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105 - Expect the Worst

You’re listening to the Feel Good English Podcast episode #105, “Expect the Worst”

Hello, there, Kevin here, with another episode of the Feel Good English Podcast.

Finally, right?

Thanks for patiently waiting for new episodes. I took the month of July to, well, remix Feel Good English. Like this song.

I’ve been doing some remixing, making Feel Good better for you, more streamlined for me; recharging my creative juices you could say.

So, thanks again for your patience. I hope you’re still here listening to the podcast. A lot of good stuff to come.

So here we go. Today’s lesson might be a little shocking for some of you, especially because it’s coming from me, someone who talks a lot about personal development.

Why shocking? Because today’s episode is on a book that pretty much disrupts a lot of the self-help genre. The self-help genre covers subjects like motivation, how to be happier, how to be more productive, the importance of goal setting, basically, self-help books teach us how to be better humans.

I talk about a lot of these topics here on the podcast, and I do think there are valuable lessons to be learned.

But… like I said, the book I read for today’s episode is different. The name of the book is “The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking” by Oliver Burkeman.

People who can’t stand positive thinking. Can’t stand, good expression there. What’s can’t stand mean?

That’s right! Can’t stand means to hate! Good job!

If you’re someone who thinks that all the self-help books on the power of thinking positively, and books like “The Secret” are garbage, well, you’d love this book.

And… if you’re like me, very open to different perspectives, philosophies and different approaches to life, you’ll also find some value in this book.

I wanted to share the lessons from this book with you because I think that we need to continue to look for varying approaches to getting through life. I don’t want to get stuck in a mindset where I think my days should be filled with positivity, happiness, productivity, goals to accomplish, and all that.

Now of course, if you listen to my podcast, you’ve heard me talk a lot about that stuff.

And I do believe that we can learn things about ourselves, and discover tactics that help us deal with life more gracefully.

But getting stuck in this “positive thinking trap” can have adverse effects. And that’s exactly what this book tackles.

An example? “Trying to be happy all the time will actually make us depressed.” Now that’s intriguing.

I am going to cover two big ideas from this book called “The Antidote”.

An antidote, by the way, is something that cures a problem. Like if you ingest poison, you need an antidote. And if you ingest too much self-help, well, you get the idea.

So the first big idea I’ll talk about is why only focusing on the positive things in your day, and ignoring the negative, is a bad idea. And believing in things like “positive visualization”, where you simply have to visualize experiences to make them become reality, is total BS.

And the second big idea? Why being obsessed with goals is dangerous, and can even kill you.

Well, as you can see, I’m being a bit of a devil’s advocate today. And because I am the one who teaches lessons from all these self-help books on the podcast, I think I’m being a bit of my own devil’s advocate.

I like that though. I like debate. Even debating myself. Maybe I’m a bit crazy. Maybe a bit crazy is good. What do you think?

And even if you think I’m crazy, don’t forget why you’re here. To boost your English skills, become closer to fluency, and to learn some interesting ideas about life. Correct?

There’s something new I’d like to try out. What i it?

I want your questions, and I want to hear your thoughts. I want to hear them. I want to hear your comments. It could be anything about this book OR questions about the English you heard in this episode.

So, send me a message, send me an email. Tell me what episode you’re asking a question about, or commenting on, and also tell me your name. I might feature your question in a future episode. You can remain anonymous if you want. There’s a good word to practice, don’t worry. Just give me a fake name, call yourself Chicken if you want. Say your name is chicken and no one will know who you are.

So let’s connect? Send your questions to kevin@feelgoodenglish.com, or you can go to the website and easily find an email button there. OK? I can’t wait to hear from you.

Please, let’s connect, send me your questions and comments on this episode.

Now let’s get into the lessons from the book “The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking”

Many of the most popular approaches to happiness tell you to focus on the positive, the things that go right in your life. Books like “The Power of Positive Thinking” and “The Secret”, rely on a concept called The Law of Attraction.

The Law of Attraction suggests that all you need in order to obtain what you desire, is to think that you have it. I actually found a pretty clear summary of how this works on the website WikiHow.

According to Wiki-how, the Law of Attraction can be done in 6 steps. Here we go. Let’s learn how to make the Law of Attraction happen.

1. Relax your mind and meditate for 5 to 10 minutes.

2. Know exactly what you want. Have a clear and detailed image.

3. Send the Universe a mental picture of what you want.

4. Write your wish down and feel it happening to you.

5. Show gratitude by recording all the things the Universe has given you.

6. Be patient and trust the Universe.

There you go. That’s all you have to do. It takes about 20 minutes to get anything you want in life. So you go through these six steps, and the rest of the day you can hang out, watch Game of Thrones, catch up on your favorite show, play some video games, and the Universe will give you whatever you need. The Universe has got your back!

So, I’m joking a bit, and I think there’s a little bit of truth here. Things can happen sometimes that I can’t explain. However, in general, I think it’s dangerous to believe that all you have to do is throw your wishes out into the Universe and everything will come true.

Have you done this before? Have you read “The Secret”? What’s your thoughts on The Law of Attraction? I’d love to hear them. Send me a message.

So anyway, Oliver, the author of this book we’re talking about today, does see benefits in being optimistic about the future, specifically when we can control the outcome.

If you have a job interview, it’d be better to walk into the interview feeling like you are the best candidate, as opposed to feeling inferior, for example.

Oliver also points out how “looking on the bright side” is good for survival, and has been intertwined with human evolution. And scientists have even said that a happy and healthy person has a less accurate and overly optimistic view of the future, and happy people think they have more control over their future happiness than depressed people.

So being optimistic about the future, thinking things will happen and will go your way, there is some value there. And it makes sense, right?

But, Oliver also has a problem with this outlook. Other than feeling disappointed when things don’t turn out the way you wanted them to, positive visualizations can actually be harmful.

There was an experiment done in Germany that “unearthed”, you could say, the truth about positive visualizations. It showed that visualizing positive outcomes actually reduces people’s motivation to achieve them. This is quite interesting.

So you want something in the future, you visualize what you want, your brain tricks you into thinking you already have that “thing” and you’ll try less to get it.

The experiment went like this (we have to back things up by science, correct?): So subjects were deprived water for a certain amount of time until they became slightly dehydrated. They needed to drink water.

Imagine a group of people who are deprived water; they’re thirsty.

Then half of the subjects were told to visualize drinking a cold glass of water, and the other half were given a different task.

So the first half simply had to think that they were drinking water. The experimenters probably used a lot of visualization techniques; see the water in the glass, feel it hit your mouth and hydrate your body.

Well guess what? Those that were told to visualize drinking a glass of water, experienced a reduction in energy levels, reduced motivation to drink water, because they had tricked themselves that they had already drunk a glass of water.

They needed water, actual water, but instead visualized drinking it, and this made them think they didn’t need water. And their body reacted, they lost energy. Real life effects!

Instead of searching out water they lost motivation because they felt they already drank water. But they didn’t. That’s pretty important, right?

This reminds me of an episode I did a while back on the importance of NOT sharing your goals. It was based on a Ted Talk by Derek Sivers, “Keep Your Goals to Yourself” that’s episode #61, of the FGE podcast, by the way.

And his Ted Talk proposed that when we share our goals, we already feel a bit of accomplishment from simply telling others about it, which in turn, reduces our motivation to actually achieve it. Very contradictory to what many others say is so important, being clear and outspoken about your goals.

So here, another question for you, the listener. What do you think? Should we share our goals, or keep them to ourselves? Send me your thoughts at kevin@feelgoodenlish.com So instead of being positive all the time, trying to be positive all the time, trying is the key word there, and telling people how great your future will be, what should you do instead?

Well, in the book he talks about something called negative visualization, we had positive visualization, imagining everything will happen they way you want it in the future, now there’s something called negative visualization we are going to talk about. A practice done by the ancient stoics.

So the stoics, stoicism, if you’ve heard of that, had this practice of negative visualization.

They thought that there wasn’t really a difference between positive and negative events.

It all came down to how we thought about the situations.

Again, I’ll repeat that. There’s no difference between negative and positive events, it just depends on how you think about the event.

So, the practice of getting used to dealing with negative circumstances could make it easier for us to live happily, unattached to what happens around us. Being stoic.

Now here’s a more modern approach.

Have you ever heard of Tim Ferris? He’s an author, blogger, and now, a very popular podcaster. He recently gave a Ted Talk on a system that he uses to avoid feeling terrible, and really, a system to help you control negative times that might happen in your life.

I’m going to play a bit of this talk now. What you’ll hear is part of the system he uses to take more action, make important decisions, and to be less “worried” about the future.

So listen up, this will be good for your listening skills, to hear somebody else talking, other than just listening to my sexy voice. Here we go:

And I did find a quote that made a big difference in my life, which was, “We suffer more often in imagination than in reality,” by Seneca the Younger, who was a famous Stoic writer. That took me to his letters, which took me to the exercise, “premeditatio malorum,” which means the premeditation of evils.

In simple terms, this is visualizing the worst-case scenarios, in detail, that you fear, preventing you from taking action, so that you can take action to overcome that paralysis.

My problem was monkey mind – super loud, very incessant. Just thinking my way through problems doesn’t work. I needed to capture my thoughts on paper. So I created a written exercise that I called “fear-setting,” like goal-setting, for myself. It consists of three pages. Super simple.

The first page is right here. “What if I …?” This is whatever you fear, whatever is causing you anxiety, whatever you’re putting off. It could be asking someone out, ending a relationship, asking for a promotion, quitting a job, starting a company. It could be anything.

In the first column, “Define,” you’re writing down all of the worst things you can imagine happening if you take that step. You want 10 to 20.

And then you go to the “Prevent” column. In that column, you write down the answer to: What could I do to prevent each of these bullets from happening, or, at the very least, decrease the likelihood even a little bit? Easy-peasy.

Then we go to “Repair.” So if the worst-case scenarios happen, what could you do to repair the damage even a little bit, or who could you ask for help? So one question to keep in mind as you’re doing this first page is: Has anyone else in the history of time less intelligent or less driven figured this out? Chances are, the answer is “Yes.”

What Tim Ferriss just talked about was a way to be more realistic about life and our choices.

If we write down what we’re thinking, and get very clear about what could possibly happen in the future, even if it’s bad (and yes, bad things do happen to all of us) we can make more rational decisions, and be more prepared for anything that happens to us, emotionally prepared, and not get trapped into thinking that we should always think positively, and that simply by visualizing good things happening to us, they will happen.

I can see why being overly optimistic and also trying to control your future just by shutting your eyes and seeing it, living it, like a dream, might not be the smartest approach. And might not eliminate worry and stress.

What do you think?

Now the second big idea. Why being obsessed with goals is dangerous, and can even kill you. In the book, “The Antidote”, he calls this chapter Goal Crazy.

He starts off the chapter by telling a story. The story is about several mountain climbers who died on Mount Everest in 1996. There’s a book and a movie about this story, it’s call “Into Thin Air”. Great book, by the way.

But the point of the story is how these climbers were so focused on their goal of reaching the summit of the highest mountain in the world, so obsessed with their goal, that they didn’t take necessary precautions to stay safe on the mountain. And they ended up dying. Dying because they didn’t handle the mountain safely.

A terrible storm came and they all froze on the mountain. They could have avoided it, but they weren’t thinking logically. They were obsessed with their goal.

The author uses this tragedy as a metaphor. He suggests that we often are so focused on a result, the “thing” we want to accomplish, that we lose touch with reality. And this can be dangerous.

If we are constantly trying to get to the summit, trying to see the results of our efforts, we won’t be as open to what happens during the journey. We won’t be flexible. We won’t see the reality of what is actually happening. And we won’t be open to the uncertainty of it all.

And quoting the book, “uncertainty is where things happen. It is where the opportunities - for success, for happiness, for really living - are waiting.

Let me repeat that. “uncertainty is where things happen. It is where the opportunities for success, for happiness, for really living - are waiting.”

Think about that for a moment….

So what does the author suggest doing instead of setting firm goals? Well, he thinks it’s smarter to focus on the “process”, not the result.

And I wholeheartedly agree with this. Long-term happiness comes from appreciating the process, not the result.

So how could focusing on the process, and putting your thoughts and effort into process instead of dwelling on the result, how could that help you feel better about English?

Help you feel good about English?

Well, guess what, we are going to go deeper into that idea in the next episode. Going to share some ideas with you based on a book called “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big” by Scott Adams. He’s the creator of the cartoon Dilbert. Very smart guy. He’s considered a genius by many.

I’m excited about that episode. Don’t miss it! That’ll be the next full episode, but first, let’s review today’s lesson.

So let’s review today’s lesson. So in the book “Antidote”, the author thinks there is a problem with all the information out there about always trying to be happy, teaching you that we should always be positive and only focus on positive, and always try to be happy. “Don’t allow the negative in your life.”

We are humans, we have emotions, we all will face hard times in our life, and even tragedies. And thinks often don’t go the way we want them to even if we try really hard, and even if we send our desires out into the Universe. They don’t always come true.

And this is why this is important. How prepared are you going to be to handle whatever life throws at you? That’s the point of the book, really. Let’s not pretend we will ever reach a place where we can always be happy, relaxed and optimistic.

And there are two tactics from this book:

The first one, learn how to plan for the “worst case scenario”.

Use Tim Ferriss’s technique from the little audio I played above if you want to go deep with it. Tim Ferriss always takes things and goes very deep with them to make them very effective.

And the second tactic; instead of basing your life on goals, on results, start putting your thoughts and emotions into the process instead. It’s much smarter that way. And we’re going to talk about that in the next episode.

So what do you think of all this? I’d love to hear from you. Please please, send me your thoughts.

You can email me at kevin@feelgoodenglish.com, you can message me on my website, and/or you can join my Facebook group called A Fluent Life. Find A Fluent Life on Facebook, and join the discussion. Oh and practice your English too. Don’t forget about your English.

See how English always comes second for me, it’s the “side note”. Well that’s the key to success with it. Enjoy the process. Focus on fun content, put English to the side.

To find all the resources I talked about in this episode go to my website, you’ll find the show notes with links to the books and videos there.

Also, big news, I have a brand new program for you. It’s called “Feel Good Premium”.

If you want to learn all the difficult vocabulary, expressions, phrasal verbs, advanced grammar from this episode, become a premium member.

Don’t just passively learn what I talk about here, go deep! That’s what the premium lessons are for.

If you’re curious, go to feelgoodEnglish.com to learn more about Feel Good premium.

And lastly, if you like my show, the biggest compliment you can give me is to share the Feel Good English podcast with someone. Tell them about it, share something online.

Share the knowledge. Help someone become a more fluent English speaker, and more fluent at life. That’d make me happy, that’d make me smile.

See ya soon with another episode, an episode on what to do instead of being goal obsessed.

So until next time, take it as it comes.

Bye bye.