Change isn’t easy. Even change we want. And it’s even harder to create the type of change that lasts. You muster up all your willpower and determination, only to eventually fall back into old habits and patterns. If you’ve experienced this, you’re definitely not alone. Sustainable transformation is one of the toughest things we face.
I’ve been there myself more times than I can count – caught in that frustrating cycle of trying and backsliding over and over again. Ever wonder what’s really getting in your way? What if the biggest roadblocks are the stories you’ve internalized about your own identity and what’s possible?
Well, my guest today is Tamsen Webster, and her new book Say What They Can’t Unhear: The 9 Principles of Lasting Change provides a provocative new framework for doing just that.
For years, Tamsen has been helping people achieve lasting change, on both a personal level, and she’s also helped leaders craft their case for large-scale change. With over a decade as the Idea Strategist for one of the world’s top TEDx events, she has mastered the art of reframing narratives in ways that stick. And, she also draws from her own powerful personal journey overcoming debilitating panic attacks and lifelong weight struggles to develop transformative principles anyone can use.
In this conversation, Tamsen and I explore the deep connection between identity, beliefs, and sustainable behavior change. We talk about listening for those “things we can’t unhear” – profound truths that corrupt our limiting stories and open new perspectives. You’ll learn how to realign your internal logic in a way that has your brain naturally gravitating toward your desired outcomes. And you’ll hear Tamsen’s philosophy for living a genuinely good life, rooted in standing proudly behind your choices each step of the way.
So get ready to be inspired, but also to walk away with practical strategies for lasting transformation, both personal and professional. Because in the end, it all begins with what we choose to believe is possible.
You can find Tamsen at: Website | Instagram | The Compact Case™ | Episode Transcript
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Episode Transcript:
Tamsen Webster: [00:00:00] If I am not sustaining a behavior that I in fact do want to sustain, I need to look differently and not say, well, what’s wrong with me? It is where is the friction with the approach? Right? Because it might just be that it was too much. I try to make too big of a change too quickly. It might have been I’m trying to make an unrealistic change. It might be that I haven’t found the reason yet to actually believe that this is possible for me, or at least to not believe that it’s impossible. Right. If the actions that you take to create a change are not sustainable, then neither is the change. I mean, full stop. Because if I can sustain the action, then I will create the change.
Jonathan Fields: [00:00:43] So whoever said change isn’t easy. Well, that’s kind of an understatement. Even change we want. And it’s even harder to create the type of change that lasts that sticks. You muster up all your willpower and determination only to eventually fall back into old habits, old patterns. And even if you made progress, it just doesn’t last. If you have experienced this, you’re definitely not alone. Sustainable transformation is one of the toughest things that we can do. I have been there myself more times than I can count, caught in a kind of a frustrating cycle of trying and backsliding over and over again. And ever wonder what’s really getting in your way? Because I know I have. What if the biggest roadblocks are actually some of the stories you’ve internalized about your own identity and what’s possible? Well, my guest today is Tamsen Webster and her new book, Say What They Can’t Unhear The Nine Principles of Lasting Change, provides a provocative new framework for really doing just that, like creating lasting change. For years. Tamsen has been helping people achieve lasting change on both a personal level, and she’s also helped leaders craft their case for large scale change. With over a decade as the idea strategist for one of the world’s top TEDx events, she has mastered the art of reframing narratives in ways that stick. And she also draws from her own powerful personal journey, overcoming debilitating panic attacks that literally lasted for more than a decade and a half, and lifelong weight struggles to develop transformational principles anyone can use. In our conversation, Tamsen and I, we explore the deep connection between identity and beliefs and sustainable behavior change. We talk about listening for those things that we can’t unhear profound truths that corrupt our limiting stories and open new perspectives. And you’ll learn how to realign your internal logic in a way that has your brain naturally gravitating toward your desired outcomes. And you’ll hear Tamsen’s philosophy for living a genuinely good life, rooted in standing proudly behind your choices each step of the way. So get ready to be inspired, but also walk away with practical strategies for lasting transformation, both personal and professional. Because in the end, it all begins with what we choose to believe is possible. So excited to share this conversation with you! I’m Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.
Jonathan Fields: [00:03:01] Tamsen, you and I have kind of like, been dancing for years now. We did some work a number of years back in the world of speaking and really understanding storytelling and narrative and your ideas, your frameworks just kind of blew my mind and really changed the way that I thought about so much of the way that I would step up in front of audiences and try and share ideas.
Jonathan Fields: [00:03:20] And so often those ideas, there was either an implicit or hidden intent. I wanted to see change in some meaningful way. I was like, people are showing up with, you know, in a certain state. So many of them wanted to not necessarily leave in a different state, but they wanted to feel their life differently. They wanted to be in their job and their relationships, in their life and their bodies differently. They wanted some experience of change. And I think so often what I would do is stand up and try and share ideas that maybe would be helpful. Maybe it would plant seeds, which is why I was super excited when I saw that you sort of like, built on a lot of the work that you were doing earlier around developing narrative and how to actually share ideas to really step into a much broader philosophy of change. So I’m excited to really dive deep into it. It also occurs to me that for you, this is personal. Very this isn’t just, oh, this is just sort of like an interesting academic pursuit. So take me there a little bit.
Tamsen Webster: [00:04:17] I really feel that I’ve been in some form of change communications for a really long time, but that’s because I’ve been interested in, you know, what I would think of as transformational change for even longer? I talk a little bit about this in my new book, but I hadn’t really ever talked publicly about the fact that I had my first debilitating panic disorder at the age of 17, and from the age of 17 until the age of 34, I continued to have a debilitating panic disorder. From that age, I was always very, very interested in, frankly, how do I not have this thing? And you can tell that just by doing the math, that it took a good 17 years to figure out for me what was going to be the way to get past it. So I’ve really always been interested in that. A few years later, when I was in my mid-twenties, I found myself overweight, as if I hadn’t had anything to do with that. Plenty. But it really was this accumulative process of trying to self-soothe from panic, which turned to smoking and eating. And I was £50 overweight, and after lots of failed attempts, I did find something that worked for me. So that became a transformational change as well. So 25 years now, plus years now and two kids later, I’ve maintained that that weight loss, which turns out unusual. And what I noticed was that I struggled with it and I managed to find a way that that worked for me, but particularly with the health goals piece of it, I found that I wanted to pay that forward. And so even though my professional job, my day job was marketing, branding, messaging, all that kind of good stuff, you know, creating change in minds in the marketplace.
Tamsen Webster: [00:05:55] What I ended up doing was moonlighting for Weight Watchers for 13 years, so that’s where I had lost my weight. And this is not necessarily an endorsement of Weight Watchers, but the purpose of those meetings was to get people to, in micro ways, change their thinking about activity or about food pushers or about whatever that topic might have been in service of this larger macro change of achieving their health goals, whatever those might have been. And you learn a lot with that. I learned the hard way what didn’t work, but I also started to learn through that trial and error, what did work to create that transformational change. And I could see the places where they did align with what was true for me and places where it didn’t. So I was like, mm, that might be a universal thing that may not be. And then I started to take those lessons and apply them in my day job. And I really came away from all of that with this realization that whether we’re talking about professional or personal, and especially sometimes when we’re talking about professional, nothing happens at that level that doesn’t happen at the individual level first. And I think that as much as a lot of times we are resistant to change or even looking for change, once we can understand what those primary levers are between what makes a change happen or not, it can really change not only how we look at that change, but also how likely we are to succeed in it.
Jonathan Fields: [00:07:27] Now that makes a lot of sense. You know, I feel like there’s so much mythology around the notion of change also. And so often we’re sort of told, well, here’s what to do. Like, all you need to do is do it, you know, or it’s just about willpower. You know, it’s there are all sorts of different things that we’re told. And so often we try and then we feel like, okay, so so that didn’t work. Which means that not only was it a failure, but now I’m a failure. So maybe this just isn’t right for me. Maybe I’m not capable of it. Rather than zooming the lens out and saying maybe there’s a larger context here, maybe there’s like a larger framework or model or philosophy that just isn’t really being transmitted to me, that I could step into, that I could adopt, that I could even apply to almost anything in my life that where I was sort of seeking a meaningful shift that would be adaptable to me, to my lifestyle, to who I am and actually affect the change that I want. And it’s interesting that that I don’t think we often go there. I think we often stop short of that on the personal failure level and just say like, all right, I guess this isn’t for me, or it’s just like, I’m not ready for it or worthy of it or capable of it. I mean, does that show up a lot in the work that you’ve seen?
Tamsen Webster: [00:08:37] Oh, gosh. Yes. And that has been one of the, I think, most important lessons that I’ve brought forward into my work because I, I really it’s the damage that’s done to somebody personally from a failed change that I think is one of the most dangerous things to happen at all. And, and yeah, you see that viscerally when you’re talking about something as deeply personal and often as deeply emotional and value and morality laden sometimes as health, weight, activity related things can be. And I saw that and I remember saying, one of the things that I would say often to my members is, listen, my job for you, aside from helping you adapt this program so that it works for you, is to be an unrelenting force of positivity about your ability to do this. Because people are super at beating themselves up and convincing themselves that they can’t. And there’s really nothing more dangerous than to tell someone, you can do this, you can do this, you can do this. And then send them blithely into a system or into a set of concepts that is 100% not going to work. You know, just as a quick example. I mean, it’s whole 30, for instance, that thing where you’re supposed to like, be super restrictive in your eating for 30 days. I mean, it’s 30 days for a reason because it sucks. And the thing is, is that nobody wants to live the rest of their life without something that they love. Like nobody does. And because of so many of those myths and stories and narratives that are out there about things like that, we somehow feel like, as you say, as a failure, if somehow we’re like, you know what? I like chocolate chip cookies. I’m gonna have one. So, so much of what I was trying to do in those early days was saying, okay, what can I do to take the emotion out of it as much as possible? And so that’s where, you know, to your point about is there’s this larger construct, this larger philosophy.
Tamsen Webster: [00:10:43] What else can I learn personally, as the person that’s helping guide these people, to give them information that helps them understand that this isn’t so much them as it is an interaction between them and all of this other stuff that’s happening. There’s a management theorist of all folks, uh, you know, Kurt Levin, who talks about how behavior is a function of people in the environment. And I think sometimes we forget that the environment is actually a significant part of it. I think really, when it comes to understanding change, and particularly if we’re trying to inspire it within ourselves, it helps, I think, just to understand like what fundamentally is and isn’t possible based on human wiring, not just your wiring or my wiring, but humans, because that’s pretty reliable as far as what’s going to work and what’s not going to work. And I don’t even mean like, counting macros. I mean psychologically and cognitively, like, how is it we think about it? So that’s really what I just started to kind of collect magpie like in my toolkit of things, and just have continued to refine those over the years. Um, you know, test them, test them, test them. Go. Oh, that’s one that, you know, consistently works. And, you know, over time, whether it’s been working with people one on one for individual change or with organizations to create it, then putting those principles into practice. And, you know, I figured it was time to put them all together for people.
Jonathan Fields: [00:12:11] And now, like, these principles are also sort of like the focus of doctoral work that you’re doing at Columbia. Yeah. You said something which is like related our ability or desire to change to the environment. And this is sort of like one of the opening principles that you explore, this notion that also changes in just in action, like it’s not something where we decide and we take an action, but it’s often a reaction. And that can be a reaction not just to our own internal environment, but also to everything around us. So take me deeper into this idea because I think it’s really interesting. Yeah.
Tamsen Webster: [00:12:38] I mean, and I, you know, I encourage people when they’re thinking about that principle that change isn’t just an action, it’s a reaction is to really put like a hyphen or a slash between re and action. Meaning, first and foremost, I make a very sharp distinction between action, which is doing a thing, and change which is continuing to do a thing and continuing to do a thing from internally driven reasons, not because you’re trying to get this thing or that you, you know, if you do this, this will happen. Or if you don’t do this, this will happen. In other words, you know, getting away from external punishments and rewards and doing it because it makes and this is a little bit of where I depart from a lot of other approaches. Intuitive sense to you, why this is possible and why you can do it. This is what I mean when, particularly if we’re talking about individual change, that, you know, change is in fact a Factor reaction and part of. Sometimes when a change is difficult for us, or we’re finding it difficult, is because we are naturally reacting to a fundamentally difficult situation for us as humans to do, which is, for instance, to just cut something out of our lives that we find joy in. That just is a of one of many mantras that I would repeat to myself if just listening.
Tamsen Webster: [00:14:00] Like if I am not sustaining a behavior that I in fact do want to sustain, I need to look differently and not say, well, what’s wrong with me? It is where is the friction with the approach? Right? Because it might just be that it was too much. I try to make too big of a change too quickly. It might have been I’m trying to make an unrealistic change. It might be that I haven’t found the reason yet to actually believe that this is possible for me, or at least to not believe that it’s impossible, right? So it very much is this idea of sustainability, which is if the actions that you take to create a change are not sustainable, then neither is the change. I mean, full stop. And it took many failed attempts on my own part to realize I was trying to do things that I mean, maybe I could blame myself for, but it just was not willing to do for the rest of my life. And that became the standard, which was, I’m not going to do something to achieve this outcome for myself that I am not willing to do for the rest of my life, because that’s how long I want the change to last. Because if I can sustain the action, then I will create the change. Yeah.
Jonathan Fields: [00:15:10] I mean, it’s so interesting, right? Because I think so often we think about, well, I can do this thing for a hot minute, like I could sacrifice, I could endure the pain for, you know, like this thing until I hit the goal. But if just achieving a one time goal is very different than creating lasting shift or lasting change where you’re just like, I want to evolve in some meaningful way, or unfold or change in some meaningful way. And I would love for that to be sort of like my sustained state moving forward. It’s a completely different equation, 100%. Almost anyone can get yourself to like a short. This is what I want to do. I want to walk A5K, like I’m going to do everything I need to do and change my routines and do this. But yet to become a person who is just like, you know, like changed in some meaningful way and that is a lasting part of who you are. Yeah. This notion of like, it’s not just the first action, but it’s the reacting like you’ve got to redo like act and act and act and act and act and is not just the outcome that you want something that you want to sustain, but are the actions that would lead to it, something that you would not just deal with sustaining but in some way, shape or form, maybe even at some point find a way to look forward to it.
Tamsen Webster: [00:16:17] Yes, that’s absolutely it. So as you say, it’s about finding those ways where even if something isn’t pleasant for you in the beginning, you know the real thing. And it’s one of the principles you talk about later in the book Is it just can’t be painful for you? And there will be a point where if the outcome is worth it, and the discomfort or the kind of displeasure with a certain behavior is worth it for you, as long as it’s not painful for you. Like emotionally, physically, mentally painful for you. Oftentimes what will happen is you’ll just find a way to reframe it, right? So that it’s just getting to a point where you’re like, well, I don’t love this, but this is my path to and therefore I’m going to accept it. Like, I wish it could be otherwise, but it can’t. So therefore we’re going to go forward.
Jonathan Fields: [00:17:03] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors.
Tamsen Webster: [00:17:09] So much of this is just about not making it so hard on ourselves. And I mean that both emotionally and in the degree of change. And, you know, it’s kind of like that, that old classic slogan of faster, better, cheaper, pick two. And, you know, that’s true, I think in any other form of change as well. So you can there’s speed, there is, you know, the equivalent of better whatever that is. So for let’s say health goals, that is something healthier or not, whatever that might be some quality related thing. And then there’s cheaper, which may actually be cost, but it can also be kind of psychic and emotional cost. And generally you get two out of the three. And so it’s about making that conscious choice about understanding. Well, this 1st May feel more costly to me, but it’s because I’m choosing for it to go faster or I want this to be easier for me, because what I would often say to people is faster, better, easier when it comes to long term change. And if I want this to be easier for me and healthy, then the only thing that can happen at that point is that it slows down. So what can you change without pain?
Jonathan Fields: [00:18:21] Yeah, I mean, it really does apply to pretty much every domain of life, of relationships, of work. And yet we are so driven by speed. You know, so often we get in our mind, we’re like, okay, so we have this vision of like where we want to be, what we want to accomplish, who we want to become, whatever it is. And we’re like, how do I get there as quickly as humanly possible? Like, now that I see it, how can I just be it? How can I make that my reality? Yeah. And so often we don’t realize that, like you’re saying, like the the faster that you go, like, maybe there is a way to actually make it happen really quickly, but you’re probably giving up a whole bunch of the behaviors that you’d be able to sustain long term to get there, which means that, okay, so you get there, but then it’s like then you end up blowing it up because like, you can’t sustain what got you there a day after you arrived.
Tamsen Webster: [00:19:11] I mean, the way that I’m wired is that I’m very much a, you know, to borrow a term from, from computing. I’m very much a serial processor. Like, I like to focus on a thing and finish it and then focus on a thing and finish it. And some of that is the sensitivity, I think, from having had a panic disorder for so long as well. Is that a huge part of my life to this day, is just trying to reduce what I refer to as the traffic noise in my head, because there’s always something sparking at me and talking, whether it’s a fun idea. You and I were talking about that, but before we were recording, part of what I wanted to get to was I wanted to find something that would permanently reduce the traffic noise of those issues in my head. I know also about myself, and I’m very much a structure framework process person, which is why that particular program worked well for me. Does not work well for everybody, because some people really resist rules and things like that. I love a good system, but it allowed me to get to a point where I didn’t have to think about it as much. Some, a lot of it became second nature, and actually all of it became second nature. And that would be that turned into something that I would also explain to folks that were starting on some form of change path. You know, I would use the metaphor of a building. I’d say, listen, what we’re doing right now is we’re building a building, right? You know how when you build a building, we put scaffolding up, right? It’s just so that we can work on the outside of the building.
Tamsen Webster: [00:20:35] We can work on the inside of the building. We got everything. And then once the building is built, what happens to the scaffolding? We take it down because the building is there. It’s strong. That’s the whole point. Like in the beginning, it’s like training wheels on a bike. You’re going to need a little extra support, a little bit of extra, you know, guidance and whatever in order to get to a point where you’re comfortable and just like a building, there’s going to be times, no matter what, change you’re trying to make, where you kind of have to go back and put the scaffolding back up to fix something on the windows, or to put like replace the stuff between the bricks, and then you’re going to take it back down again. But the point is, is to figure out will help you build the building so that it goes there and it stays strong. You’re not going to create transformational change from a place of shame. You’re not going to create transformational change from a point of weakness. You’re not going to create a transformational change from a point of self-loathing like none of that’s going to happen. So much of my approach to myself and when I’ve been helping people directly make these transformational changes, and now in my work, which is helping people help other people make transformational change, is moving people into a focus on those things where they are already strong, where they already have confidence to put these changes even when they’re unexpected, like, for instance, when they’re put upon them by work or something like that, and figure out how can you put this change rather than thinking of it as like, oh, this is a change of direction.
Tamsen Webster: [00:22:11] How can you see it? Can you see it in a way that it allows you? It is actually just it’s now actually helping to serve and move you towards or faster or whatever, and towards a different direction. And what I mean by a different direction is the one that you’re already in, the one that you’re already moving towards. And I think that can make a huge difference, just to say, where are the strengths that I already have? Because whether we realize it or not, they exist. And so when we’re trying to make a big change, the more that we can ground and spring from the things that we that are very, very stable, from our values, from our passions, from our beliefs and from our support systems, and not be trying to like, overextend into new things, which I know sounds counterintuitive, but generally that is always going to be a much more comfortable path to this change. But it’s also going to allow us to readjust in that slightly new area fully before making the next stage, like next step forward on the journey. And so in other words, we’re building strength as we’re going because we’ve started from a place of strength.
Jonathan Fields: [00:23:25] That makes a lot of sense. And you hear versions of if you start from a place of brokenness or deficit, or at least the perception of it, if that’s the story you’re telling yourself, it makes it so much harder. And if you can figure out what is the narrative of me now that I can get comfortable with, maybe I can’t love it. But what is the narrative? Me now that I can get as okay with as I can really be? And that really speaks to sort of like another big part of your philosophy, which is that so much of change work also is about it’s it’s story driven. It’s about the personal narratives that run underneath the external change that we’re seeking.
Tamsen Webster: [00:24:01] Yes. I mean, for eight plus years now, I, you know, my it was the guiding mantra underneath my first book that every decision has a story. Every decision we make has a story behind it. And it’s not just some kind of like, actual story that you can tell yourself about why you’re doing this thing in a certain particular way. But, I mean, there’s an unconscious story that your brain is producing where it’s, you know, rather than being a once upon a time story, it’s a relationship between cause and effect. Our brains are constantly saying to us, whether we realize it or not, if you do this, this will happen or this happened because this is true, or that person did this because this is, you know, this is what’s happening. So one of the things that was really foundational for me with even within the last couple of years, and it’s what sparked this whole different and related line of deeper research into stories and narratives. And all of that is to tag on two more words to that first thing, which is that every decision has a story we believe. And if we are not. And this is significant because first and foremost, we have to understand that that story is this cause and effect. And so one of the first things that we need to sometimes do is just actually take it from being inside and put it outside, like say that inside part out loud, which is what am I actually thinking here? What is the cause and effect relationship that I’ve got? And then and yeah, this is what therapy does. But it’s about saying what are the beliefs behind that? Why do I think that that cause and those effects are related.
Tamsen Webster: [00:25:34] And once we can surface those beliefs and this is again this is not new information to anywhere except in business. But that’s a whole different topic that if we can pull those deeper assumptions up and forward, we can look at them and we can say, well, what is it in this kind of combination of beliefs that’s really getting in our way? For example, with my panic disorder, it’s got disorder in the name of it. So it’s kind of hard to think of this as like that you’re a normal human when you’ve got a thing that like says disorder. This was way before anxiety was a big thing. I mean, you know, I think you and I are both Gen X, so this is whole Prozac generation. It was not on Prozac, but this was like early stages when they knew like nothing other than the fact that you’re like, you’re a freak. And like, that’s definitely how it was made to feel. But that story was one that I was telling myself. So anytime I would feel these like physical things, because for me, most of my anxiety I actually had a physical, often had a physical trigger. I found later that it had there was more actually an emotional trigger, which I was having a strong emotion which then created a physical trigger. That’s a whole thing. But the first thing that would happen would be like, oh my God, no, this is you being abnormal again. Stop stop stop stop stop right. This this kind of restrictive like don’t do this right.
Jonathan Fields: [00:26:56] And that’s the story you’re telling yourself. Also, like the story is I’m a weirdo, that I’m abnormal. Like this is.
Tamsen Webster: [00:27:01] Exactly. And then through therapy. Right. Like, I remember having a conversation with one of my therapists and, you know, he said to me one time, he was he was like, well, first of all, he said, well, what makes you think you have to live with this? So that was like an instant something I couldn’t unhear because it had never been expressed to me in any way, shape or form, that this was a thing that you could get past, not just a thing you could manage, but a thing you could get past. And so just even hearing that was just like, whoa, whoa, really? Oh hell yeah, I’m going to figure this one out. But one of the things was that realization that my panic was very much driven by any strong emotion, not just fear, anxiety, stress, whatever it would happen when I was excited, it would happen when I was happy. Like, and there’s lots of childhood reasons for that. But what that allowed me to do was to realize that those moments where I could start to feel that start to happen instead of like bracing, which is really the opposite of what’s going to help in those moments, as I discovered. But to say to myself, you know what? Actually it makes sense that you’re feeling this way right now because this is, for now, your coping mechanism.
Tamsen Webster: [00:28:10] Right? It makes sense. This is, you know, these things are present. That person is present. This is what’s happening. It makes sense that you are feeling this right now because this is normal for you. And by removing that judgment, self-judgment and shame that came with that, it allowed me to go, yeah, okay. All right. This is normal. And since I knew from very long practice that there wasn’t anything I could actively do to stop it, the next step was just like, ride it out. And what I found was that, you know, that combination of this is normal for me, and some version of the only way out is through really serve to work. I mean, I don’t want to overstate it, but it was close to instantaneously my panic stopped. But all of that was made possible because, again, a kind of a non judgy way of thinking about it, to me at least, is how I took it is just that, you know, the more I understood, which was again part of my process, like, let me understand. Let me think. I’m a sage maven from your Sparketypes about this. The more that I could find other explanations for things. And, you know, I realized that for panic, that’s very much a thought driven disorder.
Tamsen Webster: [00:29:21] Meaning the anxiety, the symptoms, the physical symptoms, 100% real. And then what will turn it into a panic attack, like an actual uncontrollable thing is the mental reaction that you have to that the oh, no. Oh, here it goes. So that kind of coalesced and crystallized in my head in this idea of, oh, well, I thought my way in and if I thought my way in, ergo, I don’t know if it would pass a logic test or not, but like it worked for me. Which was to say, if I thought my way in, I could think my way out. That’s part of what kept me attuned for looking for things like, oh, this is normal for me, and the only way out is through so that I could look at the combination of things that I was bringing to bear in any situation and start to change the story. And I think so often when we think about changing the story, we try to change the character who’s living it, which is not possible quickly. And it’s not that it’s not possible, it’s just not possible quickly. Or we try to like, change the environment completely or those kinds of things. But what I’ve come to discover, and this is true, whether it’s in a story, story or the stories that we tell ourselves, the thing that tells the story is the inputs of the story.
Tamsen Webster: [00:30:36] Meaning what are the principles, the beliefs, the values in play? What’s possible in any given pursuit of change is not necessarily to change your beliefs, because that’s or to challenge them because, gosh, a lot of times that’s what people do. They go right after those limiting beliefs, right? I mean, I’ve heard that a million times and say, well, don’t think that. Think this. Well, that’s how I think, so what the heck? So instead of doing that, it’s actually about creating a new arrangement of things you believe. So it wasn’t that I didn’t believe that panic disorder was abnormal, but I could find a way to think about it was just like, well, this is normal for me. It doesn’t deny the reality of it being a disorder, but it allows there to be something that there’s a stronger belief that something that I believe that was actually stronger than what was there, and having that belief in what I could do. Like when I said I couldn’t, I thought my way in. I could think my way out again. That was a belief based on other experiences in my life. I figured, I can figure this out because I figured other things like this out.
Jonathan Fields: [00:31:41] That makes so much sense. It’s sort of like, and the relationship between those deep beliefs and your ability to actually tell yourself a different story and then potentially even tell others a different story. It’s like it seems like you can’t do one without the other. Like the story is built upon the beliefs that underlie. So if your belief is I’m broken, there’s nothing I can do. Like this is going to destroy me. This is going to be me for life. That’s kind of like a blend of both belief and story right there. You know, everything is.
Tamsen Webster: [00:32:07] Oh, I love that you said that. Here’s the thing to understand is, like everyone, I think there’s a gosh, I love empathy, I do and I love feelings I do, but there’s very little we can do to affect our feelings directly. Now, I will clearly say, I’ve already said I’m a CBT poster child. I am very much in like thoughts, feelings, actions. That’s how it goes. And yet there are feelings that arise without any thoughts, right? To think that we are always capable of like creating like I did not create the feeling of my heart. Skipping beats like that is not a thought that I created. Like that would just still does just happen. So here’s where this goes. It’s just that we operate from an internal logic. We do like part of what our fast animalistic system, one lizard brain, whatever you want to call it, system is an intuitive thing, right? And that’s where the beliefs lay. But it is also the structure of that cause and effect, you know. And this goes back to our time living in caves. Like if there’s a sound you’re going to attend to it, you’re going to pay attention to it with kind of a suspended animation to be like, is it a saber tooth tiger? And then eventually you’re going to associate, like if that sound happens enough and it gets reinforced enough that, yep, that’s the saber tooth tiger sound. Like you hear anything that starts to sound like that, you’re going to get the feeling. And it’s not a conscious thought, but we just haven’t evolved that much when it comes to our cognitive processes, which means that again, we’re going to operate not just because every decision has a story.
Tamsen Webster: [00:33:42] Another way of thinking about it, which is has it just depends on how you’re looking at it. But it’s equally true, is that every action ends an internal argument in our head about why that decision does or doesn’t make sense. It does. And I mean that literally. It is a logical argument in its structure because we we have made some kind of pre-conscious case for these two things are related in this way. So think of it like Mad Libs. You know that like kids game, right? Where you fill in the things like, yeah, I miss those days with my boys. Like playing with it. But so that logical structure is like the blank unfilled out page on the Mad Libs. And then what we do is we fill in those blanks with our own pre-existing beliefs and values. At some level you can go, oh my gosh, then what’s the hope? But I look at that and go, oh my gosh, there’s this amazing opportunity and this is where I have been. Just got to just grinding on these questions for like 25 years now, because first of all, and this is what I was doing with the red thread, I said, a, I believe there is a standard structure to that story. Turns out there is. And b, Be thanks to Aristotle. There is a standard structure for analyzing an argument as well. I was like, and that’s even simpler than a story structure. And so what we’re doing is we’re basically swapping what we’re doing. We’re filling in this logical structure with oftentimes irrational beliefs. So it’s simultaneous logical but not rational.
Jonathan Fields: [00:35:15] Because like the macro structure is is logical. But then you’re filling in the details with something that is not logical, which makes the whole thing collapse.
Tamsen Webster: [00:35:23] It can but as long as it makes sense for you. Right. So it’s like even when something doesn’t make sense, there’s a positive intention behind every behavior. Meaning we’re always trying to do something for us that makes sense, right? It does actually make sense that even when the behavior is negative or harmful to us, it’s serving us in some way. So to me, it really is about when we’re trying to make that change happen for ourselves, because it’s really the only people we can make it happen for. It is about being willing in those moments where we observe, and I would encourage us all to be particularly keen to notice. And sometimes we choose to be blind to this, to notice those times when there is a gap between what we say we want and what our actions say we want. It’s basically that there’s a gap between what you, your espoused values and your values in use. Meaning the ones that you’re actually using sometimes are not the ones that you say. And so if you see that gap and oftentimes the whole sign is the change is not happening, the change that you’re looking for is not happening. It’s usually a good sign that something isn’t aligned there, that it’s a really good opportunity to just say, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa whoa. Okay, I say I want this, and yet I’m not making these changes, so why not? Like, what is that? What’s going on? Am I telling myself it’s not possible? Because that’s what I did for three years, that I was overweight before I started to find any success with losing. It was just like, well, I guess this is it. I’m a normal American woman. I am the average height. I am the average overweight weight, and that’s it. This is just what it’s going to be. And it took being presented with something that I couldn’t deny. And that was actually a coworker who was like looking at my after picture in real life because she was my exact height and she was only a couple years older than me, and she was talking about how she used to be £50 heavier, which was the weight that I was at the moment, that I was like looking at her and she was describing how she would get like super exhausted and tired at 3:00 every day.
Tamsen Webster: [00:37:30] And I’m like, you were describing my life. And just to be able to see someone like living that kind of it created what I now know because of my doctoral stuff. Like it’s from a learning perspective. It’s known as a disorienting dilemma, right? Like all of a sudden there’s this thing where you’re like, whoa, whoa. And the way that you’ve making meaning of the world suddenly gets, like, whacked like a mobile, right? And it takes a little while to first decide whether or not you’re going to let that settle back to where it was, or are you going to take that moment and question yourself and say, all right, well, she did it. Now let me start to question my own assumptions here about what is and isn’t possible. And at least again for me, that being able to understand or to accept that something was possible in principle was enough for me to get started and to do the exploration of like, okay, if it’s possible in principle, how can I make it possible in practice? How can I actually make this work for me because it’s a different person, she lives a different life and then find that thing that says, what is the right combination for me, given how I want to live my life, given how like what I know about myself, or what I’m learning about myself as things that I try don’t work to say, well, what can I do differently? How can I fill in those blanks of that Madlib in a way that leads me towards where the story actually now works in principle.
Tamsen Webster: [00:39:02] Because, I mean, Jonathan, I think that’s the thing that we miss so often is that, you know, and I’m blessed. Simon Sinek. I’m so glad that he did. And he and there’s another person who does all this work on purpose as well. I can’t remember his name off the top of my head, but, you know, really focusing on like, well, why are you doing something right? Because that’s cause and effect. Like, it’s like I’m doing this thing. That’s the cause. So I can have this effect. That’s the why piece. But the only things that we will stay with long term and I mean this not only in our behaviors, but partners, brands, organizations, whatever are when we also agree with why they’re doing it that way. Or we at least understand why that we can intuit and agree that, well, now I understand why it would work. And so often when it comes to transformational change about ourselves, we just haven’t done that exploration of saying, what do I know would make this true for me, right? So, you know, I oftentimes would meet people who, for instance, were at, you know, where my members and they would be struggling and, you know, and we would get to talking and they, you know, I’d find out what they did.
Tamsen Webster: [00:40:06] And I mean, some of them were like, you know, hedge fund managers. And I was like, you’re really good at managing budgets. And they’re like, yeah. And I’m like, could you think about this as a budget? And they were like, oh. And sometimes again, it’s like the context is so different sometimes that people don’t see that something like a strength they have in one area can map over to another. But that’s really the kind of thing that you’re looking for. You’re saying what is not. Instead of looking for the proof that you can’t do something, what is the proof that you could not that you will, but that would make it even possible, right, for you to do it. I mean, you’ve heard me say a couple about myself today. Like, I know I’m really good with systems, so, you know, I struggle with money for a really long time until I found a program that was a really good system for me. Again, it’s about understanding and kind of learning from experience what works, what doesn’t, and then starting to swap those things into that so that your internal logic now points you in the direction of the thing that you want, rather than is the thing that’s keeping you back.
Jonathan Fields: [00:41:09] That phrase you shared also, I think was disorienting.
Tamsen Webster: [00:41:12] Dilemma yeah.
Jonathan Fields: [00:41:13] Um. I kind of love that because, you know, on the surface it sounds negative, but it’s disorienting you toward possibility. It sounds like it’s something that kind of jars your your deeply held beliefs about what is or isn’t possible for you. Correct. And then kind of makes you question them and then presents you with some form of evidence. Maybe it’s just a little bit, but just enough where it’s like it’s disorienting to those beliefs to that, like what you were locked into. And it makes you question your sense of like, I believe this was impossible, but now I’m literally staring at something that is showing me that this is possible. And maybe it’s also it’s close enough to me that it’s kind of showing me that it’s also possible for me. And your brain kind of gets a little bit scrambled, but in a good way, but in a good way.
Tamsen Webster: [00:42:05] Yeah, exactly. I mean, that’s it’s so true. And I would say that, you know, one of the things long time fan of Seth Godin and in one of his books, I think it was linchpin, he talks about like, there’s no map, right? Like, so stop asking for a map. Nobody’s going to give you a map. And I mean, I do agree with that because once you know, something is possible, a lot of times when people say, well, tell me what you did, I’m going to do the same thing. And the thing is that the reason why, more often than not, that doesn’t work, is that the one thing that is truly unique about each one of us is our point of view is our own personal philosophy outlook on life, that truly unique combination of core principles, beliefs and values, that it is different person to person. So, you know, in my in the kind of the marketing branding change communication side of my life, that’s what we’re drilling down on is to say like, okay, well, what is truly different about your outlook in this case? But it’s for that same reason why somebody else’s plan map isn’t going to work for you.
Jonathan Fields: [00:43:07] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors.
Tamsen Webster: [00:43:13] With the new book, when I talk about say what they can’t unhear, you know, people will say, well, what is that like? What defines something that someone can’t unhear that it is first and foremost a recognizable truth, meaning you hear it and that little that like system, one instinctive intuitive goes, that’s true. You don’t need evidence. Maybe it’s the evidence of your own eyes or whatever, but no one’s given you like a whole bunch of data and facts. You just hear this and you’re like, that’s true. And not only do you recognize it as true, but it also does one of three things. It either in a truly disorienting place, it kind of corrupts how you see the world, and you’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa whoa, whoa. This clearly is possible. When I thought it was not, for instance, or oh my gosh, I always thought that genes determined everything. And it’s just like, well, you know what? Here’s a fun fact about genes. Like, if you look at somebody like chromosomes, you literally cannot tell if they came from a live person or a dead person. So how much can they really tell you? Also, 10% of known diseases are actually genetically caused.
Tamsen Webster: [00:44:19] So that kind of thing is like, oh, well then that kind of corrupts the story that I’ve been telling myself, which is just I’m genetically destined to be X, Y, or Z. So that’s one of them corrupts. The next one, I would say, is that it crystallizes something that you have heard or believed, but you just didn’t have the words for it up until that point. And so, you know, one of the earliest ones I can remember is, of all things, a Baz Luhrmann movie called Strictly Ballroom, where there’s a character who says to another character, and this is kind of the early days of my panic disorder. She says to him, A life lived in fear is a life half lived. And it was just like, boom, right? And so here is this sense of something that I had, and it helped kind of present that North Star for me for 17 years afterwards to be like. And it still guides me like, where am I on my sons? We would do like ropes courses, and my older son has like no fear of anything heights, roller coasters, whatever. And he’s like, come on mom and I’m like [gasp]! And I’m like, life lives in fear. Life lives in fear. Half lived, half lived. And I’m like, well, I still don’t enjoy it, but I didn’t miss out on it. So that’s a thing too, right? When all of a sudden it just crystallizes something that you care about or something like crystallizes a the truth that you had sense, but you didn’t have a way to believe it. This is where Proverbs are awesome, because Proverbs are those crystallizations of recognizable truths, right? Like a stitch in time saves nine or it’s opposite, and Tom’s favorite, which is the second mouse gets the cheese, and then the last one is that it creates something. It really creates an opportunity to see the world in a new way, where again, it’s not just that it distorts something, but it’s just like it opens up a whole new perspective of things you just hadn’t even thought of before. And it really brings you, you know, if we’re talking about whatever, how we ever want to think about it developmental theory, cognitive theory, psychological behavior, all of this thing, the same things happen. You’re like, Boop. We’re in like a new stage of awareness now where we can suddenly see that story that we’ve been in, rather than just being in it and living it. There’s that moment where we hear something and all of a sudden it just pops us out of it. It doesn’t mean that we’re not kind of experiencing, but now we can actually look at it as almost this disembodied person and go, that’s what we were talking about before. Well, hold on a minute, right? Like, you realize that you’ve actually been kind of accepting certain things that you’ve been telling yourself unchecked, and it allows you to go it kind of creates that mental distance from how you’ve been thinking about your world and your stories up until that point.
Tamsen Webster: [00:46:54] And again, it just goes shook. And then you’re like, whoa, all right, what comes next? As a result of this kind of new place that I am and this recognizing where I’ve been and what I’m telling myself, that oftentimes in and of itself will create that opportunity to say, well, how do I build a new point of view now that I realize that I can’t put myself back in, I can’t unlearn the thing that I’ve learned. I can’t unhear the thing that I’ve heard, and I’m choosing not to deny whatever truth that I recognized in it that sometimes, you know, so much of, I think the process of change is actually consciously listening for those things that, you know, the phrase I’ve often used in my head, it’s like it’s again, it’s just a reminder to myself, is disconfirm what you believe to be true? And I listen for things that go against consciously, that listen for things that are different than what I assume, because it just serves as a constant little check on, you know, have I missed something? Am I willingly being subjected to some other way of thinking that isn’t mine, that I’m not choosing, or that I’m not choosing consciously because I don’t want to be given all the years that I spent kind of in the grips of a panic disorder, I don’t want to be held prisoner by my thoughts unknowingly.
Jonathan Fields: [00:48:11] That all make sense also. And it’s like what you’re describing in part is, you know, like it’s this experience that gives you a different it kind of shatters your model of what was it kind of shatters your your beliefs. It shatters your stories that you were telling yourself. To a certain extent. It shatters your identity, but not in a bad way, because it also says. But here’s a hint what a new set of beliefs might be that would actually, like, move you into a new story that would allow you to then stand in a place of like, oh, like I’m a person who is X? Yes. To sort of like tell a different story about who you are. And as you sort of like wrap in the, in, like in your work also is this notion that once we travel that journey where, okay, so like, like things happen that lead to this shift in beliefs that lead to shifts in stories that lead to shifts in identities, that then if we start to to implement behaviors, make changes aligned with all of that, that change is aligned with the shift in identity, with the shift deeper shifts. Yeah. That’s what creates the lasting commitment to what we talked about in the very beginning to the like, the reaction to the saying, like, I’m not just taking an action once, but like, this is actually I’m changing the way that I’m moving through the world, like in a sustained way. And that is what really leads to lasting change that so many of us say we want, but often can’t quite grasp. Does that make sense?
Tamsen Webster: [00:49:36] Yes, 100%. And it was funny. It was a it was a it was a key principle underneath my first book. And then I was I had the good fortune of working with a research scientist that actually has proven it to be true in the lab, which is that how we see the world drives what we do. Like full stop. How you see drives what you do. Ergo, if you change how you see, you will change what you do. That is also true. This is where the kind of looking for those disorienting truths can come into play. Because what it ends up doing, and it is the thing I talk about in the book, is that I kind of do this to myself all the time, which is like I force a little battle of beliefs, because if by looking for these things all the time, it forces me to go do do do do like again, intuitive check or something, but there’s not a clear answer right away. Then I’ll then I’ll go and explore and say, let me find out more. Does this feel right to me? Does this prove out like it doesn’t seem right? But let me explore more. Let me try it. Let’s see. Like, you know, it might surprise me. And one of the things that I mentioned in the book, and it’s it’s just absolutely in line with what you just said, Jonathan, which is that when you’re able to do that, when you choose to do that, because it is a choice, is to say what you’re what I have seen it do is that instead of eroding your identity, it clarifies it because you are making these like it’s by putting these two truths against each other.
Tamsen Webster: [00:50:55] Because as I say, when two truths fight, only one wins. The whole point, though, is you have to put them head to head, because we’re very good at existing with like competing things in our head all the time. You know, we’re delightful hypocrites. I mean, we’ll just, you know, just that’s how we are. Insist on punctuality, but then we’ll be late to a party and be like, I’m fashionably late. But when we put them against each other in that moment and you’re like, well, which one are you? And you’re like, oh, well. This one. Then what you’re doing is you’re tuning that internal logic to logically lead to the outcome you want, instead of kind of creating this thing that just cannot lead to this conclusion. I mean, I mean, you can get pretty dorky about it from a logic standpoint. It’s just like if the kind of A plus B cannot possibly equal C with how your beliefs are, if like A and B are beliefs, and C is the thing that you want and your beliefs, A and B are just, it has to work. And so that’s the whole point is to say if you want this thing, if there’s this change that you’re trying to make, if there’s this, you know, whether that’s fulfillment or happiness or alignment or wow, oh, new job, whatever it is, then it has to say again, what are those things that I can look at and choose that are already in my identity that would actually make that equation work? And if that’s too kind of logical for you again, then what do you believe to be true about yourself that would make it possible, at least in principle, that this change, this even transformational change is within your reach.
Tamsen Webster: [00:52:26] Because once you change that logic, your brain cannot help but to act in accordance with it. That’s actually, you know, sometimes we look at it as a negative where we’re like, oh, well, we’re just kind of behaviorally consistent. And, you know, we’re going to follow this internal logic. Mike. Yeah. And we can also turn it to our advantage. It’s like once you’ve rearranged that logic, it becomes an equally effective set it and forget it kind of thing, where it’s moving you towards that thing where you don’t have to think about what you’re doing at every stage anymore, because it is rooted and rooted and through these things that you already believe you already agree with, you already know are possible. And now you’ve you’ve stitched them together in a way that, again, makes it both intuitive and intellectual sense to you about why this time. This is the time that you’re going to figure this out.
Jonathan Fields: [00:53:20] Yeah, it’s kind of like it becomes a GPS for your behavior, which which leads to the outcomes that you want. Love. That feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So in this container of Good Life Project., if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?
Tamsen Webster: [00:53:36] Do what you’re proud of. That’s the best way I can phrase it. And I think that kind of idea got set early in my life when I was an angsty teenager, and I read the book Notes on Love and Courage by Hugh Prather. And one of the lines that has always stuck with me is to live your life as if everything you do will eventually be known. For me, the way that I have been able to live a good life, even though I haven’t always lived up to my own standards there who has? I have just found that if I can stand fully behind what I do, if I can check the story I was telling myself, not judge an earlier version of myself by later self self-knowledge. But if I can say that at any given moment that I’m doing the best that I can, given what I know, and that I’m proud of what I’m doing and how, then that’s worked out very well for me.
Jonathan Fields: [00:54:30] Mhm. Thank you.
Jonathan Fields: [00:54:33] Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode Safe bet, you’ll also love the conversation we had with Maya Shankar about how we change. You’ll find a link to Maya’s episode in the show. Notes. This episode of Good Life Project. was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and Me. Jonathan Fields Editing help By Alejandro Ramirez. Kristoffer Carter crafted our theme music and special thanks to Shelley Adelle for her research on this episode. And of course, if you haven’t already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project. in your favorite listening app. And if you found this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable, and chances are you did. Since you’re still listening here, would you do me a personal favor? A seven second favor and share it? Maybe on social or by text or by email, even just with one person. Just copy the link from the app you’re using and tell those you know, those you love, those you want to help navigate this thing called life a little better so we can all do it better together with more ease and more joy. Tell them to listen, then even invite them to talk about what you’ve both discovered. Because when podcasts become conversations and conversations become action, that’s how we all come alive together. Until next time, I’m Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.