3 Surprising Ways to Make Peace With Your Anxious Mind | Spotlight Convo

Check out our offerings & partners: 

• Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel
• Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes

photo credits: Jen Fariello, John Cornicello

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Episode Transcript:

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:00] So what if the very thing keeping you up at night? Those racing thoughts, constant worry, spiraling fears could become your greatest ally? Nearly everyone experiences anxiety today. It’s become a shared language of our times. But what most people don’t realize is that hidden within this challenging emotion lies an unexpected gift the potential for deeper awareness, heightened creativity, and profound human connection. If we understand how to decode what anxiety is telling us and transform it into energy, ease and fuel for impact and growth. Today’s guests share three fascinating perspectives on transforming our relationship with anxiety and mental chatter. Doctor Jud Brewer, neuroscientist and addiction psychiatrist at Brown University, reveals how understanding your brain’s habit loops can help you break free from anxiety’s grip. Doctor Wendy Suzuki, professor of neuroscience at NYU and author of Good Anxiety, shares surprising research showing how anxiety can actually become a catalyst for positive change. And Emiliya Zhivotovskaya, CEO of The Flourishing Center and creator of the mind over chatter approach, introduces a practical framework for turning five different types of mental chatter into tools for growth, and together they reveal something remarkable. Uncomfortable as it can feel, anxiety isn’t something to eliminate or endure. When we learn to work with it skillfully, it can actually become a pathway to greater resilience, creativity, and aliveness. You’ll discover simple, science-backed techniques to calm your racing mind. Powerful reframes that transform worry into wisdom and practical tools to make peace with your mental chatter. So excited to share this spotlight conversation with you! I’m Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.

[00:01:50] So our first guest is Doctor Jud Brewer, a New York Times best selling author of Unwinding Anxiety Neuroscientist, Addiction psychiatrist, and a thought leader in the field of habit change and the science of self-mastery. He has developed and tested some really novel mindfulness programs for habit change, including treatments for smoking, emotional eating, and, yes, anxiety and judge. Groundbreaking work uses the latest neuroscience to help people break free from anxiety. And his wisdom has been pretty life changing for a lot of people. I know it will inspire you. I mean, what if you could rewrite your relationship with anxiety? What if instead of feeling trapped in worry loops, you could meet each moment with openness and curiosity? jud will reveal some practical tools to help make this vision a reality. So here’s Jud.

Jonathan Fields: [00:02:37] Your topic is a topic of interest. It has been for a long time, and for anyone that has not been touched by some form of anxiety, I think, you know, the last couple of years have made it a relatively universal experience. I’m curious from your lens, how have you seen the depth and the scope of anxiety change over these last 2 or 3 years?

Jud Brewer: [00:02:59] Yeah, I’m just thinking about that for anyone who hasn’t been touched. And I was just thinking, find me that person. Who is that? Yeah. It’s just seeing the rapid increase in anxiety societally is it’s just like this unfortunate naturalistic experiment to me as a neuroscientist. My brain says, oh, wow, I wonder how this is going to go. This was two years ago and then started thinking about the our brains don’t like uncertainty. And boy, there’s a lot of uncertainty and etc. and then the prediction says, wow, things are going to spike. And then things spiked and then things kept going. And then were these with these multiple rounds of uncertainty just with the pandemic first round, then we get Delta, then we get Omicron, you know, and it just keeps coming and economics schools. And so it’s it’s like we’ve hit these multiple rounds of uncertainty to the point where not only has anxiety gone nuts, but I’ve also seen where people are getting this. I don’t know if this is the perfect term, but this is how I think of it. Is is learned helplessness. A lot of people are just just like I give up, my brain is fried. Just too much anxiety.

Jonathan Fields: [00:04:10] Yeah, I guess here’s what’s spinning in my head. If in before times, anxiety was a pretty universal experience, but not entirely universal. And now basically, like you can’t talk to anybody who doesn’t say, I’m living with some level of this thing. Does that in any way, shape or form? Does the normalization of an experience that would normally be really difficult to deal with? Does the fact that we’re all in it together in any way change the way that we experience anxiety, potentially for the better?

Jud Brewer: [00:04:38] Yes. Two things come to mind. One is anytime we can work together against a common threat or enemy, let’s say it’s always better. We really, truly, as humans are better together. And the other piece that comes of that is just even knowing that we’re not alone. There’s a single condition that we all have. It’s called the human condition, and there are variations on that human condition. And we all share in stress, we all share in anxiety. And so just knowing that we’re all together in this can be the beginning of the healing there. And then also, when we can relate to each other, it’s easier to empathize and bring compassion in. When somebody is really struggling with anxiety and we know that place. It just opens our hearts a little bit where, you know, even nonverbally, oh yeah, I’ve been there. I know what you mean. And that too can be part of the the process of healing.

Jonathan Fields: [00:05:38] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So we’ve used the word anxiety a whole bunch literally in the first like 60s of our conversation. I think it makes sense also to really sort of dive into what are we actually talking about when we’re talking about anxiety?

Jud Brewer: [00:05:49] There’s a definition, I think, that that works relatively well. This feeling of nervousness or unease about an uncertain event or something in the future. Basically, I think of it. Another way to think of it is fear of the future. And the reason I like that definition is, as I was doing research for my own wedding anxiety book, I was really looking into like, why do we have anxiety? Because it’s our brains are set up for immediate threat. Basically, our brains are set up to eat and not be eaten, right? And so we’re set up to remember where food is. We’re set up to remember where danger is so that we can find the food and go back to it, and we can remember where the danger is and not go back to it. So this big question is why? Where did anxiety come from? And the best that I can gather is that think of this survival part of our brain health fear very helpful survival mechanism. We learn don’t go back there. But then also more recently our brains have evolved to plan for the future. So we’ve got the present moment. Is there danger? No. Okay, now I can plan for the future. And planning for the future is also helpful. But when you mix those two together. Fear of the future not so helpful.

Jud Brewer: [00:07:05] And so that planning part of our brain actually can start to spin out. Especially the more uncertainty there is. Our brain spins out in what if scenarios, and those what if scenarios make us more and more freaked out. Ironically, making our thinking and planning part of the brain go offline. And when I think of anxiety as fear of the future, it’s these two helpful survival mechanisms fear and planning that kind of get mixed together. And it’s not like peanut butter and jelly, peanut butter and jelly generally good together. This is I don’t know what the analogy would be, but mixing something that you would never eat with peanut butter and tasting it and saying, yep, I would never mix that with peanut butter. That’s a bad idea. Our brains just haven’t figured that out. And it turns out that anxiety is driven like any other habit. And so you say, spinning. So for any habit to form, we need three elements a trigger, a behavior, and a result. So just as an example we talked about survival right. You see the food there’s a trigger. You eat the food there’s the behavior. And then your stomach sends this dopamine signal to your brain that says remember what you ate and where you found it. So that’s how that’s the general process for habit formation.

Jud Brewer: [00:08:12] With anxiety, the feeling of anxiety can trigger the mental behavior of worrying. I’m going to say that again because that’s hard for some people to you know, I never thought about it that way. The physical feeling of anxiety, that feeling of nervousness, or that feeling of worry can actually trigger the mental behavior of worrying. And that worrying is where we start to spin because we can’t predict. We’re not very good at predicting the future. And the more we spin, the more we spin out, because we start to think, oh, this could be really bad. Or here’s another thing I didn’t think about. And then our brains just get way out of control to the point where we didn’t even get into panic. This wildly unthinking behavior, which is that far end of the spectrum of anxiety. Yes. What you’re saying is absolutely true. And it’s interesting you mentioned the word spinning, because that’s exactly how these habit loops form. So worry gives us the brain reward of feeling like we’re in control, or at least that we’re doing something. I can’t do anything about this, but at least I can worry. We’re occupying our mind, and that is rewarding enough that it feeds back so that the next time we’re anxious, it says, hey, why don’t you worry again?

Jonathan Fields: [00:09:19] You write about and you speak about and this is baked into your technology. This is the notion of three elements of awareness, curiosity and compassion. I want to talk about each one of those awareness, sort of like the starting point of what.

Jud Brewer: [00:09:30] Great question. So I would say certainly awareness is an endowed characteristic that we all have. We can be aware or we could not be aware if our mind if we’re lost in a story. So I would say awareness of everything. Right? The more aware we are of our experience, the more helpful it can be for helping us live a healthy, happy life. So let’s drill down on that, because that sounds vague. In particular, when it comes to things like anxiety or things that are causing our suffering. Like you were saying, there’s a lot of suffering in the world today. If you look at the Buddhist psychology, they talk about cause and effect. That’s the essence of karma, basically, is cause and effect. If you frame that in terms of modern psychology, it’s positive and negative reinforcement are another way that they’re described as reward based learning, and that it’s described that way for a reason. If a behavior is rewarding, we’re going to keep doing it. If it’s not rewarding, we’re going to stop doing it. And so here with awareness, what I would say is it’s helpful to drill down on awareness of the results of our behaviors. If we can see what the result of worrying is, then it helps us become disenchanted with it.

Jud Brewer: [00:10:42] If we can see if we’re a jerk to somebody, if we can see what the result of that is, instead of just yelling at somebody on the internet and then turning our computer off or our phone off and ignoring it. But really, if we did that face to face, we get to see the results of that, and just the results can help us start to change our behavior and become disenchanted with being a jerk. If we can see the results of being kind, having kindness bestowed upon us, we can start to see the joy that comes with that. So I would say awareness of cause and effect or basically awareness of the results of our behavior if we’re looking specifically at behavior change, habit change or anxiety. But in general, awareness is good looking both ways before crossing the street. Very helpful. I think of this as can we bring awareness in any moment and be curious, right. Curiosity is that attitudinal quality of mindfulness. And so there can actually be some joy and some reward that comes just from the noticing, and it gives us an opportunity to inject some curiosity and curiosity itself. I think of it as a superpower because curiosity feels great.

Jonathan Fields: [00:11:53] And that drops us into this space of, as you describe, curiosity, where now we can inquire into it a little bit under that context. You also you write about and I know it’s part of your work, this acronym that I again was familiar with, originally from a Buddhist teacher, Tara Brach, and it’s a shorthand. The acronym is Rain R.a.i.n. So it was interesting to see you bringing it in in the context, in a very specific way, in the work you’re doing. Walk us through what those letters stand for, and how it actually really plays into the curiosity and reinterpreting process.

Jud Brewer: [00:12:26] Yes. So first off, a shout out to Tara because she makes these practices so accessible for so many people. She is certainly adding light into the world in a much needed way. So this Rain practice is this acronym. I think it was actually Michelle McDonald who had first, first come up with it. And then Tara has done a great job of helping people learn about it. R stands for recognize for lost. We can’t we’re not aware. So the first step is that moment of recognition. Like we’ve been talking about gold star boom. I’m aware. And it could be a craving. It could be worry, it could be anything. Right. Whatever we’re lost in, we’re aware. The second step that A stands for allowing or accepting where if we notice something and we’re like, oh, my mind wandered, we want to push it away. We don’t want to face it. We run away or we push it away. What we resist persists. Right? So here, instead of pushing something away, we invite it in. Oh, here it is. Can I just allow it to be here as compared to pushing it away already? There’s less energy needed, right? Because we’re not resisting that. I stands for investigate and this is where curiosity comes in. So if we recognize let’s use a craving as an example of craving for food. Recognize that craving. Okay, here’s this craving. Instead of saying, I want to ignore or get rid of this, oh, what does this craving feel like in my body that I stands for that investigation where we’re starting to get curious about what that craving feels like in our body. And then N originally talked about Non-identification, where we’re seeing that it is not me. Like a thought. I have a thought. It’s not me that can be challenging for people who are first learning these practices.

Jud Brewer: [00:14:02] I brought this together with a practice from a Burmese teacher, Moss Side. I was the first one that popularized this, noting practice where you basically note physical sensations, thoughts, sounds, smells, tastes. You just basically note whatever’s in your experience. And that noting practice is a really helpful way to help us gain perspective in physics. They call this observer effect. When you’re observing something, you’re likely to affect the result. And in psychology, I think the same is true. When we observe a thought, we’re less likely to be identified with that thought. So the N happened to be the same n. So I was like, okay, great. Let’s use noting instead of non-identification so we can really get keep it on the pragmatic level. And so somebody has a craving they can note. What does that craving feel like? Is it tightness. Is it tension. Is it burning. Is it heat. And note note. And as somebody notes and they’re having that perspective they’re less identified with it. And they can notice, oh this can come and go. And I don’t have to act on it because it is not me. It is just physical sensations. And the more they inject the curiosity that I part of the practice, the more you’ll be like, huh? What’s going to come next? Oh what’s next? It’s compared to oh no, this craving. When’s it going to go away? So that’s what the rain practice is for. And again, we use it as a core practice in all of our digital therapeutics. In our Eat Right Now program, we got these gangbuster results, 40% reduction in craving related eating. And that rain practice is really a critical piece of that.

Jonathan Fields: [00:15:31] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. And it’s interesting reframe this sort of the non-attachment versus noting it’s almost again, it’s it’s creating this kind of similar goal but or a similar sort of like state, but maybe more accessible language to different people. The last piece, the third Element, is for you and you referenced it earlier, is kindness. I’ve seen you describe it as compassion or self-compassion. We’re not talking about being kind to other people when you’re anxious. Not necessarily a bad thing. Of course it’s about ourselves.

Jud Brewer: [00:15:58] Yes, absolutely. So think of a habit loop around anxiety. Anxiety triggers worry, which then makes us feel like we’re doing something in control. It feeds back to anxiety, shame, for example, or self-judgment. Something we have a thought that could trigger us to judge ourselves or feel bad about ourselves. Shame is about you. I’m a bad person, and then that shame can often the reward there because it’s not very rewarding if you just look at it. It doesn’t look very pleasant to be in the shame spiral, but it again feels this makes us feel like we’re in control. I can beat myself up over who I am or what I did. Guilt is about what I did. Shame is about who I am. We can beat ourselves up over those things, and it makes us that self-flagellation ironically feels can feel better because we’re doing something active as compared to not doing anything. And that’s because we don’t. We just don’t know anything better. We don’t know what else we could do. So here those all share the characteristic of this contracted quality. Think of we’re feeling shame. We feel this closed down contracted.

Jud Brewer: [00:16:58] This is where whether we’re beating ourselves up or not. Same is true for anxiety. We feel closed and contracted. Same is true for craving. We feel contracted. And that restlessness that underlies all of them drives us to do something. Whether it’s to worry more or beat ourselves up or feel feel shame. So here we can just compare what is it? What is shame or self-judgment feel like compared to being kind to ourselves? And this isn’t about roses and scented candles and unicorns. This is simply about like thinking about the last time somebody was kind to us. What did that feel like? Oh, for me, it feels a lot better than somebody yelling at me. And then we can think about times when we’ve been kind to ourselves. Like, when have I truly think of a time we’ve all had, moments where we’ve been kind to ourselves. For a lot of people, it’s foreign because they’re so used to being in this other loops. But then we can just compare. What does it feel like to feel shame or to be stuck in a shame spiral as compared to being kind to ourselves?

Jonathan Fields: [00:17:58] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. I want to zoom the lens out a little. You’ve been talking a lot about generalized anxiety, which we’re all experiencing for a lot of different reasons. One of the other sources of anxiety for a lot of people is moment or event based. And the thing that I think whether it’s test anxiety, interview anxiety, it’s around a very particular thing where they’re anticipating how it’s going to go and they’re freaking out. Yes. Maybe let’s take like just as an example test anxiety.

Jud Brewer: [00:18:24] Test anxiety. Sure.

Jonathan Fields: [00:18:25] Walk me through a process of like how this unfolds in the context of trying to just step into a better place around that.

Jud Brewer: [00:18:30] Yes. So with test anxiety, for example, and I’ll just say, if it’s been a while since somebody has taken a test, it could be they have to give a presentation at work or they there’s some event that’s about to come up. So we use test anxiety as an example. So what can happen is that we have this thought. It’s about the future. Oh I have to take this test in the future. How am I going to do did I study well enough. Is there are they going to be trick questions? Am I going to be up for it? So those thoughts there’s the trigger. They trigger us to worry. We start worrying. Oh no, how am I going to do? Ironically, worrying doesn’t help us study for our tests because we close down. We’re not open. When you think of fixed versus growth mindset. Growth mindset is where we can learn. So when we’re worrying about the test, we’re not actually in a good place to be studying for the test. Ironically. So that worrying can be that habitual behavior that then our brain has somehow lodged in there or habituated to and said, yeah, worry about the test. And it could be a number of reasons, whether it’s that correlation that we talked about earlier where I worried and then I did okay on the test. So I assume that I need to worry for the test or whatnot. So the first step here is to just map that habit loop out. We actually have a habit mapper that’s free.

Jud Brewer: [00:19:40] Anybody can download and print it out. Map my habit. But basically what I do with my patients in my clinic or anybody that just wants to learn how their mind works, is I say start by mapping it out. So if you have test anxiety, map it out. What’s the trigger? What’s the behavior mental or physical, and what’s the result of that? The second step very simple also includes awareness right. Because you have to be aware to map it out. You also have to be aware of the result of the behavior. Right. We talked about cause and effect. We talk about reward based learning. So what is my brain thinking is rewarding for this. So if it’s worrying about a test I would ask somebody not to think about it, but to really feel into their body because our feeling bodies are much stronger than our thinking brains. That’s really where behavior is driven. So it’s like, what do you get from worrying? Is it helping you study for the test? Is it helping you retain information? Generally, the answer is no, right? But just seeing that it’s not rewarding is that critical step for helping us to become disenchanted with the behavior. And so instead of telling ourselves that we shouldn’t worry, and then beating ourselves up over the fact that we can’t stop ourselves from worrying, we can actually go to the source where our brain is and our brain. If it sees very clearly that something is not rewarding, it’s going to become less likely to do it in the future.

Jud Brewer: [00:20:52] And that’s where the process of change happens. Now, we can accelerate that process within this third step. I think of it as finding that bigger, better offer. So our brains are relatives, so they’ll look for relative rewards. Is this rewarding more rewarding than something else? And so if we can start to see that worry is not rewarding, that reward value drops. It opens up the space for some to find something that’s more rewarding, that bigger, better offer. And here we can ask ourselves, what happens if I just bring curiosity in instead of worrying, oh, can I let me get curious about those thoughts, those worry thoughts. And does it help me notice the thoughts and not get stuck in them? And does it also help condition me to be curious and learn the material for the test instead of going, oh no, I have to study for this test. Oh, what’s this material? Oh is it? And see where we can find the natural curiosity to. It’s not that we’re going to be curious about every single subject matter that we’re ever going to be tested on, but it can certainly go a long way in helping us start to at least have that mindset, that curious mindset. So that’s the three step process. Map out the habit loop. Awareness requires awareness. Ask ourselves, what am I getting from? This also requires awareness and then ask ourselves, is that awareness, that curious awareness itself even more rewarding than getting stuck in a habit loop of worry?

Jonathan Fields: [00:22:11] I guess part of my curiosity is, do you find that people are really capable of doing this to and for themselves, or do you need someone else to help you through it? Or some other technology, which I guess is part of what you’ve been building?

Jud Brewer: [00:22:23] Yes. So if somebody just listened to this conversation and said, and then they’re freaking out before a big presentation and they’ve not employed any of this stuff, it’s not like they can just flip a switch. And suddenly they said to be curious, okay, you go. Because their brains are going to be freaking out, and they’re not going to be in a place where they can practice it. So here this is. I’m as a practitioner of medicine, I want to figure out what are the systematic ways that we can help as many people as possible to learn how to be aware, basically, because this is all about awareness and curiosity and kindness. And so we started developing these digital therapeutics. And what we found so far is that, again, it goes back to these short moments. Many times. Can we give people bite sized training like ten minutes a day systematically for over the course. And we’ve we’ve the core trainings for each of these apps is about 30 days. But then we have these theme weeks where they can build them over and they can go back. And so we’ve set up the context for people to do the learning in a self-paced manner. And I find our data our gangbusters. I never thought they would work this well. If you look at the studies, it works. They work pretty darn well. If you look at the process, I if I’m trying to learn something, I want to be able to do it at my own pace, little bits at a time, and be able to practice it over and over. So we’ve tried to set that framework up so people can do that. Now that’s just one way to do it. Also, I think that like you’re talking about having somebody help you with it can be very helpful.

Jonathan Fields: [00:23:48] Yeah. And what you’re describing also really takes us back to the beginning of our conversation around the normalizing effect. If you’re experiencing something that’s causing some level of suffering or distress, and then you start to realize that, oh, a, I’m not alone. Actually, in this context. B I’m like in the vast majority, I’m not the weirdo. I’m not broken. This is a part of the human condition that we’re all experiencing together. And that alone has got to just be like, change the nature and the quality of what you’re going through, and then you add to it process and tools and ways to actually collectively integrate the experience differently. Yeah, super powerful and sensible. And I love the fact that fundamentally we’re talking about these interesting ideas and we’re talking about peer reviewed research and we’re talking about technology, and we’re also talking about things that people have been doing for thousands and thousands of years that have worked and made them feel better. And it’s just about making them accessible to a broader audience. And for the rationally brained people who need to know. Prove to me that this works. Here you go. Yeah, here it is. Like these ideas actually work. Yeah, they’re super cool. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. I always wrap these conversations with the same question, so I’ll pose it to you sitting here in this container of Good Life Project.. If I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

Jud Brewer: [00:25:06] Yeah. Curiosity, kindness. Rinse and repeat. That’s what comes.

Jonathan Fields: [00:25:11] Up. Love it. Thank you. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. So our next guest is Doctor Wendy Suzuki, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at NYU. She’s a leading researcher on brain plasticity and memory, who’s now revealing the unexpected upsides of anxiety in her book Good Anxiety. And she makes a surprising claim. This emotion we desperately want to avoid can transform into a superpower. And she shares the science behind reframing anxiety, along with simple, accessible tools to shift it from enemy to ally. So, through inspiring stories and a whole bunch of practical advice, she guides us to the sweet spot where just enough anxiety unlocks creativity, productivity, compassion, and more. Here’s Wendy. You’ve had this really fascinating focus on anxiety and what happens in the brain, how that affects us. And you make a really provocative claim. Also in your recent book, Good Anxiety, which is that this thing that something like 90% of people experience and want nothing but to never experience it at all can in fact explore differently, be turned into something of a superpower. Now I want to dive into that. But before we get there, let’s just actually talk about the word anxiety and the phenomenon anxiety, because I think there’s a lot of ambiguity around it. So when we’re talking about anxiety, what are we actually talking about?

Wendy Suzuki: [00:26:36] Yeah. So here’s something that’s really a huge take home message that the emotion of anxiety is not a disease. It is a normal human emotion. Every single human experiences emotion. I don’t know how many people have come up to me and said, oh, I have anxiety, I have it. Oh no, well, that just means you’re human. And the premise of the book starts with is that evolutionarily, the emotion, the normal human emotion of anxiety and that underlying physiological stress response that comes with it, you know what it feels like? Sweaty palms, butterflies in your stomach, heightened heart rate, sweats all over that evolved to protect us from danger. Okay. Oh, that sounds good. I want to be protected from danger. And so, how did it work? Well, it was obvious 2.5 million years ago when a new mom was walking around with her little baby, trying to gather food, and she hears the crack of a twig. And that could be the mean. You know the difference between life and death? The crack of a twig. What is that? Is that a raccoon, or is that a big mountain lion? And so her body, physiologically like our body’s, got her ready to either fight the bad animal or run away. And that is why we are here today. People can usually say, okay, I get that. That sounds good. I buy that, but still, I’m not feeling protected. One itsy bitsy little bit from my anxiety. And the answer is no, we’re not. Very few of us are, because the volume of our anxiety is turned up way high. So we’re not quite at that. It’s actually quite a razor’s edge of the level of anxiety where you can get the positive energy, where you can get that protection. And so a big part of the book, Good Anxiety, is about providing science based approaches to turn the volume down, not to get rid of it. Again, it’s normal human emotion, but to start to turn it down and we can start from there.

Jonathan Fields: [00:28:45] But then your your invitation is to say but two things. One, anxiety experienced at a certain level actually comes with a myriad of benefits. And then how do we get to that place where at the at a certain level where we actually can experience those benefits? Yeah. So I want to dive into what some of those benefits are right now, because I think a lot of people listening to this are probably saying, I cannot imagine how you could tell me this thing that I like. All I want to do is not feel it actually has a whole bunch of benefits.

Wendy Suzuki: [00:29:15] Yeah.

Jonathan Fields: [00:29:15] Let’s explore some of these. One of the things that you talk about is anxiety. One of the benefits is actually increased motivation. How does this work?

Wendy Suzuki: [00:29:22] Yeah. The word that I like to use for this particular superpower of gift of anxiety is productivity. I love using that word because usually people think, oh, anxiety just shut me down. I can’t, you know, I’m I’m done for for the rest of the day. But it comes from the idea that the anxiety that we’ve been talking about since the beginning of this podcast is really a form of energy. It’s a form of activation energy, because again, remember, evolutionarily, it’s getting you ready to do something. You’re going to fight the line. You’re going to run away. That is energy. It’s cognitive energy. It’s physical energy. It’s like oh well that could be I could kind of start to see how that could be good. So here is how the superpower of productivity works. So this uses a very, very common form of anxiety that most of us have, which is the what if list. It strikes us at different parts of the day and for different, you know, projects like, oh, what if I what if I didn’t send that email and it wasn’t written in the right way, or I didn’t send it the right person or, you know, all these, what if it happens to hit me still to this day, right before I’m going to try and go to sleep and sleep is coming and oh, God, I just remember all the what ifs. And so here is and that is your anxiety, you know, rearing its head. So here is how to transform that. For me the next morning I don’t do it at night because I still try and fall asleep. But the next morning I can still remember all those things that woke me up for that moment.

Wendy Suzuki: [00:30:52] Each one of those, I write those down. Note none of them are about watching Netflix or similar things. They’re all about important things that you need to or you want to do. And after each one of those what ifs that you write down, you put an action on it, you do something about it. You ask somebody, you reread your email, you rewrite your email. You ask five people to rewrite it for you. You put an action on it. I must give credit where credit is due. This gift came from a lawyer that I met at a birthday party who, when told that I was writing a book on anxiety, she said, oh, I’m a high paid lawyer, that I am New York City lawyer because of my anxiety. And this is the approach that she told me about. And I’ve since hired her, actually, because she is a great lawyer and I’ve given her credit for. You know, you created the first superpower that I always tell everybody because it’s so easy to grasp and literally everybody out there, your call to action is do this anxiety hack today. Turn your what if list into a to do list. Do it and see what that does for both the the feeling of anxiety because it should go down putting an action on those words rather than just sitting there. It’s like, oh God, what’s going to happen? But doing something for it helps relieve that anxiety, and I find it so powerful. It’s doable. It’s understandable. And so, um, I’m glad you started with that one.

Jonathan Fields: [00:32:22] Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting to me also the way that you sort of like it’s almost like the alchemy part here, you know, like you’re transmuting it from anxiety into actually output, right? Yes. But it also occurs to me, as you’re saying this, you know, that anxiety is largely it’s an anticipatory experience. I think this negative thing might happen. Yes. And by doing it, you effectively take yourself out of the future tense and put you into the present moment where you’re actually just you’re making the thing that you’re concerned happen, or at least you’re testing your hypothesis in real time. And once you can respond to actually like fact and doing it makes it harder to then spin about the future, because now you have sort of like your current experience to counterbalance it. Does that make sense?

Wendy Suzuki: [00:33:04] Yeah, it absolutely does. Although now as an administrator and dean at NYU, I think of all of our students who are just putting in their application now. They did that. But there’s this waiting period. Now, what is the to do to do for that? There isn’t a lot of action that you can do. And that’s where you can go back and do the approaches. Exercise. Ten minutes of walking will decrease your anxiety levels. Did you know that that is my biggest tip of anti-anxiety, um, tools? Ten minutes of walking. You don’t even have to change into your sneakers. Just walk with whatever shoes you have on that will turn it down and remind yourself once you’ve turned the anxiety down, that anxiety comes from this wonderful desire that you students are having out there to further your education. That is a great desire to have and it’s coming from a positive, generative place. And so I’m sorry I can’t alleviate all of your students worry until you get that decision letter. But there’s still lots of things that you can do to make that gap between submission and receiving of that news a little bit easier to live through.

Jonathan Fields: [00:34:25] Love that. It’s sort of what you described. Feels like a combination of exercise and a little bit of like cognitive behavioral therapy, reframing mixed in, like all as a blended experience. One of the other benefits that you talk about is increased creativity. And again, this feels so counterintuitive to me. And I’m wondering, as I’m thinking about some of the other benefits that I want to talk to you about, some of them as well. If part of the counterintuitive part is that when we are at a state of maximum anxiety, none of this feels accessible to us. But it sounds like what you’re saying is, if we use some of these other tools that you talk about. We can sort of down regulate the level of anxiety to this more manageable level. And once we’re at that space where we’re not on complete overwhelm.

Wendy Suzuki: [00:35:10] Right.

Jonathan Fields: [00:35:11] That is sort of like this. There’s like a sweet spot where there’s a lot of benefit that comes from it. So before we even get into creativity, is that assumption right?

Wendy Suzuki: [00:35:21] Yes. You’ve hit it on the head. It’s exactly right. There is this combo of learning how to turn it down, being able to step back a little bit. And that is a really important key creativity. And it is counterintuitive because anxiety kind of nixes usual creativity flow is gone. Sorry, no flow, no creativity for you. But again, if you have some of these techniques and here’s the other thing that people don’t realize, there’s like, oh God, what anxiety is going to come, come at me today? Well, I think you can predict 80 to 95% of your anxiety because, you know, our lives are not that uncertain. We know this person gives us anxiety. We know that situation gives us anxiety. They’ve given us anxiety for years or at least several times before. So we can predict what that is. And so in a moment where you’re not in heightened anxiety, here’s where it becomes a wonderful tool to test your creativity. This just comes from, you know, typical approaches to, um, diffusing difficult situations. Are there more than one way to approach this person or interact with this person that always gives you anxiety? I mean, just the name of the person will spark anxiety. Well, are there other approaches? What? Maybe you approach them with another person. You put a third person in there to help buffer that. Maybe you prep that conversation in a different way. Maybe you get a lot of information about that person’s opinion so that that, you know, more difficult kind of confrontations are minimized because you know much more and you hadn’t bothered to, you know, some meeting or encounter before, you know, 100 different ways.

Wendy Suzuki: [00:37:10] And so you start to get good at, oh, actually, maybe there are ten different ways that I’m not doing to do this. And you start to go through it and then you start to learn what works better, what works worse. Maybe you’ll find one that works worse that that happens sometimes too. But then you know you never to do that. But you start to get this more systematic approach to your own anxiety. Coming back to this concept of self-experimentation and what are you doing? You are being very creative in coming up with different. That is very hard to do because we are creatures of habit. We go into these situations. You know, I think of conversations with parents, our longest relationship except for the relationship with ourselves. And oh, it’s always I’m always a little 13 year old girl when I go into that conversation with my mom. I don’t know what’s going on. Well, maybe I come to that conversation as a 50 something year old adult and see what would I say if this wasn’t my mother? But it was, you know, just a another person that I’m having conversation with that is a creative kind of exercise that everybody can do.

Wendy Suzuki: [00:38:14] But guess what? It helps our situations of anxiety. And the more you do it, the better you get at it. Yeah, ten minutes of walking immediately after will decrease your levels of anxiety. So you might have five anxiety provoking things. Got it? Then I would recommend that you walk for ten minutes five times before those anxiety provoking things, or right after those anxiety provoking things to decrease that anxiety level. But everybody just wants to know how little exercise they need to do to get any of these benefits. So finally, I have this answer. So it’s not ten minutes a day to solve all your problems. It is ten minutes has been shown to turn that volume down. So use that in your life because it’s doable. You don’t have to go to the gym and just dress up in spandex. So that is the take home that people should have. And the other thing is breathwork meditation. Very, very helpful immediately. I mean, here are two things I’ve just told you. They’re both free and they both have immediate benefits. And both of them. You can find over 100 free videos on YouTube to give you an example of, well, you don’t need an example of how to walk, but breathwork would benefit from a little bit of guidance and there’s so many to choose from. So that’s why I start with those two.

Jonathan Fields: [00:39:28] And I love that. And I love the fact that it’s sort of like widely accessible to a lot of people. And even if you have mobility challenges, we all actually have to breathe all day, every day to sustain ourselves. So in some way, shape or form, you know, it is an extraordinary level of accessibility. The one other thing I want to ask you about before we come full circle is in terms of, again, under the category of things that let us just kind of like get to more of a manageable state, is the notion of altruism playing into your experience of anxiety.

Wendy Suzuki: [00:39:57] Yeah, that is my favorite superpower. That comes from anxiety. I call it the superpower of empathy. And I really kind of came about and discovered this superpower thinking about my own. As we’ve been discussing my own old anxiety of social anxiety and this form of social anxiety that I think about still a lot is the social anxiety of raising your hand in the classroom and asking a question. And I had years and years of anxiety. Oh, I wanted to ask a question, but maybe if I say something stupid, everybody will think I’m stupid. Everybody thinks that. And so it took me many years to realize that everybody thinks that. And I should just ask the question. But now I’m at the front of the classroom. And I realized that those years and years and years of struggle and, you know, dealing with that gave me a superpower of teaching, which is I know there’s ten times as many questions out there than are actually people raising their hands. And so I really try and go out there and answer questions and get them to ask me things.

Wendy Suzuki: [00:40:59] You know, one on one rather than in front of the classroom. And I realized that my own anxiety, social anxiety for asking questions became a superpower of empathy. Now, that’s just not for me. It’s for every single person. Because what you can do, and this is your second call to action here, is to think about your most common form of anxiety. You know what it feels like. You know what it looks like. You know the situations where it comes up. And likely so many other people are having that same form of anxiety, even though their mask is saying, hey, I’m cool. No problem. Well, if you notice that and you notice somebody’s mask crack, all you have to do is reach out and say a kind word. And I love this one because it is a superpower of empathy and the act of compassion that comes from your own, your own deep understanding of your own anxiety. And I love it because I can’t think of anything that our world needs more today than higher levels of empathy, both for ourselves and for others.

Jonathan Fields: [00:42:06] I love that it feels like a good place for us to come full circle. So in this container of Good Life Project., if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

Wendy Suzuki: [00:42:15] Love yourself, love your life and love others.

Jonathan Fields: [00:42:20] Mhm. Thank you. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Our final guest is Emiliya Zhivotovskaya, CEO and founder of the Flourishing Center, a New York City based B Corp dedicated to increasing flourishing worldwide. Emiliya brings a unique blend of academic rigor and practical application to the science of thriving. I mean, what if you could transform your overthinking from an endless loop of worry into a powerful tool for growth and clarity? Most of us experience the weight of mental chatter daily. That constant stream of worry and second guessing that can feel impossible to quiet well. Today, Emiliya shares her mind over chatter approach that has helped thousands transform their relationship with anxiety and mental chatter into pathways for growth. Here’s Emiliya. You have this sort of taxonomy of chatter where you look at it and you say, well, it’s not all just one thing, but there are these five different types. So I think it would be helpful to maybe walk through the five different types. And just so we can have a sense for what these are and how to distinguish them. And then maybe we’ll talk about some of the tools that would be relevant for each. So maybe we’ll go one at a time defining and describing what each of these different types of overthinking chatter rumination on.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:43:35] Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And I should say that the way that this model got created is that we’re looking at the five types of chatter that need changing. These are the five types of overthinking and ruminating are the types of thoughts that people could have, that if you don’t learn how to navigate these types, they’re going to be more problematic. There are some types of thoughts that we have that are just factual thoughts like, I’m hungry, I have to pee. How much time is left in this podcast? What do I need to go do next? You don’t need to train yourself because those types of thoughts, even if you’re having them, at the very least, all they’ll do is stop you from being mindful. Then there’s sort of dreaming thoughts like, oh, where could we go for vacation this year? Or I’ve heard that Bali is beautiful this time of year. All of that type of chatter is just thoughts about the future. It’s sort of innocent. In fact, it’s great to daydream and get creative and think that. So those kind of thoughts are fine. Again, the worst that they’ll do is stop you from being in the present moment. Just being really aware of what you have right now. Empty mind, blank mind. But the five types of chatter, these are chatter that we want to be able to learn to work with, because they can lead to weighing you down, stressing you, or some of them could put you if you don’t learn to challenge them at risk for depression or at risk for anxiety.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:45:00] And if you look at what are the highest maladies that people struggle with nowadays, it’s some aspect of generalized anxiety disorder or some aspect of depression or the two going together. We could actually help quite a lot of people navigate this, these two major ailments that they’re experiencing by teaching them this chatter. So I call it the mind over chatter approach. And we start with the idea of worry, chatter, judgment chatter, regret chatter mindset chatter and motivation chatter. So worry chatter is anytime your mind has thoughts about the future that have a flavor of protection or fear. So it could be worry chatter, it could be anxiety chatter. And what’s great about this approach and actually training it as a system is if you can hear the beginning of what your mind is saying or what you’re ruminating or overthinking about, when you can catch that beginning part, you can know which chatter to apply to it or which way of reframing it. So worry chatter is anything that starts with what if it’s anything going into the future? So what if I don’t get this job? What if I make a fool of myself? What if they think that I don’t have what it takes? What if they call me out on it? What if they don’t listen to me? What if I do get it? So it’s any time that we’re having that thought of what if something bad is going to happen or it’s anything future orientated, it could also be like, I’m going to mess this up, I’m going to I will, I’ll end up, I’ll never any of these future oriented thoughts.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:46:42] And the key about mind over worry chatter is that we want to first start by having compassion for our mind as to why it’s doing this in the first place. The only reason you’re worrying is because there is the thought of a potential threat, which is not very likely, and your brain is trying to protect you from it. So the way to work with worry chatter is always first to say, thank you, brain. I know you’re trying to protect me and work with the worry, and in order to work with the worry, we have different processes. But I’ll give you some shortcuts to it. The first one that you can use is understanding that the things that you’re worried about were not actually worried about. You’re not worried that something will happen to your health. You’re not worried that you will lose your home, or your job, or your freedom or all these other things. We’re worried that these things would happen and that they would crush us. They would stop us from being able to move forward. You know what? If I make a mistake, you’re not actually afraid of whatever that mistake is. You’re afraid that you’ll make this mistake and you will not be able to recover from it. So teaching people to work with their worry. We work with helping them understand that they have handled it. The talk back sentences to well, what if this happens and what if that happens? The short key is that you say to yourself, I’ve handled it before and I’ll handle it again.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:48:03] Or you catch yourself going to those worst case scenarios. And sometimes we take a process where we actually let the brain go, worst case scenario. And you just go, okay, and then what happens and then what happens and then what happens and actually get all those catastrophizing thoughts out and then go to the unrealistically best case scenario. So what if the positive opposite happened. So it goes from I’m looking for a job. I haven’t been able to find a job. I nail my ideal job right out the gate. And then you go down this unrealistically best case scenario so that you can get to what’s most likely going to happen because in that place of worry, we’re not able to problem solve. So it’s really important to be able to peel them apart. And as you said earlier, Jonathan, you’re like, why don’t we just do away with this? Why don’t we just stop? Well, there’s nothing like telling a high level worrier that they shouldn’t worry when you tell them that they shouldn’t worry. They just worry more that you’re not worried as much as they are. They worry for you, that you’re not worrying enough. And so they just dig their heels even more into their need for worry. So rather than working with worry, we want to understand that the worry was just there to get your attention so that you could work with the chatter so that you could problem solve, so that if these, God forbid, things can happen, that you have a plan.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:49:21] So okay. Thank you, brain, for telling me about these worst case scenario things that can happen. I believe I will handle them. So let me take a look at them. You know what? If this happens, can I actually plan for this thing? No I can’t. There’s only so much I can plan for. Something that might happen ten years out into the future of what if? Something happens to me in retirement and I don’t have enough money for retirement? What can I do about it? Today is how we work with worry, chatter, and all those future thoughts can all be handled very much in the same way so that you’re able to reframe it. Catch yourself going, what if this happens? What if that happens? And you can say, if it happens, I will handle it. Or you take the thought and you digest it, you write it down and you go, okay, can I actually do something about this in this moment? If so, great. What can I do to prevent it from happening? But it’s like with a banana peel. The banana is the thing you want to eat. The peel is the worry. And most people don’t understand that. They can separate the feeling of worry, the the heartbeat, the ruminating from the actual problem solving. So that problem solving is what you want to do. But if you just stay in the worry and the ruminating about it, you’re not going to be able to problem solve as effectively.

Jonathan Fields: [00:50:33] And that makes a lot of sense to me. Let’s walk through the other four.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:50:36] Great. So from worry chatter we can go to motivation chatter motivation chatter. I might have said this in a different order but let’s just go to motivation chatter. So motivation chatter is any time that your mind is weighing you down with I have to do this, I need to do this, I should do this. And one would think that this is just perfectly innocent. Just having the thought, I need to do this, I have to do this. But what it turns into is too much of that chatter makes you feel like you have the weight of the world on your shoulder. You feel burdened by everything you have to do and you need to do. And one of our core needs as human beings is for agency and autonomy. So we don’t realize that every single time we’re thinking, like, I need to pick my kids up from school and I have to make dinner, and I need to call this person back, and I have to do this, that if it’s just like, gee, I have to do this, it would be fine. But most people, when it’s ruminating and their mind is just going. It’s on a set cycle. And I don’t do enough and I should be doing more. So the reason we’re doing we’re having that chatter of, you should do this.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:51:42] You need to do this. You have to do this. Don’t forget, you have to do this is because your brain is trying to motivate you to take action. But what often happens is it doesn’t motivate you. It just makes you feel like you are overburdened or you do eventually do it. But when it’s overthinking and ruminating about it, it’s just an overkill. It’s like I wrote down. I wrote this down on my to do list. I will get to it eventually. I don’t need to think about it. It’s a misuse of energy to keep letting my brain ruminate about it. And so there’s a quick turnaround for this. The first is just to remove the burden and reclaim agency. You don’t have to pick your children up from school. You want to pick your kids up from school because you don’t want them stranded at school by themselves. You don’t have to do the laundry. You choose to do the laundry because you would prefer to wear clean underwear, you don’t have to return your email. You want to return your email because you’d like to get back to people that are waiting for you. You don’t even have to pay your bills. Really, you don’t have to pay bills. And I would imagine that you would like to keep your Wi-Fi and your heat and your house and all these other things.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:52:51] But even that, it’s like you don’t actually have to without the control over the motivation chatter. It just starts to feel heavy and you just feel burdened by everything, by the world, by this world you’ve created, even when it’s a really good things. Like I have all of these things that I want to do, they’re all so good, but they’re not actually motivating you to take action because there’s just too many of them. So with that one, the quick one is you go from, I have to, I need to or I should to, I want to or I get to or I choose to or you can take that choose to to I choose to blank because blank. I don’t have to go to work. I choose to go to work because I like collecting a paycheck. I don’t have to go to the gym. I want to go to the gym. But sometimes you don’t want to go to the gym. And then you could just say, I want to want to go to the gym. But even I want to want is better than I have to. So this is one of the ways that in our mind, we don’t even realize it. We we zap ourselves of our power. We zap ourselves of our agency because of the way in which we’re overthinking these things, where the only reason your brain is saying it in the first place is because it wants to motivate you to go to the gym because it’s good for you.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:54:10] Pick up your kids so motivation, chatter, catching it and then replacing it. I get to you don’t have to make dinner. You get to make dinner. Little shifts like that can take something from it feeling like a burden and you can’t turn your chatter off. Can’t turn your mind off. Just. Just going. Going to. Feeling grateful for the thing that you get to do. And this. You can not just introduce yourself, but it’s really helpful to introduce your family to this idea or your colleagues to this idea. My team says this to me all the time. I’ll be on a meeting and I’ll say, okay, I have to go teach class right now. And they’ll say, do you have to or do you get to? And I’ll be like, you’re right. I get to go teach class right now because no, really, I do. I’m so honored. That’s the thing. When they say it, it’s like, yeah, I do, I get to. I’m grateful that I get to. But so often we forget that, right? And so that’s motivation chatter.

Jonathan Fields: [00:55:08] Got it. No I love that reframe also. And what I love about like these interventions too is the interventions themselves are not heavy. It’s like they’re not adding burden or complexity. They’re straightforward. They’re simple. It’s just a matter of getting into the practice of noticing and then using them on a regular basis. We talked about motivation. We talked about worry. Let’s walk through the other three.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:55:30] Yeah. So the next one that’s good to know about is mindset chatter. And the reason I call this mindset chatter is it’s intimately tied to the idea of fixed and growth mindset. And we know that research shows that people who hold more of a growth mindset are more successful. They’re better able to handle stress, persist in the face of setbacks. Growth mindset is something that’s really essential for resilience. And this is when you hear your brain say things that start with I can’t or I don’t. I don’t know how to do that. I can’t do that. I don’t have what it takes for that. And again, that might actually be accurate in that moment, but there’s a deflated feeling when we just say, I can’t or I don’t. And if it’s just like, oh yeah, I know I can’t do that tomorrow, I’m not free at that time, that’s fine. But what we’re talking about is the one that actually ties into a mindset like, I don’t have what it takes to do this. If we add the word yet to the end of it, like I can’t speak. I’m learning to speak Hebrew. I can’t speak fluent Hebrew, yet I can’t bake a cake from scratch yet. I don’t know how to launch online marketing ads from scratch yet. I don’t know how to drive a car yet. Any of these things that we can by adding the word yet to it, it’s just a simple one where we can start to catch mind chatter.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:57:00] It’s always really good for kids like, I can’t do this. I can’t do this math problem. To help them hold a growth mindset, we could say, you can’t do it yet. And what that conveys is that change is possible. So just in the same way that autonomy and agency is really important for motivation, for human basic needs, the belief that things can change, a sense of optimism for the future is also really important. So you want to be strategic around where you need this. But it’s just if you can catch where you start saying yourself, I don’t do this well enough or I can’t do this. It’s same to I’m not that kind of person. I’m not someone who can do that. I’m not like that person. Those are the types of thoughts that have this underlying mindset that may be more of a fixed mindset around, I’m not smart enough or I can’t do those things. And so just adding that yet at the end of it is a simple mindset chatter hack that takes something that would otherwise be a period. I don’t know how to do this period, and it just makes it a comma. It just opens up the keeps ourselves open to change as possible. Change is always happening, and that’s an important way to deal with that type of chatter, to get it to stop, to get it, to stop from it ruminating.

Jonathan Fields: [00:58:20] That makes a lot of sense to me also, because what you’re talking about is acknowledging the reality of your current moment. It puts you into this possibility mode rather than this shutdown mode, which and it acknowledges your reality. Rather than asking you to step into something that you know in your heart is not true, and just try and repeat it enough times so that, like you fake your way into making it a truth which you will always know is actually not true. And that creates that cognitive dissonance which just you kind of know it’s not right. I love that simplicity. Talk to me about the final two types and how he handled them.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:58:55] And just to layer on to that, what you just said is you’re in doing that in staying solution focused and actually generating ideas around what you do. You’re actually using the chatter and the thoughts for what they’re trying to get you to do, but without knowing how to, they’re just on loop. It’s like they’re on loop to try to get you to take them and do something with them, but you don’t know how to take them down from the cloud and do something with them, so they just keep going. Whereas when you catch it, you start to become creative. Okay, well what can I do about it? It opens up problem solving. And at the end of the day, that’s what you want. You want that problem solving. So the next one you actually just mentioned, it then becomes an identity. And when it becomes an identity, that identity, whether it be positive or negative, becomes some aspect of a judgment. So the next type of chatter is judgment. Chatter. Whether the judgment is positive or negative, it can still be a judgment. And so what is that form. What form does that take. This is chatter that starts with I’m so I always I’m she’s a he’s a he thinks she thinks it’s any time that we are judging ourselves, judging others or judging the situation. And that type of chatter, judgment chatter requires us to take our brain to court. Because when we can take on a positive identity that serves us like I am hard working, I figure things out.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [01:00:27] So in that case, that’s great. You’re hard working. You don’t need to challenge that. But I’m not good enough is the kind of thought where I am. And then fill in the blank. Oh, let me catch that. Well, how do I handle that? How do I get myself to stop thinking that you can just say, stop it, stop it. What’s wrong with you? You shouldn’t think that. Well, all that does is just makes you ignore it for a little bit until you’re trying to fall asleep at night and then pop. All the thoughts keep going again, but instead, we actually want to zap it. We actually want to transmute it. And that’s what the talkbacks do. And so we begin to say, okay, if my brain wants to judge myself or others or the situation, I need to say, where is the evidence? Where is the evidence? What does it mean to be not good enough? We literally want to take our brain to court. So if you walked into a court of law and you were the defendant on a case and they said, you know, you stole the money. The judge would say, prove it. Where is the evidence? You don’t just you don’t just get away with these accusations. You have to back them up with evidence. So we start to look for evidence for or evidence against it.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [01:01:31] So actually be taking your brain really seriously. Starting to ask it. Can I know that to be certain where is that evidence. And then you can talk back to it. You literally can say that’s not true because or another way of seeing that is. So when I was healing for my eating disorder, I would catch my brain saying things like, you’re so fat, you’re so ugly, you’re so gross, you’re so this. And I would say, okay, that’s not true. Or another way of saying that is, I’m not feeling so great in my body right now, but I’m not these things. And so the talkbacks I’m not smart enough or they think, right, they think I’m an idiot. Well, can I know that to be certain? Can I actually know what they are thinking? No, actually I can’t. And so it’s like basically you’re saying to your brain, I’m not going to let you get away with that. And that process can just start with catching it anytime you hear there. Uh, I’m, uh, he thinks she thinks this is, you know, then you can catch it and you could say, can I know that to be certain or where is the evidence for that? And you start to challenge your brain and then we start to choose a better feeling, thought, choose a more useful thought, a thought that’s not constantly looping and reframing that perspective.

Jonathan Fields: [01:02:51] Yeah, I love the idea of taking it to court. Um, that makes so much sense to me. Which brings us to the final one, the final of the five.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [01:02:58] This final one, I think, is actually the crux of what you were asking about, about overthinking. Because this is regret chatter. So a lot of overthinking is actually regret chatter. This is when you just can’t let it go and you’re the actual regret is I could have, I should have. What if I had? And so it’s the shoulda, coulda, woulda. And what is it about? It is a part of you that’s still trying to get your attention to say you might have made a mistake. And what it’s putting you through is a replay of, well, what if you made a mistake? What if you made a mistake? What if you made a mistake? But it just sounds like different things. You know, I shouldn’t have written that. Or how are they going to receive that? So this is regret chatter and the talk. Back to regret chatter is really coming to peace with your past. It’s an element of self-forgiveness. So the talk back to it is I can’t change the past actually saying thank you brain. I hear you saying that I should have said this differently, but I can’t change the past. Here’s what I will do moving forward, because the regret chatter is trying to get your attention so that next time you don’t do the same thing or you don’t do it Similarly. And so being able to say thank you. The past is history.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [01:04:18] The best thing I can do for myself is hold on to the lesson and let the let the rest go. So even saying, what’s the lesson? What can I do? It can also sound like I wish I hadn’t or I can’t believe I. Those are places that if you can, if you hear the beginnings of those sentences, it’s very likely that you’re going to be on a loop. I can’t believe I did this. I’m such an idiot. So there you have. Regret. Chatter, judgment, chatter. What if they all think I’m a complete bozo? Worry. Chatter. Right. But you can start to catch them all together. But they start to now be familiar. And now they’re just parts of you coming together, feeling bad over things that right now you can’t change. But what you do have control over is can you learn the lessons and can you let go of the rest? So a lot of regret chatter is being at peace with your past. A lot of it is about Forgiveness. One of my favorite definitions of forgiveness is letting go of hope for a different past. Right. The past is over. It’s already done. Hoping that the past could be different isn’t going to really help you. Catching the chatter and saying thank you brain somehow flagellating myself about this and beating myself up over it. Making myself hurt through my stress or feeling bad isn’t helping me.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [01:05:37] It’s not going to help me prevent this from happening in the future. What can I do differently? So I should have, I could have. What if I had? I wish I hadn’t. I can’t believe I that’s all form of of regret, chatter and talking back to it by coming to peace with it. That is done. And I can’t do anything about it. But I can take the lessons. And in doing that, I embrace more of that growth mindset, that learner path. Thinking. All of which will make you more resilient, but without the ability to catch the thought, pull it down from the cloud. Be like, uh, uh, I’m going to dissect you. I’m going to talk back to you. Then it feels like it’s just these thoughts are all swirling around, and they seem like they just happen without you being able to do anything about it, but actually learning how to talk back to them in real time. What it does is it just it just shuts them up, especially when you take your brain to court. It’s like, all right, I guess I can’t get away with calling you a bozo anymore or an idiot, and it might show up in another form, and then you’ll say, thank you, and you quiet it down. And over time, it does shift the relationship to thoughts.

Jonathan Fields: [01:06:44] Yeah, that makes so much sense. I mean, the five different types and the interventions that are appropriate for each. But I do want to circle back to one phrase that you just said, which is sort of like catch it and pull it down from the cloud, because it seems like that’s sort of the meta skill that binds all of them. Like before you can actually say, oh, like, which of the five is this? And then how do I talk back to it? How do I bring it to court? Like, what is the appropriate response? You’ve got to first have the ability to sort of say, oh, this is happening. Let me pull it down so I can actually see what’s happening and then figure out what what’s appropriate. Is that right?

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [01:07:21] Absolutely. The starting place for all of this, the capacity to have your mind be controlling the chatter is to be able to be aware of your thinking. And this is actually one of the things that makes humans, the unique animals in the whole animal kingdom is that we have metacognition. We have the capacity to time travel in a way that other animals don’t. We can think about the past. We can be thinking about the future. So you could be walking down the street and one would think that you are actually there now, but it’s only your body that’s there now. Your mind has time traveled into the past or into the future, and the capacity to catch your thinking and to actually think about thinking that is that metacognition cognition that makes us uniquely human. So that’s why I call this the most empowering, the most important skill that we all have the capacity to master. We’re just not being taught it. And many practices such as meditation and mindfulness, prepare you to be able to slow down your thoughts and to create the space to actually be the witness and hear them. And so that’s why meditation does make you a Jedi of your mind, so that you can start to hear those things, and then being proactive with them, sometimes just catching the thought and writing down the thought that you’re having it also is enough to make it go away.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [01:08:43] What I’m then giving you is like icing on the cake, because then you just like karate chop it up and it just no longer exists. But a lot of people find relief from the overthinking and from the ruminating just by writing it out, just by getting it out of their mind. And in many ways, that’s literally what we’re talking about with these thoughts are just they’re trying to get you to pay attention. Don’t forget, don’t forget. You might mess up. Don’t forget people might judge you. Don’t forget. You might be ostracized, whatever that might be. And so when you write it down, you’re like, okay, I got the memo. I’m not going to forget. But you turn off the alarm. Otherwise, it’s just that beeping going on in the back and it depletes you. And it takes away from you being your fully vibrant self, or as happy or as excited or as energized as you could be. Because literally your brain can weigh you down and it can also tire you out. And how do you make it stop? You make it stop by catching it, writing it down, working with it.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [01:09:43] And then if you want, you can then re-upload them back to the cloud. Changed with these new talkback sentences. I get to do my work. I get to figure this out. The most likely outcome is we would be okay and we’d figure it out. But then you put it back in the cloud and you’re being conscious of creating your reality, conscious of the thoughts that you want to be thinking and how you want to show up in the world. So if anyone wants to learn more about this mind over chatter approach and how to work with thoughts and get a few more skills, there’s other types of chatter that can also be considered. I call it sneaky chatter that you want to be aware of. I have a full course that I would love to gift to the Good Life Project. community. It’s usually $120 course, but if you go to the flourishing center.com/goodlife, you can get free access to the Mind over Chatter course, which will walk you through the whole process from start to finish, and has a bonus section on different types of sneaky thoughts that we didn’t get a chance to cover today.

Jonathan Fields: [01:10:44] Um. So helpful. I’m going to start trying to really actively practice these things myself. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. So in this container of Good Life Project., if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [01:11:03] To live a good life means to live a life of alignment, of who you are and what you feel like you’ve been put here to do. Surrounded by people that you love, that make you feel like you belong and that you matter. And with the vital health to be able to execute on that aligned purpose of what you’ve been put here to do and to enjoy it with the people that matter most.

Jonathan Fields: [01:11:31] Thank you.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [01:11:32] Thanks for the question. I love that.

Jonathan Fields: [01:11:36] So thanks so much to today’s guest for this spotlight conversation. Three just powerful approaches to transforming your relationship with anxiety understanding worry loops, reframing anxiety as a potential superpower, and working skillfully with mental chatter. These conversations reveal that anxiety isn’t something to simply endure or accept. It’s an invitation to greater awareness, creativity, and connection. And if you love this episode, be sure to catch the full conversation with today’s guests. You can find a link to each of those episodes in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Alejandro Ramirez. Kristoffer Carter crafted our theme music, and of course, if you haven’t already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you’re still listening here. Do me a personal favor. A seven-second favor. Share it with just one person. I mean, if you want to share it with more, that’s awesome too. But just one person even then, invite them to talk with you about what you’ve both discovered to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter. Because that’s how we all come alive together. Until next time, I’m Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.