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Passion Struck with John R. Miles
How to Manage Energy Not Time: Dr. Diana Hill on Wise Effort | EP 758
00:56:45
What if the problem isn’t time management, but how you manage your energy?In this episode of Passion Struck, I sit down with psychologist Diana Hill to explore why energy management often matters more than time management—and how psychological...
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- [00:00]
John Miles
Coming up next on Passion Struck, some
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Dr. Diana Hill
of these methods that we think were just one size fits all, like mindfulness is good for everyone. It is not. Mindfulness is not beneficial for some people, self compassion. For a subgroup of people, self compassion is not beneficial. I wrote a whole book on it. I'm like, this hurts. But we actually really need to look at folks more at the individual level. And so a lot of those older studies were just like big averages with population sample populations that were, as we know, like male white graduate, male white college students. So that's not who I am. So I, I don't necessarily want to apply that to me. So yeah, science is changing for sure.
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John Miles
Welcome to Passion Struck. I'm your host, John Miles. This is the show where we explore the art of human flourishing and what it truly means to live like it matters. Each week I sit down with change makers, creators, scientists and everyday heroes to decode the human experience and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning, heal what hurts, and pursue the fullest expression of who we're capable of becoming. Whether you're designing your future, developing as a leader, or seeking deeper alignment in your life, this show is your invitation to grow with purpose and act with intention. Because the secret to a life of deep purpose, connection and impact is choosing to live like you matter. Welcome back, friends, to episode 758 of Passion Struck. I am so glad you're here. Whether this is your first episode or your 50th, I want to thank you for being part of this global community of people who are committed to living intentionally, leading with purpose, and creating a
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Interviewer/Host
world where every person feels like they matter.
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John Miles
If this show has ever inspired you or helped you to take one meaningful step forward, the best way to support it is simple. First, share this episode with a friend or family member who will find it valuable. Second, leave a five star rating or review on Apple or Spotify. It helps new listeners discover these powerful conversations. Throughout the month of April, we have been exploring our new series Purpose by Design. We started with Arthur Brooks, exploring the growing crisis of meaning. Then last week with Kayla Shaheen, we turned inward, understanding how to do the inner light work that shapes how we think, feel and act. Earlier this week, on Tuesday, I sat down with Nobel laureate Alvin Roth and we zoomed out, looking at how systems, incentives and norms influenced the choices we make every day. Today we bring all these threads together because whether it's your inner world or the systems around you, your life is shaped by one thing where you direct your energy and that's Why I wanted to bring Dr. Diana Hill onto the show because so many of us, especially high achievers, leaders and creators, are exhausted. Because our effort isn't always aligned with wisdom, we're using our genius energy in ways that drain rather than direct us. Diana is one of the world's leading experts in acceptance and commitment therapy. Her new book, Wise how to focus your genius energy on what matters most, combines science, contemplative wisdom, and her own powerful personal journey to help us understand how to use energy with intention. In this conversation, we'll unpack how your greatest strengths can also become your biggest traps, the three psychological forces that lure us into unwise effort, why opening up to your emotions is often the key to focus, and how to use your energy in a way that feels deeply
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Interviewer/Host
aligned with your purpose.
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John Miles
If purpose is something you designed, then how you use your energy is one
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Interviewer/Host
of your most important design choices.
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John Miles
Now let's get into my conversation with Diana Hill. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life that matters. Now let that journey begin.
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Interviewer/Host
I am absolutely thrilled today to welcome Diana Hill to Passion Struck. Welcome, Diana.
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John Miles
How are you today?
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Dr. Diana Hill
I'm great. I'm happy to be here.
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Interviewer/Host
I want to thank our mutual friend Jordan Feingold for introducing us. I love Jordan and her work with Scott Berry Kaufman on Choose Growth. So thank you.
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John Miles
Jordan, how did you and Jordan come
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Interviewer/Host
to know each other?
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Dr. Diana Hill
Oh, I interviewed Jordan a number, I think, right when her book came out a couple of years ago and we just hit it off or simpatico. I think that both being women that are interested in science, that are interested in psychology, this intersection between taking good science to people in practical ways and I just really liked her as a human. And I also find that so many of my professional relationships come from now this sort of intersection of similar values. And then we become friends and professionals at the same time, which is really rewarding and we help each other out.
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Interviewer/Host
It definitely does. And I know you have a podcast as well, and I think that is one of the biggest blessings of doing this podcasting is interacting with people in that way and developing new business relationships and friendships. So I couldn't agree with you more. I'd love to start out my interviews with this question. We all have moments that define us. I know I've had so many in my life. What's a defining moment for you that shaped who you are today?
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Dr. Diana Hill
I call them. I love. The astronaut I think is Edgar Mitchell that took that Apollo 14 trip and then he was looking down at the earth and I saw the earth in a whole new way. And he described it as a noetic experience from the Greek word noises, which means a new experience. You shift your perspective. Right. And I've had many of these noetic experiences in my life. But probably the biggest one that comes to mind when you ask that question is when I was in graduate school, I went to University of Colorado at Boulder. I was in a clinical psychology program which is really hard to get into. It's 1% of the population get into. These programs worked hard to get there. I had recovered from an eating disorder. I was running randomized controlled trials on bulimia and I was sick. I was throwing up on the second floor while I'm running the trials on the first floor and the wake up call. I was driving home one day from the lab and I looked in the rear view mirror and I saw these bags under my eyes, the, the salivary glands that were swollen. And when I looked in the mirror I saw my own client, except for was me. It was one of those, oh my gosh, there is no difference here between me and the people serving. And it led me to actually withdraw from my graduate school and I went to a yoga ashram. I thought I was going to be a yoga teacher, but that lasted not very long. What I ended up doing is saying I need to do this differently, I need to go back, but I need to go back in a more authentic way and I need to start actually researching and applying what at that time was really new, which was a mindfulness based, acceptance based type of intervention. I went and studied with Deborah Safer at Stanford and came back and started applying some of these newer acceptance and mindfulness based models to eat disorders. It was a full shift that, that I could be more of myself, take care of myself while also serving other people. So that's probably one of the most impactful experiences, noetic experiences of my life.
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Interviewer/Host
I have a few comments I wanted to make about that. Well, first, for sharing that and being vulnerable with your story. I do always think that we are best positioned to serve the person we once were. I love how you brought that up. It's how I got to do what I'm doing as well today. But when I was given the people I was supposed to help, I certainly didn't see myself in them at first because it's really painful. But over time realized exactly who I was supposed to help. Second thing is one of my best friends is a former astronaut. He was the chief astronaut. And Chris Cassidy. And I remember him telling me this story where he was in the iss looking down, and he was sitting there looking at traffic or looking at New York City, imagining people in traffic and how upset they would be, and realizing in that moment that what we think of in the micro environments that we're in is so meaningless when you're looking at the vast universe around you. And it changed his whole perspective that he is a citizen of Earth and he needs to do things to make Earth a better place, which has informed the rest of his life. And then lastly, I just have to say, we took my son to look at the University of Colorado, and I'm not sure if that student center was there that has all their athletics in it, but. Oh, my word, is that a beautiful view. You're looking out from the basketball courts and in the background is mountains. It's absolutely gorgeous.
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Dr. Diana Hill
Yeah, well, I actually, when I chose to go to University of Colorado, I was actually deciding between there and Yale, and I went to Yale and it was like all these tall buildings. I went during winter. It was cold and austere. And I, Even at that time, I knew that wouldn't be a good place for me. But you can even be in the mountains and still struggle. Right. So it's a. Sometimes it's the needing the big picture outer experience of looking down at the Earth or looking at the traffic and having that shift. And sometimes it's the inner experience of looking at your inner world and getting honest with yourself. And that's what that experience offered to me. Dacher Keltner, he has this. He has all the work in awe. And as you were talking about your friend who's an astronaut, there was this one study where he had people go outside and look up at a eucalyptus tree for one minute versus look at a building for one minute. And those who looked up at the eucalyptus tree and then a researcher came by and accidentally spilled their pension, they were more likely to help the researcher pick up the pens. Right. So there is something about connecting to that vastness, to that. That what I call wiser self with a capital S self, that can really help shift our behavior in almost effortless ways. And we're just moved to live differently and behave differently. And I'm really interested in that for my clients as well as myself and my family.
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Interviewer/Host
I'm so glad you brought up Dacher. I have not mentioned his name in a while. I love Dacker's work. And I remember we were having this conversation about awe. And he kind of terms that the times we see it the most are when we experience moral beauty. And one thing that he told me really still sticks with me. And he was doing work at the time at Sam Quinton, and he was telling me that at a place where you would think you would experience the least amount of awe, some of these inmates experienced it more than others because he was dealing with a lot of people who were on death grow. And when they had the opportunity to even get a small bit of time outside, they appreciated the moral beauty that they were experiencing so, so much more because it was such a limited thing for them. But also he saw how much so many of them felt forgiveness for what they had done. So I'm glad you brought him up, because I love his work.
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Dr. Diana Hill
I think sometimes when we expand our time or we contract our time can have a big impact on our perception of our experience. So if you actually contract your time sometimes, I'll do this exercise. It's actually a great journaling exercise that your listeners could do. I do it when I train therapists, and I have them write down classic A year to live. If you had a year to live, what would you do with your year? But then I take it a little further where I say, if you have a year to live, okay, no, wait, no, you have a month to live. What would you do with your month? Now you only have a day to live. What would you do with your day? How would you wake up? What would you eat for breakfast? Who would you want to see? How would you want to dress? Right? Who would you want to call? What places would you want to visit? And then I say, okay, now wait a minute. You don't have a day anymore. You just have a minute to live. What would you do with your minute? And then at the end of the exercise, I encourage people to go out and do that minute. And it's interesting what people say. They'll be like, I'd call this person. I would just put my hands on my heart and I'd breathe. Or in that minute, I would just say, thank you. And it tells you a lot about what your values are. When you start to contract time like that, you can also expand time like we had all the time in the world today. What would you want to do with your day? Because we also know there's this paradox where when people feel rushed and they feel like they have less time time, they end up doing less meaningful things. There's this. This sort of paradoxical cognitive distortion that happens where we start to do things that feel, quote, important, but we do those it's called the urgency effect. We do things that feel urgent, but we don't really do the things that are most important and meaningful to us when we feel like we don't have enough time. So those are fun exercises just to play with. And acceptance, commitment, therapy. I do a lot of that kind of mind shifting stuff. So you can get more to the heart of like what is it that's truly important to you, how do you want to use your time? And how could you take a different view on things and maybe your automatic view of seeing yourself in your life.
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Interviewer/Host
That really made me think of a few things. One is that our perception is something that we don't think about enough. And oftentimes we look at it as either or so black or white and we don't lean into enough of both. And type of thinking is something that registered when you were saying that. And I think another thing that really keyed me in on what you were saying is a number of years ago I had a life or death type of situation. And I'm going to tie this into your new book which. And that was I was whitewater rafting, I was on the front of the raft and we hit this really hard rapid and I got thrown from the raft that we were on and got trapped underneath the raft. And when I was down there, I was originally in this panic mode until I really started focusing on my breathing and what I needed to do to get out of the situation. And in your new book, wise Effort, subtitled how to focus your genius energy on what matters most. Your forward has an eerily similar situation with a mutual friend of ours. Rick Hansen, who also a little bit younger than me, had a similar death defying moment. But I think that moment really sets up the core essence of your book. And I was hoping you might be able to talk about Rick that story and maybe introduce the book with it.
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Dr. Diana Hill
In the foreword, Rick talks about getting entangled in a kelp bed and the struggle against the kelp and his entanglement that almost leads him to drown, which is very similar to you. And these are physical experiences, right? But we could also apply that to psychological experiences. We feel entangled in a fight with somebody estranged from a family member or someone at work that's really difficult to be with. We get entangled in our addictions, we get entangled in our depression and our negative self critic. We get entangled in procrastination, like just name your poison, right? Whatever thing you are entangled in. And the way in which we try and get out there's three unwise efforts that we can engage in that could lead us to drown, that could make things worse, right? So if you can imagine this, you're entangled in kelp, or you're under a kayak or whatever, or you're in a marriage that is like not working so well. The first unwise effort is we get stuck in a story. So our mind is often not helpful in these situations. Our mind says things like, oh, no, I'm going to drown, I'm never going to get out of this. Or if it's a go back to the difficult marriage, it's their fault, they'll never change, or I'm right, all the things that our mind says, or this is going to destroy us, we just go to this story making mind that often makes things worse. So that's the first thing. The second thing that could cause you to drown in your marriage or your work problem or your procrastination or the kelp is that we avoid discomfort. And the way I have two surfers, sons, and my son, that's a surfer, he talks about when he gets tongue bowled by a wave, what you actually need to do is you need to just like completely let go and go down and let the water pull you back up to the top. And what we end up doing is we avoid discomfort by thrashing about. I don't want to feel this, I don't want to think this. And that can cause a lot of secondary problems. And then the third way that we can drown ourselves is by holding on too tight, trying too hard, not again, not letting go. And so that's all the practice of unwise effort. But wise effort is the practice of letting go of the story and letting in a wiser self, which could be the bigger, vast, expansive self of the ocean. The practice of knowing what your values are and pointing your energy there and really opening up to the process. And that will free you. It won't drown you. So that's the wise versus unwise effort metaphor, I guess, with the kelp.
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Interviewer/Host
Well, I love the simplicity of the name because the wise ties into wisdom and effort to me, ties into energy and how we use our energy. So wisdom and energy combined. Really cool underlying aspect to the book. Well, I moved to Tampa from Austin, Texas, and when I lived in Austin, we had this really incredible view behind our house. And so we decided to put in this huge picture window so that it was the main thing that we looked out at from the kitchen. And it had an unfortunate side effect to it, and that is birds would see it and think that they could fly through it. And so we suddenly had birds hitting this window, unfortunately, but they wouldn't hit it just once. They kept repeating that. And I bring this up because in your introduction to the book, you tell a similar story of how you live on the coast, on the west coast, and you leave your door open. Sometimes birds get stuck in your house, and maybe I'll let you take it from there.
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Dr. Diana Hill
Yes. What is it about a beautiful big kitchen window? I wish that for everyone. It's just great to have. And then the birds. So I use that as a metaphor, and I just want to say something about metaphors, because as an ACT therapist, it's actually an intervention and a technique that's very useful because when you use a metaphor, you can talk about something in a way that gives you just a little bit of cognitive distance from it, but then can see it from a different view and can communicate something that's universal. It's using language to get around. Language is what we say in act. And the metaphor is you leave your door open, the bird comes in. And birds do would evolutionarily designed to do, which is go fly up and out if you're stuck. And that's what we humans do, too, is like, if you're stuck in a problem, go at it. Go solve the problem, Go figure it out, right? But what if that problem is an example? Doing homework with my teenage son, and I'm trying to figure it out and trying to, like, get him to work harder, and it's just making things worse. The harder that I try, the more he shuts down what's going on there. So one option is to just keep flying harder at the problem, and that will lead you to hit your head, especially if the problems that aren't really easily solvable, they're ones of the inner world, right? Or relational issues. And then the next thing, edit this. And there's this whole part of this which is like the sunk cost fallacy, which is another cognitive error, which is we think that we've put so much energy into this that we just need to keep going at it. We've put money into it, we put time into it, We've put, like, all of our resources into it. So we just should just keep going at it. And sometimes that is the worst thing to do, right? Because it's destroying you. But then the next thing that we do is maybe this bird gets so sick of hitting its head that just sits on the kitchen floor and gives up. And that's Soligman's Learn Helplessness model of just I have no power to change any of this. And those two options are often ones that I see my clients bouncing back and forth from. Either I need to try harder at it or I need to give up on it. And wise effort is something revolutionarily different than all of that. It is. Hey, have you ever turned a little to the right or maybe looked behind you 180 or a little to your left and is there another door that's open that you haven't tried? And you do not have to give up flying? It's one of my pet peeves is for people to say just don't care so much or just don't work so hard. I'm like, I am a super high achiever. Look, I'm a super high achiever. Not only is that high achieving destructive to me, that high achieving is beneficial to me, but I need to figure out how to channel it in a different way. And so whatever you are flying at, I don't want you to give up who you are. But we need a little bit of variation. You need a little bit of cognitive flexibility to see if there's some other open doors, little bird. And you're going to need to fly. You're going to put some effort into it, but maybe it will feel less effortful when you're not hitting your head against the wall or against the window. So that's the metaphor of the bird caught in the kitchen. And I think most people have seen some kind of window they're flying at in their life. They can think of right now that they're flying harder at or they've given up on. And I would just encourage you to maybe get curious about that pattern and then open up and then refocus your energy, which are the three steps of wise effort that I lay out in the book.
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John Miles
Before we continue, a quick note. If today's conversation is making you reflect on where your energy is going, I want to invite you to go deeper. @theignitedlife.net I'm sharing reflections, tools and frameworks to help you not just understand these ideas, but actually apply them. Because insight alone doesn't change your life. Applied insight does. If you want to start aligning your energy with what truly matters, you can Explore more@theignitedlife.net Now, a quick break for our sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who support the show.
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Dr. Diana Hill
Foreign
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John Miles
you're listening to Passion Struck right here on the Passion Struck Network. Now back to my conversation with Diana Hill.
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Interviewer/Host
Well, I'm gonna Just do an offshoot from Sunk Cost Fallacy. I just interviewed Alex Emis and he and Richard Thaler, the Nobel laureate just rewrote Richard's famous book from 30 years ago. And on this whole Sunk Cost fallacy they review 30 years later is the science still correct? So if you want to learn the answer to that, then tune into that episode with Alex because he goes through
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Dr. Diana Hill
it in detail and they have a new term for it now they're not calling it the sun. I use Sunk Cost Fallacy because that's the common one that we all use. But I actually just did an Instagram post on this the other day because I was so interested in this concept and I'm curious what they had to say about it. But the new term that they're using now is escalation of commitment. So that tendency to persist in an endeavor once resources, time, money, identity, emotion have been invested even when evidence show it's failing. And I am curious how much of that many of these studies they redo them again and they're like, usually the answer is sorta like part of it rings true, but this other part didn't like the marshmallow study that when my kids were little I did all of those developmental studies on them because I was like okay, you're two now we're going to do this one, you're four now we're going to do the marshmallow study where you put the marshmallow in front of the kid and see if they eat it. And that a number of years later they found is that if your kid doesn't eat the marshmallow it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to get higher SAT scores is what the 60s and 70s research showed. But some of it is still rings a little bit true. So usually that's how these studies turn out that we get a little better with our measurements and our most of the time we're using more diverse samples than what we used three decades ago and our statistics are a little bit more sophisticated.
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Interviewer/Host
Well that's at the heart of it. When Thaler originally wrote that book, almost everything was done in the lab or the classroom. And now with the evolution of mega studies, especially what Katie Milkman and Angela Duckworth are doing with their behavior Change for Good initiative, it shows sure is expanding the validity or non validity of many of these theories and biases that came about before. Completely agree with you.
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Dr. Diana Hill
I've been really closely involved with Steve Hayes, working with him behind the scenes on a lot of the process based therapy work. And we're doing both mega studies, but we're also going back to individual studies. What we're really interested in is what's called ideographic measurement, which is the individual, at the individual level, all this normative data, these bell curves, does not map on to the individual. And if you actually look at individual data points, it looks more like a scatter plot than it does a bell curve because we're just looking at averages in those bell curves. So the newer types of clinical therapy approaches that have to do with process based interventions are looking at the big mega models, but then also the very individual models. This person, this client in my room, what is happening for them at the process level, what's happening for them in their relationship to their thoughts and their relationship to their emotions. And some of these methods that we think were just one size fits all, like mindfulness is good for everyone. It is not. Mindfulness is not beneficial for some people, self compassion. For a subgroup of people, self compassion is not beneficial. I wrote a whole book on it. I'm like, this hurts, but we actually really need to look at folks more at the individual level. And so a lot of those older studies were just like big averages with population sample populations that were, as we know, like male white graduate, male white college students. So that's not who I am. So I, I don't necessarily want to apply that to me. So, yeah, science is changing for sure.
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Interviewer/Host
So in the book Diana, you describe genius as our unique life force, something that everyone has, not just the gifted few, but for so many of us, we lose that energy due to distraction or other noise of life that we experience or burnout. What do you recommend to listeners to help them rediscover that energy?
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Dr. Diana Hill
First, folks might just have a reaction to the word genius, so I have to debunk this. Now, I'm not talking about your score on the Stanford Binet Intelligence Test. I just use that term to highlight a collection of strengths that make you and going back to you as an individual. You know, if my grandmother was an incredible painter, I have one of her paintings here in my space. And she taught me how to paint at a really young age. And I remember her taking me out into the garden and picking a strawberry and putting a strawberry on the plate and the number of squeezes of paints that she put on that palette. She put catam in red and then she put burnt sienna, which is this like orangey color. And then she'd even put like a dark ultra marine blue and she'd say, look at that strawberry and can you see what colors are in there? So if you look at yourself, you're like a strawberry. Your unique combination of colors is uniquely you. And then I see those when I see a client in my office. That's what I'm deeply curious about. What are their strengths? And the way that I go about it in the book is to look at these five different categories of quality, quote genius, energy that make you up. And they're all based on science, they're all based on positive psychology and have a lineage of science to them. So one is your interests. When you are in flow, when things you just lose track of time, it's usually because you're engaging in something that is really interesting to you, whatever that is. For me, painting strawberries, I could do that for hours. Right. So what are your interests? What are your character strengths? We know from some of the work around the 24 character strengths, Seligman's character character strengths, that those are really important in terms of your work success, but your life satisfaction success, when you're expressing those, what is your, what are your unique abilities and talents? What comes easily to you? What is your personality pattern and also what is your emotional intelligence? So those together like the colors of your strawberry and when you engage them, you will feel more energized in your life. You can spot it in other people. So you can think about a good friend, what your good friend's genius is. You can think about different, the eucalyptus tree or the oak tree, they have different geniuses to them. Very different. Right. And what I have found in my work with clients is that oftentimes we go straight to the solving of the problem, but we don't see the strengths that are there. And we know I do a lot of work with leaders, YPO groups, we need to encourage our leaders to see the strengths in their teams. Because if you highlight and focus on strengths, you're going to be three, I think it's no six times more engaged at work, 8% more productive at work, and you are going to be less likely to quit your job. So even just in the workplace, so that's your genius energy. But what can happen is that you can over index on your strengths and those very strengths can become your problem as well. So that's where wisdom comes in. You need to know your strengths and then you need to be wise enough to know how and when to use them. Like a dial. If my, if I have a lot of ambition, Diana Hill I'm very ambitious. I have a lot of persistence that can take me down to £72, anorexia, or that can get me back into graduate school and say, I'm going to do this thing differently and I'm going to do it my way and I'm going to do it in a more effective way. So we need wisdom to help us, guide us with our strengths.
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Interviewer/Host
Diana, thank you for answering that. And what you just described in your five aspects were personality, talents, interests, character strengths, and emotional intelligence. Out of those five, which one do you see most people out of touch with the most?
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Dr. Diana Hill
It depends. It's such a blanket statement. Also depends on development, where they are. So an interesting one, interesting is I actually think that a lot of folks have lost touch with their interests because a lot of their interests may be things that are not valued or put up on a pedestal. Maybe they had a strong interest in music as a kid and they got channeled into an academic path, or maybe they had an interest in cooking and they were told that's just, that's not going to be worth anything to you in life. Right. And what I find is that when you can engage your interest and you can actually bring your interest into your relationships and into your work, it can open up a lot of creativity and creative doors. For example, I, as you can tell, I dropped out of graduate school. I went to a yoga ashram. I have a strong interest in the body and in movement and in being embodied. It's part of my recovery. And I didn't really think that fit in the world of psychology. We're in our heads, right? And what I, over time have done, I now train. I'm about to go leave for a training. I trained therapists. Sometimes I'll be in a room of 350 therapists and we're all sitting around tables, you know, those round tables of the Hyatt Room with no windows and fluorescent lighting. And we're sitting there in our heads, knee to knee, practicing therapy. I'll get everyone up and out to the edge of the room and have them do a sun salutation. And that is my interest coming into play. But it also becomes a way for us to start thinking and talking about embodiment in the therapy room. How can we. Do you go for walks with your clients or for people that are listening? Do you go for walking meetings? If you care about the body? So going back to getting interested in what, what interests you and how can you bring your interest to life in your life can help with things like bore out and burnout. I also think emotional intelligence is another one, but that's one we talk about a lot, so interest is a little bit fresher.
- [32:43]
Interviewer/Host
Thank you for sharing that. And in the book you write that every field, whether it's physics, biology, neuroscience, ultimately studies energy. And you frame energy as something that we can regenerate, not just conserve. How does your research in acceptance and commitment therapy support that idea?
- [33:03]
Dr. Diana Hill
Acceptance and commitment therapy is about psychological flexibility. And the relationship between psychological flexibility and energy is that if you are more psychologically flexible, you are less likely to get burned out on things because you can move with the energy of life. If we think about life is in constant change, in constant flow, and you can resist that, or you can be flexible and move with it and channel your energy within it. There's a lot of efforting in resistance. And energy is real. There's this woo aspect to energy. You know, the chakras and the Pradas and chi, which I'm all down for. I'm like, that's all. I can experience that in my spiritual world. Or the energy of prayer, right? The energy that happens when you're in a church. The energy that happens when you know, you're with a group of people, but when they actually start to measure it, you can see that there is energetic exchange that happens even between people. Someone like polyvagal theory, where the energy of somebody's physical body, the shutdown, the, the little muscles around their eyes are sending signals to you, your body is picking up on other people's energy all the time. So with psychological flexibility, what we're starting to do with actual is to help people, I guess, in some ways reclaim their energy rather than having it be all entangled in their thoughts or in fighting their emotions or in this narrow sense of self. How can you open up and allow your energy to flow towards your values, which then is very rejuvenating. Anyone can think about this. You can think about an hour where you went in, you were out of alignment with your values, you left depleted. An hour where you worked hard and you were in line with your values and you left re energized even if you were working hard in both of those hours. So it's not just a one way thing. Energy can definitely flow back to you when you engage in compassionate and meaningful ways.
- [35:03]
Interviewer/Host
I'm going to come back to two things we talked about at the beginning of the episode. One is Jordan Fine Gold and the other is metaphors. So in the book you use a Zen metaphor about the five cups, empty, full, cracked, dirty and overflowing. And I wanted to ask, how does that Image help us, as Jordan would say, choose growth with more humility and less judgment.
- [35:28]
Dr. Diana Hill
Well, the five cups metaphor is it's actually a koan. And koans are little sayings that help you shake up your mind a little bit. They leave you a little bit questioning yourself, which in general is the best thing you can do. Question yourself, right? And the koan goes like this. Where there was a Zen student who went to a Zen master and we've all heard of the empty cup. One most many of us heard the empty cup. One where. But what the Zen master said to the student is, take a look at your cup. Is your cup so full? And your cup is a metaphor for the mind. So think about a problem that you're in or a struggle you're in. Is your cup so full that you're not letting in new information you think you already know? You're so full of yourself, right? We've all read the million self help books. We actually are not entering into the experience, allowing anything in. So is your cup so full in that conversation with your mother or your partner or your kid? The second cup, is your cup dirty? You're not seeing clearly. We know this about our minds. Our minds are constantly filtering out information. Here's another one with a confirmation bias. We're filtering out things don't confirm our existing views. It's dirty. It's not letting us really see is the cup turned over? You're just closed off to it. You're just like, I don't. I'm not letting any of that in, right? And then one that many of us experience these days is does your cup have holes? You're distracted, you're on your phone, you're thinking about something else. You have not trained your mind to be present and contain what is here to plug up those holes. So the fifth cup is turn it over and wipe it out. Empty it and then allow something new. This is the bird in the kitchen. Could you look around and see that there may be something different, a different way of doing things? The foundation of evolution is really variation. So you got to turn it over, open up and be open to something new, a possibility that you haven't seen before in order to flourish in the way or choose growth in the way that Jordan talks about. And there's practices to do that. There's contemplative practices, there's psychological practices to work on opening your mind, turning it over and emptying up that cup.
- [37:45]
Interviewer/Host
And I wanted to follow that up with. You've worked with parents, leaders, high achievers, Many who feel constantly drained. What do you think is common? As you look at all the people you work with in the way that they misuse their energy, is there one common thing? Is it multiple common things?
- [38:05]
Dr. Diana Hill
I think it goes back to those three things. Being stuck in a story, avoiding discomfort and holding on too tight. I recently worked on a paper with Joe Cirocci on this concept of experiential attachment, which Joe Sorochi and Steve Hayes and Sandra Ballinger. A number of people from just really around the world are working on this paper on experiential attachment that we just submitted. And the idea behind that is not only do we run away from discomfort, we chase things and we don't let go of the chase. So that I see as a real problem for a lot of people because often we're chasing things that either aren't aligned with our values or the way in which we are chasing our heart is harming ourselves. So if you think about I'll go back to my teenagers because it's just like the I got these boys, teenage boys. I have a. This 16 year old. The other day I walked into his room and the low. The sports equipment drawer was open. Every drawer is open, but the sports equipment drawer was open. And in the sports equipment drawer was a bowl that still had milk in it from his cereal, right? And I walk in the room and he's getting ready to go on this backpacking trip. And everything in my being just wants to yell at the kid. Clean up your. The yelling, the nagging. This. That's just like my automatic like chase, chase the thing that you want. I want the room to be clean. I want him to be organized, right? The cost to me of that is big because he's about to go on a backpacking trip and if I chase that and he goes away, I will experience regret. I'll be like the. I'll be at home, be like, oh, like I miss the opportunity for connection and relationship. I chose clean order. I was chasing that. I was experientially attached to that rather than pursuing my values. And you could insert teenage behavior there, but anyone listening could insert any of their other things in which they are chasing. They're chasing money, they're chasing the career goals. We see this a lot with because I am on a lot of podcasts, I'm on a lot of interviews. People are chasing numbers. They're chasing numbers and at the cost of their life, at the cost of actually living and experiencing the life that they are talking about. Like these people that we look up to that. Now I talk to that aren't they're not living the dream, they are not living it, they're just talking about it. Right? Because they're chasing some thing out there that they think they're going to get to that's going to make them happy. And what I really encourage talk about those five cups is empty your cup and take a look and what do you actually want to fill this cup with? So in that example with my son and the relationship, it was a choice point for me to stop and say what really matters here? The cereal bowl in the drawer or connecting with my son and how am I going to feel a week from now if I focus on the cereal bowl? How am I going to feel a week from now if I focus on my son? And that is the way we can turn our energy around with our values and not maybe not feel so off in our lives.
- [41:12]
Interviewer/Host
I think what you were just talking about is a great segue to where I wanted to go next, which is doing a little bit of a deep dive on understanding what fuels you versus what fools you. And you outline six universal yearnings and you were just talking about a few of these. Connection, purpose, competence, meaning orientation and feeling deeply. Out of those, which one do you think is missing the most for so many of us today?
- [41:42]
Dr. Diana Hill
I want to give credit to those yearnings first come from Steve Hayes and Joe Cirocci and they have an evolutionary base to them. We all yearn for connection because we need to survive by connecting each other. We yearn for purpose. Purpose also we yearn to a sense of mastery to get better at things. Right. We yearn for to make sense of things and we earn. To feel deeply was an interesting one too. We actually want to feel the full range of emotions. And I think that for, for a lot of us, just the data on loneliness, I hate to even bring it up because we talk about it so much, but it's so true and real is we the yearning for connection. So I run a sangha which is just like a community of people that meditate together. It has no spiritual orientation. There's Christians there, there's Buddhists there, there's non denomination people there. We meet and we meditate and this sangha is just like busting at the seams. It's in person. People come on a Tuesday morning, they get a coffee and we sit in a circle and we meditate and I guide them in a guided meditation and we yearn for that in the way that people will go to a 12 step meeting and yearn to be in a circle with other people that are just real and human. And so much of our, I think our experience now feels disconnected. We have, especially with the divisions in our. In the United States, for you people listening United States, we feel really divided with other people. We don't feel seen. We feel very alone in our struggles. And there is, for me, there is nothing better than connection. I build a career around it, connecting with another human. I don't care if you're my UPS driver or if you're my client or you're my student's teacher. If I feel genuinely connected to you, that is a source of energy that will carry me through the day or through anything that is hard. And then when hardship strikes, when you get cancer, when you go through a divorce, when your house needs a remodel, you have enough money to pay for it. Human connection is the secret sauce, not necessarily to solve those problems, but to support you in that. So I think that's probably the top yearning that people have.
- [43:52]
Interviewer/Host
I couldn't agree with you more. That's why I've been doing so much work over the past years on mattering and the belonging deficit that I think is so rampant today in society. So thank you for sharing that. And I also think it's a good opportunity to bring up Rick Hansen again, because I know one of the things that he is really working on, similar to the circle that you described, is compassion circles and just trying to get people to sit around, especially in the polarizing world that we live in, and to see how compassion is such a strength for us to use and not to avoid. So just to give them another plug.
- [44:31]
Dr. Diana Hill
There's a practice that I write about in wise effort that I often use with leaders when I work with leaders called Just Like Me. And that's when I'm training leaders how to how to see each other, but also how to see their teams in the practice and the very formal practice of it. I learned this from on a retreat with Jack Kornfield in the very formal practice of it is you sit across the way from another person. And I'm going to do this with you, John, as we're talking. So you sit across the way from another person and you look at them and you realize as you look at them that just like me, this person was a child once. And just like me, this person had a best friend. And just like me, this person has had heartbreaks. And just like me, this person has things that keep them up at night. And just like me, this person struggles with themselves sometimes to make the right choice. And just like me, this person has hopes for themselves. And when you start to see a person in that way, then the things that make us different, we all have things that we're very different people, very different lives, but we have a lot that's similar. And when we can see that common humanity, it can shift us towards a more compassionate view. Whether it's you're working with your teams or you're with the Trader Joe's person and getting your groceries, you're in the car and someone's just like me. The person in front of me sometimes gets distracted and drives crappily just like me. You know what? I am not holier than thou. I do that too. So why am I so frustrated at them? Right? And, and so we just have a little bit more compassion for each other, which I think we'd all benefit from right now.
- [46:20]
Interviewer/Host
What you were just describing really brings me back to Charles Duhigg's most recent work in his book Super Communicators. But even more so to Allison Wood Brooks research in her latest book. And she describes it as when we're talking to someone, what we're really doing is looking at a mirror of ourselves. And what going back to your whole thing on connection. So many of us aren't connecting and investing in the ways that we used to with others. And when we don't do that, we start losing that connection that we see with other people because we get in such a superficial types of conversations instead of really the deep listening that I think drove connection for millennia that seems to be disappearing more and more from our lives. But just like you said, when you see yourself in that mirror, you see all those different stages in another person that yourself feel as well. So I think what you just said was really beautiful.
- [47:19]
Dr. Diana Hill
Sort of like our handwriting, right? Have you noticed that your handwriting has gone to pot? Like we're just like none of us can really write well anymore. I used to have great handwriting. Why can't I, why don't I have handwriting that's great anymore? Because I'm not using my handwriting. And so it's just a practice. Can you just do some simple things that will support your connection? The first most simple thing is to put your phone off and away into a place where it is not in your view. When I'm driving my son, that same 16 year old to school, get my phone out of here so I can connected to him. And also I'm a better driver, all of that. But also can we meet can we just choose to meet in person, even if it's easier to meet by phone or by video? Can we choose to not instacart everything, even though it's faster to instacart things? I actually had a client who said that her nutritionist told her to stop instacarting so much because she was just ordering the same foods, even though they were healthy foods, she was ordering the same foods and she was losing the diversity in her diet from eating broccoli every week. Because you need to have 30 different types of fruits and vegetables in your week. Right? So the same is true for us. We need a variety of interactions with people. Maybe the people that you are interacting with at the grocery store or the farmer's market are people that would be beneficial. Those weak ties that would be beneficial for you. So a lot of the things that are. That we've just gotten in the habit of, we need to maybe be a little bit more uncomfortable in our life. They take a little bit more time. But isn't that the meaning of life? If you really do believe the meaning of life is connection and not getting to some end point that you never get to that's in front of you, then do those things it is. Chop wood, carry water. That's what life is about.
- [49:05]
Interviewer/Host
I've recently interviewed Claude Silver, who's the chief heart officer of VaynerMedia. And I love that idea of heart and leadership. And you describe living from the back of the heart while taking action from the front. And I was hoping you could just describe what that practice looks like.
- [49:26]
Dr. Diana Hill
It's actually a meditation practice that I learned from Trudy Goodman, who's one of my mentors and teachers and good friends. And the practice is, if you can imagine your heart, and at the front of your heart is like the agitations, the irritations, the sadness, the. The joys, the excitement when you're all entangled up in that. Sometimes you can act impulsively, you can feel a little bit jostled by life, or you also maybe avoid things because they feel really intense. Living at the back of the heart is taking two steps back, almost like leaning back to the back of the heart. And you can see all of that happening at the front. But what you're acting from is from a stable, centered core that is your wisest self. It's not that you're getting rid of anything at the front of the heart. You may even appreciate some of the stuff at the front of your heart. But from the back of the heart, you are much more solid Connected and free. And that's a meditation practice, but it's also just an action practice. Like when I go out to go through my day, I can tell, am I at the front of my heart here or can I lean back a little bit and be, hey, what would be at the back of my heart? Sometimes there's this line that I'll use sometimes with some of the executives that I work with, which is called, wait, why am I talking? And then there's the follow up, waste, why am I still talking? I could use that for myself. Right? So sometimes living at the back of the heart is just taking two steps to back and being quiet for a minute, pausing, finding your center, feeling your feet on the ground, connecting with your wise self, looking up at that eucalyptus tree for one minute, right? And then acting from there, even with everything that's happening at the front of your heart.
- [51:19]
Interviewer/Host
I love that. And Diana, how has writing wise effort changed how you parent, create and lead?
- [51:25]
Dr. Diana Hill
Going through the process of the book, I took many clients through it and with me along the way. And it was really beautiful to see that I was going through the process of getting curious, opening up and focusing my energy while I was writing the book. How do you engage in wise effort while you're writing about wise effort? Right. And then seeing my clients be transformed by this method as we were working together through it. It's all stuff that I've been practicing for decades or maybe 15 years. Right since that moment in graduate school when I had a noetic experience of I am you and you are me. But the way that this book has transformed how I work and lead is it's really been more of a focusing of my energy that this is what I want my life to be about. I want my life to be about helping people discover their genius energy, harness it, and use it in ways that are regenerative, not only for the benefit of them, but really for the benefit of our greater good. Because if we're all engaging in wiser effort, if we're all using our gifts and we're all giving them in a way that's aligned with our values, then the world would be such a better place. And that is my purpose and my mission. And this book is one avenue to support that purpose and mission.
- [52:40]
Interviewer/Host
I love that. And finally, what does it mean for you, Diana, to live a passion struck life?
- [52:46]
Dr. Diana Hill
This is living a passion struck life. It's following the waves of energy that come at me. It's making choices that bring vitality to myself and my community and letting go of stuff that maybe on the surface looks good, but that is draining the heck out of me and encouraging other people to do that as well. So that being driven by passion, being driven by values, being driven by love with a big capital L O V E is a passion struck life for me.
- [53:16]
Interviewer/Host
Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. And for the listeners who want to learn more about you, where are the best places for them to go?
- [53:21]
Dr. Diana Hill
You can go to wise effort.com I write on Psychology Today. I have a podcast, Wise Effort, but It's all@wiseeffort.com and it's the best place to find me there and on Instagram Dr. Dianahill.
- [53:33]
Interviewer/Host
Diana, thank you so much for joining us today on Passion Struck. It was such an honor to have you.
- [53:38]
Dr. Diana Hill
Thank you. It's a delight to be with you.
- [53:39]
John Miles
That brings us to the end of today's conversation with Diana Hill. What stood out most to me is this. So many of us believe the answer to a better life is simply to try harder, to push more, to do more, to optimize more. But what Diana shows us is something very different. Sometimes the problem isn't effort. It's how we're applying it. Because when our energy is misaligned with our values, even success can feel exhausting. But when our energy is aligned, even hard things can feel meaningful. And maybe that's the deeper shift, not asking, how do I do more? But asking, where is my energy actually meant to go? Because your greatest strengths, your ambition, your persistence, your drive can either fuel your life or quietly drain it, depending on how you use them and the invitation, this episode is simple. To stop flying harder into the same window and to start looking for a different way forward. And that insight leads directly into our next conversation. Because if today's episode is about how we direct our energy, next we'll explore something just as essential, how we connect. I'm joined by University of Chicago psychologist Nicholas Epley, and at the core of
- [54:46]
Interviewer/Host
his work is a powerful paradox.
- [54:48]
John Miles
We are a deeply social species, wired for connection. And yet every single day, we choose to be less social than we could be. We avoid talking to the stranger next to us. We stay in small talk instead of going deeper. And we hold appreciation. We feel. And in doing so, we miss out on one of the most powerful forces for a happier and healthier life. And bridging that gap between people is often far easier than we think. If we're willing to take the first
- [55:15]
Interviewer/Host
step, you won't want to miss it.
- [55:17]
Nicholas Epley
We tend to think about ourselves in terms of our competency so you're thinking about starting a conversation. You think, well, what are we going to talk about? Do I have anything in common with this person? Can I carry it on? Right, you're an agent, you're thinking about your competency. Other people, they care about your competency, but not first and foremost. What they first and foremost care about is how nice are you. That's the basic how warm are you? Are you friendly? Are you trustworthy? Are you a friend I can interact with or a ufo? Somebody I should avoid?
- [55:45]
Dr. Diana Hill
Right?
- [55:45]
Nicholas Epley
So we're evaluating ourselves through this lens of competency. Other people are evaluating us through this lens of warmth. When you reach out to engage with somebody positively, those are inherently warm acts. Those are going to be high on that spectrum, on the warmth spectrum. People are going to react to to that generally pretty positively.
- [56:03]
John Miles
If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might be feeling burned out or Misaligned. Leave a 5 star rating review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Explore more tools and insights@theignitedlife.net and pre order my upcoming book, the Mattering Effect. It's available everywhere. Books are sold. Until next time. Remember, purpose isn't just about what you choose, it's about how you direct your energy towards it. I'm John Miles and you been Passion Struck. Until next time. Live with energy, act with wisdom, and as always, live life. Passion Struck.
- [56:46]
Dr. Diana Hill
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