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This week we talk to Russ Harris

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

In This Interview, Russ Harris and I Discuss...

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

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This week we talk to Russ Harris

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

In This Interview, Russ Harris and I Discuss...

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

     

 

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This week we talk to Justin Stenstrom

Justin Stenstrom the founder of EliteManMagazine.com, the host of the Elite Man Podcast on iTunes, a best-selling author, life coach, and speaker.

He has been featured on major news websites like The Huffington Post, Maxim, The Good Men Project, Lifehack, Elite Daily, and many more.

In This Interview, Justin Stenstrom and I Discuss...

• The Wolf Parable
• His podcast, The Elite Man
• Taking control of the thoughts in your head
• Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP)
• Hypnosis
• How he has battled anxiety, panic attacks, and depression in his life
• The powerful, subconscious mind vs the conscious mind
• The role of positive affirmations and suggestions
• Reprogramming the subconscious mind to be happier
• What a successful hypnotic session feels like
• How some people can be hypnotized and others cannot
• The key learnings from his podcast
• The guests from his podcast who stick out to him
• The power of failure or rejection to propel people forward in their lives and/or careers
• The supplements that he recommends for depression
• Fish Oil with DHA and EPA
• Omega 6 and Omega 3 ratio
• Vitamin D
• B complex
• Magnesium Citrate

   

 

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LA Times- Michael Owen Baker  

 

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This week we talk to Heather Havrilesky

Heather Havrilesky writes the popular advice column Ask Polly for New York Magazine’s The Cut. She is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness and the new advice book How to Be a Person in the World. She writes The Best Seller List column for Book Forum and has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Esquire, The Los Angeles Times, NPR's All Things Considered, and many other publications.

In This Interview, Heather Havrilesky and I Discuss...

• The Wolf Parable
• Her book, How to Be a Person in the World
• Coming to peace with your flaws
• Finding a place within yourself where who you are is enough
• What a beautiful life is to her
• How she is constantly checking and rebalancing areas of her life
• The serenity prayer
• "Is the juice worth the squeeze?"
• That touching the same flame can be dangerous to some people
• Seeing your life as a series of problems instead of a patchwork of things to savor
• That there isn't an objectively "good way to be"
• How people are far more complex than we give them credit for
• The question of "does it serve you" is a good one to ask yourself in relationships
• Not knowing how to get below the surface with people
• How she has finally learned to relax around other people
• That people are trapped in their head
• To not beat yourself up for falling into the same "pot holes" over and over

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This week we talk to Colin Gawel

Colin Gawel is the guitarist of the American rock band, Watershed. Colin also has a solo career both with and without his backing band - Colin Gawel and the Lonely  Bones. The album Superior - The Best of Colin Gawel was released in Dec 2016. Colin also lead writer, editor, and founder of the website Pencilstorm and the owner of the legendary Colin's Coffee in Columbus, Ohio.

This conversation was recorded live in Colin's kitchen and is focused on fatherhood in honor of Father's Day this weekend. In This Interview, Colin Gawel and I Discuss...

• Father's Day
• His song, Dad Can't Help You Now
• The challenge of watching your child live life beyond your protection
• What it feels like as a parent for your child to leave home
• Talking to your children about addiction in their family history
• Being on the little league baseball team together as kids
• How important it is to come back from adversity
• Doing things for the love of doing them rather than for the anticipated outcome
• His time in the band, Watershed
• Keeping things in balance in life
• That time is precious
• How we find resilience in life
• The importance of the people you surround yourself with
• How he writes about what it's like to be an adult in his music
• His song, The Words We Say
• How different people react and interpret his songs differently
• How unusual it is that as a musician, he prefers to perform sober rather than high on something
• That he's conscious of how his son sees him consuming alcohol
• Our mutual love of music
• His song, Try a Little Faith

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This week we talk to Chris Niebauer

Chris Niebauer received his Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuropsychology from the University of Toledo where he specialized in left-right brain differences. He has conducted research on consciousness, handedness, beliefs and the sense of self and is currently an associate professor of cognitive psychology at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania. When he is not teaching, Chris likes to play guitar, spend time with his family, and work on new books. His new book is called The Neurotic's Guide to Avoiding Enlightenment: How the Left Brain Plays Unending Games of Self-improvement

In This Interview, Chris Niebauer and I Discuss...

• His book, The Neurotic's Guide to Avoiding Enlightenment: How the Left Brain Plays Unending Games of Self-improvement
• That your thoughts and behaviors should match and when they don't you look to make it happen - Cognitive Dissonance
• Confirmation Bias
• The power of gratitude
• The mechanics of thoughts themselves
• The law of opposition
• Why if you accept a bad mood, it begins to dissipate
• That the universe is always becoming something that it isn't
• The good and bad news about the ego
• The impermanence of "things"
• The eternal nature of "verbs"
• The often incorrect storytelling, or pattern finding nature of the left brain
• The left brain interpreter
• The ego as a story that we tell ourselves
• The challenge of finding consciousness in the brain
• "Doing" rather than "having" consciousness
• The analogy of jogging to consciousness or ego: if you stop jogging and pat yourself down trying to find the "jogging" in you. It's a verb, not a noun
• The connection between pattern finding and depression vs anxiety
• A state of enlightenment and the left, pattern-finding brain
• How we want the universe to be a mystery

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This week we talk to Thomas Sterner

Thomas Sterner is the founder and CEO of The Practicing Mind Institute. He is considered an expert in Present Moment Functioning. He is a popular and in-demand speaker who works with high-performance individuals including, athletes, industry groups and individuals, helping them to operate effectively within high-stress situations so that they can break through to new levels of mastery.

He has been featured in top media outlets such as NPR and Fox News. He is the author of the best seller The Practicing Mind. His latest book is called Fully Engaged: Using the Practicing Mind in Daily Life

In This Interview, Thomas Sterner and I Discuss...

• His newest book, Fully Engaged: Using the Practicing Mind in Daily Life
• How you can't change anything that you're not aware of
• That most of us spend our day as someone in their thoughts as opposed to someone who is having thoughts
• Meditation being the vehicle for growing in self-awareness
• Learning to recognize the truth that "I am not my thoughts, I am the one who has thoughts"
• The strengths of being observer oriented rather than in a state of reactivity
• That people who think they've had a "bad meditation" have actually had a very good meditation
• That meditation is never a done task
• The value of thinking of meditation like you do exercising
• The innate sense in us that is misinterpreted
• That the desire to expand is built into our DNA
• The power of the question, 'And then what?"
• That real perfection is the ability to expand infinitely
• It's the interpretation of the experience that makes it feel the way it does
• Making decisions about how to handle a "road block" beforehand
• How we can control our emotions and doing so is a skill
• The difference between a feeling and the truth
• The importance of setting goals with accurate information
• How you have to be in a situation to learn how to function in that situation
• That struggle is a sign that we are expanding and learning and up against our threshold

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Credit Kwaku Alston  

 

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This week we talk to Dani Shapiro

Dani Shapiro is the bestselling author of three memoirs and 5 novels.  Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Tin House. The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times, and has been broadcast on NPR's “This American Life”.  Her newest book is Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage

 

In This Interview, Dani Shapiro and I Discuss...

• Her newest book, Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage
• Her book, Devotion: A Memoir
• How we are all connected
• Her history with Orthodox Judaism
• This sense that she had to pray though she didn't know who or what she was praying to
• Her process of figuring out what she believes in a spiritual realm
• Living inside the questions, exploring spiritual wisdom
• How she moved away from an all or nothing mentality
• That if her only two choices are "all or nothing", she's going with nothing
• With her book Devotion: A Memoir, she wrote the book so that she could go on the journey, not the other way around
• "If you want to do something, begin it, because action has magic, grace and power in it." - Goethe
• The "third thing" that's essential in relationships
• What it means to walk through life with another person
• What it is like to be comfortable not knowing things in life
• The saying "we can make the best out of everything that happens" vs "everything happens for a reason"
• Her parents terrible accident
• The death of her father and it's effect on her life

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This week we talk to Peter Singer

Peter Albert David Singer, is an Australian moral philosopher. He is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and a Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne. He specializes in applied ethics and approaches ethical issues from a secular, utilitarian perspective. He is known in particular for his book Animal Liberation, in which he argues in favor of vegetarianism, and his essay Famine, Affluence, and Morality, in which he argues in favor of donating to help the global poor. For most of his career, he was a preference utilitarian, but he announced in The Point of View of the Universe that he had become a hedonistic utilitarian.

On two occasions, Singer served as chair of the philosophy department at Monash University, where he founded its Centre for Human Bioethics. In 1996 he stood unsuccessfully as a Greens candidate for the Australian Senate. In 2004 Singer was recognized as the Australian Humanist of the Year by the Council of Australian Humanist Societies, and in 2006 he was voted one of Australia's ten most influential public intellectuals. Singer is a cofounder of Animals Australia and the founder of The Life You Can Save.

In This Interview, Peter Singer and I Discuss...

• His book, Ethics and the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter
• How he's widely considered the most famous living philosopher
• Utilitarian philosophy
• The importance of preventing unnecessary suffering
• How the world is better today than it's ever been
• The reasons why we don't donate to help save children across the world
• Where to find highly vetted charity organizations to donate to
• How we've evolved to respond to help the person right in front of us but not yet to respond to someone who needs help on the other side of the world
• The science of measuring happiness
• Which is a better, more important question: asking people if they're satisfied with their lives or enjoying their lives moment to moment
• Reducing unavoidable suffering vs. making people happier
• The link between happiness and money at various levels of society
• The importance of living in accordance with your values
• The importance of believing that your life has some purpose
• Personal identity or the idea of self
• The public good as a value and then individual liberty as another value
• Physician-assisted suicide
• His views on animal rights
• The value of starting new things later in life and taking on things you may not be great at

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It also often features different animals, mainly two dogs.

Photo Kris Snibbe/Harvard News Office
 

 

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This week we talk to Kurt Gray

Kurt Gray is an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He received his BSc from the University of Waterloo and his Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard University. He studies the mysteries of subjective experience and asks such deep philosophical questions as: Why are humanoid robots creepy? Why do ghosts always have unfinished business? Why do grandma's cookies taste the best? And why do adult film stars seem stupid? His research suggests that these questions—and many more—are rooted in the phenomenon of mind perception. Mind perception also forms the essence of moral cognition.

In science, he likes to wield Occam's razor to defend parsimony, asking whether complex phenomena can be simplified and understood through basic processes. These phenomena include moral judgment, group genesis, and psychopathology. He has been named an APS Rising Star and was awarded the Janet Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Research.  He was also given the SPSP Theoretical Innovation Award for the article "Mind Perception Is the Essence of Morality." His work has been generously funded by the John Templeton Foundation. He recently published the book,  The Mind Club: Who Thinks, What Feels and Why it Matters

In This Interview, Kurt Gray and I Discuss...

• His book, The Mind Club: Who Thinks, What Feels and Why it Matters
• People who we perceive as having a mind similar to ours
• The uncertainty about the minds of others
• The two fundamentally different factors in how we see minds
• Agency: the capacity to act and to do
• Experience: the capacity to feel and to sense
• The moral responsibility connected to these two things
• Thinking doers
• Vulnerable feelers
• Didactic completion
• The objectification of women
• That child abuse often occurs with parents who view their children as having a higher agency than they are capable of having
• The danger of inferring intention
• Moral typecasting
• That we treat our heroes poorly
• The Just World theory
• How we rationalize our behavior
• That we give more sympathy to people who are at a greater distance from us
• The poorer you are, the more likely you are to believe in God
• Seeking control as a motivation
• How to increase self-control
• The implementation intention study
• The when and the then and how it takes away self-control entirely
• What the self is from the perspective of his work
• The analogy of particle board for the self
• The way people respond morally is the most essential to our perception of who they are (vs physical traits)
• That we perceive the world rather than understand it directly

 

 

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