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190: Akshay Nanavati

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This week we talk to Akshay Nanavati

After overcoming drug addiction, alcoholism, PTSD from fighting the war in Iraq and recovering from the brink of suicide, Akshay Nanavati has since explored the most hostile environments on the planet and built a business helping people live limitless lifestyles. Combining his life experience with years of research in science and spirituality, he wrote a book called “Fearvana: The Revolutionary Science of How to Turn Fear Into Health, Wealth and Happiness.” Of the book, The Dalai Lama said “Fearvana inspires us to look beyond our own agonizing experiences and find the positive side of our lives.”

 

In This Interview, Akshay Nanavati and I Discuss…

  • The Wolf Parable
  • His book, Fearvana: The revolutionary science of how to turn fear into health, wealth, and happiness
  • How he got the Dali Lama to write the forward for his book
  • That we don’t control what first shows up in our brain
  • How if you feel fear and stress is not your fault
  • The second dart/arrow parable
  • Acting your way into right thinking literally restructures the pathways in your brain
  • The ability to develop a positive relationship to suffering
  • Committing yourself to the worthy struggle
  • Reducing life to the simplest next step
  • Dealing with fear – it’s ok to be scared
  • Bringing the rational mind into fearful situations
  • The challenge response
  • Fear is a gift if you believe it to be
  • The growth mindset vs The fixed mindset
  • If you want to be great you have to believe that you are
  • How ego can be both helpful and unhelpful
  • The worthy struggle
  • Keeping things automated in your day so that you can save self-discipline or willpower for the times you need it

Akshay Nanavati Links

189: Eric Barker

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Eric Barker- Full - The One You Feed

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This week we talk to Eric Barker

Eric is a thought leader in the field of success. His humorous but practical blog, Barking up the Wrong Tree, presents science-based answers and expert insight on success in life. Over 270,000 people subscribe to his weekly email update and his content is syndicated by Time, The Week, and Business Insider. He has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and he was a columnist for Wired. With a writing career spanning over twenty years, Eric is also a sought-after speaker and interview subject and has been invited to speak at MIT, West Point, NPR affiliates, and on morning television.

His first book, Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong is available now.

In This Interview, Eric Barker and I Discuss…

  • His book, Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong
  • How he defines success
  • Achievement, Happiness, Significance, Legacy
  • The dangers of only using one metric for happiness
  • How money is a lever to something else that makes you happy rather than the thing that makes you happy in and of itself
  • There’s no finish line in the quest of what makes me feel good
  • We must decide what is “enough”
  • New and novel make our brains happy
  • We must decide what really is going to make us happy in the long run
  • Turning what we do in our lives into games can be helpful in increasing our persistence and grit
  • Games have these attributes: Winnable, Novelty, Goals, Instantaneous Feedback
  • A feeling of progress and meaningful work keeps us engaged
  • Challenging yourself in a familiar task
  • True burnout is when you start to feel pessimistic about your job so you withdraw and then you get poor feedback so you finally disengage
  • Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose
  • A change is as good as a rest
  • That we are telling ourselves stories about what’s has meaning and what doesn’t
  • How telling your children about their lineage will increase the likelihood they stay away from drugs, stay in school etc
  • Therapy as editing the story we’re telling about our lives
  • Cognitive reappraisal
  • The role of positive self-talk
  • I can do it vs I can’t take this anymore
  • If you break your arm you wouldn’t say “I am broken” you’d say “My arm is broken”
  • Listening to our thoughts from a distance and asking “is this useful?” to be more mindful about what thoughts we identify with
  • We don’t choose what makes us happy, we choose what’s easy
  • The role of a plan
  • How anticipation is happiness

Eric Barker Links

188: Gregg Krech

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Gregg Krech- Full- The One You Feed

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This week we talk to Gregg Krech

Gregg is an author, poet, and one of the leading authorities on Japanese Psychology in North America. His work has been featured in THE SUN magazine, Tricycle, SELF, Utne Reader, Counseling Today, Cosmopolitan and Experience Life. His books include Naikan: Gratitude, Grace, and the Japanese Art of Self-Reflection, A Natural Approach to Mental Wellness, and  The Art of Taking Action.  His newest book, Question Your Life, will be available soon.

Gregg and his wife, Linda, founded the ToDo Institute, a non-profit center in Vermont that uses Japanese Psychology as an alternative to traditional Western approaches to psychology. Over the past 25 years, Gregg has introduced Japanese Psychology, particularly Naikan Therapy, Morita Therapy and Kaizen, to thousands of people through his workshops and online courses. His work supports a blend of the psychological, the spiritual and the practical, and helps individuals to clarify purpose, cultivate gratitude, develop compassion and engage in meaningful action. He is a member of the North American Naikan Counsel and Editor in Chief for the quarterly journal “Thirty Thousand Days: A Journal for Purposeful Living.

In This Interview, Gregg Krech and I Discuss…

  • The Wolf Parable
  • His book, The Art of Taking Actions: Lessons from Japanese Psychology
  • How Eastern wisdom is directed towards taking action, as well as contemplation
  • Taking your practice off your cushion
  • The misguided premise that we have to figure things out in our life before we can act
  • The power of momentum in action when small steps are taken
  • Cultivating gratitude
  • Avoidance, resignation, complaining
  • How accepting things as they are isn’t necessarily passive
  • That complaining keeps us stuck in focusing on the trouble in our lives
  • The overlap between ACT and Japenese Therapy
  • Feelings and thoughts are uncontrollable by our will
  • Allowing feelings to be what they are but not letting them inhibit our ability to move forward and take action
  • Taking action based on the needs of the situation rather than just on the feelings we have
  •  How essential it is to step back from our lives and reflect and then make choices on how you need to move forward
  • How most of the time we do not feel like doing the things that need to be done
  • Exercise being an example!
  • The maxim: Lead with the body
  • How if you don’t feel like something now, you’re probably never really going to want to do it so get it done now
  • That the anticipation is often worse than the consummation
  • His next book that focuses on self-reflection

Gregg Krech Links

187: Matthew Quick

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Matthew Quick - Full -The One You Feed

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This week we talk to Matthew Quick

Matthew Quick is the New York Times bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook, which was made into an Oscar-winning film; The Good Luck of Right Now; Love May Fail; The Reason You Are Alive; and four young adult novels: Sorta Like a Rock Star; Boy21; Forgive Me Leonard Peacock; and Every Exquisite Thing. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages, received a PEN/Hemingway Award Honorable Mention, was an LA Times Book Prize finalist, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a #1 bestseller in Brazil, a Deutscher Jugendliteratur Preis 2016 (German Youth Literature Prize) nominee, and selected by Nancy Pearl as one of Summer’s Best Books for NPR. The Hollywood Reporter has named him one of Hollywood’s 25 Most Powerful Authors. All of his books have been optioned for film.

In This Interview, Matthew Quick and I Discuss…

  • The Wolf Parable
  • His new book, The Reason You’re Alive
  • ICATS – what it means and why limiting it in your life is helpful to anxiety
  • How public speaking causes him to have anxiety
  • His calming practices to manage his anxiety
  • Why dismissing whole groups of people is a mistake
  • The importance and benefit of meeting people who are different than you
  • Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comforted
  • Generational tendencies in worldviews
  • The damage that’s done when we shame others about their thoughts
  • The relationship between anger and fear
  • How silencing people is un-American and frustrating
  • The transparency of the main character in his new book
  • Humor is experiencing the unexpected
  • Laughing and Crying give relief to tension
  • The major life changes he has made over the past 3 years and their impact
  • Believing he couldn’t function without alcohol and Rxs
  • The long-term benefit of passing on some forms of short term relief
  • The power of the past to continue to live on
  • Every experience leaves an impact on you and affects the rest of your life
  • The power of focusing on process and not result

Matthew Quick Links

186: Russ Harris Part 2

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This week we talk to Russ Harris

Russ Harris is a medical practitioner, psychotherapist, and leading expert in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). His books include ACT with Love, ACT Made Simple, The Confidence Gap, and The Happiness Trap, which has now been translated into twenty-two languages. He lives in Melbourne, Australia, and travels internationally to train mental health professionals in the ACT approach.

In This Interview, Russ Harris and I Discuss…

  • The Wolf Parable
  • The principle of connection in ACT
  • Practicing attention in the shower
  • The exercise of “notice 5 things”
  • How to notice the person you come home to in a new way
  • The physical practices of yoga and tai chi
  • The observing self vs the thinking self
  • The scientific study of spirituality
  • Living a spiritual life even if it’s not a religious life
  • Values = desired qualities of action
  • The difference between goals and values
  • Examples of how you can live your values on your way to your goals
  • Committed Action
  • Examining your life to identify areas where your behavior is not reflecting your values
  • The basic ACT formula of “Be Present, Open Up, Do What Matters”

Russ Harris Links

185: Russ Harris – Part 1

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Russ Harris- Full - The One You Feed

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Please Support The Show With a Donation

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This week we talk to Russ Harris

Russ Harris is a medical practitioner, psychotherapist, and leading expert in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). His books include ACT with Love, ACT Made Simple, The Confidence Gap, and The Happiness Trap, which has now been translated into twenty-two languages. He lives in Melbourne, Australia, and travels internationally to train mental health professionals in the ACT approach.

In This Interview, Russ Harris and I Discuss…

  • The Wolf Parable
  • Getting the wolves to cooperate and not battle
  • Embracing even our most difficult feelings
  • The Reality Slap and the Reality Gap
  • An overview of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
  • The Serenity Challenge
  • How we always have a chance to improve our situation
  • Taking the action that is needed regardless of what we feel
  • What “psychological flexibility” is
  • Cognitive defusion techniques
  • Recognizing that are thoughts are not facts
  • Asking the question “Is this thought useful”?
  • Noticing and Naming our thoughts and feelings
  • “The Greatest Hits” approach
  • The “I’m not good enough” story”
  • “I’m having the thought that” de-fusion method
  • The artificial distinction between thoughts and emotions
  • The Struggle Switch

Russ Harris Links