The Self

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Dan
We will. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Words of Wellness, the podcast, where we consider the ways people think, speak and write about wellness. I'm Daniel Anderson and we're coming to you from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Today we're going to be talking about the self. I have four guests with me and I will let them introduce themselves and.

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Katie
My name is Katie Mohr. I'm a freshman here at UNC.

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Nikolas
Nikolas Lewis. I'm also a freshman.

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Unai
And so I'm when I am a freshman, too.

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Sam
My name is Sam and I'm also a freshman.

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Dan
Well, welcome to the show. It's great to have everyone here. The concept of the self, I think, is one of these really large terms. And when we started to study this, each of you has a book that you were looking at. Was there anything that surprised you about the reading that you did in terms of this self and this large concept?

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Dan
What did you learn from from these books that you explored in.

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Katie
My book was all about defense mechanisms that we use. The whole idea is that the reason our defense mechanisms exist is to avoid pain that comes from early childhood. It was all kind of an evolutionary based idea that basically who we are today stems from how we were treated when we were babies and we are most vulnerable.

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Katie
The defense mechanisms that we use today are the areas in which our parents maybe fell short or they gave too much support in one area, and how that translates into your later life. And something that I found interesting is in the first part of the book, he kind of sets it up where he gives six different groups and he describes each group and you're supposed, as the reader, you're supposed to pick one or two that you most identify with, and then you carry that with you through the rest of the book.

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Katie
And as he goes through different defense mechanisms like denial or repression or projection, he'll give examples based on each group of how they're most likely to respond to uncomfortable or difficult situations. And I actually, I felt a little called out at times because I identified with a couple of groups, and then I'd read about a defense mechanism and my group would come up and I'd be like, That's actually really interesting because I actually do that.

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Katie
So it was really easy to engage with the book. I really enjoyed it. Yeah.

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Dan
Those groups, do you remember recall with a couple of them were.

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Katie
Some of them were: if you have a tendency to have really low self-esteem. Some of them were, I guess mine was: I tend to be really calm and like every situation, I don't get too worked up when things go wrong. But that, actually, turns out to be a defense mechanism. And I read about that and I was like, oh no, I didn't realize that was something I was doing that was harmful potentially.

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Katie
They didn't really identify the groups. They were just listed one through six. But then they were mentioned as he went through different defense mechanisms.

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Dan
So that's interesting.

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Katie
It was.

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Dan
What else? What jumped out at people?

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Nikolas
I would say my book, even though is in the self category with Deaf, I read more like a coaching book because like she kind of gave like a I got formulaic, like step by step process to like how to feel better. I feel like prescribe to people that were feeling unhappy in their lives and like it was talking about like how he needs to be honest and take heart and take accountability for it.

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Nikolas
Like your actions and focus on like what you. It was really focused on like what your desires are in life. Like you're like what you yearn for is like a really is a lot like if it's like relationships are like a successful career and things like that and how to like focus on those things and then weed out things that are harmful to like that specific goal, I don't think it's talked about is like the biggest tidal wave of integrity.

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Nikolas
So like living with integrity and doing things, like doing things purposefully is something I find interesting.

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Dan
Yeah. So I already am hearing two different aspects of this self ah, that I notice in these books. One has to do with correction and Katie, that sort of feels like what you were saying. These defense mechanism is let's look at things that we can fix in some ways. And Nicholas, it sounds like years on, this coaching dynamic is more of like the success positive like let's look how you can achieve what you want to achieve.

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Nikolas
Yeah.

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Dan
Yeah. So this dynamic of like downsides as a focus of wellness versus happiness, thriving upsides seems to play out in these books already. I hear two of those back and forth.

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Katie
Yeah.

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Unai
Yeah. That's what my book is called Resilience. So it's quite a bit different because that's not how like a step by step process or like, you know, whole process in 200 pages, whatever it was. But this book started saying, Hey, I'm going to give you the name of the 12 chapters and just the one that you feel is more appealing to you.

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Unai
You can just read first and read the other ones and just not read the other ones at all. So it's more like an encyclopedia of teaching that you don't quite read, at least like base or base. But yes, consult and look it up in the middle. And I found that very interesting. And so what he did basically to break up of four core qualities and then bring so three side pharmacy drill.

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Unai
And so it was recognized and I knew that the other ones were safety connection, safety, satisfaction and connection. Right. So like what it is basically for a recognizing. So how to ensure that you're safe from dangers than satisfaction. So I to be aware of your recognition of that and be happy with that and the connection but maybe also like interact with her people and show them that you are not show them wrong things that are going on in your head.

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Unai
And I felt that was like very interesting, like a pretty explosive breakdown. And yeah, I do remember other explicit quotes because he had like very small tips, right on a big picture idea of how to be more resilient. And number wonder was like, So when you recover from a setback right it's hey get get back again and so on.

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Unai
But like it's only important to recover your position. It's also recovery or momentum, right? If you are like physically oriented. So like basically how many people recover their position, but then they are not feeling well enough to work towards their goals again. So yeah, you have recovered, but there's still something else that you have to do and you have to be aware that it's not over and you still have to recover and gain momentum to continue thriving for your success.

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Dan
So we've heard about resilience, we've heard about some success and some challenges. Sam, Does your reading fit into any of those or what? What new can you add so far?

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Sam
So my book was the smallest out of all of them. It was, I think, maybe barely over 100 pages, and it was called the Untitled Self was written by C.G. Jong. I'm pretty sure it was written in like the 1940s or very early on in the 1900s. So it's not really like a up to date help book, but it's more just like advocating for people to kind of like wake up and realize who they are as a person.

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Sam
It's very like it read a lot like 1984, if you have ever read that book, or it's very like it talks about the world in like a very like dark manner and like it's very just very negative about the world. Like, it's like trying to repress your individuality. And it also talked a lot about the church, like about how you how people say, like you find your own self through God, but then you also find it by joining like a mass of other people, all doing the same thing.

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Sam
So it's kind of like a paradox in and of itself. But it's it's titled a self-help book, but it wasn't really feeling like a self-help book. It felt more like it was a guy preaching at me for a hundred pages, just like telling me like, I need to wake up and realize who I am and stop in like being just another person in the masses.

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Sam
And I didn't really, like, click with it all that much because like, I know who I amI don't think I'm being like, repressed by society or anything. And it just felt like and it's also like from the guy who, like, was writing it, you know, a very, rich white guy who had anything he ever wanted talking about like how society was like repressing him and his individuality.

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Sam
I'm like, you, you don't really have like the platform for that to, like, to build your ground on. And it just the book, it was a well-written book. I see what the message they were trying to say or he was trying to say. But the the execution, in my personal opinion, was not executed as well as it could have been.

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Dan
Yeah, maybe we can return to some of this because it's, you know, a very well-known figure in psychology, Young, who has these notions of archetypes and talks about consciousness and unconsciousness. So it may be that we can get to that, but it's making me think of one question, which it sounds like. Sam, that book was kind of operating under the enterprise of how do you define and understand yourself, like what actually is the self?

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Dan
And it sounds like these other books are kind of skipping ahead on that step and saying, do this. If you're having this kind of a problem or do this to achieve what you want or to bounce back from a tough situation, do this. And they've kind of just assumed that the self is something we already are comfortable with or we know.

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Dan
But I feel like the self is one of these terms in wellness that's more ambiguous that maybe, you know, maybe there is work to be done to figure out what do I actually mean when I'm saying self?

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Katie
Yeah, I think I don't know why, but that just kind of brings to mind those like personality tests. I don't know. Like people are always trying to figure out who they are and they want to identify with a group. And so they take these personality tests and they think they have their entire life figured out because some of them will like go through how you act in like relationships or like in professional environments.

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Katie
And I think it is just kind of an escape from like sitting with yourself, you're looking for a quick answer. I think the only way you can really know yourself is through self-reflection and being by yourself. No one's going to there's no machine that's going to be able to tell you who you are. That's just what that reminds me of.

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Unai
I mean, there's this idea that, like, you're not like fix things. Like if the person tests of you. Yeah, you're a very sociable guy with, I don't know, whatever trait that maybe attributed that that may be you with, especially in our ages that maybe youth ten years, but five years later, you're like very shy because something just because degree and you lost sociability So like it's very difficult to like categorize something because maybe you're transitioning from some aspect to another one.

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Unai
It's a very diffuse borders between personality traits.

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Sam
The hardest conversation that you can ever have with yourself is who am I and who do I want to be? And I have often seen that people are a lot like electricity. They'll always take the path of least resistance, and people don't like to do things that require a lot of work, myself included. My IDST is a perfect example of that, but people like there's personality qualities, like Are you a Ravenclaw or whatever?

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Sam
And then they'll tell you your personalities or whatever, whatever little online quiz you take. But people often don't like to have that conversation because they don't know. And that's why a lot of these people read these books and the self-help things is because they don't know. And the thought of not knowing is scarier than actually knowing what you are or what you want to be.

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Sam
So I think a lot of this thing stems back to what you were talking about earlier with how humans have defense mechanisms for fear, and it's all relating back to just how fear dictates every little decision we make. Because if you have a fear or the thought of fear makes us or influences our decisions.

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Nikolas
Yeah, I think that's like, yeah, I think that's really like per I don't know, it's like perspective, I guess because like I feel that also it's like, like reckoning with, like negative aspects of yourself can be really difficult for a lot of people. And so like, I agree with you, like reading, I feel like people reach out to like self-help books.

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Nikolas
Amazon, I just find like what? Like one of these aspects of myself and like, how can I use I'm like positively, I see.

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Katie
I feel like people avoid trying to figure out who they are because they don't want to be uncomfortable with what they find. Like, I think it's so easy to morph who you are these days and kind of turn yourself into someone maybe you're not, but you want to be. And the realization that comes with reading a self-help book can be unsettling if you find something about yourself that you don't like.

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Katie
So I would honestly argue that people will do anything to avoid knowing who they truly are.

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Unai
I mean, this is just selective memory or not equivalent, probably not exactly sacred memory. So like the most representative example is astrology and so on. So like when you read a description on personality, their DNA is so vague and so like unclear. They have such a vocabulary that like, everyone could fit there. And it kind of makes you feel good because you are.

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Nikolas
You're like everyone.

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Unai
Else. Yeah, you can.

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Nikolas
Feel like you're part of.

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Unai
Society, you feel identified and you can kind of manipulate all those words to make you seem as the person who you want to be right and the person who you actually are. So in essence, many people. Yes, I guess some folks to find the solution they want and even if in one chapter they say something good about them and the other ten are so wrong, they'll just remember the good one and just stay away.

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Unai
Yeah. Yeah. This book said that I'm very that I'm going to be very successful in life, and the other one is showing your weakness and so on. It's like, I don't know, try to like, be more aware of where you are, not who you want to be.

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Dan
Yeah, yeah. The level of effort and work that people put in to shaping their selves. I think that is an open question. Like Katie, you're saying a lot of people probably don't want to pay attention to that because some aspects of it are unpleasant or but then often people will get into a place where they feel like they need to because they're just not comfortable with where they are in life or they're looking for some change and then maybe they reach out to these books.

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Dan
And but I'm interested in this kind of take out menu approach that you're talking about. Oona, you said your book was actually constructed that way, where you pick what is going to be useful to you and go with it. And I guess would all of you sort of say something about that? Do these books all kind of operate that way when you, you know, you're looking for a certain tweak to your identity and you grab that book?

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Dan
Or does the book have a, you know, one chapter that works, one that doesn't?

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Nikolas
We always say, especially since well, and this is like so broad and like one solution might not work for everybody. I feel like most of these books are written to like a general audience, so they'll give you like multiple solutions to the same problem. And then like, you'll pick I think like, like Sam said, like he'll pick defensively.

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Nikolas
So whatever. Whenever our solution takes the least amount of work or like the least amount of like, like self reflection, I feel like it washes.

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Unai
Heavily on the books of like Joe, if you buy a book called Why Do I Do That? Again, that is specific is maybe because you just want to reflect on yourself, but if you buy a book called The of Integrity, it's because you want to be more you have more integrity. So in essence, I think it's pretty straightforward and most people have read a book by those books, find a weakness in their lives are not so good thing.

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Unai
Right? I'm just weak and I want to change that.

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Dan
Yeah. Back to the positive negative kind of aspects of self that people can focus on. It's almost like you can train the lens on one dimension or another dimension, and depending on where you are, that might happen almost organically in some ways. Let me talk a little bit about this idea of I guess I want to say overlap with other aspects of wellness.

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Dan
So when we did the the analysis that you made, dictionaries related to the self and you look through these books and came up with terms that occur frequently in books that are associated with the self, and then we ran a bunch of other wellness books through the word frequency computational program, and it revealed that there was a lot of overlap, I think in your group.

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Dan
It was with relationship books and with coaching books and maybe the body books, the books that were focused on the body came up a little bit. Can you talk a little bit more about that overlap or the way that your topic of the self and that kind of language connects with these other topics?

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Katie
Mine was pretty even on all categories, all the way through. I think it wasn't really focused on body. There were exercises that were listed in the book that I think got translated to like body that just didn't exist, but pretty much all across the board, my book was even on like self and thriving and coaching and relationships.

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Katie
And I think it just speaks to the fact that all of those things like relationships and coaching, like they deal with yourself, and when you work on yourself, you're working on those different parts of your life. Like it's always going to be connected to other things. I don't think you can just stand alone in yourself and not analyze different parts of your life while you're looking at yourself.

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Sam
I was talking with a professor earlier. It's not about my book because my book doesn't really focus. My book mainly has a lot of like power aspects, which it doesn't really connect.Mine was kind of like an outlier when connecting to the other topics. But I was talking with you earlier. I got broken up with yesterday.

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Sam
Oh, yeah, Oh yeah. Eight months, you know, that type of stuff. But the the thing that helped me realize was a lot about the self and relationships is that often you can lose your aspect of self in the relationship and with the idea of dependency and what and whatever that follows. But it's also about, you know, finding yourself in the relationship of what you do and in this, like this comes back more to the idea of like the self as in who do you define as like as an individual.

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Sam
And a lot of these like relationships, like as we've seen through the social media aspects or through our books or whatever, people like companionship and they will often, you know, push themselves to great lengths for that companionship, even if it's, you know, unhealthy or not good for that person. And that's what also I feel like these books do a great job of like with the coaching aspect as well about how to, you know, maintain yourself because at the end of the day, no matter, you know, who's there, you still always have yourself.

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Sam
And I think that's also another you were talking about resilience earlier and I feel like that's another thing that the books do a good job of is like telling people how to be resilient and how to kind of land on your feet.

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Nikolas
Yeah, I think that's I think this book talks well a decent bit about like how people would try to like mold themselves into the person that they want to be for like companionship. So yeah.

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Dan
Yeah. That self other dynamic I think is really important. So, you know, this idea of defining yourself seems like an inward movement. I'm going to figure out what my integrity is, what are my values. But there's always a kind of cross-referencing, I feel like with others, the how you relate to others is going to continually inform how you view yourself.

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Unai
I mean, there's also the idea of like half of your self is defining who you are when interacting with other people. So like, you can be kind if you're not aware of of people, because I get maybe resilience in receiving grace forever is purely self, but in many other kinds, if you're very team the emerging person, right? An individual working if you are in kindness pursue not are are sociopaths or whatever most of those are to other people.

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Unai
It's how you interact with other people. So also yourself is defined by how you interpret her people. So it's it's intrinsic to self. They are people.

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Dan
Absolutely. And then the other thing that I've recognized from reading a lot of these books is people will talk about connection and relationships as one of the keys to wellness. So if you are so comfortable in yourself but you're completely isolated, chances are you're going to be having a hard time if you don't have connections in your life and relationships with other people.

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Dan
Um, we've been talking about resilience a fair amount. I thought I'd play a clip and maybe I can get your reaction to it. It'll give us some, some topics to think about in terms of resilience.

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Lucy Horne
So number one, resilient people get that shit happens. They know that suffering is part of life. This doesn't mean they actually welcome it in. They're not actually delusional, just that when the tough times come, they seem to know that suffering is part of every human existence. And knowing this stops you from feeling discriminated against when the tough times come.

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Dan
So that was Lucy Horne. She's a researcher who studies resilience, talking about, you know, tough times. One of the things that jumped out at me is at the end where she talks about how I'm not being discriminated against because something bad happened to me. I'm interested in that because I feel like people have a sense of fairness in life that things are supposed to happen to good people.

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Dan
Good things should happen, but life doesn't play out that way. So I don't know how that connects. I mean, it definitely links with resilience. Can you talk about how that overlaps with what you've been studying or with our concept of ourselves in some ways?

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Sam
Yeah. The idea of like the thing that really stuck with me from the it's a little clip was people like things like, why does this happen to me? Like, I struggled that for a long time and like, all this, like a string of bad things would happen is like. And that was also like, I was like, kind of, like, kind of like phasing out of the church, too.

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Sam
And my church group, I was like, like, why does God do this to me? Type a deal. But I've come to realize that, you know, shit hits the fan sometimes and life just, you know, it doesn't always work out like this week, you know, not been the greatest loss my AirPods got broken up with. Someone stole my laundry.

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Katie
Like all of it?

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Sam
Yeah.

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Katie
Oh, no.

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Sam
And but at the end of the day, I know it's not like the universe, just like, you know, singling me out or something like that. I just. It stuff happens, and, you know, you know, if you went when you hit rock bottom, you can only go up and I feel like as long as like as long as people have that mindset, you know, you can get through anything.

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Nikolas
Yeah, I think it's like an important part of like the like when the flipside of like the common humanity thing, like you're not the first person for this to happen to you. And like other people have gone through this and been perfectly fine in their lives, like, as if were in parts like really yourself to other people in that sense.

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Nikolas
And I was like, getting this. Like what? You know, it's like, what's he like? The self is like, inseparable from the other like, like other people are to impact how you feel about yourself. I feel like.

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Dan
Are there some resilience strategies that you have encountered?

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Nikolas
I mean, do you mean like coping mechanisms or just like.

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Dan
Yeah, tactics, things you might, you know, you turn to when you're in these situations.

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Nikolas
I just like me like, I like exercise a little bit or like, yeah, I think that's like, what if I'm like, mad about something.

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Unai
Or something that. Yeah, I some I think this was right in the book. Yeah. So he made a comparison of people from Iceberg. So like, we are not on Instagram for example. Yes, but typical when people don't show their whole life, they only show a good part. So he basically compared it with an iceberg. You know, he's obviously that one part and it's not evenly distributed.

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Unai
So I guess I'm like, you see some of the girls in some of the bars. No, you see all the good things. But then there's this a bit very big body parts that didn't have to be go because again, shit happens. And like that said, so like you got to be aware people are an iceberg and the more you know someone probably the more you just cover.

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Unai
Nice. It's like, yeah, you know, when your friends are going through shit, but not when other people like I don't know your classmate. That is nearer as of the room. You only know maybe one day down he comes because he got an eight. So the more you know people you have to be that, the more you know them, the more you see the iceberg.

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Unai
So like everyone has an iceberg, it's just you don't eat. Yeah, that's like be aware of that. And yes, so now it's something to me on the I suffer days and so on.

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Dan
Yeah that sense of fairness I think is important to dial back a little bit because it is true that there's going to be suffering in life. It's kind of connects with this notion of of Buddhism or some of the spirituality aspects of of wellness that, you know, if it was all just rainbows and butterflies, none of these books would even exist in the first place, probably.

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Dan
So you're going to be participating in some of the same challenges that everyone participates in. One strategy I've encountered is to go back in time and look at obstacles that you've overcome in the past, in the ways that you've been able to kind of successfully navigate challenges. And you recognize if I've been able to do that before, the chances that I'm able to do that again are pretty, pretty strong.

00;28;53;05 - 00;29;17;10
Dan
So you can go with that. And then, Nicholas, I like your recommendation of, you know, movement. These are the wellness strategies that come up all the time. So whether you know, you're in a particular problem that's precisely labeled it just happened today. I need to get out and run or something. It's a good thing to turn to in any situation, as are the relationships and the connections.

00;29;17;10 - 00;29;24;29
Dan
I think as well. If you know you're having a lot of trouble, is there someone you can connect with is a good strategy as well?

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Katie
Yeah, I always if I'm in like a rut or it feels like something is just going wrong and I can't fix it, I, I try and focus on the things that I can control, whether that makes me a control freak or not, I don't know. But I find when I can accomplish something and do something and take control of something, it makes me feel better.

00;29;50;05 - 00;30;08;19
Katie
It puts things in perspective. Like, my whole life isn't going wrong. There are things I can do right. And when I can do something productive, it just puts the bad situation into perspective and makes it feel a little smaller.

00;30;08;19 - 00;30;30;09
Dan
So let's go back to Sam was talking about the book by Young, and one of the aspects of the psychology that Young puts together is this notion that you have a conscious sense of yourself and then there's an unconscious self that you don't really pay attention to that much, but it kind of they overlap or bubble up sometimes.

00;30;30;16 - 00;31;06;00
Dan
And then he has what he calls a collective unconscious, which is something that is almost like an inherited and also a cultural sort of sense of who you are. So in what way are our identities and ourselves shaped by these larger cultural constructs, or maybe almost like a genealogy, a history that we come from? Like who? How do we get to be this self that we are in terms of these larger societal and maybe historical aspects of us.

00;31;08;29 - 00;31;09;11
Speaker 7
And.

00;31;12;12 - 00;31;36;17
Nikolas
I would say, well, I think that like there's a lot of different like structures that I can imagine you are, I think like the family is one that's really important, like what your parents say to you. That's important who you are. I think religion can invite who you are as a person. And I see the world. And in terms of culture, like the community, just like the local community, you grew up in, and are you strong yourself with as like a child and as you grew up in middle school and high school like he was John himself?

00;31;36;20 - 00;31;41;06
Nikolas
I think an impact like your decision making and thought processes, so say in that sense.

00;31;42;17 - 00;32;00;16
Sam
Yeah, yeah. The idea because there's definitely like two for like two versions. I mean, there's a version that like he knows very social and like, likes to be around people and likes to go out and do things and there's like the other side, I'm just like, I hate people and I want to stay in my room and just be by myself.

00;32;00;16 - 00;32;36;02
Sam
And it's just, you know, it's like you have two different faces. There's like some Japanese like saying or like proverb or whatever, or it's like you have like three faces for the world they want. The world sees one. They like your friends see them, one that only you see. And it's just I definitely agree that, you know, we definitely I definitely have at least like different things I show about myself to other people and, you know, my family, like, you know, I don't tell my parents that, you know, I go to parties and, you know, indulge and this is going like to the.

00;32;38;24 - 00;32;39;24
Speaker 7
We we could that.

00;32;40;05 - 00;32;41;13
Dan
We could edit that.

00;32;41;28 - 00;33;00;14
Sam
And but it's it's definitely a real like I guess, you know, what I'm trying to say is the only real thing that you know there are different versions of yourself that you show and like what you think of yourself is not the same thing that you know, the what the world sees of you or what your friends think about you.

00;33;01;08 - 00;33;08;17
Sam
And it's just it's because everyone's perspective is different and no one is ever the same. So no one will ever see the person or a person the same.

00;33;09;28 - 00;33;24;18
Unai
I remember that discussion I had. Like some friend was saying, Sorry, we threatened to alcohol. So when you drink, you're like, you say the truth and you're sober.

00;33;24;18 - 00;33;27;24
Sam
Where drunk words are sober thoughts.

00;33;27;24 - 00;33;59;09
Unai
Yeah, yeah. It's like you've invited when you drink you already are true. You like I can see why that is true. But also I feel like the boundaries you may set on what you say and what you don't say. Your filters know whatever. And also some about of yourself. It's like those barriers you build between what you want to see divorcees Would your friends see and would you only see those boundaries, those filters you build that Second Life?

00;33;59;09 - 00;34;16;06
Unai
To some extent it's also part of yourself. So it's not that you just have a life and you show less, so your friends and even less to the work. It's just that they are kind of different lives. So like you live and how you want, but it's another one of the lives is bigger than the other one or whatever.

00;34;16;06 - 00;34;17;17
Unai
It's just differences.

00;34;18;20 - 00;34;37;14
Katie
I've never thought of it like that. Like the barriers and the filters that you have are actually part of yourself. And I think like every part of yourself, who you are in social situations, who you are with, your friends, who you are by yourself, that may be different, but they are all who you are. Like, they're you're not hiding anything.

00;34;38;08 - 00;34;47;01
Katie
Maybe you're being selective with what you share, but I don't think you're betraying yourself by not showing someone everything about you.

00;34;47;17 - 00;35;14;00
Dan
So yeah, it's like this. And we've been talking about metaphors a lot as we study wellness, and I think maybe we could see if we can generate one, because the idea that you have a core self and then you have an outer self or you have multiple selves that you show, I think that holds true. Everybody is different depending on the context and also depending on the moment.

00;35;14;00 - 00;35;33;02
Dan
And as you go through life, you're going to be a different person than you were 20 years ago, something like that. So, you know, I'm wondering what the what the metaphor might be. I'm thinking of like an onion where there's different layers and, you know, but that's not exactly the right metaphor. I'm also thinking of like up and down metaphors.

00;35;33;02 - 00;35;52;17
Dan
Young has this idea that you have your ego, which is this conscious self that's kind of up at the top and people see it are you're really that's who you think you are. But then underneath there's these other aspects of self. So there's kind of like a spatial down below. Maybe the iceberg is, is one of these metaphors as well.

00;35;52;17 - 00;36;06;05
Dan
Can you think what other metaphors might we put together to describe this weird thing that is changing and shown to different people?

00;36;06;05 - 00;36;36;13
Sam
Maybe like an outfit like, yeah, like I cause I don't act the same way around my parents than I do my friends. That's definitely for sure. And it's just it's like the this, the thing that you need to show or anything that there or the clothes you put on the occasion that you're in. Like, I'm not going to curse in front of my parents and I'm not going to like I'm not going to use like, yes, ma'am and no sir to my friends.

00;36;37;11 - 00;36;45;22
Sam
And it's it's like I see like the different clothes you put on is like the different types of like characteristics that you show around different people. So.

00;36;46;09 - 00;36;48;28
Dan
Yeah, I like that. That seems like a pretty useful one.

00;36;49;18 - 00;37;11;20
Unai
And also maybe trying to develop that better. So like you can show some things, but you can't high your height generally. But I mean you could do that with high heels, but generally you're going to high your height or your color face maybe. I don't know. You know, there's something that you can't hide it. Just define yourself. And then also you can put your clothes.

00;37;12;02 - 00;37;12;10
Unai
Yeah.

00;37;12;26 - 00;37;37;25
Dan
Yeah, I like that. Um, I wonder if, like, acting metaphors are like a character's in a in a play or a movie or something. Could also be a way of describing the way we act in certain situations and not in others. I think that's fantastic. Well, are there any last thoughts? What else do we need to know about what you've been studying or about these aspects of the self?

00;37;39;02 - 00;37;41;11
Speaker 7
Maybe.

00;37;41;11 - 00;38;12;11
Katie
I guess in my book, the author was really adamant about trying not to put yourself in a box, like when he was going through the groups and he said, like, it's really likely that you're going to find a sentence or two within each group that you identify with, and that's okay. Like, the goal is not to just define yourself in five sentences, try and find something that you can identify with most, but that doesn't define who you are.

00;38;13;06 - 00;38;39;07
Katie
It's just helpful for the exercise moving forward to pick a group. But he said, like, be really careful about putting yourself in a box and putting limitations on who you are. Um, so yeah, you can be multiple different things.

00;38;39;07 - 00;39;01;04
Dan
Well, thank you. That was a really enjoyable conversation. Um, Sam Una, Nicholas, Katy, I really appreciate the insights into the self for our listeners. Remember that you're not just one thing. As Katy says, don't put yourself into a box and understand that these concepts of the self are going to come into play in good times and bad times.

00;39;01;04 - 00;39;29;09
Dan
If you're struggling. These lessons in resilience and how your self responds to those are going to be important. And then as you try to, as they say, be your best self in life, you're going to be able to use these strategies as well. So I appreciate all of you're listening and tune in for another episode soon. Nice.

00;39;29;17 - 00;39;30;21
Sam
I like.

00;39;32;08 - 00;39;32;11
Katie
You.

00;39;33;08 - 00;46;04;29
Dan
Guys. Did great. Babies are born to enter, penetrate.

00;46;04;29 - 00;46;12;25
Nikolas
Into Mom's mind and to download what they find their models of how to understand reality. In the United States, 55% of babies.

00;46;13;00 - 00;46;27;21
Dan
Have a deep two way conversation with mom, and they learn models to how to relate to other people. And those people have models of how to relate. Have a huge head start in life. Scientists at University of Minnesota did a study in which they could predict was 77% accuracy.

00;46;28;01 - 00;46;29;21
Speaker 7
At age 18 months.

00;46;29;21 - 00;46;30;06
Nikolas
Who was going.

00;46;30;06 - 00;46;32;09
Dan
To graduate from high school based on who.

00;46;32;09 - 00;46;33;25
Nikolas
Had good attachment with mom?

00;46;34;04 - 00;47;17;09
Speaker 8
We asked everyone to write down all the emotions that they could identify in themselves as they were experiencing them and my guest. But I guess the mean or the average would be probably seven and the average was three. I can identify happy, sad and bad, and I thought, Oh my God, what happens to us? And what happens to the connection that we have with ourselves and other people when we have to share of really diverse experiences and emotions into just three big buckets, like what happens when it's actually not anger or sadness, it's actually disappointment or it's more it's even more profound than sadness.

00;47;17;09 - 00;47;45;19
Speaker 8
It's despair or hopelessness or anguish. We asked everyone to write down all the emotions that they could identify in themselves as they were experiencing them and my guest. But I guess the mean or the average would be probably seven and the average was three. I can identify happy, sad and mad. And I thought, Oh my God, what happens to us?

00;47;45;19 - 00;48;17;12
Speaker 8
And what happens to the connection that we have with ourselves and people when we have to share of really diverse experiences and emotions into just three big buckets, like what happens when it's actually not anger or sadness, it's actually disappointment or it's more it's even more profound than sadness. It's despair or hopelessness or, you know, anguish. And we asked everyone to write down all the emotions that they could identify in themselves as they were experiencing them.

00;48;17;12 - 00;48;52;29
Speaker 8
And my guest. But I guess the mean or the average would be probably seven and the average was three. I can identify happy, sad and mad. And I thought, oh my God, what happens to us? And what happens to the connection that we have with ourselves and other people when we have to share of really diverse experiences and emotions into just three big buckets, like what happens when actually not anger or sadness, it's actually disappointment or it's more it's even more profound than sadness.

00;48;52;29 - 00;49;04;22
Speaker 8
It's despair or hopelessness or, you know, anguish.

00;49;07;02 - 00;49;07;02
Speaker 8
Well.

00;49;09;16 - 00;49;30;05
Dan
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Words of Wellness, the podcast where we consider the ways people think, speak and write about wellness. I'm Daniel Anderson, and we're coming to you from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill today. We're going to be talking about wellness coaching. And I have four guests with me. I'll go ahead and let them introduce themselves.

00;49;30;23 - 00;49;31;15
Speaker 9
I'm Tyler.

00;49;31;28 - 00;49;35;04
Katie
I'm Siri. I'm Kirsten. And I'm Kate.

00;49;35;04 - 00;49;50;17
Dan
So let's get started talking about coaching and wellness. We've been talking about wellness a lot over the last few months, but I've yet to talk with anyone about coaching. What makes talking about wellness in terms of coaching different from other conversations about wellness?

00;49;51;12 - 00;50;14;20
Speaker 9
In other conversations of wellness, a big portion of the rhetoric and conversation used is talking about how you should be thinking about life and how you should interpret the things around you. But with coaching, the focus is a lot more on the individual who's individual being coached and like you. And I think that's a really big distinction between what we've been talking about before.

00;50;15;03 - 00;50;32;24
Katie
I definitely agree with that. And whenever we were like learning about all of the different ones, I found that coaching felt more like inspirational, empowering than the other. The others were kind of like talking you through certain situations, whereas the coaching books were like inspiring and empowering you to move forward.

00;50;33;18 - 00;50;35;22
Dan
What surprised you about the books that you read?

00;50;36;17 - 00;51;12;17
Katie
With the book I read, I was surprised by its crude nature from time to time, and also I was kind of surprised how much the author also talked about himself and his story within anecdotal evidence on how he was able to like, grow his life and therefore, like his advice can also be applicable to other people. So I found that it was interesting to notice how the author weaved in his story and to helping the readers.

00;51;13;04 - 00;51;38;25
Katie
I completely agree. Siri. Our books seem very similar on like my books crew. Nature is kind of the special marketing technique for it, and he definitely likes to talk about his life and how he is an American, which makes him better for some reason. But I was pretty skeptical of the coaching genre. But like the actual advice he gives isn't really that bad of advice.

00;51;38;25 - 00;51;51;14
Katie
It's more like practice positive self-talk, like resist those negative thoughts through action. You never want to be just sitting there and watching the world go by. And I definitely agree with those statements.

00;51;52;06 - 00;52;15;03
Speaker 9
And another thing that made my book unique was in the books we've been reading, it focused on like scientific fact about like how exercise will make you feel better, do better, etc. and like how doing certain things like thinking about something that makes you happy will make you more happy in the future. But all of those were just you read, you interpret, you try to do in life.

00;52;15;15 - 00;52;32;16
Speaker 9
But in my book, those half of the pages were like, Fill in the blanks, think about yourself, and write down qualities you have in yourself and what you want to improve on. And it was just polarizing to see how much how much more focus there was on the individual.

00;52;32;16 - 00;52;51;04
Katie
One thing that really surprised me and whenever I started reading my book was in each chapter there were just two words and there were two contrasting words. And then the author would tell a story about his personal life through it. And then the next it was called The Surfer in the Siege. So one part was the story of the surfer.

00;52;51;04 - 00;53;02;28
Katie
And then the other was the sage, which kind of described the the two words and how it's like applicable to like everyone's life, not just his personal story, which was really neat whenever I was reading it.

00;53;03;23 - 00;53;12;15
Dan
Did any of the books take up science? Was there science woven into them at some level, or were they really just more anecdotal and personal?

00;53;12;15 - 00;53;50;12
Katie
For my book, a turn of the In Gorilla mindset mentions fitness and he utilizes his anatomy to discuss how to think about your body and everything. So there is some of that scientific language within the book, but not necessarily the scientific analysis. I feel. Rather these books tend to employ language to provide almost ethos to the writing itself and to provide ethos to the author itself.

00;53;50;12 - 00;54;29;11
Katie
To attempt for the fact that, oh, he Chernov is trying to appear as a smart guy, but by listing, I guess glued till Maximus or something. He mentioned that in the book. I just I think he's just trying to use language to make him appear smarter rather than actually employ analysis. I think in my book there's like two like science examples he used, which is like the system, one of our minds and then system to like the automatic.

00;54;29;11 - 00;54;57;10
Katie
We don't think about it like you identify colors. There isn't like a thought behind that really. And then system two would be like interpreting what system one has. And I've heard that before. And then one other thing was like comparing his like advice to like exposure therapy and like actual, like therapy offices. But those are two. The only two I can think of that was even slightly like scientific.

00;54;57;23 - 00;55;15;11
Dan
Yeah. So the way that these books gather, their authority has much more to do with, as you said, Siri, the ethos or the kind of standing of the author. It's testimonial based rather than evidence, scientific evidence based, fair to say.

00;55;15;24 - 00;55;24;06
Katie
Yeah, exactly. And that's within the if we analyze like the name of the category itself, coaching the ethos comes from the coach.

00;55;25;01 - 00;55;53;21
Dan
Absolutely. I could see that. And we could use analogies with other areas of life where an individual is the inspiring figure or I don't know, it's more driven by one person than a broad claim, as you were saying. Tyler. It's not like broad scientific evidence. It's more, I don't know, anecdote. Does that diminish our engagement or, you know what?

00;55;53;28 - 00;56;02;06
Dan
How should we, how should we read these critically if the evidence that's being provided to us is more personal, more linked to individuals?

00;56;03;26 - 00;56;29;04
Katie
I would say, at least for my book, it was kind of like on the border where mine could almost fit into the religious category. And so that was in the spiritual category as well. And so that was really interesting, like reading it because it wasn't scientific based at all. It was kind of like his story and how he found like religious and spiritual evidence to provide for the story rather than scientific.

00;56;29;04 - 00;57;00;05
Dan
Interesting. Were there other spiritual elements that showed up in in any of your other books now? So I wonder if by dialing back the scientific support in these in this genre of books, if it creates space for other adjacent topics. So. Kersten you're saying there spirituality was available in this one? I know Siri, your book I think has been listed in some political circles as well.

00;57;00;10 - 00;57;10;04
Dan
Did you find that there was more politics or more of any other kind of topic that comes up because these books are personal based and not talking about science as much?

00;57;10;22 - 00;57;50;18
Katie
Yeah, definitely. I feel that he takes on a very put he employs language where people who are politically active would understand and more so I think it would be the gorilla mindset was written for men who are older and are generally involved within business and generally involved within fitness. And I guess it also brings up bro culture. And I think the book was directly written for bro culture.

00;57;50;27 - 00;58;19;01
Katie
And it's interesting because as a woman who is I'm in business and I'm also physically active and I also am involved myself within politics, but a different lens. Reading the book, the tone was not intended for me. It was intended for the other people.

00;58;20;06 - 00;58;50;18
Speaker 9
Adding on to what Siri said, I think all of our books had a very different tone, whereas yours are talking about like bro culture and politics. Yours or series was talking about bro culture and politics. Christians were talking about like spirituality and not white juror case. We're talking about. But and Miles, you're talking about self-improvement. And I think the fact that these books are I think the fact that science is like left on the wayside allows for the diversity in these coaching books.

00;58;50;18 - 00;59;12;06
Speaker 9
Because if you don't have a focus on if you have less of a focus on empirical, proven things, you allow for more diversity in what you talk about. And that in turn allows coaching books to be very diverse and to allow the reader to, in a sort of sense, choose their own path on how they want to be coached and how they interpret their coaching.

00;59;13;11 - 00;59;43;14
Katie
Yeah, I completely agree. I kind of like it more when it's less science based because often I'm looking at the studies they cite and I'm like, Is that really 60 participants? Is it like amazing? Especially when they go lower to like ten, But with the coaching genre, I feel it's a lot easier to not necessarily believe what they're saying, but to like, do what they're talking about because it's less You should do this because this, this and this.

00;59;43;14 - 01;00;05;04
Katie
It's like you should do this because it'll make you feel better or something else. It's more like, like a guided path. And meanwhile, I feel like a lot of the other self help books, it's like change. Like you can only go this way and you can only do this to get the best version of yourself. I definitely agree with that.

01;00;05;04 - 01;00;28;07
Katie
Something I found really interesting in my book compared to other books that I've read within the self-help book was that mine felt through was like targeted to like an entire like anyone could read it and it would be applicable rather than like other books are like for female or like anything like that. And so mine was like, I really enjoyed it because of that aspect where it wasn't targeted to one group.

01;00;28;07 - 01;00;32;27
Katie
It was like, Anyone can read this and understand what the author is trying to portray.

01;00;33;16 - 01;01;02;05
Dan
Yeah, so we talked about gender a little bit. Sarah You're saying your book was targeted at men very specifically. Is there also an age dynamic there? I know Kathryn, you're the title of your book is on BLEEP Yourself. Well, leave that bleeped, but I can imagine a just help me think through what audiences are being aimed at with a title like that or with these kinds of books.

01;01;02;05 - 01;01;04;07
Dan
What can we say about the audiences for these books?

01;01;04;14 - 01;01;30;24
Katie
At least for mine, it definitely seems not necessarily targeted towards men intentionally, but through like the language, like the author uses Bishop uses. He like will kind of like leave women out of the conversation when he does. Does those like, anecdotes he'll be like, imagine like you're talking with your friends and you're going to the gym and they talk something about a woman.

01;01;30;24 - 01;02;01;19
Katie
And I'm like, That wouldn't necessarily happen to like a group of women. Or they're like, Imagine trying on suits or like stuff like that. And at least her, like my book specifically, it seems like it's geared towards the people who are skeptical or skeptical of self-help books where they're like, I want a different book. And she book, he definitely goes towards like that edgy thing with his use of profanity, which I find kind of silly, you know?

01;02;02;04 - 01;02;28;23
Dan
That's my is there kind of stereotype then? And this might not apply to all the books, but especially Katherine and Siri, these kind of, I don't know, bully your way through life type books saying, you know, be assertive, step up to, you know, are they trying to create a model that's, I don't know, a caricature or a stereotype?

01;02;28;23 - 01;02;32;11
Dan
Is there some of that in the way these books work, or am I jumping far?

01;02;32;23 - 01;03;20;11
Katie
I would say so. I think as I think with these books, they when they do this meanness, in a sense, they're trying to appeal to their reader because in sometimes when this male reader who is a bro is reading this book, they don't want to feel like they're getting rid of their masculinity in some sense. Because if we really think about self-help, a lot of it has to do with introspection and feelings of where you question yourself.

01;03;20;20 - 01;03;48;22
Katie
And sometimes that doesn't align with masculinity at at least for mine. Once you get over like the, like sections where he just talks about himself and then uses random quotes from like male philosopher as his advice actually seems way more applicable to like the broader audience, like engaging in like positive self-talk and like retrain your brain to like, not think so negatively.

01;03;48;28 - 01;04;01;17
Katie
Like that can apply to anyone. But because of the way he uses his language, I feel like he's definitely not including a wider audience. Yeah, I completely agree with what you said.

01;04;02;01 - 01;04;21;20
Speaker 9
Yeah, and this isn't to say that all coaching books are like geared towards the bro guy. At the very least, my book feels like it's geared towards anybody who just is having a life crisis of some sorts and wants to come back to the roots and try to improve themselves so it can be a lot broader or category.

01;04;22;01 - 01;04;43;13
Katie
Something kind of interesting that you brought up, Catherine, was that since it was like a male author mein book had two male authors, which I thought would kind of structure towards men a little bit more, but they did like a really well job of like being very inclusive to everyone. So I just found that really interesting. All reading.

01;04;43;21 - 01;05;04;19
Dan
Yeah, I like Your book is called The Server in this Age. You said in many ways I think it's using that metaphor of surfing, which you would think would be really particular. So if I don't surf, how is this book going to be applicable to me? What are some of the ways that it broadens that out? It's not about surfing, but it is in some ways.

01;05;04;19 - 01;05;25;22
Katie
So he kind of talks about his life story, and so he really uses the surfer to as a metaphor of like overcoming life's waves or like something like that. But he uses like his story, like he had lost his son. And so, like many of the chapters were focused on that and like, how to overcome that as a family.

01;05;26;04 - 01;05;51;22
Katie
And then the surfing was mentioned, but it was also used in a really like interesting way that like made it inspirational for like anon, someone that didn't surf. It was just like, Oh my gosh, that's awesome. Like, look at all these experiences rather than just being like, like using that tone of like surfer that the normal person probably wouldn't understand, but he makes it like, understood to all nice.

01;05;52;01 - 01;06;12;09
Dan
So I feel like we've looked at some of the ways in which these books are unique or the coaching genre skews a certain way. It's a little less scientific. Some of them are more particular in their audience, maybe with a male audience and in two of our cases, but not all. So let's talk about some of their strength.

01;06;12;09 - 01;06;27;05
Dan
It's Katherine. You mentioned that there were some really solid strategies in here. What you know, without science, what are they offering us? What are some of the big takeaway bits of advice that come through in these books?

01;06;27;05 - 01;06;56;03
Katie
At least for me, a lot of the book like focused on like the Assertive Self and then the narrative self. The narrative self just sits back and like narrates life as it goes on while the assertive one takes what they want and engages in people and doesn't shy away from like a lot of negative emotions. Like, you know, failure is a thing that life has, and if you're too afraid of it, you'll watch pass by.

01;06;56;15 - 01;07;20;03
Katie
So that was like the main, like strengths I really liked. I really liked the advice they gave, like just doing stuff regardless. On how like your brain thinks because honestly, that sometimes that's what you got to do. Your brain's just not going to like, turn off all those, like, negative feelings and negative thoughts. But if you do something and you get absorbed in it, often you forget what you were feeling in the first place.

01;07;20;19 - 01;07;49;27
Katie
Yeah, totally. I also think turnover provides useful strategies within mind mindset. He talks about the importance of self-talk and he says it's important to treat yourself or talk to yourself as if you would talk to a trusted friend. He says that a good strategy he recommends is recording yourself when you're talking about yourself and then replaying it back.

01;07;50;03 - 01;08;35;04
Katie
And then when you replay it back, you realize all the negative things you're saying. And then you said, Imagine you said that to a friend, then you all wouldn't be really good friends anymore. And he provides other examples of the importance of mindfulness, even within walking, just noticing the way you move. So I think he does provide useful examples, but as Catherine said, due to tone and due to language being used, sometimes despite it being useful strategies is really for one to consume.

01;08;36;03 - 01;09;06;16
Speaker 9
And a common theme among at least Siri. And my books were that a big portion of the book is self-reflection. So instead of like logos, no credibility from science, like if a person believes something, then they are more likely to do it themselves. So by having the person think about themselves and maybe like reflect about, reflect about how they talk about themselves, they can identify what it is they don't like about themselves so that they can work on it.

01;09;06;16 - 01;09;12;05
Speaker 9
And it's something that they want to work on, which makes it a lot easier for them to get going.

01;09;13;14 - 01;09;35;12
Katie
As my book kind of or as I had mentioned earlier, my book had like two contrasting words is the label of like each chapter. And so at least for my book, it was really relaxing almost to read, which was really interesting and helpful to me because like with all of us, I know, I'm sure all of us have like so much schoolwork and stuff.

01;09;35;12 - 01;09;50;03
Katie
We get like really overwhelmed. And so mine was kind of like a take a step back, like, relax, everything's going to be okay, which was a really easy read and really helpful like where I was at, like in school and like stress and stuff like that.

01;09;50;14 - 01;10;17;05
Dan
I like that a lot. Kiersten Because I think it's easy to get lulled into sense that these books are a vehicle and they're going to give you some kind of message. So if you carefully read it, it'll say Do A, B, and C, and that's going to help with Problem D formula kind of thing. And Tyler, I think you said your book had actual forms to fill in or, you know, it's like actually telling right this down, make lists, do these sort of list making things.

01;10;17;05 - 01;10;43;19
Dan
So what I'm hearing is that the books themselves, at least the two here, were enacting their messages a little bit. If you spent time with your book, you would get this sense of perspective. Forget about the little things. Let's let's look at the big picture or you might make a list of these that you have. So I really like that the book itself is doing self-help in some ways, as opposed to just delivering a message about self-help.

01;10;43;19 - 01;10;44;13
Dan
If that makes sense.

01;10;44;20 - 01;11;07;02
Katie
I think that's really interesting because where maybe Tyler's book could work for like some of the audience, like that could be really helpful to some where they're out stuff. But like for my book, it was just so open to interpretation where I could maybe take some of the things that he was saying and I could be like, okay, let's do like a lists kind of mentality.

01;11;07;02 - 01;11;18;17
Katie
Like, that could work for me or it could be like a big picture idea where I'm like, Okay, let's just take a step back. Look at the big picture, and then like, take it one step at a time. And it was really, really helpful.

01;11;19;12 - 01;11;41;29
Dan
So one of the things that we did to try to understand how these different genres of wellness books work is to read them and then identify language that shows up in the different categories. So you all made a dictionary, a list of terms that up regularly in the coaching genre of wellness books. Let me just read a few of them and we'll see what thoughts we have.

01;11;42;08 - 01;12;09;14
Dan
These ones jumped out at me because they were a little different than the others. There's some like spiritual or self-care that come up in almost all of the categories, but then in your category were things like future business, potential power, better goals? Will willpower money? Are those the kind of focuses that set these books apart, or what can we say about that type of language that shows up in these books?

01;12;10;16 - 01;12;35;01
Katie
I think personally, with the willpower specific, though, well, a lot of my book was like, you need to go out into the future and take what you want, which is I guess part of it's like pandering to that like male audience. But a lot of it was talking about the future that you want through like certain steps you have to take or well, that would be better for you to take than just sitting by.

01;12;35;01 - 01;13;10;27
Katie
So mine was definitely thinking about the future of what you want. I think with the money aspect in my book, the author writes How Oh, you can also check out my podcast if you want to learn more. And it's almost like a pyramid scheme in some sense that is applicable to a lot of coach is because since once they sell you something, they're trying to sell you more.

01;13;11;16 - 01;13;30;22
Dan
Yeah, you bring up one of the concerns that circulates around coaching and wellness has to do with the what does it take to become a wellness coach? How do you go about doing that? And I think if you're okay, I'm going to play a clip that gives us some insights into into this coaching. So I looked into this a little bit.

01;13;30;22 - 01;13;54;17
Dan
You can easily get a credential to be a life coach. There was one entity that was charging $250 and you take an online quiz, you can take the quiz as many times as you want. And a reporter took the quiz one time and missed too many questions and just took it again. They didn't even read any of the materials and got their credential in about an hour to be a life coach.

01;13;54;17 - 01;13;59;06
Dan
So this is a licensed therapist talking about that phenomenon.

01;13;59;20 - 01;14;22;03
Speaker 8
A life coach by themself is not a therapist. If somebody comes to me and they're depressed or they have anxiety, I'm going to be able to help them with that because it's part of my training. Is part of the problem. You think that anyone can become a life coach? Yes and yes. They aren't skilled with or understanding of mental illness.

01;14;22;14 - 01;14;25;24
Speaker 8
They may not even recognize they shouldn't be going there.

01;14;27;01 - 01;14;36;18
Dan
Is there something we should be doing to educate the public then? Or how concerning is this phenomenon of openness of of being able to be a life coach?

01;14;38;03 - 01;15;01;07
Katie
I definitely think some people that go to life coaches actually need to go to a therapist, but is still like a stigma around mental health. And like if you go to mental health, that means mental health care services. That means like you're sick or there's something wrong with you. But I do think maybe there needs to be some education in the public.

01;15;01;08 - 01;15;30;09
Katie
I don't think the regular like layman is to go to a life coach, but maybe perhaps in those like upper class, like communities or like especially, I think men would rather go to a life coach than like a therapist because again, the stigma around mental health. So maybe something targeting those specific communities being like, hey, people, you're going to don't actually may not know what they're actually doing.

01;15;31;04 - 01;16;06;08
Speaker 9
Yeah, I completely agree with Kate and think that the biggest issue here is that there is not enough education between the differences between a life coach, a life coach and a therapist, because I feel like a lot of the time life are trying to blur the line in order to make themselves more desirable and appealing. But as long as you understand that life coaches come from a position of like, anecdotes and just things they believe in and try to, I guess, not impose but help teach others, it becomes a lot clearer that it's like an option that you can go to if you want.

01;16;06;13 - 01;16;10;13
Speaker 9
But if you do need something more serious, therapy is a much better option.

01;16;11;12 - 01;16;32;16
Katie
I completely agree with that. I think a life coach would put out and voice their opinion on how to like solve a certain issue, whereas a therapist is going to take like all of the factors into consideration before providing the help that you may need, which I think is definitely something that we should try to be informing the general public about.

01;16;32;28 - 01;17;04;11
Dan
Yeah, the difference between somebody who's being disingenuous and just trying to make money and somebody who is actually pursuing something, they think is a value. As a life coach, we should probably make note of that. So there's going to be bad apples trying to just capitalize on on this tendency for life coaching to be popular. But is there a tangible difference between something like wellness and life coaching in terms of wellness might be more problem solving?

01;17;04;11 - 01;17;17;05
Dan
You're having anxiety. There's something that it needs to be fixed, whereas life coaching is more of you're doing fine and you're trying to move to thriving. Is that fair to say or is that a false binary between those two?

01;17;17;26 - 01;17;49;20
Speaker 9
I think that's a pretty accurate description of the difference between wellness, wellness and life coaching in a sense, because when you're talking about wellness, you're trying to get to a state where you can feel well and be happy with yourself. But when you're life coaching, as the term implies, you're coaching yourself in a way that like in any other sense of the word coaching, you think about improving yourself past like average if you're getting swim coach, you're like, I'm already a decent swimmer, but I want to be better and I want to be able to be competitive.

01;17;50;09 - 01;17;58;03
Speaker 9
So when you're getting life coach, you're already in a position where you're at least some are comfortable with your life, but you're trying to get to the next step of, I guess, striving.

01;17;59;05 - 01;18;32;07
Katie
Yeah, And I think another aspect of life coaching has to do with perhaps professional development and maybe connections within industry. If the coach is than just a book, a person that you go to on a weekly basis. And that's what people might be looking for when I guess as the clip intended, I don't necessarily think she was talking about the books of the coaching.

01;18;32;07 - 01;18;58;27
Katie
I think maybe she was discussing life coaches within the sense where they try to address both your wellness and professional opportunities. And also I think it's interesting how if we tie in to Maslow's Pyramid and I guess it's reaching to not just average but to a competitive sense.

01;18;59;11 - 01;19;01;16
Dan
Can you glossed that pyramid for us?

01;19;01;16 - 01;19;09;28
Katie
Yes. So the pyramid starts out with actually a week and someone else.

01;19;10;06 - 01;19;20;26
Speaker 9
Starts with basic necessities at the bottom like food, shelter, water, etc.. And then as you move up, you I guess I need I don't have the exact pyramid, but I think Kate's pulling.

01;19;20;28 - 01;19;29;24
Katie
Yeah. Yeah. Psychological needs, safety needs, love and belonging, esteem. And then self-actualization is at the top.

01;19;30;06 - 01;19;53;16
Dan
So there's a kind of trajectory implied. When you move toward those top levels, you're more in the coaching zone, you're fine tuning your improving kind of, moving along. In some ways, that contradicts a little bit. Catharine, with the title of your book on BLEEP Yourself, which assumes there's already something wrong that needs fixing. And I think there's probably no absolutes here.

01;19;53;27 - 01;20;16;26
Dan
Even if somebody is saying do more positive self-talk, that's both improvement to thrive and it's addressing something that might be holding you back. So in some ways they're more in the improvement space, but it overlaps a little bit. And this concern with credentialing is it's interesting to think about because at one level there are a lot of real predatory practices.

01;20;16;26 - 01;20;40;14
Dan
Probably if somebody is struggling, then they're more likely to kind of latch on to someone who says, I can help you, whether they're credentialed or not, and that could be a real problem. But by the same token, maybe somebody can be inspiring and write one of these books or even start a business as a life coach if they have that personal kind of ethos driven to help people.

01;20;40;25 - 01;20;47;26
Dan
So we don't want to close the door just because you don't have an advanced degree, but it's also open to some predation.

01;20;48;11 - 01;21;16;16
Speaker 9
But Adding on to your thing about bad apples, I think that unfortunately has pushed when we think about self code or these coaching books, they are mainly addressed towards middle class individuals and I think that is an unfortunate, unfortunate byproduct of the fact that there are so many bad apples because in the middle wage category or middle income category, you have people who have both disposable income, but they also are like trying to better themselves.

01;21;16;29 - 01;21;26;29
Speaker 9
So by targeting that audience, which is I believe what's happening, you have a much greater chance that like swaying people and having them follow you like a cult, like fashion.

01;21;27;20 - 01;22;00;07
Katie
Also, to add on to the idea of class and income, I feel like this idea of life coaches have really existed throughout history because of people within communities who are respected, who give advice. But recently the phenomena of this life coaching is that it has become significantly more commercialized and therefore devalues its authenticity and its genuine idea and also its ethos as well.

01;22;00;07 - 01;22;32;21
Katie
Because since now anyone can become a life coach, but in one of my classes I'm taking, it's called Modern Muslim Societies. We talk about the Sufi circle and Sufi masters who teach, who are respected individuals within communities and people would they these masters would be trained within around ten plus years of schooling on how to self actualize themselves.

01;22;32;28 - 01;23;09;04
Katie
And common folk would go to these Sufi masters with questions they have about either agriculture or about love, about several, several things. And in the sense could be a life coach. But they're not making any profits from this. And also these Sufi circles and Sufi masters, they come from a lineage of families of Sufis rather than just. And I guess that makes it less accessible to become a life coach, but also it makes the quality much better.

01;23;09;26 - 01;23;28;06
Katie
I find that really interesting, and I definitely agree with what you say about it always being like prevalent kind of through history, because I feel like there's always going to be like an industry around life coaching because people are always kind of searching for the next best thing, and that's kind of what they get whenever they're reading a life coaching book.

01;23;28;21 - 01;23;49;06
Katie
So it could be really like subjective, I guess in the middle. I guess the middle income is always searching like we have all of this, but like the next best thing, like we want more or like something like that. And they're kind of can find that through a life coaching book rather than the end that there's nothing like wrong, but they're just searching for more.

01;23;49;26 - 01;24;11;28
Dan
I could see almost a vicious cycle in our culture that promotes more as the measure of how well you're doing in life and then a coaching industry that springs up to further that sense that if you only get coached a little better, you too can get more and at some level, adjusting the entire framework of maybe more is not where you're actually going to find happiness.

01;24;11;29 - 01;24;23;03
Dan
Could be a good outcome here. Well, is there anything we should touch on before we wrap up? What anything left to say about your books that surprised you or that links with our conversation so far?

01;24;23;26 - 01;24;46;03
Speaker 9
I guess one last thing I wanted to observe was that when we were doing our dictionary analysis analysis, I think I saw that among all the other categories, coaching was like relatively middle to high for all the categories, which I think is is a testament to just how diverse the coaching books are. And also in our own category, we couldn't really get coaching that hot.

01;24;46;22 - 01;25;15;00
Dan
Yeah, absolutely. There was this interesting overlap where coaching showed up in books. What you wouldn't expect is spirituality category or other categories that had this kind of coaching language threaded throughout all of these genres. Yeah, which I guess maybe takes us to some thoughts about where we're going with these is to be discerning on your own, especially with these audience concerns of these self-help books.

01;25;15;00 - 01;25;40;05
Dan
Are there coaching books in particular? It might not be aimed at you and you can make your own choices about which of these books is going to work really well. And you can probably deploy these coaching strategies even when you're working in another area of wellness, like self-development, spirituality, all of those kinds of things. Well, thank you very much to my guests, Tyler, Siri, Kirsten and Kathryn.

01;25;40;11 - 01;25;53;07
Dan
It's been a really engaging conversation and we'll be back with another episode next week on Words of Wellness.

01;25;53;07 - 01;25;55;04
Sam
We find Rhonda's certification.

01;25;55;04 - 01;26;19;24
Speaker 8
On her site from the Life Coach Training Institute, and all it takes to get a certificate from the school is this online test for roughly $250 a life coach. Buy them self. It's not a therapist. If somebody comes to me and they're depressed or they have anxiety, I'm going to be able to help them with that because it's part of my training.

01;26;20;01 - 01;27;32;11
Speaker 8
Is part of the problem. You think that anyone can become a life coach? Yes and yes. They aren't skilled with or understanding of mental illness. They may not even recognize they shouldn't be going there. Yeah. So what is empathy and why is it very different than sympathy? Empathy fuels connection. Sympathy drives, disconnection, empathy. It's very interesting. Teresa Wiseman is a nursing scholar who studied professions, very diverse professions where empathy is relevant and came up with four qualities of empathy perspective taking the ability to take the perspective of another person or recognize their perspective as their truth.

01;27;32;20 - 01;27;55;09
Speaker 8
Staying out of judgment not easy when you enjoy it as much as most of us do, recognizing emotion in other people, and then communicating that empathy is feeling with people.

01;27;55;09 - 01;28;16;00
Speaker 7
The third kind is very important and it's underrated. It's called empathic concern. It means if I have someone in my life who's in distress, I'm not just going to feel it. I'm going to want to help them because I love them. It draws on a third part of the brain, which is the they call it the ancient mammalian system for parenting.

01;28;16;13 - 01;28;59;00
Speaker 7
It's it's like a parent's love for a child. If you have that love for someone, then you're going to be there for them. And that's that's a different kind. That's different than cognitive difference in emotional. If I win, I will be happy. If I don't, I won't. It's an if then cause in effect, quid pro quo standard that we cannot sustain because we immediately raise it every time we attain it.

01;28;59;25 - 01;29;18;19
Speaker 7
You see, happiness. Happiness demands a certain outcome. It is result reliant. And I say, if happiness is what you're after, then you're going to be let down frequently and you're going to be unhappy much of your time. Joy, though joy is a different thing.

01;29;18;19 - 01;29;20;11
Dan
It's something else. Joy is not a choice.

01;29;20;25 - 01;32;53;26
Speaker 7
It's not a response to some result. It's a constant joy is the feeling that we have from doing what we are fashioned to do.

01;32;53;26 - 01;33;12;23
Dan0
Another value that we want to make sure that the students get out of it is they learn about a professional environment. And one of the things that I learned from that was that when we went out, people came in early and they stayed late and they loved what they did every day. They loved everything about it. Nobody was punching time clock or saying, You need to be here from now to the end.

01;33;13;01 - 01;33;30;27
Dan0
It was, Oh my gosh, I get to go in and do this thing. And there was this professional environment that they got to be in. And along with that meant that especially students who weren't always a part of university culture, they got to learn the culture of what it means to be professional, right? What does it mean to act, to act and work in a professional environment?

01;33;31;14 - 01;33;49;04
Dan0
So the things that students learn when they're doing this, they learn these research skills where students get to learn. It's not just about doing things, but it's about learning how ask the questions, right? Knowing how to phrase a question, and then what you would do about getting it in the era of big data, right? This is one of the things we need to know.

01;33;49;04 - 01;33;58;21
Dan0
The data often there, it's how do you interpret it, what kind of questions to ask out of it?

01;33;58;21 - 01;34;37;25
Dan1
Oh, great, great. Oh I.

01;34;39;14 - 01;34;57;03
Speaker 7
Mm. I'm surprised.

01;34;58;24 - 01;35;23;07
Dan
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Words of Wellness, the podcast where we consider the ways people think, speak and write about wellness. I'm Daniel Anderson and we're coming to you from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill today. We're going to be looking at self-esteem, aspects of self esteem that include self-talk and self-compassion, and we'll be thinking about that with some guests.

01;35;23;20 - 01;35;26;15
Dan
I'm going to go ahead and let them introduce themselves now.

01;35;26;15 - 01;35;34;17
Nikolas
Hey, I'm Dorian Blow. I'm a freshman here at Chapel Hill, and my sub topic within self esteem is self-talk.

01;35;35;10 - 01;35;46;08
Katie
And Cindy's saying I'm also a freshman at Chapel Hill and my subtopic is identity. I'm holiness. Yeah, I'm a freshman at USC and my sub topic is self-perception and.

01;35;46;17 - 01;35;50;00
Dan
Hi, I'm the sister similar. I'm also a freshman at USC.

01;35;50;00 - 01;35;54;00
Nikolas
And my subtopic within is confidence.

01;35;54;11 - 01;36;06;03
Dan
Terrific. So we've been talking about a lot of these topics in our class. What have you learned that's new that we haven't yet sort of considered? Well, I think that to define what self assumed.

01;36;06;03 - 01;36;28;10
Nikolas
Really is we have to first start with like, what does a person believe is most important about themselves? Because self esteem is, we believe, really a measure of of the way a person quantifies themself like their own worth and their confidence in their own abilities and characteristics. So we think that to discuss self, the discussion should first begin with what is a person's identity like?

01;36;28;10 - 01;36;30;21
Nikolas
What do they see themselves as and what's important in their lives?

01;36;31;22 - 01;36;53;04
Katie
So I think a really important part of self esteem is your identity. If you're sure about who you are and like what you value and what you want to be, then by definition your self esteem will go up because you're more confident in yourself. And if you like really believe in yourself, then it can be easy to just keep working on your self esteem and having like a good positive mental state.

01;36;53;11 - 01;37;18;21
Dan
Yeah, I feel like people talk about self esteem in positive terms, but when you're both mentioning identity, that's making me wonder whether that should be questioned a little bit because nobody is like perfect. Everybody has like good aspects and bad aspects of their personality. So could you talk about that a little bit? The ways that know self esteem gets sort of like put forward as this?

01;37;18;21 - 01;37;23;28
Dan
Like you've got to be up, you've got to be positive. It's sort of a positive term.

01;37;23;28 - 01;37;41;15
Katie
Yeah. So if you have like if you're sure about who you are, even if you're feeling bad about yourself sometimes and you have like negative self esteem, like you can always look forward and know that like even if you're in a bad state, like it will not last forever and you can always like pull yourself out of it.

01;37;41;15 - 01;38;02;10
Katie
So I feel like even if it's a it's inevitable that you'll have points in your life where you have very low self esteem. But if you know who you are and you're solid in your identity, you'll be able to pull yourself out of that eventually. And as you're talking about identity, another big part is self-perception. And comparatively speaking, self-perception is a more neutral word.

01;38;02;19 - 01;38;29;13
Katie
And when we were trying to research it and think about it, we thought about it as kind of like an internal mirror that reflects who you see yourself as. Although that mirror isn't always accurate because sometimes you see yourself as this very outgoing person. You love yourself, but then at times it can also be very harmful when you see yourself as like failure or just aspects of yourself that you don't feel as if you're enough.

01;38;29;23 - 01;38;44;26
Katie
So we feel like when we look at self-perception, it's widely affected by your environment, because your environment sets the social standards for which you believe you should be attaining. And in that way it can either benefit or harm you.

01;38;45;13 - 01;39;08;22
Nikolas
And I also think it's important for identity to align your self-perception with how other people see you because then that comes down to authenticity. Are you always the same person or do you sort of tailor the way you speak, the way you act based on who you're talking to? And I think people can sense if you're doing that, if you're being authentic or not.

01;39;09;09 - 01;39;12;21
Nikolas
I'm not sure how. I guess just intuitively.

01;39;12;21 - 01;39;37;16
Dan
Yeah, I think that's fascinating in many ways because if you study rhetoric and aspects of identity, you realize that, you know, people do kind of adjust the way they perform in front of people based on the audience. And I'm sure we all act differently around our family than around some close friends or a business contact or something. So we are different people.

01;39;37;29 - 01;39;50;20
Dan
But this notion of authentic self comes up a lot in conversations, and that seems to imply you're just one thing all the time that are my. Am I picking up on a tension that's that's out there?

01;39;51;02 - 01;40;12;24
Nikolas
Definitely. And I think that ties into self-talk a lot because it's how what's the story you tell yourself about yourself? Who are you? Are you the same person or are you different depending on who you're with? And if you're the same person? Yeah, you might be slightly differently depending on the situation. You know, you might be more polite with your friends or with your family than your friends, for example.

01;40;13;23 - 01;40;23;28
Nikolas
But in essence, your identity remains the same. You still have the same moral values, virtues, and intrinsic to who you are as a person.

01;40;24;03 - 01;40;47;17
Katie
Going into that, I think it's also important to define what identity is, because there's so many aspects of ourselves we can identify with. We can identify ourselves as a friend, a chess player, a dancer, or find something that's more intrinsic. And as you were exploring, we saw that there were kind of two kind of categories of identity. One that is changed by external factors.

01;40;47;26 - 01;41;11;01
Katie
So like, for example, being a dancer or, something that like performing a hobby, that's something that changes as you move to a different city, moved to a different place. But then intrinsically there also characteristics such as being an outgoing person, being a kind person, being someone who loves something that no matter where you go, that's part of your identity.

01;41;11;01 - 01;41;23;25
Katie
And I think finding something intrinsic in yourself to identify with is definitely something that builds self-esteem because it's something that nobody can really take away from you or your environment can't take away from you.

01;41;24;23 - 01;41;47;09
Dan
I like that distinction. I think, you know, this intrinsic notion. I hear people talk about it in terms of values a lot of times. And but what are some of the ways that you can nail that down? How do you identify something that's peripheral, like, you know, a hobby, you're a dancer versus this kind of big internal aspect of yourself.

01;41;47;25 - 01;42;02;18
Katie
I feel like it has to be kind of intuitive, like no one can tell you what you value about yourself. So you need to just evaluate like what in life values to you. I mean, matter to you and what do you think like, like your core values are?

01;42;03;20 - 01;42;04;01
Dan
Yeah.

01;42;04;17 - 01;42;15;29
Nikolas
I think also that like for a lot of different people, identity means different things, right? So like Lena was saying, some people are maybe outgoing, other people are less outgoing, Other people are just, you know, if they make friends, they make friends.

01;42;15;29 - 01;42;17;26
Dan
Life happens to them. It's not really something they.

01;42;18;05 - 01;42;37;00
Nikolas
As a big part of themselves. Maybe they value other parts of their life, or maybe they think that other parts of their personality are more core to their identity as a person and. So this is also why identity becomes very hard to define. Just because everybody is is different, not just in terms of the things they identify with, but the things they feel are actually important to them.

01;42;37;12 - 01;43;04;05
Katie
And Also, I think identity is something that changes so much, like life is such a journey. So like every walk of life, you learn something new about yourself and in that way your identity can change which can be scary. But at the same time, it's kind of the evolution of like getting older and maturing. And I'd say that like if I have to share like an anecdote from my own life is I think growing up in Shanghai, I was very confident in who I was as a person.

01;43;04;05 - 01;43;27;04
Katie
I saw myself as a dancer, as a good friend, and someone who really connected with the community. But then moving across the globe to a boarding school in Massachusetts, I felt so lost because I couldn't dance anymore. I couldn't do lots of the things that I thought I really identified with. And I think that was kind of the journey that led me to explore more about what really made me I was.

01;43;27;13 - 01;43;44;15
Katie
And in that I found that I was an outgoing person. I was someone who loved connecting with my friends. And that's something that hasn't changed since I was a kid. But It really took like a move to make me realize that there are some intrinsic factors of my identity that I never really identified with as a kid.

01;43;45;14 - 01;43;58;21
Nikolas
Do you think that was genetic? Like that would have been who you became no matter where you were born? Or do you think that was your parents, your school, your peers when you were growing up? Do you think that made you extroverted or a combination of both?

01;43;59;06 - 01;44;23;28
Katie
I definitely think that so many factors plays into it. I think there's definitely a genetic component. I mean, we're all biologically built differently, but then I think our environment is also highly like dictates who we are as a person. And growing up as an only child, I think that made me want to connect with people more because there wasn't like a sister or brother at home that I could just hang out with and fight with.

01;44;24;12 - 01;44;49;00
Dan
So I think there's a lot of positive possibilities with this idea that at first it kind of seemed like these peripheral aspects of our identity were maybe a problem. So, you know, I act one way in front of someone and then I act a different way and you need to get to your core piece. But what I'm hearing is that you can be more than one thing.

01;44;49;01 - 01;45;15;05
Dan
You don't have to just be one thing. And maybe that suggests a possibility for change. You hear people kind of grumbling, people don't change, but ah is what I'm hearing, that people can change. And if they can, then does that even translate some of these intrinsic parts? Like where's the boundary between I'm changing some external aspect of my behavior or I'm changing something that's, you know, more inside more long lasting?

01;45;16;13 - 01;45;40;05
Nikolas
I think that the mechanism of change is self-talk because as I said earlier, we are the stories that we tell ourselves and we are the patterns of actions that we do every day. That is who defines those, what defines us, who we are as a person. You can say that you're the greatest person ever and you study every day and read every day, but if you don't do those things, you are not that person, you know.

01;45;40;05 - 01;46;11;10
Nikolas
So but it has to start. You will never become that person without telling yourself that you can become that person. So it all starts with self-talk. It starts with believing in yourself. And I think a huge component of it is seeing examples of people that have done the things you want to do before you. I think that can really inspire change because or maybe not change, but progress in the direction you want to go, which will inevitably cause changes because you never end up where you expect to.

01;46;11;16 - 01;46;19;05
Nikolas
So I think self-talk is, the fundamental process that can help you change from who you are to who you want to be.

01;46;19;26 - 01;46;30;15
Dan
Have any of you made like deliberate efforts to know, kind of adjust core pieces or like practice self-talk? How does that look like and what does that look like in practice?

01;46;30;27 - 01;46;59;25
Nikolas
I think it it just comes down to things are going to be really hard at first and you have to understand and acknowledge that you're not going to see progress for the first month. You meditate or month you go to the gym or whatever run, but you have to have faith that the progress after you've put in the work for so many months, so many years, will eventually pay dividends, you have to believe.

01;47;00;15 - 01;47;27;28
Nikolas
And that's I started working more and you don't see results for the first couple of months at all, but you just have to get in there every day and just commit. It's sort of a leap into the unknown. It's a it's a stubborn faith and it's almost religious, but it's it's not because it's tangible. And you can see if you stick with it for long enough, things do start to change and life always changes.

01;47;27;28 - 01;47;28;23
Nikolas
So I.

01;47;28;23 - 01;47;29;29
Dan
Think that there's also like.

01;47;30;08 - 01;47;31;00
Nikolas
I mean, with.

01;47;31;00 - 01;47;33;24
Dan
Story and so there's there's like maybe exercise in working out and this at least.

01;47;33;24 - 01;48;08;10
Nikolas
Creates like kind of a more tangible and clearly visible like way of tracking progress. Whereas when you have something like your identity or way you, you act or feel, this is a lot harder to measure and you can't really like, it's very difficult to know when you've made progress. And so this is the same reason why, like as we write in our initial books about blessings and gratitude, and we saw that people who are who are counting their blessings every night or doing something to practice gratitude may have felt more satisfied eventually, but they didn't really they didn't really see themselves incrementally increasing that they just it just kind of happened to them.

01;48;08;21 - 01;48;39;06
Dan
Yeah. Interesting questions about habit and how you kind of build a profile or a posture of a certain kind of identity. I don't know if we want to say it's willpower because that is kind of problematic. But you're saying through small steps every day these things can build I kind of want to go back to Helena, though, and this point about accuracy and identity, I think overlaps in some ways with this.

01;48;39;06 - 01;48;41;19
Dan
So could you talk a little bit more about that?

01;48;42;03 - 01;49;10;15
Katie
Yeah, I think that when we think about identity, it's hard to see ourselves changing, but inevitably we are changing every day and that's actually a good thing because who wants to be stagnant? And I think that the way that we perceive the world changes so much because of our external environment and we might be inspired by a motivational speaker or see something and realize that maybe this is our new dream and this is what we what we want to achieve and think to change yourself.

01;49;10;15 - 01;49;41;11
Katie
One thing that's super important and intrinsic is confidence and one quote that a motivational speaker at my lab talks about is What is confidence? Lots of people think of confidence as thinking of yourself as, you know, you're so strong you can do all of this. But confidence is built through keeping promises to yourself. So as you are seeking out to be this new person, as you're seeking change, you create steps and you create promises to yourself.

01;49;41;11 - 01;50;03;08
Katie
Whether that's going to work out every day, whether that's meditating every day and sticking to those plans and keeping those promises to yourself as what builds you up to be confident. And that confidence is what gives you that ability to navigate life and create changes and kind of push through the different changes in your identity and still be okay with.

01;50;03;25 - 01;50;38;06
Dan
I like that and I feel like there may be some overlap with these more amorphous concepts like self-talk or identity with this incremental take, these concrete steps and, and attention to them. Notice that you're doing these steps and fulfilling them. I like the keeping promises. So are there particular strategies then that would bring those together? Like how can self-talk be put together with some of these habits or with some of these incremental steps that you want to take rather than have it just this, you know, big concept?

01;50;38;06 - 01;50;41;13
Dan
I should talk to myself in a nicer way.

01;50;41;25 - 01;51;07;10
Katie
I would say that the first thing is to kind of accept who you are as a person and kind of recognize that you are an ever changing person. So even as your external environment changes or aspects of your identity changes to first accept yourself going along with that, I think it's also helpful to just surround yourself with people that have the same aspects that you want yourself.

01;51;07;10 - 01;51;24;12
Katie
So for example, if you want to study more than just having the study buddy or going to study groups or office hours would help with that because our external environment does shape some of who we are. So just surrounding yourself with people that you want to be like will help you become the person that you want to be.

01;51;24;16 - 01;51;40;11
Nikolas
Yeah, I've heard this. This common notion that you are a product of the five people you spend the most time around. And while I think this may be a little bit of an oversimplification, I think there's is some truth to that. Like if you spend more time around a certain kind of people, you inevitably are going to pick up some some traits of their own character.

01;51;41;03 - 01;52;06;05
Nikolas
And I thought you asked, how can we balance self-talk with whatever is not self-talk? And the way I conceptualized that was as sort of not necessarily a flow state as being the opposite of self-talk, but so self-talk is active cognition where you're you're thinking, you're playing and you're judging, you're selecting the best option from a set of options.

01;52;06;05 - 01;52;28;10
Nikolas
The opposite of that would be flow, which is just pure awareness, total immersion in the present moment. And you need both. You've got to have, if you always are thinking all the time, then you have nothing to think about. And if you are fully immersed in the present moment, then you don't have any reflection, you don't have any learning, you don't have any growth.

01;52;29;00 - 01;52;50;08
Dan
Can we break this down a little bit more? I like where you're going with the idea that. You know, sometimes we're really being much more deliberate. This is me giving myself a lecture and then other times we're like completely augured in on, you know, I'm doing my needlepoint right now, and that's all that matters to me. There's got to be some space in between.

01;52;50;19 - 01;53;14;11
Dan
Or maybe we can figure out what are some of the dimensions of this. And I feel like self-talk is such a tough thing to put a boundary on because where does the line between sort of thinking and talking to yourself lie? Like how many thoughts have we had so far today? It's what, 1030? It's 1030 in the morning.

01;53;15;03 - 01;53;30;20
Dan
How much thinking have we done and how much of that has been internal so far? I probably have thought 2000 2000 items from, you know, how am I going to brush my teeth today, too? Did I turn the right turn on the way to work? I'm constantly thinking.

01;53;31;08 - 01;53;48;20
Nikolas
How much of that is conscious, though? How much of that are you thinking about, oh, how should I brush my teeth? Or is that just ingrained muscle memory at this point? Like, should I turn left? Are you thinking about that or is your body just sort of doing it? So it's like, how do you define thought? Like there's levels of thought out.

01;53;49;05 - 01;54;05;18
Dan
It's a mix for me. I think it's a mix. Like sometimes I'm buttering my toast, getting into this thing like this is the best way to butter toast. I've buttered toast 10,000 times in my life and I've learned you put it on here. You let it wait 10 seconds. Then you try to spread it and then it spreads more smoothly.

01;54;05;18 - 01;54;22;23
Dan
I'm really conscious, you know, I'm processing this and thinking about it. So I don't know. Is that self? You know what a good toast, butter or I am right now? Am I doing self-talk then, or do I actually have to sit down and say you deserve good things in your life or something that.

01;54;23;05 - 01;54;47;10
Nikolas
I mean, I would posit that anything you think is self-talk in some way in the sense that you're talking to yourself, it's in your own brain. But I mean when people typically say self-talk, I guess they don't mean that. So I think that we could all we could classify all of it as self-talk, but it's definitely to varying levels of helpfulness and in terms of how it's affecting your wellness and confidence and self-esteem and whatnot.

01;54;47;24 - 01;54;58;26
Katie
Yeah, I think if you're just thinking to yourself to encourage yourself to get through a hard task or just to wake up in the morning, it can be a cause of better self-talk if you're trying to help yourself get through something.

01;54;59;22 - 01;55;20;23
Dan
So back to the accuracy point, what I've read is that people tend to be much harsher on themselves than they are to other people. So, you know, why did you turn left? Now you're stuck behind traffic. You should have known if you'd gone on the bypass, you would have gotten to work better. What an idiot. Why did you do that?

01;55;20;23 - 01;55;37;19
Dan
So people are doing those kinds of judgments on themselves in a way that's much harsher than they would if if someone else had like, made a wrong turn on on the way to work. So does that overlap with this kind of sense of identity and that accuracy of understanding who we are at all?

01;55;38;09 - 01;56;08;26
Katie
I think for sure, because is kind of the negative self-talk that we would categorize as where you're kind of taking away from your confidence, not necessarily identity, but that's definitely like a way to conceptualize it and I guess like an actual solid advice, as somebody said that would you tell five year old self whatever you're about to say to yourself, or would you tell your best friend what you're telling yourself right now?

01;56;09;02 - 01;56;33;27
Katie
And then that way it's kind of like how we talk to ourselves is so much more critical than the way we would talk to someone else or a kid younger than us. And I think that's why I think going back to Dorian's point of practicing deliberate positive self-talk rather than negative self-talk makes a huge difference in how you see yourself own self perception, confident self esteem and all of those factors related.

01;56;34;10 - 01;56;42;15
Dan
Yeah, and now maybe we're in the realm of self-care. Then there's overlap with self-affirmation, self-care, these kinds of concerns.

01;56;43;10 - 01;57;00;03
Nikolas
I think like when it comes to something like self-affirmation or even just self-talk after some kind of event, there's there's always like many ways to react to something like in the example you gave or I made a wrong turn, like, you know, there's, I guess two basic ways you could react to this. You could first say, Oh, no, I made a wrong turn.

01;57;00;08 - 01;57;16;02
Nikolas
Well, whereas, you know, another way would be what you describe like, Oh man, I always do this. Why? This is always happen. I'm such a bad driver, I can never concentrate. And so on and so forth. And you know, you can say the same thing when something good happens like supposed to. So I'm going to run. He finishes and he finishes his model in record time.

01;57;16;02 - 01;57;23;21
Nikolas
He could say, okay, I guess this happened. Or he'd be like, Yes, why am I? Why am I such a good runner? I'm incredible. I could be an Olympic athlete and and so on.

01;57;24;06 - 01;57;58;19
Dan
One of the things for our listeners, we studied a bunch of tweets that were related to the hashtag self-talk. We took 600 tweets that had that hashtag self-talk, and then we distilled them down to about 180, and then we coded them, we read through them and coded them for different factors. And one of the factors that came out that was kind of interesting is some of the tweets we coded with this label called Perspective, and that had to do with when people who were tweeting about self-talk were saying, keep things in perspective.

01;57;58;19 - 01;58;28;26
Dan
Don't get bogged down in comparing yourself to other people. And I don't know what to make of this. And all of our conclusions are preliminary because were doing this as kind of an exploratory exercise looking at these tweets. But it turned out posters who we had coded as male did, a lot more of this perspective oriented tweeting and the ones we had coded as female tended to put more tweets out there that we coded as self-compassion oriented tweeting.

01;58;29;19 - 01;58;43;03
Dan
Does there any kind of gender dynamic that we should talk about in terms of, you know, self-esteem self self-talk? What happens when we bring gender into those conversations?

01;58;43;19 - 01;59;06;21
Katie
I actually feel like I don't really see that that statistic in real life because I feel like women are more likely to compare themselves to other women, like on social media, like it's such a big problem. Like models are like photoshopping themselves and then people see that and they compare themselves to that. So I don't really see like the breakdown that we saw in those tweets.

01;59;06;21 - 01;59;36;07
Katie
And I would say that the only distinction that I would draw from that conclusion is that the the different things that genders compare so like I think for females it's mostly like body and like body image and kind of the looks that like females kind of tend to see on social media, you know, that model body image. Whereas I think for men it's more like the success, like how well you're doing in the business realm.

01;59;36;07 - 01;59;54;22
Katie
And I think that might be something that creates this distinction of like females feel like self-compassion is more towards like body image and how people perceive their looks. Whereas for a guy it might be having that perspective on their own success and where they benchmark themselves.

01;59;55;08 - 02;00;13;05
Nikolas
I it's important to know too, that all of these things that we're saying are kind of biased by our own, our own experiences and what we've seen in our own lives and like even in the distribution with the tweets, I feel like it's certainly appropriate to generalize this, especially because this has been like a small study run one to the small sample size.

02;00;13;18 - 02;00;17;00
Nikolas
I think that I mean, it could be representative. We can't really say for sure.

02;00;17;27 - 02;00;51;23
Dan
I feel like you're giving us a helpful warning there not to draw strong conclusions based on this exercise that we did in class. Looking at tweets. But I feel like the point about comparison actually cuts a couple of different ways. And the point that you mentioned, Helena about social media and cultural depictions of identity, there's sort of ideals that are put forward and probably those are gendered ideals for women and ideals for men that are culturally constructed in many ways.

02;00;52;01 - 02;01;17;20
Dan
And that, I feel like takes us back to the conversation about authenticity and identity and accuracy. We're constantly being bombarded with a bunch of constructs that probably are not accurate, you know, are what, what, how, how do those constructs differ from your own identity? How do they shape the way that you come to grips with your identity?

02;01;18;08 - 02;01;40;24
Katie
I think this leads us back into the whole idea of our self-perception being shaped by the external world we perceive ourselves is heavily tied to how we perceive what we should be, and those are socially constructed. So like the standards that society kind of sets is like telling us that we should look a certain way or defining success in a certain way.

02;01;41;03 - 02;02;04;17
Katie
So I think that what you consume also can be dictated by you. So in a way it's like, are you kind of consuming unrealistic goals and is that negatively affecting your self-perception? Or in a way, are you consuming things that are affirming your identity and building on your own confidence and self esteem?

02;02;04;17 - 02;02;37;17
Nikolas
I agree that the cultural values are very important, especially when we're super young, when We're not dictating what content we take in when our parents are and the school systems are. We don't get to choose what society thinks we should be. But when you grow up and you have a little bit more autonomy, you can you don't really have self-selection with the with the algorithms on social media.

02;02;37;17 - 02;03;09;06
Nikolas
It'll show you stuff that you interact with. But through the mechanism of interaction, you can kind of tailor what you want, what you think you should be. And then social media will show you that like a mere and that there's something really problematic about that. Because if if you switch into a negative mind frame and it starts overloading you with negative content, then that can just spiral you down into a pit of depression.

02;03;09;06 - 02;03;37;02
Nikolas
But the other side of that is social media has a lot of potential to inspire growth. If that's something that you're seeking within yourself, it'll show you more of that and give you access to it. But there's also a shallowness because it's, you know, it's one Instagram post or one TikTok, which is 30 seconds long or whatever, and you can't really dig into the details, get into the nitty gritty.

02;03;37;20 - 02;04;16;21
Dan
I think that's a really important point about these algorithms and the way that they they're based on feedback. So you're going to be bombarded with messages based on the kinds of messages that you like or favorite, what have you. So I have a question related to that is how conscious are you all when you're, you know, working your social media feeds that some click that you make or some decision that you make is going to translate into these sort of ultimate outcomes, like, oh I better not click on this sad person crying because they're going to start feeding me more sad people crying.

02;04;17;07 - 02;04;33;26
Dan
Is this all just like under the radar? And we're not really aware it? Or do people consciously sort of curate their feed knowing that, you know, the attitude they express in their clicking will translate into an attitude that's delivered to them in messaging?

02;04;34;15 - 02;04;56;11
Katie
I know for me, when I'm scrolling on social media, especially Tik Tok, if I see something that I don't really like, there's an option for me to like, say, I don't want to see stuff like this again. So if I see like negative things or things that just like affect my mood, then I'll click on that button and then hopefully like that tailors my foot, my page so that I can see things I actually want.

02;04;57;12 - 02;05;17;18
Nikolas
I've definitely seen a video that was like kind of funny before, but I didn't like it because I consciously had the thought. I was like, Oh, if I like this, I'm going to get more videos like this in the future. And it's not my style of comedy. Even though this one specific video is funny, I don't want this genre in my feeds.

02;05;17;19 - 02;05;24;25
Nikolas
I just didn't like it and it was weird because I did have that conscious thought. I was like, This is the algorithm at work?

02;05;25;03 - 02;05;48;01
Dan
Yeah. Nice. I'm glad you had that sense of consciousness. I've had the same sometimes, like Spotify will be on some kind of random feed where it's giving me a bunch of stuff and I'll hear a song that I really hate and I think I need to click off of this. I need to fast forward this before it finishes, because if it finishes, they're going to think, I like this song and I really don't and I don't want any more of it coming at me.

02;05;48;01 - 02;05;54;08
Dan
So I jump out of the shower right now, slip and crack my head. But I got to fast forward before I, you know.

02;05;54;08 - 02;06;09;07
Nikolas
Spotify added an artificial intelligence deejay now. So that's if your dystopian fantasies need any more fuel. You know, they are literally examining your search history and trying to curate something off that. So.

02;06;10;23 - 02;06;39;02
Katie
Yeah, like, unfortunately, I think social media has blown up in the past few years and the algorithms, they want you to be addicted. They want you to like the content and keep scrolling and scrolling. And I think that as it's taking a bigger chunk of our life away, we have to be more conscious and more deliberate about the type of content we consume because lots of times, like the content that they're pushing is stuff that is not healthy for us.

02;06;39;12 - 02;07;01;28
Katie
And these like idealistic images that we see on social media, they are addicting. It's something that we want to consume more of, even if we're conscious that it's not for us. So kind of making deliberate decisions to, you know, unfollow people that you think are not benefiting you or for me, like I had to delete Tik tok because it was really affecting my own mental health.

02;07;02;05 - 02;07;16;00
Katie
So making deliberate changes and even limiting your time on social media and just spending time with real around you can actually reaffirm who you are and I think overall make you mentally happier.

02;07;16;14 - 02;07;48;22
Dan
Yeah, I like that. And it's making me wonder that if someone could make money creating a social media platform that was about wellness or self esteem, like not have it be neutral where you can choose what you want because you know it's not that complicated. People who studied wellness understand that you need strong relationship ups. If you get out with nature, if you, you know, have movement in your body, if you do self-talk that is building yourself up, there's a few things that are going to be useful to you.

02;07;49;02 - 02;08;09;07
Dan
So why not construct a social media platform that said, only that, or if it saw that, Oh, you're clicking on a lot of negative stuff. We're going to pause that and I'm going to send you some kittens, you know, being shepherded by a dog while they're taking care of baby chicks and then that's going to make you feel better.

02;08;09;19 - 02;08;12;20
Dan
Would you sign up for that or why? Why isn't someone doing that one, I wonder.

02;08;14;01 - 02;08;14;27
Speaker 8
I think that.

02;08;15;16 - 02;08;45;22
Katie
Is a really cool concern that could be explored. But at the same time, I think that the things that make people well is so vastly different that like there isn't one size fit all like content that would make or break someone's wellness. Like for some people maybe it's like a motivation to like, work out and like be stronger, but at the same time, maybe someone else consuming that same content might see it as something that makes them feel like they're not doing enough.

02;08;46;00 - 02;09;01;06
Katie
So I think there's a fine balance is why I think going on this journey is like, you really have to find what works for yourself and that is kind of like an identifying factor that nobody can really help you with, but you just kind of have to see it through yourself.

02;09;01;25 - 02;09;18;28
Nikolas
Yeah, I think that like on an app like that, it's going to be like there's going to be kind of a big difference the way people perceive these things and how it makes them feel. I mean, personally, if I saw it like that, you know, I might say, Oh wow, like, this is cute. I guess I feel better now where somebody else say cheese.

02;09;18;28 - 02;09;42;25
Nikolas
Even these kittens, dogs and chickens are having a better life than I am. I wonder what's wrong with me. Yeah, that's self-talk. That's how you interact. External stimuli. It's like when you see someone doing better than you or someone happy or animals happy or something. It's like, does that make sad? Because I don't have that happiness. Is that that's FOMO?

02;09;43;13 - 02;10;10;22
Nikolas
Or you can choose to think consciously this happiness exists in the world. Therefore I can also have this happiness, or I can also work out like this one if I work hard. And that's that goes back to the faith and the self-talk. Do you have a what's your attitude on failure if if you're going to hit the first brick wall, which you're going to hit, are you going to stop and lay down?

02;10;10;22 - 02;10;34;29
Nikolas
Are you going to get back up and keep running? So I think that's the biggest thing when it comes to social media, because social media is going to give you a billion different versions of who you could be and you kind of have to pick and choose the best parts of everything and synthesize that for yourself. And you can't do that in a healthy way if you don't have healthy self-talk and confidence and identity and self-perception.

02;10;35;03 - 02;10;54;00
Nikolas
So it's all very tight and together. I think it's very important. Yeah, I think when people talk about their own like happiness, they kind of misconstrue it as the like what the stimuli around them are. Whereas, you know, a strain of saying it's not so much about what you see and what happens to you because, you know, life is going to throw all kinds of different things about you.

02;10;54;00 - 02;11;07;01
Nikolas
It's more about teaching yourself how to how to respond and react to those things. So so that you can have, you know, a healthy amount of self-esteem and confidence so you can handle the situations as you can handle situation you may find yourself in.

02;11;07;19 - 02;11;25;18
Katie
Yeah, Going along with that, I think the most important skill you can have institute yourself how to respond positively because you can never control environment fully. Like there's always going to be something that happens or you don't expect. So when that time comes, you need to be prepared to pick yourself up and then just keep going.

02;11;25;18 - 02;11;48;24
Dan
Terrific. Well, I've enjoyed our conversation about self esteem and self-talk. I'd like to thank Helena Dorian for Sister and Sandy for joining us and for all of our listeners. Remember that self-talk can be a real mechanism. It can take you up or take you down when it comes to your self-esteem, and you're going to gain confidence by keeping your promises.

02;11;49;12 - 02;12;08;07
Dan
Take a moment. Be compassionate towards yourself and be careful with social media. You can pick and choose what you're doing and let self-talk guide you. Thanks again. We'll see you soon.

02;12;12;13 - 02;12;32;03
Dan
Hello everyone, and welcome to Words of Wellness, the podcast, where we consider the ways people think, speak and write about wellness. I'm Danielle Anderson and we're coming to you from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Today, we're going to be talking about the self. I have four guests with me and I will let them introduce themselves.

02;12;32;03 - 02;12;36;17
Katie
And my name is Katie Moore. I'm a freshman here at USC.

02;12;37;14 - 02;12;39;03
Nikolas
Nicholas Lewis. I'm also a freshman.

02;12;39;03 - 02;12;42;04
Unai
And so I know I'm a freshman, too.

02;12;42;29 - 02;12;44;18
Sam
My name is Sam and I'm also a freshman.

02;12;45;14 - 02;13;06;00
Dan
Well, welcome to the show. It's great to have everyone here. The concept of the self, I think, is one of these really large terms. And when we started to study this, each you has a book that you were looking at. Was there anything that surprised you about the reading that you did in terms of the self and this large concept?

02;13;06;00 - 02;13;09;17
Dan
What did you learn from from these books that you explored?

02;13;10;15 - 02;13;36;11
Katie
Well, my book was all about like defense mechanisms that we use to the whole idea is that the reason our defense mechanisms exist is to avoid pain that comes from early childhood. It was all kind of an evolutionary based idea that basically who we are today stems from how we were treated when we were babies. And we are most vulnerable.

02;13;36;11 - 02;14;08;18
Katie
And the defense mechanisms that we use today are the areas in which our parents maybe fell short or they gave too much support in one area. And how that translates into your later life. And something that I found interesting is in the first part of the book, he kind of sets it up where he gives six different groups and he describes each group and you're supposed as the reader, you're supposed to pick one or two that you most identify with, and then you carry that with you through the rest of the book.

02;14;09;00 - 02;14;35;29
Katie
And as he goes through different defense mechanisms like denial or repression or projection, he'll give examples based on each group of how they're most likely to respond to uncomfortable or difficult situations. And I actually was I felt a little called out at times because I identified with a couple of groups, and then I'd read about a defense mechanism and my group would come up and I'd be like, That's actually really interesting because I actually do that.

02;14;36;10 - 02;14;40;27
Katie
So it was really easy to engage with the book. I really enjoyed those groups.

02;14;40;27 - 02;14;43;11
Dan
Do you remember recall it? A couple of them were.

02;14;43;21 - 02;15;07;23
Katie
Some of them were, if have a tendency to have like really low self-esteem. Some of them were, I guess mine was. I tend to be really calm and like every I don't get too worked up when things go wrong, but that's actually turns out a defense mechanism. And I read about that and I was like, oh, no, Like, I didn't realize that was something I was doing that was harmful potentially.

02;15;08;17 - 02;15;16;26
Katie
They didn't really identify the groups. They were just listed one, three, six. But then they were mentioned as he went through different defense mechanisms.

02;15;17;04 - 02;15;21;12
Dan
So that's interesting. It was what else what jumped out at people?

02;15;21;20 - 02;15;50;14
Nikolas
I would say my book, even though is in the self category with a deaf, I read more like a coaching book because like she kind of gave like a I got formulaic, like step by step process to like how to feel better. I feel like prescribed to people that were feeling unhappy in their lives. And he was talking about how he needs to be honest and take and take accountability for it, like your actions and focus on like what you really focus on, like what your desires are in life you yearn for is, I guess certainly is a lot like if it's like relationships or like a successful career and things like that and how

02;15;50;14 - 02;16;00;05
Nikolas
to like focus on those things and then weed out things that are harmful to like that specific goal I don't think it's talked about is the book is a way of integrity. So like living with integrity and doing things like doing things purposefully.

02;16;00;25 - 02;16;23;10
Dan
Yeah. So I already am hearing two different aspects of this self are that I notice in these books. One has to do with correction. And Katie, that sort of feels like what you were saying. These defense mechanisms look at things that we can fix in some ways. And Nicholas, it sounds like years on, this coaching dynamic is more of the success positive.

02;16;23;11 - 02;16;40;11
Dan
Let's look how you can achieve what you want to achieve. Yeah yeah so this dynamic of downsides as a focus of wellness versus happiness thriving or upsides seems to play out in these books already. I hear two of those back and forth.

02;16;40;29 - 02;17;03;16
Unai
Yeah. And Survivor is called Resilience, so it's quite a bit different because there's not like a step by step process or like, you know, whole process in 200 pages, whatever it was. But this sort saying, Hey, I'm going to give you the name of her 12 chapters and just the wonder that you feel is more appealing to you, you can just read first and read the other ones and just not read the other ones at all.

02;17;04;05 - 02;17;28;05
Unai
So it's not like an encyclopedia dictionary that you don't quite read, at least like base or base. But yes, consult and look it up in a minute. And I found it very interesting. And so what he did was basically break up of four core qualities and then bring it on three. So 14. So you drill safety, connection, safety satisfaction and connection.

02;17;28;22 - 02;17;54;00
Unai
Right? So like what it is basically for a recognizing so how to ensure you're safe from dangerous satisfaction. So I to be aware of your rejection of that and be happy with that and then connection but maybe also like interact with other people and show them that you are not show them wrong that are going on in your head.

02;17;54;15 - 02;18;14;10
Unai
And I felt that was a very interesting, like a pretty exhaustive breakdown. Yeah, I do remember other like specific quotes because he had like very small tips, right on a big picture idea of how to be more resilient under one was. So when you recover from a setback, it's not only important to recover your position it's a stroke over your momentum.

02;18;14;10 - 02;18;33;09
Unai
Right. If you are like physically oriented so like basically how many people recover their position, but then they are not feeling well enough, work towards their goals again. So yeah, you have recovered, but there's still something else that you have to do and getting back to that momentum to continue thriving for your success.

02;18;33;24 - 02;18;43;27
Dan
So we've heard about resilience, we've heard about some success and some challenges. Sam Does your reading fit into any of those or what? What new can you add so far?

02;18;44;09 - 02;19;07;15
Sam
So my book was the smallest out of all of them. It was, I think, maybe barely over 100 pages and was called the Untitled Self. It was written in like the 1940s or very early on in the 1900s. So it's not really like a up to date help book, but it's more just like advocating for people to kind of like wake up and realize who they are as a person.

02;19;07;15 - 02;19;35;16
Sam
It very like it read a lot like 1980. If you've ever read that book or it's very like it talks about the world in like a very like dark manner and like it's very just very negative about the world. Like, it's like trying to repress your individual. And it also talked a lot about the church, like about how you how people say, like you find your own self through God, but Then you also find it by joining like a mass of other people, all doing the same thing.

02;19;35;29 - 02;19;56;28
Sam
So it's kind of like a paradox in and of itself, but it's it's titled a self-help book, but it wasn't really feeling like a self-help book. It felt more like it was a guy preaching at me for a hundred pages, just like telling me, like I need to wake up and realize who I am and stop in like being just another party person in the masses.

02;19;57;16 - 02;20;17;00
Sam
I didn't really, like, click with it all that much because, like, I know who I am? I don't think I'm being like, repressed by society or anything. And it's also like from the guy who, like, was writing it, you know, a very, you know, rich white guy who had anything he ever wanted talking about like how society was like repressing him and his individuality.

02;20;17;00 - 02;20;36;00
Sam
I'm like, you, you don't really have, like the platform for that to, like, build your ground on. And it just the book, it was a well-written book. I see what the message they were trying to say or he was trying to. But the the execution, in my personal opinion, was not executed as well as it could have been.

02;20;36;20 - 02;21;02;28
Dan
Maybe we can return to some of this because it's a very well-known figure in psychology, Young who has these notions of archetypes and talks about consciousness and unconsciousness. So It may be that we can get to that, but it's making me think of one question, which it sounds like. Sam That book was operating under the Enterprise of how do you define and understand yourself what actually is the self?

02;21;03;18 - 02;21;23;09
Dan
And it sounds like these other books are skipping ahead on that step and saying do this if you're having this kind of a problem or do this to achieve what you want or to bounce back from a tough situation, do this. And they've kind of just assumed that. The self is something we already are comfortable with or we know.

02;21;23;18 - 02;21;36;11
Dan
But I feel like the self is one of these terms in wellness that's more ambiguous that maybe, you know, maybe there is work to be done to figure out what do I actually mean when I'm saying self?

02;21;36;21 - 02;21;59;11
Katie
Yeah, I think I don't know why, but that just kind of brings to mind those like personality types. People are always trying to figure out who they are and they want to identify with a group. And so they take these personality tests and they think they have their entire life figured out because some of them will like go through how you act in like relationships or like in professional environments.

02;21;59;24 - 02;22;16;10
Katie
And I think it is just kind of an escape from like sitting with yourself like you're looking for a quick answer. I think the way you can really know yourself is through self-reflection and being by yourself. No one's going to there's no machine that's going to be able to tell you who you are.

02;22;16;10 - 02;22;40;27
Unai
I mean, there's this idea that you're not like fix things. Like if the personality tests of you, yeah, you're a very sociable guy with whatever that may be attributed or that may be you, if especially in our ages, that maybe youth, ten years, but five years later, you're like very shy because something horrible, just because degree on you lost sociability.

02;22;41;08 - 02;22;54;24
Unai
It's very difficult to like categorize something because maybe you're transitioning from some aspect. Another one to say very diffuse borders between personality traits.

02;22;54;24 - 02;23;16;02
Sam
The hardest conversation that you can ever have with yourself is who am I and who do I want to be? And I have often seen that people are a lot like electricity. They'll always take the path of least resistance, and people don't like to do things that require a lot of work, myself included. My ideas is a perfect example of that.

02;23;17;06 - 02;23;40;27
Sam
People like there's personality quizzes, like Are you a Ravenclaw or whatever? And then they'll tell you your personalities or whatever. But people often don't like to have that conversation because they don't know. And that's why a lot of these people read these books and the self-help things is because they don't know. And the thought of not knowing is scarier than actually knowing what you are or what you want to be.

02;23;41;12 - 02;23;59;10
Sam
So I think a lot of this thing stems back to what you were talking about earlier with how humans have defense mechanisms for fear, and it's all relating back to just how fear dictates every little decision we make because the thought of fear makes us or influences our decisions.

02;23;59;20 - 02;24;20;26
Nikolas
Yeah, I think that's like, yeah, I think that's really like for, like perspective, I guess because like, I feel that also it's like reckoning with like negative aspects of yourself can be really difficult for a lot of people. I agree with you, like reading feel like people reach out to like self-help books Amazon I just one what like what are these aspects of myself and how can I use them like positively I see.

02;24;20;26 - 02;24;42;19
Katie
I feel like people avoid trying to figure out who they are because they don't want to be uncomfortable with what they find. I think it's so easy to turn yourself into someone. Maybe you're not, but you want to be. And the realizations that come with reading a self-help book can be unsettling. If you find something about yourself that you don't like.

02;24;42;19 - 02;24;50;07
Katie
So I would honestly argue that people will do anything to avoid knowing who they truly are.

02;24;51;06 - 02;25;20;14
Unai
I mean, is literature selective memory or not equivalent? Probably not exactly sacred memory. So like the most representative example is astrology and so on. So like when you read a description on personality, the idea is so vague and so a clear sort of vocabulary that like everyone could fit there. And it kind of makes you feel good because you are.

02;25;20;21 - 02;25;21;12
Nikolas
You're like everyone.

02;25;21;12 - 02;25;22;09
Unai
Else. Yeah, you.

02;25;22;18 - 02;25;24;00
Nikolas
Feel like you're part of.

02;25;24;00 - 02;25;48;16
Unai
Society, you feel identified and you can kind of manipulate all those words to make you seem as that the person who you want to be right and a person who you actually are. So in essence, many people. Yes, I guess some folks do find the solution they want. And even if in one chapter they say something good about them and the other ten are something wrong, they'll just remember the good one and yes, stay.

02;25;48;20 - 02;26;00;23
Unai
Yeah, Yeah. This book said that I'm very not I'm going to be very successful in life and the other one is showing your weakness and so on. It's like, I don't know, try to like be more aware of where you are, not who you want to be.

02;26;00;23 - 02;26;01;03
Speaker 7
Yeah.

02;26;01;14 - 02;26;26;11
Dan
The level of effort and work that people put into shaping their selves. I think that is an open question. Like Katie, you're saying lot of people probably don't want to pay attention to that because some aspects of it are unpleasant, but then often people will get into a place where they feel like they need to because they're just not comfortable with where they are in life or they're looking for some change and then maybe they reach out to these books.

02;26;26;11 - 02;26;53;09
Dan
But I'm interested in this kind of take out menu approach that you're talking about. You know, you said your book was actually constructed that way, where you pick what is going to be useful to you and go with it. And I guess would all of you say something about that? Do these books all kind of operate that way when you you're looking for a certain tweak to your identity and you that book or does the book have a, you know, one chapter that works, one that doesn't.

02;26;53;16 - 02;27;15;12
Nikolas
We always say, especially since well, and this is like so broad and like one solution might not work for everybody. I feel like most of these books are run to like a general audience, So they'll give you like multiple solutions to the same problem. And then like, you'll pick, I think like, like Sam said, like he'll pick the possibilities and so whatever, whatever solution takes the least amount of work or like the least amount of like, like self-reflection, I feel like it washes.

02;27;15;29 - 02;27;38;12
Unai
I believe on the books are like generally, if you buy a book called, Why do I do that? Again, that is specific is maybe because you just want to reflect on yourself, but if you buy a book with integrity, it's because you want to be more. You have more integrity. So in essence, I think it's pretty straightforward that most people have read a book by those books, find a weakness in their lives and.

02;27;38;12 - 02;27;39;12
Unai
They want to change that.

02;27;40;00 - 02;28;03;20
Dan
Yeah, back to the positive negative aspects of self that people can focus on. It's almost like you can train a lens on one dimension or another dimension, and depending on where you are, that might happen almost organically in some ways. Let me talk a little bit about this idea of, I want to say, overlap with other aspects of wellness.

02;28;03;20 - 02;28;37;23
Dan
So when we did the analysis that you made, dictionaries related to the self and you looked through these books and came up with terms that occur frequently in books that are associated with the self and then ran a bunch of other wellness books through the word frequency computational program, and it revealed that there was a lot of overlap, I think in your group, it was with relationship books and with coaching books, maybe the body books, the books that were focused on the body came up a little bit.

02;28;37;23 - 02;28;46;09
Dan
You talk a little bit more about that overlap or the way that your topic of the self connects with these other topics.

02;28;46;17 - 02;29;24;17
Katie
Mine was pretty even on all categories all the way through. I think it wasn't really focused on body. There were like exercises that were listed in the book that I think got translated to like body that just didn't exist, but pretty much all across the board my book was even on like self and thriving and coaching and relationships, and I it just speaks to the fact that all of those things, like relationships and coaching, they deal with yourself.

02;29;25;01 - 02;29;42;08
Katie
And when you work on yourself. You're working on those different parts of your life. Like it's always going to be connected to other things. I don't think you can just stand alone in yourself and not analyze different parts of your life while you're looking at yourself.

02;29;43;17 - 02;30;02;11
Sam
I was talking with a professor earlier. It's not about my book because my book doesn't really focus. My book mainly has a lot of like power aspects, which it doesn't really it didn't. Mine was kind of like an outlier when connecting to the other topics. But I was talking with you earlier. I got broken up with yesterday. Oh yeah.

02;30;02;17 - 02;30;34;13
Sam
Oh yeah, eight months, you know, that type of stuff. But the the thing that helped me realize was a lot about the self and relationships is that often you can lose your aspect of self in the relationship and the idea of dependency and what and whatever that follows. But it's also about know finding yourself in the relationship and what you do in this like this kind of like more to the idea of like the self as in who do you define as like as an individual and.

02;30;34;13 - 02;31;04;24
Sam
A lot of these like relationships, like as we've seen through the social media aspects or through our books or whatever, people like companionship and they will often, you know, push themselves to great lengths for that companionship, even if it's, you know, unhealthy or not good for that person. That's what also, I feel like these books do a great job of like what the coaching aspect as well about how to, you know, maintain yourself because at the end of the day, no matter, you know who's there, you still will always have yourself and.

02;31;04;24 - 02;31;15;26
Sam
I think that's also another. You talked about resilience earlier and I feel like that's another thing that the books do a good job of is like telling people how to be resilient and how do I kind of land on your feet?

02;31;17;01 - 02;31;25;01
Nikolas
Yeah, I think that's I think this book talks well I do some good about like how people will try to like mold themselves into the person that they want to be for, like companionship so.

02;31;25;13 - 02;31;48;23
Dan
That self other dynamic I think is really important. So, you know, this idea of defining yourself seems like an inward movement. I'm going to figure out what my integrity is, what are my values. But there's always a kind of cross-referencing, I feel like with others, the how you relate to others is going to continually inform how you view yourself.

02;31;49;18 - 02;32;26;16
Unai
I mean, there's also the idea of like half of your self is defining who you are when interacting with other people. So like, you can't be kind if you're not a warrior for people because I get maybe resilience in receiving grace forever is purely self, but in many other kinds, if you're married to the person, right, an individual working, if you are in kindness, pursue, not kind, are are sociopaths or whatever.

02;32;26;29 - 02;32;39;07
Unai
Most of those are. Other people think it's how you interact with other people like I'll see yourself is defined by how interact with her people so it's it's intrinsic to self the other people.

02;32;40;03 - 02;33;01;29
Dan
Absolutely And then the other thing that I've recognized from reading a lot of these books is people will talk about connection and relationships as one of the keys to wellness. So if you were so comfortable in yourself but you're completely isolated, chances are you're going to be having a hard time if you don't have connections in your life and relationships with other people.

02;33;01;29 - 02;33;11;27
Dan
We've been talking about resilience a fair amount. I thought I'd play a clip and maybe I can get your reaction to it. It'll give us some some topics to think about in terms of resilience.

02;33;11;27 - 02;33;41;26
Speaker 6
So number one, resilient people get that shit happens. They know that suffering is part of life. This doesn't mean they actually welcome it in. They're not actually delusional, just that when the tough times come, they seem to know that suffering is part of every human existence. And knowing this stops you from feeling discriminated against when tough times come.

02;33;42;18 - 02;34;12;24
Dan
So that was Lucy Horne. She's a researcher who studies resilience, talking about tough times. One the things that jumped out at me is at the end where she talks about how I'm not being discriminated against because something bad happened to me. I'm interested in that because I feel like people have a sense of fairness in life that things are supposed to happen to good people, good should happen, but life doesn't play out that way.

02;34;13;03 - 02;34;22;27
Dan
So I don't know how that connects. I mean, it definitely links with resilience. Can you talk about how that overlaps with what you've been studying or with our concept of ourselves in some ways?

02;34;24;06 - 02;34;43;11
Sam
Yeah. The idea of like the thing that really stuck with me from that, it a little clip was like things like, Why does this happen to me? Like, I struggled that for a long time and like, almost like a string of bad things would happen is like and that was also like, kind of like phasing out of the church too.

02;34;43;12 - 02;35;04;19
Sam
In my church group, I was like, Why does God do this to me? Type of deal? I've come to realize that, you know, shit hits the fan sometimes and life just, you know, it doesn't always work out like this week, you know? Not been the greatest loss. My AirPods got broken up with. Someone stole my laundry. I'm like, all of this.

02;35;04;19 - 02;35;05;03
Sam
Yeah.

02;35;05;05 - 02;35;06;05
Katie
Oh, no.

02;35;07;02 - 02;35;23;07
Sam
And but at the end of the day, I. It's not like the universe, just like, you know, singling me out or something like that. It just. It stuff happens. And, you know, you know, if you went when you hit rock bottom, you can only go up. And as long as people have that mindset, you know, you can get through anything.

02;35;24;02 - 02;35;36;25
Nikolas
Yeah, I thing is like an important part of like the like when the flipside of like the common humanity thing, like you're the first person for this to happen to you. And like other people have I got through this and been perfectly fine, though I was saying, as it were, in parts like really yourself, other people in that sense.

02;35;37;06 - 02;35;44;22
Nikolas
And I was like getting this. Like what? You know, it's like, what's he like the self as inseparable from the other like, like other people are and impacts how you feel about yourself.

02;35;45;07 - 02;35;48;21
Dan
Are there some resilience strategies that you have encountered?

02;35;49;21 - 02;35;51;29
Nikolas
I mean, give me like coping mechanisms or just like.

02;35;51;29 - 02;35;56;10
Dan
Yeah, tactics, things you might turn to when you're in these situations.

02;35;56;16 - 02;36;03;07
Nikolas
I just like me like, like exercise a little bit or like, yeah, I think that's like if I'm like, mad about something or something.

02;36;03;14 - 02;36;23;14
Unai
I think this was right in the book. Yeah. So he made a comparison of people with an iceberg. So like, we are not an Instagram for example. Yes, But typically when people don't show their whole life, they only shoot a good. So he basically compared it with an iceberg. You know, he's only see it at one part and it's not evenly distributed.

02;36;23;14 - 02;36;52;13
Unai
So I guess I'm like, you see some of the girls in some of the bars? No, you see the good things. But then there's this a very big that didn't happen to people because again, shit happens. And like, that's it. So like, you have to be aware people are an iceberg and the more you know someone, probably the more you as colonized was like, yeah, you know, when your friends are going through shit, but not when other people like your classmate, that is nearer as of the room.

02;36;53;04 - 02;37;07;11
Unai
You only know maybe one later he comes happy because. He got an eight. So the more you know people you have toward, the more you know them, the more you see the iceberg. Like everyone has an iceberg. It's just you don't see it. Be aware of that.

02;37;08;00 - 02;37;35;00
Dan
Yeah. That sense of fairness, I think, is important to dial back a little bit because it is true that there's going to be suffer and in life it's kind of connects with this notion of of Buddhism or some of the spirituality aspects of of wellness. If was all just rainbows and butterflies, none of these books would even exist in the first place, probably.

02;37;35;00 - 02;38;00;10
Dan
So you're going to be participating in some of the same challenges that everyone participates in. One strategy I've encountered is to go back in time and look at obstacles that you've overcome in the past, the ways that you've been able to kind of successfully navigate challenges. And you recognize if I've been able to do that before, the chances that I'm able to do that are pretty, pretty strong.

02;38;00;10 - 02;38;23;06
Dan
So you can go with that. And then, Nicholas, I like your recommendation of, you know, movement. These are the wellness strategies that come up the time whether, you know, you're in a particular problem that's precisely labeled. It just happened today. I need to get out and run or something. It's a good thing to turn to in any situation, as are the relationships and the connections.

02;38;23;06 - 02;38;30;12
Dan
I think as well. If you're having a lot of trouble, is there someone you connect with is a good strategy as well?

02;38;30;29 - 02;38;53;16
Katie
Yeah, I always if I'm in like a rut or it feels like something is just going wrong and I can't fix it, I try and focus on the things that I can control. Whether that makes me a control freak or not, I don't know. But I find when I can can accomplish something and do something and take control of something, it makes me feel better.

02;38;53;16 - 02;39;09;10
Katie
It puts things in perspective. Like they're like, my whole life isn't going wrong like there are things I can do, right? And it may when I can do something productive, it just puts the bad situation into perspective, makes it feel a little smaller.

02;39;10;05 - 02;39;31;24
Dan
So let's go back to Sam. Was talking about the book by Young, and one of the aspects of the psychology that Young puts together is this notion that you have a conscious sense of yourself and then there's an unconscious self that you don't really pay attention to that much, but it kind of they overlap or bubble up sometimes.

02;39;32;02 - 02;40;06;24
Dan
And then he has what he calls a collective unconscious, which is something that is almost like an and also a cultural sort of sense of who you are. So in what way are our identities and ourselves shaped by these larger cultural constructs, or maybe almost like a genealogy, a history that we come from? How do we get to be this self that we are in terms of these larger societal and maybe historical aspects of us?

02;40;06;24 - 02;40;32;21
Nikolas
I would say, well, I think that like there's a lot of different like structures that can make you or I think like the family is one that's really important, like what your parents say to you, that's important who you are. I think religion can impact who you are as a person. And I see the world. And in terms of culture, like the community is like the local community you grew up in and, are you starting yourself with as like a child and as you grew up in middle school and high school, like he was trying with I self-loathing can impact like your decision making.

02;40;33;07 - 02;40;47;22
Sam
The idea because I definitely like feel like two versions of me. There's a version that like, you know, is very social and like likes to be around people and likes to go out and do things. And there's like, the other side. I'm just like, I hate people and I want to stay in my room and just be by myself.

02;40;48;09 - 02;41;14;20
Sam
And it's just, you know, it's like you have two different there's like some Japanese saying or a proverb or whatever, or it's like you have like three faces for the world. They won. The world sees one. They like your friend. See, the one that only you see is the only real thing that you know, there are different versions of yourself that you show and like what you think of yourself is not the same thing that you know what the world sees of you or what your friends the about you is because everyone's perspective is different and no one is ever the same.

02;41;14;20 - 02;41;18;05
Sam
So no one will ever see the person or a person the same.

02;41;18;11 - 02;41;32;16
Unai
I remember that discussion I had, like some friend was saying. So we thread it to alcohol. So when you drink, you're like, You say the truth and you only.

02;41;32;16 - 02;41;33;12
Katie
Serve sober words.

02;41;33;15 - 02;41;37;06
Sam
Or drug. Drunk words are strong words. Yeah, yeah.

02;41;37;19 - 02;41;56;05
Unai
It's like physical environment when you drink your beer to you. I can see why that is true. But also I feel like the boundaries. You may set on what you say and what you don't say. Your filters, you know, whatever. And also some a part of yourself. It's like those barriers you build between what will see the world sees.

02;41;56;05 - 02;42;22;24
Unai
Would your friends see and would you only see those boundaries or filters You put that second life? To some extent, it's also part of yourself. So it's not that you just have a life and you show less so your friends and even less to the world. It's just that they are kind of different lives. So like you live how you want, but it's another one of the lives is bigger than the other one or whatever it is, just differences.

02;42;23;26 - 02;42;35;13
Katie
I've thought of it like that, like the barriers and the filters that you have are actually a part of yourself. You're not hiding anything. Maybe you're being selective with what you share like this.

02;42;35;13 - 02;42;56;04
Dan
And we've been talking about metaphors a lot as we study wellness. And I think maybe we can see if we can generate one. The idea that you have a core self and then you have an outer self or you have multiple selves that you show, I think that holds true. Everybody is different depending on the context and also depending on the moment.

02;42;56;04 - 02;43;20;24
Dan
And as you go through life, you're going to be a different person than you were 20 years ago. You know, I'm wondering what the what the metaphor might be. I'm thinking of like an onion where there's different layers and, you know, but that's not exactly the right metaphor. I'm also thinking of up and down. Young has this idea that you have your ego, which is this conscious self that's kind of up at the top and people see it.

02;43;20;24 - 02;43;35;19
Dan
Are you? You're really that's who you think you are. But then underneath there's these other aspects of self, so there's a spatial down below. Maybe the iceberg is, is one of these metaphors as well. Can you think what other metaphors might we put together to describe this?

02;43;36;03 - 02;44;03;01
Sam
Maybe like an outfit like I because I don't act the same way around parents than I do my friends. That's definitely for sure. And it's just it's like the this the thing that you need to show or the thing that or the clothes you put on fit the occasion that you're in. I'm not going to curse in front of my parents and I'm not going to like I'm not going to use like, yes, ma'am and no, sir, to my friends.

02;44;04;00 - 02;44;11;19
Sam
And it's it's like I see like the different clothes you put on is like the different types of like characteristics that you show around different people.

02;44;12;07 - 02;44;14;16
Dan
I like that. That seems like a pretty useful one.

02;44;15;06 - 02;44;29;07
Unai
And also maybe trying to develop that better. So like you can show some things, but generally you're going to hire height or your color face maybe. I don't know. You know, there's something that you can hide it, just define yourself and then also you can put your cool.

02;44;29;08 - 02;44;51;07
Dan
Yeah, I like that. I wonder if acting metaphors are like characters in a in a play or a movie or something could also be a way of describing the way we act in certain situations and not in others. Fantastic. Well, are there any last thoughts? What else do we need to know about what you've been studying or about these aspects of the self?

02;44;51;07 - 02;45;24;14
Katie
I guess in my book, the author was really adamant about trying not to put yourself in a box when he was going through the groups he said, like it's really likely that you're going to find a sentence or two within each group that you identify with, and that's okay. Like the goal not to just define yourself in five sentences, like try and find something that you can identify with most, but that doesn't define you are it's just helpful for the exercise moving forward to pick a group.

02;45;24;14 - 02;45;39;03
Katie
But he said like, be really careful about putting in a box and putting limitations on who you are. So yeah, you can be multiple different things.

02;45;39;03 - 02;46;01;27
Dan
Well, thank you. That was a really enjoyable conversation. Sam Una, Nicholas, Katy, I really appreciate the insights into the self for our listeners. Remember that you're not just one thing. As Katy says, don't put yourself into a box and understand that these concepts of the self are going to come into play in good times and bad times. If you're struggling.

02;46;02;05 - 02;46;41;27
Dan
These lessons in resilience and how your self responds to those are to be important. And then as you try to, as they say, be your best self in life, you're going to be able to use these strategies as well. So I appreciate all of your listening and tune in for another episode soon. We're. Hello, everybody, and welcome to Words of Wellness, the podcast, where we consider the ways people think, speak and write about wellness.

02;46;42;11 - 02;46;56;02
Dan
I'm Daniel Anderson and we're coming to you from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill today. We have four guests who are going to talk to us about the topic of self-care. So Without further ado, I will hand it over to my guests.

02;46;57;14 - 02;46;58;24
Katie
Hi, I'm Siri.

02;46;59;04 - 02;46;59;26
Speaker 9
I'm Tyler.

02;46;59;27 - 02;47;42;19
Katie
I'm Kirsten. And I'm Kate. So I wanted to start off this conversation of self-care by talking about stress, which almost seems like the opposite of self-care. But I think it's important that we work our way up from perhaps opposite to those solutions. So and I want to gear my questions towards college students as we all are. So according to you, Anti Learning Center college students commonly experience stress because of increased responsibilities, a lack of good time management, changes in eating and sleeping habits and not taking enough breaks for self care and also transitioning to college can be a source of stress for many first year students.

02;47;43;02 - 02;48;07;04
Katie
So I wanted to ask you guys, what do you feel like your biggest contributors to stress are in college? I would have to say, trying to kind of manage like so I am a cheerleader here and I'm trying to manage like the student athlete kind of balance between it. And it's really hard because sometimes I'll have like stuff do and I'll be like, Oh wait, I have to go to practice.

02;48;07;04 - 02;48;15;14
Katie
So I like, I can't do it. And it like causes me to stress out while I'm at practice focusing on that rather than focusing on what I'm actually there for.

02;48;16;21 - 02;48;33;05
Speaker 9
For me, it's that I am taking a few, many classes, so I'm always either behind on work or like doing my work as it's do, which is obviously not the best because procrastination is not good for wellness.

02;48;34;15 - 02;48;54;14
Katie
Yeah, I'm in kind of the same boat as you, Tyler. My high school did not prepare me for like this level, of course, like at all. So, like, especially like the math and science is where you're basically just told, hey, figure it yourself. And if you can't do it too bad. Definitely. It causes me a lot of stress.

02;48;54;14 - 02;49;17;00
Katie
You know, you're studying for a test for like a week, which means like you neglect all your other, which means you're behind. So that's like my biggest factor of stress. What about you? Sorry, I completely agree with all of you guys. I would say like one of the biggest factors of stress I've been noticing more recently is due to competition.

02;49;17;13 - 02;49;42;17
Katie
And I feel like, especially with the epidemic of LinkedIn, I just look at people's profiles and I see like the billion things they're doing. And then I look at mine and I'm like, Am I doing enough? And I'm also a pre business student. And being a pretty business student means that you have to be in several clubs. You have to have good grades and it's just and you don't even know if you're going to get into the business.

02;49;42;17 - 02;50;10;26
Katie
Major At the end of it all, I definitely agree. I think that's so stressful. Kind of like comparing yourself to one another and you see it in your classes all the time and it was like prevalent in high school, but not near as much as it is now because it's like a competition constantly. Like I don't even like talking about school kind of with like friends and stuff because I was like, I don't want to talk and like, compare myself to you because then I'll be like, Oh wait, I should be doing this or I should be doing that whenever.

02;50;10;26 - 02;50;17;00
Katie
I'm just like, It's better if you just sit down and focus on what you're doing because nobody else knows what you're doing.

02;50;17;24 - 02;50;40;16
Speaker 9
And also the same for comps like here. We now have to apply for the major, which makes everything a bit more competitive. And while before I believe the culture is more like in our welcoming and inclusive, now since there is a hidden agenda of trying to get into the school, I feel like everything in Canada has gone a little more cutthroat, which is not what I wanted.

02;50;42;01 - 02;51;03;21
Katie
Yeah, same with me. With trying to be a health policy and management major. The school doing School of Health doesn't allow you to take classes until you're in the major, so there's no real way to show like your interest because you literally can't take the classes. And this is like a super competitive major with only 40 students getting in.

02;51;04;12 - 02;51;33;06
Katie
So you're kind of fighting with everyone to even get noticed. So I feel very much the same way. Yeah. So that's I can I did not realize like the health policy side or the computer science side was like that. It's strange that so many students here, like when we applied to get college, you think it's going to be over the application season, but it begins again in just a year.

02;51;34;26 - 02;51;44;29
Katie
So I wanted to ask like second question of like when you experience these feelings of stress, what do you specifically do to cope?

02;51;45;26 - 02;52;11;08
Speaker 9
Well, people cope in a lot of different ways. Before coming here, I read a short excerpt from The Washington Post, and one way a woman did self-care was by saying going to a therapist, She was going through a lot of emotional trauma or trauma. But then another person, they define self-care more as like hiding themselves. Beauty wise and being happy with how they look and expressing themselves in that way.

02;52;11;24 - 02;52;17;10
Speaker 9
But I guess for me, self-care and if you ask the question one more time.

02;52;18;10 - 02;52;20;25
Katie
When you're stressed out, what do you specifically do to cope?

02;52;21;10 - 02;52;28;23
Speaker 9
For me, exercise is an amazing outlet because it just lets me like get the feelings I have out. And yeah.

02;52;29;25 - 02;52;54;03
Katie
I would definitely agree. I think exercise is one of the best ways to deal with it because you just take your mind off of it for a little bit and sometimes like the motivation of like either getting to the gym or like motivating yourself to get out there and like go for a run or something can be hard, but like, the feeling afterwards is like you actually experience like a runner's high and it feels so good, like after where it's like exercising.

02;52;54;03 - 02;53;29;12
Katie
And then I also practice self-care through like just taking time for myself. If it's just painting my nails with my friends or like, like playing a game or like something with my friends, it it helps a lot. Yeah, I'm kind of in the same boat as you like Houston, where much of my stuff is just like hanging out with friends to, like, reveals, relieves stress and like, honestly, like being with other people while you're doing work can be counter, but it's nice to know you're going through the same thing with multiple people.

02;53;29;22 - 02;53;54;19
Katie
So you're kind of like, bonding over that. Yeah, definitely. It seems like you guys have all very positive outlets to alleviate stress. I know sometimes when I'm very stressed, I just lay on my bed in my dorm and just scroll through TikTok and Instagram for hours on end. And I know I'd feel better if I like, pick myself up and went to the gym.

02;53;54;28 - 02;54;14;27
Katie
And I guess I just have to be more conscientious about positive ways to cope. Oh yeah. Agree. I'll sit in my bed like after I've finished a homework assignment and I'll be like, This is going to scroll on for 10 minutes and then at 10 minutes turns into an hour and then an hour turns into 2 hours and I'm like, Where did my day go?

02;54;14;27 - 02;54;44;16
Katie
I'm literally just scrolling TikTok all day. Um, so beyond just methods of coping, how do you guys prevent stress in college? I say I prevent stress kind of from at the beginning of the week. I'll write out everything that I have to do, like my schedule and like that. I know that I won't be able to do schoolwork or something like that and just write out every single assignment.

02;54;44;16 - 02;55;02;15
Katie
And then once I can check off something, it's like it feels so good to be able to just check it off the list and be like, okay, I can move on to the next thing. And then something else that, like really prevent stress is like before I'll call my mom or call friends or family and just kind of talk to them and tell them exactly what I have to do.

02;55;02;15 - 02;55;14;08
Katie
Even though she probably didn't want to know like specifics of what I had to do. But it just helps to kind of talk to someone and be like this. What I have to do, this is how I'm going to do it. And then it kind of alleviates stress for me.

02;55;16;03 - 02;55;40;01
Speaker 9
I completely agree with the checklist because at the beginning semester I didn't have any form of organization for my homework. I just run through my mind every day, like, what classes do I have in my career to have do for the classes, which obviously made me miss a few assignments here and there. But in the past, like three or four weeks, I've been keeping or two or three weeks I've been keeping a checklist that actually helps a lot with making sure I don't miss any assignments.

02;55;40;01 - 02;55;45;05
Speaker 9
And it kept me a lot more organized, which in turns helps me for procrastinating.

02;55;46;15 - 02;56;11;28
Katie
Yeah Same with like the checklist thing I use not for like the product placement, but like nutrition, which has like a calendar feature where I put every single assignment that's still in there. But I do believe in college you are going to be stressed, especially in a place like you and see where it's so academically rigorous. I feel stress is just a part of being a college student, so circumventing that is really hard.

02;56;12;11 - 02;56;30;07
Katie
But like with the Kirsten thing of like telling someone else what you're going to do. So like, helps keep you accountable. Like really helps. Like, I'll be annoying my friends about, like, I have to do this, then this and this. And they're like, well, I don't really, I'm still going to tell you. So yeah, that would be like my way.

02;56;31;09 - 02;56;57;01
Katie
Yeah. I also take on the calendar method and also the and I think that's useful. But also sometimes when I look at my checklist and see so many boxes that almost contributes to it, or if I see Google calendar with the block of time, that also might contribute to it. But as you said, like as a college student, it feels like stresses unavoidable.

02;56;57;15 - 02;57;03;18
Katie
But nonetheless, I think it's important to discuss methods of coping and prevention.

02;57;03;29 - 02;57;28;00
Speaker 9
But also like one of the topics read in the books for our class, I think one of the things that's been keeping me motivated through college is finding something to look forward to. And then just keeping my eyes on that boy push through the rest of the week like this weekend. I'm excited for the four day weekend obviously, and I'm excited to attend projects, a mentor and that's really exciting for me.

02;57;28;07 - 02;57;33;23
Speaker 9
So while I'm pushing through this last day of the week, I'm just thinking about making it to that and how fun it will be.

02;57;34;24 - 02;57;54;23
Katie
I think a big thing for me too, about stress is that I get so overwhelmed with my assignments or like things that I have to do, and I realize that just like taking one at a time, like, helps me more than anything. If I'll just like, sit down and I'm like, okay, I need to do this. And I'll be like switching through tabs on my computer and.

02;57;54;23 - 02;58;08;06
Katie
Be like, Okay, I'm going to do a little bit of this and then a little bit of that. And then but if I just sit down and I just like, finish the assignment and then I'm able to check that off, I feel so much better afterwards and. I'm like, okay, now I can move on to this and then finish that.

02;58;08;06 - 02;58;27;10
Katie
And that just kind of helps me a lot. Yeah, I'm the exact same way. I'll have like 18 different topics that I'm doing at once, which takes like 4 hours to do rather than if I just chose line for like 30 minutes and do it. So it's really, it's helping me to like focus on a class, do all the assignments, and then move on to the next class.

02;58;27;26 - 02;58;30;16
Katie
Yeah, Yeah, definitely.

02;58;31;23 - 02;58;47;25
Speaker 9
Well, I also had a question related to self care. And it's not that I've heard how you guys define your own self-care and how you practice self-care, but how would you define or sorry, I heard how you guys practice self-care, but how would you define self-care?

02;58;48;24 - 02;59;16;01
Katie
I would say self-care. I would define that as like the connection between your mind and body and like how you can do certain task or something to kind of like aid your body to connect with your mind and like feel. I don't know, I guess like, feel better about yourself and like, do a little task that just kind of like promote your wellbeing physically and mentally.

02;59;17;18 - 02;59;39;18
Katie
My first instinct is to be like taking care of yourself, but I think it's like important to like self-care is like for self betterment either. Like you don't necessarily have to be like, I have to do this, this and this to be productive, but like taking time and like practicing like mindfulness would be like my version of self-care.

02;59;40;19 - 03;00;18;04
Katie
I would say self-care is a systematic set of actions that you take for yourself on like a quantifiable basis, such as daily or weekly. That could be like playing with your friends or watering your plans or just being with yourself and. I would also say self-care is also an aspect of your mindset. I think practicing gratitude and practicing mindfulness being present are all important aspects to self-care.

03;00;18;27 - 03;00;48;05
Speaker 9
Okay, I completely agree with everything you guys just said, and according to a study from Birchbox, which is an interesting source, but more than half of Americans believe that self-care involves some form of screen time and taking care of their bodies and taking a mental break. Those are generally like the top three categories. People play self-care in, and I think you guys covered most of that, which is it's nice to hear that it's a universal opinion.

03;00;48;22 - 03;01;12;29
Speaker 9
But another thing is, you guys were categorizing self-care as a set of steps that you should carry out to improve yourself. In a way, I feel like that type of rhetoric, stress also would stress people out because it's like I have to do these things to get better and I guess what are your thoughts on that?

03;01;13;26 - 03;01;47;03
Katie
I think well, I listed some examples earlier and by definition, and those examples hold true for me, but it's a variable sort of thing like X, Y, and Z. What does these x, y, z examples of like I guess like improving from stress like, and making yourself feel more present, mindful and grateful mean to you? And for me that is watering my plans for me, that's being with my friends and for me that's like being by myself, like journaling.

03;01;47;09 - 03;02;09;06
Katie
But for other people it can. The X, y, z variables can change. Yeah, I do think as a society we place like a lot of, like meaning on being like productive even when we're trying to take care of ourselves. So like, like, say you're just looking up how to like, do yoga and but first you have to buy a mat.

03;02;09;06 - 03;02;27;14
Katie
You have to watch this 30 minute video. You have to listen to mindful music that can be very stressful when you're just trying to better yourself. But then again I feel like this simple things are way better than the things you need a lot of money to do. Like you don't have to buy like a $30 yoga mat.

03;02;27;14 - 03;02;56;20
Katie
You can literally just outside and just be there in the moment. I definitely agree with that. And I think practicing self-care can be like so many different things for people like Sarah was saying. Like for me it is also watering my plan to use a lot, but it's just like little things. And I also love like spontaneous activities, like with your friends or something like that.

03;02;56;20 - 03;03;12;05
Katie
And I'll be like, This wasn't in my plan, but I'm so happy that I did it, or I'm so happy that I'm here, like with you guys. And I think that that kind of connects to the feeling of gratitude for others like. Whenever people bring out the best in you, I think is what is really important.

03;03;13;06 - 03;03;51;25
Speaker 9
And I'm really glad that you brought up no specific goals. The end point, it's more like the journey. Move towards it and letting yourself do things that moves you towards it. Because one of the I watched a YouTube video around a year back that was how to pick topics for self-improvement, roughly. And it was instead of picking very specific goals, like I will go to the gym three a week or I will go on a five hour or I would like take 30 minutes each day to meditate or something instead of picking very specific goals, it tells you to pick very broad, overarching goals for like a year.

03;03;52;08 - 03;04;10;16
Speaker 9
For instance, this year I'm doing the Year of Help, which is very very broad, but it also means that you can't really go wrong and everything you do towards it is improvement. And I think that's really important that there's no specific metrics us to improve. It's more that we if we think we're improving and that's good enough.

03;04;11;07 - 03;04;35;12
Katie
I definitely agree with that. And I kind of see that in almost like my diet is where I'm like, if I like try to set goals, but obviously it's like, does it work only like eat whatever? And then I'm like, Oh, I feel bad about myself because I shouldn't eat that or something like that. But in reality, like I should just be focusing on like the overall, like wellbeing and making sure that I'm eating like healthy foods.

03;04;35;12 - 03;05;03;04
Katie
Also, it's a really healthy balance between the different types. Yeah, I find that like a really nice sentiment. Like it's so important to be for giving of yourself and not be harsh because like if you're like, Well, I'm so dumb, why didn't I do this? Why did I do that? It definitely affects the way you do yourself, but if you're like, okay, well, maybe I'll do better next time, that definitely sets up like a better, like self-talk about yourself.

03;05;03;24 - 03;05;31;27
Katie
Yeah, I was completely going to say something about self-talk and this idea. I think that especially for diet, like you have to practice that says like I deserve nutritious meals that are going to fuel me throughout life, but also I deserve treats that are going to make me happy and I deserve to eat with my friends. And you also like going to the gym.

03;05;31;27 - 03;05;54;00
Katie
I deserve to have a strong body. I'm grateful for the legs and arms that move me throughout life and then being like not diminishing yourself, not saying like, oh I look ugly. You practicing internal positive self-talk will make you much more motivated for the journey ahead.

03;05;54;00 - 03;06;04;19
Speaker 9
And a little unrelated, but I want to ask one more question about how have you guys changed how you view self-care because of COVID, or has it stayed consistent run it properly?

03;06;05;16 - 03;06;32;22
Katie
I would say mine has definitely changed because with the initial lockdown, I was just so used to like being in sports and being with friends constantly and like having such a set routine throughout the day. And then COVID just completely threw that off and I was like stuck at home and I was like, Well, what I do with my day because and then I was also stuck and I couldn't I got at the point where I couldn't, like, get my license because of COVID.

03;06;32;22 - 03;06;50;15
Katie
And so it pushed it back. And so I was like literally stuck at home all day. My parents worked throughout, so like they couldn't take me places. So I just kind of found ways to like exercise was one of the main things where I was like getting outside, playing with my dogs, just doing like little things that would just kind of benefit me.

03;06;50;15 - 03;07;14;10
Katie
And I actually found a lot peace within that. And I was like really thriving, being able to exercise and just kind of do my own thing. But at the same time, I was also feeling a lot of gratitude towards friends and family, the just like through and that's what social media kind of helped was like the aspect of being able to call your friends or just like text with them and stuff like that really helped.

03;07;15;13 - 03;07;38;21
Katie
Yeah, it definitely changed my view of self-care, especially like with Tik Tok and like Tik Tok boom. I would just like scroll there for hours and see people like doing like insane things to their body, like the Gua sha thing where like you mold your face like a jade, like sculpting tool or like people that would like put like layers upon layers of like face there.

03;07;38;22 - 03;08;02;20
Katie
So that kind of like, definitely like, distorted my view of what I'm supposed to do to take care of myself, I guess during that COVID era. Yeah, like going back to Kirsten's point about like you have all of this time that's available to you now that like during like freshman and the beginning of sophomore year, like I was doing stuff, I had a routine.

03;08;02;20 - 03;08;26;00
Katie
I was like a foot, a fish swimming in water. I wasn't really thinking, but now that I had a lot more time available to myself, wow, I have to think for once. And that just made me learn a lot more about myself and also made me learn a lot more about ways I can practice self-care.

03;08;27;15 - 03;09;00;29
Speaker 9
I also think that I the beginning of COVID, we were all unused to the amount of time we had because what used to be a set rigorous schedule was now like more free flowing and just was not as prevalent anymore. And for me it was roughly the same. I also developed and found ways to cope with this time, and while some of them I would now consider unhealthy overall, I think in that moment it was definitely very relevant to keeping like saying like, yes.

03;09;01;20 - 03;09;25;16
Katie
I agree, especially the school at the beginning of COVID, because no one knew how to kind of respond to it. So for my high school, at least, that was during my sophomore year. And so we had like an Ivy. I was in the Ivy School and we had like an Ivy project and like it was just like supposed to be this hard thing and like, nobody really, like, finished it.

03;09;25;16 - 03;09;50;14
Katie
Like, I was, I presented my thing through zoom, and it was just like the oddest experience, even though that was supposed to be like such a big milestone and stuff like that. And no one knew kind of how to respond to these like things that were thrown at them. But also through school we were completely asynchronous. So like I would be able to finish my assignments if I sat down in one day and then for the rest of the week I was like, What am I supposed to do now?

03;09;50;14 - 03;10;19;04
Katie
And so was kind of finding ways to like manage your time, especially through that. And that kind of helped me like a lot. Yeah, with like my high school, like the second semester sophomore year where it happened, we just straight up didn't have school, so I was given no assignments, nothing to do for like the entire day. So I would play like a lot of animal crossing and like, go outside and play with my dog.

03;10;19;19 - 03;10;28;11
Katie
So it was very much like, like, what do I do with myself when there's nothing like, no tasks to complete? You know, you had to create like your own things to do.

03;10;29;05 - 03;10;32;04
Speaker 9
But I don't really have much to add on that topic.

03;10;33;10 - 03;11;06;17
Katie
Okay, So I was kind of a switch, but I focused more on the practice of journaling then. So I just was wondering like if you guys, it can like I guess it kind of goes to like organized session because like for me I don't really journal that often about like gratitude or anything like that. But I always find like journaling, like writing out my task of the week and then at the end all like make a little note, like take everything one day at a time or like just little things that whenever I see, I'm like, This is so helpful.

03;11;06;17 - 03;11;33;15
Katie
Like Just like a silly little message, but it means so much. I guess for me it would be like the checklist, a calendar and making sure all like my things are in order. I don't necessarily necessarily like journal my thoughts, so that would be like the extent of like my journaling. I feel like I do journal my thoughts during elementary school.

03;11;33;15 - 03;11;58;17
Katie
Like for second grade I would like write down like, I guess everything that happened throughout my day, like, oh, today I had P.E. then I ate Doritos for my snack. But that would it wouldn't have much analysis towards it. But then I recently, like, picked up my journal from elementary school. I'm like, Wow, this has so much in it.

03;11;58;22 - 03;12;27;17
Katie
And then I started journaling again in college, but not including everything I did in the day, but more so like my analysis from a specific moment in that day and how that really made me feel. And practicing journaling allows me to practice writing also like decongest or almost like digest, like my thoughts and everything. And I find it very useful to release my emotions.

03;12;28;21 - 03;12;52;29
Speaker 9
I used to do a lot more of what people consider traditionally journey, which is like writing down your thoughts and what happened during the day back in like elementary and middle school and high school. I like found that journal and read through it and tried to pick it back up. But I never had the motivation to because for me it was more of a thing that I know it's there, but is it how really useful is it and how much we look back on it?

03;12;53;20 - 03;13;15;12
Speaker 9
So recently the thing I've been using as like a side journaling or replacement for journaling is I like taking a lot of photos. Like every time I think anything is interesting is happening or I love a moment. I mean, I'll try my best to take a photo of like the people around me, the situation and everything that just makes that moment enjoyable.

03;13;15;12 - 03;13;30;00
Speaker 9
Me And every like week or two I find it really easy to just scroll through it and remember those things, which for me is just like a more convenient form of journaling, I guess, but formal photos.

03;13;30;04 - 03;13;50;04
Katie
I love that. I definitely see myself doing that like way more than I think. I'm just like about whenever I'm about to go to bed, I'm just like scrolling through my memories and I'm like looking and I'm like, Oh, and then I'll send it to a friend. And they're like, We just have a nice little conversation like that time and like, rehashing on that time, and it always brings a smile to my face.

03;13;50;04 - 03;14;20;18
Katie
I guess that would definitely be a form that I use as well. I guess I'll transition to my topic, which is already kind of touched upon it, but it would be the commercialization of self care, particularly like beauty. So according to Vice, the wellness industry is worth $1.5 trillion. So like how do you all like perform self-care without like falling into commercialization and like buying a bunch of products?

03;14;21;13 - 03;15;04;20
Speaker 9
Well, I found it interesting because in one of the articles they wrote, a person vehemently denied doing any form of self-care because they associated it so much with consumerism, and they just did not believe in consumerism. So in our current society, especially with this statistic of 1.5 trillion you just mentioned, I think consumerism is very related to self-care and vice versa because everything and a lot of things, if you want to improve yourself, you have to first do some sort of consumer act like for yoga, you have to buy a yoga mat or consume some music, which then these two ads, which leads to profit for Google, etc. and I think everything eventually back to

03;15;04;20 - 03;15;07;25
Speaker 9
consumerism. But yeah.

03;15;08;24 - 03;15;50;27
Katie
It's hard to I would say that the most positive contributor productive aspects of self-care actually costs no money to me. I would say like spending time with the sun is something that I do that makes me feel so much happier than maybe like drinking green juice. And I would say that exercising, moving my body as well is, something that's free, maybe not that aspect of weightlifting and going to a gym, but like walking and that is free and that makes me feel good.

03;15;52;05 - 03;16;24;15
Katie
I would definitely I think I definitely fall into both categories because on one hand I'll do certain aspects that like are free, such as exercising or just talking with friends and family, but also being like in a generation, social media is targeted such to like a young age group, like they'll post, I guess, certain things like I get ready me or day in my life and I'll see like their videos and I'll be like, Oh, I wish I had that or something like that.

03;16;24;15 - 03;16;48;20
Katie
It would be like, Well, it's linked to my Amazon storefront and I'm like, Oh, okay, here, go, love it. So I definitely fall into like that a little bit. But I don't know, I guess I see both sides of it, but it's really hard whenever you see it, like on TikTok or something, because also they could be misrepresenting the product or something for their own financial benefit.

03;16;48;20 - 03;17;08;00
Katie
And so I'm sitting there and I'm like, Well, I just got misled because this product is not how I thought it would be. Or like this beauty trend was not exactly what I thought it was going to be. So yeah, I definitely agree with the Tik Tok thing. I feel like self-care now. It's mostly like a Tik tok, like industry.

03;17;08;00 - 03;17;38;16
Katie
I got to scroll through and I'll see like a get ready with me or like, especially like beauty influencers lying about how great their product is when it actually isn't. But like transitioning into my next question, which is kind of like vague, but when I was like reading up on this topic, I found a bunch of like articles by like marginalized feminists that were like claiming that self-care is almost like exclusion and area.

03;17;38;25 - 03;18;14;03
Katie
Like you can say, well, you just need to exercise. But like, what about a person who's chronically ill who literally cannot exercise or they'll be put in like large amounts of pain. So like, I guess my question would be like, do you believe like self-care can be exclusionary, especially in like beauty self-care? I think self-care in that sense could be exclusionary, but I think I don't think that's necessarily a negative to talk about ways to practice self-care.

03;18;14;03 - 03;18;41;12
Katie
Because since if one aspect of self-care perhaps to a chronically ill person not being able to move applies to them, then maybe another aspect of self-care does apply to them. And that's why it's important to have conversations about ways to practice self-care and how people have found ways to practice self-care. Because since it's not one end all be all with one specific thing.

03;18;41;12 - 03;18;57;11
Katie
And like I remember in Spark or Burnout, the article we read, the author kept on mentioning exercise as the end all be all, but it's not necessarily the end all, be all.

03;18;57;11 - 03;19;35;22
Speaker 9
And I believe that self-care is a very polarizing thing, specifically because of you mentioned there's like a tick tock self-care. There is self-care as we defined it, like individually. But then there's also that like really publicized and beauty centric exercise centric self-care. That is what we like view it as today. And that type of self-care definitely is more it's lot less accessible to everybody and also probably negatively impacts people's mental health because of what they see and how they compare themselves against it.

03;19;35;22 - 03;20;15;23
Katie
I definitely agree. I think that self-care is very subjective because what I may think is self-care. You may not and. So it's like it can be so different and like it just is practiced in so many different ways. And it's even things that you wouldn't think it was. But back to your question, I wouldn't say it's like exclusionary about all specific things like Siri were saying where they may not be able to exercise, but they may be able to sit out in the sun for 15 minutes and, you know, talk or read with a friend or family member or something like that.

03;20;15;23 - 03;20;47;07
Katie
So it's just kind of finding ways that, like make you feel better about yourself and like, it's all about like what I yeah, like what makes you like, feel happy and like, through your practices. Yeah, I completely agree. That was just like an interesting pattern that I saw, especially when I was just looking up commercialization of self-care. I found what Tyler said really like impactful because there is Tik tok self-care and then there's like actual self-care.

03;20;47;16 - 03;21;14;07
Katie
So like Tik Tok self-care might be like targeted towards, you know, people that can buy their products, you know, people spend 2 hours a day on their beauty routine, which obviously isn't representative of all of us. So I do believe that important, like the little things are more important than like buying a $200 like foundation. Well, that was like my topic.

03;21;14;07 - 03;21;55;08
Katie
Does anyone have any, like, final thoughts? I don't think I guess one of the other topics, not really a topic, but what you were saying about Tik Tok is so interesting because I feel like everybody, at least for like our younger generation, is on it and the stigma of like having like certain things on there is like really detrimental to like least my mental health and like, I'm sure others, whenever you see people who like and then you're self comparing and like one of the books that we would read, we talked about like the self comparison and how it's like harmful to you because I'll there and I'll be like, Well, why does it like,

03;21;55;08 - 03;22;14;22
Katie
why don't I look like her? Or like, why doesn't my body look like her? Like I exercise, but I can't look like her or something like that. And so I guess just like that negative stigma around social media is really detrimental, but also finding ways that like you have to remind yourself, like you're so unique and different in your own way.

03;22;14;22 - 03;22;41;07
Katie
And that's like what actually makes you, you know, beautiful. So I think it's important to connect self-care with positive self-talk, as we discussed earlier. And I think doing positive self-talk will just make the journey of practicing self-care much, much more enjoyable and much, much more productive.

03;22;41;07 - 03;22;42;04
Speaker 7
Okay, Well.

03;22;42;04 - 03;23;08;06
Dan
I'd like to thank our guest Siri for reminding us that stress is something we're going to encounter, but there are lots of ways to work through it, and I really appreciated the insights into how COVID impacted our abilities to deal with stress. As Tyler brought that topic up and that free time was not something I had thought about before, but very interesting and reminder to all of us to keep journaling.

03;23;08;06 - 03;23;53;24
Dan
Or if journaling is not your thing, take a lot of pictures. That seems like a great strategy to to remember where we're going. And finally stay inclusive. As you think about your self-care, what is self-care? It can be anything. It doesn't have to be something that shuts people out. So thank you very much to our guest today. Tune in for our next episode and we'll see you next time.

03;23;53;24 - 03;24;21;08
Speaker 7
So I live in the Berkshires and we have a great program here called Shakespeare In the Courts, where if you're a juvenile delinquent in this county, you have a 50% chance that a judge will condemn you to become a Shakespearean actor. That civilization, the Shakespeare program is enormously helpful because it helps people to feel their bodies and to feel what it feels like to be a king.

03;24;22;08 - 03;24;31;26
Speaker 7
It's it feels like to be a warrior. You get to really have a deep experience of yourself in different possibilities.

03;24;31;26 - 03;25;02;03
Speaker 6
So, number one, resilient people get that shit happens. They know that suffering is part of life. This doesn't mean they actually welcome it in. They're not actually delusional, just that when the tough times come, they seem to know that suffering is part of every human existence. And knowing this stops you from feeling discriminated against when the tough times come.

03;25;03;13 - 03;25;33;18
Speaker 6
So, number one, resilient people get that shit happens. They know that suffering is part of life. This doesn't mean they actually welcome it in. They're not actually delusional, just that when the tough times come, they seem to know that suffering is part of every human existence and knowing this stops you from feeling discriminated against when the tough times come.

03;25;34;28 - 03;26;05;05
Speaker 6
So, number one, resilient people get that shit happens. They know that suffering is part of life. This doesn't mean they actually welcome it in. They're not actually delusional, just that when the tough times come, they seem to know that suffering is part of every human existence. And knowing this stops you from feeling discriminated against when the tough times come.

03;26;05;17 - 03;26;34;25
Speaker 7
And then we study yoga. Maybe if you do yoga, you can open up your relationship to your body. You learn how to breathe calmly. You learn to pay attention to yourself. You get to see how different movements and different postures affect you. And so you form a deep relationships, your internal sensory system. Yoga at the end was a more effective treatment for PTSD than any of the drugs we had studied.