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260: Wise Effort with Dr. Diana Hill

Welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch! This podcast is about the practice of Couples Therapy. Each week, Shane Birkel interviews an expert in the field of Couples Therapy to explore all about the world of relationships and how to be an amazing therapist.

In this episode, Shane talks with Dr. Diana Hill about Wise Effort. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots, and watch it on YouTube – follow and leave a 5-star review.

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The Couples Therapist Couch 260: Wise Effort with Dr. Diana Hill

This episode is brought to you by Alma. Visit https://helloalma.com/dg/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=privatepractice to learn more

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In this episode, Shane talks with Dr. Diana Hill about Wise Effort. Diana is a clinical psychologist, international trainer, and sought-out speaker on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and compassion. Hear how to practice Wise Effort, how to help your clients create a stronger connection with their partner, the most common types of regret, why people lose connection with the things they want, and why you should find a tree. Here's a small sample of what you'll hear in this episode:

    • What is Wise Effort?
    • Why do people lose connection with their genius energy? 
    • What psychological factors impact our decisions?
    • Why do we get defensive?
    • What is The Wise Effort Method?

To learn more about Dr. Diana Hill, her book Wise Effort: How to Focus Your Genius Energy on What Matters Most, and her programs, visit:

WiseEffort.com

Show Notes

 

 

 

What is The Couples Therapist Couch?

This podcast is about the practice of Couples Therapy. Many of the episodes are interviews with leaders in the field of Relationships. The show is meant to help Therapists and Coaches learn how to help people to deepen their connection, but in the process it explores what is most needed for each of us to love, heal, and grow. Each week, Shane Birkel interviews an expert in the field of Couples Therapy to explore all about the world of relationships and how to be an amazing therapist.

Learn more about the Couples Therapy 101 course: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/

Find out more about the Couples Therapist Inner Circle: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/inner-circle-new

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Dr. Diana Hill 0:00
There's always a way that we could do it differently, where we could show up as more of our authentic selves show up as our wisest self and with our values. And when we do that, our relationships are more connected, and it allows the other person to show up.

Intro VO 0:19
Welcome to The Couples Therapist Couch, the podcast for couples therapists, marriage counselors and relationship coaches to explore the practice of couples therapy. And now your host, Shane Birkel, Hey

Shane Birkel 0:36
everybody, welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch. This is Shane Birkel, and this is the podcast that's all about the practice of couples therapy. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, and the goal of this podcast is to help you learn how to more effectively work with couples and possibly even learn how to have a better relationship. The episode this week is brought to you by Alma. They make it easy to get credentialed with major insurance plans at enhanced reimbursement rates. Alma handles all of the paperwork and guarantees payment within two weeks. Visit, HelloAlma.com/ATPP or click on the link in the show notes to learn more. Hey everyone, welcome back to the couple's therapist couch. This is Shane Birkel, and today, I'm speaking with Dr. Diana Hill, ACT psychologist, leadership coach and author of Wise Effort, how to focus your genius energy on what matters most. Hi Diana. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. It's good to be here. Yeah, absolutely. I'm looking forward to talking to you. Why don't you start by telling everyone a little bit more about yourself.

Dr. Diana Hill 1:40
Sure. I'm a clinical psychologist. I specialize in Act or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. I've been practicing act for over 15 years, and I trained a lot of therapists, so I work closely with Steve Hayes, who's the founder of Act, to do things like boot camps and train therapists. But I also have a private practice, and I work a lot with executives and organizations. The primary focus of my work is to help people identify where they're stuck. What are the inner psychological factors, things inside of us, like being stuck in stories and being stuck in our emotions and avoidance, and how to become more psychologically flexible and use wiser efforts to really live the lives that we want to lead and have the relationships that we want to have and make the difference we want to make in the world.

Shane Birkel 2:33
Yeah, that's great. And you know when you when you say wise effort? Can you, can you give a little background about what that means. And you know what inspired you to write the book about

Dr. Diana Hill 2:44
that? Sure? Well, I think anyone just those words, you can think about this past week, moments when you were not engaging in wise effort. I can certainly think about many. Actually just had one this morning. My husband came up to me. I was we have an elliptical outside, and I'm a stack your stack, your lifer. So I'll hop on the elliptical and I'll do emails in the morning, just like, you know, pop off some emails. And my husband came up to me, I'm on the elliptical, I'm getting these emails done, and he's trying to talk to me, and I'm like, I can't right now, right? And, and this is our 10 minutes in the morning before he goes to work, and I go off on my day. And we had this, you know, sort of a bid for connection that I dropped. So that's, that's unwise effort. I felt bad afterwards. I was like, why am I prioritizing stupid emails over connecting with my husband before he leaves for work? What if he didn't come back later today, you know? Or how am I going to feel later today? What is the most important thing here? So we all can think about those little moments of unwise effort. And then we can also think about wise effort, the moments where we actually choose to align ourselves with our values show up. Sometimes that's doing what's hard to do. Sometimes that's saying what's hard to say. Sometimes that's being with what's hard to be with, because we care about something. So wise effort can be micro, those, those bids for connection that you drop, but they can also be macro, making decisions around your life and your life, course, choosing to listen to your whole body, yeses and your whole body knows. And I work a lot with folks on both. You know? I think we all do as therapists. We do the little, micro, wise effort adjustments, but sometimes we need macro ones. We need big life changes that are scary and require us to decide, I'm going to put my energy here because there's something here that is important for me that I need to do, or that I need to let go of, or that I need to put more energy into because I've been neglecting or less energy into because I am so burned out by it

Shane Birkel 4:43
will be an example of one of the big things that someone would change.

Dr. Diana Hill 4:48
Oh, I mean, I think we can all think of big things that people change. You know, the willingness to leave a job, to leave a marriage, to move to maybe change a relationship pattern with somebody. I, you know, I think about some of my clients that have been entrenched in maybe estrangement with a family member for years and years and years. And what we know about estrangement is that people are estranged, yet they think about that person every single day, and it weighs on them, and they ruminate about it. And even though you've created distance, they're not distant, they're still in your mind and your body. So a wiser, big effort move would be actually doing something about that. Maybe that would be reconnecting with that person, but maybe that would be doing the inner work of forgiveness of yourself, forgiveness of them, of letting go. Those are big moves and the process that I teach in the method has these three big steps to it that can be used in those moments when we're on the elliptical and our partner wants to connect, or those moments when we really don't want to let our resentment go. And the three steps are first getting curious, getting curious about what's keeping you stuck, getting curious about your stories that you're in, the avoidance patterns that you're in, the things you're holding too tight to, but also getting curious about your gifts, what I call your genius energy, and your values, what in deep in your heart, you care about. The second step has to do with opening up. And a lot of my work as an act therapist is in this realm of psychological flexibility, which is a lot of opening up. How can we open up our minds a little bit more? How can we start to question our own minds? How can we step back from our thoughts and act? We call that cognitive diffusion, you know, because in that moment with my husband on the elliptical, or in the moment where you don't want to forgive someone, you are in your own like self, thoughts. I'm right. You know, what I'm doing is so important. We need to open up and ask ourselves, are you sure? Are you sure? Just that simple question. And then we open up to feelings. We open up our sense of self. And then the third step of the wise effort method, as I walk people through it in this book, is focusing your energy on what matters most. Energy is sort of your life force, and where are you placing it? And is Is this right now? Here and now? People that are listening to this, they can ask themselves, what I'm doing right now, is this where I want to be putting my energy? And is this what matters most to me? And you begin to be like a, you know, like a camera aperture or lens, where you can sometimes focusing means dialing it in and getting really focused on something that you've neglected. Sometimes it's expanding it out and seeing a bigger picture of possibility for yourself.

Shane Birkel 7:33
This is, yeah, this is great. And I really appreciate the personal example that you used. And I'm thinking about this in two different ways. And maybe you can help me, you know, as tell me how to think about this. But you know, when I'm thinking about you on the elliptical, you know, one of the, one of the wise effort ways of looking at it is sort of taking a step back and evaluating, you know, how do I want to spend my morning, for example, right? Like, like, am I going to make a commitment to doing the elliptical for 10 minutes and then spending 10 minutes with my partner and sort of like, being intentional about putting the wise effort into how I'm setting up my morning so that I'm, you know, prioritizing spending that 10 minutes with my partner if that's what I really want to do as well, or the other way I'm thinking about this is more of a my a mindset shift, right? Because you could set up your day like that, but there's still going to be all these kinds of moments and opportunities that are unpredictable, right? Where you you thought, well, this is my elliptical time, but now my husband's coming into the situation and now, like, how can I, you know, have a mindset shift about how I'm looking at these opportunities?

Dr. Diana Hill 8:50
Yeah, that's exactly it. There's so much energy and effort put into productivity, hacking our lives, atomic, habiting our days, and that's all great. I mean, I do it. I have sort of a morning routine. I have a structure to my week. I time block. This is a time block for podcasts. I'm going to do podcast after podcast after podcast, right? And I'm not going to be checking my emails in between, right? So I, I, we all do that. We all need that. But what happens when you've time blocked something and something else comes in that's important to you? How can you be flexible with that? Because just as inflexible and just as unwise would be to connect with my partner in that moment on the elliptical, but then in my head, berate myself about not getting my emails done. So either way I lose it's a lose lose situation. And many of us are stuck in these lose lose situations where it's like, either I do this or I do that, and I'm always feeling like I'm not doing enough. And one of the lines that I put in the wise effort method was from my clients, super high performing attorney, mother of three. Just like a badass in all areas of her life, and extremely burned out and extremely depressed. And she she said to me, you know, I am simultaneously over committed and under involved. I'm skimming the surface of my life. I'm moving through things, and as we see this sort of push towards more productivity, more content, more is more the it's eating us alive, and we don't know what to do with it. So wise effort is individual to every single moment, and it requires a deep inquiry, like deep inquiry of, how do I want to show up here? You know? How do I want to show up here with people that I love? How do I want to show up here with myself? And that's the that's the values work. We spend a lot of time and values on act, and I spend a lot of time of values in the book, the whole chapter on it, because our values aren't like the mission statement that you put on the bulletin board at, you know the grocery store, like the mission of our store is, or on your website, there the ways in which you are showing up moment to moment that demonstrate the type of person that you want to be and that is carried with you in every moment. So in the moment on the elliptical, if I value presence and I value compassion and I value connection, I can do that whether I'm continuing my emails or I can do that whether I get off the elliptical and spend 10 minutes with my husband. It doesn't actually really matter.

Shane Birkel 11:30
So, yeah, part of it is like the meaning that you're creating about it in your mind is that what you mean

Dr. Diana Hill 11:36
part of it is the the heart that's driving it. So I can be I can my husband could come up to me, and I'm valuing presence, connection and wisdom. I said, kindness, compassion, kindness. He could come up to me and I could I could look, I could look, take a breath, look him in the eyes, and say, I love you. I want to connect with you. I'm doing emails right now. I carved off this, this period of time just checking like, can you just, can we just do like, a look in the eye, check in for for 20 seconds to know that I'm connecting and I'm gonna go back to my emails. You can go to work, you know, or it could be getting off and telling myself, I'm choosing to connect with him right now because I'm prioritizing this relationship over these emails. There's a psychological there's a you know, we have all these cognitive biases, and one of the biases is something called the urgency effect, which is, we have a tendency to prioritize what seems to be urgent over what's important, and the nature of our current world is everything is urgent, and everything is telling you that it's urgent. I mean, the all caps emails that you feel like you have to read. I have looking at my computer here. I have 2033 unread emails. Two uh, 2033 it's pretty impressive. Yeah, definitely, yeah. And it's because I have, I choose wise effort in part. I mean, I it actually be wiser for me to go to unsubscribe to half of the crap that's in there, but, but it is wise effort for me to just some things I don't reply to, some things I don't respond to. If you get an email back from me, you're important in this world, in my life, in my where I want to put my energy, and sometimes it's important for me to respond out of courtesy and kindness and out of my values so the but we feel like we're being pushed around by external sources that are choosing and stealing and misdirecting and depleting our energy?

Shane Birkel 13:45
Yeah, I think email is such a good example of that, right? You know, I might have a vision of how I want to spend my day, that day and I start checking my emails, and all of a sudden, other people's agendas start coming in and taking over and sort of, you know, it's easy to get swept up in that and then lose sight of what I really want, you know, what, what's connected to my values, of what I the goals I want to achieve, or, you know, making my family a priority, whatever things they are, you know, yeah,

Dr. Diana Hill 14:16
the other day, I was in my kitchen, and I was sitting at the as at the table, I was Working on a slide deck and for a presentation that I'm doing this weekend. And then my son was in the living room, and he's a 12 year old, and he was working on something, and my mom came over. So my 75 year old mom came over, and she had gone to the farmer's market, and she had this, this big bag full of tomatoes, and she had, she had gotten like these, like beautiful orange tomatoes and these big brandy wine, and they were so good. She walks in so excited to share her tomatoes. And neither my son nor I close our computer. And there was this moment that I like, I I got. Got it. I got it. Afterwards, I was like, Oh my gosh. What is the most important thing here this slide deck, or my 75 year old mother with tomatoes, who went to the farmer's market and thought of us and brought us tomatoes, and my son connecting with his grand how much? How much time does my son have with his grandmother? How much time do I have left with my mom? And we can look at those moments of yes, that's an unwise effort, but we can also look at that little twinge of regret. Because I believe that regrets have a lot of information in them about how we could redirect our energy in the values chapter of the wise effort book, I actually have people look at their regrets as guideposts to what their values are. I interviewed Daniel Pink a number of years ago, and he wrote the book The Power of regret. After he he did this huge study with over 4000 participants asking them, What do you regret? And then he sorted them all out, all of the big qualitative analysis, and identify these four main areas that people have regrets in. They have regrets. They have moral regrets, things that they've done in their lives that have harmed people that they haven't repaired, or maybe even harmed themselves. They have foundation regrets, those things that accumulate over time that you regret, like, Oh, if I had only started wearing sunscreen in my 20s, or, Oh, if I only had started putting money aside for my quarterly taxes, like a little earlier. You know? So foundation regrets, we have connection regrets, that one with my mom was a connection regret, right? And then we have boldness regrets, which are those times when we weren't bold. We didn't go up to someone, we didn't ask for what we wanted, we weren't clear in our wants, and we played small. And I mean, working with therapists, I work a lot with boldness, because a lot of therapists kind of hold back. They're like, I'm not going to say that. Like this. You're going to have a boldness regret if you don't say it, you know? So those, all of those regrets when you have them, when they pop up, when you open up, and you feel a little bit of that feeling in your body can be arrows directing to you to where you might want to put more of your energy, not in that, like shame, blame way, but in a Yeah, I did something there that had a ping of yuck or um, and it's time for me to course correct. I need to focus my energy in a different way around calling myself out around my mom, who I think is just always going to be there, and she's kind of annoying, and she shows up at like, kind of the like, kind of the worst time always, you know, but, but she's like, the most important thing. What's more important than your mom? As a mom, I should say, what's more important than your mom? Than your mom, right?

Shane Birkel 17:43
Well, and I think I appreciate something you said before, and I just want to say this for because I know there are people who think about this, you know, sort of who don't value themselves enough. Perhaps, you know where, so I hear what you're saying in that situation with your mom, you know, and it's something to you feel it. You try to learn from it, right? Try to learn from that moment of regret. But I appreciate what you said earlier, when you said one option, you know, we were talking about being on the elliptical with your husband coming up. One option would be for you to say, Honey, I really love you. I really want to connect with you, but I'm doing my emails right now, and that people have the right to sort of set boundaries at times. If you are doing something that's really important, just because you know your partner or your mom or whoever comes into your space doesn't mean that you have to cater to whatever they need. It's more about learning for yourself, connecting to those values and making choices that you're going to feel good about in the long run.

Dr. Diana Hill 18:50
Yeah, so this is a couples therapy podcast. Extrapolate that to the bedroom, right? How many times are there bids to connect and to be gendered? About it? It's often, you know, the especially in, like, heterosexual relationships, where, like, one partner is the primary caregiver, and they're, you know, they're just exhausted at the end of the day, and they get a bid for connection. They get a hand on the shoulder. They get, you know, I want to have sex sign, and then the other partner is, like, turn away. Like, do everything I can to, like, not have this happen, instead of actually connecting and saying something, like, I'm exhausted right now, I would love to, can we just spoon, or can we just cuddle? Or what would feel really good is for you to rub my back if you have energy and I don't have energy. Or what would feel really good is to get a really good night's sleep, and then, you know, maybe we can carve out some time tomorrow how different that would feel for the partner than the shutdown, right? And so what happens is, and that requires a little opening up, right? It requires a little bit of one remembering that you want to connect with this person. Person that you love, this person, verbalizing it, sharing it, saying what you want, and then, and actually that it's okay to say, I don't, I don't want to right now, right? Because then the other side of it is then, or people don't say anything. They just, they just, they're like, Okay, fine. And your poor partner is having sex with like a Limp Bizkit, and that's no fun, right? So somewhere in there, sorry, I'm so, oh no, I love your audience speaks this way, Limp bizkits. But somewhere in there is a way that we could do it differently, that we that there's, there's always a way that we could do it differently, where we could show up as more of our authentic selves show up as our wisest self and with our values. And when we do that, our relationships are more connected, and it allows the other person to show up as well.

Shane Birkel 20:52
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if we're able to speak our truth in the relationship, you know, with respect and consideration, no matter how hard it is for the other person to hear. You know, it's important that they know the truth of the our authentic reality, whether it's in that moment or something bigger,

Dr. Diana Hill 21:10
yeah, and you're and you're always kind of holding one eye in, one eye out, right? So one eye into what this experience is for me, but also one eye out that perspective shift of, I wonder what it's like for them. You know, I wonder what it's like for them to receive this, or hear this, or, you know, they're, they're bidding for something, and it's coming from, you know, what's that coming from? From there, from them. So actually, in the, in the wise effort book, I have a section on wise effort. Have a chapter on wise effort and relationships, and I have a section on wise effort and the body. And in the wise effort in the body section, I have this whole piece on wise effort in the bedroom. Like, what, what is pleasurable to you? Have you lost contact with that? What is your i this whole thing? Or what is your genius? Like? What is your genius? What are the things that you're good at? What are your interests? What are your what is your emotional intelligence? What are your strengths and have those things been set aside? Right? Because we're playing small, and this can totally like, yes, it can transform your relationship, but it can also transform things like your sex life, or it can transform things like your creativity. You know, your writing, your experience with writing, because what often happens is that we end up avoiding discomfort. We're unwilling to step into the discomfort, and we lose track with of our values, and we also lose track of this genius energy, the thing that makes us us. How do we guide that? How do we direct that? How do we use wiser efforts with it?

Shane Birkel 22:36
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Dr. Diana Hill 23:39
the three things that I talk about in the book, and I have people spend a good amount of time on are one you're stuck in a story, you know? So if you and I here, Shane and Diana, have we all, everyone does, we have a running commentary in our heads. And most people would be like, Oh my gosh, I'd be mortified if anyone knew what my running commentary was in my head right now? Yeah. Is that

Shane Birkel 24:03
true? Right? Yeah, totally okay for the most. So we all

Dr. Diana Hill 24:07
have running commentaries in our heads. I'm not going to make you expose yours, but you have one. Shane has one people that are listening. They have a running commentary. Sometimes that running commentary is about what like they're they have it about what we're talking about, or they have it about something totally related, unrelated to what we're talking about. But we all have a running commentary. That's the nature of the human mind. So there's nothing wrong with you if you have a mind that's talking all the time, that's just what the mind does. It's designed to do that the mind produces language. When we are stuck in a story, we are believing our mind to be true, we are distracted by our mind, and we're letting that story run the show. So for example, I've had, I'll disclose mine, because I experienced with throwing myself under the bus. So I my stories during during this podcast interview are things like, I'm talking too much. Gosh, I just said Limp Bizkit in the bedroom. Is that weird that I said that? It just came out. Sometimes I'm just impulse. I'm being too impulsive. I'm not showing my professional side enough, right? So those are three stories. I'm talking too much. I'm too impulsive. I'm not showing my professional side. Now, sometimes those stories are helpful to look at. I may need to stop talking. Sometimes those stories are so loud that I'm putting my hands up in front of my face. It's as if you're walking through life with these stories in front of your face. And then I'm not actually connecting, because I'm so worried about what I saying Limp Biscuit that I've lost shame. So when you are stuck in the story, it will misdirect your genius. It will block your energy from flowing. That doesn't mean you don't look at your listen to your mind from time time, go look at it. Be like, is that true? Is that helpful? Is that kind? Is it timely for me to be thinking about that? Sometimes it is. I'll stop talking.

Shane Birkel 25:58
Yeah, no, that's great. No, I really appreciate you going through that, because it really resonates, you know, and, yeah, something like, am I talking too much at work, or something like that, if somebody had that story in their mind, you know, it's not necessarily like, I like what you said, like, it's something that you can evaluate right, or be curious about right. You can sort of say, like, is this true, or is this something that I'm just letting sort of run wild in my mind, and it's using it's it's holding me back from actually opening up more at work and being more productive or something like that, right? And so each one of these things are things that could potentially hold us back. But, you know, I guess one of the first steps is just becoming conscious of our own stories and how they're serving us or not serving us in our life. Is that right?

Dr. Diana Hill 26:48
Absolutely, absolutely. And this is why, if you're a therapist, you start to help your clients do that. And the way you do that is you say things like, so your mind is saying so you have a story that so there's a narrative going on. What's happening in your mind when you're when you're, you know, go back to the lying in bed with your partner. If I were to climb inside your mind, what would I hear? So that you can start to differentiate between your mind is not you just because you have a thought, does it make it true? Some of those thoughts are helpful. Some are not helpful, and our whole practice is opening up to our minds and being more flexible. So I said three things that that misdirect our genius energy. So one is stories being stuck in them. It's not that we're going to ever turn off our minds. I'm a meditation instructor. I've been meditating for over 20 years, and anyone that thinks that they can silent their mind has not meditated for 20 years, right? There are spaces between our thoughts. We can get better at being in the present moment, but your mind is like a pasta machine making pasta. It's just going to keep doing it, you know? So it's going to keep thinking. So then the second thing that can block our genius energy, whether it's at work or in relationships or in creativity. You want to write a book, you want to make a podcast, you want to write a sub stack, you want to post something on social media, whatever it is you want to heal a relationship is avoiding discomfort, running away from what's uncomfortable, and we know that we evolved to do things like pull our hands off of hot stoves, right? Run away from Tigers if a tiger is coming after us. But unfortunately, when it comes to the inner world, running away from discomfort is probably one of the most dangerous things you can do. We know this is therapists, right? You running away from trauma in your body? What are you running away from parts of yourself? You're running away from emotions. And the reason why it is so dangerous is for two reasons. One, often the ways in which we run away from discomfort create more problems. So you have a lot of back pain, so you lie in bed, which produces more back pain. We know this, like the basics, like what doctor tells you, if you have back pain, go for a walk, right? You are feeling really ashamed or embarrassed about something, so it's something that happened with a friend, so you just don't call them back. Really anxious about going to an event, so you don't go right, so you're really stressed, so you drink right. All the things that we do to try and get rid of our discomfort, so running away from discomfort, usually the things that we do to run away makes it worse. But the second part of running away from discomfort, why it's so problematic, is that oftentimes, if you think about a trajectory of where that discomfort is, is that the discomfort is inherently linked to something we care about. You want to start a substack. Work, but you keep procrastinating, because every time you sit down to write, you hate everything that you write. You want to level up at work, but you keep like, you know, playing small, because Leveling up is scary, but the thing that you care about, the thing that you value, repairing a relationship. Maybe it's like you want to start an exercise program, right? But you run away from that because you feel too out of shape, or it's, you know, there is something in there that you care about. And when you when you run away from the discomfort of, I don't like the feeling of going to the gym and starting again, you run away from the very thing that you value, and your life will get smaller over

Shane Birkel 30:42
time. Would you say that you know, when you're talking about starting a subset is that like a newsletter? I don't even know

Dr. Diana Hill 30:51
substack newsletter. All my people always want to start substack. So my clients are doing this right now. It's a blog, hearing

Shane Birkel 30:57
that a lot lately, yeah, and or you want to level up at work, for example, would you say there's underlying sort of psychological things that I make up about that, like, what if people think that what I have to say is really stupid, right? Or, what if, what if I write it and everyone thinks like, oh my gosh, he's such a loser. Or, like, it goes to a deeper sort of meaning of who I am, and right? It's like, it's safer to play it small, because then I don't have to take the risk of exactly myself out there.

Dr. Diana Hill 31:28
Yeah? So those are the stories. Yeah, right. And then there's also just the discomfort of, like, the panic I feel in my chest when I walk into a cocktail party. I don't want to feel that. I don't like that. There's a story, but there's also the feeling, the feeling that I have in my belly when I'm telling someone the truth about something I'm angry about, you know, something that hurt me. And yes, there's stories there. But then there's also just like the discomfort, like the physical discomfort of it. I want to hide. I want to run away, unfortunately, to grow, to evolve, it involves discomfort. We must step into spaces that are uncertain in order to expand our lives, right? So that's the second one, is running away from discomfort. And then the third one, that's also these are all interconnected and interrelated, and you'll work on them in the wise effort method. But the third one has to do with holding on too tight. And the ways in which we hold on too tight to things that are changing. We hold on too tight. Oh my gosh. Do you remember, like, when therapy, when we started moving to electronic notes, and like the therapist were like, No, I believe in the paper note, or, like, the calendar, like, I believe in my paper calendar, and like, yes, the paper at the paper notes, I agree with you. I love paper notes. I love paper calendars. But guess what? Folks like, you're gonna have people sending you calendar invites, and if you, if you don't, if you, if you're still on the paper calendar, you're screwed. Like, you need to, you need to, like, Get with the times, right? Or you can totally love your paper notes, but everyone else is moving to digital, and you're you're going to coordinate with physicians, and they're going to want your electronic notes, and they're going to ask you to go back to notes from two years ago to and they're going to expect you to have them. So, okay, we resist change

Shane Birkel 33:17
AI, right? Using AI to help you with your notes, yeah, using AI to help you with your notes, people are super, uh, opposed to that,

Dr. Diana Hill 33:25
right? So it doesn't mean, it doesn't mean you just drop your values and you're like, Okay, I'm going like, I'm all about going with change. It's that you, oh, we go back to that opening of our mind, huh? Okay, am I in a story? Then here's another cognitive bias. We tend to, I forget the name of this biases. I have to, I'd have to look it up. But the bias is, is that the less you know about something, the more of an expert you think you are. That's funny, because the folks that know a lot about something like AI and notes, will will have a very nuanced both and response. They won't have it that's bad. They'll be like, Well, okay, there's benefits here, but there's concerns here, and then we gotta think about this and it's evolving, and they'll just be like, I'm not really sure they'll have, like, this humility to them. Really wise people have humility. They have they hold uncertainty. They can be in a paradox. They can hold both sides. If you are ever in a position where you are certain about something, you are showing that you don't know about it, that's good. So we have to open our minds, yeah,

Shane Birkel 34:41
yeah, yeah, no. I think that is so helpful. You know, when you when you think about like, even, even the interpersonal situations that you've described with with your husband or with your mom or with with whomever, it's sort of like, we often start to get this sort of or. Or it can happen, you know, in certain situations where we start getting this sort of overly confident, right and wrong kind of feeling about what I'm supposed to do in the situation. And it takes us away from that curiosity. It takes us away from the ability to sort of be flexible, as you've talked about, and to sort of explore again, I and maybe it's about connecting back to our values again, like, is this what I really want, or am I just being defensive in this moment? You know,

Dr. Diana Hill 35:29
that's a great question. Yeah, right, right. Is this really what I want, or am I just being defensive? What am I defending? And often it's, it's sort of three things that we have a tendency to defend around right? We defend around our security and safety. We don't feel safe and secure, yeah, in some way, we defend around our autonomy and control. We want to believe that that we are in control of our lives and each other and our we're really not, you know, if covid taught us anything, right? We're just not. And then we defend around wanting approval and belonging, you know? So you're threatening my my connection here in some way. So approval, control and safety are sort of the three. They're sort of three primary evolutionary needs that we have. We need to fit in. We need to feel like we're safe. We need to feel like we have enough resources. Like those are three drives. Paul Gilbert talks a lot about this, and compassion, focus, therapy, the things that drive us, but when we get rigid in those, you know, then all, all we're doing is like, I'm putting on a show to make sure that I look like you prove of me. I'm defending my my stuff, so that I'm in control of it, and then I'm staying really, really, really safe. And all three of those will prevent you from evolving. All three of those prevent you from connecting, and all three of those will will make you Yeah, you'll play small, you'll you'll hold on to your paper calendar, yeah, for dear life.

Shane Birkel 37:09
And as you say that, I'm just thinking like it makes sense, how relationships end up feeling so high stakes and so stressful and overwhelming sometimes, because there's so much about safety, so much about control, so much about acceptance or belonging that come into play, you know, when you're trying to work through these things. And again, to go back to that idea, I think oftentimes we're not even conscious of what's happening. You know, I might just get frustrated with my partner, and not even if I don't take a step back and try to be curious, then I might not even realize what's going on.

Dr. Diana Hill 37:48
Yeah, I love that. Take a step back. One of my meditation teachers taught me the practice of sitting at the back of the heart and actually in meditation, where you actually imagine when you're when you're meditating, you're sitting at the back of your heart, and the front of your heart is the agitated mind, the worries, the feelings, the swirling kind of energy, the whatever's going on in this moment that's all happening at the front of your heart. But could you get behind it? Could you take a step back? Could you be in this wiser view, this wiser perspective that's much more interconnected? And then now I'm doing this like rad new meditation that I'm learning, a Tibetan meditation, where you actually open up the back of your heart and you move into the space around us, right? Because our wise self is so much bigger than what's happening in our head. It's even so much bigger than what we're feeling right go back to Marsha Linehan in DBT. She would often talk about the horse and the rider. You know, like your wise self isn't the horse that's the emotions that are pushing you around. It's also not the rider that's trying to control it all. Your wise self is this, this um, symbiotic relationship between your mind and your heart and your interconnection with other people. So we can step into a wiser self. Whether we're therapists, we need to be in our wisest self. We don't want to be at the front of the heart and taken down by every single emotion that our clients are having or what when we're in a relationship, but we can observe. We can sit at the back of the heart from a more compassionate, grounded, maybe even more expansive, place that will help tremendously in whatever you're doing. And you will start to when you operate from wise, wiser efforts. When you operate from this wise self, there's a whole, I have a whole chapter on how to cultivate the wise self, but when you operate from that place, you will also be giving signals and permission for the other person to operate from their wisest self. And then when that happens, like, if my husband's his wisest self and I'm my wisest self, then we are the best parents on the planet. You know, in that moment. It, or we're like, we're just, we're doing it, right? And if one person rises to the wisest self or expands the wisest self, it helps. It like it helps, you know, we're kind of always in and out. We're always in and out of our small selves and

Shane Birkel 40:12
our wise selves, right, right? And, you know, I talk about this with couples a lot, right? Like, when you get in the heat of the moment, you lose contact with the wise self, right? And people are sort of more in fight or flight. And sometimes it's important, it's important not to judge yourself for that. It happens to everyone. But it's also important to have the hope that you can get back to that wise self that you can do, you know, set up strategies for yourself to be able to continue to come back to it and connect with it.

Dr. Diana Hill 40:47
Yeah. And what helps us get there? Right? So getting to know what helps you get there in the moment, and sometimes what helps us get there are physiological interventions, something as simple as slowing your breath down so that you're breathing more in your your from your lower belly all the way up and all the way down. This is one of the practices from compassion focused therapy. They call it soothing rhythm, breathing. You breathe in a way that your body is sending signals to your brain. You're safe, right? Sometimes we need to do to get into our wisest self. We need to lean on a some assault that is wiser than us. I'll go out to the ocean. I'll go down to this incredible oak tree that's outside my office space, and I'll just sit in the presence of trees, or sit in the presence of ocean, the ocean, or for some people, it's the mountains, and realize there is wisdom all around me, and I am part of that you know, that can help us get into our wisest self. Find a tree. I you know everyone, if you ever think about your childhood, for most kids, even city kids, if you ask them, was there a tree? Tell me about a tree. And pretty much everyone can come up with a tree. Do you have a tree Shane that you think about? Yeah, sure. What's your tree?

Shane Birkel 42:09
Well, when you said that, there was one that came to mind that was at the school that I went to that was, like, right outside, tell me about it. I mean, it was, there's something really calming about, you know, thinking about that, you know, it was, it was really big. It was bigger than any tree that I had at my house. And it just felt like really cool to to see it. And it just felt part of the whole scene, when you think about it, yeah, yeah,

Dr. Diana Hill 42:36
yeah. I had this, this tree there's, like, I think it was like a maple, which is so weird in Santa Barbara, but it had these little, pretty little prickly seed pods that would drop, yeah, and I remember picking up the prickly seed pods and holding in my hand. And the colors turning. Colors don't turn much here in California, but this one, the colors of the of the leaves turned. And I just loved finding the seed pods and finding the leaves. And so, yes, it's bigger than us. It's changing, and it's, it reminds, it like connects us to a wisdom that is so much bigger than this moment of whatever thing you're in, you know. So we could, we could do physiology of our body. We can, we can find the wisdom in nature. Another really great one to help people get connected to their wisdom is the wisdom of their ancestors, their parents, people who came before them that went through, really for most of us, our ancestors went through harder stuff than us. So you know what they what they went through, and their strengths that were passed on to you epigenetically. They're in your the cells of your body. Yes, the trauma is in the cells of your body, but so are the strengths of your ancestors, and you can call upon them, or someone that's passed, you know, speaking to somebody that's died, or a pet or an animal. So there's so many ways that we can access our wise self that aren't just about our small self, little s, and when we do that, then we can get through difficulty from a more regulated nervous systems place, a more compassionate place, a bigger mind, a bigger heart, and we become the ancestors that we, we would, would hope, would leave, you know, this world in a better place. And for me, that's, that's the true work, I think of wise effort is not only for to benefit ourselves. I'm kind of sick of selfie. And we are in a we are in an over selfing culture. We're full of ourselves. And if we can start to see, uh, sort of an interchange, an interdependent and interconnected nature to us, that when I am in my wisest self, and I direct my energy and my wisdom and my genius in a way that aligns with my values, yeah, it benefits me. I feel better. My life is better. I enjoy my life more. It's. It's better all around. But it doesn't end there. It actually means they can offer that to others, and I can have a positive impact on this world. And if everyone did that, then our world would be a better place. So that's what I work with, CEOs around, that's what I work with teachers around, that's what I work with therapists around, because most of us care about that, about having an impact.

Shane Birkel 45:23
Yeah, that's great. You know, the title of your book is called, why that wise effort? You said something before, like the wise effort method. I just thought that sounded really cool. Is that part of what people learn in the book when they Yeah,

Dr. Diana Hill 45:39
it's a book. I take you through it. Yeah, yeah. So the way that I write, the way that I've always approached things, was I kind of don't like reading about things. I want to do them, because I have so many self help books that I'm like, This is great. And then I'm like, am I? Am I ever been doing it? Now feels impossible. So it's a very applied book. There's a tremendous amount of science behind everything that I'm teaching, but I'm not going to drag you into the science in it. So it's very applied. I walk you through these three steps of get curious, open up, focus your energy. The last bit of it is how you want to focus your energy and your relationships and your creativity and your community at work with your body. And so there's a series of questions that you answer throughout the book, at the end of wisdom, building questions at the end of the book, a tremendous amount of exercises. And like my other books, I always kind of envision, because this is what I like as a therapist, is I like to be working on it, on myself, and then I'm inspired to bring some of these little exercises into the therapy room, so that it's sort of like a little bit of continuing education, you know, like, Okay, I got this great exercise from this book, and then I'm book, and then I'm going to do with my next client. I'm always doing that, you know, because it's, it just feels more integrated, you know, and I'm living, I'm the living embodiment of what I'm teaching. So that could, that is a nice part of it is just has a lot of fun exercises and things that you can do your work as well, in your teams, with your kids, with your partner, not just you know, you

Shane Birkel 47:03
nice, great. Well with this episode comes out, so all of you listeners out there, as you're listening to this, the book was just published, so you could definitely go find it. And where can people find out more about you?

Dr. Diana Hill 47:17
You can find out more about me at wise effort.com Okay? And if you are a therapist, I walk therapists through the wise effort method to help level up their therapy. I have a program called the business of therapy, wise effort, the business of therapy, and it's a live six week program that we do when the next round is starting in February. Well, it's eight weeks, but it's, it's if you do want to start that sub stack, yeah, or podcast, or you just want to play bigger in the room, I work with therapist. It's like one of my sweet spots is working with therapists, because I just think you're making a difference in this world, and I want you to be the biggest, wisest version of you possible. So that's a in person program, business of therapy, but that's all on wise effort, calm.

Shane Birkel 48:08
Okay, great. Well, thank you so much, Diana, it's been great talking to you. Any other final thoughts before we wrap it up today?

Dr. Diana Hill 48:16
I think just go find a tree. Yeah, yeah, totally Yeah. And like, say thank you, you know, like, thank you to these trees.

Shane Birkel 48:24
Yeah, absolutely All right, thank you again, and hopefully we can catch up again at some point in the future. The episode this week is brought to you by Alma. They make it easy to get credentialed with major insurance plans at enhanced reimbursement rates. Alma handles all of the paperwork and guarantees payment within two weeks. Visit, HelloAlma.com/ATPP or click on the link in the show notes to learn more. And thank you again, everybody. This is Shane Birkel, and this is The Couples Therapist Couch - the podcast that's all about the practice of couples therapy. I hope you have a great week, and we'll see you next time. Bye, everybody!

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