[Music] so why is movement specifically so important to mental well-being I almost don’t even know where to begin with this I mean you can start with the data if you just look at the data around the world every country you can imagine that it has been studied in every age group every health status every gender every socioeconomic status people who are more physically active or happier they have better relationship to them or meaning in life they’re less at risk for things like depression and loneliness if you go further than just sort of that kind of epidemiology and you look at how movement affects the brain and how movement affects mental health it’s as if humans were born to move and when we are physically active it puts us in a state of not just body but of mind to be the best version of ourselves you know everything from the neuro chemistry of the runner’s high which makes us enjoy cooperating with other people more and gives us hope and optimism all the way to how if you are regularly active you have a different brain and nervous system than people who don’t exercise you have a brain and a nervous system that are more sensitive to pleasure and more resilient to stress I could literally just talk for the next hour listing the many ways but I think the the biggest takeaway is that that human beings as individuals and as a species we thrive when we are active that that our brains aren’t just housed in bodies like it’s a suitcase that’s carrying our brains around our brains really work best when we are in bodies that are active [Music] hey everybody I hope you enjoyed this episode brought to you by our sponsors at bling castie welcome to impact Theory today’s guest is a research psychologist a lecturer at Stanford and an award-winning science writer she’s also a best-selling author of a number of books including the willpower instinct and the upside of stress and her TED talk titled how to make stress your friend is one of the 20 most viewed TED talks of all time her powerful insights into the field of science help which focuses on translating insights from psychology and neuroscience into practical strategies that support health and well-being has made her a much sought-after speaker and consultant she’s worked with countless organizations including the New York Times education initiative and she’s appeared on such prestigious television shows as the Today Show Good Morning America at the Anderson Cooper show and CNN’s vital signs so please help me in welcoming the woman whose incredible work has been published in 28 languages around the world Jazzercise aficionado and author of the joy of movement Kelly McGonigal PhD thank you welcome to the show so I didn’t know anything about the movement side of your life I had been introduced obviously to you through the TED talk and all the cool stuff that you’ve done around stress which was really interesting I’m a total psychopath for willpower so I was like alright what’s the next we’re gonna be and it was a curveball for me but then like the way you tie it together with all the connection and stuff what made you want to write about the power of movement I this is the book I was born to write it’s funny because most people who know me as a public figure don’t know that this is actually the most important part of my life I discovered exercise as a way to take care of my mental health when I was very young like seven or eight and I’ve been teaching group exercise classes for 20 years and I’m convinced it is the most important thing I do to take care of myself and I also think it’s the most important contribution that I make to my community the classes that I lead so I you know every book that I’ve written so far it’s because somebody else asked me to you know like oh you teach this class on the science of willpower it should be a book or you gave this TED talk it should be a book and this was the book where I said this is the book that I want to write because I believe the single most important thing that other people can do as well to to take care of their minds and also build community so why is movement specifically so important to mental well-being I almost don’t even know where to begin with this I mean you can start with the data if you just look at the data around the world every country you can imagine that it has been studied in every age group every health status every gender every socioeconomic status people who are more physically active or happier they have better relationships they’re more meaning in life they’re less at risk for things like depression and loneliness if you go further than just sort of that kind of epidemiology and you look at how movement affects the brain and how movement affects mental health it’s as if humans were born to move and when we are physically active it puts us in a state of not just body but of mind to be the best version of ourselves you know everything from the neuro chemistry of the runner’s high which makes us enjoy cooperating with other people more and gives us hope and optimism all the way to how if you are regularly active you have a different brain and nervous system than people who don’t exercise you have a brain and a nervous system that are more sensitive to pleasure and more resilient to stress I could literally just talk for the next hour listing the many ways but I think that the biggest takeaway is that that human beings as individuals and as a species we thrive when we are active that that our brains aren’t just housed in bodies like it’s a suitcase that’s carrying our brains around our brains really work best when we are in bodies that are active you actually talked about in the book how it’s quite possible that the very reason we developed large brains was to move give us some of the science behind that one thing that I found in my own life was once I could understand the biological mechanisms once I knew why things were the way that they were it became easier not to be a slave to it that then I sort of understood my sense of agency within the meatsuit as it were so where does the hypothesis that our brains were created to move us come from yeah this is I mean this is an idea that I feel like you can’t even explain it this is an idea that if you look at the structure and the function of the brain everything that humans do other than think is a form of movement you know communicating language emotion expressions labor finding food celebration procreation it’s all a physical action and the idea is basically other than think and ruminate and plan that’s you know that there is no other reason to have a brain except to interact with the world and even like thinking is subservient to our ability to engage with the world and so basically we have a brain that scaffold every type of interaction we have with the world which is movement and I think it’s it’s not even like a fancy idea it’s it that just is true so talk to me I don’t experience the runner’s high so I work out everyday because I recognize its importance but I think I recognize it largely intellectually especially because I’ve been doing it now for so many years so I don’t take a lot of time off from it so I don’t have sort of really a lot to compare to my wife though gets a pretty powerful runner’s high if she’s stressed out she needs to work out whereas if I’m stressed out I’d actually rather take time off and I find that gives me time to sort of settle my mind settle my nervous system so what is it that’s going on physiologically that makes like the the connections between anxiety depression working out cognitive optimization the book that John Ratey wrote spark going into like if you have like your hardest class you should do physical education right before and get your heart rate up what is going on physiologically that makes that true oh my gosh okay so so much but first I want to ask you you said you don’t get a runner’s high what do you actually do what’s your favorite form well I have run so I did cross-country for four years so when I say like I gave it a shot yeah I don’t run so I’m not I’m not here to make anyone run whatever under tight you unless there’s a killer soundtrack but even then like why not just dance that is super interesting and I’m very surprised we will definitely want to get an answer that so the exercise that I do is largely just way based so I do some bodyweight stuff but primarily I’m trying to lift heavy ish weights and not like the strongest cat ever but that’s that’s my zone so it’s interesting so if you want to look for a classic runner’s high the type of movement that is most likely to trigger it is when you are persisting at something that is like a cardio respiratory activity like walking fast hiking running swimming cycling dancing and my guess is that so we know that there are individual differences and whether people experience that as euphoria versus that might be like you know the classic runner’s high versus more just a sense of empowerment something that feels more like a relief so a lot of it’s an individual difference and a lot of times I think we’re promised the euphoria that’s like an amazing drug rush a lot of people don’t get that version of the runner’s high but most people like I don’t actually know that there’s any evidence that people don’t get any version of the runner’s high and we know that that human beings and also other social species like dogs when they engage in cardiovascular activity for about 20 minutes or so moderate intensity one of the changes that you see in the brain is an increase in endocannabinoids which is the neurotransmitter that cannabis mimics and if you work really hard you can get also an endorphin rush or if you have a killer playlist you can get an endorphin rush or if you’re moving with people that you love you can get an extra endorphin rush but that the core high actually is an endorphins it’s endocannabinoids so some people experience that as a kind of euphoria but a lot of people experience it as just feeling better like the worries are a little bit less everything feels possible things feel like there’s reason to hope and no cannabinoids also increase the pleasure we get from social contact so sometimes you don’t even notice what the runner’s high is or the exercise high is until afterwards and then you reunite with your partner or you meet up with your team and suddenly it just it’s an easier interaction somehow their stories are funny and it feels better to hug someone so the runner’s high it’s not always that rush that people think it is we’re like in the moment peak intensity you’re like love and life because you’re working hard the actual runner’s high is more of this this neuro chemical change that seems to make us more optimistic and also more open to connecting with others and my guess is you might get a version of that but also the movement the exercise that you’re doing is probably going to affect your brain in your mental health in slightly different ways so we know for example when you are lifting heavy weights you’re doing things that really engage the core the muscles of your core actually talk to your brain in a way that tends to rather produce this kind of happiness or euphoria it actually calms down anxiety it’s a really interesting neuro feedback loop that when you brace your core and when you’re engaging in that kind of strong muscular contraction that’s stabilizing your brain reads those signals from your body as essentially I got this I’m in control so that’s not really like a runner’s high but it can be a really empowering state of mind and so your literal moment a moment sense of self is always being informed by what your body is doing and we know that when people are active often they experience themselves as a different version of themselves so with something like weight lifting you are literally getting feedback sensory feedback from your body that says I am strong I move heavy things I do hard things I’m powerful and your brain does not receive that information from like you’re lifting something heavy so your your brain is gonna get feedback from muscle contraction and tension of the tendons on your joints your brain does not get that information and think my bicep is strong or you know my my lats are strong the brain thinks I am strong I have strength I am exerting myself in this way and every movement form has its own like signature proprioceptive feedback so my favorite form of exercise my favorite forms are dance and yoga and when you think about the gestures and dance or the the gestures and yoga the full-body gestures my favorite proprioceptive feedback are actually these physical signatures of joy like your arms stretched out and your gaze lifted and your heart open can start a movement experience feeling depressed and anxious and demoralized but after you know ten minutes of throwing my arms in the air and looking up and smiling my body is like you are joy my brain is like you are a joy and so often people get attracted to the forms of movement that give them a sense of self that is really personally meaningful or empowering and you know with running sometimes it’s I’m free I’m fast I’m going somewhere you’re on to something insanely powerful that I’ve never been able to put words to and I was saying this is somebody not long ago and I was like okay so I grew up in a morbidly obese family I used to be 60 pounds heavier and when I got lean for the first time was really the first time in my life that I’d been lean and but I’d already been working out for a while so as I got lean I was I was literally hard bodied and there is something so psychologically rewarding this can sound weird but this is so [ __ ] true I stand by this there is something so psychologically rewarding about like reaching across your body and you hit your PEC or something in like Jesus that’s hard or you slap your abs I was just doing this this morning and my abs are hard and I was like it sounds dumb to say it to somebody but it’s [ __ ] awesome like there is some weird feedback loop in your brain where I’m like I don’t even know why this is so awesome but my some subconscious part of me while I didn’t think I was a bad person when I was heavy or anything like that but I was not getting a positive reinforcement loop from encountering my own body in the way that and I’m talking like you’re not even thinking about so I’m not talking about looking in the mirror I’m talking about when you feel like when you feel a t-shirt tight across your arm when you flex your arm that there’s some signal that gets sent when you bump yourself in whoa it’s like that was unexpectedly hard there’s there is something really powerful in that and and what you’re describing is exactly what I get in the gym I am strong I remember so again I’m not setting any strength records but my highest deadlift was I think 385 pounds and I thought I [ __ ] bent over and picked up almost 400 pounds like that’s crazy and when you start thinking about stuff like that and you’re putting in that energy and you see that reward and your body is changing the amount that it changes your mind is yeah crazy well you know in my book I write about that woman who she actually had a plan to take her own life and she went to the gym and she dead lifted a personal best and it was literally in the moment of sensing her own strength that she decided she wants she wanted to live and I think that so often movement can give us these these moments of feeling what is possible in yourself and for yourself through this very concrete way you know I one of the ways that I’ve experienced that I’ve had a lifelong fear of flying I hate flying and for years I refuse to fly and when I decided that I finally wanted to face that fear I knew I had to learn how to deal with how I feel on a plane like my heart pounding and I feel like I can’t breathe and I feel like I’m trapped and I thought like when because I couldn’t practice by getting on a plane that’s too much but when else have I ever felt that way and I realized that one time I’d been to a indoor cycling class I hated it I felt like I was trapped I couldn’t breathe my heart was pounding I wanted to escape but I felt like the the instructor locked the doors and there was no way to get out of the room so I started going to indoor cycling classes as a way to practice getting used to what it feels like to be on a plane to feel trapped and afraid and what was so crazy about it to me is first of all it worked when I learned how to tolerate that discomfort I learned I can have a voice in my head that says you can’t handle this you need to escape and at the very same time that voice was in my head I could have the experience of choosing to stay like no you decided to do this and so there’s room for this voice in your head and also staying and I learned to tolerate the the sensations of discomfort but something weird happened where because of the playlist like listening to empowering music that I started to sense the sensations differently and I started to have an experience when my heart was pounding a feeling not afraid but feeling brave and feeling badass and somehow my brain like reorganize how it experienced the physical sensations of fear so that in moments when I actually was afraid suddenly I was like I guess I’m brave I guess I’m a badass and it’s so movement is so amazing in that how it gives us access to to physical feedback that allows us to have this different sense of self and again I’m I’m always encouraging people to figure out what’s that movement for you because this isn’t about you know believing everyone should exercise in a certain way to achieve some sort of ideal health and certainly not some sort of like ideal appearance but that every form of movement has its own empowering effects on your mind and often it’s a matching process figure out what that is yeah what you were saying about bravery I think is so important so Jordan Peterson has a whole thing so he was a is I guess still a clinical psychologist and so has tons of patients and he would deal with people with severe phobias and he said that when you do immersion therapy said you’re not making it less scary for them what you’re teaching them is that courage and bravery are powerful and that they’re more powerful than fear and so the physiological symptoms may not even change for them but their framing around that does and I know you’ve talked a lot about the importance of framing and the way that you see something how do you see that play out in people’s lives what’s the importance around framing are there other ways that you encourage people to do that yeah I mean absolutely so you know the idea that you just expressed actually is I think one of the core principles of everything I’ve ever tried to teach people which is that you can have an inner experience that is telling you you must do one thing or you can’t do this other thing and you can at the same time choose something that’s consistent with your values I mean certainly exposure therapy is like a very advanced version of that where some part of you wants to be able to go out in public or to talk to someone and overwhelming anxiety says this is you can’t do it and most people choose to try to control their inner experience rather than choose the action that’s most consistent with their values and their goals so you know this is true whether we’re trying to overcome addiction whether we are choosing to stay alive with our voices in our head that are severely depressed and and taunting us whether we’re choosing to overcome anxiety that that often the one skill you need is to say I can’t always control my inner experiences but I can make a choice right now that I know my future self will be grateful for that reflects my core values and I’m gonna learn how to tolerate this inner experience and that’s true for stress it can be also true for pain you know I’m someone who is in pain most of the time because I have chronic pain and that was the very first thing that pain taught me is you can choose to do things in a physical or psychological circumstance that is less than ideal but you can make room for everything that’s going on inside of you and still engage with life so you know this is that is literally the theme of everything that I try to share with people and you can learn it through therapy you can learn it through meditation which is often just one big giant you’re sitting with things in your your mind in your body that you don’t want to deal with and you definitely learn it through exercise because so much of exercise is actually learning a new way to not only deal with physical discomfort because I mean exercise is hard I’m not one of those people who says you know you don’t really need exercise you can just do the easy thing like don’t you have to sweat you can just you know stand up and stretch and you’re done like no you like the more intense probably the better for every aspect of you and so you’re going to be uncomfortable you’re going to get tired there’s gonna be a voice in your head that says you have to stop you know there will literally be feedback from your muscles that say you should stop and you learn how to how to negotiate and figure out what matters most to you and push through that okay there’s a couple things in there that I want to talk about you’ve spoken very eloquently about pain Yoga for pain management one what is it that drives the chronic pain that you’ve had to deal with and two how do you deal with it mentally and physically yeah wouldn’t it be nice to know so I had no answer for you in terms of what the pain is you know I started experiencing really debilitating headaches as far back as I have a memory of being alive so I don’t know when it started you know in my family history there was always oh Kelly has her headache now she’s lying under a blanket it is your sister you identical twins yeah she she does not have the type of pain I have she developed migraines after a traumatic brain injury but for whatever reason growing up you know she she did not share that particular aspect of my nervous system and you know it’s sort of hard to explain but the way I usually try to explain it to people is I understand that most people when they wake up in the morning if they just keep going they get hungry and they get tired I get pain like in the same way that that’s just what my nervous system produces and so it’ll often start with a mild headache and then there’s face pain and then there’s like things stabbing me in the eye and it’s just it’s all often up here sometimes systemic and none of the so some people who have chronic pain dedicate their lives to figuring it out and fixing it and nobody ever talked to no specialist ever had a explanation for it or a treatment that made sense to me so I have chosen just to live with it and to take care of myself in ways that I know make it sustainable and it’s funny that my biggest trigger for pain is actually talking there’s something about yeah I know right cuz I’m a teacher and a speaker and the most fulfilling activities in my life often are through interaction and communication so I had to make a choice very early on that said I was going to choose the thing professionally that I found the most value in and the most immediate value like maybe I help someone today like I taught a class and I someone said something afterwards like that was valuable I know it was valuable and know that I will go home and feel like I was run over by a truck every time and just to choose that I’d be like that’s that’s the cycle that I can live with and you know it goes back to that idea that you can choose your values over trying to control your inner experiences so I basically abandoned trying to figure it out or I think like the last time I went to a doctor for it was like 14 or 20 15 he just gave me the chills I knew you were gonna say values there and that was the other thing that I wanted to talk to you about so what is it like you you talk about values I think really interestingly maybe more than most people I have encountered in my life and I think values are so important so why are values important to you how do you come up with them you tell people they should have core values like why I values are I mean they are I think this is true for everyone but I don’t know they’re the thing that that gives you direction that give you courage I will say that you know everyone has individual personality strengths I think one of my greatest personality strengths is a really strong gut response when things are value consistent or inconsistent like I don’t realize it you know a week later a year later like maybe that wasn’t really consistent with my values it like assaults me the sense that like you know this is that this is or it excites me like I feel like literally when some of these values consistent there’s like a hook on my heart and I get hooked and pulled forward and that it gives me the energy or it gives me the courage it’s not what other people value you for so it’s not like what’s valuable about you it’s not are you smart are you you know whatever it’s when you are engaged in that activity or role where you are offering something to the world or bringing something to a relationship or you you are demonstrating a particular strength or virtue you feel there’s just a natural reward for it it’s like you are in alignment and I think that when people reflect on the moments they feel most alive and most proud of themselves are most connected to something bigger than themselves you can start to identify this is the role this is the relationship this is the the priority this is the way of being and you know so one of my values is enthusiasm which is a value that I like not even a lot of other people value it and do you mean to be enthusiastic whether I’m being like a fan at a concert but oh my god there’s todrick Hall which is like last week like just be so sincerely enthusiastic to to share in other people’s joy it’s like to be able to catch other people’s joy to love what I love and that that is something I know it sustains me and lights me up and it gives other people permission to also like to freely be a fan or freely share in joy or freely celebrate things that maybe are not important but that just make you happy so that’s a core value for me and I feel like there are things like that too like the values don’t have to be things that are virtues you know like honesty is my value I try to be honest but I don’t wake up in the morning and think today I bring honesty to the world your night I think today I’m bringing enthusiasm today I’m gonna bring compassion you know it’s another core value today I value I’ve been working with a lot lately as local community and I realized that that was a value when I didn’t have much of it and I was doing so much travel that I was losing contact with like actual people I live near that that kind of neighborhood type of community in connection so sometimes you know what your values are because it’s that thing that you long for you’re like like there’s something missing and that can be a value too and you can choose it without feeling like you’re already good at it I mean you know the value doesn’t have to be the thing that comes easy courage is another one of my values because my default temperament is fear and dread so we’re card on the courage aspect that’s amazing compassion self compassion you teach people how to do that yeah how did that become a thing how do you teach somebody to be more compassionate and then what’s easier teaching someone to be compassionate or self compassionate cuz such good questions so let’s define compassion so this is this is my area of research for the past decade so and the kind of like the scientific working definition of compassion is that it is a response to suffering so you become aware of some pain or suffering and there’s a part of you that is moved by that sometimes like upset about it distress by it touched by it and there’s another part of you that thinks I can do something to relieve the suffering I want to do something to relieve the suffering and so you respond in some way whether it’s through listening or taking action or standing up for someone so it’s the cycle of responding to suffering and often like ideally it includes a sense of hope and empowerment a sense of maybe love there’s also a kind of a warm glow to it so it’s not it’s not a response to suffering that’s fuel primarily by anger it’s not a response to suffering that’s fuel primarily by empathic distress like oh my gosh you’re sad like I can’t handle that I don’t like sadness let me cheer you up so I don’t have to have this sadness infection that’s not compassion right it’s it’s a response to suffering that’s driven by an actual desire to see that that suffering relieved and taking some kind of joy or meaning in that in that act of trying of responding so the way that you teach people compassion is first of all to recognize this is a basic human instinct and even people who get diagnosed as being sociopaths often have compassion it’s just a narrow circle right so so pretty much all human beings have the capacity it’s what caregiving is rooted in you know so a caregiver and their child or their pet or there’s this instinctive response you see them suffering and you want to scoop them up and protect them and take care of them so this is a basic human instinct and teaching compassion is often about figuring out where in the process you are you’re shutting down or being less effective so for some people the teaching of compassion is about the awareness aspect you know maybe you you are aware when your partner or your child is suffering but there’s a kind of a like a compassion blindness if you don’t really see the suffering in the people you work with because you’re so focused yourself or it’s hard to understand the life experiences of people who are different from you so you don’t really see their suffering so for a lot of people the teaching of compassion is this kind of cognitive empathy like you actually have to learn to pay attention and to imagine what it’s like to be other people and to ask people about their experiences so that can be one aspect of what it means to teach compassion it’s like literally wake up and learn to see more clearly for other people they were like overwhelmed by the suffering they see it all they feel it all and where they fall down is being overwhelmed by that I see all the suffering in the world and then I just feel powerless or overwhelmed or I feel like that that suffering is so contagious that now I just need to escape it and so the strength that needs to be developed is that actually the strength that we were talking about earlier to tolerate that initial distress so that you can choose action rather than being overwhelmed by it for other people it’s about training the resources like you want to be compassionate but no one ever really demonstrated to you what it’s like to listen to someone and so you actually train and listening or maybe you need actual skills trained people to listen yeah because their first instinct is just going to be to be quiet yeah and point their eyes of the person well that’s not a bad that is okay having done it that is actually not most people most people listen with their mouths they will immediately jump in and try to so they set out to listen and they want to share and problem-solve and talk back because that’s one of the ways that we connect but actually the very first listening exercise that I teach in my compassion trainings I call it listening with your heart and it would be like if we were doing a partner exercise so let’s say the exercise is to share what brought you to this training so you do your little reflection you know what you’re ready to share you partner up and then first of I always ask who typically talks first and make them the listener first to really get in your mindset that actually the most these are people that know each other no no usually not at all no so how would they not talk more it’s not so not comparisons like are you the type of person who would usually volunteer to talk are you like like you’ve been in this room for ten minutes and you haven’t said anything yet and really you’re thinking that ratio is wrong there are people who know and then I guide the listener in this contemplation you close your eyes and you bring attention to your physical heart you know not particularly whoohoo about this but literally there’s a heart in your body that is beating you bring your attention to it you sense your lungs on either side of your heart and you just imagine you’re breathing in and out of your heart start to bring some awareness down there and then usually people can feel that and then I ask them to imagine that they are dropping their ears to where their lungs are it’s just it’s a visualization just imagine your ears are where your lungs are on either side of your heart you imagine dropping your eyes down there so you’ve got like your nostril your ears and your your eyes here and you do not move your mouth we are listening from the heart and you listen with your whole body and so you turn your attention to the person who’s sharing and when you are listening with your whole body often your body language is open your eye contact is not particularly aggressive and you literally imagine that you’re breathing in what the other person is sharing and you just let it land without having to respond and you set the intention to understand the other person’s experience with the assumption that there’s nothing you ever have to do or say back like that’s the first training we do and actually we don’t let people respond in the first exercise you literally aren’t allowed when we make it more advanced we do things like reflective listening where you you share what you heard very close to the language they used and then the next level of appreciative listening where you say what really resonated with you and you you put yourself a little bit more into the conversation that’s an advanced skill but that that idea you know how you train listening is you have to change your mindset that it’s about understanding it’s not the point where you’re waiting to jump in and anyways but we could talk so now I’m gonna be quiet because I could like go through the whole compassion training program well I really want to get to the self compassion is that’s something that a lot of people in my audience struggle with is yes how to you know feel how to maybe forgiveness I’m not sure in fact that’s part of what I’m super curious to know like when you say to be self compassionate what do you mean when you get people to focus on is it dropping their eyes and ears down in their own heart or is it something completely different so you asked which was harder first of all self compassion is definitely harder for most people and it is harder to teach because it’s harder for most people and I think about this from an evolutionary point of view compassion as an instinct is connected to the caregiving system it exists to help us respond to suffering that is outside of ourselves compassion does not function sort of ideally and naturally when we have to be the object of it and the source of it that is not what compassion exists for that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have compassion for yourself but you know I think of all emotions and you know these capacities we have they are there for a purpose and compassion is for responding to the suffering of others and we have other very powerful instincts that compete with compassion when the suffering is our own shame is one sadness is one depression anger worry and anxiety and these are you know strong evolutionarily adaptive emotions that motivate us to actually seek perhaps the help of others or to sometimes to withdraw and try to figure things out but they themselves often produce a lot of suffering and can keep us from being really effective and so the first step is is deciding that you are worthy of compassion that you deserve compassion do you get people to do that well I often do it sideways so there’s a step in our compassion training called common humanity which is about recognizing what all human beings have in common which is the desire to be happy the desire to be loved the desire to contribute and the constant experience that falls short from that that we all know physical pain we all know disappointment we all know rejection we all know anger we all know fear and usually if people have through their own experiences you know maybe a difficult childhood a traumatic relationship that that they’ve come to the conclusion that they can’t trust others or that they aren’t worthy of compassion often the the first intuition is you have to go in and fix that at like the you level let me tell you why you are worthy let them create a story about you but actually the thing that breaks it open for most people you already know that you’re human and when you come to recognize that all humans suffer and all humans are trying to be happy and everything that people do is an expression of that even if it’s not skillful that that often breaks the heart open in a way that’s more powerful than like some sort of therapy conversation about why you specifically are deserving that’s really interesting so I do this thing called impact Theory University talk about mindset people fly me all over the place to talk about building businesses and stuff and one thing that I’m always coming back to you is self-worth is where people are really tripping themselves up and so because I went through this and my big problem was I could and this is like I’m not being humble this this is everything’s a bell-curve and I know where I fall on the intellectual bell-curve and I always saw myself as just smart enough to realize how much smarter some people are and the people that really went on to do extraordinary things it was like I am smart enough to be aware of my inadequacies and that always felt like this really gnarly trap and that seems like a pretty good place to be actually but I mean we don’t need to when I was when I was young it was not be you’re absolutely right it ends up paying off dividends once I cobbled together the the sort of following insight which is exactly what you were saying which is once I realized that the average human is the ultimate adaptation machine and the very thing that we are evolutionarily designed to do is grow and change right so culture stacks so it’s like a horse is born a dolphin is born it can just do its thing within like 20 minutes a human is not that way and so we are designed to drink in all this culture and so we sort of stay you know we have to be to your point about caregiving we have to be taken care of and all that so it’s two different evolutionary strategies pre wire everything or no allow them to absorb but they’re going to need to be taken care of now in choosing nap path of needing to be taken care of then your very design is to adapt to your surroundings to your culture to knowledge all of that stuff so I thought okay we’ll wait a second if that’s what humans are actually designed to do and look I admit we’re not blank slates so some amount is hardwired let’s ballpark it at 50% 50% of who we are as written in stone there’s nothing you’re gonna be able to do to change it but 50% is changeable and the life altering effects of changing that 50% even not skillfully as you said is still radically transformative so I thought okay I’m willing to accept that I’m an average human maybe even a little below average I actually don’t believe that about myself but I’m saying even if you were a little bit below average you still fall somewhere in that bell curve the amount that you can change is extraordinary far better to focus on that so I always tell people there’s only one belief that matters and that belief is that you’re roughly an average human and that the average human is designed to grow and change and so now just invest everything into that it’s really interesting buddy else say that that like you just need to anchor yourself to being average like all humans do this all humans have that same wants and desires and why not have compassion for yourself now I remember that was one of the very first insights I had as a psychology undergraduate I remember one day just thinking wow look if you don’t need to be better than other people it’s just so much easier are they really not trying to be better than other people I secretly own I secretly it’s my obsession yeah really not unlike a you said earlier oh god I don’t remember the exact words use it’s not like I owe virtue so you said it’s not when I talk values I’m not talking about virtues like I don’t think that it makes me better like that I’m just trying to out play so to me the name of the game is how many how much of your potential can you turn into usable skills yeah and so that to me is a fun game that I play with compassion I care deeply about the other players I am NOT a step on somebody’s neck to get ahead kind of guy that’s not interesting to me I like to see other people win but I also want to win well you know so there are these two human drives cooperation and competition and I think people you know they fall on a spectrum of which one is more motivating I think probably the healthiest is to have both of them being motivating forces neither one tripping you up too much because you can definitely fall too much in the like give it all away the sort of cooperation scale but um this is you know I have an identical twin sister as you mentioned and this is the one big distinction between the two of us she’s super competitive and I just AM NOT like I I the thing that drives me is did you do something today that was of value to the world like were you of any use or not and I can be very hard on myself about that if I feel like I’m not so it’s not like there’s no self-criticism I’m not comparing myself to other people or sort of like a hierarchy but it’s very internally I want to get back to that initial insight that you had so for you it was a big moment to realize I don’t need to be better than other people because growing up your I was always told be the best being number one it’s really important to be better than I mean you know this is from parents who wanted me to make sure that I was successful to growing up in a town that that prided itself on being number one and a lot of things and I don’t know I just I thought that was the way to be a good human and at some point I realized it was such a barrier to connecting with other people and that you know I I think I remember one in one class it’s such a silly little story but I remember the professor was like you’ve done so well on your exams we want to give you the chance to not take the final exam we know you’re going to get an eye on it we’re pretty sure so you don’t have to take the exam but we want you to tutor somebody who might not pass this class and to whatever amount of time you would spend studying for the exam we want you to tutor her so that she can pass the class and I was like this is the most brilliant thing I’ve ever heard and at something like that it was so much fun and they were right I would have gotten an A but I got to put that time into actually helping someone else who is struggling and I feel like that was a turning point where I started to think like how can that be my orientation where instead of if there’s a way to invest I’m worried about me performing well versus contributing like how do I redirect the energy so that it’s not about my performance as much as it’s about my contribution that is so interesting to me alright there’s so much about you that’s interesting all the stuff do you write about really intriguing where can people find out more about you my website Kelly McGonigal comm and on all the social media you know just as me and Kelly McGonigal nice okay so what is ultimately the impact that you want to have on the world what I hope every day when I wake up is that something I do whether it’s a dance class that I’m teaching or it’s a book that I wrote 10 years ago or maybe it’s somebody listening to this I hope that I think about this every day there’s somebody who right now is facing something in their lives that they aren’t sure they can handle and something I did or said or wrote gives that person a sense that a they are not alone and B that that they are adequate to their own life in this moment even if it’s nothing they would have chosen for themselves oh that’s pretty good guys her work spans a gamut of things that I think is really intriguing the movement stuff I think is incredible in terms of its impact on depression anxiety and connection which is no one is talking about that the way that she’s talking about that read it I think you will find it very powerful her whole library of books are incredibly amazing and if you haven’t seen her TED talk do yourself a favor and if you haven’t yet subscribed be sure to do so and until next time my friends be legendary take care everyone there is no way to build an empowering mindset or get ahead in business without constantly learning and accessing new information and today I want to share one of my secret weapons in the battle to learn new things and get ahead for all of us who are ambitious and busy it’s almost impossible to find enough time to sit down and just read but thankfully there is a practical app that solves that problem and I highly recommend it the app is called blink Asst blink is condenses powerful nonfiction books into bite-size text or audio you get the key takeaways the need to know 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