Something happens. The tire goes flat, the layoff comes, test results come back. And then a sentence starts running in the back of your head. That shouldn't have happened. I should weigh less. They shouldn't have fired me. You barely register it. It plays like a radio in another room, and it produces a feeling, and the feeling produces a behavior, and the behavior produces the day you are having.
The stress paradox is that the thought causing you the most pain is also the one that feels most obviously true.
Of course they shouldn't have fired me. The belief feels like clear sight rather than distortion, and it feels useful, like it is the thing that will finally motivate change. It almost never is.
Treating stress as a condition to be managed rather than a belief or thought to be examined leaves it running.
My guest is Andy Bernstein.
Andy is the creator of Active Insight and the founder of the Resilience Academy. He is the author of Breaking the Stress Cycle, and he has taught at Wharton Executive Education since 2007, where his sessions have been audience favorites for thousands of leaders. His corporate clients include Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Johnson & Johnson, Google, Coca-Cola, and Genentech.
Andy built a process for dealing with stress that is seven steps, done on paper. You do not lie on a couch. You do not say a word. In this conversation, he walks through all seven steps live, twice.
Challenging the way other people think is something we all do constantly. Challenging your own thinking is something we rarely do.
Some highlights from the episode:
03:32 Losing his father at 14 and his sister at 16
06:00 Byron Katie, The Work, and a job he never meant to leave
08:26 Active Insight
11:07 Field-testing
14:51 Where our idea of stress came from
19:25 Bears, war zones, and the adaptive exception
24:41 "Should" as the argument with reality
29:33 The seven steps, walked through live
30:43 What is negation?
36:50 Running the process on "they shouldn't have fired me"
39:19 The showdown with yourself
43:37 Time doesn't heal wounds. Insight does.
44:34 The Grant Study and not pushing love away
47:00 Doing it in your head, and when that isn't enough
50:47 Won't I become a doormat?
51:09 Flow, not stress
53:49 The psychology of subtraction
Enjoy!
For show notes and more, visit larryweeks.com/podcasts
