The Groundhog Day Roadmap for Changing Your Life
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
186.83406
Summary
Do you feel stuck in life? Do you keep repeating the same thoughts outwardly? You keep repeating a cycle of unhappy disappointment? To break the cycle, maybe what you need to do is watch a film that has become synonymous with this kind stuckness, Groundhog day, which my guest says contains the roadmap to escaping a life lived on autopilot. His name is Paul Hannum, and he s the author of The Wisdom of Groundhog Day: How to improve your life One Day at a Time, and today on the show, he unpacks the deeper philosophical layers of what s considered one of the best movies of all time.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast
00:00:10.740
do you feel stuck in life inwardly you keep repeating the same thoughts outwardly you keep
00:00:15.360
repeating the same routine and on and on a cycle of unhappy disappointment goes to break the cycle
00:00:20.760
maybe what you need to do is watch a film that has become synonymous with this kind of stuckness
00:00:25.360
groundhog day which my guest says contains the roadmap to escaping a life lived on autopilot
00:00:30.760
his name is paul hannum he's the author of the wisdom of groundhog day how to improve your life
00:00:34.860
one day at a time and today on the show paul unpacks the deeper philosophical layers of what's
00:00:39.300
considered one of the best movies of all time paul explains how the film teaches us that to escape
00:00:43.700
the ruts of what he calls the groundhog day condition we must first make an interchange
00:00:47.380
where we learn to approach life in a more grateful present focused engaged way from there we can
00:00:52.400
embrace the film's unique strategy for change which is to experiment with doing something new
00:00:56.200
every day thereby refining and improving our lives through the process of trial error and progressive
00:01:01.240
improvement after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash groundhog
00:01:21.420
well thank you it's a pleasure to be here brett so you are a speaker you're an entrepreneur you're
00:01:27.160
an academic who taught about organizational behavior and entrepreneurship at oxford university
00:01:31.220
you've also written a book about the surprising wisdom that can be found from the 1993 cult classic
00:01:38.740
bill murray film groundhog day i'm curious when did you start thinking about the life-changing insights
00:01:44.400
contained in groundhog day i mean what was going on going on in your life when you thought
00:01:48.240
this movie resonates well you know i first watched this film in 1993 the year it came out and i thought
00:01:55.840
wow what a what a brilliant comedy it was hilarious and magical but it also had a profound effect on me
00:02:03.160
unlike any other movie and you know when i talk about this half the people i talk to think i'm mad and
00:02:09.120
half the people i talk to get it straight away because there's something so much deeper when you go below
00:02:14.840
the surface of what is really a deceptively simple romantic comedy and what it did for me was it
00:02:21.300
really i felt that phil was my story i was very ambitious i i was very self-centered a classic only
00:02:29.640
child and at the beginning of the film i recognized him maybe not as bad as him this is bill murray's
00:02:35.260
character phil connors but by the end i saw a vision of how my life could be
00:02:40.760
and like phil i had hit rock bottom in my life and i really had to find my true self i've always
00:02:48.060
suffered acutely from anxiety and some depression and for me the way he changes and transforms himself
00:02:56.380
in the movie was a real path for me that i was able to escape from a lot of my anxiety and depression
00:03:02.920
and help my clients with too because i was on a career path where i was motivated by financial
00:03:10.200
success status you know popularity but now after this movie i switched to really focusing on my inner
00:03:18.480
life rather than my outer life to really focus on my health my mental health my well-being because for
00:03:24.160
me this is a story groundhog day is a story of somebody who turns the worst day of his life into the best
00:03:30.540
day of his life by changing his story about himself and what it means to be a human being and about
00:03:36.900
what matters the most in life so i used the ideas in the book in the 1990s in my leadership training i
00:03:44.680
got my students to watch it at oxford and other universities i taught at and 20 years ago i met
00:03:51.040
danny rubin who's a screenwriter and came up the initial idea of groundhog day and we became good friends
00:03:56.120
and he actually wrote the introduction to my book and when through my conversations with him i really
00:04:02.200
understood the deep spirituality and philosophy underneath this book and the reason that has
00:04:09.060
been chosen as one of the most spiritual movies ever made which unless you can understand what danny
00:04:15.300
was talking about and the real meaning of the transformation in this movie is quite difficult to
00:04:20.420
get but it's a profound metaphor for the human nature and you know you're when i think about the art of
00:04:27.220
manliness a lot of self-help books are written for an audience which is men and women and i would say
00:04:34.000
i don't have exact numbers say 75 80 percent of self-help books are bought by women but what i found
00:04:41.360
with my book and groundhog day it appealed particularly to men because it was almost like a comedy gave them
00:04:47.160
permission to think about their inner life think about and talk about their feelings so it's a great
00:04:52.900
way of opening a conversation about a whole range of personal development areas okay for those who
00:04:59.600
aren't familiar familiar with the basic plot of the movie i mean it's become such a cultural touchstone
00:05:03.500
i mean when you talk about you know something that happens over and over again people just say oh it's
00:05:07.280
like groundhog day it's become that embedded in our culture but for those who aren't familiar maybe a
00:05:12.000
refresher what's the the reader's digest version of the plot of the movie sure well
00:05:17.060
it's a tale groundhog day is a tale about a very cynical ambitious weatherman phil connors who's
00:05:22.640
played by bill murray and how he becomes trapped in the small town of punksutoni and reliving the exact
00:05:29.420
same day february the 2nd over and over again now there's a lot of debate about how long he was there
00:05:36.260
and danny is never going to tell me maybe he's not sure but we reckon around about 20 to 30 years
00:05:42.220
will give you a good idea of repeating the same day and through this he goes through the whole
00:05:48.780
spectrum of emotions at first he has fun with it he's stuck in time then he goes into shifts into a
00:05:56.920
real sense of despair and he tries to kill himself again and again but then he reframes his whole
00:06:03.240
attitude to what's happened and he discovers that actually there's real joy to be found in this small
00:06:11.120
town which he despised at first and he learns to love it and he turns his life around and he learns
00:06:17.200
through perseverance resilience resourcefulness to gradually adapt cope and ultimately triumph over
00:06:23.920
this adversity and he turns this this very cold bitter february day when all hope had seemed lost into
00:06:30.880
really a perfect day and you see him at the end he falls in love with rita who is producer is his
00:06:37.740
producer and they wake up together on a new day the 3rd of february and phil has escaped the time
00:06:43.280
trap and is free at last yeah so okay phil starts out cynical and through this this refining process
00:06:49.960
becomes less selfish more engaged with the world around him and love i mean it's like love is like
00:06:56.240
what saved him it got him out of the time loop absolutely he he really shifted and we'll talk about
00:07:03.160
this more i'm sure from this idea of living through his personality and his goals and his desires and
00:07:09.840
his self-centeredness to learning to really transcend his ego and move to this much higher state of
00:07:16.600
consciousness where he was able to find that he had everything he needed in a town that he had
00:07:22.640
previously despised on a day that he had loathed and with people he hadn't cared about he discovered
00:07:29.580
his true self and i feel that this is a beautiful allegory a parable for how we can all live and how
00:07:36.360
we can find what's most meaningful and significant in our lives and as you said uh this is considered
00:07:42.040
one of the most spiritual films i mean if you just look at that basic plot you can see the the
00:07:45.980
influences of buddhism like buddhism has the same sort of idea you reincarnate until you kind of
00:07:50.420
figure things out and you can escape reincarnation and reach nirvana there's philosophical implications
00:07:56.060
you know nietzsche also kind of did some thought experiments about if if you could live your life
00:08:01.620
over and over again for eternity like would you want to live this life so it makes you think like
00:08:06.300
well how do i want to live this life right now that's a very good point brett and you know these
00:08:10.920
philosophical questions are not just dry abstract questions it's a superb question to look at your life
00:08:17.680
and see it from different perspectives just as phil was forced to do in groundhog day and with this
00:08:23.380
new perspective you can see where am i going in this life is this the life i want to be living and
00:08:29.520
you can look back at the past and say would i have done things differently then imagine yourself in the
00:08:34.580
future looking at you today saying what would i do differently now and this also accords with salvation
00:08:41.480
in christianity with enlightenment in buddhism with you know other major religions in fact danny who
00:08:48.800
who wrote the screenplay still gets letters from spiritual leaders from around the world claiming
00:08:54.460
to have the definitive interpretation of what this movie is like all works of genius it has multiple
00:09:00.820
interpretations so you argue that a lot of people live their lives like phil stuck in groundhog day they
00:09:08.600
might not be in a literal time loop but they live the same day over and over again you call it the
00:09:14.820
groundhog day condition what is that and how does it manifest itself well i've been um working as a
00:09:22.040
you know a coach and an academic for nearly 40 years now and i noticed something in the thousands of
00:09:28.760
people i work with that they could be uh in london today and oklahoma tomorrow in japan the next day
00:09:36.160
but in their inner life they were replaying the same thoughts and feelings and emotional patterns
00:09:42.800
often going all the way back to childhood and i call this the groundhog day condition
00:09:48.100
it's the sense that every day you're having very similar thoughts and feelings some neuroscientists
00:09:53.860
say that about 80 to 90 percent of what we think about today is the same as yesterday and we are
00:09:59.760
creatures of habit and we tend to get stuck in these grooves sometimes it can really help us but often
00:10:06.040
we get stuck in a state of worrying or multitasking or busyness and distraction and we can feel
00:10:12.380
disconnected from a direct experience of life and from real joy and for me when i thought about this
00:10:18.900
idea of groundhog day in its broader psychological meaning it seemed to answer offer answers to the
00:10:25.420
questions like why do we feel stuck why is change so hard why do i feel unfulfilled why do i feel that
00:10:31.640
life is passing me by and why is it but often what we think we want turns out to be disappointing
00:10:37.500
and with groundhog day it allows you to excavate below the surface and see what's really going on
00:10:44.580
in your habitual thinking and feeling which most of us never do most of us when we feel sad or unhappy
00:10:50.260
we try and change something outside of us you know we we go away we go on vacation we might change
00:10:56.420
job partner or where we live but it rarely fixes the issue or the problem it's only when we change
00:11:03.640
from the inside out that we make real change and that's what phil does in this movie okay so you
00:11:09.160
highlight in the book you some of the symptoms that you've noticed in people who you have this
00:11:12.920
groundhog day condition uh feeling that you're stuck i know i'm sure a lot of people felt like that
00:11:17.000
compulsive thoughts and feelings that that's a big that's a symptom of you know anxiety and depression
00:11:22.060
you kind of have these reoccurring ruminating thoughts that aren't productive living on autopilot
00:11:28.040
a sense of meaningless i'm sure everyone listening has had those moments when they're lying in bed and
00:11:32.460
thinking what's the point of it all what am i doing and then yeah the powerlessness to change like you
00:11:37.220
think everything is determined by your outside conditions absolutely and you know those compulsive
00:11:43.520
thoughts and feelings are very very powerful in fact one of the best pieces of advice i can ever give
00:11:49.320
someone is is to say you are not your thoughts is and a lot of therapeutic techniques have this
00:11:55.280
where you separate yourself from your thinking and realize that it's not you often it's just noise
00:12:00.480
but when you suffer from depression anxiety you take your thoughts far more seriously and you
00:12:05.380
ruminate on them as you mentioned and i sense that in groundhog day he learned to break away from
00:12:11.900
thinking all the time and just experience life more in being mode rather than thinking mode and that's
00:12:17.940
something i feel we've we all need to do because we're in we live in a civilization where everything
00:12:23.940
is around our thinking and and about constantly being distracted it's the reason you know the world
00:12:30.120
health organization has said by 2030 depression is going to be the biggest health problem in the world
00:12:35.520
now a lot of it's down to the pandemic you know political problems wars economic crises but i feel
00:12:42.820
at its root is in our civilization we've become disconnected from ourselves and we are caught we
00:12:50.920
get caught in these thinking loops where we're fixated on what we don't have on what we believe
00:12:55.980
will make us happy and a psychologist taught with a hedonic treadmill once you get on that you can never
00:13:01.800
get off because you're never going to be able to satisfy this this constant hunger for more and groundhog
00:13:07.800
day is a great story for illustrating this in my view well you also highlight the you know the the
00:13:13.020
causes or of groundhog day condition we talked about your mind you need these cognitive processes
00:13:17.980
and preferences for you know rumination that aren't healthy or productive but you also talk about just
00:13:23.700
your life history can cause it the way you're parented your education you're the type of career you
00:13:29.640
choose and like you're surrounded by people who they're all pursuing a particular goal and you think
00:13:35.140
well i need to do that because everyone else is doing it but that might not be good for you
00:13:38.560
very much so you know my my view and i think this is becoming more prevalent amongst psychologists
00:13:44.180
is that we have multiple personalities at some level or sub personalities they're different parts of us
00:13:49.440
we're one person with our partner or spouse we're another person with our parents another person with
00:13:54.640
our friends or at work or with a ceo we change but we are often governed by these personality
00:14:02.120
patterns that we can trace back to childhood and our conditioning the way we were parented the way
00:14:07.920
we were schooled whether we're the eldest youngest or like me an only child our friends then our
00:14:13.760
workplace our culture our social media and you know and the countries we live in you know living in
00:14:20.060
i've lived in britain i've lived in the states and they can have a different impact and influence on
00:14:24.740
your personality but the problem is we our personality becomes our identity and we feel
00:14:31.120
it's fixed we feel it's as real as the microphone i'm speaking into but it's not it's fluid it's
00:14:37.240
dynamic and again in groundhog day we see how it can change but the problem is but we get stuck in
00:14:42.920
our ego and these stories we tell ourselves we get stuck in our roles our conditioning our neediness
00:14:47.880
and our unconscious drives and it's only when you can get out of those and rise above them and see
00:14:54.320
them for what they are that they're not you they're only part of you and they're fleeting and often
00:14:59.760
they're not very helpful that's when the real change happens now it took phil in the movie you know
00:15:05.640
20 30 years to get there what i tried to do in the book was come up with a framework to use the same
00:15:12.100
process which i think is very valid but applied in your life to cut through all these
00:15:17.580
different versions of yourself which can hold you back well you also argue this this groundhog day
00:15:22.860
condition creates what's called the conditioned self and this is the self that's just created by
00:15:28.240
all these conditions that we find ourselves in like we're we're controlled from the outside i mean
00:15:33.200
what are the like how does the condition self manifest itself like what are the characteristics like
00:15:37.780
where how do you see those in phil in groundhog day well with phil i identify five core
00:15:44.020
characteristics but there are all versions of the conditioned self for phil the dominant one that
00:15:49.500
came across at the beginning was a sense of entitlement he was selfish proud self-centered
00:15:55.680
almost narcissistic you know when he came into town he wanted the best hotel he called himself
00:16:00.780
the talent he wanted to find a phone line for celebrities because he believed he was one and he
00:16:07.240
believed that the more he focused on satisfying his own needs the happier he would become and it took the
00:16:13.100
whole experience of a film to to eliminate that very negative and erroneous attitude so that's
00:16:21.320
fulfill the sense of entitlement is stronger for me my dominant conditioned self has been the need for
00:16:27.680
approval i wanted my parents approval especially my dad my friends recognition i went to a school where
00:16:33.740
your whole self-esteem was based on how well you did in tests or whether you were good at sport
00:16:39.760
you were called by your surname there was no joy there was no friendliness or amicability you were
00:16:46.520
just a number and you were measured in business it was very much the same now i've really managed to
00:16:52.200
overcome that drive it's taken me many many years but we have a need for approval others could be a need
00:16:58.020
for security or dependency or control perfectionism but i believe based on my experience that everyone
00:17:06.040
listening to this podcast will know that there's some part of them going back to their childhood that
00:17:12.600
could be limiting their potential for happiness and it could be sabotaging them in some way and these
00:17:19.400
are stories which go back to our childhood which we buy into often to cope to survive a playground
00:17:25.560
survive bad parenting to help us get through life but what can be useful as a coping mechanism in the
00:17:32.840
playground can be very damaging in adulthood and can ruin our relationships too okay so phil started
00:17:40.820
off the movie arrogant the conditioned self uh how did he become aware that he was a conditioned self
00:17:48.540
in the movie and then how do you think we become aware of our condition so that's the first thing you
00:17:52.860
have to know that you you are this thing before you can make a change right exactly well one of the
00:17:58.620
reasons i wanted to write about groundhog day rather than do a more academic book or a more traditional
00:18:04.020
self-help book was i believe groundhog day is so accurate to how we live our life in that phil doesn't
00:18:11.940
have a guru there's no magic wizard or or mentor helping him through here he has to find out everything
00:18:20.060
through trial and error through learning by doing learning through experience and through the film
00:18:26.580
he tries out every possible strategy to be happy he sleeps with different women he he commits crimes
00:18:34.320
he eats till he's obese he does anything he wants and gradually he eliminates these these needs from
00:18:42.680
his conditioned self he lets go the entitlement he lets go of the the need for control he lets go of
00:18:49.760
his need to be admired by everybody and he just lets go and naturally becomes a more loving kind
00:18:57.700
person and i feel that when you cut through the conditioned self and you go to what i call the authentic
00:19:03.240
self you can touch who you really are and and you're so much more than your personality but to answer
00:19:10.520
your question but it gets there through trial and error and that's the only way ultimately we can learn
00:19:15.540
we can have therapists we can have coaches but we learn from observing our own experience and acknowledging
00:19:23.180
it and trying something new every day that's the essence of the movie he tries something new every day
00:19:29.760
well it's not like phil kind of follows the buddha and is that right so like his buddha goes out there
00:19:34.200
he's looking for enlightenment the first way he tries to like find it through sensuality right
00:19:38.160
trying to like hook up with a lot of women and he's like that didn't work and then he found an aesthetic
00:19:43.000
who is kind of life denying and i'm just going to live in this cloistered world not eat and that
00:19:49.060
didn't get it like that phil you know basically becomes life denying the most extreme way killing
00:19:53.660
himself trying to kill himself and then he finds this middle middle path basically like the buddha no
00:19:59.900
you're spot on there are a lot of parallels to the story of buddha but you know i if um i'd encourage
00:20:06.400
everyone to stop and think for a moment about what is their story about what will make them happy
00:20:12.900
what do you think will make you happy because in the movie phil has this unique opportunity through
00:20:19.080
the time loop to test out every possible strategy for living everything because he's got infinite
00:20:26.380
time and as far as he knows he's trapped in time forever for eternity and through trying out
00:20:31.960
everything he discovers what the great religious leaders have told us what many of the great psychologists
00:20:37.880
have told us what we're now learning from positive psychology from neuroscience is the way to live
00:20:44.040
which is to be in the present which is to be loving kind find meaning help others you know this is the
00:20:51.180
beauty of the film is that through this this incredible story he's actually summarizing what we're now
00:20:58.720
learning from modern science modern psychology as well as what we've known for thousands of years from
00:21:06.160
ancient wisdom like buddhism we're gonna take a quick break for your word from our sponsors
00:21:10.280
and now back to the show well yeah and i think that's the one of the big takeaways the thing that
00:21:15.660
the transformation that happened in phil there's a couple transformations by being stuck in the time
00:21:20.540
loop one he realized okay he can't change the outside world right everything's just going to happen
00:21:26.760
the same thing over and over and he can't change that so he has to change himself but the other one his
00:21:32.640
his relationship to time changed by being stuck in the time loop and it shifted him from that
00:21:37.440
past and future orientation to a present orientation and you talk about in the book oftentimes like
00:21:43.520
most of our thoughts are about the past and the future and thinking about that can make us happy
00:21:49.480
sometimes right if you think about a good memory from the past that makes us feel good if you think
00:21:53.400
about you're looking forward to a trip you're going to that can make us happy but oftentimes we when we're
00:21:58.360
focused on the past and the future it often makes us miserable why is that well that's an extremely
00:22:04.180
important point and you know right when i was writing this book and before i've been practicing
00:22:08.300
mindfulness so i've always been interested both professionally and personally in how we can spend
00:22:14.200
more time in the present moment you know i love books like the power of now michael singer's work i you
00:22:19.760
know but again in groundhog day what's fascinating is how his relationship to time changes throughout the
00:22:27.060
movie at first time is an irritation to be endured he's waiting there impatiently to in in the town
00:22:35.040
he doesn't want to be in to return to his former life as a celebrity weatherman in the city you know
00:22:39.760
there's a contrast between this slow dull what he calls hicksville and the exciting vibrant city
00:22:46.040
then time becomes a resource where he can use it to exploit other people so he uses the time loop
00:22:53.200
to seduce women as i said and do other things which are not really helping anyone next though it becomes
00:22:58.980
it's terrible onerous burden to be suffered for eternity there's that wonderful point in the movie when
00:23:05.060
the clock turns around very slowly and there's this loud crash as it comes to six o'clock and time is a
00:23:11.880
weight pinning him down but then finally when he goes to the present moment and he stops thinking about
00:23:18.960
the past and the future and he realizes he is in an eternal present then become time becomes a great
00:23:26.700
gift where he can learn new skills like us sculpting he's got the time to learn piano to help others and
00:23:33.900
ultimately to find happiness and when he becomes aware that time's a gift he really learns how to
00:23:40.560
master time and he slows right down and pays attention to the present and he reframes what had become a
00:23:48.500
terrible where previously been a terrible day when he was just focused on the the past what he'd lost
00:23:53.680
in the future how he could get out of there and became grounded in the present moment and that's
00:24:00.760
where his happiness lied and ironically it's only when his future was removed that he could really
00:24:07.480
recognize the gift of the present moment and he says to rita at one point no matter what happens
00:24:14.280
tomorrow or for the rest of my life i'm happy now and you you argue that you know that that shift
00:24:20.620
that he makes from not being focused on the future to this being focused on the present and the world
00:24:26.480
around him like he achieves going back to sort of the religious motifs in this movie he achieves a state
00:24:32.000
of grace in this time loop very much so for me a state of grace it's a phrase um it's not a common
00:24:39.400
phrase but it to me it means being in the present it's a peak state when you feel most calm most present
00:24:47.100
and most alive it's when you're in the flow or maybe what maslow calls self-actualization if you
00:24:52.900
look at the characteristics of that it's about being present and alive and phil achieves this state when
00:24:59.240
he changes his story about what's happened to him and the key moments in the movie the real pivotal
00:25:04.900
moment is when he's trapped in the time loop and he's teaching rita to flick cards into a hat another
00:25:11.980
useless thing he's learned in the time and she asks him is this what you want to do with eternity
00:25:18.360
then she suggests that eternity could be a blessing in disguise she says to him i don't know phil maybe
00:25:26.240
it's not a curse it just depends on how you look at it now he begins to realize that the time loop is a
00:25:33.480
blessing and he shifts to this state of grace he shifts to a higher level of consciousness you could
00:25:39.020
call this enlightenment um but whatever your views he fundamentally changes the way he looks the way
00:25:46.340
he acts everything about him shifts and he's in this state of grace and this higher level of consciousness
00:25:54.440
which is just extraordinary to watch and i think we all have this grace this innate well-being
00:26:00.080
this appreciation this love this wisdom and that one of the key goals of our life is to connect to
00:26:07.340
it or reconnect to it maybe we had it as children before education got hold of us maybe we had it
00:26:13.280
when we weren't just thinking all the time and we were just being um so i think it's a very powerful
00:26:18.800
moment in the movie yeah and i for me like a state of grace is kind of like you realize what you do
00:26:23.720
doesn't matter but it does matter at the same time right i mean i think phil realizes that there's
00:26:29.540
that really powerful moment where phil you know he's making that shift from selfishness to selflessness
00:26:35.180
and there's that homeless guy the old homeless guy and he dies every every day and phil at first tries
00:26:42.200
to save him and you can tell that he's like i gotta save this guy and he gets really frustrated that he
00:26:47.580
can never save this guy this guy will just keep dying and then he realizes i'm not going to be able to
00:26:52.740
save him he's i can't do anything about that but what i can do in the meantime i can just i give this
00:26:58.400
guy a warm meal i can be kind to him that's what i can do and once you let go of that i mean that's i
00:27:05.940
think that's that state of grace like he knew he couldn't change anything but he knew he could do
00:27:08.980
something now yeah that is um again a very important part of the movie where i think several things are
00:27:16.560
going on here everything you say is absolutely true he realizes it's not not everything is going
00:27:23.440
to have an end goal or an end state he's not going to be successful in everything but it's the actual
00:27:28.220
act of doing it it's the quality of his moment to moment life that's more important in a way than
00:27:35.880
actually what happens and we live in a a culture where everybody's focused on goals and achieving
00:27:41.940
things and and end states we're all working towards these these end states we think will make us
00:27:47.540
happy but it's the true truly happy people are people who enjoy the journey i know this is a
00:27:53.960
cliche but the movie really brings that out but there's something else about the old man that i think
00:27:59.200
is critical here and that is at some point phil could almost believe that he was divine but he was a
00:28:05.240
god he had almighty power but when he realizes he can't save the old man he lets go of a lot about
00:28:11.740
hubris and a lot about pride and has an even deeper compassion for other people because it's a compassion
00:28:18.520
that we are all you know he he can't save everyone and that people are going to die and not even he can
00:28:25.080
fix that and that gives him a deeper appreciation of human nature and a deeper compassion in my view
00:28:31.440
so how do you think we can make that shift from to this present focus and get into that state of
00:28:36.920
grace without having to be stuck in a literal time loop like what do you what does that look like on
00:28:41.380
a day-to-day basis well i think there's a number of things i think mindfulness is incredibly important
00:28:46.880
and i'm sure you've had many guests who talk about mindfulness but mindfulness allows you even
00:28:51.540
momentarily to escape from the noise escape from all the future projections and just be for me being out
00:28:58.980
in nature is critical we have forgotten that this world is a miracle groundhog day is a story of how
00:29:07.340
he discovers that his life is a miracle but even in this town which he hated at first with these people
00:29:13.920
he was contemptuous of he has everything he needs to be happy and so whether it be through mindfulness
00:29:21.300
through gratitude practices through being in nature through volunteering there's many different roads to get
00:29:28.000
there i encourage everyone to spend far less time focusing on what you don't have or what you think
00:29:34.460
will make you happy and far more time focusing on what you do have we've known this for thousands of
00:29:40.520
years and but now we know you know places like the university of berkeley have a massive department
00:29:45.380
dedicated to the study of gratitude and we know from many studies that the people of the most grateful
00:29:50.780
are also the happiest and also that people who might be billionaires but they worried why they've got
00:29:57.320
less billions than their main competitor are going to be miserable in many ways but the whole of our
00:30:03.040
society is set up for scarcity for focusing on what we don't have and what we do have so we need to have
00:30:09.840
rituals and behaviors to counteract these social and economic forces which are always based on scarcity
00:30:16.660
and lack yeah so okay mindfulness i think just paying attention more to the world around you that's the
00:30:22.200
big shift that happens with philly he actually starts engaging with this small town and he realized well
00:30:27.640
here's this homeless guy and then here's this person this person has a story i mean he just instead of
00:30:33.520
seeing these people as means to an end he starts seeing the world around him as an end that's very true
00:30:40.820
and you know in the work i do with leaders we have a model called transactional leadership and
00:30:45.520
transformational leadership transactional leadership is where you lead or manage people as a means to an end
00:30:51.700
you treat people almost like pawns on a chessboard to control them to achieve your goals increase productivity
00:30:57.220
and it it takes all the emotion out of it transformational leadership is a view that everybody you come across
00:31:04.060
you can transform you can improve their life it's about giving not taking it's about helping people feel
00:31:10.520
good about themselves and phil goes from being very transactional to being transformational and he does
00:31:16.480
that by letting go of his ego and reconnecting to his deeper self well you argue and you mentioned this
00:31:21.920
earlier that one of the most powerful lessons from groundhog day is that all of life consists of skills
00:31:27.960
that you must practice to master how did this idea show up in the movie well i think the unique
00:31:35.340
if you like model or strategy coming out of groundhog day if you're looking at groundhog day as a template or as a blueprint
00:31:41.920
for your life a lot of what i've said you can find in other books probably find in other movies but what i think is
00:31:50.020
unique about groundhog day is this concept of practice is establishing what skills do you need and i think that phil learns
00:31:58.500
a whole range of skills through resourcefulness resilience appreciation how to change each day
00:32:06.040
a growth mindset you know how to grow through learning how to create a positive intention at the beginning of
00:32:11.980
the day and how to find meaning but these are all skills and not just attitudes they're skills and
00:32:17.640
the genius of groundhog day is how he learns he learns by changing something small every day through
00:32:26.380
incremental small daily changes now we know from psychotherapy we know from coaching we know from
00:32:34.180
health interventions but the best way to bring about a behavioral change is through small incremental
00:32:40.460
changes and groundhog day is a beautiful parable about how he does that so the end of every day he can
00:32:48.620
reset he knows tomorrow everybody's going to be doing exactly the same they're going to be going to the
00:32:54.300
same places the same activities saying the same things with the same people the only thing that changes is him
00:33:00.580
so he can try something new every day until he gets it right and my feeling is from working as i say with
00:33:09.360
thousands of people coaching and leadership is those people maybe about 10 or 20 percent of people who really
00:33:15.780
get the big changes in their life it's not because of knowledge it's not because of desire it's not because of
00:33:21.420
personality it's because they change their behavior they do the work they do the practice and groundhog day is all
00:33:28.220
about somebody who does the work and and so i think that's the absolute key to this you know in terms of if you want to
00:33:35.900
change your life and the biggest message of a movie is that daily practice okay yeah so with this try and something new
00:33:41.940
every day doesn't have to be anything big i mean just try doing little things in your behavior or your daily routine
00:33:48.820
something of some examples here like you know try doing an active service for your wife every day
00:33:52.840
see what happens say no to people when they ask you to do something you don't want to do
00:33:57.680
instead of you know looking at your phone first thing in the morning try meditating for five minutes before
00:34:03.220
you pick up your phone or you could try if you if you watch netflix at night before you go to bed
00:34:07.960
try reading a book instead but as you say the key is just to pick one thing you don't have to pick
00:34:13.180
multiple things at the same time just focus on one thing at a time and then see what happens
00:34:18.360
no absolutely and you know with phil he learns to play the piano he learns ice sculpture he learns other
00:34:25.440
skills but he also learns the art of living now he doesn't even learn that consciously he doesn't sit
00:34:31.460
down with a self-help book but he just learns it through his experience my view is we should approach
00:34:37.160
living in the same way we approach learning how to read and write or drive a car or play golf and
00:34:43.000
through practice all the skills are out there there are free courses all over the internet from some of
00:34:48.420
the best universities in the world but it's how you practice that is the absolute key here yeah so like
00:34:54.380
big life skills you know the quality you talk about the quality of your life is determined by the
00:34:57.940
quality of the small decisions you make so get better at decision making that can be a big game changer
00:35:02.640
yeah and in um again in groundhog day he can see how his decisions work out now because he can try
00:35:09.960
something on a thursday and the next day he'll know whether it's worked or not and he can make these
00:35:16.060
small little changes and and monitor results but we can do this too if you've got a difficult boss
00:35:21.680
try saying something new to them tomorrow try a new approach try smiling more and just notice what
00:35:27.520
happens the worst thing is we get stuck and this is a groundhog day condition we get stuck in these
00:35:32.420
habitual default reactions and responses to things but we can only change through trying something
00:35:39.040
new which he does again and again well i think what's empowering about this movie helps you realize
00:35:43.840
okay i might not be stuck in a literal time loop but i've got you know hopefully 20 30 years to live
00:35:50.380
you know 40 years left of life i can make the most of that time i can i can start the changes that
00:35:56.860
will accumulate over time today absolutely and you know there's one sentence that i take away from my
00:36:05.900
my book and the movie it's this this concept that he turns the worst day of his life when he tries to
00:36:11.400
kill himself again and again into the best day of his life when he's in love and he's happy he's joyful
00:36:17.380
and passionate and the only thing that changes is him he doesn't move to a new place he doesn't have a
00:36:24.840
new job he doesn't become a billionaire win the lottery he doesn't you know win mvp he just changes
00:36:31.400
his inner life and his outer life becomes magnificent and there is achievable for absolutely everyone
00:36:38.200
anybody can follow that you don't need to be in a time loop all the tools are out there all the
00:36:43.360
ingredients and the recipe are there i think groundhog day is a beautiful recipe but the ingredients are
00:36:48.820
all there well paul is there something like if you there's like one thing someone could start doing
00:36:52.720
today that's from your book and from the groundhog day that could start getting them on this path of
00:36:58.300
escaping the groundhog day condition what would that thing be you think as a practical technique
00:37:03.360
brett i think there's nothing better than journaling i insist on everyone i work with journaling because
00:37:08.800
journaling allows you to capture and record what's happened today to investigate what's happened today to
00:37:17.160
write in your total privacy complete confidentiality about how you feel about it and then set an intention
00:37:24.040
that tomorrow you're going to try something new so whether it be in a relationship or something to do with
00:37:30.180
your mental health or a new skill you're learning just take one behavior and for a few weeks just record
00:37:37.320
the experience of trying something new every day notice what works what doesn't work when you journal
00:37:43.980
the actual act of getting it out of your head onto paper is profoundly liberating and it means it's
00:37:50.200
far more likely that you're going to follow through on those behavior it's a form of commitment it also
00:37:55.300
allows you to declutter your mind and it can make you feel calmer and happier this is why so many
00:38:01.620
therapists and in positive psychology people use journaling in research it's used because it works it works
00:38:07.820
brilliantly it's a simple technique um there are there are many many others but that was the one i would
00:38:13.080
encourage you if you want if you like this idea of groundhog day and this daily change start recording
00:38:18.720
your day and see each day almost as a lifetime and when you wake up tomorrow you can be reborn you can
00:38:24.980
reinvent yourself you can wipe the slate clean from yesterday and reinvent yourself today and journaling
00:38:31.640
is the mechanism to do that yeah i think this whole idea of treating your life like an experiment is
00:38:37.660
powerful but i only think it works if when you're testing out these different hypotheses to see you know if
00:38:44.120
it'll improve your life you have to record the results of your experiments i mean even if it's not like a
00:38:49.280
formal journal you just kind of make a note for yourself maybe on your your phone in the notes app
00:38:53.640
because i you think okay i know this about myself now and i'm going to remember this in the future but you
00:39:01.260
don't i mean here's here's some examples from my own life whenever i get invited to a social event i think
00:39:05.400
oh geez i don't like this thing i get ready got to go there and do the small talk but then afterwards
00:39:10.800
after i've gone to the thing i'm like man i really had a great time i'm so glad i did that
00:39:14.120
or i mean here's another thing i've i've learned i have to keep re-realizing that i don't like to go
00:39:19.820
on vacation somewhere where i'll be doing things in crowds of people i mean you weirdly have to record
00:39:26.880
that kind of stuff so you remember it so you don't end up in that groundhog day condition the
00:39:32.200
journaling can also help you figure out if you are in the groundhog day condition because you you
00:39:35.840
mentioned this in the book i had this similar experience with journaling i've i don't journal
00:39:40.080
anymore regularly but i was a regular journaler and one thing i noticed that okay stuff would
00:39:45.800
different stuff would happen and i'd write about it but there's this underlying current of just
00:39:50.840
pessimism and negativity that i could see that would happen you know 20 years ago 15 years is the same
00:39:59.220
thing i was like okay i'm repeating these thought patterns over and over again i need to do something
00:40:03.560
about this and i think you mentioned you had the similar experience oh absolutely again one of the
00:40:08.360
reasons i wrote the book was i was living what most people say was an amazing lifestyle i lived in a
00:40:13.200
you know 9 000 square foot house in one of the you know most luxurious real estate in in california
00:40:19.900
i had very successful businesses i was flying first class around the world but when i looked at my
00:40:24.700
journals it was the same anxieties the same insecurities the same resentments the same fears
00:40:31.080
day after day after day and i suddenly realized i can't carry on doing this this is this is insane
00:40:38.600
i've spent my whole life on this flawed strategy of going outside to fix these inner problems and
00:40:45.020
through journaling and looking at my journal and seeing this year after year i realized i thought well
00:40:50.600
i'm either insane i've got to there's something going on here and uh it really woke me up because
00:40:56.380
a journal is a record and we forget things you know we easily forget how we feel we forget our moods
00:41:03.520
we can we can remember dates we can remember people but we lose sight of our feelings and experience
00:41:09.080
but when you look back at it and investigate it and learn techniques for questioning it you know like
00:41:15.060
what else could this mean what else could cause this what could i do next to help me get through this
00:41:20.000
there's some beautiful questions you can learn from cognitive therapy acceptance commitment therapy
00:41:24.460
and many different techniques it's all available on the web and in very good books but just the act
00:41:30.200
of journaling makes yourself your own coach your own mentor well paul this has been a great
00:41:35.740
conversation where can people go to learn more about the book and your work well sure well on my
00:41:40.160
website i have um excerpts for book and more about me which is paulhannam.com www.paulhannam.com my book is
00:41:47.620
the wisdom of groundhog day most of my time now i'm doing a lot of work around mental health i have
00:41:52.840
been for years which i think is the you know one of my serious issues in the world right now
00:41:57.440
and you know find out more about me there most definitely well paul hannam thanks for your time
00:42:02.920
it's been a pleasure thank you very much my guest is paul hannam he's the author of the book the
00:42:07.840
wisdom of groundhog day it's available on amazon.com also check out his website paulhannam.com
00:42:12.900
and check out our show notes at awim.is slash groundhog we find links to resources we delve
00:42:17.060
deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the awim podcast make sure to check out
00:42:28.340
our website at artofmanliness.com where you find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles
00:42:32.400
we've written over the years about pretty much anything you think of and if you'd like to enjoy
00:42:35.700
ad-free episodes of the awim podcast you can do so on stitcher premium head over to stitcherpremium.com
00:42:39.820
sign up use code manliness at checkout for a free month trial once you're signed up download
00:42:43.300
the stitcher app on android ios and you can start enjoying ad-free episodes of the awim podcast
00:42:46.760
and if you haven't done so already i'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review on apple
00:42:50.020
podcast or spotify helps out a lot if you've done that already thank you please consider sharing the
00:42:54.320
show with a friend or family member who would think we get something out of it as always thank you for
00:42:57.780
the continued support until next time it's brett mckay remind you on this awim podcast but put what