about the affluenza virus, possessions, achievements, looks, money, status.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think just to wrap up, because I could go on loads about this book, and this is literally only one chapter of it, is um is just what we can do, what you can do going away with from this episode.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: What are the follow-up questions and activities that Jim gives in the book?
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the first thing is practice observing the critic, monkey mind, and trickster.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: When do they seem to appear in your day?
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: What types of circumstances might they appear?
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: And just spend one day each observing the three great adversaries, and then journal, write down what you learned from them.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: And again, this is a learning process, there's no right or wrong.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's just becoming more aware and being able to pay attention to them when they come about.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: So whenever you find yourself frustrated, ask yourself what are the circumstances of this situation and what are my thoughts?
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: He says these are two different things.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_00: The circumstances is the actual thing that happens in life, and then your thoughts is how you perceive the circumstances.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: So once the two categories are separated and no one can argue about the circumstances, so you really separate them, then consider the solution, but not before you do that.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: So it's worth going into the emotion, going into the reality of the situation, then reframing it, and then finding a solution.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: Set an alarm on your phone for this message to come up at some point during your day.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: Where is your mind right now?
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: Then note if any of the three adversaries were taking charge of your thoughts, and if so, do a reset.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: Take two long, slow, deep breaths in through the nose with the exhale longer than the inhale.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: Right, that is enough of me talking about good old Jim Murphy's book.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: Hope you found this interesting, um, sparked somewhat your curiosity for what is going on in a lot of our brains, and hopefully can give you the confidence to not judge yourself too much by the thoughts that you have, the actions, what you might consider failures, and also hopefully it's given you some actionable things, some practical things to go forward.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for listening.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: If there is anything, books, any ideas, anything that you find fascinating, drop me a message and I'll get another episode out on it.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but for now, have a great rest of your day and a great weekend.