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New Years Resolutions and Motivation
187 Plays2 years ago
Today we talk all about motivation and New Year's resolutions. The episode was recorded early in January, but the conversation may be even more important today. Throughout the episode, try to reflect on some of the goals you may have set for yourself this year. And if you’re struggling with some of these goals, how might you reframe your motivations in a healthy manner? Thinking about the benefits can help respark motivation! And remember to give yourself credit for the progress you’ve made!
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Origin
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello, I'm Dr. Farah White. And I'm Dr. Grant Brenner. We're psychiatrists and therapists in private practice in New York. We started this podcast in 2019 to draw attention to a phenomenon called the doorknob comment. Doorknob comments are important things we all say from time to time, just as we're leaving the office, sometimes literally hand on the doorknob.
00:00:23
Speaker
Doorknob comments happen not only during therapy, but also in everyday life. The point is that sometimes we aren't sure how to express the deeply meaningful things we're feeling, thinking, and experiencing. Maybe we're afraid to bring certain things out into the open or are on the fence about wanting to discuss them. Sometimes we know we've got something we're unsure about sharing and are keeping it to ourselves. And sometimes we surprise ourselves by what comes out.
Motivation and Resolutions
00:00:50
Speaker
Today, Farrah and I talk all about motivation in New Year's resolutions. The episode was recorded early in January, but the conversation may be even more important today. Throughout the episode, try to reflect on some of the goals you may have set for yourself this year. And if you're struggling with some of these goals, how might you reframe your motivations in a healthy manner? Thinking about the benefits can help re-spark motivation. And remember to give yourself credit for the progress you've made. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
00:01:21
Speaker
It's our first recording of 2023. Very exciting. You know what year it is. Are you checking my orientation? Yes. Do you know what floor you're on? I think I'm on the first floor. I'm on a wooden floor. That's a concrete answer. Yeah. These are psychiatrist jokes, by the way.
00:01:43
Speaker
Yeah. You may not know this, but when we formally interview people, even though sometimes people don't know why we're asking them such basic questions, we will ask things like, do you know what year it is? Do you know what day it is? Do you know the day of the week? What is the date? Who's the president? What floor are you on? Do you know why you're here?
00:02:00
Speaker
And usually people who don't have any problems with those questions go, yeah, it's 2023. But sometimes you find out that people aren't oriented to time or place, and that's important to know.
COVID's Impact on Time Perception
00:02:15
Speaker
And I think it's particularly important now because with COVID and all of that, I feel like we've had a few lost years, right?
00:02:26
Speaker
Yeah, I think our jokes are not meaningless because we were talking about the idea of 2022 being kind of a lost year, let alone 2020 and 2021. Certainly there's a lot of disorientation and
00:02:42
Speaker
even dissociation. I know a lot of people, and I've noticed this myself as well, sometimes have trouble being really present and aware. I think that was even more pronounced when we were all working from home much more. For sure. And the days kind of blend together. For sure. But I think now that we've returned to some sense of normalcy, it feels almost weird to be coming back to things, reconnecting with people, and I think
00:03:12
Speaker
a lot of people have had this experience that they're not exactly where they had hoped they'd be, they haven't accomplished, you know, what they set out to accomplish, whether it was, you know, before their
00:03:25
Speaker
30th or 40th birthday, or, you know, a lot of times we measure life in milestones as much as we do with time, right?
Societal Shifts and Resolutions
00:03:34
Speaker
Well, what do you think is different now with COVID? Because counter argument is, yeah, every year people make New Year's resolutions they don't keep, it's a running joke.
00:03:44
Speaker
The needle moves a little bit every year, I think, as things become more societally standardized. For example, dry January, when people don't consume the alcohol has become a thing. Yeah. I mean, I think it was a thing for a lot of people for a long time, and now it does seem like it's more collective. I think it's ultimately a good thing. I don't know. What are your thoughts on it?
00:04:12
Speaker
Well, my thoughts were that the needle moves a little bit as some of these things become institutionalized. And a lot of people still approach New Year's with the same, yeah, I want to get things done, but I'm not really confident that I will. And I also don't know how, actually, if I have a goal necessarily to not just set my intention and visualize that goal, but actually achieve it and also safeguard against things that could distract me from it. Right.
00:04:40
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. I think having expectations, protecting against distraction or disappointment, all of those things are important. But I do think that the beginning of the year is a time when people are particularly reflective. It doesn't mean that they stick to the changes, but they at least examine their lives and what they'd like to see happen.
Global Crises and Personal Priorities
00:05:05
Speaker
Right. So COVID has been an existential crisis on a global level, the likes of which we haven't seen in a hundred years, to some extent in the same class of things as like nuclear threat or climate crisis. And so there's been a heavy existential load. A lot of people have really looked at how they're living and thought about living differently, reexamined their priorities as a consequence of
00:05:35
Speaker
something like post-traumatic growth. And then on top of it, you have the typical New Year kind of winter existential blues. And then that fades. It fades as the season changes. And I guess what I've been thinking about recently, or really just the past few days, is what allows some people to really create the changes that they want in their lives.
Success in Life Changes
00:06:05
Speaker
why do others seem to have a really hard time with it? You know, when we see a patient who's like doing really well, I think there's a tendency to be like, Oh, yeah, we're like helping this person, we're doing a good job, right? But then we're doing the same job for the other person that that might not be achieving their goals. Not sure what you're insinuating. I'm just saying that. I don't think I don't think that we are the rate limiting step. I think there's something
00:06:35
Speaker
just outside of consciousness, like ours and the patients that is driving.
00:06:43
Speaker
Did you see the documentary stuts that Jonah Hill made? I saw the first 13 minutes of it. Okay. Well, I guess it's a conversation for another time, but one of the things that I thought was kind of cool is that the psychiatrist has all these tools and talks about your life force and conceptualizing things like that. And I don't...
00:07:09
Speaker
know that it necessarily has to be one thing or the other. An analyst might look at it and say, well, this person can't move forward because of a repetition compulsion. What's a repetition compulsion? You might have to step in, but it's a concept in a theory that Freud developed to say that when people are traumatized by something,
00:07:35
Speaker
they unconsciously replay and recreate that traumatic event in different ways. So like when you see a girl and she's like, I always choose the wrong guys.
00:07:46
Speaker
She is doing what's comfortable based on her history. She's compulsively repeating her traumatic past, and we know this is true even with victims of sexual assault. Sometimes they will reach out to their abuser and they're trying to repeat, replay, and really make sense of what happened.
00:08:11
Speaker
So that I guess is like kind of a less positive thing than the tools and the life force, but there are like many theories for why people are held back and how to move forward.
00:08:25
Speaker
Yeah. Well, there's data that on average people who experience abuse are at greater risk for future abuse. I think one thing to be sort of clear on is that we're not blaming people for repeating things because they don't usually want to.
Freud and Self-Talk
00:08:44
Speaker
From a psychoanalytic point of view, the repetition compulsion, Freud was never fully able to explain. He had a few ideas. One was mastery, like I keep doing this over and over again to try to beat it. And finally, he actually ascribed it to what he called the death instinct, that there was some kind of destructive force.
00:09:05
Speaker
And Dr. Stutz is talking about the life force, which I think is also a horror movie about a malevolent alien, if I remember correctly. And so Freud talked about the like Thanos, death and Eros, like life.
00:09:25
Speaker
And another analyst, some folks may have heard of because he was also an anti nukes, a kind of sociologist, Eric Fromm, um, talked about the biophilic drive, the life loving drive. I think nowadays in a contemporary trauma point of view, while there are psychodynamic factors, meaning sort of unconscious emotional things that are determinants of our decisions, we also recognize that a lot of it is not motivated, but it's just,
00:09:53
Speaker
been encoded into more reflex or condition response areas of the brain. If you want to be technical, the difference is between the ventral stream, which is like the older parts of the brain that's associated with the ventral surface of the body, which is the front, the stomach, and the dorsal stream, which is the back, is more about choice and executive function.
00:10:20
Speaker
And so trauma, when it's not mitigated, will shift things to a sort of a condition response state. And so Happy New Year, you have an idea that you want to do something different, but like the old habits take over. And then the question is, well, what needs to happen on a behavioral and an attitudinal level to shift that and sustain it? Because the motivation to start something is very different from the motivation to keep it going.
00:10:48
Speaker
Right. So a lot of people will start exercising and they're they're stoked. Right. They go to the gym for a few weeks and then it becomes routine again. And then they sort of.
00:11:00
Speaker
start to feel their motivation flagging, and you might ignore that. Don't ignore that if you notice that, because that means it's time to shift your strategy. And then, you know, maybe they decide, okay, I'll pick up a pint of ice cream. I won't mention any brand names, but everyone has their favorite brand. What's your favorite? I'm not going to mention any brand names. The people want to know, Grant, the listeners want to know. I'm not going to mention any brands.
00:11:28
Speaker
You know, and then it's a slippery slope. And then, and then they sort of, this is where psychology comes in. Cause then people might feel a little bit mad at themselves, disappointed. They might just totally give up. If they're perfectionistic, they failed. They don't deserve, you know, deserve it. So it goes into a masochistic kind of punishment mode. And then it's like, okay, well I ate ice cream. I might as well completely let everything go. What's a healthier way to deal with that? Do you think you're, you're an expert, right?
Therapeutic Innovations and Expertise
00:11:58
Speaker
I think first of all, when we set goals, we should make sure that they're deep and meaningful and that the motivation is sound.
00:12:09
Speaker
For example, saying I want to exercise six days a week. I'm just going to wake up at like 4.30 in the morning before anyone is up. I'm going to hop on the Peloton because I want to fit into my jeans. One, I feel like that is not being kind to myself because I may at some points, like how do I know when I need sleep more than I need exercise, right? So then I'm going to be constantly like conflicted about it.
00:12:36
Speaker
And then I read a paper that cardiovascular exercise offsets the problems from sleep deprivation, actually. But really, what's the right balance? I would be surprised. Okay. I don't think there's enough cardio, but I would have to be constantly running marathons to offset the damage from the sleep deprivation.
00:12:57
Speaker
But I also think that if we have a goal in mind that is really deep and meaningful, and we have a sort of more realistic, because there are only these like two toggles, right? Either your goal can be more realistic, or your motivation can come up. I feel like shifting that and saying, well, what's really important is that I'm able to
00:13:22
Speaker
I don't know, walk around the city when I'm in my 70s or 80s or enjoy moments with kids or grandkids. That feels like a little bit more important.
00:13:37
Speaker
Yeah, this is, you know, I fundamentally agree in certain ways with what you're saying. The last thing you said is it reminds me of motivational interviewing where it's like, quit smoking because you could get cancer. That doesn't really motivate people. But if you ask them, well, how do you think it'll help you if you quit smoking? They'll go,
00:13:56
Speaker
I know, I know, it'll reduce my cancer. But no, how do you think it would really pay off? Well, I would love to run up the stairs and not get short of breath. I would love to chase my kids around. I get really embarrassed by the way my breath smells, so I wouldn't have to deal with that anymore. And then not getting cancer is nice, but it doesn't motivate me.
00:14:14
Speaker
which is kind of like what I call the willpower trap, where a lot of people, as you're saying, they kind of don't set up the context for them to play the long game, and so they set themselves up to fail. I'm going to exercise six times a week. I'm going to wake up at 4.30. I like to wake up before I go to sleep, which saves time.
00:14:33
Speaker
Think about that. If you wake up before you go to sleep, then you can have negative imaginary sleep and you wake up refreshed and you have 28 hours a day. You think about that. Modern solves the workaholism problem. But people set themselves up in this willpower trap where
00:14:53
Speaker
they essentially create circumstances where they put themselves on the spot to either perfectionistically achieve some nearly impossible demand, though people do accomplish amazing things, you know, under adverse circumstances. They either have to do this really horrific thing or they feel like, you know, they failed. And then that again feeds into that vicious cycle of like, oh, I am disgusted with myself, you know,
00:15:21
Speaker
I never accomplished my goals. I've never kept my New Year's resolution. And maybe that is a repetition compulsion, the kind of setting up and then disappointing oneself. Totally, and that negative self-talk. Like if your parents were always disappointed.
00:15:37
Speaker
Not you personally, but I mean, you know, I didn't think you were thinking of me personally, but yes, you're right. You're right. No, no. I mean, it's just, there's a look on your face. I felt a little bad, but, um, but that could be internalized that negative self talk and that kind of like conditional love. If you don't, if you don't succeed, then you don't love yourself. That doesn't work. That's a recipe for pain. Yeah. Sometimes we have these like very deeply entrenched ideas of,
00:16:06
Speaker
who we should be or how we should behave or we want our lives to look like. I think that where therapy can be helpful is it really breaks it down. You have another person from whom you can kind of learn to think. We can't always learn to think from friends or family, right? Because they are very tied in to our decisions.
00:16:31
Speaker
Well, they also suffer from some of the same patterns, so there's less variability, unless one of your relatives is one of us. No, but even if it's one of us, it's like we can't objectively tell our kids, brothers, sisters, like, oh yeah, that sounds totally unrealistic, or that sounds like a really good idea, or you should go back to school. Yeah, you can.
00:16:57
Speaker
Yeah, you totally can. It often doesn't work, though, for different reasons. Right. It doesn't work, and it's like you've got some skin in the game, right? Well, learning to think with someone else can be helpful. And I think it does help if they occupy a perspective in relation to one where they're not too involved and they're not too detached. And of course, being in a helping profession, you're kind of set up to help.
00:17:25
Speaker
And people don't always think their friends or relatives necessarily have the same motives, though, you know, people can also be unsure about their therapists or psychiatrists or primary care doctor or surgeons motives for that matter. Yeah, I mean, hopefully there's some like basic level of trust that, you know, your therapist wants.
00:17:47
Speaker
you to be happy or to be healthy or you know something like that. Yeah it's a different podcast about therapists are human too and there's certainly examples of therapists who haven't you know upheld that trust or doctors who break the Hippocratic oath right but
00:18:03
Speaker
or who are motivated narcissistically or financially. I think that's more the exception, but like I said, it's a different conversation and probably a good one. I generally think you're probably trustworthy though.
00:18:18
Speaker
No, thank you. And likewise, you also think you're trustworthy. We also, we all have our unconscious biases, right? But it's our job to sort of be aware of them. But if someone is in a relationship or a job or, you know, any number of things, I don't I don't really feel like, oh, this needs to have like some sort of particular outcome. And if I do feel that way, then I have to look at it.
00:18:47
Speaker
Right. As a therapist, as a doctor, you locate yourself in such a way that any needs of yours that are being met are within normal limits, reasonable financial expectations, reasonable professional satisfaction, but patients should be expecting that people working on their behalf in this way.
00:19:10
Speaker
are not invested in the wrong ways in what happens. One of the things about Stutz is at the very beginning, within the first 10 or 15 minutes, based on me not having seen more of it, what does he say? He says something like, if you do what I tell you, I guarantee you will get better. Something like that. Yeah. I guess is that when you turned it off?
00:19:36
Speaker
No, no. I mean, I was interested in it. I just, you know, I had to, I had to wash my hair. Yeah. I'd do my nails. No, no. I mean, I was interested in it, but I know there were some critiques because he's a bit unorthodox, but that doesn't mean that, you know, that he doesn't, isn't actually very effective.
00:19:59
Speaker
And maybe he's got a particular set of experiences or skills where he really does know how to direct people. Though that's not the conventional psychotherapy approach, particularly in a psychoanalytic circle is to be more like not being directive.
00:20:19
Speaker
Right, and also I think to make guarantees, I think you and I have probably helped a lot of people, but I don't think we have categorically, we can guarantee that every single person we cross paths with will get better.
00:20:36
Speaker
It's not a guarantee though, it's conditional. If you do what I tell you, you will get better. It makes me wonder what you think about behavioral activation, which could be controversial because you're telling a patient, I know you're really depressed, but you like knitting, knit for a few minutes a day. And then it just activates those brain circuits that help to pull the person out.
00:21:00
Speaker
though a lot of times it's not that straightforward, but it's worth a try. So how do you persuade someone, you know, to do that? Well, you can say, I think this is going to help you. Let's see if it does. I don't know. I just try to shy away because we're talking all about trust, right? And there's so many things that have come into like the field of psychiatry. And I have been having the conversation about
00:21:28
Speaker
ketamine and psilocybin and MDMA and all these things that are still evolving.
00:21:37
Speaker
Yeah. Well, there's been an erosion of expertise as well. Right. And there's a lot more ambiguity, you know, and what is the right thing to do. And, you know, more than sort of, there's a model of evidence base and then there's a precision medicine model. It's like, okay, well, this study showed that psilocybin cures PTSD. That's, that's amazing. Like PTSD is a huge problem. I specialize in trauma. Um, and treatments, you know, don't, don't always work. Even if, even if you do what you're supposed to do, we're told to do.
00:22:07
Speaker
On the other hand, the psilocybin studies are limited. They're with very specific populations, but then it kind of gets picked up by different entities in the media and on social media and Twitter. And there is an aura around it, which then creates this kind of collective placebo effect. And then kind of everyone wants to do that. And I know some people who have, you know, used psychedelics and really it's been transformative. And a lot of people,
00:22:35
Speaker
though those aren't the stories that people pay attention to, because they're not as kind of cool. They're like, yeah, it didn't do very much for me at all, you know? Right. Right. And I am always really cautious when people say, well, this is it. Like, this is the cure, right? The answer. The answer. And I actually try to move people away from that, because it puts so much pressure.
00:23:05
Speaker
do therapy, I do med management. I think it's fairly effective and relatively low risk. But I don't know that I would say that there's any one treatment out there that is the answer. I think I just encourage people to keep looking for what makes sense for them within reason, right?
00:23:26
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I think we're always wary of one size fits all solutions.
Future of Technology in Therapy
00:23:32
Speaker
But I think people are often understandably and justifiably often looking for something that's going to work faster. Yeah. And I do think
00:23:41
Speaker
those treatments are coming, and some of them are here, say for depression or PTSD, where with conventional medications and therapy, it could take months or years even in some cases. And it's true with some of the emerging treatments and maybe some that are in the so-called pipeline, you know, for either drug or brainstem.
00:24:03
Speaker
development, they can treat depression quickly. There's a St. TMS protocol, which is a Stanford rapid protocol for transcranial magnetic stimulation, which has something like an 80% response rate for treating depression. And it involves getting like a lot of treatments within one week, but they're quite tolerable treatments and you know, you might have to take a week off from work and insurance doesn't quite cover it yet, but it does have an FDA clearance.
00:24:30
Speaker
that offer hope. However, the data is that with almost every single treatment, including psychedelics, a lot of people, maybe the majority, I'm not sure where the data is landing yet, have a need for maintenance treatment. Right. It's interesting because I guess the way that psychedelics and I don't know that much about it, and maybe we should
00:24:55
Speaker
you know, try to look into it and reconcile it with what we do, but anything that, um, I think you have to be pretty open to trying things in order to try psychedelics. Right. And, um, one thing psychedelics do for a lot of people is it makes their personalities more open. That's a personality trait is openness to new experiences, a little bit of a catch 22. That's where advice comes in. You know, if your doctor says, Hey, do this, I think it'll work. Right.
00:25:25
Speaker
And actually research shows that what the prescribing
00:25:30
Speaker
clinician, the psychiatrist or whatever, thinks about the medication or the treatment has a very strong impact on the outcome. Even with the same medication, the attitude about the medication is at least as important in some studies as the actual biological effect. So when someone says something that powerful, like if you do what I say, you'll get better, it's also kind of like, well, you didn't do what I said, so you didn't get better.
00:26:00
Speaker
A lot of people can't do what people tell them to do. Right. I think that's one of the reasons that people come in to seek help, right, is they feel out of control. They know what they should be doing. Luckily, a lot of information is out there for people. But that can make it worse.
00:26:20
Speaker
Well, it can make it worse, but I just think like most people know what's out there in terms of treatments for depression and anxiety. And if they don't, they can look it up. And the problem is sometimes following through. Well, it's a double-edged sword. You know, I spent several hours the other day in the drugstore trying to decide what laundry detergent to buy. What did you settle on? I didn't get anything. Oh, sounds like the paradox of choice got to you.
00:26:50
Speaker
I'm going to wear Tyvek clothing, which doesn't need to be washed. Really? You know, it's reverse bio-engineered materials. Not Tyvek, but there are some buildings. This is a somewhat divergent thought. But that's associated with creativity, and I'm creative.
00:27:09
Speaker
copy the surface of, I think it's a lotus leaf. Lotus leaves naturally shed dirt. They have some funky structure on the macro, on the meta materials level. And they have incorporated that. And I think there's a paint that I read about a couple of years ago that has that type of surface. And so it's like a self cleaning building. But where does the dirt go? Is it just piled up around the base of the building? I don't know. But they also have like
00:27:38
Speaker
like sweat wicking, you know, athletic garments. And I kind of like that idea. Yeah. A lot of those are, are, are biomimetic. If we could have like sort of something that helps the human psyche sort of. Yeah. Yeah. Like a biomimetic therapeutic approach.
00:27:57
Speaker
I know. Something more organic and involving some sort of relationship with another primate. So 2022, COVID, lost years. We talked a little bit about like looking back though, how do you reflect on something that you're sort of half forgetting already? How do you make meaning of something before it's finished kind of after 9-11, right?
00:28:22
Speaker
took a while. Now we look back over 20 years later, but some things about it are still hard to access. Yeah, as with anything that's difficult to metabolize.
00:28:36
Speaker
We may get it in bits and pieces, right? Dribs and drabs. Dribs and drabs. It ebbs and flows. And so there are so many things out there to help people sort of organize their thoughts. But what do you think?
00:28:53
Speaker
How is this experience like for you sort of, I call it Perry post COVID it's not over, but it's not not over. We're in sort of limbo or some transitional state. Maybe 2023 is kind of a transitional year. Yeah.
Adapting to Change with Technology
00:29:08
Speaker
And, and how do we come back to it? Right? Things are not.
00:29:12
Speaker
the same as they were, not even close. I feel like the world has changed a lot. Did it change? Did it change or is it perhaps a repetition compulsion writ large? Maybe. Where the pendulum just swings back and forth. Yeah. What I do think has changed is I think tech has advanced. I think the last time the world was in a state a little bit like this,
00:29:39
Speaker
was maybe in the post-Vietnam era in the 70s. There was a sense of disenfranchisement and sort of broad existential unclarity after a period of upheaval. I don't think it maps exactly, but I think you can make a case that history repeats. Yeah, yeah.
00:30:00
Speaker
But I think what's different is tech. Potentially, I think for the people who are living through it, it becomes really hard to sort of grab on to the things that were valuable, not to sort of ruminate or get pulled into, you know, negative emotions like shame or guilt. Yeah. But what do you think is different? I don't want to be too sort of negative. I think there are some,
00:30:30
Speaker
really good things about, you know, that people seem more conscientious and in some ways more compassionate. But I do think there's a level of disconnection, right? Because that's what happened during COVID. We all sort of disconnected from each other. And although people were, I think, trying to stay connected remotely,
00:31:00
Speaker
Do you think people are more disconnected by virtue of not having been in person? Yeah, I do. And I think it feels weird for us to just be with each other. You know, I think that's also not to digress too much, but something, you know, in terms of dating, like there are so many, I guess, superficial and virtual connections. And I think that true, truly like sitting down with someone is
00:31:30
Speaker
is rarer now than it was. And I don't think things will go back to that. You know, I see it in my own practice that there are a lot of people that pre-COVID came into session every single week. We would never even think of, like, doing a phone call instead. Well, what if you made it, you know, sort of, okay, I'm just going back to in-person meetings for everyone. Yeah, but that's not realistic. That's not the world we live in anymore.
00:31:58
Speaker
Right. Part of this is like acceptance that, you know, my practice is always going to be partially remote. How do I make the most of that? How do people, you know, not lose sight of their goals, the changes that they want to make and just know, I don't remember what it is. It's like a consulting term, like an acronym that says like change is the only real constant.
00:32:26
Speaker
I think there's a French saying, right? The more things change, the more they stay the same. Yeah, but that's kind of like the opposite of what I was saying. Change is the only constant.
00:32:36
Speaker
Yeah, but we have to be able to accept it and work with it somehow. We know the expression haste makes waste. Just a lot of aphorisms coming my way right now. Well, I think it's hard for us to conceptualize change. So, you know, you had a hypothesis that like things are like change, they'll never be the same. And I think you could just as easily say,
00:33:02
Speaker
Yeah, this happens all the time. We just don't know it because we weren't alive 70 years ago. What I do see, though, like I said, I think tech is different. And without tech during the pandemic, it would have been much worse. And so people are closer in other ways. And we get a lot more time with our families, maybe, where we have more time to ourselves. You don't have to commute as much. We're sort of learning how to use this virtual reality.
00:33:32
Speaker
at least this two-dimensional connection, what I imagine is augmented reality would make work from home. Really, it would blur the boundaries between working from home and working in the office because you could occupy a very telepresence, convincing sense of shared space with AR, not virtual reality, but augmented reality, which isn't here yet. But it's very easy for me as an avid science fiction reader
00:34:01
Speaker
to imagine in five to 10 years, instead of doing Zoom, which makes you tired and you get just staring into screen, some folks may remember, and I think maybe these platforms are still around that are more immersive, but the technology just isn't ubiquitous. You know, like cell phones are everywhere now, and no one ever really anticipated that. They blew up around the planet the way flowers exploded and changed evolution, you know, millions of years ago. The Cambrian explosion, it's called,
00:34:31
Speaker
So there's been a kind of a cell phone explosion. But I think at some point in the not so distant future, it's going to be routine for us to have augmented reality gear. And then the physical location won't matter as much.
00:34:46
Speaker
We're not there
Technology's Impact on Human Connections
00:34:47
Speaker
yet. I also think information technology has brought us a lot closer. You were alluding to something earlier. It's like anyone can look stuff up. Knowledge that would have been sequestered by experts, you can read it. You could always go and buy a medical textbook if you wanted to read up on it as a layperson, but now you can just Google it. My advice to people is they read material that's
00:35:14
Speaker
that's credible, you know, because there's a lot of bad information, but still technology has changed human relatedness. So what does 2023 hold and what's your advice for people? Is it really that important to set and keep goals every year, according to an arbitrary calendar? Not according to an arbitrary calendar, but I do think it's important for people to take stock of what's working for them and what's not working for them.
00:35:42
Speaker
you know, put a plan in place. And to know that, like you said before, the needle is going to move one way or the other. Let's try to direct it. Let's feel good about our efforts and be compassionate towards ourselves. And I think that will, yeah, it's not going to be like, maybe super, super transformative every minute. But I do think that will help us lead a more meaningful life.
00:36:07
Speaker
It takes some sort of intermittent, sustained, if perhaps intermittent, effort that you just keep.
00:36:15
Speaker
up the direction that you're in and if you kind of flag, if you falter, you kind of move forward, the fail forward model. And there does seem to be something about planning things out in a calendar basis that helps people succeed. Gantt charts, having been around for a long time, but I'm starting to see ads for kind of Gantt chart apps for people.
00:36:42
Speaker
And I think part of that is because life is more complex than it used to be. And a lot of things that people might have just kept in their head 20 years ago, there's just too much information to do that now. On one hand, people could be involved in a lot more activities and projects, but on the other hand, it's harder to just keep it in your head. We used to remember phone numbers.
00:37:07
Speaker
And now our brains are filled with all sorts of other things. I still remember my house's landline, phone number. We had some people for kids for sleepover last night, and we were explaining to them answering machines in case they see it in a movie or something. And one of the neat things about answering machines, which again, you might see in a movie sometimes,
00:37:31
Speaker
is people would monitor their answering machines. And so, you know, you could be home and this was like, not necessarily, you might not even have caller ID. Some of the fancier answer machines had caller ID on them too, after a little while, but basically like your phone would ring and you would listen to the message.
00:37:53
Speaker
and you'd hear your own voice and then you'd hear someone on the other end calling, I'm calling from AT&T and asking you to make you an offer or it would be like maybe someone you want to talk to and be like, oh, it's Farah. Hey, pick up the phone. Or it would be like, you know, someone you don't want to hear from. And then it'd be like, I know you're there. Pick up the phone. I know you're listening. That doesn't happen anymore. I know. That's such a shame. Although I do appreciate
00:38:23
Speaker
how voicemails are transcribed. Yeah, voice to script. Yeah. You know, it's convenient. I honestly find it very difficult to remember what we did when you didn't have a phone with you all the time and couldn't get a text message. Yeah. How did we plan anything? You know, how did we show up at the same place at the same time?
00:38:44
Speaker
Well, but we somehow worked it out. We adapted. Right. Well, I mean, I know how you would you would do what you said. You know, if you were going to meet for dinner at eight p.m., you would be there at eight p.m. And if you were really running late, you'd call the restaurant and there'd be a message for you. Sorry.
00:39:00
Speaker
your party can't make it or they're running late. Now, now we kind of just ignore things until, until the, um, the moment is approaching. And then we start like messaging about it, a lot of people. And if you're someone who likes to plan and know things ahead of time, it's going to be, it's going to be hard to work with people who are kind of spontaneous about it. I just think, uh, that maybe it was easier. Like you said you were going to do something and so you just did it. And now,
00:39:30
Speaker
There are so many ways to sort of let somebody else know you changed your mind, it's not going to work for you. Oh, I just looked at the traffic and it's going to take me too long to get down there, that kind of thing. There's more noise. More noise. In a sense. Yeah.
00:39:49
Speaker
You know, I think our thoughts are cluttered more. And, you know, I was looking at something on like a Facebook professional group and someone anonymously posted, like, I never put down my phone. Like, do I have a problem? And most of the respondents were like, no, that's what I do, too.
00:40:10
Speaker
So what do you want for 2023? What do you what do you think is going to happen? Do you think there's so many things? It's not even I don't even know how to formulate the question. Right. There's so many big things going on. It is a little bit hard to think about. It is. But I just hope that people can achieve what they want to achieve.
00:40:29
Speaker
be kinder to each other and kinder to themselves. That's it. You sound like we have to stop soon. This is like end of the session
Closing Thoughts and Listener Engagement
00:40:37
Speaker
talk. Well, it's funny. I just realized like there was something in me that was like, I just can't talk anymore. And I look at, we're at 46 minutes, 45 minutes. So I think that this is, um, and, and for people who don't know, um, therapy and individual therapy session is usually 45 minutes long. So it used to be 50 minutes.
00:40:58
Speaker
Really? The 50-minute hour was, I think, a book title maybe, but it's been pared down. Yeah. I know you're probably a stickler for time too. Not particularly. What's the license plate number of your office? We can sign off. Yeah, I guess we'll just have to leave this one a little bit unresolved, but there's going to be another one after this. Yes. This is the cliffhanger.
00:41:28
Speaker
As PT Barnum said, always leave them wanting more. So with that, thanks for listening. And people can go and if you'd like to rate and review, follow us on Instagram, all of that good stuff. We'd love to hear from you and love to connect. Totally. Absolutely. We would love that. Thanks for listening and stay tuned.
00:42:00
Speaker
Thank you for listening to the doorknob comments podcast. We appreciate your time and hope you've gained something from joining us today. Please let us know what you think. You can email us at hello at doorknobcomments.com. Find us on Instagram at doorknobcomments on iTunes and on our website doorknobcomments.com.
00:42:18
Speaker
Let us know if there are any particular topics you'd like us to address. We'd love to hear from you. Remember, the Doorknob Comments podcast is not medical advice. If you may be in need of professional assistance, please seek consultation without delay.