Welcome to Joy Lab!: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Joy Lab podcast, where we help you uncover and foster your most joyful self. Your hosts, Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr. Aimee Prasek, bring you the ideal mix of soulful and scientifically sound tools to spark your joy, even when it feels dark. When you're ready to experiment with more joy, combine this podcast with the full Joy Lab program over at JoyLab.coach
Henry: Hello, I am Henry Emmons and welcome back to Joy Lab.
Aimee Prasek: I am Aimee Prasek. So we are in our Element of Gratitude and we're talking about a really powerful gratitude practice that I'm calling, we're calling Grateful Self-Talk. God, we need a better name for it. Hmm. I don't know.
Henry: Yeah, let's think about that.
Aimee Prasek: Called, "put a better title here", so we'll see. Or somebody else send us some ideas.
Aimee Prasek: Once you do the practice, let us know what you wanna call it and we'll change the name. [00:01:00] Um, so, let's get into it. I think many folks would agree that using more positive, more kind self-talk is helpful. And if you're not so sure on that, that's okay. I will link to some of our past episodes that get into the science of that. How more self-talk or more positive self-talk is generally good for us in every way. From mental health to relationships, to productivity. So, the first thing to just say here is that speaking lovingly, or at least kindly or respectfully to yourself absolutely matters.
Henry: I don't think it's a surprise to anyone that we are having a more or less constant dialogue in our minds. Now, I, I do think for much of the time it's probably neutral or pretty neutral. You know, it's, [00:02:00] it's almost as if we're doing a play-by-play commentary of our lives because it's so interesting, right?
Henry: But as I'm sure we have all noticed that commentary can get a little dark at times with a tone that is typically self-critical.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: So I wanna talk about a relatively new branch of psychology. It's been around a while now, but still a lot of people may not have heard about it. It's called Internal Family Systems or IFS, because I think they have a refreshing take on this idea of self-talk.
Henry: So what, what this says is that each of us has several parts inside of us, and every one of these parts mostly has our own best interest at heart. [00:03:00] So even those voices that sound harsh or like a critical parent, maybe, they are simply trying to protect us. They're trying to help us. Maybe they're trying to keep us safe from, you know, someone else's criticism, almost like they're inoculating us or something, or trying to prevent us from getting shamed or, or something like that.
Henry: So the approach to healing then is not to try to shut down these negative voices or even replace them with a positive voice. The the idea here is to become more aware of them, to welcome them. Maybe even be grateful for them because they are trying to protect us. Okay? But that still is only kind of part of the story here. So we can replace those negative critical [00:04:00] parts with something that's more positive, which is also more true. It's closer to the truth to be more positive about ourselves.
Henry: And when we give these more loving, supportive, affirming messages to ourselves— again, I'm leaning on the internal family systems theory here, but I believe this to be true myself— when we give these more affirming messages, we are speaking from the truer part of ourself. I just call it true self, and that is our core self.
Henry: It's our essence. And it's not so much a part of us like all these other little voices. It's more of our authentic, it's the real deal of who we are. The essence of who we are. So the wisest thing we can do here is to put this true self [00:05:00] in charge. And authorize it to speak with this more positive loving tone, and that tone might as well include gratitude, which we're talking about right now.
Aimee Prasek: I love that. I love that you brought internal family systems theory into this, 'cause it does feel like you got, you got a whole lot of people in your head.
Henry: You got a whole lot of people in your head. It's like you invited a party and you didn't invite the best characters all of the time.
Aimee Prasek: Sometimes and they're all there and they're not leaving. There's no checkout time. Everybody's in there. I, and I think it applies to our topic so well today as we apply gratitude to our self-talk. But before we dive in, you might be thinking that gratitude for ourself is like not really gratitude as we talked about last episode. Gratitude has that kind of external aspect, the relational aspect or recognizing goodness that we've received. You know, where it comes from. [00:06:00] So I get that this might seem kind of weird or impossible to apply it to our self-talk, but we can. And thanks to that family of voices, in our heads, right? So there's a strategy, for self-talk called distanced self-talk or illeism.
Henry: Illeism? You gotta, you gotta spell that or...
Aimee Prasek: l-I-I-L-L-I? No, I-L-L-E-I-S-M. You
Henry: I have never, ever heard this term.
Aimee Prasek: Illeism, yeah, it's gotta be I-L-L-E-I-S-M. Um, okay. The, I know the, the name is complex. The practice is actually pretty simple. You engage with yourself. You have a conversation with yourself in the second or third person rather than the first person. So,
Henry: Ooh.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah, instead of using I or me statements, you're gonna use you or she or her, he, him or they. Or your name. You can use your name to refer to yourself. Okay? So [00:07:00] that's really the big shift. At first glance, you might think that sounds really stupid, especially if you're somebody like me when you hear somebody speaking in third person. You're like, "Oh My God,"
Henry: The, the royal we.
Aimee Prasek: To bring up the narcissism conversation we had a couple episodes ago, um that is not this.
Aimee Prasek: Okay? So that's not what we're going for. This practice is really done in your mind or on paper. Like do it on paper too. The point is that you're talking to yourself. You're not on stage. You're just having a conversation with yourself in a different voice, in an intentional, in a conscious voice. And the power of, of this is that it creates psychological distance. So it helps us to kind of step back and get a a bit more abstract look at what's happening, see the bigger picture, get outta the mess that we might be creating with our own stories, [00:08:00] biases, fears, all these voices that are maybe too loud to sort out and we're just sort of lost in that mess so we can step back in such a way where we get a bit more objective, dare I say, a bit more rational even. So, yeah. The other piece of this is to apply gratitude. So we can step back in this practice, speaking in that, second or third person get a bigger picture and have that certain kind of conversation with ourselves. And we can focus it on these opportunities for gratitude. And just by stepping into that second or third person voice, we can bypass some of the obstacles that sometimes stand in our way for gratitude. By practicing this kind of psychological distancing we can see more, we can see what might be true, what we might be missing, and we can call it out.
Henry: Aimee, I can't believe you brought this up and that I, I have [00:09:00] been practicing this for years. Mostly in write, in writing. Yeah. I had no idea I was practicing illeism.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: Glad that... I'm gonna look it up now.
Aimee Prasek: It's gotta be somewhat ingrained in us. I mean, we hear people speaking in third person as like a power move, right? So, there like, there's like this understanding that this is helpful in some way. I think we all know this, but you know, we resist it when we see people do it, but yeah.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Aimee Prasek: Like I think we, you just feel it. You'll feel it. Do it. You'll feel it.
Henry: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I do it in writing that, that just works, works for me. But I think it works because of what I was saying earlier about true self. I see this part of me that's speaking in the second or third person as I, I, here's how I envision it. It's kinda like a wiser, older version of myself, or it's like a mentor or a guide.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: Um, I might, sometimes I even, I imagine this, this part of me [00:10:00] sitting beside a mountain lake, you know, cross legged with a, you know, just a robe on or some sort of, you know, image of the, the wise sage,
Aimee Prasek: monastic and wise, and
Henry: monastic. I told you I almost became a monk. And so yeah, we have that in common too.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah. Yeah.
Henry: So it's, it's as if it's speaking words of wisdom and comfort to the younger, sometimes lost, occasionally befuddled parts of myself. 'Cause they are there too. And it's also a little bit like a, a loving parent. You know, just
Aimee Prasek: Hmm.
Henry: speaking to a frightened child, you kind of, you get the idea, you know, it's just nothing but goodness coming from that part of myself.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah, I love that. Yeah, you've got this very clear character in your mind, Henry. I think that's brilliant and that's what you can do. I wanna give an actually an example of how you can do this. And I'll tell [00:11:00] you, my character is more like a Studs Terkel character, if anybody
Henry: Oh, I love Studs Terkel.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah. So, okay, here's my, here's how I do the practice.
Aimee Prasek: And here are probably like, who is Studs Terkel? Or people
Henry: Oh yeah. You might need to explain this.
Aimee Prasek (2): Oh just a brilliant journalist who was like a combination of, I don't know, probably and Walter Cronkite and Mother Teresa and like Betty White. I like... just the best four people that you know, like stick 'em together, I think is who, who I envision Studs Terkel was, He wrote the stories of regular people and how regular people,
Henry: Yeah.
Aimee Prasek: quote "regular people", are extraordinary.
Henry: Yeah, he's, yep, he saw them.
Aimee Prasek: Yes. So, studs sees me in this, this practice that
Henry: Love it.
Aimee Prasek: Yep. So what I do for my practice, I, I also like to write, and so my character is a bit of this Studs [00:12:00] Terkel, so like this loving journalist who wants to write a story about like me doing good things in the world.
Aimee Prasek: So, um, I'll put my focus on myself. I'll start writing how my efforts are creating good things in the world in second or third voice, right? So Aimee is, you know, taking her dog out for a walk every day and in the winter puts boots on their feet. Like what a like, huge obstacle she does every time she does it. Like fighting with each paw and takes the effort like, you know, you can make
Henry: Wait, you do that for more than one dog then?
Aimee Prasek: There's eight feet that I have to put
Henry: Oh my gosh, Aimee,
Aimee Prasek: put boots on
Henry: you deserve the credit for that.
Aimee Prasek: It should be a novel. So it can be little stuff, guys. You don't need to pick something big. I think that is a big thing. And so, so you can have that character. I'm, I'm writing as that character writing about that thing that is good that I'm offering the world. And then as a journalist, I also wanna [00:13:00] get the bigger picture. So I'll put my lens, sort of, you know, pull it back and look at the, the folks and other creatures who have played a role in whatever good thing I'm writing that little story about. So it might be the neighbor who also walks their dog and motivates Aimee to get out there in the rain or snow and also care for her creatures.
Aimee Prasek: Or
Aimee Prasek: the sun that shines on those walks.
Aimee Prasek: Like anything that's contributing to that goodness, have fun with it. Tell a story, about the ordinary that is extraordinary. Um, I think is really, it's, it seems kind of silly. I swear to you practice it. It is very helpful and I think the power of this practice really comes in that it, of course, it encourages us to engage in loving self-talk and that illeism, second or third person, but it also helps us to recognize our social connections. [00:14:00] And this can be little stuff. Again, maybe you're grateful that you made it out of the house today without too much anxiety and the trees in your backyard or the barista at the coffee shop greeted you and helped ease your anxiety too. That really matters when it comes to gratitude as well. That's that relational aspect, and it absolutely is generative and creates kind of an upward spiral of more gratitude in your life. And also, of course, the point is that we're training our, our brain as well to notice more good things. Your goodness and then the connections that feed that too.
Henry: I love this, Aimee. I, I think it also, it, it, it does something else that I think is really important here. And that is that it's a way of strengthening our self-compassion muscles
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: Because true self, if we're speaking from this point of view, [00:15:00] is nothing if not compassionate.
Aimee Prasek: Hmm.
Henry: I just think it's really beautiful, this voice, because there is never anything
Henry: coming out of it like, "What's wrong with you?" "Can't you just grow up?" "Are you ever gonna get past this stuff?" You know, the, the usual, things that pop into our heads. The voice of true self is always, always unconditionally loving and supportive. And I think that may be because we can set it up that way.
Henry: You know, would we do this, if you ever notice even a hint of criticism or a should or any implication of weakness coming through, then you know you're not speaking from true self. You, you, and you can just notice it back up a bit, recalibrate and give it another go. And the beauty of it is, I think you were, you were alluding to this too, Aimee, is that once you get the hang of this, [00:16:00] it is incredibly easy to do.
Henry: It feels totally natural and it starts to change the way that you look at yourself, not just when you're practicing it, but all the time. You know, just as you're going about your day-to-day life.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah, it changes the tone of conversation. I'm picturing a, a family around the dinner table in our heads and how it can really, you can really change the tone of conversation and keep that conversation moving in a way that is a bit more nourishing. And not by shutting people up by, but by changing the conversation, adding in a new dimension. I think gratitude highlights that as well. We talked about this generative aspect. Like when we send it out, we get it back. When we get it back, we're more likely to send it out. And it's it, it just feeds us and it feeds those around us. It's [00:17:00] just this wonderful feedback loop that we can self-generate, we can tune more into. So let's be generous with our gratitude and apply it to ourselves. And I wanna end us with a little bit of wisdom from Melody Beattie, some motivation here, I think. "Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough and more. Turns denial into acceptance, chaos, to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend."
Aimee Prasek: Thank you for listening to the Joy Lab podcast. If you enjoy today's show, visit JoyLab.coach to learn more about the full Joy Lab program. Be sure to rate and review us wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
Thanks for joining us!: Please remember that this content is for informational and educational purposes [00:18:00] only. It is not intended to provide medical advice and is not a replacement for advice and treatment from a medical professional. Please consult your doctor or other qualified health professional before beginning any diet change, supplement, or lifestyle program.
Thanks for joining us!: Please see our terms for more information.
