PNTV: The First 30 Days by Ariane de Bonvoisin (#42)

Foreign. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another great book, as always. We've got Ariane de Bonvoins. Great book, the first 30 days, as always. Great book, Philosopher's Note. Six page PDF with maybe a dozen of my favorite big ideas. And this book rocks. One of the standards I have when I'm reading a great book or reading a book to determine whether or not it's great, is when I get to the end of it, I can kind of get a sense of the author. And this is one of those books where reading it, I just got a sense that Ariane is just a cool human being. I get that same experience with Paulo Coelho's books, Gay Hendricks books, a bunch of other authors, but I really had that strike me as I read this book. Ariane runs a website you can check out called the first30days, or first30days.com, and it's all about navigating change in our lives, the book and the website. So we're always going through changes in our lives, and she says we want to pay attention to those first 30 days as we go through these transitions. And the book is all about big ideas on how we can navigate those first 30 days of any change in our life. So if you're going through a change or you know someone who is, I think you'll like the note and I think you'll really enjoy the book. It's good stuff. So a bunch of big ideas. One of the fundamental ones is this idea. There's a change guarantee. Ariane says when she looks at people who navigate change effectively versus those who don't navigate it as effectively, she finds that there are change optimists, people who are optimistic when they are in the face of change. And she believes there's a change guarantee, that every change has the opportunity to bring extreme, extraordinary things in our lives. It has a positive aspect to it, and too often we get caught up in the negative stuff associated to whatever we're going through that we don't like. That's different than what we expected, what we hoped would have happened. What we want to do is step back and to see it from an optimistic vantage point. And the optimist, the change optimist in this case, looks at the change and says, you know what? There's something really, really powerful and positive about this, and. And I need to find it. So if you're stuck in a change right now and you're stuck in a negative mindset around that change, there's some awesome Ideas you can engage in that will help you get through it. One of the easiest ones is write down whatever is stressing you out, what the change is and how you're interpreting it, and then see if you can identify the best possible outcome that could come out of the change or maybe a few various best possible outcomes. And it's a really cool idea Ariane goes off on in the book, and it's talked about throughout the positive psychology literature. We know scientifically that being able to restructure our thoughts cognitively, not just doing affirmations, although we talk about affirmations a lot and mantras as tools of thought and ways to shape our mind, we're talking about actually changing the way we see something. Right. When we can do that, we can go from the negative interpretation we have to a more positive interpretation by simply imagining what good could come out of this and what's the best possible outcome. It's really cool stuff. Scientists call it a best possible selves diary, where you imagine your ideal future. And it's been scientifically proven to increase levels of happiness between people who do that and people who don't do it. Really cool stuff. So if you're going through struggles right now, imagine what are the best possible outcomes you can experience. And. And I think you'll dig it. So change optimist. Another big idea on that front is the idea that we can develop our optimism, much like we develop our muscles or our heart and our cardiovascular system by training. So we've talked about the training effect many times. The idea is that if you want to change your body again, whether it's building a muscle like your bicep, or building your heart, or building your emotional body by developing your optimism or whatever, you've got to do a couple of things. One, you've got to stretch yourself a little bit past your current comfort zone. If you're just sitting there lying on your couch, emotionally or physically, you're going to adapt to that. Your body is incredibly brilliant to adapt to whatever challenges you put on it, whatever stresses you put on it. So you want to stretch just a little bit more than what you're used to. And then your body does something miraculous. It says, wow, okay, you want me to perform at this level? No problem. I will overcompensate. So you overload your body and then your body over compensates and you get stronger. So that works with our body and it works with our change muscle. As Ariane describes it, our change muscle is how we see the world. Sonia Lieborsky I mentioned in the note, she wrote a great book called the how of Happiness, where she goes off on the 12 principles that we know scientifically increase our happiness. We have a note on that, too. Check out the book. But she also says the same thing. As with anything, we've got to practice it. But as we practice approaching our challenges with more optimism, our optimism grows, our muscle of optimism grows, and we become more able, more adept at seeing the world optimistically than we were before. It's a really simple concept, but it's a really big idea. We've got to practice approaching life optimistically if we want to see sustainable changes. Really, really cool stuff. She's got an awesome idea here. She says, very simply, look back on your life and see the other challenges you faced in your life. Because we've all had incredible challenges many times throughout our lives. Now, when you went through those challenges, think of the times you navigated the challenges the best, right? Imagine those times and then ask yourself, what did I do? What worked for me in the past that I had done before when I was facing similar or equally challenging challenges, what did I do that worked? Was it I really stepped up my meditation practice? Was it I journaled a lot. That really helped me out. Was it I exercised consistently, I stopped eating these kinds of foods, I stopped drinking, I stopped watching as much tv, I hung out with these kinds of people. Whatever it is for you, figure out what worked for you in the past when you went through challenges that you can do now. It's a really simple, really big idea. So you may want to do a quick inventory on that and get clear on what habits you have that work that you already know have worked for you in the past. And as I say again and again and again and again in these PNTV episodes and throughout the note, one thing that I do when I get stressed, and yes, it does happen, and yes, it happens more often than I'd like. What I like to do when I get a little bit off is to journal. What's the number one thing I need to start doing right now? Oftentimes I remember, wow, this really worked for me in the past. I've got to do that more consistently. I've got to not get online before I do my creative stuff. There's a seductive pull for me on that, and that leads to habits that just don't make me feel creatively alive. That's a big one. I need to go to bed earlier so I can get up earlier. Whatever it is that I identify as the top number one thing, it's huge. So what about you? What's the number one thing that you could be doing right now to help yourself navigate through this challenge? And what's the number one thing you can stop doing right now that would help you navigate whatever challenges you're facing in your life? Really cool ideas that I love. So another big idea we have. Ariane talks about change. Demonstration, right? We've got fear and kind of anxiety and depression, all these little demons that come into our lives when we're going through a change. Change demon, she calls them. So when we're going through these challenging times, these demons pop up. She says we got to think about our GPS system and look at our lives like a GPS system. So if you're driving and you've got a GPS system, there are two things that happen that make that work. One, your current location is identified, and. And two, very importantly, you know where you want to go, right? So if I'm in Ojai, California, which is where I am right now, and I don't know where I want to go on my trip that I'm taking geographically, I don't know if I want to go down to LA or up to San Francisco or across the Pacific to Bali. If I don't know that, then I'm in trouble. There's no navigation system that can help me. But if I say, look, I want to go to Bali, which we're going to do in August, very excited about that, and go back there for our honeymoon and another sabbatical. But when I know that I want to go there, I know I want to go to Los Angeles or to New York, I can plug that into my gps, and then I know how to get there. I can get support. So the key here is you've got to know where you want to go when you're stressed and you're kind of turned around, you don't know what side's up. You've got to identify what you want in your life. It's a huge idea. As you do that and as we do that and get more clarity on it, things come into play, come into focus in ways we couldn't have anticipated. So that's a really big idea. She talks about the importance of integrating fear into our lives. Fear doesn't go away. It doesn't need to go away. We talk about this a lot in the notes. Just wave at it. Fear can be our friend. All the great performers, all the great people we admire still have fear and they move through it, which leads us to the final idea. Quickly she says if you want to navigate change effectively, you got to keep on moving, take baby steps. So identify right now. What's one thing you could do that would move you in a positive direction toward a positive outcome, and engage in that now. So that's a quick look at Ariane's great book, the first 30 days. Hope you dug it. Share more with you soon. See you.