#657： Why You Don't Change (But How You Still Can)
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
200.76074
Summary
Dr. Ross Ellenhorn spent his career facilitating the recovery of individuals diagnosed with psychiatric and substance abuse issues. In his latest book, How We Change and 10 Reasons Why We Don t, he argues that if you ever want to change, it s more fruitful to understand why you don t than figure out why you do.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
00:00:11.020
Anyone who's ever tried to lose weight, curb their temper, quit smoking, or alter any of
00:00:14.520
their habit in their lives knows that personal change is hard, really hard.
00:00:18.320
Most self-help books out there treat people like machines, blitzing past this difficulty
00:00:21.800
and offering mechanical five-step formulas for changing your life.
00:00:25.160
My guest today says such simplified solutions hugely miss the mark.
00:00:28.060
He argues that if you ever want to change, it's more fruitful to understand why you don't
00:00:33.480
To understand that, you've got to go deeper, existential even.
00:00:36.460
His name is Dr. Ross Ellenhorn, and he spent his career facilitating the recovery of individuals
00:00:40.180
diagnosed with psychiatric and substance abuse issues.
00:00:42.920
In his latest book, How We Change and 10 Reasons Why We Don't, he's taken what he's learned
00:00:46.460
in his work and applied it to anyone trying to change their lives.
00:00:49.460
Ross and I begin our conversation with some of the reasons we don't change, including
00:00:52.440
the existential pressure of feeling like you're solely in charge of making change happen,
00:00:55.780
a dizzying amount of freedom and number of options for what to do with your life, and
00:00:58.920
day-to-day factors which influence our level of motivation.
00:01:01.620
From there, we turn to the role of hope and faith in psychology, and how these forces can
00:01:05.160
both boost and restrain your ability to change.
00:01:07.480
We discuss the way a fear of hope can constrain your life, why you sometimes need to embrace
00:01:10.980
staying the same in order to ever change, and the difference between good faith and
00:01:15.080
We discuss the idea that you don't develop hope, but you can develop faith, and how to build
00:01:18.760
your faith in yourself through embracing humility and taking small steps.
00:01:21.940
Ross then explains why he doesn't really give advice on how to change beyond finding the
00:01:25.380
good and a bad habit, but how patience and your social environment can also help.
00:01:29.060
This show's got some counterintuitive advice that will help you see your struggles differently
00:01:33.180
Check out our show notes at aom.is slash change.
00:01:43.440
All right, Ross Ellenhorn, welcome to the show.
00:01:48.820
You work with people who've been in and out of the psychiatric system and trying to get
00:01:52.700
help, and they haven't been able to make changes, but this book is also geared just to regular
00:01:56.240
people who have found change to be hard, and I think we've all experienced that to one
00:01:59.980
extent or the other, trying to quit smoking as hard, trying to lose weight as hard, controlling
00:02:05.480
your anger, your temper as hard, and you always have this desire, like, this is the time.
00:02:13.440
But then, you know, a week later, you know, you're off the treadmill.
00:02:20.460
Like, why is it so hard to make personal changes like losing weight, quitting smoking, being
00:02:28.420
And so, you know, I learned why it's hard from these individuals who are having such
00:02:33.540
profound problems with motivation and with accepting help.
00:02:37.900
But it really is applicable to all of us, including you and me.
00:02:44.460
And it's basically that every time you're trying to change something in your life, you're
00:02:49.140
exposing something that's really terrifying, which is that you're kind of driving the bus
00:02:56.200
And that's what existentialists would call existential accountability.
00:03:01.520
There's nobody really making things happen for me.
00:03:05.600
And if this life's going to have any depth or meaning to it, I'm in charge of that.
00:03:11.060
And so every act of changing yourself is really this profound act of kind of shepherding your
00:03:18.700
You know, it's very interesting because think about what people did, at least at the beginning
00:03:27.240
The massive agility that people showed in changing their lives, right?
00:03:39.220
That's actually easier, even though it's more massive, than dieting.
00:03:43.960
Because dieting is like, I'm on my own, I'm in charge of my life, and I'm making this happen.
00:03:49.460
And so there's always that pressure of having to look at yourself and your own accountability
00:03:57.300
No, yeah, I think that's, yeah, it's definitely existential.
00:04:00.280
We'd rather just like, I'd rather have someone tell me exactly what to do, so I don't have to
00:04:04.600
I mean, there's this fascinating work on, you know, why is it that Scandinavian countries,
00:04:17.620
In the United States, and you walk in, there's like 20 different cereals.
00:04:20.840
You know, you walk into PGA Fridays, and there's enormous menu.
00:04:24.360
And that level of choice actually can become depressing.
00:04:28.640
Well, yeah, and we also have just choices on how we want to live our lives.
00:04:32.100
You know, 100 years ago, your choice was like, my dad was a farmer, his dad was a farmer,
00:04:38.940
Now it's like, well, I can be a blogger, I can be a lawyer, I can be an accountant,
00:04:44.900
And that can be really terrifying to have to make that choice.
00:04:47.900
Yeah, yeah, that combined with a culture that says that because you're free, something's
00:04:55.720
wrong with you if you don't achieve those things.
00:04:57.700
So there's also a mythology in that, right, that everybody's sort of seen as this free
00:05:02.220
agent that should be able to make their life become whatever it should be.
00:05:06.060
You know, so there's like this, there's two things going on at the same time in our culture.
00:05:09.420
One is this idea that wherever you are is sort of your, an expression of who you are.
00:05:14.880
And the other is, you know, you're in charge of your life because there is some truth to
00:05:19.300
The second part, you know, that you're in charge of your way you respond to the world.
00:05:22.900
You're not always in charge of how, where you end up.
00:05:25.800
So there's this deep existential reason why it's hard to make personal change because it's
00:05:30.400
scary to accept the fact that you're the one who's driving the bus of your life and
00:05:34.420
you have all these options to choose from as to where to go.
00:05:37.560
But there's also more day-to-day things that can either make us more or less motivated to
00:05:43.080
And so, so there's this field around us and let, let me, let me give you an example from
00:05:47.920
the book and then I'll explain why that example is important.
00:05:50.760
So I, I have a goal in my life to give more honest, critical feedback to my employees because
00:06:00.560
And one day I needed to give one of my managers some feedback and I really felt like this is
00:06:10.160
I felt lousy, all the excuses for not doing it started entering my head.
00:06:15.220
You know, maybe I'll just do it next week or I'll kick the can down the road some other
00:06:19.380
And I was in New York city and I got on this elevator with a group of people.
00:06:23.140
And while we're going up, this woman spills her coffee and somebody in the elevator says,
00:06:28.380
you know, I'm going to sprinkle a little sugar on that to make it congeal.
00:06:33.840
Another person grabbed some napkins from their pocket and put it on it.
00:06:37.640
And we got to like the fifth floor and this guy got out and said, that was the best elevator
00:06:44.940
And then we got to the 10th floor and this businessman gets out and he yells back to us,
00:06:53.880
And I got off of that elevator and I was totally prepared to give this manager feedback.
00:07:03.480
Well, we all live in these fields and the fields are very complex and you cannot predict when
00:07:11.380
And the fields are basically, there's a bunch of forces moving you forward.
00:07:16.780
There's all kinds of traits, your own self-confidence, your own mental agility.
00:07:22.000
But there's also things like how good your day is going, what happened to you yesterday, what's
00:07:28.180
on your mind at that time, what's your socioeconomic class, what else is going on at that point.
00:07:34.980
And then there's all these restraining forces, all these things holding you back, your self-doubt,
00:07:43.900
And so what happened to me that day was there was enough of an extra little bit of good stuff
00:07:49.960
going on, sort of a sense of faith in humanity that pushed me over to the ability to actually
00:07:57.240
And that's why one day you might be planning to diet and you can't diet.
00:08:01.380
And then the next day you wake up and you're completely able to diet.
00:08:04.000
That's because something has shifted in this field around you.
00:08:07.020
All the forces holding you back, all the forces pushing you forward.
00:08:11.860
And the way to think about it is each of us is sitting between those two forces at all
00:08:17.160
Sometimes we're closer to our goal because either the positive forces are stronger and
00:08:21.780
the negative forces are the same, or the negative forces are less for some reason and we're
00:08:26.200
And then we're always in this field between these two things, moving back and forth.
00:08:31.140
And then as we just discussed earlier about this existential anxiety, that's a restraining force.
00:08:35.060
But what's interesting about that, just the fact of wanting to do something, to achieve
00:08:39.000
a goal, make a personal change, actually can cause a restraint because we start freaking
00:08:47.120
That's exactly right, that the thing that changing comes with its own built-in restraining
00:08:54.300
There's other kinds of motivations where it's just basically these two fields, but change
00:09:04.820
Like if you're going to plan on losing weight, you're hoping to lose weight.
00:09:09.220
And so there's always hope as a positive force forward.
00:09:13.160
But the problem is that hope too has its restraining element because hope can lead you
00:09:18.260
to profound experiences of disappointment and helplessness.
00:09:22.780
And so if you've had enough experiences of disappointment, hope is actually scary.
00:09:27.260
And that's part of why hope is both a positive force and a restraining force.
00:09:33.000
Well, let's dig into this idea of hope more because this is the first book of psychology
00:09:37.600
that I actually, where it deals with hope very seriously because you often read about
00:09:42.260
hope in terms of like a religious book or something like that.
00:09:45.680
In this realm of psychology, humanistic psychology, what does it mean to hope for something?
00:09:50.840
Just like want something that you don't have or can't see?
00:09:53.620
Well, first of all, I want to point out what an insane world we live in that hope is not
00:10:00.600
a central element of what we're talking about in psychology.
00:10:03.280
And that we have all these weird terms that psychology and psychiatry is made up that have very little
00:10:10.600
meaning like depression, anxiety, that they don't really have a meaning attached to them
00:10:18.340
I'm experiencing despair because I didn't get it.
00:10:21.160
Like these words have been removed from therapeutic practices.
00:10:24.280
It's very sad in a lot of ways because it treats people as if they're kind of like these
00:10:28.660
broken things instead of recognizing they're dealing always with the same things everybody's
00:10:33.640
dealing with, which is how do I hope for things and how do I deal with the despair of not getting
00:10:41.160
It's sort of an emotion and a position that makes sense.
00:10:44.400
So hope is, in a way, it's similar to other things that are emotions and positions like paranoia.
00:10:53.320
And hope is this attitude in which you place importance on something you want and you start
00:11:01.500
So every time you hope, you're actually attributing to something an importance.
00:11:06.400
So the example is, you know, your parents ask you what you want for Christmas or Hanukkah
00:11:10.980
The minute you say bike, that thing becomes this important thing to you.
00:11:14.900
You also notice at that point that you lack a bike.
00:11:18.360
So two things are going on at the same time when you hope for something.
00:11:20.920
It becomes important and you recognize you lack it.
00:11:25.300
That means that hope always implies risk because if you don't get it, you recognize something
00:11:30.560
you've now appointed as important you don't have and you recognize you lack it.
00:11:35.700
So every time you're trying to change something about yourself, you're going to be recognizing
00:11:39.560
if you don't get it, you lack that thing that you want to change and it was important.
00:11:44.100
And hope is this thing that moves you through uncertainty.
00:11:47.400
You don't hope for something and know you'll get it.
00:11:49.480
That's what makes it so evolutionarily important because hope is getting you through uncertainty
00:11:59.260
It's kind of very different than a cheaper emotion, which is optimism.
00:12:06.320
Hope is, I don't know if everything's going to be great, but it's going to drive me, move
00:12:11.920
And there's two very important qualities to hope.
00:12:14.360
And if you take a survey on hope, you'll be taking Charles Snyder's survey typically.
00:12:19.620
And there's two things he's looking for that hopeful people do.
00:12:27.500
And the other is they find alternative pathways.
00:12:31.480
So hopeful people, when you see a barrier, you try to figure out your way around it.
00:12:36.800
And when you think about hopeful politicians, they're often talking about how we're going
00:12:40.880
to work our way around something, they're not promising we'll get there.
00:12:44.400
You know, Churchill's famous speech about we'll fight here, we'll fight there, we'll
00:12:50.740
He's just talking about we're going to try every way possible to fight them.
00:12:56.820
It's this emotion we experience through uncertainty.
00:13:01.480
So you mentioned one element of hope is this belief in yourself that you're capable of doing
00:13:11.680
And again, faith is one of those words we typically associate with faith and with religion
00:13:16.800
But in this model of how people change, like what is faith?
00:13:21.980
So again, this is a real problem that we would think of these things as important in church
00:13:28.900
and in synagogue and in mosque, but not important in therapy, right?
00:13:34.420
So faith is very similar to what Bandura, a social psychologist, calls self-efficacy.
00:13:41.580
So self-efficacy is the belief that you can make things happen, that you're competent enough
00:13:47.780
to control your life and to fix things and make things and be able to kind of take on
00:13:56.780
And that's really what faith is in yourself, which is that I can get through this.
00:14:04.380
And so hope has that kernel of faith in it because that element, what Snyder's pointing
00:14:12.240
And when you've been met with lots of disappointments, you lose that faith in yourself.
00:14:17.920
And if you lose that faith in yourself, you become afraid of hope because you're saying,
00:14:21.960
hope's going to bring me to that point again where things are going to fall apart because
00:14:28.340
And I don't know if I have enough faith in myself to handle that.
00:14:33.420
So like these things, the faith and hope, they drive us, they help us move forward in uncertainty.
00:14:40.700
Because once you experience that defeat, you don't get what you wanted or you had faith
00:14:46.160
in yourself and your ability and like it didn't work out, like you just, you go, you can fall
00:14:53.900
And also despair, the other term I would use for that is helplessness.
00:15:07.380
I'm driving this bus and I'm no good at making things work.
00:15:14.220
And so that's why the next time you're ready to hope, you're like, I don't want to have
00:15:18.820
that experience again, that I'm not able to make my life work.
00:15:26.160
So you mentioned like when you were talking about hope and giving an example of hope and
00:15:29.320
a kid hoping for a bike at the holidays, if you don't get the bike, it's a bummer, but
00:15:36.860
But like when you say you hope to lose weight for the 20th time, like that can be even more
00:15:52.520
I mean, think about, think about COVID again, right?
00:15:55.380
Like what were we hoping for when we massively adjusted our lives?
00:16:01.960
We weren't, we weren't hoping for some great thing to happen.
00:16:08.080
It was just like, let's get through this thing.
00:16:11.160
But to say to yourself, I'm going to lose weight.
00:16:13.320
That's like all the responsibilities on my shoulders.
00:16:16.740
And I'm hoping for a thing that I'm going to, that, that, that makes me better than I
00:16:34.880
Who is this person driving the bus that's, that is my life?
00:16:40.820
There's existential stakes whenever you make a goal like that.
00:16:46.660
And I thought it was interesting, your research on hope and this fear of hope.
00:16:50.060
So like hope can cause a fear of hope because there's always a chance you're not going
00:16:53.040
to, it's not going to happen for you, what you wanted.
00:16:55.000
What you found is that people who are the most hopeful are actually the most afraid
00:17:06.680
People who are very hopeful and have fear of hope are very agitated.
00:17:13.680
They, they get engaged in these things called counterfactuals where they're constantly thinking
00:17:23.040
They, they don't, they're less likely to see a positive event coming up than a person
00:17:31.320
Like a person who doesn't have hope, they're like, oh yeah, my graduation is coming up.
00:17:35.180
Person who has hope, they're going, oh my God, I'm going to get excited about this.
00:17:42.060
So what we're finding is that the relationship between hope and fear of hope is this sort
00:17:49.600
And what that means on some level is we might be, we might be actually diagnosing people
00:17:54.040
as depressed or even in despair when actually they're people with a lot of hope, but they're
00:18:01.780
They're like a, they're like a high diver who's afraid of heights.
00:18:05.380
And you make this case is really, I mean, it's counterintuitive that, okay, when you
00:18:09.840
decide to hope for somebody, you also have this fear of hope and you decide,
00:18:12.060
to let the fear drive your decision, we often think, well, that's not good.
00:18:17.320
But you kind of make this counterintuitive that sometimes that's what needs to be done.
00:18:21.540
Sometimes you have to just kind of stay the same because you've still got some work you
00:18:25.800
have to do before you can make that big change you're hoping for.
00:18:30.380
So this, this gets, this gets a little con, not convoluted, but complex.
00:18:39.020
So I'm afraid of trying something that will change my life because I'm afraid of that feeling
00:18:44.980
of helplessness that's going to happen and despair if it doesn't happen again.
00:18:49.300
And I'm afraid my hope's going to coax me into doing it.
00:19:07.220
So I'm actually doing something that's, that's nurturing of myself.
00:19:10.400
I'm trying to kind of make sure that what hope I have is safe.
00:19:16.640
I'm not moving forward because I don't want that injured again.
00:19:20.300
I'm staying still so that I don't get whatever motivates me more hurt.
00:19:26.040
And so in the book, that's really what I'm talking about is, can you find a way to have
00:19:32.360
That's sure a better attitude towards staying the same than hating it, right?
00:19:37.620
And that's such a disrespectful way to look at the fact that you didn't diet or you didn't
00:19:44.320
It's not respecting that there's parts of you that are trying to take care of yourself
00:19:49.820
And they come from self-love and all love is messy and inaccurate and screwed up and sometimes
00:20:01.660
And so sometimes you go overboard and you protect yourself too much, but it's coming from the
00:20:06.540
Well, yeah, something you say about people who have a fear of hope, the thing they do
00:20:10.840
to protect the hope that they have is they severely constrain their lives, right?
00:20:17.800
Like the only things you're worried about are things that happened a few months ago.
00:20:20.760
And the only things you're kind of maybe excited about are the things that will happen in
00:20:24.540
But you're not really hoping, what's my life going to be like in a year, two years, three
00:20:31.940
Because you don't want to hope that far in the future because there's a good chance it
00:20:41.680
You know, and so then what are you doing there?
00:20:43.920
You're trying to protect what hope you have from another injury.
00:20:54.460
But on the other hand, you're doing something that has some sense to it.
00:20:59.360
And the more you can respect that, maybe even find it kind of beautiful that you're
00:21:06.860
It just doesn't work to like hate yourself for not change.
00:21:17.940
You know, this idea of like hope and being afraid of hope reminds me of like that saying,
00:21:22.960
I don't know if it's connected, but it sounds kind of the same.
00:21:25.140
Like cynics are just idealists who have been disappointed over and over again.
00:21:31.780
And it's like, I think people like hopeful people, they're just like people who are afraid
00:21:35.560
They're just, they're hopeful people, but they just been, they feel like they've been
00:21:38.140
burned so many times that they, they get kind of like, I'm not going to put my, I'm not
00:21:42.100
going to hope this time because it'll feel bad.
00:21:45.420
I would just adjust that just a little bit from people who are, you and I are afraid of hope.
00:21:50.760
I mean, some people are just more afraid of it than us.
00:21:54.020
I mean, you know, there's not a single theologian out there that says, go hope.
00:22:05.820
And if it takes some strength to face hope, there must be something scary about it.
00:22:09.020
And there's what's scary about is hope is always about risk.
00:22:11.900
And I'm, that's not my, that's not something I made up.
00:22:15.000
Every theologian's talked about hope is a risky attitude.
00:22:17.860
You're climbing a mountain and every step you take towards hope means a bigger fall if the
00:22:29.500
And that's why religion has always been about hope and faith.
00:22:32.700
It's trying to kind of get people to act on hope.
00:22:39.680
We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
00:22:47.220
So like, say someone makes a goal to lose weight or maybe they want to change their job, but
00:22:50.940
like they haven't made the move because there's a whole bunch of reasons.
00:22:54.560
You give like a whole bunch of reasons that in the years you've been working with people,
00:22:58.160
you found different reasons, like different things that people are protecting when they
00:23:01.860
just, when you say, when they decide, they might not know they're making a decision,
00:23:05.480
but you know, when they decide, I'm not going to, I'm not going to move forward on that change
00:23:13.340
Like, yeah, we've been kind of talking about this, but this pain of one pain is just the
00:23:20.960
And we'd rather just, like we talked about earlier, just escape from that.
00:23:24.400
I mean, any examples of people you worked with where the reason why they stayed the
00:23:28.580
same is because they were afraid of that existential freedom.
00:23:32.380
I would say that most of the people I deal with, you know, and now this is me applying
00:23:38.040
my ideas on them and I'm pretty much against people deciding what other people's experiences
00:23:42.400
are, but my way of looking at things is that most of the people I'm dealing with, this is
00:23:48.980
They're having a major existential crisis, partly caused by the fact that they've had a
00:23:56.560
massive disappointment because of having been diagnosed with a psychiatric issue.
00:24:00.740
And so they're dealing with, you know, if I'm free, I'm accountable.
00:24:06.220
And if I'm accountable, can I actually get my hopes up again?
00:24:09.700
You know, can I have another experience of kind of loss regarding this?
00:24:14.540
And so for most of them, I think this is going on for them.
00:24:17.820
Well, and you also talk, you bring this other essential idea of bad faith and good faith.
00:24:22.700
You know, good faith, I think this is from Sartre.
00:24:26.160
He said that like, you know, good faith is when you recognize that you are accountable,
00:24:30.400
You're not, you know, you might not be responsible for the hands you're dealt in life, but you
00:24:38.000
Bad faith is whenever you pretend you don't have that like ability or accountability or responsibility.
00:24:44.920
And, you know, I remember you talked about one person you worked with who did something
00:24:48.720
that looked like good faith was actually bad faith.
00:24:50.940
I guess what it was is he, he set up this like system of accountability where people
00:24:59.940
So like, it's, it looked like good faith in that he was setting up this system, but it
00:25:03.600
was actually kind of a bad faith move because he wanted other people just to take care of
00:25:08.120
He wanted to set up the system and then he didn't have to think about it after that.
00:25:14.480
So he, he wanted these, these, you know, we kept telling him, you know, because I run
00:25:21.980
So he just kept telling me, you could call any time if there's a crisis.
00:25:26.340
But he wanted check-ins to make sure he wasn't in crisis.
00:25:31.300
And, and that's bad faith because what he wanted was this sense that people were kind
00:25:36.320
of there automatically responding to him and that he was the sort of passive person that
00:25:42.540
they were taking care of because passivity is kind of the art of bad faith.
00:25:47.120
And to call us would mean that he was an agent.
00:25:52.280
So that, that's a really significantly injured person, right?
00:25:55.480
That they, they, they knew that they had this service where they could call any time, but
00:26:00.100
they didn't want to use the service because they were so terrified of actually being an
00:26:06.680
And that's kind of classic for a lot of the people I work with, you know, but, but right
00:26:11.280
now, you know, you and I are talking, this is a good faith interaction.
00:26:15.340
I'm feeling completely like I'm my own agent of my life right now.
00:26:19.220
You know, I feel like I'm spewing out words and ideas that are my own and I'm accountable
00:26:26.320
And when I leave and I walk home, I'm going to be thinking about how I have to be home
00:26:31.420
And that have to is bad faith because I'm acting as if that time I have to be home is
00:26:38.680
something I have to do instead of I want to do because I don't want to piss people off
00:26:45.720
So our days are filled with these back and forth between good and bad faith.
00:26:49.900
And some of that's, some of that's just functional.
00:26:52.980
You can't just go through life seeing everything as a choice, but some of it's because we just
00:26:57.420
are sort of terrified of this idea that there's a lot of choices in front of us.
00:27:02.420
Well, I mean, so going back to this idea where that, that can actually be useful because I
00:27:07.900
think people are hearing that like, well, that's not good.
00:27:09.600
Bad faith sounds not good where you pretend like you don't have accountability for your
00:27:14.140
But like, say they talked about this guy who set up this system, like, it sounded like
00:27:20.440
Can it like, can that be a way where he sort of works his way up to building good faith?
00:27:27.260
I tell this other story about, I mean, you know, and these are extreme stories because
00:27:31.060
these are people that have been under extreme experiences of disappointment.
00:27:36.680
I had a guy in a group and I hated this, but I was a junior therapist at the time.
00:27:41.240
So we were asked, we had to ask them to give a number to their mood, which is sort of dumb,
00:27:46.140
but, and he would always say every week he was a two, which is really low in depression.
00:27:52.120
Like he was a two with 10 being, you know, doing really well.
00:27:56.380
And he'd say a two every week, but there were these women in the group who went to church
00:28:00.900
with him and they'd come into my office and they'd tell me things like he was starting
00:28:05.920
Like he spoke at the church the other day, like he got his own apartment, like he got a job.
00:28:14.540
And so he needed us to kind of stay in this place of seeing him as a two, not scare him
00:28:19.440
with our expectations going up about his own agency, right?
00:28:22.740
That he can make his life work in order for him to escape bad faith.
00:28:26.820
He couldn't have us be part of it and get excited for him.
00:28:30.540
And so that was sort of his method to get out of it.
00:28:33.300
No, that's another one of the 10 reasons why we don't change the fear of just expectations
00:28:38.780
Once you tell people, your wife, like, oh, I'm going to, this is, I'm going to lose
00:28:45.640
And then, you know, a week later, you're, you know, got the burrito taco enchilada meal.
00:28:53.260
And, you know, she's disappointed and you feel it and you're like, I just don't want
00:28:57.340
I'm not even going to say, I'm trying to make a change.
00:29:01.780
That raising other people's expectations means raising them seeing your, your, that you're
00:29:07.920
the master of your life and having other people witness that is scary, right?
00:29:16.200
You witness yourself letting them down and you feel bad about yourself.
00:29:20.820
And one way to avoid that is to not change, right?
00:29:24.040
You stay miserable so that you don't have to face the misery of a disappointment in front
00:29:32.760
And we sort of stay in this state, this possum like state, because we don't want to have that
00:29:37.240
experience of being, you know, raising our hopes and then having them dashed.
00:29:41.540
And I mean, so this one guy you talked about who was, you went to your, your group therapy
00:29:45.500
session said he's a two, like, yeah, that was kind of his way out of it.
00:29:51.880
But I mean, how else have you seen people overcome this fear of just expectations?
00:30:04.020
One is that I really don't think that you can develop hope.
00:30:08.900
So the more people kind of get better at things, get better at life, the more willing they are
00:30:16.820
And so the more willing they are to kind of face the fact that things might not work out,
00:30:23.500
You know, the more I've gotten good at things, anything, the more I kind of feel like I can
00:30:30.540
And I've seen that in my, in my clients, you know, the more that they can kind of take
00:30:33.420
care of themselves and be in charge of their lives, uh, the more willing they are to take
00:30:38.640
I guess, you know, the one story I tell in the book is this guy used to kind of know back
00:30:43.000
in the, the, the punk scene in LA who wanted to quit smoking.
00:30:45.960
And he did actually the opposite of the, the, the guy that gave the, the two, he took pictures
00:30:51.840
of himself looking like an idiot smoking and he called these idiot cards and he plastered
00:30:57.820
them and he was really well-known in LA and people loved them.
00:31:00.540
So he plastered these all over the clubs and the bathrooms and the clubs all over the place.
00:31:06.180
And it was his way of kind of reminding himself in a way that, you know, continuing on with
00:31:14.160
It was this kind of reflection of this thing, but he also made it into kind of a performance
00:31:18.440
because he got all these other people involved in it in a way where they were reflecting to
00:31:22.160
him and it held him accountable in this other kind of way that helped him finally quit.
00:31:27.340
It was kind of a beautiful little piece of performance art in some ways.
00:31:30.540
Well, you mentioned one thing that people kind of get out of, overcome these fears of
00:31:34.280
expectations or freedom is, you know, they, they start taking small steps in different
00:31:40.240
It might even, not even, might not even be related to the, like that, the big issue in
00:31:44.140
Whether they think they're depressed or they've got, you know, something else, but they, they
00:31:48.360
decide, you know what, I'm going to, in this one area of my life where the stakes aren't
00:31:55.140
But then another reason like people don't change is because like small steps, like that's
00:32:06.000
And so a lot of people think, well, it's not even worth it.
00:32:08.040
If I had to do like these little minuscule steps and I'll make much progress, then I'll
00:32:12.920
So here's, here's another word that you don't hear in therapy enough, which is humility.
00:32:17.260
That, um, when you head out towards a goal, if you find every small step to be insulting,
00:32:23.740
because every small step reminds you where you are, right?
00:32:29.700
Matter of fact, if you don't take those small steps, you can dream all you want that you're
00:32:33.000
really close to the goal and never, never change, right?
00:32:35.800
It's really easy to kind of think, oh yeah, I could do that tomorrow.
00:32:39.080
But to take the small steps is this kind of painful event of having to look at where you
00:32:45.520
If you're afraid of hope, you'll never take those small steps.
00:32:49.600
Or if you have this kind of overblown version of yourself where you think you can achieve
00:32:54.260
it right away, you'll never take the small steps.
00:32:56.540
And the danger in that is that every small step, once it's completed, actually adds to
00:33:05.500
And the next day you're going to take the next step, but you've got to get on those steps
00:33:12.180
You have to fuel each other if you can get on the track.
00:33:16.460
But the problem is you're terrified and it's painful because each one is an insult.
00:33:21.100
I mean, so like, I'm trying to think of a problem.
00:33:22.920
Like, you know, if you have to, if you need, if you're trying to get a promotion at your
00:33:25.920
job, a career that means a lot to you, it might mean you have to take some sort of remedial
00:33:30.560
course or go to some like continuing education class that you think is really easy and you're
00:33:35.440
going to look like an idiot and you're just like, I'm not even going to do that because
00:33:37.820
it's, but like, if you had hope and you wanted to act on that hope, like you would do it.
00:33:42.640
You would, and you had the humility, you would do it.
00:33:49.000
And then, so the humility is kind of needed at that point of the small steps, right?
00:33:52.840
You know, the story of Icarus is really fascinating because Icarus's dad, who was the god of
00:34:08.220
And he built Icarus, these wings, and the wings had two problems with it.
00:34:12.300
One was, you know, we know about the sun, right?
00:34:14.420
They'd melt if he got to, if he got, if he had hubris, if he got too close to the sun.
00:34:18.140
But if he got too close to the ocean, they'd get wet and get destroyed.
00:34:25.640
And so you have to kind of float between those two things.
00:34:28.040
You can't be kind of like worried all the time that I'll feel bad about myself and humiliated
00:34:34.280
And you also can't be living in this world where, oh, I'm above those small steps.
00:34:39.640
So we say we hope for a change, but sometimes we just stay the same because like we're afraid
00:34:43.060
we're trying to protect ourselves from all these things we've been talking about.
00:34:45.460
The fear of freedom, the expectations, the indignity of small steps.
00:34:51.080
So like, I mean, I think we kind of hit on it, but it's like how the first step is looking
00:34:55.500
at these things as maybe not as a negative because that will just, I don't know, kind
00:34:59.720
of taint things and make you feel worse about yourself, which just sort of creates this vicious
00:35:06.880
So to this, these tensions of that, that's created of, of hoping and then you hope causes
00:35:14.760
You just, I don't know, like what do you, when you work with a, when you work with a,
00:35:18.040
with a client, like what does that process look like of, of change when they finally
00:35:25.960
So, you know, I'm, I'm in this awkward position of writing a kind of self-help book that gives
00:35:31.600
Because I really don't believe that like advice on what you need to do to change works.
00:35:38.740
What I think works in what science shows is contemplation from a nonjudgmental space.
00:35:47.960
In other words, I'm doing this for this reason.
00:35:51.140
That's why I have 10 reasons not to change, right?
00:35:58.400
And I'm looking at both and I'm weighing them, right?
00:36:03.740
If you look at sameness is bad, you're never going to look at the reasons for it.
00:36:07.860
And so real change happens, real sustainable change happens when you're able to say there's
00:36:15.840
And I have to say goodbye to that good in order to move forward.
00:36:19.820
If all you say is that, is that lie to yourself that everything about this thing is bad, it's
00:36:27.940
That's really what is happening now in some ways with people with problematic habits or
00:36:32.520
what's people call addiction is that we're discovering that if a person can discuss and
00:36:37.140
think about why they like using, why it's important in their lives, what it does for them,
00:36:41.960
they're actually more likely to give it up than somebody where it's just about, you know,
00:36:50.500
I'm trying to say, you know, spend some time looking at this thing and appreciating it.
00:36:56.000
Because if you do that, you can probably leave it behind.
00:36:59.100
You're never going to retire it if all you think is it's bad and that you're bad because
00:37:03.700
Well, it sounds like it's a good analogy, be like a protective, overprotective parent,
00:37:07.060
Overprotective parent isn't, they're not doing it out of like, they had this urge to be a totalitarian.
00:37:11.960
They're usually doing it out of like a sense of love and they want to protect you.
00:37:15.180
But at a certain point, they have to realize that's actually not going to help my kid.
00:37:24.120
I have a 22-year-old son who's planning a big road trip right now.
00:37:29.680
My wife and I are discussing whether it's a good idea for him to do it.
00:37:34.700
This kid's 22, you know, but we love him and we're worried about him.
00:37:39.480
And if we were to intervene on that in some way, we would be doing something not good,
00:37:49.360
It would sure piss him off and it wouldn't feel good, but it's not bad.
00:37:54.180
It's just love that's not being controlled right.
00:37:57.700
So let's kind of recap big picture overview of what we've talked about so far.
00:38:02.060
So there's this, whenever you want something, you hope for something, automatically there's
00:38:09.020
Between where you are, you don't have the thing and where you're at, the thing you'd like.
00:38:13.300
And by thing, I asked me already, we're talking about personal change here.
00:38:16.340
So I'm not talking about a bike or an iPad or whatever.
00:38:19.360
And then whenever you start hoping, that's a driving force towards the thing you want.
00:38:24.720
But then also there's a countervailing restraining force, which is the fear of hope.
00:38:29.460
And then there's also faith is driving us towards that.
00:38:32.040
We have this capacity, we have faith in ourselves and the ability to do what we want or what we
00:38:39.300
But there's also a countervailing restraint to there.
00:38:42.440
That's like, you know, you mess up and your actions don't give you the results you wanted.
00:38:47.000
And embedded in that, there's all these other driving and restraining forces like you were
00:38:53.160
You're in a good mood, your family's supportive, the weather's nice, but also restraining things
00:38:59.140
like you just, people are annoying, you know, customer service experience that went bad.
00:39:13.060
And then the other thing, you know, sometimes we decide in all the mix of this,
00:39:16.280
these tensions and driving forces just to stay the same because that's easier sometimes
00:39:27.260
And I think the only thing I want to add to that, you know, is that sometimes those restraining
00:39:34.500
And so I give this example or story in the book about a woman who works in the cafeteria
00:39:42.400
who wants to go back to college and has to drive to her college through rush hour to get
00:39:49.940
to class and then has to drive all the way home, has to find parking on campus, is dealing
00:39:57.400
And she may be filled with hope and have low fear of hope and still not do as well as a
00:40:03.540
person with high fear of hope and lots of hope who's the executive in her company where
00:40:08.420
the cafeteria is and someone drives them to the class and, you know, someone helps them
00:40:13.280
with his homework and all those sorts of things.
00:40:15.020
So there's all kinds of other restraints than simply our existential choice.
00:40:19.340
There's all kinds of other socioeconomic restraints, gender restraints, all kinds of restraints
00:40:27.100
I definitely don't want this book to be something like Tony Robbins.
00:40:30.640
I just don't believe that we can think things and beautiful things will happen.
00:40:35.520
There's plenty of political and economic forces against us as we move forward in life.
00:40:41.820
But the other, I mean, that's true, but you also make this point, like Sartre would say,
00:40:45.360
it's like, yes, there are restraints, but we have the ability.
00:40:49.900
It's going to be hard, but we can take a posture towards these restraints that's hopeful,
00:40:56.060
faithful, and I'm not going to say positive because I don't want to get with it.
00:40:59.580
But like, yeah, you have efficacy in the world.
00:41:06.860
And also, I mean, it just sounds like too, you know, I think it's interesting.
00:41:09.960
We've been talking about faith, hope, humility.
00:41:12.920
I mean, I think another thing that's required for change is like patience.
00:41:15.660
And that's something that's not really talked about.
00:41:18.680
Oftentimes when you go to a therapist, it's like, well, here's our plan.
00:41:21.880
We'll meet for three weeks and then, you know, a month, once a month after that.
00:41:27.140
It's like, it sounds like your idea is like, no, it could take a year or two to, I don't
00:41:32.520
say, I don't even know if you solve things completely.
00:41:34.680
It doesn't sound like you solve things completely, but get for things to get better.
00:41:37.700
Yeah, yeah, there's this, you know, this book, Zorba the Greek, it was also a movie.
00:41:45.680
And there's this scene in Zorba the Greek that's just so beautiful where he finds a chrysalis
00:41:51.240
with a caterpillar that's slowly becoming, it's just about to the point where it's becoming
00:41:59.900
So he starts opening up the chrysalis and of course the thing dies in his hands.
00:42:03.740
And he's like, that's just about the most sinful thing you can do.
00:42:08.200
He says this in the book, you know, like not letting something just sort of emerge in its
00:42:21.200
We're not respecting the fact that, you know, it might take getting in an elevator with some
00:42:27.800
coffee spillers for us to feel like I can move forward today.
00:42:31.140
You know, you have to wait for your field to be in the right place sometimes and you
00:42:37.780
Well, another thing you talk about, you were talking about all these different restraining
00:42:39.840
forces that we don't have control over, but another like driving force that can help
00:42:45.740
And so surrounding yourself with people who are supportive and understanding, et cetera,
00:42:53.040
I mean, that's maybe like, you know, a lot of, that's why people go to group therapy or
00:42:56.660
join AA because it's just being around people who got their back or they feel like they got
00:43:04.000
I mean, I have to tell you, you know, it's amazing how little sort of the psychotherapeutic
00:43:10.080
professions understand motivation and how well social psychology understands motivation.
00:43:17.320
Social psychology has it down and they've done research after research on that.
00:43:20.860
And this is about things like a sense of your value and your community, your purpose, your
00:43:27.840
These are all the things in a person's field that actually move them forward.
00:43:32.380
I mean, you know, social psychology is basically kind of the study of motivation on some level,
00:43:36.940
And it's all about this thing about what are the things going on around you that gets you
00:43:48.700
I got this cousin of mine that does this research where he has people sit in a chair and he's
00:43:55.400
a social psychologist and he has them sit in a chair and he has this tarantula in this
00:43:59.600
plexiglass box move closer to them down this ramp.
00:44:03.140
And they actually can control how close it gets.
00:44:05.240
And people that only think about negative support, only think about it, they don't have less social
00:44:11.780
support than the other people, think that that tarantula is closer to their face than the
00:44:16.740
people that think about positive social support.
00:44:21.800
Two people walking towards a hill will see, will be more accurately measure the height of
00:44:29.060
that hill and how hard it will be to travel that hill than one person.
00:44:33.240
So social support has all kinds of things to do with how we look at threats and how we
00:44:39.920
And so surrounding yourself with people, feeling connected to people is just vital to us moving
00:44:45.960
We know that isolation ties with cholesterol and smoking for heart disease.
00:44:51.180
And that's because of all the cortisol that's in your system when you're isolated, right?
00:45:04.040
Yeah, social support can help you be more of an individual, like with good faith, right?
00:45:09.280
That sees that they are accountable and responsible for their life.
00:45:15.480
Like you need the group to become an individual.
00:45:20.700
It's a really great kind of paradox that you can't be too lonely.
00:45:28.500
That these things really feed our ability to be original and creative with our lives
00:45:35.900
Well, Ross, this has been a great conversation.
00:45:37.640
Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
00:45:45.100
And then the book is, you know, it's an Amazon, it's everywhere.
00:45:48.040
It's, it's HarperCollins and they can just look it up how we change and the 10 reasons
00:46:00.000
He's the author of the book, How We Change and 10 Reasons Why We Don't.
00:46:03.060
It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.
00:46:05.440
You can find out more information about his work at his website, ellenhorn.com.
00:46:08.860
Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash change.
00:46:14.060
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast.
00:46:23.900
Check out our website at artofmanliness.com where you find our podcast archives, as well
00:46:27.140
as thousands of articles written over the years.
00:46:28.660
And if you'd like to enjoy ad-free episodes of the AOM podcast, you can do so on Stitcher
00:46:32.640
Head over to stitcherpremium.com, sign up, use code manliness at checkout for a free month
00:46:36.720
Once you're signed up, download the Stitcher app on Android or iOS, and you can start enjoying
00:46:42.100
And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a review
00:46:48.240
Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who would think we could get
00:46:51.760
As always, thank you for the continued support.
00:46:55.060
Remind you not only listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.