Appreciate the Small Things in Life

The news seems to get crazier and people are getting more polarized. How is a person supposed to find solace and meaning in life? Perhaps the best way is to learn to appreciate the small things.  https://neurosciencenews.com/meaning-life-small-things-21063/   Transcript: you're listening to psych with mike for more episodes or to connect with the show with comments ideas or to be a 0:06 guest go to www.cyclicmike.com follow the show on twitter at psych with 0:13 mike or like the facebook page at psych with mike now here's psych with mike 0:19 [Music] welcome into the psych with mike library this is dr michael mahon and i'm here 0:25 with mr brett newcomb hello it's really hot and it's well there are 0:31 issues of concern around something called climate change and drought climate change is a pigment of your 0:37 imagination that's what some people say with sweat rolling down their face yeah 0:44 yeah and no water in the pipe yeah and i guess uh uh we should clarify or or at least set 0:50 the the the frame of reference it's the end of july 0:55 in st louis missouri and it is it's just oppressively oppressively hot i heard 1:02 you supposed to get to 104 today 104 today i that i heard on the radio this 1:08 morning that there was a uh 1:13 that the the the mercury reached 115 in oklahoma yesterday wow 1:19 yeah so my sound quality just changed did you turn something down i i manipulated 1:25 something because it was really loud in my in my it's just only mattering if you can be heard 1:31 we'll see everybody can be heard one one hopes you know uh i think that 1:37 um you would live longer if you could reduce your 1:43 level of anxiety and one way to do that would be to learn how to appreciate small things like oh well i'm not this 1:50 is amazing i'm not anxious i'm perfectionistic 1:56 is there a difference i'm not sure they are yeah yeah so i i sent you this article on uh 2:03 from neuroscience news yes not psychology today or bride magazine 2:09 well you're reaching more a field for your your intellectual acumen we've had 2:15 articles from neuroscience before i know but i just was recognizing today that you but 2:21 my reluctance to do that is because then you say oh she's got all these 2:26 words and things in it that you can't win yeah yeah that's true i should just change the rules for the conversation i 2:32 should just learn to appreciate that yeah as long as you're not anxious about it yeah yeah you appreciate the small things that 2:39 uh enjoy the moment set in the moment meditate and you but 2:45 the reason that i wanted to uh so this is an article about enjoying 2:50 the moment what's it what's the title of the article searching for meaning try appreciating the small things right 2:57 yeah and my philosophy is that there are no new 3:02 things that everything's a rebranding of something that somebody did before i 3:08 mean obviously maybe if you discuss that's actually been said before yeah nothing new under the sun exactly i read 3:14 that years ago and you talk about this all the time that that people come up with new theories or come up with words 3:20 they just rebrand old theories yeah and put them back in the mixer come out with something else i remember when 3:29 back in 2008 2009 2010 when we were still at webster and 3:36 the concept of mindfulness was huge in the zeitgeist of the psychological 3:43 community and all of our students would come in and talk about oh i'm going to be a mindfulness counselor 3:49 that's what i'm and and i would say what do you use the word zeitgeist yeah when i was young it was uh the term was 3:56 velchong world view mm-hmm yeah 4:01 same stuff yeah same point so they're going to be mindful counselors and you said what are you going to be mindful ah 4:07 yeah and i would say what does that mean and it was 4:12 if you ask 10 different people what it means to be mindful you're going to get 10 different answers we will all emote 4:17 and obfuscate because there really isn't a definition of that i mean we all think 4:24 we know what that means but there's not an official psychological definition 4:29 well and even if there were people wouldn't adhere to it rigorously right 4:35 yeah it's because it's all smoking mirrors well i don't know about that 4:41 actually yes you you you have said that for so okay so explain what you mean by that 4:47 um it's not a hard science it's not replicable you can't do an experiment 4:53 with measurable ingredients and then have someone on the other side of the world with similar training and equipment replicate the experiment get 5:00 same results so it's a fluid medium it's a dance of relationship and understanding of 5:05 connectivity where people who are struggling in their lives with with 5:12 pain or distress of one kind or another frequently referred to you by someone else like the 5:18 wife says if you don't go to counseling we're going to get a divorce or the judge says if you don't go to counseling 5:24 you're going to have a longer prison sentence or the employer says if you don't go to counseling you're not going 5:29 to have a job be employed so you get people to come in and say my life is really 5:35 i'm unhappy and i'm angry if they'll say that they'll frequently make a joke if 5:41 they're men and say i don't know why i'm here but my boss or wife told me i need to be here i don't really agree 5:47 and then you start trying to have conversations with them and you have to do all the posturing of who's in charge 5:54 whose is the biggest who has the most authoritative interpretation of reality uh and who's 6:00 going to win the competition so my original question was i'm sorry 6:06 did i lose the thread how is well no you you created a tapestry ah there we go uh 6:12 my original question was how is this what we're talking about learning to appreciate the small stuff 6:17 different from mindfulness but now i'm interested in exploring this idea of 6:26 then what really is therapy so you're saying that that it's smoking mirrors in that it's 6:33 about the quality of the relationship so does that mean that you don't think that 6:40 it really matters what the therapist says well i think it matters exponentially i 6:45 i just don't think that i have a defined answer it's not like you bring it to me and say how much does this cost and i 6:51 say oh it's 32 dollars and 12 cents or how much does this weigh and i sell it 18 ounces 6:57 it's not it doesn't work that way it is an interactive experiential medium 7:04 where we spend time together and i try to facilitate a conversation 7:10 that you have with yourself with me being a reflector and a repository so i listen to what you say 7:17 and i reflect it back to you and if i do that accurately it's like holding a mirror up and what i try to 7:24 surround the mirror with is a zone of safety so that you're not feeling attacked or 7:30 criticized or threatened by what you see in the mirror you're able to express it 7:35 reflect on it reflect back on it and then we can discuss if you wanted to 7:41 see a different vision what would that look like and how could you implement it 7:47 and if you do that then you can make different choices in your life that hopefully will alleviate 7:54 or remediate the pain that's existing so when i would talk to students they would 8:00 say oh i'm going to be a mindfulness counselor i'd say what does that mean and they would oftentimes 8:06 say to me things that are in this article i'm going to ask people to you know slow down to deep breathe maybe 8:13 meditate pay attention to the trees listen to the birds and that may actually be 8:19 good advice but if you are delivering that advice to a really anxious person 8:26 who doesn't see the ability to slow down and look at the trees and listen to the 8:32 birds that messages is is useless isn't it yeah it is it 8:38 reminds me of the opening song of the music band where all the traveling salesmen on the train are 8:45 confed fabulating about professor harold hill being so successful selling boys bands 8:51 around the midwest and especially in iowa and their constant reiteration or complaint 8:58 is he doesn't know the territory meaning he doesn't follow the rules he doesn't do it the way he's supposed to he doesn't do it the way we do it 9:05 he manages though to make an incredible living and impact and influence lives 9:10 doing what he does he just doesn't do what they do what they want him to do and the outlier then is always 9:17 criticized by the mainstream because he's not walking in the middle of the road that they want him to walk 9:23 in and that they are convinced is the right road so they society puts pressure on you to 9:29 stay in the middle of the road and so then you inculcate that pressure 9:35 with an impact on your self-image your sense of 9:40 what do i need to accomplish what's a positive win for me how can i avoid losing 9:47 how will i know when i've what what how will i know when i'm satisfied happy are you happy 9:54 i don't know i don't have this or that or the other and so this approach the 10:00 neurology news approach article is saying that there is value 10:06 and potentially progress in learning to slow down the mental script that's echoing in your head 10:13 that's been imposed on you by your culture your family your religion 10:18 your boss your corporate messaging 10:23 and just experience something so you just hit on a on a point that i 10:28 think is salient but is really the heart of the issue which is 10:33 you know to slow down the mental processing 10:39 to me that's more what mindfulness to the extent that meditation is an 10:46 allegory for mindfulness that's really what is the the the 10:51 therapeutically effective part i think so uh but it's like my wife and i were 10:58 commenting the other day in conversation we're both retired and people will ask us well what do you 11:03 do now that you're retired and i give some smart ass comment i'll say like i don't do i be 11:11 and they don't understand what that means and so they they think i'm being a smart aleck which of course i am 11:18 but what we are astonished by my wife and i 11:23 is we pretty much do whatever we want to do although she will put me in the trick 11:28 box on a regular basis because she'll turn up me and say what do you want to do today and i don't have a road map for today 11:35 sometimes i do oh i want to go to the botanical gardens or i want to go to the art museum or i'm going to go to the movie or what have you but oftentimes i 11:42 don't i don't have a map for today i just want to be here and do whatever comes to mind so then what is your 11:48 response i don't have a map for today i just want to be here and do whatever comes to mind do you have something you want to do 11:53 i'll consider that and sometimes she does because sometimes it's a lead-in like when where do you want to go for dinner any kind of question uh but 12:00 sometimes no neither of us have anything to do we'll just sit here and stare at him so then if if 12:06 are you okay with your wife's name yeah absolutely i love her no no but i mean if i say that yeah so if if you and 12:13 phyllis are having a conversation and she says what do you want to do today and you say i don't have a road map and 12:20 did you have something and she says no is she okay with that answer or does that answer 12:26 make either her or you feel like oh now i'm anxious now i need to find because i 12:31 think that that's a lot of times what we we go out and we try and find things to do because we think we're supposed to be 12:36 doing something yeah well she's more that way than i am she she still hears voices in her head about you need to be 12:43 doing something yeah at the end of the day she'll think back and say did i do anything today and or did i was i just a slug 12:51 and she gets herself worked up about that much more than i do i don't i'm not that 12:57 self-aware or self-reflective that at the end of the day i add all the pluses and minuses to give it a point value i 13:04 think the old white protestant message is 13:09 you must be productive you must be doing something yes that is the message and it's a cultural imperative it was for 13:15 men of our generation but what i've found is now that i'm off the treadmill now that i'm not uh a wage slave or 13:23 don't work for someone or for something i don't have the same yardstick to 13:29 measure progress so this article is suggesting that there is 13:35 benefit to just being but being aware that you are being but that's the the 13:41 we've done shows on the difference between doing and being right and we both agree that 13:48 being is superior a way of if you can it's hard that's a challenge i think 13:55 that the that you know white anglo-saxon protestant messaging is what gets in the 14:00 way of that because people have that is you your word inculcated into them 14:05 and and how do you stop hearing that message so that you can 14:11 just sit and be um for me 14:17 it's a i think it's a reflection of my stubbornness and my oppositionality i have always been oppositional i don't 14:24 like authority i don't like rules that limit or constrain me 14:30 in in service of someone else's agenda 14:37 i'm willing to be self-disciplined if i set an agenda for myself i will limit or constrain myself to try to reach that 14:43 goal but if someone imposes one on me you've got to increase your sales output 14:48 by 32 this month it will fire you i don't like i don't respond well to that 14:53 okay let's run to our break and when we come back we'll pick this up all right 14:59 hey guys dr michael mahan here from cyclic mike and do you think that you 15:05 have a story to tell i know that when we started cyclic mic 15:11 the things that we really wanted in a podcast hosting 15:16 company was that they knew what they were doing and libsyn has been around since the 15:22 very beginning they're the oldest running consecutive still existing podcast hosting company in the entire 15:29 world i think but certainly in the united states so they've been around since people started uploading things to 15:37 the internet and so they have a lot of experience but we also needed a service 15:43 that was easy to use and libsyn is just so intuitive and even 15:49 though they've got all of this experience they just keep on upgrading so they just recently went through a 15:56 major renovation a major upgrade to libsyn5 and made the service even more 16:02 intuitive and user friendly than it was before and it was so user-friendly before that i was able to figure it out 16:10 and get site with mike up on the surface so we've been using uh libsyn since the very beginning of 16:16 psych with mike for over two years now we love them and as a friend of the show 16:23 if you go to libsyn and start a podcast right now you get your first month free 16:29 so you go to libsyn.com and use the code 16:34 n f-r-i-e-n-d so friend of the show friend that's l i b 16:40 s y n dot com and use the code f r i e n 16:46 d and you get your first month free and as always if it's friday it's cycling 16:52 okay we're back and so all right so i hear you saying that that you can be oppositional and so someone says this is 16:59 the message or this is the expectation you will try and bristle against that so does that 17:04 well i will try to find a way to do it but differently from how you told me to okay just to prove to you that i was 17:10 smarter than you were and i could but then how do you at the end when you get to retirement how do you 17:17 exist mental adjustment it's a significant one yeah and it doesn't happen overnight and 17:23 as a counselor i worked with a lot of men who reached retirement age or families where the men reached retirement age and men would retire and 17:30 they would say well i sold my company or i've taken my buy out and now i'm gonna play golf every day 17:36 and so they play golf every day for six months and then they come in saying i'm going crazy right uh 17:42 i need to find something to do i need to to measure myself against another hill to climb i remember one man telling 17:49 me i need the force of a wind to lean against something that will push me 17:56 so i can overcome so it it's still part of his internalized script that he needs to be a go-getter 18:02 and conquering mountains right uh and so we had conversations but what if 18:07 you you don't find that what if there's not something to lean against and he's a 18:12 pretty smart guy and his response was his life will give you one mm-hmm you know his wife got sick or you'll create 18:19 one same difference yeah um but he had to find it wasn't what he expected to find 18:25 to lean against but he had to find a way to survive that particular set of obstacles 18:30 so when i hear all of that yeah that you're talking about and and 18:36 you know when i've done therapy and come up against this where people are struggling to hear that message you 18:42 know appreciate the small things see the trees hear the birds to me especially when you're talking 18:49 about retirement what that comes down to is a 18:54 lack of identity so the the protestant message says you'll be a good person 19:02 you'll have an identity if you are working towards these productive goals 19:07 when you're talking about mindfulness and appreciating the small things and slowing that 19:13 mental kind of of rush of thought down 19:18 what i see is that people then are forced to 19:25 be more aware maybe not even consciously but intuitively of this 19:30 question of identity and they don't have an answer for that and that's what they struggle against and so for me i want to 19:38 try and help people to establish an answer to those existential questions 19:44 i think that that has to be a part of learning how to slow down 19:49 i think there's significant value in having the conversations but i think you have to frame it in your own mind not 19:55 necessarily in the client's mind in terms of trying to identify the 20:00 cultural messaging that creates the world view of your client whether it's a religious one you know i 20:08 think a cotton mather a famous puritan preacher in the 1700s 1600s 20:14 gave a speech called sinners in the hands of a sermon centers in the hands of an angry god 20:21 the theory was that it wasn't a matter of grace if you got 20:26 to heaven it was a matter of earning brownie points with god so if you behaved 20:32 in a set of strictures uh that were defined by what would get you to heaven 20:38 meaning not sin and these ways this is one this is one that's one those are three 20:44 don't do those then you can go to heaven when you die and the whole philosophy of life was that this life was to be one of 20:52 uh woe and conflict through which you navigated to get to a place where you could get off and be in 20:58 a joyful state for eternity um so if that's the messaging that you 21:04 received from childhood and from the surrounding culture it's going to be internalized in your 21:09 head and if it's not working for you as a message you find out that you're inherently 21:15 sinful and they say oh that's satan talking to you you know be alarmed alarm 21:20 what if little pleasures are not sinful what if little pleasures are okay what if 21:26 sitting on the mountaintop watching the birds fly beneath you and seeing the valley out in front of you 21:31 is a pleasurable thing for you but you're not 21:36 productively digging in the coal mine so as a therapist 21:43 my job is to say well what if right and so then okay so i'm going to be the client yeah and you just said to me what 21:50 if what is sitting on the mountain top watching the birds below you and the the clouds and all 21:56 is pleasurable and then i say well then my family won't eat because i'm not working in the coal mine 22:02 possibly but what if your family then had to get their own food 22:07 could they have you raised have you raised your children to be able to support themselves right 22:12 and so when do you let go of that right i think the not in this lifetime right yeah i think 22:18 that's the the expectation of most people and certainly the majority of 22:23 males so what happens then when you become physically disabled and you're not physically able to go to work and 22:28 bring home the bacon right you had better take out disability insurance to make sure that you can cover your wages 22:35 for the rest of your life i mean that's what that's what the protestant message why not just go rob a bank 22:42 because that would have a lot of other consequences associated with it that you might not 22:48 want to negative consequences negative costs for the choice behavior right if the choice behavior you have is i'm 22:54 going to sell drugs on the side right or i'm going to rob a bank you might make good money 23:00 but if you do there are going to be consequences that society will impose right are you willing to accept those 23:06 well no i don't want that to happen to me well then you need to consider are there other alternatives for what to do 23:14 i don't like my job i don't like doing physical labor i don't want to be a physical laborer all my life i don't want to wear a shirt that says dave on 23:21 it and work for minimum wage well 23:27 what other choices could you make right to impact that outcome right but 23:32 you know i think that when we're talking to people about this idea of slow down 23:37 you know you don't have to be so driven then i think that what for a lot of 23:42 people where the uphill swim is or the the upstream swim is 23:50 that okay even if i choose this for me yeah then what about my wife what about my 23:56 kids what if they what if i can't make as much money and now we can't go on as many vacations right so uh 24:06 i am 75 years old i grew up and was functionally productive in an era where 24:11 there was a world view about making a commitment to a job showing up for work every day my 24:19 some of my clients came from similar backgrounds and i remember having a number of 24:24 conversations of frustration about the younger group today 24:30 aren't driven by the same messaging and so they're willing to take a job on the assembly line at 24:36 chrysler but they'll call in two days a week and say they're going fishing because they want to go fishing more 24:41 than they want to come to work but i worked that job and i worked overtime 24:47 in double time and saturday time to make money to get to a significant place of financial stability 24:54 and i was very successful i managed to do that but these kids are not doing that and yet they want the new pickup 25:00 truck and they want the big house and they want it all right now well how are they going to get it all 25:05 right now well some of it is going to come from me you know i don't have to pay for my kids truck well 25:11 i remember one of the most devastating life lessons is that i learned early i 25:16 learned sitting next to a friend who experienced it i was able to observationally encounter it and he had 25:23 bought a college mate of mine we were working together in the student center and he 25:28 had bought a brand new mustang convertible and his father told him don't buy that 25:33 you can't afford it you have these other things that you have to pay for like college 25:39 and he said i can do it i can do it right now i've got this job i can make this money summer summer off 25:45 so he came summer ended he lost his job and then now we're working at the student center for three bucks an hour 25:51 right and he can't make his payments so he goes to his dad and says can you pick up the payments on my car instead 25:56 said no he said but but then they'll repossess my card which i told you that's the cost of the choice you made 26:02 so he lost his down payment he lost his licensure fee lost his insurance fee he lost his car 26:08 and still had to pay off the note yeah so he didn't have a car and he still owed the bill right so he was devastated yeah it was it was his dad's fault right 26:15 my dad's a cheap sob he wouldn't pay for the garden he could afford to sure so he wants me to suffer 26:22 but i know that guy now 50 years later and he still has that car i mean bought 26:28 years later he bought that car back but he still has it and he drives a 15 year old car as his everyday car he 26:35 doesn't go spend money willy-nilly he doesn't buy things that he can't pay cash for he learned a lesson in college that hurt 26:42 significantly yeah but it changed his world and and this is obviously going down a different tangent thing yeah 26:48 sorry sweating the small stuff no no but but you make such a great point that's such a hard 26:55 thing to do in therapy is to talk to parents about setting boundaries for 27:00 their adolescent children and then consistently enforcing them i think that that's a lost art i don't think that 27:06 people do that very much anymore how many conversations do we have with parents that came in because they had adolescent 27:12 boys were acting out and they couldn't find any way to have consequences that worked right i'm 27:18 telling me he has to stay home he doesn't stay home he sneaks out and then what and he steals my car uh he goes out 27:24 with his buddies well you have to you have to find what does he value well he values soccer 27:30 well don't let him play soccer oh no the team counts on that yeah he's the best player on the team 27:36 and the coach and the team will be upset we can't take that away right you know right so your suggestion is 27:42 well let the team put pressure on him to behave my you know my remembrance of the early days in the 27:50 group practice was that cell phones were just starting to think yeah and i 27:56 remember that in the early days of our the group practice one of the things 28:02 that we struggled with was as a group coming up with a philosophy for what we 28:07 were going to say to parents about what was the age to give your child a cell phone and then 28:13 once they started to become more and more ubiquitous i would have conversations with parents all the time 28:19 and and one of the things that i would say is you know you can take away that cell phone and be like well no we can't 28:25 because then we won't be able to get a hold of him and i'd say to the parent how often does he answer the phone when 28:31 you call him they're like well never i'm like well then you can't get a hold of him now but they still 28:37 couldn't pull the trigger on taking the phone away and i can't take the car away from my kid as a consequence of bad 28:43 behavior because i need him to drive his sister's right well what if you had a rule that he 28:49 couldn't drive it for his own personal reasons he could only drive it for the reasons that you wanted right oh we can't do that right well why can't you 28:55 do that well because it won't work so as long as they put themselves in that box of i can't do that i can't do 29:00 this i can't do that nothing changes exactly and so then what are you so then you say 29:06 well learn to appreciate the small things yeah you know your garage is empty right now you could 29:11 clean it up or you just sit in it and say wow it's a nice garage you could do that you could do that yeah 29:18 yeah and then they left and you said that's really stupid and he said well you're the one that's tied to not right 29:23 can you untie it exactly yeah and so and then what am i paying you for well i 29:29 don't know i don't know what are you paying me for exactly uh so what 29:34 i've learned from this conversation is that what it all comes down to 29:41 is every human being is involved in a series of 29:47 psychological gymnastics that they are conducting within their own mind 29:53 and what we're trying to do is to help them learn some new moves you got to 29:58 walk that lonesome valley yeah you got to walk it by yourself nobody else can walk it for you and anybody who can't 30:06 take away their child's cell phone is going to have the same problem when we talk about learn to slow down and see 30:14 the trees and hear the birds until the individual is ready to hear that 30:20 message and which will happen when they can't hear any other message yeah as 30:26 long as they can still hear the siren call they're going to try to respond it that's their preference right and i've 30:32 said that forever about people who abuse substances that a person's going to abuse substances until the consequences 30:40 for doing that is no longer acceptable to them not to the boss not to the wife not to 30:46 the police officer and that's really the the secret of psychotherapy 30:52 it's all about trying except there's a there's no corollary that i agree with you but the coral area is that they have 30:58 to have a glimpse of an alternative way forward no that's what i was going to say and that's what psychotherapy is is 31:05 trying to give them an opportunity to see a different candle 31:10 in the darkness and can you choose to walk towards this candle rather than 31:16 staying in within the the boundaries of the light that the candle you're with is casting and for a lot of people that's 31:24 scary because there's a period of time where you're walking in darkness between the two 31:30 glows of light and i think that's hard for people but to me that's what psychotherapy is is holding that 31:36 person's hand while they're walking through that darkness and hopefully they can find that other 31:42 candle sometimes people don't yes but because you also creature 31:48 your acculturation you have to be leery of not taking on responsibility for the 31:54 outcome if you're the therapist you have to provide the options you have to provide the safe holding environment 31:59 you have to provide the reflective listening but you can't provide the solution right and it's so damn tempting 32:05 to do and what you can't do quit your job stop drinking get a divorce kick your kid out 32:13 those are not answers that you can provide that solve a problem 32:18 and you can't take responsibility for the client not being able to take positive action in their lives that's 32:25 not the therapist's responsibility i mean can you imagine how narcissistic that 32:30 you have to be to be able to think oh but i should be able to change this 32:36 person's behavior well i just had to think of some of the bosses i had yeah yeah 32:42 is that a shot i mean not at me well you're never my boss no yeah no okay i 32:48 think it's time to close this all right hopefully that was beneficial for people as always if you would like to get a 32:54 hold of us at psych with mike you can get us through psych with mike.com the music that appears in psych with mike is 32:59 written and performed by mr benjamin the clue and we always love it if you want to do us a solid go on the youtubes and 33:07 find psych with mike and subscribe to the show there and as always if 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