Summary
Joe reveals why the things we’ve been trying to change for years never change: shame. “Shame is the lock that keeps the chains of bad habits in place.” The things we tell ourselves we “should” do are precisely the things that stay stuck.
He shares a personal experiment: at 28, he wrote down honest truths about himself. Months later, he checked which had changed. The unchanged ones were all things he’d been “shoulding” himself about.
Key Concepts
Key Quotes
“Shame is the lock that keeps the chains of bad habits in place.”
“The things that we are ashamed of are the things that we do for decades.”
“You shame something and you can’t feel anything all the way through. And so you just keep on coming back to trying to find that emotion and you’re repeating that pattern over and over again.”
“Shame is basically saying there’s a part of myself that’s no good. Walking around thinking I’m no good is no walk in the park.”
Transcript
If you’ve ever wondered why you’re not changing in the way that you want to change, the answer is shame. Because shame is the locks that hold the chains of bad habits in place. And in this video, we’re going to talk about shame. We’re going to talk about real tools that help you feel the things that you need to feel so that the shame can just disappear and you can have the life that you want. One of the most stressful thought structures that you can have is a should. There’s things that you have been trying to stop doing for a decade and you haven’t. And every single one of them is something you tell yourself you should do. We tell ourselves we should do stuff. And however, we never look at the fact that that really really seldom works. I remember when I discovered this, I was I was like 28 years old and I had this moment where I was like, I’m going to write down the honest truth about myself whether I want to look at it or not. And so I wrote down all these things about my behavior that were hard to admit. And then I just folded it up and put it away somewhere. And six months later, eight months later, I found it. And when I unfolded that piece of paper, I went through it and said, “How much of these have changed? how many of these have changed? And I checked off all the ones that had changed. And the ones that I hadn’t changed, they were all things that I was telling myself that I should do. So that obligation, that should, need to, have to, it’s incredibly stressful. Telling yourself that, you can just feel your whole body contract when you’re saying it to yourself. You can feel the stress of it. And then it’s also stressful because it doesn’t work. So you’re sitting there telling yourself you should do something, then you don’t do it. Then you beat yourself up for not doing it. Then you tell yourself you should do it again. And then you don’t do it. And then you beat yourself up. And that’s an incredibly stressful situation. Okay. So, this exercise is going to be a writing exercise. And what I’m going to ask you to do is write exactly what I tell you to write and then pause the video. And then once you’re finished writing the list, then unpause the video and take the next step. But don’t listen to the next step before you’ve done the first step or it’ll destroy the experiment for you. Okay, here we go. First step, I want you to take out a piece of paper, get a pencil, or use your phone, and I want you to write down everything that you’ve been trying to change about yourself for at least four years. Whether that’s how you eat or who you hang out with or how nice you are or how you want to become more embodied or more proactive or more forthright with your opinion. I want you to write all of those things down. Okay? Now, press pause and write all those things down. And when you’re done, press play again. All right. Welcome back. So now you have this list in front of you. You’ve written down everything that you’ve been wanting to have different for long time. And now notice and check off all the ones that you feel that sense of obligation around what you feel have felt a sense of shame around that you feel like there’s something wrong with you and that you have to and that you’ve got to if this doesn’t change. And you might notice how ineffective that feeling of shame and obligation is if so many of the things on this paper also are full of that shame and obligation. Go ahead and pause the video until you’re finished checking out the list and then press play again. Shame stagnates behavior. You can think about this society. What what one part of the political divides shames the other part of the political divide for, they just keep on doing that behavior and vice versa, right? Shame just stagnates. The things that we are ashamed of are the things that we do for decades. There’s this great quote by a guy named Aia Shante and he says shame is the locks that keeps the chains of bad habits in place. If you look at kids and and you’re naughty, that’s they’re going to grow up naughty. You shame somebody, it’s the best way to make sure that they’re going to continue that behavior. Shame is like a stagnation of emotion. You shame something and you can’t feel anything all the way through. And so you just keep on coming back to trying to find that emotion and you’re repeating that pattern of shame over and over and over again, which is insanely stressful. But it’s not just stressful for that reason. It’s also extremely stressful when you think about it this way. Shame is basically saying there’s a part of myself that’s no good. Walking around thinking I’m no good is is like no there’s no walk in the park. No one’s like, “Hey, you know what? you know, it feel really good in my body right now is to think I’m no good. So, so multiple places that you’re thinking you’re no good in life, that’s shame just creating this underlying stress in your system and it doesn’t solve anything. It doesn’t actually heal anything. How you drop the shame is a really tricky thing because what’s happening there is that there’s a whole bunch of emotions that are being held back by the shame. And so, uh, you can go to emotional inquiry on our on our website and you can find out how to allow those emotions to move and feel those emotions. There’s also a couple podcasts that you can go to and and listen to. But the critical piece is to just at least first start noticing every place you shame yourself and see how gentle you can be at that moment.