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Mental brakes to avoid mental breaks | Steven Hayes | TEDxDavidsonAcademy

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    Human beings have the biological
    equivalent of a sports car
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    between their ears.
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    And it’s wonderful
    that we have this device.
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    Our ability to reason and problem solve;
    to plan, predict, evaluate, abstract,
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    or create is the envy
    of the rest of living creation.
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    But you would not jump
    into a fast sports car
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    and jam on the accelerator
    if somebody hadn’t told you
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    where the brakes are
    and how to apply them.
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    And this mind of ours, at times,
    takes us in the wrong direction.
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    And when it’s doing that,
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    we have to know how to slow it down
    and to put on those brakes.
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    And it’s not obvious where that is.
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    Our temptation is to put on the brakes
    by jamming on the accelerator
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    and swerving back and forth really fast.
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    But it turns out the brakes
    are in an entirely different area.
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    I’m giving this talk at a TEDx
    that’s sponsored by the Davidson Academy,
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    which is one of the treasures of the U.S.,
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    a school for the gifted and talented,
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    where young people who have IQs at the
    99.9th percentile or above are educated.
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    And so I know I’m looking at people,
    who over the next years,
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    are going to make a profound difference
    to human society, very likely.
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    But I’m also a clinical psychologist.
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    And I know that I’m looking at people
    who are going to suffer.
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    I know that I’m looking at people
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    who are going to have thoughts
    come up very close like,
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    “You’re not lovable,” or,
    “Life’s not livable.”
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    Like, “There’s something wrong with you.”
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    "Deep down you’re bad" or, "You’re mean,"
    or, "You should be ashamed."
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    Or, "You need to figure out a way
    to run from that painful rejection,"
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    or betrayal or that traumatic thing
    that happened to you.
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    And when that happens,
    I don’t care how smart you are,
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    you’re going to need to know
    how to put on the mental brakes.
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    And what I want to share with you
    is the surprising science
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    of where those brakes are.
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    For the last 30 years, I and my colleagues
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    have been studying language
    and cognition through the filter,
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    through the lens, of a theory called
    Relational Frame Theory, or RFT;
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    a perspective I developed decades ago,
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    and the applied extension of that into
    Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT,
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    a whole set of methods that we use
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    in many, many different areas
    of human suffering.
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    And I want to explain to you
    what language and cognition is,
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    why what we’re doing here
    right now is different
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    than what the bird outside
    the window is doing.
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    Because when you see it,
    you’ll know a little bit
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    of how to actually push on
    the accelerator even more.
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    That’s not the purpose of my talk.
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    But you’ll also know why you cannot rely
    on that part of your mind
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    only when you need to slow it down,
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    when it’s taking you
    in the wrong direction.
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    So I could summarize 30 years
    of work in a little ditty,
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    it’s kind of a little humiliating
    that you can do it, but you can,
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    which is this:
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    Learn it in one, derive it in two;
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    put it in networks
    that change what you do.
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    That’s 30 years of work.
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    (Laughter)
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    And so I want to explain what that means
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    and why we’re different than
    that bird outside the window.
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    Let’s take the first two lines;
    Learn it in one, derive it in two.
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    Take the simplest thing;
    the name for an object.
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    Very young children, human infants,
    learn that if something has a name,
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    if I’ve called this a boo-boo, let’s say,
    and then I said, “Where’s the boo-boo?”
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    The infant, soon enough,
    would try to find this.
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    We’re the only creatures that do that.
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    The language-trained chimps don’t do that.
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    In controlled research they don’t.
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    And by the way, please don’t email me
    about your really smart dogs and cats.
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    (Laughter)
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    I know you’ve got them; I've got one too.
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    And they don’t do it.
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    But we do do it.
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    If you happen to know that, for example,
    that round red thing is called an apple,
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    if I were to say to a baby
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    who’s had enough exposure
    to a normal verbal community
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    and is normally developing,
    by around age 12 months,
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    “Where’s the apple?”
    the baby will look for it.
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    And then you can put it into networks
    that actually change what we do.
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    If you knew that the name
    for apple was also "yabuka",
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    and then I asked you to imagine
    when you’re really thirsty,
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    going to the refrigerator and getting out
    a fresh bottle of yabuka juice
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    and pouring it into a glass,
    and then imagine bringing up
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    that yabuka juice and smelling
    what yabuka juice smells like,
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    and then having a couple of big,
    sweet gulps of yabuka juice.
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    Can you imagine that?
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    If you had cotton in your mouth
    and spit it out, many of you,
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    your cotton is now heavier, because
    you’re salivating to yabuka juice.
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    And unless you’ve lived in Croatia
    where apples are called yabukas,
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    you’ve never heard it before,
    until this old bald guy said it to you.
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    That’s how fast it happens.
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    And it’s wonderful as we begin
    to then learn other relationships
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    other than names,
    like "before" and "after",
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    "cause" and "effect",
    "bigger" and "smaller".
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    And little kids break free
    from the formal properties of events.
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    A little kid thinks a nickel
    is bigger than a dime,
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    but a four, five, and six-year-old
    know a dime is bigger than a nickel.
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    But wait a minute.
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    If a dime can be bigger than a nickel,
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    then no matter how successful you are,
    maybe it’s not big enough.
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    You should have been so much more.
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    This same problem-solving tool
    that we’ve got can turn on us,
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    and it does.
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    And what are you going to do when it does?
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    Let me just show you some of the problems
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    of just trying to rely on problem-solving
    only to put on the brakes.
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    Take an example like this:
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    I don’t want you to think of jelly donuts
    that are filled with crème filling.
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    So when that thought comes in your mind
    or you look at that and see that,
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    I don’t want you to think of that;
    don’t think of that, it’s bad.
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    It’s important you not think of that.
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    What I suggest you think of
    instead are hats.
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    So when you think
    of donuts, think of hats.
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    Hats; remember hats.
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    Think of donuts, think of hats.
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    Hats, hats.
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    You get it? You got it?
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    Now it is true in the moment
    that you’re thinking of hats,
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    it seems like this works.
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    This is where obsessive-compulsive
    disorder comes from,
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    as we push it away,
    push it away, push it away.
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    But I can show you that that’s not real.
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    That sense that you’ve got it
    under control now,
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    this logical problem-solving mode of mind
    has eliminated that bad donut,
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    I’ll show you it’s not true.
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    What comes to mind if I say this?
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    Black...white, right?
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    Hot...cold, right?
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    Hats...
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    (Laughter)
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    Donuts.
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    (Laughter)
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    That’s how fast it happens.
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    Learn it in one, derive it in two,
    put it in networks.
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    The network is now bigger,
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    and just because you say “is not a”
    doesn’t mean that it’s not related.
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    Opposite is a relation,
    different is a relation.
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    And so the network’s gotten bigger.
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    And now hats will remind you of donuts.
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    I’ve now put that in your head.
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    (Laughter)
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    And other people are putting
    things in your head.
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    It wouldn’t be so bad if everything
    in our head we put in there, but we don’t.
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    The television screen, or your sibling,
    or a parent when they’re really mad
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    and criticizing you, or just things
    that occur to you;
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    things go into your head.
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    And once they go in, that’s an issue.
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    Suppose I were to tell you,
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    - this is to see how fast it happens -
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    I’ve got three numbers
    that I want you to remember.
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    And the TED Talk people in cooperation
    with the Davidson Academy,
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    maybe the Davidsons themselves,
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    have given me the money
    such that when I ask you
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    what the numbers are that I’m about
    to give you a week from now,
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    if you remember them,
    I’ll give you $10,000,
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    so it’s really important.
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    Here are the numbers:
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    One, two, three.
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    Now don’t forget it.
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    Ten grand is on the line.
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    So if I tap you on the shoulder
    a week from now and I say,
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    “What are the numbers?” you will say…
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    One, two, three; good, don’t forget it;
    it’s really important.
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    I lied; there’s no money.
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    (Laughter)
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    But do you doubt that a week from now
    if I came up and said,
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    “What are the numbers?” You could tell me?
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    How many people think you
    couldn’t tell me?
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    How about a month from now?
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    Are there people in here weird enough
    that a month from now
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    you’ve taken up that gray
    matter, and that white,
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    you’ve got one, two, three
    in your head? Really?
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    How about a year from now?
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    There’s some people in here a year...
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    How about on your deathbed
    with a really old man?
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    “What are your numbers?”
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    (Laughter)
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    Why?
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    Just because I said it, that’s enough.
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    Because that’s the way
    the human nervous system works.
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    It’s like having a calculator
    where there’s no minus button,
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    and there’s no delete button, just pluses
    and equals and multiplies.
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    Once in, it stays in.
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    I can tell you as a psychologist,
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    there is no process in psychology
    called "unlearning".
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    There’s extinction, et cetera,
    but that’s inhibition.
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    That’s not unlearning.
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    You can learn it again faster
    the next time,
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    even if you’ve forgotten it, which means
    it must be there somewhere.
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    One, two, three will be in your head
    for the rest of your life.
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    (Laughter)
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    But suppose it was something
    really painful.
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    Suppose it’s your girlfriend saying,
    “I don’t want you.”
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    Suppose you’ve been betrayed
    in some deep way.
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    There’s no place else for that to go.
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    And when it gets up close,
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    when that voice starts telling you
    that you’re unlivable;
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    that you’re unlovable
    and life’s unlivable,
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    when that happens, you’re going
    to need to put on the brakes.
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    And this little ditty orients us
    towards where that might be.
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    It’s not the “learn it in one,
    derive it in two, network” part.
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    You’re just building networks when
    you’re arguing with yourself.
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    True, if you don’t have information,
    okay, get the information.
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    If you just need to think
    more flexibly, okay.
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    But most of the things
    that we really struggle with,
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    we’re thinking that we’re going
    to get an eraser,
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    or a delete button,
    and that doesn’t exist.
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    But the last line tells us what we can do:
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    change what we do.
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    There are ways of changing
    how your thoughts function,
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    how they work when they show up.
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    What are the numbers?
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    (Laughter)
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    We’ve been riding this tiger
    of language and cognition
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    as long as homo sapiens
    exist, and probably,
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    based on brain size,
    some of the early hominids.
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    That’s probably 400,000 years old.
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    We know it’s not more than
    2.8 million years old
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    because the chimpanzees don’t do this.
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    But we do.
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    But we’ve been riding this tiger
    and been trying to figure it out.
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    And, actually, if you want
    to pick one place
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    as to where we might get some
    ideas about what to do,
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    it’s not going to be in the
    problem-solving part of our culture;
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    it’s in the wisdom traditions.
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    It’s in our spiritual
    and religious traditions.
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    And that will help us orient
    towards what the process is.
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    How do we change what we do?
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    And once you see that,
    then you can see there’s other ways
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    that are outside those traditions.
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    And we’ve come up with them in the work
    on RFT and ACT and tested them.
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    Everything I’m going to tell you about
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    has been tested
    in multiple scientific studies,
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    literally hundreds of studies on RFT
    and close to 1,000 studies on ACT.
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    So let’s just take this first one
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    that does directly come out of the
    spiritual and religious traditions,
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    which is mindful awareness of thoughts,
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    because it will help us see the principle.
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    If anybody’s in here a meditator,
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    you know that your job
    is to simply watch your thoughts
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    unfold as a process with a sense
    of dispassionate observation.
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    You don’t have to put a big religious
    wraparound to do that.
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    Anyone in here could do it.
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    You could do it by simply watching
    the clouds in the sky go by,
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    and with each thought that shows up,
    stick another one in the cloud.
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    Don’t push it away; the cloud
    goes at its own speed.
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    Don’t cling to it;
    you’re not controlling the clouds.
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    Just put it there and let it go,
    if it comes back again, put another one.
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    Or pick anything,
    like cars going by on the freeway
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    or leaves floating by on the stream;
    practice this, and you’ll get this sense.
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    And what is the sense?
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    That’s where the brake is.
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    Here’s what the sense is:
    to watch your mind do its work
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    with a sense of distance
    and dispassionate curiosity.
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    Not to buy into the thoughts
    and look at the world structured by it,
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    but to watch the process
    of thinking in flight,
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    and that’s what you’re doing with your
    contemplation and meditation.
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    That puts on the brakes.
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    It’s just like watching a spider weave
    a web, a little cognitive web.
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    Look at that.
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    Isn’t that interesting?
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    That puts on the brakes.
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    And if that’s what’s going on here, yes,
    of course contemplative practice,
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    I suggest it to everybody,
    it’s a good thing to do.
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    But I’m going to give you some things
    that will seem silly, that will seem odd.
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    but I’ve been shown in scientific
    research to be of some help.
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    My first suggestion;
    give your mind a name.
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    If it’s named, it’s different than you,
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    you can listen to it with a sense
    of distance and watch it babble on
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    and make some choices;
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    are you going to be guided by it or not?
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    Sometimes it has good
    advice, sometimes bad.
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    You don’t have to argue with it
    or make it stop talking to you.
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    You don’t have to change its opinion.
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    Just go, “Okay, thank you, George;
    What else you got to say?
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    Uh, okay. Thank you.”
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    I call my mind "George".
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    If you don’t like George,
    pick your own name.
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    If you don’t have one come to mind,
    you can pick Mr. Mind or Ms. Mind
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    and literally get a bit of separation
    when you’re having that painful thought,
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    recognize this is your mind
    talking to you.
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    And some of this may be things
    you came by honestly, things you heard.
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    What are the numbers?
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    It isn’t necessarily anything
    you have to do anything about.
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    If you have a thought up on you and
    you need to put it out there,
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    not to make it go away,
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    but just you can see it as it is, instead
    of just seeing the world structured by it.
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    Same with a thought.
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    If you’re having a thought,
    an archetypal bad thought,
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    like “I’m bad, I’m really bad,” and you’re
    really feeling down on yourself,
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    I suggest singing that thought.
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    In absence of any other suggestion,
    how about to “Happy Birthday”?
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    (Singing to tune of "Happy Birthday")
    "I’m really, really, really bad.
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    I’m really, really, really bad.
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    I’m really, really, really, really, really
    I’m really, really, really bad."
  • 16:30 - 16:31
    (ends singing)
  • 16:31 - 16:31
    (Laughter)
  • 16:31 - 16:33
    Thank you, George.
  • 16:33 - 16:35
    (Laughter)
  • 16:35 - 16:38
    This is not to ridicule your mind.
    I’m not doing that.
  • 16:38 - 16:41
    It’s just to remind you
    that it’s just a voice talking.
  • 16:41 - 16:43
    And whether you do with it,
  • 16:43 - 16:46
    base it on your heart and your values
    and what works in the situation,
  • 16:46 - 16:50
    not just on the automatic
    pilot, the push-pull,
  • 16:50 - 16:54
    click-click of learning it in one
    direction, deriving it in two,
  • 16:54 - 16:55
    and putting it in networks.
  • 16:55 - 16:59
    You can’t trust that problem-solving mode
    to give you the right answer.
  • 16:59 - 17:02
    Here’s one, and I’m going to ask
    for some audience participation.
  • 17:02 - 17:06
    You’re going to have to help me here
    or I’m going to look really stupid.
  • 17:06 - 17:08
    This was invented by Titchener,
  • 17:08 - 17:11
    a father of American psychology
    more than 100 years ago,
  • 17:11 - 17:14
    or actually, exactly 100 years ago.
  • 17:14 - 17:17
    And he had this theory
    of language and cognition
  • 17:17 - 17:18
    that oriented towards what?
  • 17:18 - 17:22
    This idea that, if you took language out
    of context, it would lose its meaning.
  • 17:22 - 17:26
    And the way he did that,
    in public talks and demonstrations,
  • 17:26 - 17:29
    he would have people repeat
    a word out loud really fast.
  • 17:29 - 17:31
    We’ve done the research on it.
  • 17:31 - 17:33
    You get a diminishment of distress,
  • 17:33 - 17:36
    a diminishment of believability
    at about 30 seconds.
  • 17:37 - 17:40
    And so I’m going to do it just 20,
    because you’ll get the sense,
  • 17:40 - 17:42
    and I don’t want to drive
    people crazy on YouTube.
  • 17:42 - 17:45
    But what I’m asking you
    to do is to take a word.
  • 17:45 - 17:46
    We’ll take milk.
  • 17:46 - 17:49
    Why? Because most of us
    know what that’s like.
  • 17:49 - 17:52
    And take just a minute
    to think of what milk is like;
  • 17:52 - 17:55
    what it tastes like, what it smells
    like, what it looks like.
  • 17:56 - 18:00
    Cold milk, white milk,
    the perceptual functions.
  • 18:00 - 18:03
    And then the thing I’m going
    to ask you to do with me,
  • 18:03 - 18:07
    I’ll do it with you,
    so I’ll be as foolish as you are,
  • 18:07 - 18:11
    is to say the word milk out loud,
    fast, for 20 seconds.
  • 18:11 - 18:15
    And then just see what happens to white,
    cold, creamy, glug-glug stuff.
  • 18:15 - 18:20
    Are you willing to be complete idiots
    for just 20 seconds?
  • 18:20 - 18:21
    Help me out here.
  • 18:21 - 18:22
    You willing?
    All right.
  • 18:22 - 18:24
    Ready, set, go.
  • 18:24 - 18:25
    Loud.
  • 18:25 - 18:30
    [Everyone repeats “milk” for 20 seconds.]
  • 18:30 - 18:31
    A little louder.
  • 18:35 - 18:36
    A little faster.
  • 18:39 - 18:43
    Okay; the longest
    20 seconds of the whole talk.
  • 18:43 - 18:45
    (Laughter)
  • 18:45 - 18:49
    What happened to white, creamy,
    cold glug-glug stuff?
  • 18:49 - 18:52
    It started going away,
    it started going away.
  • 18:52 - 18:53
    And other things showed up,
  • 18:53 - 18:56
    like how hard it is to say that word
    over and over again.
  • 18:56 - 18:58
    Your mouth started getting tired.
  • 18:58 - 19:00
    And the weird sound;
    isn’t it a weird sound?
  • 19:01 - 19:04
    But look, some of these difficult thoughts
    are just programmed,
  • 19:04 - 19:05
    like what are the numbers?
  • 19:05 - 19:06
    One, two, three.
  • 19:06 - 19:10
    At one level they’re nothing
    other than sounds.
  • 19:10 - 19:12
    You’re going to turn
    your life over to that?
  • 19:13 - 19:14
    Really?
  • 19:14 - 19:15
    It’s not safe.
  • 19:15 - 19:17
    Put on the brakes.
  • 19:18 - 19:21
    So if you have “bad” up
    on you, do 30 seconds.
  • 19:21 - 19:25
    It turns out 30 is about right,
    really fast, on bad.
  • 19:26 - 19:30
    I gave a talk at Stanford;
    it was to a large, prestigious group.
  • 19:30 - 19:33
    I was talking about the amount
    of money that we’d spent
  • 19:33 - 19:36
    on sleeping medications
    and how it’s gone up to about
  • 19:37 - 19:40
    well, the slide said three, and what
    I should have said is, "Three billion,"
  • 19:40 - 19:44
    and instead I said,
    “It’s gone up to three trillion dollars.”
  • 19:44 - 19:45
    (Laughter)
  • 19:45 - 19:49
    Then I went home to my hotel
    and I went to sleep.
  • 19:49 - 19:52
    And at 3:00 in the morning
    I sat up bolt upright and said,
  • 19:52 - 19:55
    “Three trillion dollars, you idiot!
  • 19:55 - 19:57
    (Laughter)
  • 19:57 - 19:59
    That’s not right.”
  • 19:59 - 20:01
    I leapt out of the bed,
    I’m marching back and forth.
  • 20:01 - 20:04
    “They probably recorded it;
    I did it at Stanford.”
  • 20:04 - 20:06
    (Laughter)
  • 20:07 - 20:10
    I said, “You’re stupid;
    how stupid could you be?”
  • 20:10 - 20:14
    And that reminded me of word repetition.
  • 20:14 - 20:17
    If you just said over and over again,
    “How stupid can you be?”
  • 20:17 - 20:19
    there’s enough gaps there,
    that keeps its meaning.
  • 20:19 - 20:24
    But instead I sat on the bed
    and really fast said out loud, to nobody,
  • 20:24 - 20:27
    “Stupid, stupid, stupid,
    stupid, stupid, stupid,
  • 20:27 - 20:28
    stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid."
  • 20:28 - 20:30
    And then I went to sleep.
  • 20:30 - 20:32
    (Laughter)
  • 20:32 - 20:35
    I recommend it; it’s a brake.
  • 20:36 - 20:41
    Oh, dear; here’s one
    that seems very, very silly,
  • 20:41 - 20:43
    but it makes a very dramatic difference.
  • 20:44 - 20:47
    If you have a difficult thought that’s up
    on you, say it in different voices,
  • 20:47 - 20:50
    maybe your least preferred politician.
  • 20:51 - 20:52
    I won’t guess who that might be.
  • 20:52 - 20:55
    (Laughter)
  • 20:55 - 20:58
    Or if you don’t like that,
    how about a cartoon character?
  • 20:58 - 21:01
    If we were taking that thought like,
    “I’m bad, I’m really, really bad,”
  • 21:01 - 21:04
    I guarantee you it will feel a little
    different if you’re saying,
  • 21:04 - 21:08
    “I’m bad. I’m really bad.”
  • 21:08 - 21:10
    (Laughter)
  • 21:10 - 21:13
    Now be careful; I’m not telling you
    to ridicule your mind.
  • 21:13 - 21:14
    Really, I’m not.
  • 21:14 - 21:18
    And at the very end I’ll explain a way
    to make sure that comes together.
  • 21:18 - 21:22
    It’s to get a little separation,
    to get some air in the room.
  • 21:23 - 21:24
    Slow it down,
  • 21:24 - 21:26
    so you can make some choices.
  • 21:26 - 21:29
    If you’ve already done the work
    and you’re really tired
  • 21:29 - 21:33
    you’re sick and tired of a particular
    self-criticism or self-evaluation
  • 21:33 - 21:34
    and you’re ready to let it go
  • 21:34 - 21:36
    don’t do this until you’ve done the work,
  • 21:36 - 21:40
    because the final step
    is kind of a public declaration
  • 21:40 - 21:44
    as a way of taking that deep, dark secret
    and sharing it with others,
  • 21:44 - 21:50
    because it turns out the big joke
    is our secrets are the same secrets.
  • 21:51 - 21:53
    Write it out and stick it
    on your chest on a sticky note,
  • 21:53 - 21:56
    or if you really want to,
    order it for a t-shirt.
  • 21:56 - 21:58
    And just see what happens.
  • 21:58 - 22:00
    Just wear it out in public.
  • 22:00 - 22:03
    And I guarantee you that thing
    is going to drain out the energy,
  • 22:03 - 22:05
    almost by the minute.
  • 22:06 - 22:11
    Robyn Walser, an ACT person in Palo Alto,
    came up with this working with veterans
  • 22:11 - 22:15
    who have to face some really difficult,
    really difficult thoughts.
  • 22:15 - 22:17
    We ask our soldiers
    to do such tough things.
  • 22:17 - 22:21
    And they’re having things
    like "murderer" on their chest.
  • 22:22 - 22:27
    And by God, you know,
    I’m not going to run around
  • 22:27 - 22:30
    and have that running
    my life anymore, here.
  • 22:30 - 22:34
    They wore it almost like
    boy scout badges, yeah?
  • 22:34 - 22:38
    The first time I ever did it,
    when I heard that Robyn was doing this,
  • 22:38 - 22:41
    I was giving a workshop
    at a church camp up at Lake Tahoe,
  • 22:41 - 22:43
    and I wrote down the word “mean.”
  • 22:43 - 22:46
    And I remembered
    this memory of being caught
  • 22:46 - 22:51
    when I was about six years old with a
    magnifying glass at El Cajon, California
  • 22:51 - 22:55
    figuring out how fast tarantulas go
    if you really heat up their rear end.
  • 22:55 - 22:57
    (Laughter)
  • 22:57 - 22:59
    And the look on my mother’s face
    to this day, Iike...
  • 22:59 - 23:01
    (Grimaces)
  • 23:01 - 23:02
    I’m really bad.
  • 23:02 - 23:05
    You know, that’s the kind
    of weird thing little boys do.
  • 23:06 - 23:09
    And, yeah, I shouldn’t do that
    to spiders, I get that.
  • 23:09 - 23:14
    But here I am in my 60s or 50s by then,
  • 23:14 - 23:17
    walking around with “I’m mean”
    for the rest of my life.
  • 23:17 - 23:18
    Really?
  • 23:18 - 23:20
    So I stuck it on my chest.
  • 23:20 - 23:22
    But it was so hard.
  • 23:22 - 23:27
    When we took a break and I went
    to get coffee from the church camp cook,
  • 23:27 - 23:29
    I went like this so that
    he wouldn’t see it.
  • 23:29 - 23:31
    (Laughter)
  • 23:31 - 23:34
    And now it’s completely gone;
    I get it, I get I have a history.
  • 23:34 - 23:35
    Okay.
  • 23:35 - 23:37
    But I’m not mean.
  • 23:38 - 23:41
    I’m not going to be running from
    mean for the rest of my life.
  • 23:43 - 23:45
    An easier way to do it,
    a little small version on this,
  • 23:45 - 23:49
    is put it on your screensavers,
    the kind that have words come up.
  • 23:49 - 23:51
    Take difficult thoughts,
    put it on screensaver,
  • 23:51 - 23:54
    give yourself a regular opportunity
    to notice those thoughts and see:
  • 23:54 - 23:56
    does that really have to run your life?
  • 23:57 - 24:01
    My students, I’m sure it was them,
    snuck into my office over here.
  • 24:01 - 24:05
    And I’m sure they did it,
    because I’m in there having a meeting.
  • 24:05 - 24:06
    I look over at my computer.
  • 24:06 - 24:10
    And it says over there, “Deep down,
    there’s something wrong with you.”
  • 24:10 - 24:12
    (Laughter)
  • 24:12 - 24:14
    I’m going to eventually
    find out who did it,
  • 24:14 - 24:16
    don’t think I’m not.
  • 24:16 - 24:18
    Somebody snuck in.
  • 24:19 - 24:22
    I said that I would try to get
    the emotional feeling for it,
  • 24:22 - 24:26
    and I want to finish my last example
    of hundreds that we have developed.
  • 24:26 - 24:30
    You can access it in these self-help books
    and so forth under the ACT work.
  • 24:32 - 24:35
    If you have something
    that is really up like this,
  • 24:35 - 24:37
    that has a history that goes
    back a long way,
  • 24:38 - 24:41
    picture yourself as young as you can go
  • 24:41 - 24:43
    having a thought
    like that or things like it.
  • 24:44 - 24:47
    And take a little time to picture
    what you looked like at that age:
  • 24:47 - 24:50
    what your hair was like,
    what you dressed like.
  • 24:51 - 24:54
    And then, in imagination have those words
  • 24:54 - 24:57
    come out of that child’s voice,
  • 24:57 - 25:00
    out of that child in the voice of a child.
  • 25:02 - 25:04
    And I guarantee you,
    it will stab you through the heart.
  • 25:04 - 25:07
    To hear some of the things
    we say to ourselves,
  • 25:07 - 25:09
    when you hear it out
    of the mouth of a child.
  • 25:09 - 25:14
    And it will pull from you the kind
    of self-compassion and kindness
  • 25:14 - 25:16
    that is the purpose
    of these kinds of methods.
  • 25:16 - 25:18
    This is not about ridicule.
  • 25:19 - 25:23
    This is about learning how to deal
    with a language tiger
  • 25:24 - 25:29
    and to ride it, without having it run you
    right off the edge of the cliff.
  • 25:30 - 25:32
    So I’m giving you just some ideas
  • 25:32 - 25:36
    in the surprising science
    of where the mental brakes are.
  • 25:37 - 25:38
    They’re not in just figuring it out
  • 25:38 - 25:41
    and evaluate it and making
    your thoughts change.
  • 25:41 - 25:45
    They’re more in taking a self-kind,
    compassionate posture,
  • 25:45 - 25:48
    and looking at that little
    mental spider doing its work
  • 25:48 - 25:52
    with an attitude
    of dispassionate curiosity.
  • 25:52 - 25:54
    Let your mind do what it’s doing,
  • 25:55 - 25:58
    but figure out when it’s pushing you
    in the wrong direction,
  • 25:58 - 26:00
    how to put on the mental brakes.
  • 26:01 - 26:03
    You need that skill; we all do.
  • 26:04 - 26:07
    And mental brakes avoid mental breaks.
  • 26:07 - 26:09
    I hope I’ve been useful to you.
  • 26:09 - 26:10
    Thanks.
  • 26:10 - 26:12
    (Applause)
Title:
Mental brakes to avoid mental breaks | Steven Hayes | TEDxDavidsonAcademy
Description:

How can we best deal with difficult or negative thoughts? Dr. Steven Hayes discusses language, cognition, and the science behind putting on the mental brakes.

Steven C. Hayes is Nevada Foundation Professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Nevada. He has shown in his research how language and thought leads to human suffering, and has developed "Acceptance and Commitment Therapy" a powerful therapy method that is useful in a wide variety of areas.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

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Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDxTalks
Duration:
26:22

English subtitles

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