Brian Johnson explains illeism, talking to yourself in the third person. A study of 555 people found third-person journaling reduced emotional distress more than first-person. When you use distance language, wisdom-related measures jump 22 to 31 percent.
Questions this episode answers
555 participants (journaled thoughts for four weeks).
Four weeks.
22% higher on intellectual humility.
31% higher on open-mindedness.
15% higher on compromise.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic one. In the last few plus ones, we've been hanging out with Donald Robertson and his buddy Socrates. We're going to continue our exploration of wisdom from his new book, let's Get Straight to Work. Donald tells us A closely related method involves referring to our own thoughts and actions as if we were talking about those of someone else. Third person self talk is known as elism, from ili, the Latin pronoun for he. We don't even need to use our imagination for this, just our words. For example, rather than thinking I'm really upset and don't know what to do in the first person, I might say to myself, donald is really upset and he doesn't know what to do in the third person. Donald continues by saying A recent pair of studies on elism asked a total of 555 participants to to record their thoughts in a journal for four weeks to test whether wise reasoning could be cultivated in daily life. Participants were to write about various social experiences that happened each day. One group using the first person and the other third person language or ilism. Those employing iliasm were found to have improved on ratings of wisdom measured in the same way as above. The study also found that in some cases illism reduced negative emotions such as anger or frustration in participants relationships. End quote. Now one of the things that makes Donald so special as a modern day Stoic philosopher is the fact that his background is as a cognitive behavioral therapist. He knows how to apply this wisdom and what works and what doesn't in a very practical way. Now right before that passage he says, and I quote him again. In one study, researchers described a hypothetical relationship problem to participants in two groups. One group was asked to imagine it was a friend's problem, the other group's participants to view it as if it were their own. The group examining the problem as if it happened to a friend scored 22% higher on ratings of intellectual humility, 31% on open mindedness and 15% on compromise. And right after that passage he tells us similar verbal techniques have long been used in cognitive psychotherapy. Aaron Tebeck and his colleagues advise clients suffering from anxiety disorders to practice detached self awareness. Look at your thoughts, feelings and actions as if you're a friendly but not overly concerned bystander. They describe this as learning to watch myself watching myself in language highly reminiscent of Socrates's analogy of the eye that looks at itself. Moreover, using third person language can, they claim, help a client to increase self awareness by voluntarily choosing to distance himself from his anxiety. End quote. That's today's plus one elism. It does a hero good. Try it today. P.S. the basic idea here is similar to what other CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy practitioners describe as defusing from our thoughts. Check out our notes on Stephen Hayes's get out of youf Mind, into youo Life and Russ Harris's the Confidence Gap.
For more what's up? This is Michael President and head Coach at Heroic One quick note before we go. I just think it's so amazing that Brian keeps reading all these books and distilling them into more wisdom in less time. By the way, thank you Brian for continuing to read the books distill them for us. I love not having to read the book, just getting them more wisdom in less time through the plus ones of Philosopher's Notes. And if you're into this kind of thing, expressing the best version of yourself and using your greatest gifts to make a positive impact on the world, make sure you head to Heroic Us to check out all the other resources that we have available to you. You can download a bunch of free goodies including Philosopher's Notes, Masterclasses and our scientifically proven Heroic app. You can also explore advanced resources to help you go next level, including live and virtual workshops, working one on one with a heroic performance coach, or even becoming a certified coach yourself as you master heroic performance, the fundamentals of coaching excellence, and heroic coaching prosperity. Again, head to Heroic Us to get the ancient wisdom, modern science and practical tools you need to activate your heroic potential and and change the world together. And please do hit subscribe. Appreciate you have a fantastic day and see you again soon.
