← The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
1KHO 786: Modern Life Wires the Brain for Urgency | Elisha Goldstein, Tiny Shifts
00:54:10
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- [00:01]
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- [00:31]
Jenny Ertz
Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Jenny Ertz. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside and I read a fantastic book that is so like, I mean, it could not be more perfect for this day and age. You're talking about techno stress, you know, and all this overwhelm and how we can make shifts, tiny shifts to change that. And so Dr. Elisha Goldstein is here and he wrote this book, Tiny Shifts How Emotional Health Transforms Stress, Relationships and Longevity. And I just got so much out of it. Thank you so much for being here. Welcome.
- [01:00]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
Oh, it's, it's my pleasure and I feel privileged to be with you, so thanks for having me.
- [01:05]
Jenny Ertz
You have put a lot out into the world. You have almost 800 YouTube videos, you have your own podcast, a newsletter, lots of books, lots of things that you have going on. So I'll make sure, I'll put your website link because people should check it. You have things that are coming in the future. But you've been a psychologist for over 20 years, a best selling author. Can you talk about the, you know, you know, that sort of introduction into that field, what got you interested in it in the first place? And now, I mean, now you're, you're pretty far down the line here where you've got all of these resources for people, but really focusing on, on just making small changes, even when it seems like small changes really wouldn't matter.
- [01:40]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
You know, the, that that question's actually, I was, I wasn't even expecting that question. It was really relevant because it's how I got into this was I was in, I don't know, probably in my 20s. I was in San Francisco. I was, I was playing a whole lot harder, as I always say, to the point of like being fortunate to be here right now. I might not had I not kind of like made a shift in my life to become, to look at what I was doing and to get, get really kind of get outside is really what happened. Like, okay, I'll just give everyone here just a very brief kind of note on this. I was, yes, I was sort of in trouble and in my mid-20s and, and I was suggested by my stepmom at the time to maybe take some time out and go away to this kind of adult retreat. And it was very much out in nature and it was there. That openness allowed me to be inspired to see things a little bit differently, to challenge the ways that I had always seen life or grown up in life, and to see the interconnection of me and nature and everything. And wanted to do something different. And I wanted to be more generous to the world, to give more to the world. I was really kind of inspired to do that. And then I went back into my corporate job after that month away and it took me only two weeks to fall back into my old habits. And so that taught me the power of environment and the cues and triggers that are all around us and how we can kind of just get drawn into the stream, the current, the way life is. But a seed was planted in me and I chose to move into a different environment and go back to graduate school. And that's what got me into the field of psychology and the interest in meeting the moment in a different way and the interest in being aware of our environment. And now in our current environment right now, we have so many cues and triggers that are constantly vying for our attention. It's like you can't really, it's fair to say, and I just want to normalize for everyone that we're all in this boat together and we're all slightly programmed at this point. I mean, our nervous systems are primed to when that next. To look for that next message, that next email to go onto that social platform to, you know, to kind of check for our. Because it's all relational in a lot of ways. So we're kind of primed for this. But it's an abundance of information, an overwhelm of information, an overwhelm of headlines and algorithmic just kind of like grabbing at what's going to like make us a little bit more anxious to be able to look and focus on that, you know, a little bit longer so that they can sell their ads a little bit more. And that's just a reality. So there's good and there's bad to it, whatever, but the, the reality is we're, we are swimming in an ocean right now where we've normalized, I'd say a low grade chronic stress that's there for some people. Higher grade.
- [04:54]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah, yeah, you call it, you know, you talk about the overwhelm loop and this techno stress and I, I found like it was very relatable. You add the sentence in here. That said, the hardest part isn't that we're so busy. It's that even when we stop, our minds still can't rest. The algorithm never turns off, so we feel like we can't turn off either. And I think it's so overwhelming that you would never imagine that something, some tiny shifts could make the difference. Can you talk about when you started to realize. So you say you come home. I like the idea of an adult retreat. Like we do. You know, I mean, it's often, it's like, you know, it's sometimes it's like, well, things have gone really poorly, so I'm gonna go, you know, have this time and try and, like, recalibrate. But even if it's just like, adults don't do that. Kids do. Kids go to summer camp. But you could just see how it be so helpful for an adult. At what point when you came back and you're like, oh, I'm right back into my old environment, at what point did you realize, I, I actually can make some small changes, and it really is going to make an actual difference?
- [05:54]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
I think that was. That it took a little bit of time. I was, I was surprised, you know, just to be transparent, this was like, me massively abusing drugs and alcohol, you know, at the time. And I think that I was a little bit surprised how fast I got pulled back into that. And, you know, it's, it's, it's sort of implicit, which means when I talk about these cues and triggers that are all around us, and some of us have it with our. Some of us have it. Have it with our technology. Some of us have it with our relationships. We get cued and triggered into reacting in ways we didn't want to react. Some of us have this with our bedtime routines or with eating or exercising or different things like that. But I was it. But, but because a seed was planted, I think I, I, I've realized that I would take these. And this is interesting to. When I was in the, in my, in my work and this was happening, I would pause and I would literally choose to take a walk outside. And this was in downtown San Francisco. I'd go along the Embarcadero, and I would let my mind just kind of float and say, like, and ask questions like, what do I really want to do right now? What a powerful question I asked myself at that time, which was, you know, imagine it's 10, 20 years down the line right now. What will I have wished? What will I have wished? Well, I have looked back and said, like, yeah, that really mattered, or I lived really meaningfully, or I did exactly what I wanted to do. What does that look like? And so I allowed my mind to kind of float on that idea. And the powerful thing about, like, that being a tiny shift, asking ourselves questions. Yeah, because. And I talk about this in tiny shifts, how the whole artificial intelligence world that everyone's sort of afraid of and enamored by at the moment is built on how our brain works. And so what many people may not know if they weren't kind of tuned into the whole techno environment was Google had been working with neurological programming for quite a while. And so, like, mapping it on how our brain works. So when you ask your brain questions, just like you ask your AI or whatever questions, it gives you an answer. And so when you ask it, like, what's wrong with me? Or how's this world going to go into hell in a handbasket? Or how is, like, my family falling apart? Or, you know, this, these types of things, it's going to give you those answers. Now, those answers may not be correct or right or based in fact or anything like that, but if you ask a different question, you access something I call our natural intelligence, which is our Ni versus AI. Not that AI is bad, but we want to access our Ni too. We want to get a little. We want to get some emotional reps with that. And. And you can ask yourself, like, yeah, you know, imagine it's. Put yourself into the future, your future self. Imagine it's five years from now or a year from now, or for me, it was 10 years from now. And looking back onto this moment, what will I wish I would have done? And what that does is that allows you to draw on your own. Own innate wisdom and experience to access that. And that's what I did in that moment. And so it said to me, my mind said to me, like, I want to do a different form of work. I want to do something where I weave in what's meaningful and purposeful into my life. And so that started that question, that little emotional pivot that I made led to bigger things, which was eventually researching, going back to school and becoming a psychologist. And, you know, that's when I got in touch with so many other things after that, mindfulness and so much more. And so which inevitably also kind of full circled back to this book, tiny shifts. Because my research, my doctoral dissertation that was later published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, was all about, how do we. There's so many beautiful moments that are happening all around us that we miss because we're too busy. And so how do we become more aware, how do we become more aware of these meaningful or what I call sacred moments? And what impact does that have on our stress and our levels of well being? So this is the research that I did in 2006, it was published again in the journal Clinical Psychology. And what I found was that we can actually cultivate these moments if we have enough awareness around them.
- [10:22]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah, it's filled with fantastic ideas. You have one other thing to say about it. I interrupted.
- [10:28]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
No, no, but we can. Yeah, we can. We can be aware of them, we can cultivate them. That's. That's basically it.
- [10:32]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah, yeah, you talk about, you know, like some of the ones that are so small, it was like you called it a micro interruption. You just say, I can handle this. And I was like, gosh, yeah, you know, it really does change your outlook on it. So what a change, what a life change. Elisha. And then at this point, you know, you've written Uncovering Happiness. You've got all of these like decks, like a stress reduction card deck that's about mindfulness and one about mindful living and the now effect you've written. And another book, Ms. Br, Everyday Staying in the Present Moment. And then your emotional longevity podcast that you have, and then the YouTube channel with 800 videos and then tiny shifts. One of the things that you talked about, and I thought this was really insightful, was that we are trained to add solutions. So, you know, we just, we think we gotta add, add, add, add. And yet we're already overloaded. So the whole point of this book is that they are small things. You say we often are imagining some kind of grand overhaul, but real change starts with small sustainable shifts, not from these massive transformations. So, you know, little things that you can say. It's all throughout the book. May I accept myself just as I am. You know, if you think of five minutes a day for three weeks on something meaningful, you know, you give all of these different ideas that people can use. And then you also have how to break the overwhelm loop. It's the 4R method. And I was hoping to talk about just a couple of the Rs and then people can go read the book and learn what about the other Rs? But I think if we could start with Refocus, this is the second one because this is kind of similar to what you were talking about in Refocus. It's a lot about asking different questions. So can you talk about like One question that you could ask yourself. It's the siren test. Is this actually an emergency? And I thought that was a really good one because we feel like we're in an emergency all the time. So in Refocus, this is a lot about asking different questions.
- [12:22]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
Guess I want to say about that that wasn't a big lift. So you say, like, we have. We oftentimes feel like we need to do more to feel better, and we don't really need to do more to do better. We just need to learn how to recognize. So this is the first r recognize when we're in a conditioned pattern. I call it an emotional loop. An emotional loop is. And that's why I open up around the overwhelm loop, because I think I feel like right now the zeitgeist of our culture is an umbrella emotion or feeling that a lot of people feel is this feeling of. It's just kind of too much going on right now. It's too much to juggle. There's too much happening in the world. I can't keep track of all the wars that are going on, and I have no control over what my country is doing and where. And then I've got to take my kids to these games and I still got to be involved with my work and be helpful in that. I got to make my meals. I gotta, you know, make sure everyone's got what they need. I mean, there's just so much going on. I have the story of me sitting in the. In the corner of our kitchen, and I think everyone has one of these. It's like a. It's like the corner of crap, we call it, because it's just like where everything, all the crap ends up, you know, it also happens to be where my phone is plugged in. And so I'm sitting there, like on my phone, my shoulders to my ears, you know, trying to return like five different Amazon items while, you know, like trying to transfer credit card points to my airline miles because we're going on trip. And like, then the laundry's overloaded and the kind of side of my eye over here, and I'm sitting there at the time, my 9 year old now, he's almost 11, but he's 9. He's kind of tucking at my shirt and he's like, dad, Dad, I want to show you something. They want to show you this thing. And I'm like, okay, in a minute. In a minute. I got all these things I got to get done or I'm going to forget to do them or Whatever they have to be done. Now, I call this an urgency bias. We've all been programmed with this urgency bias that we have now. It has to be done now. I have to return this message. Now. I have to. You know, we're just like. It just feels like the right thing to do because we're just programmed. And so there I was, and I'm kind of like getting this stuff done, and I. And then I kind of turn to my left and he's gone. So I remember asking him later because I just gave a talk at a, you know, at this place, and he was actually there and. And he's like, tell the story, tell the story. Because he wants to be in the story. And so I'm like, what, what was it? Do you remember what it was that you were trying to tell me? I thought it was some cool basketball trick or something like that. He's like, no, it was this, like, model I created or something like that. But. But I missed that moment. And so that's what that was, a sacred moment, a meaningful moment that I missed because of my urgency bias and my wrapped up in all the various juggling that's happening. But more importantly, Jenny, what I came to understand through being a psychologist and being interested in the research around, like, what really creates real, well being, like feeling good in life. And it's these moments of connection. And when we. So that was a moment of connection, a meaningful moment in connection. Say, okay, you missed one meaningful moment of connection. Big deal. Well, consider this. How many meaningful moments of connections, or what I might call sacred moments, how many of these moments with repetition do we miss throughout the day or weeks or months or years? Your kids are now in college. They're gone, you know, like this type of thing. And so what we know is relationships. Our sense of connection is one of the cornerstones to our health span and longevity. So living, feeling well in the later years of our lives, not just living longer. And that was research that was done by Bob Waldinger out of Harvard, very famous study. And so, you know, so that was. That was important. So for me in that moment to bring us Back to the Rs, the four Rs. By the way, just so everyone here is aware, this is like the distillation of a fairly simple and structured way to be able to break out of whatever emotional or overwhelmed loop that you're in and be able to do something so that you can refocus more on what matters or access your. Access your wisdom. I hear so many people tell me, like, I Already I know what to do. I just don't do it right. And so. And that's even like with heart medicine. That's even like with heart medicine, people have heart disease don't adhere to their medication. Like, we have a hard time following through, but we already know so much stuff.
- [16:56]
Jenny Ertz
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- [20:02]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
So recognizing that we're in an emotional loop or a stress loop or an overwhelm loop, or I can't believe I'm juggling so much loop. Call it whatever you want. The idea is to recognize it. What recognizing it does is it allows us to come out of the emotional center of our brain, bring a bit more blood flow to this prefrontal region, which is the more evolved region of the brain. That allows us to say, okay, look, I'm stressed right now. I get a little space from it. What's most important for me to focus on, you know, in this moment allows us to get access to a little bit of choice. But typically that's just the very first step. And that's where people make the biggest mistake is they think they can just like reframe something or shift their attention in that moment. But typically it doesn't work or distract.
- [20:54]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah, that's kind of what you say. That's just what you're saying. Yeah.
- [20:57]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
Or distract. And it doesn't, it doesn't work because we're still pretty wound up.
- [21:03]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah.
- [21:03]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
Is the reality. And I just want to kind of mention this one other piece before we get to the refocus, which is that, and this is important for everyone to consider here when you're in the middle of your day. I was in my corner of crap. I have a million, by the way, a million stories of and being in my own loops. But when you're in that, even recognizing it, if you think about it for a second, okay, so your heart rate was up, your shoulders were tense, your stomach was cramping, or, you know, you don't even notice it, but your body's in this fight flight, freeze response and you recognize it. Your body's not ready to shift its attention or to do the better thing or that kind of thing, typically. And so what happens is, even though we know better, we typically fall back into our. Whatever our old patterning is because we're wound up. And so we need to release that. And this is the part that most people miss, is going to make you a thousand times more effective in drawing on what you already know is going to be helpful for you accessing your natural intelligence is this step of release. So what does release mean? It's pretty simple. If your body is wound up, you need to literally unwind it for a second. So there's many different ways to do this. And this could take 10 seconds, 5 seconds. This is all meant to be done in like this tiny, tiny shift. Yeah, it's tiny thing, right? It's a whole tiny thing. So for me, and for many people I know, taking a breath and lowering your shoulders is enough. Like, is if you take it. And what's. What's actually interesting, Jenny and everyone here can do this, whether you're driving, car, washing your dishes, or whatever you're doing while listening to this right now, if you take a breath in, you'll notice your shoulders slightly rising. It's just because there's more air coming into the body. Right. If you take a little bit of a longer breath out, your shoulders slightly fall. And so what's happening there, if you think of it anatomically, is that the right word? Physiologically, we'll say is your muscles that connect your neck to your shoulders have to stretch and elongate on that exhale. So you're literally sending a signal to your brain that, I'm safe, I'm safe right now, I'm okay, I'm safe. That's the opposite of the fight flight freeze response. And we want that. We want to send those safety signals to our brain so that we can. When we're. When we feel safe, our body's in a place of calm. Typically we feel more grounded. We're able to focus better in the moment when we don't feel safe, we're scattered or we're hyper focused and our body's in a tense bundle. So that release step. And there's many ways to release. You know, we're not going to talk about all of them right now, but there's many ways to do this that might be more personal for you or maybe more helpful to you. But the idea is don't just step into that space by recognizing it. By recognizing, like, I'm a mess right now. I'm in the I'm a mess loop right now. Right. So that's a good first step. And, you know, if we could bring some humor to it. And then. But the release widens that space between stimulus and response, and that gives us access to more choice, possibility, and growth. And so we want that wider space. So that's the point that most people miss.
- [24:35]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah. Okay. I think I jumped. I think I jumped over one, because refocus is actually the third. So this is in the book. The book is called tiny shifts, the 4R method. So you even say, and this is a part to me, like, sometimes where I'm like, if I feel mad or sad or disappointed, like you almost, you almost want to kind of ignore it. Right. Like it feels overwhelming. And maybe it's embarrassing. It's embarrassing that I feel sad or disappointed or mad or whatever. But you say for. Recognize that awareness itself is a form of regulation. I think that's motivating because I would sometimes want to avoid the awareness of what exactly is going on. You wrote, each time we put words to what we feel, we regain a little more balance. The specificity alone helps relax the nervous system. And then you can respond, respond more wisely. So you talk about noticing your actions. So like, oh, I'm eating too many chips. Oh, you know, I'm smoking, or, or whatever.
- [25:33]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
The situation is snapped at my kid. Yeah, yeah.
- [25:36]
Jenny Ertz
But, but what would you say to the person? I mean, I would, I would be the type that would skirt around the edges of naming what's going on.
- [25:44]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
Well, you're in the. You're in the majority. I mean, we're not, we're not, we're not wired to jump into a fire. So we want to kind of. We're wired to conserve energy, and it takes energy to be with what's uncomfortable. I might even say, like, if we peel the layer back of the onion for a second and say, what's the definition of emotional health? The definition of emotional health, you know, we could say, well, it's to be able to feel confidence over regulating our stress and feeling connected in our relationships and engaging life in a healthy way, or eating our sleep or this. But if we peel the onion back a little bit, we might say it's the ability to be with what's uncomfortable. It's the ability to be with what's uncomfortable. Because if we can be with what's uncomfortable and we feel okay with that, we're not going to be as reactive. We're not gonna. We're not gonna react out of our patterns to our brain's pattern to conserve energy. So I'm going to go down the road most traveled because that conserves energy versus being with what's uncomfortable, because that's going to take a lot of energy, and that's not what I want to do. So typically we operate on autopilot, and so our brain makes the decision for us. That's why we get caught in those, we might call those unhealthy habits around going on to the next Netflix show or eating that extra this or that in the, you know, wherever in the pantry. Because we have so many, so many things in our pantry that will lower our cortisol levels initially. And so, you know, it's easy to kind of do that, or I'm just too. I'll get, I'll get to the exercise later, I'm, I'm exhausted, you know, type of thing. And so we, the recognizing the naming, the feeling allows our brain to get some certainty. Our brain loves certainty. Okay, There's a difference between I feel bad right now and I feel confused or sad. And the reason that kind of granularity matters is because when we get. And this is why it's important to build an emotional vocabulary. So in tiny shifts, I have a whole emotional vocabulary based on and inspired by, I would say, Marshall Rosenberg's nonviolent communication. And, and, and there's many different ways to expand emotional vocabulary, by the way. That's not the only way, but that's a. It's a really good one. It's helped me in my life. And, and so when we, when we say, like, I'm, I'm sad or I'm confused, let's say we're going to have a different need, we're going to have a different need in that moment. And when we, when our needs are met, we tend to feel really well. When our needs aren't met, we don't feel well. So when you're not feeling well at any second, you're feeling imbalanced or on edge or overwhelmed or stressed, it means a need is not being met to be very simple about it. So you might, the question might be, okay, I recognize, I release, I refocus. I recognize a feeling. I'm confused. Let me see if I can get more granular. Literally, I tell people, like, go to this emotional vocabulary list when you're not feeling well and just see if you can be. See if you can identify words that are a little more specific because then we can look at the needs inventory here and say, what need is not being met? So that could be the question. What do I need right now? It's a very common self compassion question, which I think like, when are. If we can get better at noticing. Okay, I'm confused. Oh, well, that's what I need is clarity.
- [29:12]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah.
- [29:13]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
Okay. I'm sad. Okay, What I need is some soothing or some connection right now. I'm mad, I'm angry, I'm frustrated, I'm irritated, I'm enraged right now. Okay, well, if I'm enraged right now, maybe what I need to do is get some energy out. But if I'm angry right now, maybe what I need to do is communicate with this person or I need to take a little. Maybe what I need is space because I'm so enraged that it's not going to be very skillful for me to communicate with this person that I'm enraged at right now. I need to kind of bring my heart rate down a little bit and then reconnect with them. What I need, I need, I need resolution, I need repair with this person. I'm needing. What am I needing right now? Maybe I'm just needing food. Maybe I'm needing sunlight. Maybe I'm needing connection. We talked about earlier before we kind of this podcast that I, I used to do these calls with a group of people and we would take a walk around the neighborhood. I always wanted to do this, by the way, pre technology, I always had this idea that, like I want to bring people to a forest and I want to put headsets on everyone and I want to guide them through like a guided practice as they're walking through the forest. But I didn't like have the technology. This was many years ago. And now we have no, I could do this for people all around the world at the same time now. And so I would do this, and we'd walk around our neighborhoods. And I'm. I live in Los Angeles, in the city some people live in, you know, in the forest. Some people live, you know, wherever they live, all around the world. And we would take a moment, and we would. And we would be walking and talking. So I'd be guiding, and some people would be talking about things that are happening and whatever, but we would take a moment and pause, and we would identify a tree near us, and I would guide people through. And this was inspired by one of the students in this program. And I would guide people through a practice, and I said, listen, just kind of entertain this for a second. Bring this. A beginner's mind to this. Go to your nearest tree, whether it's a slim tree or it's a wide tree, choose whichever one is near you. And everyone has these in whatever city, even New York City, like, everyone got a tree somewhere. And put your arms around it, connect your chest to the trunk, and just allow yourself to linger in that connection. I just. Then I just went quiet. And there's something powerful. You know, we always have this thing about tree huggers, you know, whatever. But there's. There's something powerful about the connection. Your chest, your heart, your sternum, your connection of your arms on the tree. That's very regulating, and that's the tiny shift. What do I need right now? I need connection. I don't have people around me. Okay. Find your nearest tree. And what I would tell people, I said, if you feel kind of like. Like you feel people are judging you who are walking around you right now, I say consider an alternative so you can recognize that people are judging me. I feel tense about it. Take a moment. Take a breath. Release. This is recognize.
- [31:57]
Jenny Ertz
Release.
- [31:58]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
Refocus on the Reframe for a second. Maybe I'm inspiring some people right now.
- [32:05]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah.
- [32:05]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
Is it possible I'm inspiring some people right now? Like, you know what. What kind of emotional shift does that create? You know, even if there's. That. No, not possible. But if there's a part of your mind that says, like, yeah, maybe I am. It's uplifting. It. Access. We ask ourselves a different question. Our brain looks for different answers. That's a tiny shift.
- [32:25]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah. I love that that's in the book. Even just the feel of sunlight you talked about. Joy is one of the fastest ways to interrupt a loop. Lately I've been trying to simplify my closet, just choosing pieces that are comfortable Easy to wear and still look put together without a lot of effort. That's really why I keep coming back to Quint. Is there, the fit is right and everything just makes sense. Quince makes it easy to refresh your everyday this spring with pieces that feel as good as they look. They use premium materials like 100% European linen, organic cotton and ultra soft denim. So you're getting that elevated feel without overpaying. Their lightweight linen pants, dresses and tops start at $30 and they're the kind of pieces you can wear again and again because they're breathable, versatile and just work. One thing I've been wearing a ton lately is the everyday fleece joggers. They're perfect for those cool spring mornings. Really soft, super comfortable, but still structured enough that I don't feel like I'm just in loungew all day. And that's the thing with Quince. Everything is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands because they go straight to ethical factories and skip the middlemen. So you're getting great quality without paying for the label. Refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Head to quince.com outside for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q U-I-N-E.com outside for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com outside so I would have been the type, you know, you talk about some people, they skip over release. I would be the type that would skip over, recognize and just try and box breathe. You know, they're like, it's not, it's not working.
- [33:56]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
Yeah, we jump to the tools, right?
- [33:58]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah, it's really helpful. So the specificity. I'm so glad to know that Elijah, you know that awareness is a form of regulation and that the specificity alone is going to start to help to relax your nervous system. And then you talk about release. You know, we've already talked about this quite a bit, but there's a lot of ideas in the book, like writing, put putting a pen in your mouth and doing a half smile. You added this sentence I thought was a really big deal over time. This is kind of like what we were talking about at the beginning with overwhelm and use the phrase techno stress, which I wanted to read what you wrote about that. Techno stress, the mental strain that comes from the endless micro demands of emails, group chats, the pressure of immediate for immediate responses, endless purchasing options. I hate that. I wanted to buy like a little step like I Used to do step aerobics like when I was in high school. Like you buy a, like literally like a small step and then you can put little risers under it if you know, you're more athletic. And the other day I was like, you know, I really like doing that. Maybe I'll get a little step. I mean I never bought one because it was like, well, this one has 5,421 ratings in that, you know. And I was like so overwhelmed. Okay, I'm. I thought was such a big deal that you put that in there. I hate that I have. I struggle at restaurants. Endless purchasing options, non stop content and stimulations. Each one of these seems small, but together they create a background hum of stress that tells us we're always behind, we're not enough and we're never allowed to rest. So one of the things that you talked about with release is that over time and probably it's like now, right, right now, it's been a lot of time of this too much becomes a way of life and we forget what calm even feels like.
- [35:37]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
Yeah, there's a big deal. Great. There's a great story by. I'm blank on his name right now, but I'll remember it after I tell this story probably where David Foster Wallace, I think. And so he was giving a speech at Kenyon College and he. And there's these kind of like two fish that are swimming. Two like young fish and the, they're swimming along doing whatever they're doing and an older fish comes to them and says like hey boys, how's the water? And they look at him and a little confused and they continue on. They're like, what's water? So you know, when we're swimming in it, we don't even know what it is anymore. And this low grade chronic background of stress, this idea that you can work at 10:00pm or 11:00 clock while you're trying to go to sleep or you're, you're, you're trying to rest and take a break in the day, but your mind knows you got all these Amazon returns to do or you got these different like things you could get or you know, you got these 10 messages from group chats on your phone that you got to respond to. You know, like there's always something, right? Much more than there ever has been. And so our brain, we think we're trying to rest, but our brain is juggling all of this. In the background there's something called the Zeigarnik effect, which means like our brain doesn't Our brain's always trying to close the loop. And so even though you might not be consciously, you're trying to, like, put it aside. I'll get to this stuff later. Your brain's trying to close the loop around it. You got an issue happening with your kid. You haven't gotten them into the right camp, the camp or sports program or, you know, whatever. Your brain's trying to solve that even while you're trying to rest. It's trying to think of the different schools they should go to or the different camp, whatever. It's. It's always. There's so much right now. And so how do we. We have to have a protocol almost that's simple for us. We just have to accept the reality that this is just the reality we live in right now. It's okay. It's. I mean, maybe it is okay or not okay, but it just. It's. It's important to just kind of accept that we are not islands. We are interconnected with all of this stuff. And. And so to have a protocol of saying, okay, hold on, let me recognize the offness of this moment or the tension or stress I'm holding, or the I can't stand the mess in my house, I'm pulling my hair out loop that's there. And let me see if I can see where I'm holding that. My body. Because my body's reacting without me even knowing it. That's. I mean, it's all. Look, your heart rate goes up, your. Your. Your. Your furrow brow, like, you know, let me see if I can kind of like balance this out for a second. And there's simple ways to do that. And then let me see if I can. Now that I. Now that I've done that. Now that I've done that, let me see what would support me in resting. Yeah, like, you know, but we have to take those steps. If we just kind of try and reframe or push ourselves up into the tool. Let me just kind of do this breathing exercise like you were saying. Box breathing. It could be helpful, by the way, but the. Our body's in such a place that it's going to snap back pretty quickly. The conditioning is real and just like with anything else. And I'll just kind of lay this out pretty simply for all of us here. Our brain has a very simple way of operating. It may seem complex. We only know the tip of the iceberg with it, but we do know something that's pretty simple about it. Repetition, repetition of something creates neuroplasticity. Now bring it into other domains. This is how we know this is true. So we know this is true because we've seen it in different studies. But repetition of something makes things easier.
- [39:18]
Jenny Ertz
Right.
- [39:18]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
And so I'm learning guitar. If I did 10 minutes, if I really did 10 minutes a day with guitar, I would get really Good, you know, 10 minutes of walking, driving a car, whatever. Our brain has something called procedural memory with it. People in the behavioral field call it habits. So we know this is real. So it's. But. So if you peel these tiny emotional pivots, Recognize, release my body, will it fix everything in the moment, right then and there? It'll. It'll enhance something for sure. I promise you that. But. But will it fix your life? No, it's about making it simple enough to. I mean, making it, Sorry, Low. Low effort enough, I guess, is my point.
- [39:59]
Jenny Ertz
So you can repeat. Dive.
- [40:00]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
Yeah, so dive under the brain's threat detection system of, like, this is another too much type of thing. So it dives under there. So that. Right, exactly. You're saying. So you can repeat it. So our brain begins to memorize the procedure, and it gets easier in the context of our life. And that's exactly what tiny shifts do.
- [40:19]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah. And in the long term, it just really affects the quality of your life. So people can read the book. It's called tiny shifts. You talk about refocus, and these are the. Some of the different questions that you can ask yourself. And then you talk about reinforce. I thought that this was actually really important too, Elijah. Like, when you're talking about the emotion is the story save button. And that's like, okay, that. That makes sense. Like when things are really emotional, why you remember, like, that fight or whatever. But. But on the flip side, save our stuff.
- [40:49]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
Yeah, I like that term. A lot of people use that word saver. I created kind of an acronym about it, which I thought was kind of good. That the. The S stands for stop. Right. The A stands for if you're having a. So this is meant to be used, you know, really in any moment. That's a wonderful moment in your life. But in the. In the reinforced stage, the fourth R, what I'm trying to support us in doing there is something that neuroscience calls emotional tagging. And what that does is it's about increasing our memory of something. So you want to remember. We want our brains to remember, like, this new identity. Like, oh, I can do this. I can handle hard things and I'm okay. Or I can, like, move through these difficult moments sooner I can make different decisions and choices. Look at me. You know, like, can you feel kind of relief or you feel better? We want to emotionally tag that so that our brain recalls it more in future moments. So we. We spot it. We can stop. That's a. SS Stop or spot it. We acknowledge it with the A. Then we do something. We take a moment with it. The V is vitalized. Take a breath in. Allow that. Allow that moment to have a little bit of space. Then we own it. That's the O, which is like, yes, this is me too. You know, that's kind of like. We're kind of like clicking the save button and we're saying, like, I'm this person who can do this thing too. I also have these good moments or this ability to move through this kind of challenge or make different choices, as we just said. And then that is reinforcing. So now we've reinforced the moment. That's the fourth R. It's another one just, like, release that most people miss. They'll, like, make a different choice or reframe something or, you know, and then they'll just kind of, like, move on. And their brain doesn't tag it because it's going to tag the difficult things more. Because everyone here has heard about the negativity bias at this point. You know, over the last couple decades, it's been a big thing, and it's just real. And so we need to take these. These moments, too, and reinforce them so that they're easier to recall the next time. And so, yeah, that's like clicking the save button on that moment. I sometimes literally close my eyes and I'll take a snapshot of the moment, because my brain, like, likes looking at photos. And so I'll take a snapshot and, like, take a moment, see it in my mind, like this. This moment of relief, this moment of moving through this transition, whatever it might be. This moment of as this woman, Vanessa Corll Bennett, who also. They has a book that's called Less Awkward, or this is so Awkward, and it's about teens. And. And she had a moment where she was outside of her teenage son's room, and he just, like that started. Stopped saying I love you to her. And she was pretty hooked by that. Like, oh, does he not love me? What is it? This is. And then. So she paused. She took a moment, because I remember interviewing her, and she. And I said, this is, like, exactly what this is about. You did exactly what? This protocol. She took a moment. She recognized this loop that she was in. This Kind of like self worth. I'm a terrible parent. He doesn't love me. Loop. And she took a moment, took a breath, and kind of released it. And she refocused on a different question. Like, he's in this kind of stage of life right now. What do I. Instead of like, what isn't he giving me? Which was the question her brain was asking, she asked, what do I have to give? And so she said, all I can do right now is give him my love and see him as he moves through this time and transition. That new question made all the difference. It created a complete different emotional experience for her. And, you know, that's sort of what this is about. Can we, can we allow ourselves to make these emotional pivots that support us instead of keep us stuck?
- [44:39]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah, and stick with it. If you stick with it for five or 10 extra seconds of noticing and savoring. So we're, you know, we're spending all this time outside. You know, take that mental snapshot or the different things that you can say, like, like the one I talked about at the very beginning, like, I can handle this. You know, you got five or ten seconds. You stick with that. And you say it gives your nervous system, you know, enough time to record a new experience, enough emotion to record a new experience. You brought this up earlier, and I'd never heard of this. So I'm like, I don't know if it's something common that people have heard of or if I'm just like completely out of the loop, but I never heard the phrase non violent communication before. Tools to build emotional granularity. Okay, this is what I thought was so fascinating, Elijah. So you, you're talking in this part about first of all, that irritation, frustration and annoyance are all shades of anger. So I'm thinking about, well, sometimes as a parent, you're feeling all those types of emotions, irritation, frustration, and annoyance. But then teens do too. You know, like, there's a lot of irritation and annoyance and frustration in those years. I mean, I guess we all do, right? We all struggle with those things. But you had this part in here about the non Non Violent Communication Feelings and needs inventory. And I thought, these needs, I feel like kids are not getting these. So the Non Violent Communication Needs Inventory. Autonomy. I bet kids have hardly any of that, right? Choice, freedom and independence. Wrote connection. I mean, that's obviously dropping a lot because of technology. Meaning a lot of times kids don't feel like they have meaning. Physical well being. Are we getting enough rest, Nourishment, movement, play is One of them is there adventure like you, you just went on a big adventure with your son.
- [46:25]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
Oh yeah.
- [46:26]
Jenny Ertz
So I want to hear about that. But like peace and which were kind of like you talked about earlier. We're in this like techno fearance. It's like, it's just. There's not a lot of peace. It's a lot of stress and then spiritual communion, beauty, wonder, gratitude and inspiration. And I just thought oh my goodness. If this is kind of like what you need. It's probably, I'm probably. It's not the right way to say it like what you need to non violently communicate. But like if these are needs that we have. I just was like oh, we're kind of oh for eight here when it comes to our kids.
- [46:56]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
Wait, wait, let me ask you Jen. Did you just create a new term that I think is actually really an. A really great techno fearance?
- [47:04]
Jenny Ertz
Oh, I don't, I don't know. What does yours say?
- [47:06]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
Is that a real.
- [47:07]
Jenny Ertz
Is that probably some words that people use?
- [47:10]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
I think you created that just now and it's a, it's a relevant term.
- [47:14]
Jenny Ertz
I don't think I created it. You have techno stress. But I feel like I've probably heard it before techno anyway. If you have pretend like I made it up.
- [47:21]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
It's the first time I ever heard it was. It was a really. Yeah. Really adept term. I think so. Yes, that's right. So the, so we, you know, the be it being able to notice our emotions. The reason I like non violent communication personally and the reason I integrated into tiny shifts and I've integrated into like my teachings for as far as I can remember is because it's like a puzzle piece. It's like what's my missing puzzle piece here? It's like I have a certain feeling here. There's a need that's missing. If I can find that need and move in the direction now you don't need to. I want to just be clear with everyone. You don't need to find that perfect puzzle piece and fit it into that emotion. You know, like that. What we want to do is start moving in the. Identify it so we can move in the direction of it. That's all. That's really it. That's like that to make it again. Can we move in the direction of it a little bit? Like that's all we're really looking for. Because that's going to be relieving on its own. Yeah. And, and so, but, but it is like a puzzle piece. We're saying like I Have a feeling. When I'm not feeling well, I'm, you know, there's a need now it's not being met. Keep it very simple. What is that? I can identify it. What does that look like? To move in the direction of it? Okay, so I can. If it's connection, maybe it's just sending a text to my kids or my partner or, you know, if it's, it doesn't. Again, it could be. We could use technology for good still. Right. Because I, I don't feel it's too much for me to like go in their presence right now, but I can move in the direction. I can send a text. If it's, if it's food, that's very clear. If it's, you know, if it's, if it's taking a moment to take care of myself, I need to soothe my nervous system. Good. What does that look like? That's better than beating yourself up and being self critical in that moment. So we're just kind of like. And then that's another question because what does that look like? And as we ask ourselves that question, we start to get better at knowing what the answers are. So then like with the refocus stage, we have like, we can ask our brain questions. It looks for answers. We talked about that. Wherever our focus goes, we invite an energy to flow. So then we, then we can also just draw on our own wisdom. We have so many, no doubt, Jenny, that there's been so many podcasts that people have listened to of your podcasts, have so much wisdom in them that they, they know a lot of things that are helpful right now, but they just have trouble accessing it. But they know it. Or from their personal experience, they know a lot, but they have trouble accessing it. We all do. And so in that refocus stage, because we've done these different things, we can just kind of begin to draw on what our needs are and what we, what we know them to be and start moving in that direction and start feeling better as a result of it. You mentioned I went on a, a trip with my son. So we just went to, we just went all through Colorado because he wanted to look at a bunch of schools in Colorado because he's going to college soon. And, and we went to Manitou Springs, which some of you are listening might be familiar with. It's right outside of Colorado Springs. And there's this thing that I was recommended, I'd never been there before. And they're like, oh, you gotta do this thing called the Manitou Incline. So just to be clear, some, again, people who are listening, there might be many people who have done this or may know about it, but the Manitou incline is 2,768 steps up a mountain. And. And so that's the half of it. And then you either go down the steps or you go down this hiking trail all the way down. And I don't think I've ever done that many steps. Now, some people may be, I'm on the StairMaster, and I do 5,000 steps. Okay, so the.
- [50:50]
Jenny Ertz
That.
- [50:51]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
So, yeah, I don't know. So this is its own thing. So I'm. I'm taking these steps initially. And of course, my son is, like, a track star, like, whatever. He has a different. He has a different sense of being in shape than I do for this type of stuff. So he's, like, ahead of me, and I'm going up this, and, like, I gotta take some breaks. I'm kind of pausing for a moment, trying to, like, walk my talk for a second, recognizing, like, the looking up at there and saying, like, holy cow. Like, that's a lot of steps I still have in front of me that it'll tell you, like, on the bottom right of the step, like, okay, you're at step 200, 400, 600, 500, whatever. And so I'm like, I got a lot. And I. And I said, okay. There's a part of my mind saying, like, you can just go down now. You don't have to go up the rest of this. This is too much. You know, it's kind of feeling a little bit overwhelming to even look at it. So I paused, I took a breath. I took a. You know, I'm feeling, like, the overwhelm. The intensity of it. And I took a breath and kind of released for a second, and I told myself, like, what would be most supportive in this next. This next round of effort I give towards these steps. I saw this guy who. In front of me who was going up the stairs, and he was looking down while he was going at the stairs, he wasn't looking up at, like, how much he had in front of him. He was looking down. So I said, okay, I think that would be supportive. I'd look down. So through this whole journey, my refocus went from, like, that. That was helpful for a little bit, then went to, oh, wait a minute. I have these AirPods. I can put on one AirPod, and I can listen to some music while I'm doing this. That was my son's recommendation by the way so it's good to be connected with people because he was doing it the whole time. Then you know, then finally I, I, I made it all the way up. I ended up doing a whole Instagram story about this thing by the way, because I'm like, this is, this is perfectly aligned with like what this whole thing is.
- [52:36]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah.
- [52:37]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
And you know, finally making it to the end because it's tiny steps, tiny shifts. Yeah, we take a tiny shift. Tiny steps. So but these were like internal ones. Like I was making these emotional pivots because I was having this voice in my head like you can't. This is too much. Yeah, you're never going to make it. That kind of thing. And so I had to work with that versus just like what's the next small habit I can do? This was more about the emotional pivot internally. Sometimes I call tiny shifts like the atomic habits for emotional health in some way because it's the inside game that's sort of the foundation.
- [53:07]
Jenny Ertz
Right. Yeah, it's so helpful. And it really did stick out to me that you know, we're talking about these needs, this needs inventory. I was like, we are not structuring childhood in any way to like meet these needs, at least in abundance and certainly not all at the same time. So, so cool. What an adventure to go do that with your son and, and then, you know, you've got play is one of them and movement is one of them and a little bit of autonomy is one of them too. So it's fantastic book. It is called Tiny Shifts. How Emotional Health Transforms Stress, Relationships and Longevity. This is one of several books that you have and a lot you can go to your website and find that you have to offer people to really help them with their emotional health and also to check out your YouTube. This has been such an honor. We always end our show with the same question. What is a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside.
- [53:54]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
That was outside. Favorite memory from my childhood that was outside. I used to go to my grandparents house in Vermont every summer. My parents were separated and so they'd like this was a way of us kind of like getting taken care of I guess in the summer that when they went and did their own thing. But and, and they lived on a farm and I was very unstructured and highly unsupervised I would say. And I used to just be outside in the ponds catching frogs and, and like walking around just getting into all kinds of mess. But it was always outside there because they had all this beautiful outside and I Just remember a lot of enjoyment with it. And I'll say that that's from my childhood. And then as. As an adult, I will say this to anyone who has kids right now, how important it is to get outside with them, even if they resist going on those hikes. My mom used to bring me on hikes when I was a kid. I remember. And I used to be like, I don't want to go on a hike. You know, like. And I used to. But it didn't. It. It planted a seed for loving that later on in my life. And to go do that with your kid is, as they're teenagers and, you know, even as I get a little older, teenagers, too, I mean, is a great opportunity for connection when they may be at a time in life where they're, you know, disconnecting a little bit more, moving towards their own independence. And so getting out in nature with your kids is incredibly nourishing, and even if they're a little resistant to it. So I want to encourage them, little bit of that.
- [55:35]
Jenny Ertz
Such great advice. Dr. Elijah Goldstein, thank you so much. I love the book, and I think it's so needed in this time when we really have all these little overwhelms that are adding up, adding up. You talk about how to, like, change the loop, you know, so you're not stuck in that loop anymore.
- [55:47]
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- [55:48]
Jenny Ertz
It's really applicable. It's been such an honor to get a chance to talk with you. Thanks for being here.
- [55:52]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
Thank you so much. I loved it.
- [55:57]
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Dr. Elisha Goldstein
Thanks for making all my favorite recipes. Hi, Ma. Thanks for your unfiltered advice.
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- [56:07]
Dr. Elisha Goldstein
Hey, Mom. Happy Mother's Day.
- [56:09]
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