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Episode 152: Anger in relationships, falling in love with a monk, food cravings
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all right good evening everybody it's Nate G here along with dr. Doug Lyall dr. Lyle how you doing that evening good good actually I might there's a storm in my area so I don't have my landline it's knocked out so we just have to make do with the cell phone so we'll do the best we can it sounds great from this side so we'll hopefully the transmitted through the through the internet okay for our listeners who listen who don't listen live but we're going to power Thursday and and I think it's just fine all right all right so today on the show the show is titled anger in relationships falling in love with a monk and a question about food cravings so I've sent dr. Lisle I'd sent you a article recently that we're going to talk about on the show and this article actually starts to it discusses this it's a psychologist who is a immigration psychologist his name is Josh Imams a day and he wrote an article called the cycle of anger and relationships and it sounds like he's you know he's trying to piece together what the research says in the Journal of research and personality there's an article in a couple a couple of authors that piece together the review of all the literature and they're trying to figure out the where anger comes from and where the cyclical model model of anger comes from in relationships and a couple of highlights from this article is that they say quote the current research proposed a cyclical model of anger involving both intrapersonal and interpersonal mechanisms that outlines how anger becomes mutual and self-perpetuating between intimate partners now this particular author says similar to characterizations of gratitude as both sensitive to others pro-social behavior in a cause of one's own pro-social behavior they're proposing that anger arises partners negative treatment and anger motivates one's own negative behaviors towards partners and through these processes anger is readily transmitted across partners and elicits responses that may prepare to it anger so the article actually proposes that on days when people feel particularly angry towards their romantic partners they tend to engage in more destructive behaviors towards their partners so I consider myself a layman when it comes to psychology but that doesn't make sense to me about days when people feel particularly angry now I've certainly had days where I wake up on the wrong side of the bed but I can't imagine this is any scientific discovery of any any magnitude but I will leave that to you in just a second mm-hmm so as we go further on this one I want to talk now okay but so we look at this article and they have a couple of figurines of figures of you know it's essentially these boxes with arrows it's kind of like you're your evaluator worst case scenario and you drop down the box below and I don't you know daily anger them daily destructive behavior them daily perception of destructive behavior then then your other person's daily anger and so just it with what sounds like they're trying to stumble upon is what we've heard on the show before maybe about a year or two ago which is the vicious cycle and the virtuous needle so you know I might be making a stretch here but but this is what I think about this article is that it's as I sent you and as I posted on the Facebook group is you know they are starting to catch on it's interesting that they're not quite there yet but but we wanted to hear your take on this article dr. Lyle yeah I glanced at this thing today and my colleagues are morons what guy that's our rounded alright this is a it's a kind of interesting is I think it's Journal and research and personality I think it's a legitimate journal and legitimate scientists trying to figure this out this is this is where you go this is what happens to to science when when you're not hooked in in a conciliation to the theory of evolution you just you sort of look at things and just describe them and build a model but none of this is hooked into the understanding my vision and obviously anger is a very sophisticated mechanism that has been built by evolution for a specific purpose that statistically increases the likelihood of survival and reproduction obviously okay but only obvious to people that would be the read Richard Dawkins or listening to this broadcast clearly not the authors not the psychologists the academics that that did this thing so let's let's look at this the what anger is is it's a mech it's a signaling mechanism and the signaling it's a signaling device that tells the person on the other side of it that it's directed towards anger is a threat they're just calling it destructive behavior it's not destructive behavior it's a threat okay it's just like any other behavior it's designed to statistically optimize the likelihood of genes survival so what it's doing here is it's actually attempting to influence the receiver on the other side of the communication and it's not meaning to be destructive it's flattening them it's saying you're treating me unfairly and if you continue to do that there's going to be consequences now they're talking about oh then that causes anger back really that's not typically what's going to happen what's typically going to happen is it's going to cause guilt so where is that in the model not in a little boxes I saw you sent me the the purpose of anger is to get concessions out of people on the other side and it activates the guilt mechanism so it doesn't always it might though so very often when like if you take two intimate partners I mean it would help if somebody in this was a clinician because the truth of the matter is very often if you've got some angry pain in the ass you know disagreeable partner the person on the other side has been tapped their time feeling guilty because the anger mechanism keeps activating guilt mechanisms because the guilt is a mechanism that says oh my god you think I've treated you unfairly boy I sure don't want to get kicked out of this coalition sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry what can I do to make up for it that's what's on the other side okay so now it is true that sometimes when someone is if someone sends an anger signal the person on the other side essentially has a couple of choices and they're not choosing but they're making entrances and the inference that they might make is oh my god you're angry because you know something that I did it was not bad ie that was unfair in the relationship let me scan my memory is there anything maybe there is okay and so now maybe I feel guilty and now I'm starting to to make submissive gestures or conciliatory gestures ie signal guilt so that I can modify the anger and reduce the likelihood of of whatever the the threats are but on the other side of that anger on the other hand I might say hmm I I am not guilty of anything you're being a shit okay in other words I might look at it and say no I'm not guilty of anything and you you are threatening me for no good reason and I know what you're threatening me for and you're out of line and now the person that gets gets the anger directed towards them they themselves get angry and send a signal back okay now this is what these guys are talking about because they're like we there's a Mutual's disruptive thing yeah okay let's look at what's really happening what this is is in negotiation and at the rid of it there's a conflict of interest that is either a really bad conflict of interest that that needs to be rooted out and exposed or these people are going to be perpetually not very happy or it turns out that there's a misunderstanding that needs to be rooted out and shown the light of day so I thought what they said they said oh be kind of nice think happier thoughts about when the person is angry and interpreted some other way that most ludicrous notions about what you're supposed to do to fix this what you're supposed to do to fix this is use what I call crystal clear so if someone's angry it it gets to be very interesting because they're they're they're feeling that you've been unfair with them maybe fairly complicated and they may have some really pressing issues in their mind about what it is that they're pissed off about but it also could have a lot of ancillary processes that are going on that are causing them not to be direct with you okay that there's that there's a complicated swirl of insecurity anger resentment at all kinds of stuff that's happening so if we're going to these guys are going to just like I don't know just keep swirling this thing around to definitely and try to be a little nicer good luck to you know we want to get to the root of this thing we're going to use crystal clear and crystal clear is you need to start asking questions and you need to essentially be determined that you're going to keep asking these questions until you get it super clear so the way you're going to do it is you're going to have the guts to tell your partner listen I can tell you're not happy with me and I'm not sure why so what I want to do is I want it I want to find out and see if we can give we can figure it out because I don't you know I don't like it I feel my I feel it ated myself but I want to hear where you're at so can you tell me what's going on with you know so it's the son of the bitch okay it's like okay could you guess No okay so do you want to just be silent about it and just protest indefinitely until you're ready to talk no it's like okay well you'll talk when you'll talk and you know the doors open oh well I can't I can't really help you you know and I'm not going to I'm not going to bow down and kiss your feet if you don't tell me what's going on so that's that you threatened them back but we're doing it very openly okay now so how is it really going to go listen I tell you're not happy with me and I got like seven reasons why that could be and I'm not sure what it is but I want to know because I don't like this feeling okay I want us to feel good so can you tell me can you talk to me and tell me what's what's going on what are some of the things that you're upset about what you know what are some things I did and shut up and you let them talk okay and you and then they talk some more and you say don't you don't defend yourself no there's no defense no defense no no lawyers in here no arguing nothing your job is to keep asking okay keep telling me more about this more about that tell me more tell me more let me see if I understand and all you get to do is you get to ask questions and then you get to summarize what it is that there's what they're saying so what you're saying is is that every time we go out somewhere you catch me looking at the waitress and you have really a big ship set okay and then what you would bla bla bla you you feed it back until they can give you a look in the eye and they could say yeah that's it that's what I feel okay now you have a crystal clear you've done a full assessment of actually what's going on inside that person's head if they will allow you okay they may not they may maybe not be willing to talk and that's because they may be insecure about some things they don't they don't want to walk into the space where they believe that the relationship has intractable conflicts of interest and they're not ready to actually face it okay but if we don't think that the relationship has conflicts of interests that are insurmountable then we definitely want to be quietly and patiently tenacious about crystal clear and then once we've heard it all then we can say okay let me see if I can respond to some of this and we're looking for where there's been any misunderstandings exaggerations where there's been some baggage that it's been lots of the for because there's past hurts that have been you know haven't been resolved and negotiated but the spirit of this thing is hey you know we're not one person and we're not one entity we're going to have some conflicts of interest and I you know if you're if you're angry I want to know why I want to understand it and then see if we can make things fair because I want to be fair and fair is the central word that is that is where it is that we're aiming okay so if we do this this is how we unwind us it doesn't hurt to be add a little bit more finesse if you want to be really good and that is you before you begin crystal clear you feedback to your partner a whole bunch of things about what did it white is that you find them so valuable and attractive this is flood the circuit okay so you say listen I you know for three days you've been giving me the silent treatment you've been irritated with me and I'm not sure why like I could speculate you know I could guess about five different things maybe you could be mad about but I don't know why it is and I feel vaguely guilty and I also feel vaguely irritated because I don't know whether it's fair I don't know what you're up to but I do know that you know I'm you know for a reason because you're the most important person in my life and I you know I got you tremendously I love this about you I love that about you this that in the other okay if you want to get really fancy you use the technique that it's on my website I talk about it attribute anecdote so you give them the attribute ie you're just you're so beautiful I just love how this or that looks about you so the anecdote attribute and then the anecdote is the details around it you know I just appreciate your honesty I can remember the time when so now we fled the person's circuit a little bit and we can even say we're doing it listen you need your circuit flooded okay let me tell you all the things I admire about you and you flood them okay and then you say I really need to know what's going on I need to understand this because I just want to be fair and I just want to hear your side of the story and I want to get it okay if you use that kind of a process than one or two things happen you resolve the conflict probably pretty well pretty easily if the relationship is fundamentally sound or what happens is is that this this smooths over the situation pretty well but the time being and takes the takes the animosity out of great deal what's going on but it doesn't actually get to the root of the problem and there's still a wellspring of conflict that's coming up because somebody in that relationship doesn't qualify for somebody else and that that's actually driving the the behavior that's annoying and upsetting and disturbing and then the minutes driving the feelings of in fairness and it's driving the anger displays and the latent Colet that's under those anger displays etc so yeah don't take these people's advice and think nice or thoughts about what the other person's you know pissy behavior really might mean forget about it what you want to do is you want to unpack this in this sort of way and realize that the anger isn't quote destructive behavior what it actually is is it's a signal and it's a frustration and it's a it's a comment about the inference of unfairness and we want to get to the root of that now when it comes to the there's sort of vaguely describing a vicious cycle but the but but what we want to do is be more specific and that is we and they're trying to like mitigate it somehow we start to mitigate the vicious cycle by spinning it very hard by flooding the circuit when we flood the circuit we have suddenly we've stopped the really vicious part of this is the esteem hits but the person sending with the anger okay they are threatening the person or threatening the relationship there can be counter threats it's like well if you don't value me that much then I'm not going to value you that much either so what we must do is go directly against that signal and and essentially use a very very loud explicit voice that says I value you tremendously and I just want to be fair and I want to understand where you're coming from that is the mechanism to stop the vicious cycle okay so that's that's how we do it and that's some good instruction for people that are listening so I'll have a follow-up question which is I mean get obviously highly intelligent but there's a lot of highly intelligent people all over the world but they're all spouting a lot of BS about you know stuff that we've heard here with different articles health human nature government stuff like that so now this is not my question this is a question from listening from way back when but question is what's your secret there's there's some sort of perfect personality to acquiring good information or is it just knowledge of all the biases and statistics and then just some bit of dumb luck like how do you know this stuff and why don't right how do I know why am i right and everybody else wrong right right all right the thing is is that that there's probably multiple factors that have gone into this and luck has certainly played a great role so I so when it came to economics I got very lucky I was interested in I was majoring economics confusing and one day I happen to be in in the library and I was just looking to take a break and I you know I was I was very interested in learning economics and that's why I was majoring in it it was confusing and it all didn't integrate with it with the dam quite frankly and it looked to be sort of impossibly complicated and I just felt like you know I just can't believe that I would ever actually integrate thoroughly understand the dynamics that would be you know in Samuelson's major text on economics it just this wasn't coming together even though I was getting an A in class and so I went to the little section and there was a book there was actually a paperback book that had a you know the cheap library binding over it was called you can profit from a monetary crisis and I knew of the author Terry Brown and you know I I knew of him he was touted by people that I had confidence in and I sat down to read the book and it was it was extremely readable and within a hundred pages of reading you can profit from monetary crisis I understood economics it's like I was done and I was done with my econ major I was done with my professors clearly they didn't grasp this in this way and so what I got was really good teaching and then that that that was a major backdrop of thinking that that hasn't left me to this day when I when I was interested in psychology I spent I had really good what you call a classical education in psychology so I was learning all the things that you know major university PhD students are learning about psychology and clinical psychology the way were dutifully supposed to do it so I was getting a really good grounding for ten years at the university level both you know from my undergrad and my grad school at the end of that time right about when I was ending this by I'll just I'll tell the story I don't know if I told it before but never on them on the radio like this so now the whole world is going to know the story if I haven't told it before when I was married my wife was a grad student long with me at the University of Virginia and she likes to get free crap she just did she was an accumulator of crap and so the behavioral science book club that came with like the the monthly little American psychologist newspaper or whatever was that we got his grad students on that I never would have gotten that she paid the $25.00 fees so we get this crap from the house month and it had the equivalent of Columbia Records thing of him but you know by three records this year and you get eight records free for one cent okay well I done that it's not a grad and regret a bit and because it'll send you you've got the Cindy of these cards if you don't send the card back then it'll send the record and then you've got some you know album you don't want so anyway the same thing happened she wanted to join this thing I said don't do it don't do it these cards are going to come in and then we're going to get some book that they're going to ship it to us because you forgot to send the card back and then I'm going to have to either buy it or and uh if she wanted all the free crap it's like three hundred sixty six dollars three books and supplies you know with a with a psychology Casares and the DSM three and everything else under the Sun so she wanted to do this and I said okay I mean what am I going to set poor go ahead but stay on top of those stupid cards well she didn't living apart cuz I was doing my internship in in Maryland and I came home and sure enough there was a book there it's like uh for crying out loud you didn't send the card back she's like oh I know I got busy I just lost the card I'm like great so he was at least a skinny book you know these books are way overpriced because they're going to try to leash you on the three books that you have to buy that year well it was his selfish gain and so I thought I remember this $19.97 when he'd buy it and store at that point it would have been 1295 like okay well whatever so I thought well we got to buy three these things anyway so you know it's like a Christmas present so I opened it up and I read first paragraph and that was it like oh my god and by the end of page two I knew that I had just learned something that no psychologist at the University of Virginia it but the purpose of animal behavior is to survive and reproduce to pass on the genes it was just it was a a thunderbolt so this was luck I could have easily gone through my life and never gotten this message I could have heard it from somebody did was interesting and passionate about it but it wouldn't have been the great Dawkins with his his extraordinary prose and so I happened to get incredibly lucky and that now 30 years later since that since that time you know I I've been able to meet and and read the writings of brilliant people and that's you know in the field and they all line up on the dots because this is all Concilium it's all integrated in with the entire unity of knowledge of science so meanwhile our little friends here at the journal of personality research are doing trying to publish something on anger completely and utterly unconnected to Concilium there's no dots that go back to physics but what we think about here and what we discuss here goes back to physics physics determines chemistry chemistry determines biology biology determines psychology psychology determines sociology political science and anthropology it's how it works okay this is all a network of laws of the way nature works and so that's why I'm write a lot I'm write a lot because my thinking is guided by the principles of Concilium and so in a lot of that obviously it helps to be bright and and it also helps to be well educated enough to know that the great authorities in the world don't know okay so somebody else that might have heard about The Selfish Gene or even read a couple chapters wouldn't have appreciated that the entire field of psychology was in the dark but I did because I was right in the middle of a top university finishing up my PhD so if I hadn't heard this message then that means the profs didn't know and if the Provost didn't know the whole field didn't know if a whole field didn't know this a revolution in which it is and so this is so the answer the question is I was lucky I found gold I would also say something else which is what Sir Francis Crick said when people said you guys found gold he says yeah but we were looking for gold and I was too okay so I was I was determined to try to understand how psychology works and I did not buy into any of the major theories I was I was frustrated but there was not an integrated way of thinking about the field and I was I was frustrated there didn't seem to be a plumb line to guide our thinking and I was frustrated about it and although other clinicians are lining up either psychodynamic or cognitive behavioral he's supposed to vote for one of the teams and supposed to tell you something about who you are and I didn't vote for anything because it just didn't it didn't make sense to me nobody had an integrated view when Dawkins by by page 2 The Selfish Gene I knew that it instantly understood that an integrated view of understanding psychology was possible I had no idea how far that this could take us clinically I couldn't have speculated but it turns out of course that when you finally have a place to set your lever you can move the world and the rest of psychology has not set its lever down and so they continue to be bright people doing investigations unconnected to conciliate and therefore not not having their thinking guided by an integrated theory to help them and that's that's why I'm right nobody else's out of follow-up question for you that I've wondered the aisle is if you had your way and you could snap your fingers and create a research project yeah to demonstrate a particular effect would you know what would it be and have you thought about something like that well not actually do I know I haven't thought about it but the John to being a lotta committee cosmides did think about this they had they had a ordinary vision for psychology that I did not actually understand until I met them which I met them last summer and I got to sit there next to me to college buddies and talk to her for five hours and I'm bragging this is name-dropping hair this is like I met Elvis I met Elvis everybody so I met Elvis and Elvis you know can really sing leda cosmides really is as smart as it looks and she she and John TV actually even in their you know 30th year as they're getting their PhDs they know that they understand the Revolution and they know their Harvard University and they know that the rest of the world doesn't know it including a Harvard faculty and so they sit there and they grind on the problem and they actually come up with a plan to try to revolutionize the field by educating all the poor saps that don't understand and what they did was that they went into each area of psychology that's remotely connected to them and they looked for the biggest baddest theories that carry the big weight that everybody believes in that are the big you know vanguards of thought in a given subfield and then they chopped it to pieces so they they would look at it and say okay they're wrong there but everybody thinks they're right and so we are going to do a research study to demonstrate that the wrong and we're going to show everybody that the way you arrive at the correct solution is through evolutionary lens and this is why they made their mistake it's incredible and they in other words they're trying to be as efficient as possible at changing the course of the Titanic and they haven't been very successful and they're frustrated with that lack of success but they've been so so in one way and they would see your question is what research project would you do well to me and cosmides have done a bunch of them and they went to considerable effort to try to throw a walk through the biggest windows in town and I have to tell you they've thrown some big rocks or some big windows but it wasn't by accident they did it for this reason they have not you know we couldn't analyze what their impact has been the impact will grow and will will eventually transform the entire field in the next fifty or hundred years but they're frustrated that it didn't in the 3035 years they've been at it they haven't been more successful now in my view they had been spectacularly successful because they have educated probably you know a thousand academics around the world that understand in a way that they never would have understood so so the seeds are sown but this is kind of this is like a Copernican revolution you know the pet the peasants and even the monks and the you know and even intelligentsia are not going to grasp it for a while and it might easily take a hundred years before this becomes common knowledge and and the baseline of how psychology is viewed just aa long answer the question is done mostly dumb luck and a few bones that's bone more or less what it was all right all right well we're going to turn the ship a little bit and then talk about another album of love another form of luck which is in this case mr. person's question it's about unrequited love those in dr. Lisle about a year ago I moved to a Buddhist monastery where I lived for three months while I was there I fell in love with one of the monks he's my age and we have similar passions and we shared a connection but as much as I try I cannot seem to let go of this infatuation I feel like he's my soul mate even though red-flag he's a celibate monk I'm a classical singer and he does not like classical music so I know it would never work but we're both vegan have a good sense of humor very smart have intense personalities when will I be able to let go of this crush we stayed in contact after I left the monastery but I have stopped regular communication he knows how I feel because he asked me if I had feelings for him and my impression is that it boosts his ego to think that I like him am I crazy for holding out hope that he might feel the same way even though he has not given me any clear indication that he does oh if you live long enough you'll hear at all oh my goodness falling in love with the booze mug the guys are there for a reason okay so the and it's um you know I get it I mean I can I can understand how something like this could happen there could be many many factors driving it but obviously whatever's going on with this situation the woman does not qualify okay so this is and there may be a number of reasons why she doesn't qualify in other words nobody may qualify because we don't know anything about this guy's psychology he may be a very odd dude in a number of ways and this bra we know you gay for all we know he's transgender for all we know he's got some really weird stuff up there we have no clue he may have pedophilic fantasies and this is why he's become a buddhist monk or he just may want to be a buddhist monk because he wants it because he thinks it's cool and it you know it had some benefits to it and he would fall in love with somebody else but our role doesn't qualify so if you're kind of bat your eyelashes at somebody for three months and make little kissy face and talk about all your deep soul connection and the guy you know doesn't flirt with you at all it doesn't make the slightest move doesn't make any indication that there's any possibility or interested in something in a relationship you don't qualify okay now you may be maintaining that interest for a number of reasons because he doesn't you know he might be kind and interested in you as a person we could have a weak knees Delta situation where we're you know he would be a beautiful over rewarding person and there he is single right there and he's a really nice guy handsome attracted to them oh my god it's like yeah to that you don't qualify you don't qualify so you don't qualify that's the fundamental reason you're probably not getting over it because because the guy's such a gentle soul that he's not giving you any rejecting feedback and not absolutely signaling any irritation when you give him positive feedback in fact it may even boost this ego oh yeah he may like it you may like the positive feedback but that's it he's not he's not interested in giving you any positive feedback so send him a postcard now and then and maybe maybe whatever you know by email or by or by handwritten postcard from who knows the Netherlands and say hello you know whatever and for all we know some wacky thing that it's in his head that's making him a Buddhist monk may get somehow resolved not likely move on this is a this is a waste of time in search of a romantic relationship but it may not be a waste of time in terms of of something warm and friendly that you have some degree of contact into your future so that's how you look at it this is a you'll move on when you invest a little bit of time and energy and maybe finding somebody new and then suddenly you get some positive feedback and you're like oh that's how it's supposed to be and that is how it's supposed to be dr. Lisle would you ever join a Buddhist monastery for a couple of months as long as they had a basketball court there yeah I might for a couple months if they have a bad luck or like get it away no phone calls I could just work on my new my new shot technique which is really exciting by the way well you'll have to tell us all about an eye for an eye yeah yeah well Alan Goldhamer and I discovered a new shot technique at our old man's basketball camp from a great coach and so now now we are we're just gloating and we can't wait to get to the gym every day and quite frankly we don't even want to work let's go work on our shot right here I hear that the Tuscany Hotel which is the site of chef AJ's ultimate weight loss program I believe they have a basketball court there so maybe maybe I'll be able to play oh my god we'll have a vegan demonstration of yeah a vegan basketball players at 60 years old showing how it's done yeah I can't wait chef AJ we're looking forward to that chef AJ make sure there's a Hooper out there somewhere oh yeah speaking of which so chef AJ's ultimate weight-loss program is happening in Labor Day weekend and so if you register you could get to register by February 1st you can save $300 for that and you get to meet dr. Lyle dr. Goldhamer in person chef AJ jean-pierre neal barnard I think there's one other person here it's dr. Thomas Campbell the medical director of the T contrition studies so check that out I'm going to be there as well but all those be on the sides you can check it out at chef AJ website chef AJ website com so tom scam is coming looks like it yeah I got I got a fire Campbell is is the second nicest person in the world the first person is is is his dad there's Colin unbelievable that's great I'll be it'll be great too great to see him I haven't seen him in a few years cool yeah sounds like it's gonna a lot of Ellen oh all right so our question it actually has to do with the ultimate weight loss program so and it's a dietary question it's it's from somebody who says dr. Lyle I'm relatively new with the ultimate weight loss program and I've been I've been having some success but I'm not all in now no I'm thinking of non-compliant food for you know days on end and I feel like I'm in danger of a slip how do I stop myself even if I haven't been able to be all in how do I stop myself from having these cravings but even if I haven't been all in its worlds better than it was before yeah what you're dealing with is a is pressure that comes from two different sides of your motivation and so this is a very interesting problem this is we've got this is what we're going to call the pleasure trap on one side and the ego trap on the other so just in case your issue about being all in I'm Navajo in okay so I've lived just fine not being all in on on healthy diet the I'm pretty much in and I do a good job but I'm not looking to be perfect the perfection is is ideal for reducing cravings over time because if you do a superb job for about four months then you will pretty well not have any interest at all in any naughty food you just won't you'll this is what I call a deep groove where the palate is so sensitized that that you really would not you have no interest in going outside of the matrix the problem is is it's bit difficult to get in a deep groove and even once you're there yet even though you could be pretty well bunkered in for a while sooner or later you may get pushed out of it now certain personalities won't get pushed out of it so if your chef AJ you're not going to get pushed out of it if you're Allen Goldhammer you're not going to get pushed out of it but if you're me if you're weak of the flesh me too you're going to get you're going to get pushed out of it okay and so the problem is is that that if you have conceptually set the bar very high and the concept is is that you're supposed to be perfect then when you when you when you quote transgress you may essentially feel like some sort of a failure and you may be embarrassed and you may be you may feel like you've discovered that you cannot in fact keep a perfect behavior and yet you may see like you should be able to keep a perfect behavior but some of these icons do and so as a result you've walked into what we call the ego trap where the expectations are too high and so what happens when we're in the ego trap we very likely then kick over the table and just essentially self-destruct and just say we basically are showing our internal audience you can't judge me because I'm not trying okay and this is very common in drug and alcohol problems so the expectation is that you're going to be perfect then you if you if you aren't perfect you've been perfect for a while you might have been sober for 90 days and then you crack and then you don't you know you have two things now chasing you you have the pleasure trap is now chasing you but now the ego trap has got you in a situation where you are embarrassed and now the right thing to do is to deliberately self-destruct so that you're you can show your internal audience and anybody else you can't judge my ability to manage this problem because I'm not really trying watch me while I take another drink so this is so our problem is is that if you set the bar so low that you basically say oh I know what I'm going to do I'm going to add a carrot a week mmmm add an apple a day to my normal diet if we set the bar so we're going to be out of the ego trap but we're going to be in the pleasure trap because we're going to still be in ham and cheese sandwiches and barbecue and chocolate shakes so we will never sensitize the colleague around a healthy diet on the other hand if we set the bar so high at perfection then we can walk our way into the ego trap and when we stumble we're going to kick over the table and be in trouble so the right way to do this is to understand that we're conceptually aiming for somewhere in the middle and I just was talking to a lady this week on the phone about this that she's bouncing around and not kind of knowing how to manage this and I said here's a here's a one you know every nervous system is going to be different so I can't give you a hard and fast rule but here's something that we can try and that is that we can try that once a week when you go out you know just wanted to go out and have a glass of wine have you know piece of pizza it's like okay let's let's make it a once a week thing because it's a social issue for her and that in this case we're going to we're going to say okay listen if we clearly we're going to get some turbulence in the pleasure drop the next day to some degree you're thinking about pizza thinking about the wine it's going to rattle around a little bit however if we can relax into the notion that you know what we're going to be able to do it again next Saturday because it's a Saturday night ritual then after we do this for a while we can get into a groove where essentially we're not that we're not that freaked out about the transgression and we're not that excited or feeling deprived about it you know in the days follow because we know next Saturday we're going to have the same thing that we're going to do it again so this is a way this is one choice to set the parameters between the pleasure trap in the ego trap that we keep it clean and F that we really like clean food but once a week we let our hair down okay and for for a meal it's a Sunday morning brunch maybe that's going to be what it is or Saturday night or you could yeah it's probably you know I'm not going to say it's a prescription that you should do it the same meal every week but it's not a bad idea for awhile and in other words just set up a ritual so this is a this is one one style other people could do it very differently depends upon who the person is there's people they could transgress to the tune of two or three hundred ninety calories a day and do the rest of their calories really good and they'd be fine okay I think a lot of people do that so the when it comes to healthy living and healthy eating most of the value that has taken place as a result of these discoveries has taken place in the bodies of people who have not done it perfectly so keep that in mind the fact that there are some people out there who are exemplary and have an unusual personalities and somewhat unusual circumstances I mean that's remarkable and it's admirable but it's not something that you need to emulate what we want to do instead is to set a course for a combination that works for you and we can we can see that over time if you're doing well you're healthy you're reasonably fit and you like to eat healthy food most of the time we've done well and that's all we need to do
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