The Art of Manliness - Why You Don’t Change (But How You Still Can) [ENCORE]

00:00:00.420 Hey, this is Brett. We're taking a break from new episodes for the holidays. We're rebroadcasting

00:00:04.500 episode number 657, Why You Don't Change, But How You Still Can, with Dr. Ross Ellenhorn.

00:00:10.400 It's a great episode to listen to as you're thinking about the changes you want to make

00:00:13.300 in your life in 2023. We'll see you next Monday in 2023 with a brand new episode. Happy New Year.

00:00:19.780 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Anyone who's ever

00:00:31.940 tried to lose weight, curb their temper, quit smoking, or alter any of their habit in their

00:00:35.480 lives knows that personal change is hard, really hard. Most self-help books out there treat people

00:00:40.240 like machines, blitzing past this difficulty and offering mechanical five-step formulas for changing

00:00:44.820 your life. My guest day says such simplified solutions hugely miss the mark. He argues that

00:00:49.160 if you ever want to change, it's more fruitful to understand why you don't than figure out why

00:00:53.220 you do. To understand that, you've got to go deeper, existential even. His name is Dr. Ross

00:00:57.660 Ellenhorn, and he spent his career facilitating the recovery of individuals diagnosed with psychiatric

00:01:01.760 and substance abuse issues. In his latest book, How We Change and 10 Reasons Why We Don't, he's taken

00:01:06.320 what he's learned in his work and applied it to anyone trying to change their lives. Ross and I

00:01:10.220 begin our conversation with some of the reasons we don't change, including the existential pressure of

00:01:14.040 feeling like you're solely in charge of making change happen, a dizzying amount of freedom and number of

00:01:17.920 options for what to do with your life, and day-to-day factors which influence our level of motivation.

00:01:22.020 From there, we turn to the role of hope and faith in psychology and how these forces can both boost

00:01:26.120 and restrain your ability to change. We discuss the way a fear of hope can constrain your life,

00:01:30.160 why you sometimes need to embrace staying the same in order to ever change, and the difference

00:01:33.700 between good faith and bad faith. We discuss the idea that you don't develop hope, but you can

00:01:37.860 develop faith, and how to build your faith in yourself through embracing humility and taking small

00:01:41.960 steps. Ross then explains why he doesn't really give advice on how to change beyond finding the good

00:01:46.020 in a bad habit, but how patience and your social environment can also help. This show's got some

00:01:50.140 counterintuitive advice that will help you see your struggles differently after it's over.

00:01:53.580 Check out our show notes at aom.is slash change.

00:02:05.940 All right, Ross Ellenhorn, welcome to the show.

00:02:08.900 Thank you.

00:02:09.380 You work with people who've been in and out of the psychiatric system and trying to get help,

00:02:13.260 and they haven't been able to make changes, but this book is also geared just to regular people

00:02:17.000 who have found change to be hard, and I think we've all experienced that to one extent or the

00:02:20.860 other. Trying to quit smoking is hard, trying to lose weight is hard, controlling your anger,

00:02:26.760 your temper is hard, and you always have this desire like, this is the time. This is the thing

00:02:32.240 it's going to be. I'm going to get it this time, but then a week later, you're off the treadmill.

00:02:38.180 So what's going on there? Why is it so hard to make personal changes like losing weight,

00:02:45.020 quitting smoking, being more patient with your kids?

00:02:48.560 Yeah, and so I learned why it's hard from these individuals who are having such profound

00:02:55.020 problems with motivation and with accepting help, but it really is applicable to all of us,

00:03:00.620 including you and me. No one's free from this, and it's basically that every time you're trying

00:03:07.760 to change something in your life, you're exposing something that's really terrifying,

00:03:12.280 which is that you're kind of driving the bus that's your life, and that's what existentialists

00:03:17.660 would call existential accountability, and that causes anxiety. There's nobody really making

00:03:23.540 things happen for me. I'm in charge, and if this life's going to have any depth or meaning to it,

00:03:28.820 I'm in charge of that. And so every act of changing yourself is really this profound act of kind of

00:03:37.260 shepherding your own life, right? It's very interesting because think about what people did,

00:03:43.440 at least at the beginning of COVID, in response to that. The massive agility that people showed

00:03:50.840 in changing their lives, right? But they did it in a group, and they did it because they had to,

00:03:58.820 that's actually easier, even though it's more massive, than dieting. Because dieting is like,

00:04:05.460 I'm on my own, I'm in charge of my life, and I'm making this happen. And so there's always that

00:04:11.060 pressure of having to look at yourself and your own accountability every time you try to change

00:04:16.480 something. No, yeah, I think that's, yeah, it's definitely existential. Like, freedom is so scary.

00:04:20.780 You'd rather just like, I'd rather have someone tell me exactly what to do, so I don't have to think

00:04:23.660 about this. Right, right. I mean, there's this fascinating work on why is it that Scandinavian

00:04:29.180 countries, that people are so much happier? And there's all kinds of reasons. But one reason is

00:04:36.340 less choice. In the United States, and you walk in, there's like 20 different cereals. You walk into

00:04:41.940 PGA Fridays, and there's enormous menu. And that level of choice actually can become depressing.

00:04:47.860 Well, yeah, and we also have just choices on how we want to live our lives. You know, 100 years ago,

00:04:53.640 your choice was like, my dad was a farmer, his dad was a farmer, I'll be a farmer. Now it's like,

00:04:59.980 well, I can be a blogger, I can be a lawyer, I can be an accountant, I can be whatever. And that can be

00:05:06.460 really terrifying to have to make that choice. Yeah, yeah, that combined with a culture that says

00:05:13.000 that because you're free, something's wrong with you if you don't achieve those things. So there's

00:05:18.400 also a mythology in that, right? That everybody's sort of seen as this free agent that should be

00:05:23.400 able to make their life become whatever it should be. You know, so there's like this, there's two

00:05:27.780 things going on at the same time in our culture. One is this idea that wherever you are is sort of

00:05:32.520 your, an expression of who you are. And the other is, you know, you're in charge of your life,

00:05:37.860 because there is some truth to that. The second part, you know, that you're in charge of your

00:05:41.840 way you respond to the world. You're not always in charge of how, where you end up.

00:05:46.100 All right. So there's this deep existential reason why it's hard to make personal change,

00:05:50.440 because it's scary to accept the fact that you're the one who's driving the bus of your life,

00:05:54.500 and you have all these options to choose from as to where to go. But there's also more day-to-day

00:05:59.400 things that can either make us more or less motivated to change.

00:06:02.580 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so there's this field around us. And let me give you an example from the book,

00:06:08.660 and then I'll explain why that example is important. So I have a goal in my life to give

00:06:14.500 more honest, critical feedback to my employees, because it's not something I'm very good at.

00:06:21.020 And one day I needed to give one of my managers some feedback, and I really felt like this was

00:06:25.920 the opportunity to change that behavior. But I didn't sleep all the night before. It was kind

00:06:29.700 of a muggy day. I felt lousy. All the excuses for not doing it started entering my head. You know,

00:06:35.760 maybe I'll just do it next week, or I'll kick the can down the road some other way.

00:06:39.800 And I was in New York City, and I got on this elevator with a group of people.

00:06:43.660 And while we're going up, this woman spills her coffee. And somebody in the elevator says,

00:06:48.860 you know, I'm going to sprinkle a little sugar on that to make it congeal so it doesn't spread

00:06:53.060 through the elevator. Another person grabbed some napkins from their pocket and put it on it.

00:06:58.060 And we got to like the fifth floor, and this guy got out and said,

00:07:01.340 that was the best elevator ride ever. And everybody started cracking up. And then we

00:07:05.840 got to the 10th floor, and this businessman gets out, and he yells back to us, same time,

00:07:10.920 same date next year. Let's all meet here on the elevator. And we just lost it. And I got off of

00:07:15.940 that elevator, and I was totally prepared to give this manager feedback. Now, what happened in that

00:07:23.020 elevator ride? Well, we all live in these fields, and the fields are very complex. And you cannot

00:07:29.120 predict when those fields will shift. And the fields are basically, there's a bunch of forces

00:07:34.040 moving you forward. There's self-esteem. There's all kinds of traits, your own self-confidence,

00:07:40.340 your own mental agility. But there's also things like how good your day is going. What happened to

00:07:47.140 you yesterday? What's on your mind at that time? What's your socioeconomic class? What else is going on

00:07:54.040 at that point? And then there's all these restraining forces, all these things holding

00:07:59.780 you back, your self-doubt, socioeconomic reasons, all of those things. And so what happened to me that

00:08:06.820 day was there was enough of an extra little bit of good stuff going on, sort of a sense of faith in

00:08:12.300 humanity that pushed me over to the ability to actually change my behavior. And that's why one day

00:08:19.060 you might be planning to diet and you can't diet. And then the next day you wake up and you're

00:08:23.120 completely able to diet. That's because something has shifted in this field around you. All the

00:08:28.300 forces holding you back, all the forces pushing you forward. And the way to think about it is each of

00:08:34.020 us is sitting between those two forces at all times. Sometimes we're closer to our goal because

00:08:39.500 either the positive forces are stronger and the negative forces are the same, or the negative forces

00:08:44.160 are less for some reason and we're pushing towards it. And then we're always in this field

00:08:48.620 between these two things, moving back and forth.

00:08:51.540 And then as we just discussed earlier about this existential anxiety, that's a restraining force.

00:08:55.620 But what's interesting about that, just the fact of wanting to do something, to achieve a goal,

00:08:59.740 make a personal change, actually can cause a restraint because we start freaking ourselves out.

00:09:05.660 That's right. That's so great you point that out. That's exactly right. That the thing,

00:09:09.720 that changing comes with its own built-in restraining force, right? There's other kinds of

00:09:15.440 motivations where it's just basically these two fields, but change always has that existential

00:09:19.820 accountability. And it also always has hope. So hope is always there. Like if you're going to plan

00:09:26.360 on losing weight, you're hoping to lose weight. And so there's always hope as a positive force forward.

00:09:33.280 But the problem is that hope too has its restraining element because hope can lead you to profound

00:09:39.880 experiences of disappointment and helplessness. And so if you've had enough experiences of

00:09:44.780 disappointment, hope is actually scary. And that's part of why hope is both a positive force and a

00:09:52.320 restraining force.

00:09:54.000 Well, let's dig into this idea of hope more because this is the first book of psychology

00:09:58.000 that I actually, where it deals with hope very seriously because you often read about hope in terms

00:10:03.800 of like, you know, like a religious book or something like that. In this realm of psychology,

00:10:08.540 humanistic psychology, what is like, what does it mean to hope for something? It's just like want

00:10:11.900 something that you don't have or can't see? What is it?

00:10:14.400 Well, first of all, I want to point out what an insane world we live in that hope is not a central

00:10:21.540 element of what we're talking about in psychology. And that we have all these weird terms that psychology

00:10:28.460 and psychiatry is made up that have very little meaning like depression, anxiety, that they don't

00:10:34.260 really have a meaning attached to them when hope does, right? I'm hoping for this thing. I'm experiencing

00:10:39.680 despair because I didn't get it. Like these words have been removed from therapeutic practices. It's

00:10:44.760 very sad in a lot of ways because it treats people as if they're kind of like these broken things instead

00:10:50.240 of recognizing they're dealing always with the same things everybody's dealing with, which is how do I hope

00:10:55.420 for things and how do I deal with the despair of not getting them? So hope is not quite an emotion.

00:11:01.800 It's sort of an emotion and a position that makes sense. So hope is in a way, it's similar to other

00:11:07.840 things that are emotions and positions like paranoia. Paranoia is not just a feeling. It's a position

00:11:13.040 towards life. And hope is this attitude in which you place importance on something you want and you

00:11:20.040 start moving towards it. So every time you hope, you're actually attributing to something an

00:11:25.800 importance. So the example is, you know, your parents ask you what you want for Christmas or

00:11:29.820 Hanukkah and you say a bike. The minute you say bike, that thing becomes this important thing to you.

00:11:35.300 You also notice at that point that you lack a bike. So two things are going on at the same time when you

00:11:40.640 hope for something. It becomes important and you recognize you lack it. That means that hope

00:11:46.500 always implies risk because if you don't get it, you recognize something you've now appointed as

00:11:52.260 important you don't have and you recognize you lack it. So every time you're trying to change

00:11:57.380 something about yourself, you're going to be recognizing if you don't get it, you lack that

00:12:01.620 thing that you want to change and it was important. And hope is this thing that moves you through

00:12:06.660 uncertainty. You don't hope for something and know you'll get it. That's what makes it so

00:12:11.180 evolutionarily important because hope is getting you through uncertainty to a goal. It moves you to

00:12:17.640 the goal to uncertainty. It's kind of very different than a cheaper emotion, which is optimism. Optimism is

00:12:24.940 everything's going to be great. Hope is, I don't know if everything's going to be great, but it's going

00:12:29.420 to drive me, move me towards that thing. And there's two very important qualities to hope. And if you take

00:12:35.940 a survey on hope, you'll be taking Charles Snyder's survey typically. And there's two things he's

00:12:41.120 looking for that hopeful people do. One is they have a belief in themselves. There's a sense of,

00:12:46.840 I can do this. And the other is they find alternative pathways. So hopeful people, when you see a barrier,

00:12:54.640 you try to figure out your way around it. And when you think about hopeful politicians, they're often

00:13:00.120 talking about how we're going to work our way around something. They're not promising we'll get there.

00:13:04.600 You know, Churchill's famous speech about we'll fight here, we'll fight there, we'll fight there.

00:13:08.240 He never says, we'll beat the Germans. He's just talking about, we're going to try every way

00:13:13.700 possible to fight them. And that's hope. That's where hope rests. It's this emotion we experience

00:13:20.000 through uncertainty.

00:13:21.700 Okay. So you mentioned one element of hope is this belief in yourself that you're capable

00:13:25.000 of doing something. That belief, like faith comes up. And like you also, like hope and faith are

00:13:31.380 also connected. And again, faith is one of those words we typically associate with faith and with

00:13:35.740 religion and spirituality. But in this model of how people change, like what is faith?

00:13:42.380 Yeah. So again, this is a real problem that we would think of these things

00:13:46.660 as important in church and in synagogue and in mosque, but not important in therapy, right?

00:13:54.820 So faith is very similar to what Bandura, a social psychologist calls self-efficacy.

00:14:01.980 So self-efficacy is the belief that you can make things happen, that you're competent enough to

00:14:08.400 control your life and to fix things and make things and be able to kind of take on something

00:14:14.220 and make it work. That's different than self-esteem. And that's really what faith is in yourself,

00:14:19.860 which is that I can get through this. I can figure out how to get through this. And so hope has that

00:14:26.060 kernel of faith in it because that element, what Snyder's pointing out is this sort of belief in

00:14:30.240 yourself. That's kind of faith. That's faith, right? And when you've been met with lots of

00:14:35.000 disappointments, you lose that faith in yourself. And if you lose that faith in yourself, you become

00:14:39.960 afraid of hope because you're saying, hope's going to bring me to that point again where things

00:14:45.140 are going to fall apart because I'm going to get disappointed. I'm going to fail.

00:14:48.200 And I don't know if I have enough faith in myself to handle that.

00:14:52.200 No. So yeah, that's, I mean, that's a good point. So like these things, the faith and hope,

00:14:55.800 they drive us, they help us move forward in uncertainty. But as you said, it's a double-edged

00:15:00.780 sword because once you experience that defeat, you don't get what you wanted or you had faith in

00:15:06.680 yourself and your ability and like it didn't work out, like you just, you go, you can fall into

00:15:11.180 despair.

00:15:12.580 Right, right. And also despair, the other term I would use for that is,

00:15:18.200 helplessness, the experience I can't get my needs met. I can't make my life work. That's a profound

00:15:25.920 experience, right? I'm driving this bus and I'm no good at making things work. That really beats you

00:15:32.920 up, right? And so that's why the next time you're ready to hope, you're like, I don't want to have

00:15:39.220 that experience again, that I'm not able to make my life work. That's a very profound terror.

00:15:44.560 No. So yeah, I mean, that's a good point. So you mentioned like when you were talking about hope

00:15:48.600 and giving an example of hope and the kid hoping for a bike that the holidays, if you don't get the

00:15:53.680 bike, like you're, it's, it's a bummer, but you move on. But like when you say you hope to lose weight

00:16:01.380 for the 20th time, like that can be even more devastating because just like, it's about you.

00:16:06.820 It's not a thing. It's about you as a person. Absolutely. That's right. Right. I mean,

00:16:13.180 think about, think about COVID again, right? Like what were we hoping for when we massively adjusted

00:16:19.400 our lives? We were hoping for the status quo. We weren't, we weren't hoping for some great thing

00:16:24.320 to happen. Right. So the challenge of hoping wasn't that great. It was just like, let's get through this

00:16:30.260 thing. Right. But to say to yourself, I'm going to lose weight. That's like all the responsibilities

00:16:35.680 on my shoulders. And I'm hoping for a thing that I'm going to, that, that, that makes me better

00:16:40.680 than I am right now. And that makes that really kind of serious, right? Because the pitfall is I'm

00:16:48.060 not able to diet. If I'm not able to diet, simply do that. Am I capable of doing other things?

00:16:55.340 Who is this person driving the bus that's, that is my life, right? Can I have faith in that person?

00:17:01.180 Yeah. There's existential stakes whenever you make a goal like that.

00:17:04.600 Yep. Yep. Exactly. Yeah.

00:17:07.060 And I thought it was interesting, your research on hope and this fear of hope. So like hope can

00:17:11.040 cause a fear of hope because there's always a chance you're not going to, it's not going to

00:17:14.240 happen for you what you wanted. What you found is that people who are the most hopeful are actually

00:17:19.900 the most afraid of hope. Or did I get that right? Did I read it wrong?

00:17:25.480 Oh, almost right. Okay.

00:17:27.120 People who are very hopeful and have fear of hope are very agitated. Okay.

00:17:34.480 They, they get engaged in these things called counterfactuals where they're constantly thinking,

00:17:38.760 I should have done this. I should have done that. Right. Or this should have happened differently.

00:17:43.340 They, they don't, they're less likely to see a positive event coming up than a person who doesn't

00:17:49.740 have hope. And that kind of makes sense. Like a person who doesn't have hope, they're like,

00:17:53.620 oh yeah, my graduation's coming up. Big deal. Person who has hope, they're going, oh my God,

00:17:57.940 I'm going to get excited about this. And then I'm going to be let down and they get scared of it.

00:18:01.620 They don't want to look at it. So what we're finding is that the relationship between hope

00:18:05.920 and fear of hope is this sort of difficult, difficult situation. And what that means on some

00:18:11.340 level is we might be, we might be actually diagnosing people as depressed or even in despair

00:18:16.360 when actually they're people with a lot of hope, but they're afraid of it. It scares them.

00:18:21.260 They're like a, they're like a high diver who's afraid of heights.

00:18:25.820 And you make this case is really, I mean, it's counterintuitive that, okay, when you decide

00:18:30.400 to hope for somebody, you also have this fear of hope and you decide to let the fear drive your

00:18:34.480 decision. We often think, well, that's not good, but you kind of make this counterintuitive

00:18:38.900 case that sometimes that's what needs to be done. Sometimes you have to just kind of stay the same

00:18:44.860 because you still got some work you have to do before you can make that big change you're,

00:18:48.340 you're hoping for. Yeah. So this, this gets, this gets a little con, not convoluted, but complex.

00:18:56.760 Maybe let's think about this for a second. So I'm afraid of trying something that will change my life

00:19:03.460 because I'm afraid of that feeling of helplessness is going to happen and despair if it doesn't happen

00:19:09.380 again. And I'm afraid my hope's going to coax me into doing it. And then I'm going to be let down.

00:19:14.460 What am I protecting when I do that? I don't change. I'm protecting my hope in a strange way.

00:19:23.440 I'm protecting my capacity to keep hoping. I don't want it injured anymore. So I'm actually doing

00:19:28.520 something that's, that's nurturing of myself. I'm trying to kind of make sure that what hope I have

00:19:34.600 is safe. So I'm playing possum. I'm not moving forward because I don't want that injured again.

00:19:40.080 I'm staying still so that I don't get whatever motivates me more hurt. And so in the book,

00:19:47.360 that's really what I'm talking about is can you find a way to have some affection for staying the

00:19:51.600 same? That's sure a better attitude towards staying the same than hating it, right? And being

00:19:57.020 shameful about it. That's such a disrespectful way to look at the fact that you didn't diet or you

00:20:03.020 didn't work out or anything like that. It's not respecting that there's parts of you that are

00:20:06.820 trying to take care of yourself that aren't working. And they come from self-love and all love

00:20:13.660 is messy and inaccurate and screwed up and sometimes goes overboard. Love is not some pure state. And so

00:20:22.540 sometimes you go overboard and you protect yourself too much, but it's coming from the right place.

00:20:27.920 Well, yeah, something you say about people who have a fear of hope, the thing they do to protect the

00:20:32.220 hope that they have is they severely constrain their lives, right? And like time kind of gets

00:20:37.840 compressed. Like the only things you're worried about are things that happened a few months ago.

00:20:41.240 And the only things you're kind of maybe excited about are the things that will happen in a few

00:20:44.700 months, but you're not really hoping what's my life going to be like in a year, two years, three years.

00:20:50.340 What are my kids going to be like grandkids? Because you don't want to hope that far in the future

00:20:55.440 because there's a, there's a good chance it might not work out the way you hoped for.

00:21:00.120 Right, right, exactly right. You know, and so then what are you doing there? You're trying to protect

00:21:05.480 what hope you have from another injury. And that kind of makes sense. You know, it's not great.

00:21:13.500 You know, you end up staying the same, but on the other hand, you're doing something that

00:21:17.120 has some sense to it. And the more you can respect that, maybe even find it kind of beautiful that

00:21:24.280 you're doing it, the more likely you are to change. It just doesn't work to like hate yourself for not

00:21:29.780 that just doesn't work. Shame. If you want to, if you want to really be stuck, be shameful. That'll,

00:21:36.520 that'll keep you stuck.

00:21:38.400 No, this idea of like hope and being afraid of hope reminds me of like that, that saying,

00:21:43.600 I don't know if it's connected, but it sounds kind of the same. Like cynics are just idealists

00:21:47.080 who have been disappointed over and over again.

00:21:51.100 Yeah.

00:21:51.780 Right. It's like, I think people like hopeful people, they're just like,

00:21:54.280 people who are afraid of hope. They're just, they're hopeful people, but they just been,

00:21:58.000 they feel like they've been burned so many times that they, they get kind of like, I'm not going

00:22:01.660 to put my, I'm not going to hope this time because it'll feel bad.

00:22:05.300 Yeah. I would just adjust that just a little bit from people who are, you and I are afraid of hope.

00:22:11.480 I mean, some people are just more afraid of it than us. I mean, you know, there's not a single

00:22:15.880 theologian out there that says, go hope. It's easy. Right. They're always talking about it.

00:22:21.120 Hope and courage go together. That it takes some strength to face hope. And if it takes some

00:22:26.980 strength to face hope, there must be something scary about it. And there's what's scary about

00:22:30.420 is hope is always about risk. And I'm, that's not my, that's not something I made up. Every

00:22:35.800 theologians talked about hope is a risky attitude. You're climbing a mountain and every step you take

00:22:44.560 towards hope means a bigger fall if the thing doesn't work out. And that's why religion has 0.99

00:22:51.420 always been about hope and faith. It's trying to kind of get people to act on hope. It's a really

00:22:58.440 evolutionary thing. We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:23:03.800 And now back to the show. So, okay. Staying the same. So like, say someone makes a goal to lose

00:23:09.240 weight or maybe they want to change their job, but like they haven't made the move because

00:23:13.000 there's a whole bunch of reasons. You give like a whole bunch of reasons that in the years you've

00:23:17.340 been working with people, you found different reasons, like different things that people are

00:23:20.960 protecting when they just, when you say, when they decide, they might not know they're making a

00:23:25.500 decision, but you know, when they decide, I'm not going to, I'm not going to move forward on that

00:23:30.060 change that I hope for. And one of them is just pain. Like, yeah, we, we've been kind of talking

00:23:34.920 about this, but this pain of one pain is just the fear of existential freedom. And we'd rather just,

00:23:42.720 like we talked about earlier, just escape from that. I mean, any examples of people you worked with

00:23:46.500 where the reason why they stayed the same, because they were afraid of that existential freedom.

00:23:51.880 Yeah. I would say that most of the people I deal with, you know, and now this is me applying my

00:23:58.800 ideas on them and I'm, I'm pretty much against people deciding what other people's experiences

00:24:02.800 are, but sure. But my way of looking at things is that most of the people I'm dealing with,

00:24:07.520 this is what they're struggling over. They're having a major existential crisis, partly caused by the

00:24:15.080 fact that they've had a massive disappointment because of having been diagnosed with a psychiatric issue.

00:24:21.140 And so they're dealing with, you know, if I'm free, I'm accountable. And if I'm accountable,

00:24:28.020 can I actually get my hopes up again? You know, can I have another experience of kind of loss

00:24:33.280 regarding this? And so for most of them, I think this is going on for them.

00:24:38.220 Well, and you, you also talk, you bring this other existential idea of, of bad faith and good faith.

00:24:43.480 You know, good faith, I think this is from Sartre.

00:24:45.860 Yeah.

00:24:46.200 Yeah.

00:24:46.540 You said that like, you know, good faith is when you recognize that you are accountable,

00:24:50.340 right? You're not, you might not be responsible for the hands you're dealt in life, but you are

00:24:54.500 responsible for how you respond. And that's the scary thing. Bad faith is whenever you pretend

00:25:00.060 you don't have that like ability or accountability or responsibility. And, you know, I remember you

00:25:06.360 talked about one person you worked with who did something that looked like good faith was actually

00:25:10.560 bad faith. I guess what it was is he, he set up this like system of accountability where people

00:25:16.540 checked in with him. So he had people check in with him. Right. So like it's, it looked like good

00:25:21.940 faith in that he was setting up this system, but it was actually kind of a bad faith move because

00:25:26.300 he wanted other people just to take care of it. He wanted to set up the system. Then he didn't have

00:25:29.800 to think about it after that.

00:25:31.700 Right. Right. That was a, that was a fascinating thing. That's right. That's right. So he,

00:25:35.180 he wanted these, these, you know, we kept telling him, you know, because I run this program that,

00:25:41.240 you know, it's 24 hours. So he just kept telling me, you could call any time if there's a crisis.

00:25:45.780 Right. But he wanted check-ins to make sure he wasn't in crisis. And, and that's bad faith

00:25:53.640 because what he wanted was this sense that people were kind of there automatically responding to him

00:26:00.080 and that he was the sort of passive person that they were taking care of because passivity is kind

00:26:05.000 of the art of bad faith. Right. And to call us would mean that he was an agent. He was making

00:26:11.820 this happen. So that, that's a really significantly injured person, right? That they, they knew that

00:26:17.600 they had this service where they could call any time, but they didn't want to use the service

00:26:21.720 because they were so terrified of actually being an agent, making things happen. Right. And that's

00:26:27.720 kind of classic for a lot of the people I work with, you know, but, but right now, you know,

00:26:32.040 you and I are talking, this is a good faith interaction. I'm feeling completely like I'm

00:26:37.380 my own agent of my life right now. You know, I feel like I'm spewing out words and ideas that are

00:26:43.060 my own and I'm accountable for those things. And when I leave and I walk home, I'm going to be

00:26:49.380 thinking about how I have to be home at a certain time. And that have to is bad faith because I'm

00:26:56.500 acting as if that time I have to be home is something I have to do instead of I want to do

00:27:02.060 because I don't want to piss people off that I'm late and I'm making that decision. So our days are

00:27:06.880 filled with these back and forth between good and bad faith. Right. And some of that's, some of that's

00:27:12.500 just functional. You can't just go through life, seeing everything as a choice, but some of it's

00:27:16.960 because we just are sort of terrified of this idea that there's a lot of choices in front of us.

00:27:21.940 Well, I mean, so going back to this idea where that, that can actually be useful because I think

00:27:28.420 people are hearing that like, well, that's not good. Bad faith sounds not good where you pretend

00:27:32.680 like you don't have accountability for your life, but like say to talk about this guy who set up this

00:27:38.060 system, like it sounded like it was useful for him. Can it like, can that be a way where he sort

00:27:42.760 of works his way up to building good faith? Yeah. Yeah. I tell this other story about, I mean,

00:27:49.400 you know, and these are extreme stories because these are people that have been under extreme

00:27:53.200 experiences of disappointment. Right. But I'm, but this is another example. I had a guy in a group

00:27:58.300 and I hated this, but I was a junior therapist at the time. So we were asked, we had to ask them

00:28:03.320 to give a number to their mood, which is sort of dumb, but, and he would always say every week he was 0.59

00:28:09.180 a two, which is really low in depression. Like he was a two with 10 being, you know, doing really well.

00:28:16.440 And he'd say a two every week, but there were these women in the group who went to church with 0.70

00:28:21.500 him and they'd come into my office and they'd tell me things like he was starting to date.

00:28:26.300 Like he spoke at the church the other day, like he got his own apartment, like he got a job.

00:28:31.700 And then one day he didn't show up. He never showed up again. And so he needed us to kind of stay in

00:28:37.140 this place of seeing him as a two, not scare him with our expectations going up about his own agency,

00:28:42.740 right? That he can make his life work in order for him to escape bad faith. He couldn't have us be

00:28:48.500 part of it and get excited for him. And so that was sort of his method to get out of it.

00:28:53.680 No, that's another one of the 10 reasons why we don't change the fear of just expectations from

00:28:58.040 ourselves and others, right? Once you tell people your wife, like, oh, I'm going to, this is, I'm

00:29:02.820 going to lose in weight. This is the time I'm going to do it. And she's like, yes. And then,

00:29:06.540 you know, a week later, you're, you know, got the burrito taco enchilada meal and, you know,

00:29:15.080 she's disappointed and you feel it. And you're like, I just don't want to experience. I'm not

00:29:17.920 even going to say, I'm trying to make a change.

00:29:20.900 Right. Right. Exactly. That raising other people's expectations means raising them seeing your,

00:29:27.480 your, that you're the master of your life and having other people witness that is scary,

00:29:33.680 right? Because then you can let them down. You witness yourself letting them down and you feel

00:29:39.500 bad about yourself. So you try to avoid that. And one way to avoid that is to not change,

00:29:43.980 right? You stay miserable so that you don't have to face the misery of a disappointment in front of

00:29:49.440 them. And the same goes with our own selves. We don't want to raise our own expectations. And we

00:29:53.520 sort of stay in this state, this possum like state, because we don't want to have that experience of

00:29:58.360 being, you know, raising our hopes and then having them dashed.

00:30:01.400 And I mean, so this one guy you talked about who was, you went to your, your group therapy

00:30:05.900 session said he's a two, like that was kind of his way out of it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Smart.

00:30:11.280 Yeah. It was smart. But I mean, how else have you seen people overcome this fear of just

00:30:16.340 expectations? Is it just, does it come naturally? Does it come when you're ready? What happens there?

00:30:22.700 I think that it's a couple of things. One is that I really don't think that you can

00:30:26.420 develop hope. You have to develop faith. So the more people kind of get better at things,

00:30:32.660 get better at life, the more willing they are to kind of risk hoping again. Right. And so the more

00:30:38.220 willing they are to kind of face the fact that things might not work out, but they'll survive.

00:30:42.420 So I've seen that in my own life, you know, the more I've gotten good at things, anything,

00:30:46.540 the more I kind of feel like I can kind of survive other disappointments. And I've seen that in my,

00:30:51.940 in my clients, you know, the more that they can kind of take care of themselves and be in charge of

00:30:55.120 their lives, the more willing they are to take greater risks. I guess, you know, the one story

00:31:00.240 I tell in the book is this guy used to kind of know back in the punk scene in LA who wanted to

00:31:05.760 quit smoking. And he did actually the opposite of the guy that gave the two. He took pictures of

00:31:12.420 himself looking like an idiot smoking and he called these idiot cards and he plastered them and he was 1.00

00:31:18.820 really well known in LA and people loved them. So he plastered these all over the clubs and the 1.00

00:31:24.020 bathrooms and the clubs all over the place. And it was his way of kind of reminding himself

00:31:28.760 in a way that, you know, continuing on with this behavior wasn't actually working for him.

00:31:34.580 It was this kind of reflection of this thing, but he also made it into kind of a performance

00:31:38.840 because he got all these other people involved in a way where they were reflecting to him.

00:31:43.140 And it held him accountable in this other kind of way that helped him finally quit. It was kind of

00:31:48.160 a beautiful little piece of performance art in some ways.

00:31:50.700 Well, you mentioned one thing that people kind of get out of, overcome these fears of

00:31:54.680 expectations or freedom is, you know, they start taking small steps in different areas of life.

00:32:00.700 It might not even be related to the big issue in their life, right? Whether they think they're

00:32:05.280 depressed or they've got something else, but they decide, you know what, in this one area of my life

00:32:11.260 where the stakes aren't that big, I'm going to make these small steps. But then another reason

00:32:16.200 like people don't change is because like small steps, like that's kind of undignified, right?

00:32:20.600 It's like, that's, that's for babies. Like I'm, I'm a grown man. I'm going to make big changes

00:32:25.360 now. And so a lot of people think, well, it's not even worth it. If I had to do like these little

00:32:29.220 minuscule steps and I'll make much progress, then I'll just stay the same.

00:32:32.920 Yeah. Yeah. So here's, here's another word that you don't hear in therapy enough,

00:32:36.900 which is humility. That when you head out towards a goal, if you find every small step to be

00:32:43.260 insulting, because every small step reminds you where you are, right? It reminds you how far you

00:32:48.780 are from the goal. Matter of fact, if you don't take those small steps, you can dream all you want

00:32:53.140 that you're really close to the goal and never, never change, right? It's really easy to kind of

00:32:57.320 think, oh yeah, I could do that tomorrow. But to take the small steps is this kind of painful event

00:33:03.060 of having to look at where you are in relationship to your goal. If you're afraid of hope, you'll never

00:33:08.260 take those small steps. Or if you have this kind of overblown version of yourself where you think

00:33:14.100 you can achieve it right away, you'll never take the small steps. And the danger in that is that

00:33:18.220 every small step, once it's completed, actually adds to your faith in yourself. If you can do it,

00:33:24.620 it adds to your faith. And the next day you're going to take the next step, but you've got to get

00:33:28.360 on those steps along the way in order to keep going. You have to, these fuel each other if you can get on

00:33:35.800 the track. But the problem is you're terrified and you're, and it's painful because they're each one

00:33:40.080 is an insult. Right. I mean, so like, I'm trying to think of a problem. Like, you know, if you have

00:33:44.360 to, if you need, if you're trying to get a promotion at your job, a career that means a lot to you,

00:33:48.360 it might mean you have to take some sort of remedial course or go to some like continuing 0.99

00:33:52.600 education class that you think is really easy and you're going to look like an idiot and you're just 1.00

00:33:57.020 like, I'm not even going to do that. But like, if you had hope and you wanted to act on that hope, 0.99

00:34:01.820 like you would do it, you would, and you had the humility, you would do it.

00:34:05.600 Right. Right. Yeah, that's right. It's exactly right. And then, so the humility is kind of needed

00:34:10.900 at that point of the small steps, right? You know, the story of Icarus is really fascinating

00:34:16.880 because Icarus's dad, who was the God of craft, which is amazing, right? Because craft is all about

00:34:24.340 small steps. You have to really get skilled at craft. And he built Icarus these wings and the wings

00:34:31.160 had two problems with it. One was, you know, we know about the sun, right? They'd melt if he got

00:34:35.640 to, if he got, if he had hubris, if he got too close to the sun, but if he got too close to the

00:34:39.900 ocean, they'd get wet and get destroyed. And that's humility and that that's humiliation, right? And so

00:34:46.440 you have to kind of float between those two things. You can't be kind of like worried all the time that

00:34:50.420 I'll feel bad about myself and humiliated if I, if I, if I take this small step. And you also can't

00:34:55.500 be living in this world where, oh, I'm, I'm, I'm above those small steps.

00:34:59.720 So we say we hope for a change, but sometimes we just stay the same because like, we're afraid

00:35:03.460 we're trying to protect ourselves from all these things we've been talking about. The fear of

00:35:06.340 freedom, the expectations, the indignity of small steps. So like, I mean, I think we kind of hit on

00:35:13.240 it, but it's like how I, the first step is looking at these things as maybe not as a negative,

00:35:17.500 because that will just, I don't know, kind of taint things and make you feel worse about yourself,

00:35:22.560 which just sort of creates this vicious cycle. It's not good. So like, what is the solution?

00:35:27.280 So to this, these tensions of that, that's created of, of hoping, and then you hope causes

00:35:31.880 fear of hope and all, I mean, it's like, yeah, what, what do you do? You just, like, what do you,

00:35:36.960 when you work with a, when you work with a, with a client, like, what does that process look

00:35:42.060 like of, of change when they finally happens for them?

00:35:44.900 Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I'm, I'm in this awkward position of writing a kind of self-help

00:35:50.040 book that gives no advice, right? Because I really don't believe that like advice on what

00:35:57.060 you need to do to change works. What I think works in what science shows is contemplation

00:36:05.340 from a nonjudgmental space, right? In other words, I'm doing this for this reason. That's

00:36:11.820 why I have 10 reasons not to change, right? I'm doing it for this reason. I could do it

00:36:16.880 for this reason. And I'm looking at both and I'm weighing them, right? You're not going

00:36:23.620 to do that. If you look at sameness as bad, you're never going to look at the reasons for

00:36:27.200 it, right? And so real change happens, real sustainable change happens when you're able

00:36:33.000 to say there's some good in this behavior I want to change. And I have to say goodbye

00:36:37.240 to that good in order to move forward. If all you say is that, is that lie to yourself

00:36:43.960 that everything about this thing is bad, it's very hard to move forward. That's really what

00:36:49.280 is happening now in some ways with people with problematic habits or what's people call

00:36:54.060 addiction is that we're discovering that if a person can discuss and think about why

00:36:58.280 they like using, why it's important in their lives, what it does for them, they're actually 0.91

00:37:03.220 more likely to give it up than somebody where it's just about, you know, you're screwed 0.99

00:37:07.760 up because you're an addict. And that's what I'm trying to do in the book. I'm trying to 0.83

00:37:11.340 say, you know, spend some time looking at this thing and appreciating it. Because if you do

00:37:17.100 that, you can probably leave it behind. You can retire it. You're never going to retire it

00:37:20.640 if all you think is it's bad and that you're bad because you're doing it.

00:37:24.200 Well, it sounds like it's a good analogy, be like a protective, overprotective parent,

00:37:27.320 right? Overprotective parent isn't, they're not doing it out of like, they had this urge

00:37:31.260 to be a totalitarian. They're usually doing it out of like a sense of love and they want to

00:37:34.460 protect you. But at a certain point, they have to realize that's actually not going to help my

00:37:38.600 kid. I need to back off if I really do love him. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have a 22-year-old

00:37:47.100 son who's planning a big road trip right now. My wife and I are discussing whether it's a good

00:37:52.640 idea for him to do it. And it's like, what are we doing? This kid's 22. But we love him and

00:37:59.120 we're worried about him. And if we were to intervene on that in some way, we would be

00:38:03.100 doing something not good. But it would be coming out of our love. It wouldn't be coming out of

00:38:08.320 anything bad. It would sure piss him off and it wouldn't feel good. But it's not bad. It's just

00:38:15.220 love that's not being controlled right.

00:38:19.180 So let's kind of recap big picture overview of what we've talked about so far. So there's this,

00:38:23.120 whenever you want something, you hope for something, automatically there's attention that's

00:38:28.580 created, right? Between where you are, you don't have the thing and where you're at,

00:38:32.820 the thing you'd like. And by thing, we're talking about personal change here. So I'm not talking

00:38:37.660 about a bike or an iPad or whatever. And then whenever you start hoping, that's a driving force

00:38:43.840 towards the thing you want. But then also there's a countervailing restraining force, which is the

00:38:48.940 fear of hope. And then there's also faith is driving us towards that. We have this capacity. We have

00:38:53.580 faith in ourselves and the ability to do what we want or what we need to do to achieve that thing

00:38:59.020 we'd like. But there's also a countervailing restraint to there. That's like, you mess up and

00:39:05.140 your actions don't give you the results you wanted. And embedded in that, there's all these other

00:39:09.780 driving and restraining forces. Like you were talking about earlier, you're in a good mood.

00:39:14.740 Your family's supportive. The weather's nice, but also restraining things like

00:39:19.840 people are annoying. Customer service experience that went bad. That can all affect things as well.

00:39:28.000 Did I get that right?

00:39:28.960 That's great, man. That's awesome.

00:39:30.800 Okay.

00:39:31.160 Thank you. That's great.

00:39:33.200 Yeah. And then the other thing, sometimes we decide in all the mix of these tensions and

00:39:37.880 driving forces just to stay the same because that's easier sometimes. And it protects where we are

00:39:44.120 now. That's right. And I think the only thing I want to add to that is that sometimes those

00:39:51.500 restraining forces are out of our control. And so I give this example or story in the book about

00:40:00.300 a woman who works in the cafeteria who wants to go back to college and has to drive to her college

00:40:07.180 through rush hour to get to class and then has to drive all the way home, has to find parking on

00:40:14.560 campus, is dealing with having to take care of her kids too. And she may be filled with hope and have

00:40:20.520 low fear of hope and still not do as well as a person with high fear of hope and lots of hope who's

00:40:27.200 the executive in her company where the cafeteria is and someone drives them to the class and someone

00:40:33.300 helps them with his homework and all those sorts of things. So there's all kinds of other restraints

00:40:37.360 than simply our existential choice. There's all kinds of other socioeconomic restraints,

00:40:43.240 gender restraints, all kinds of restraints on us as we move through life. I definitely don't want 1.00

00:40:48.900 this book to be something like Tony Robbins. I just don't believe that we can think things and

00:40:53.780 beautiful things will happen. I don't believe it. There's plenty of political and economic

00:40:59.320 forces against us as we move forward in life. But the other, I mean, that's true, but you also

00:41:04.220 make this point, like Sartre would say, it's like, yes, there are restraints, but we have the ability,

00:41:09.080 like we can navigate that. It's going to be hard, but we can take a posture towards these restraints

00:41:14.460 that's hopeful, faithful, and I'm not going to say positive because I don't want to get with,

00:41:19.960 but like, yeah, you have efficacy. Yes. In the world. Yeah. Yeah. And your response to the world.

00:41:25.560 That's right. That's right. Yeah. And also, I mean, it just sounds like too, you know,

00:41:29.660 I think it's interesting. We've been talking about faith, hope, humility. I mean, I think

00:41:33.840 another thing that's required for change is like patience. And that's something that's not really

00:41:38.040 talked about. Oftentimes when you go to a therapist, it's like, well, here's our plan. We'll meet for

00:41:42.660 three weeks and then, you know, a month, once a month after that, and then you're done. It's like,

00:41:48.240 it sounds like your idea is like, no, it could take a year or two to, I don't even know if you

00:41:53.800 solve things completely. It doesn't sound like you solve things completely, but get for things

00:41:57.560 to get better. Yeah. Yeah. There's this, you know, this book Zorba the Greek, it was also a movie.

00:42:04.640 Oh yeah. Yeah. And there's this scene in Zorba the Greek that's just so beautiful where he finds a

00:42:11.020 chrysalis with a caterpillar that's slowly becoming, it's just about to the point where it's becoming a

00:42:17.380 butterfly and he decides to help it. So he starts opening up the chrysalis. And of course the thing dies in

00:42:23.560 his hands and he's like, that's just about the most sinful thing you can do. He says this in the

00:42:29.300 book, you know, like not letting something just sort of emerge in its own time. Right. It's just an

00:42:36.920 awful thing to do to it. And we're doing that too much to ourselves. We're not respecting the fact

00:42:43.120 that, you know, it might take getting on an elevator and with some coffee spillers for us to feel like

00:42:50.020 I can move forward today. You know, you have to wait for your field to be in the right place

00:42:55.700 sometimes. And you have to be patient with that. Well, another thing you talk about, you were talking

00:42:59.340 about all these different restraining forces that we don't have control over, but another like driving

00:43:02.920 force that can help us is our social environment that can play. And so surrounding yourself with

00:43:08.440 people who are supportive and understanding, et cetera, that can help a lot. I mean, that's maybe like,

00:43:14.600 you know, a lot of, that's why we people go to group therapy or join AA because it's just being

00:43:19.660 around people who got their back or they feel like they got their back. Yeah. I mean, I have to tell

00:43:25.780 you, you know, it's amazing how little sort of the psychotherapeutic professions understand motivation

00:43:32.580 and how well social psychology understands motivation. Social psychology has it down and they've done

00:43:39.700 research after research on that. And this is about things like a sense of your value and your

00:43:44.540 community, your purpose, your social support. These are all the things in a person's field

00:43:50.420 that actually move them forward. I mean, you know, social psychology is basically kind of the study of

00:43:54.840 motivation on some level, on some level. And it's all about this thing about what are the things going

00:44:00.160 on around you that get you to move forward. And one of the main ones is social support. Social support

00:44:05.080 is just this medicine, right? That kind of moves you forward. I got this cousin of mine that does

00:44:11.280 this research where he has people sit in a chair and he's a social psychologist and he has them sit

00:44:18.040 in a chair and he has this tarantula in this plexiglass box move closer to them down this ramp. And

00:44:23.560 they actually can control how close it gets. And people that only think about negative support,

00:44:29.800 only think about it. They don't have less social support than the other people.

00:44:33.220 Think that that tarantula is closer to their face than the people that think about positive

00:44:38.720 social support. Not that they have more social support. Two people walking towards a hill will

00:44:45.260 see, will be more accurately measure the height of that hill and how hard it will be to travel that

00:44:52.220 hill than one person. So social support has all kinds of things to do with how we look at threats

00:44:57.880 and how we look at challenges. And so surrounding yourself with people feeling connected to people is

00:45:03.140 just vital to us moving forward. We know that isolation ties with cholesterol and smoking for

00:45:11.000 heart disease. And that's because of all the cortisol that's in your system when you're isolated,

00:45:14.740 right? It affects all, it makes you paranoid. It causes all kinds of problems for people.

00:45:20.700 So these are all social things. They're not necessarily psychological.

00:45:24.300 Yeah. Social support can help you be more of an individual, like with good faith, right?

00:45:29.520 That sees that they are accountable and responsible for their life. That's kind of,

00:45:34.940 it's kind of counterintuitive. Like you need the group to become an individual.

00:45:38.220 Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's really great though. It's a really great kind of paradox that you can't

00:45:44.080 be too lonely to be alone, you know, with yourself. That these things really feed our ability to be

00:45:51.380 original and creative with our lives is this sense that we're connected to others.

00:45:55.200 Well, Ross, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book

00:45:59.500 and your work?

00:46:01.440 My, my work is at ellenhorn.com. That's our, that's my company. And then the book is, you know,

00:46:06.960 it's an Amazon, it's everywhere. It's, it's HarperCollins and they can just look it up how we

00:46:11.140 change and the 10 reasons why we don't.

00:46:13.300 Well, fantastic. Well, Ross Ellenhorn, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:46:16.120 Yeah. Yeah. It was great. Thank you.

00:46:18.880 My guest today was Ross Ellenhorn. He's the author of the book,

00:46:21.280 How We Change and 10 Reasons Why We Don't. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores

00:46:25.160 everywhere. You can find out more information about his work at his website, ellenhorn.com.

00:46:29.260 Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash change, where you find links to resources,

00:46:33.280 where you delve deeper into this topic.

00:46:41.660 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at

00:46:45.060 artofmanliness.com where you find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles

00:46:48.380 written over the years. And if you'd like to enjoy ad-free episodes of the AOM

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00:46:54.800 use code manliness at checkout for a free month trial. Once you're signed up, download the Stitcher

00:46:58.640 app on Android or iOS, and you can start enjoying ad-free episodes of the AOM podcast. And if you

00:47:02.720 haven't done so already, I'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple

00:47:05.480 Podcasts or Stitcher. It helps that a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please

00:47:08.860 consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who would think we could get something out

00:47:11.940 of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay. Remind

00:47:15.740 you not only listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

00:47:21.160 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - December 28, 2022

Why You Don’t Change (But How You Still Can) [ENCORE]

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