959: Don’t Believe Everything You Think With Joseph Nguyen

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Katie: Hello and welcome to the Fit Bottomed Zone Podcast. I’m Katie from fitbottomedzone.com, and this beautiful episode is an invitation to not believe everything that you think. And I’m with a guest who wrote a bestselling book by the same name that was really profoundly helpful for me. My friend Joseph, he’s a New York Times bestselling author of the book called Don’t Believe Everything You Think.

His work has been translated into many languages and has touched thousands of people all over the world, millions of readers worldwide. And he draws inspiration from philosophy, spirituality, and psychology. And what I love is that he distills all this timeless wisdom into simple, pragmatic, and accessible tools that we can all make use of in daily life.

And I feel like his writing style, his storytelling approach, and as you’ll hear in this interview today, his way of speaking are so helpful. There’s so many nuggets in this interview. I will let you hear them for yourself in real time, but he talks about so much about our inner experience, about learning to differentiate between thoughts and thinking, how we truly create our reality by our experiences and our perceptions and our attention and so much more.

I absolutely loved this conversation and I know you will as well. So let’s jump in. Joseph, welcome. Thank you so much for being here.

Joseph: Thank you so much for having me. It is such an honor and a pleasure.

Katie: I have been excited for this interview for a while, and it’s long overdue. I’m so glad we finally get to chat again. We were introduced through a mutual friend and immediately I just felt so aligned with you. I loved your book before I even knew you, and I’m really excited to get to go in all those directions today.

And if you’re willing, I think it would be awesome to hear a little bit more about your personal story and what actually what led to this book that ended up becoming a bestseller with good reason. But I know it wasn’t sort of your first endeavor and that maybe there was a story there that led to the birth of this book.

Joseph: Yeah, of course. So yeah, I believe some of the best books come from the author’s, greatest pains and that was very true for this book for me. It was a visceral lived experience, born out of a great deal of pain, of introspection, of reflection, and a lot of spiritual and emotional thrashing before I could find, before I could tread water and put my head above the surface.

And it goes back to kind of how I was raised and brought up and some of the things that were really difficult in my life at the time. So it kind of starts with my journey of probably right after high school where I left, or I graduated high school and entered college and really wanted to be able to help my parents.

So they went into maybe about like a million dollars worth of debt after the ’08 crash. So I saw how taxing that was for them and like physically, mentally, spiritually,  financially. And they hid it from us pretty well as kids. Growing up, it was just me and my brother, but as children, you kind of, you don’t have to really hear your parents say much, you can feel everything that’s going on.

So that was our experience of life, which was they loved us so much. They tried to give us everything they possibly could within theirmeans and bounds. But we saw how much stress that they were going through. And so to me, that translated to, I wanted to do everything I possibly could to give back to them.

So I kind of, at that point when I entered college, I decided to start a business to kind of help them exit out of that debt, to pay it off. So I helped my mom grow her businesses and things like that. And I grew my own advertising agency up to a pretty great amount and that was like an amazing experience.

The only issue is, you know, I kind of had a goal of like trying to gain financial freedom and then help my parents pay off the debt. But what I didn’t realize was the cost of that while pursuing that journey. So on the road to achieving that goal, I sacrificed everything. I sacrificed my relationships, my own personal health, my spiritual health, emotional health, so many different things.

And I just completely neglected myself. So I kind of spiraled downwards. I accomplished seemingly everything that I wanted to, but felt emptier than I ever had before, after I had accomplished that. And that’s because everything was sacrificed as a byproduct. And I thought that accomplishing that goal would alleviate all of the anxiety, all of the emotional angst and lack of fulfillment that I had in life.

But it did the opposite, which left me extremely puzzled because I thought that if you followed what the typical roadmap was to success, to a fulfilling life, to having enough money to live, a roof over your head like that, that would lead to some sort of internal peace. But it only amplified the the anxiety that I was having.

So chronic anxiety every single day. I had no idea where I was gonna get the next client, if I was gonna have enough money to pay for rent and things like that. My wife at the time had a chronic illness and it’s gastroparesis, so it was paralysis of the stomach. And so she had to be hospitalized multiple times.

And just watching a loved one go through something so difficult like that, and having no control and no cure and anything like that is probably one of the most difficult things I’ve had to experience. So I essentially hit rock bottom after that and my business partner and I split, went 50 grand into debt at the age of like 21.

So it was, it was a bad time to say the least. And that’s when I hit rock bottom. And that to me was the point of no return because, and the point where everything shifted because I tried to exhaust all external options to fulfill this internal void. And that was finally the point in which I started asking myself the really important questions in life, which was like, who am I?

Why am I here? Why am I having all of these negative thoughts thinking, why do I feel so unfulfilled in life? And so that was the inflection. And then I started asking myself things like if, I mean, I can’t lose anything else, so I’ve lost everything that I seemingly could. If I had unlimited money already traveled the world, had no fear and didn’t receive any recognition for what I did, what would I do or what would I create?

And that was a turning point for, or actually the beginning of me writing the book. So I don’t write after I have clarity, I actually write to gain clarity. And so that began the journey of writing for me and trying to figure out what is going on. Because obviously manipulating the external world did not give me the internal peace I was looking for. So then I had to begin looking inward and questioning everything that I thought, including my own thinking, which was, are all these thoughts true? If so, how do I know? Why do I believe what I believe? Have I ever stopped to question what I believe or did I just adopt my beliefs from everyone around me?

And can I form new beliefs that help me versus hurt me? So that was the genesis of everything.

Katie: I am sure that journey had, its certainly bumps along the way and also sounds like an incredible journey. And I know in our in-person conversations in the past, I like you can look back and see that the hardest things in my life actually led to some of the most beautiful things in my life in hindsight.

And one of my projects recently has been to try to narrow that gap and to learn to find gratitude in the moment even before I can see the positive things that might come of it. And I know we’ve also been on a little bit of like parallel journeys in this and that you were able to turn yours into such beautiful words that have helped thousands and thousands of people.

I’d love to delve into the concept you talk in the book about, but I think this is really paradigm shifting. The idea of separating, kind of understanding the difference between our thoughts and thinking and then from there, going into kind of the root of suffering. Because I think that the questions that you asked yourself are really profound and probably very helpful to all of us. But maybe let’s start there with thoughts versus thinking.

Joseph: Yeah, so there’s a pretty big distinction between those two. I’ll start with a high level overview and then kind of dive into the specifics. So one of the core questions that I ask myself that kind of led to the understanding of this was, well one, why do I have so many negative thoughts? And it just didn’t make any sense to me because it seemed uncontrollable. It just doesn’t make any sense that it just pops into my mind and then I’m stuck with it, and then I have to believe everything there. But then I stopped to ask myself, is every single thought that I have in my mind true? And I started to see, like, I think science has shown that we have about over 60,000 thoughts in a given day.

How is it true that every single one of those thoughts is 100% accurate and true? Most of them are probably not. So then that began a little bit of a separation between me and the thoughts that I was having. And seeing that although I cannot control my thoughts, that’s okay, because thoughts do not control me.

It is my beliefs that control me. So thoughts don’t affect me unless I believe them to be true. And so that is so powerful because we cannot always control what thoughts enter our minds, but we can always control whether we believe in them or not, and we can shift that belief at any time. So it’s the same thing with events in life, right?

Most of the time we can’t really control what happens, but we can always control how we respond to those things, whether we respond out of fear and ego to try to protect ourselves, or if we respond out of love, out of abundance, out of gratitude, right? And so that then brings back the power and agency back to ourselves, rather than delegating that to other people and what they might think of us, and having all of our emotions wrapped up and being able to be manipulated by others.

This brings the peace back to you, and it always is within you. So that’s the beginning of it. Now, in the book I make a distinction between thoughts versus thinking. And how I define thoughts is that they are neutral observations or intuitive promptings, and thinking is our own negative judgment about the thoughts or events that we have.

So an example of this is, let’s say it’s raining outside. A thought would be, which is a neutral observation, would be, it’s raining. Thinking on the other hand, would be saying, this rain ruined my day, or this is the worst thing ever. Or, why does this always happen to me? I’m so unlucky all the time. All of that negative judgment is thinking, which is the root cause of our suffering.

And all of that is actually unnecessary and doesn’t change the event that’s happening at all. And it only prevents us from being able to see it for what it is and to remove the negative emotion from what’s happening. And suffering, the way that I look at suffering is it’s actually resistance to reality, whatever is happening right now. And if we don’t like what’s happening and we wish it were different, that creates resistance in our minds. And that resistance starts to manifest in the form of negative emotions and judgment and resentment and guilt. And so in life, the more that we can flow, the more that will grow, but then also have a lot more sense of peace and not need to feel like we need to control everything.

So that’s the difference between thoughts and thinking for me. And so in my mind now I can with that distinction, it’s a lot easier to see what is a true thought, an actual event that’s happening, a neutral observation, or what is thinking, my own thinking, the negative judgment of that thought. And doing that throughout the day allows me to see, okay, what I’m doing now, s this thinking helpful?

Is it useful? Is this thinking, making me feel the way that I want? And if not, understanding that I have the ability to actually let that go, to not need to think about that any longer or in the same way anymore. But I never realized that I could actually just stop thinking about it in that way. I just assumed that anything that I thought was fact and that it was unchangeable, but that’s not true. And the way that we look at anything can be changed instantaneously by letting go of our own judgment of whatever’s going on. So that’s the core essence of thoughts versus thinking.

Katie: I love that so much, and I love your idea that thoughts don’t control us, but our beliefs around them do. I’ve long had this practice in my life where I’ve thought, if something’s worth believing, it’s also worth questioning to make sure it’s actually true. And so I actually do this in a very intentional way. Every new year, I make a list of everything I believe to be true, and throughout the  course of the year, I challenge each of those things on purpose and read things with alternate viewpoints and really research it with the idea that if what I believe is correct, that I’ve only hopefully gained empathy and understanding for people who might not believe the same thing.

And if it’s not, then I’ve hopefully found new perspective and gotten to learn through that exercise. And I know also firsthand, that’s led to some of the really big questions in my life and some tremendous shifts in my life. And also that those inner shifts are not always easy. So I’m curious how, if you have any advice for people of even beginning this process of learning to, it seems like be aware of our thoughts and then to become more intentional about our thinking. And the way you explained it in the book, I feel like is so helpful.

Joseph: Yeah, that’s a beautiful question. So, although it’s simple in terms of the identification between thoughts versus thinking, it can be quite challenging to literally challenge your entire belief system in life. But you kind of have to ask yourself what is more important? Is it being right or is it being at peace?

And at a certain point, trying to be right or trying to make reality fit the way that we think it should be is so much more painful than letting go and finding peace. And so it just helps to reflect on our lives like this and how we’re actually feeling, being totally honest with ourselves. Are we at peace? Are we fulfilled? Are we filled with love or are we filled with anger, resentment, and just so much anxiety around our lives and our thinking? And so it’s actually not a bad thing when we start to come to terms with how we’re feeling. And a lot of times we suppress our emotions because we don’t think that we should feel them or feel guilty for feeling them, or that we’re not really experiencing it at all. And so that suppression only perpetuates the emotions, but if we want to overcome or let go of those emotions, we have to then confront them. And that’s a very scary thing because most of us don’t want to go there.

We don’t want to look at the skeletons in the closet a lot of the times, because we’ve gone so long without doing so. But once you kind of take an audit of your life and see how much psychological and emotional suffering that you’re going through, then I think the pain points us to where we’re meant to look.

And a lot of times that’s where, it’s what we fear most is what we most need to confront. And on the other side of fear is everything that we desire. So that peace, joy, and love that we want is on the other side of confronting and challenging all the beliefs that we have about our lives and about other people.

And so it just takes faith and courage. But to make it very practical, if you’ve experienced enough pain, it’s a, I think that’s all the motivation you need in order to kind of push you over the edge to question everything and to give yourself permission to let go of a lot of those things that you don’t have to hold onto anymore.

Katie: I love that and I think of so many quotes from different stoic books that I’ve read and from the book actually called Letting Go by David Hawkins,

Joseph: Yes, I love that book.

Katie: And how so many people throughout history seem to have connected this idea of letting go and surrender, not in a giving up kind of way, but in a letting go of actually the illusion of control because it’s never that we actually have control to begin with.

I heard the analogy once that it’s like, we think we’re driving the car, but really we’re sitting in the passenger seat with a little toy steering wheel, like a toddler thinking we’re driving. And that surrender is actually just letting go of the false control to begin with. And I love the idea that you brought up of what we fear most is what we actually need to confront.

And on the other side of that is the peace and the joy that many of us are seeking or all of us are seeking. And I know that can be, well, truly is a lifelong journey as well. Are there any examples from your life of ways that you learn to practice that? And then maybe walk us through some things that you went through personally with this.

Joseph: Yeah. So along the lines of letting go, I’ll dive a little bit more into that and get into the personal stories of it. And you’re exactly right. Like you hhit the nail on the head there with how many other philosophies, religions, schools of thought that actually point to the same truth.

If you look at Buddhism,  Buddha was saying that attachment is the root of suffering. And what he means by attachment is our own resistance to reality. It’s that judgment of reality. And he’s also saying, we need to let go of our attachment to these things, our ideas of things, of how they should be rather than how things are.

So letting go is then the cure there. In Christianity, there is, they usually talk about surrendering to God fully and trusting and having faith. Right? All of that is evolved around the same idea of letting go. And stoicism, like you were talking about, it’s about not reacting immediately to what’s happening, but to remove our own perceptions of whatever is happening in the moment and to let go of that. To be able to see it from a more objective standpoint and to even investigate multiple perspectives of what’s happening in that moment.

So it looks like all of these different modalities, schools of thoughts, philosophies, religions, they are all different roads to the same destination, which is if you let go, you’ll find peace. And they just have various scenic roots to go there. And whatever you resonate most with is likely one you should probably go down and then see how that goes for you.

But at the end of the day, it’s all about letting go, letting go of control, like you were saying. Letting go of what people think of us. Letting go of our fear of failure. Letting go of the fear of being unlovable, not enough, all these things. It’s because of that fear of those things that actually brings it into this present reality and creates the negative emotions that we’re experiencing.

But as soon as we become okay with any of those things, let’s say worst case scenarios, then we actually become liberated from those experiences. We can then transcend it, even if it happens, we find out that we’re okay. That those experiences do not define who we are. That who we are is beyond our experiences, beyond our thoughts, beyond our past, beyond our thinking even.

And that’s the most beautiful part about all of these different philosophies that point us back to this singular truth. So for me, how I practice letting go is just throughout the day: so meditation helps significantly. And that’s what they teach in vipasana meditation, transcendental meditation, tons of different meditations.

The whole purpose is to be able to observe your thoughts and detach yourself from them and not see yourself as the thought. So if there’s the thought that comes in and says, I’m not enough, you can then see that as just a thought, but not who you actually are. And one thought experiment that I love doing is, a lot of times we believe that we are our thoughts.

We believe that we are what we think, but is this actually true? Because let’s say we just had that thought come in of, I’m not enough. What happens when that thought leaves? Where are we? We’re still here. So if that thought came in and left, we should have gone with it, but we’re still here, which means we are not our thoughts.

We are also not our past. We are not our thinking. We are something beyond those things. And so we are the space in which those thoughts can come in. That is where liberation is, finding peace and knowing that we are the canvas and not actually the paint that’s on it. And that we can kind of wash away any paint that we think is us and start anew again and say, this is not us.

We are actually infinite possibilities, infinite space in this present moment. So that’s one practice that I do is just constantly remembering that I’m not what I think. I am not my thoughts. I am the one who’s able to experience those things, but that is not me. And the other thing that I love doing is just practicing a form of, you can say transcendental meditation. But I like repeating mantras that are grounded in truth. So an example is, I would repeat to myself, thinking is the root cause of suffering. More specifically native judgment is what I mean by thinking. And so when I repeat that, I find that I can’t think about anything else because the mind can only focus on one thing generally at a time. And so it calms the mind. And then because it’s grounded in truth, it brings me right back to myself, to this present moment. And deep breathing helps a lot as well. Breath work has been proven many times to be able to activate the parasympathetic nervous system and to ground ourselves.

And I like it a lot because I can’t take a breath in the past and I can’t take a breath in the future. I can only take a breath in the present and that’s where peace is. That’s where we are actually and the only moment that actually exists. And if we dwell too much in the past, then we start to manifest resentment, guilt, and a lot of these and all of this depression. And then if we look too far in the future and worry so much about it, then that manifests fear and anxiety within us. And so in the present moment when we take deep breaths and start to repeat some sort of mantra, right, or just remember these truths, then that allows me to let go of all the thinking that’s going on and to come back to my body and say, okay, I’m safe.

I’m okay. No matter what happens to me, no matter what thoughts come into my mind, I’m still okay. And that has been so liberating for me to be able to practice. And I don’t just practice that during meditations, but actually throughout the day. And that’s what’s created a fundamental shift in how I live my life, rather than only waiting in the morning or until the nighttime to actually audit what’s going on in my mind.

So anytime I experience a negative emotion, I actually use that as a trigger and reminder that I’m too caught up in my mind. That I’m believing what I think, rather than allowing myself to accept what is and to flow with it and to release the emotion or whatever is in my body to pass through me. So there’s also this idea that if we eat food, I like to think of this analogy, but like, if we eat food and we keep it in our bodies, that’s okay if it’s only for a few hours.

But if it goes for a day and the food is still in our system, that might cause some issues. But if it goes a week or a month or a year and the food is still stuck in our system, that’s gonna wreak havoc on it and not feel great. And so the same thing is actually true for our minds, thoughts that enter our minds that we hold onto create a lot of psychological and emotional suffering for us. And so thoughts are meant to come and leave our minds as quickly as they came and use them if they’re useful, but discard them if they’re not. And that’s the flow of life. So food that our body holds onto too long causes indigestion, thoughts that our mind holds onto too long creates anxiety.

So everything is meant to flow and the more that we can do that, the more peace we’ll find. But those are some of the practices that I do.

Katie: Oh, there are so many beautiful things wrapped up in what you just said, And I love that you talked about our core fears. I think everybody has some of those beliefs of not being good enough, not being worthy. I hear this from very high achieving people who a lot of people would look at and think they had it all figured out.

And I feel like we all have some version of those same core things that we get to learn and delve into as adults.  I also love that you talked about that you can’t take a breath in the past or in the future. It reminded me of, I’m gonna mention all the books and I’ll course link to yours also, but the book Awareness by Anthony DeMelo.

And he talks a lot about the present moment and I’m reminded too of like their anxiety and stress and all those things don’t live in the present moment. Those come from thinking about the past or the future and how many teachers throughout history have centered on simply just learning to be more present since that’s truly all we actually have anyway, is that present moment.

I also would love to delve deeper into the idea of like this awareness of our thoughts and curating our thoughts because I’ve learned in my life firsthand how powerful our thoughts could be. And I’ve shared this before, but in the past when I was told I had Hashimoto’s, at first, I had kind of stories in my head about being sick.

And I had that story of I am sick, or my body is attacking itself. And I, like you, learned to question, wait a second, is that true? And realized actually our bodies are always on our side. And whenever there’s a symptom, it’s actually a beautiful message from our body trying to communicate with us directly.

And what if I reframed this? What if I, instead of telling myself I was sick, told myself I was healing, and told myself that I had more and more energy each day. Or my friend Tina, has a great mantra she uses all the time that everything works out perfectly for me. And it’s so beautiful to see how it seemingly actually does, even if it’s not the way she might’ve wanted it. She’s able to find the perfection in every moment that happens in her life.

I would love to talk more about how do we never waste a trigger. How do we become aware of our negative thoughts? Then how do we curate that inner language to be more positive? Because I also think, and we’ve talked about this a little bit, but our thoughts are so powerful in determining our actual reality.

And I think this is one of those really high ROI things we can learn and cultivate in our lives, is when we learn how to pay attention to our thoughts and how to make friends with them, they can also work so positively and really shift our inner landscape.

Joseph: Yeah, what a beautiful question. So there’s a couple of things about curating thoughts. Number one is while we can try to cultivate positive thinking, what happens is if we do that without addressing the negative thinking that’s going on, then we’re just going to be fighting ourselves the entire time.

We’ll try to think positive, then flip back to negative, and it creates these opposing forces within us that feels very, very painful spiritually and emotionally. So what I’ve found to be more useful is to actually let go of the negative thinking first, rather than trying to think positive first.

Because if we’re in a rut and we are going through a lot of psychological suffering and something really challenging in the moment, it might be really difficult to try to reframe it or flip it into something positive because it’s so far from the way that we currently feel. But at the very least, we can start to let go of beating ourselves up more than we need to.

And all of that negative judgment that we have of ourselves, of other people, of the world, that can, it’s a lot easier to let that go. And then from there, there’s this… I fundamentally believe that peace, love, and joy are actually our natural states. A lot of times people believe that we’re just biased towards negativity and that that’s our genetic makeup. That we’re always that way, but that’s actually not true.

If you look at children, look at how they operate, how many of them are walking around so anxious and depressed and not able to do anything, and just frozen in fear? Most of them are just having fun. They’re so playful. They’re fearless. They’re probably more careless than we would like, but that’s the nature of children.

But that’s also the nature of ourselves. And the only reason why we’re not like that is because we think ourselves out of it. And so a lot of these philosophies and religions will say, we need to become more like children again. I think Jesus said something like that as well, right? Like, you have to become a child of God and before you can enter the kingdom of heaven now, things like that.

And so what he’s really saying and what a lot of these philosophers and spiritual masters are saying is that we need to go back to our true essence of who we are. And once we let go of this negative thinking and stop judging ourselves so much, then we have so much more space for this innate peace, love, and joy to surface from within us.

And so we don’t really have to try that hard to think positively because that’s our essence. That’s who we are. We’re always growing, we’re always learning, we’re always full of love, as long as we don’t get in the way of that. As long as our egos don’t get in the way of that by trying to control everything.

And so I love the example that you gave of how seeing it not as an illness, but as your body communicating to you saying that, here’s how we’re healing. Here’s a message of how you can restore balance in your body just because it might be imbalanced somehow. That’s not a good or bad thing, that’s just it telling you, Hey, here’s what we can do to grow. And so that’s what life does, is it always presents us, not obstacles, but opportunities for us to do that. And it might come in the form of challenges, in the forms of things that we might not have expected, but in every single obstacle there is that opportunity to see in a new way, a new light for us to grow and learn and expand in new ways.

So it’s just like going to the gym. If we don’t have any resistance towards anything, if there’s nothing challenging, then we’re never gonna grow muscle, right? But in order to do that, we have to rip the previous muscle, right? Which might be painful, but through that pain, that’s where the growth is.

And ultimately in life, what are we here for? Right? If it’s not to grow, if it’s not to love, if it’s not to learn? So everything in our lives is actually bolstering that very thing and we’re most fulfilled in life when we do realize that we are ever expanding and growing in so many different ways than we never thought possible.

And usually the way we grow most is through challenges and circumstances that we would’ve never thought possible. That’s what allows us to stretch beyond what we imagined. And when you look back, like you were saying in some of your past experiences, you wouldn’t, you just are unrecognizable now.

You never would’ve thought that you could’ve overcome some of those things, but that has now led you to become so much more resilient, so much more powerful. And that’s just through realizing your true nature and not your past. But those are some of the things that we can do to kind of like start to flip the script.

And the other thing that I’ve noticed is, you know, our attention is the architect of our reality. And so it’s not so much as to, you can focus on positive thoughts, but what that’s doing is the mechanism behind really bringing that into our actual lives is actually where we place our attention.

So if we place our attention more on negative judgment and those types of things, how we wish it were different, just resistance in general, then we will only magnify that pain. And so if we shift our attention, ’cause you know, reality is we live in a perception of reality, not reality itself, and our perception is formed through where we’re placing our attention.

It’s kind of like social media and it’s algorithms, right? Like, I like to think of life as that. But the social media is a great reflection of just how life works, which is when you go on Instagram or TikTok or any social media platform, it starts to learn what you respond to and what you like.

But the way that it learns that is by learning how you’re responding to things and how long you’re spending on those specific videos. And then they give you more videos just like that. But life is the exact same way. The longer you spend giving your attention to certain things in life, life will give you more experiences like that.

So if we keep focusing on negativity, how we wish things were different, or how we feel like we’re not enough or fear, all of that will magnify. It’s just reflecting back where we’re placing our attention. But we can move our attention to things that are seemingly more positive. So from shifting, from fear to love.

So instead of asking or wishing that this moment was different, that which is more fear-based and, and trying to prevent things from happening that we might not want, we can shift the attention to how can I bring more love into this moment? What is life trying to teach me in this moment?

Or how can I act from a place of trust? And one of my favorite questions is, how would I be if I knew everything would work out and just operating from that place? So now we’re shifting our attention from fear to love, from feeling contraction to expansion. And that shift is literally just from our attention alone.

And you can physically feel it when you’re thinking in a more fear-based way, which is going to contract who we are and or if we’re thinking in a more love-based or abundant way, which is expansion. And it might be a little bit scary to shift into that expansive part, but that’s only because we’re going to the unknown.

We’re doing things now. Like, so for example, if we’re trying to change our lives, most of us try to do the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different result. But in order to get something different out of life, you have to do something different. You have to go into the unknown where you haven’t gone before, do things that you haven’t done, think things that you haven’t before, and create new beliefs that you might not have previously.

So that’s going to feel uncomfortable, but that’s where all of the growth is. That’s where peace is. Just on the other side of that. And the more you can become okay with uncertainty, the more peace you will experience. And so the whole point of life is not to try to avoid uncertainty, but to become okay with it.

And in that lies your power, because that’s the only constant, right, is change. So if we keep resisting it, we’re always just gonna feel so much anxiety, and pressure and strain. But as soon as we begin to lean into it and say, we’re okay that we can survive this. That we’ve survived everything else up from our lives up until this point, and we’re still here now. That no matter what happens, you’re going to be okay and you have that full belief in yourself, then that’s where everything will begin to shift for you.

But those are some of the practices that I’ve had in my life to shift from negative to the positive.

Katie: I love it. I feel like every response you have could be its own like Ted Talk with all of the wisdom you bring to it. And so many thoughts came to mind as you were saying that. One quote that I loved, maybe it was from Wayne Dyer that said, sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment. And I think, I know you’re a parent as well, but stepping into that childlike wonder and bewilderment of life, I think has been very helpful for me in shifting that inner state a little bit.

And I also think of again, the book Awareness from Anthony Mello and how he talks about, it’s not actually that we fear the unknown, it’s that we fear the loss of the known. And to your point, getting comfortable with that uncertainty. Like that’s the whole magic you are seeking is in the cave you are avoiding type idea.

Joesph: Yes.

Katie: And he also has this line, I wish I remembered it exactly, but it really struck me that we go through life thinking we’re seeking to be loved. And it really, in our essence, what we seek is to be love, to exist in that state of love. I feel like you’ve explained that so beautifully in the response you just said.

And I’d also love to delve into the body connection because I know sometimes when people get into the inner world and the emotional and mental and spiritual work, sometimes that feels separate from the body. And yet I know also from reading books like, Bessel Van der Kolk, the Body Keeps the Score, also the body is along for this ride and actually a very important part of that journey.

So I would love if you could delve into the body side. And from there maybe we’ll build into intuition, because I know there’s also a connection there. But what do you teach people about paying attention to even the body in this journey?

Joseph: I love that. So the body a lot of times will view it as the enemy. That if we could just shut off our emotions, if we could just numb everything, then we would find peace. But a lot of times that’s what we try to do, right? We try to numb it through distraction. We try to numb it through different vices, alcohol, food, going out.

It doesn’t matter what it is, doom scrolling. We do a lot of things to try to numb it, but at the end of the day, we realize and experience that it just doesn’t work. And if anything it exacerbates all of the emotions that we have. But one of the things I’ve learned, I think,  I forgot who said this, maybe Brene Brown, but, or a few other authors have also echoed this same truth of like, emotions are not the enemy, they are messengers, and they are all here to tell us something. And how I love to use emotions and view them from the standpoint is, all of them, all emotions are there to help us, to remind us to come back to ourselves, to the present moment.

That’s all they’re reminding us to do. So, for example, if fear comes up, all I view that is, this is something that’s important to me, you should pay attention to it. Not that you should fear it, not that you should avoid it, but that this is something that is important to you. Because if you didn’t fear it, then it wouldn’t be important.

So the fact that it’s here means that there’s something here for you. There’s something that you can learn. There’s something that you can grow from and it’s probably exactly what you’ve been looking for. So I use fear as an indicator of which direction I should probably go in and to realize that the only thing I really have to fear is just the feeling of fear itself. But if I realize that it’s just a feeling and that it will not kill me, but that if I listen to fear, then it will take the life of all of my hopes, dreams, and everything that I want. Then I can see it for what it is and actually accept it and say, thank you for being here.

So I think there is a thought experiment of someone explaining how, like, if you can imagine, each emotion was like a visitor to your house,  like a little child, like just visiting. And if you just try to shut them out, they’ll keep coming back in droves. They’ll keep calling all their friends and just start like, raid everything around your house, egging it and toilet papering and all that stuff.

But as soon as you welcome them in and treat them like guests that you love, that you know, like family, then you can learn from them. You can figure out their story. You can figure out what they’re trying to tell you. And the more that you respond with love to all of these things, you can see that they transform before your eyes.

Fear then becomes gratitude and anxiety then becomes this fuel that you can use to see, oh my gosh, like I didn’t realize how much I’m caught up in my mind. So all of it is a reminder of coming back. And so if we didn’t have emotions then we wouldn’t know where to go, we wouldn’t know where the opportunities were, we wouldn’t know, we wouldn’t have any internal compass at all. We would just be, we wouldn’t even enjoy life because if we removed emotion, right, that removes the peaks. If we remove the valley, there’s no more contrast in life. And the contrast of our experience is exactly how we learn. Information is… we acquire knowledge through information, but wisdom can only be acquired through lived experience.

And our emotions create that lived experience and encodes it within our bodies. So I love listening to our bodies so much because it is the antenna and the vessel or channel between the physical and the divine, if you wanna believe in that, right? That is why we’re here. So that is like one example of how I use the body and it is so powerful. So it’s actually through the body that we can influence the spiritual, if that makes sense. And it’s a two-way street.

Katie: Yeah. And I love that idea that the beauty is in the contrast, as our mutual friend Ryan says. And that without the valleys, we wouldn’t have the peaks either. And also that like to your point, learning to not necessarily judge either of those as good or bad, but to observe them and to experience them.

And I feel like that’s a perfect segue into the topic of intuition, which I feel like there has been a little bit more talk of, I’ve seen even in the mainstream lately. And it can still feel a little bit elusive. I would guess most people at least know what intuition is, though maybe not all of us have a great relationship or understanding of our own intuition.

So, what’s your understanding of intuition and what are some ways that we can nurture that in our lives?

Joseph: Intuition is one of my favorite topics. Intuition is so important. It’s who you are, but it’s unknowable, it’s infinite. You can call it god, you can call it universe, you can call it your higher self. Whatever it is, it’s just something that is beyond the ego. And our intuition is always talking to us.

It’s that still, quiet voice in the back of your mind or in your heart that you can feel that says, go for it, you should do this. It says things like, you should move or you should stay. You should leave your job. Or you should start a business. You should marry this person. You should leave this relationship.

It always leads you to exactly where you want to go and creates the life that you want to live. But most of the time we ignore this because it’s, a lot of times the action around what intuition is saying is shrouded in fear. But like we were saying before, that fear is not in the way, it is the way to exactly the life that you want.

And so it’s just pointing us there at all times. But if you look back in your life, I love doing the style experiment. You know, if you think about some of the best decisions that you’ve ever made in your life that radically changed it for the better, how much of those decisions was rooted in hyper logic and analysis, and how much of it was rooted in a sense of knowing or intuition, right?

Like how do you, can you logically choose a partner? Can you logically choose the job or even place that you live? Can you logically choose if you want to pursue a hobby or not? Most of those things are completely illogical, and actually, if you look at most of the world, it’s not realistic, it was all fabricated by someone.

Someone had to think of these things and create them in the world. Having a smartphone, having internet, being able to do this podcast virtually, like none of this is realistic. None of it makes sense. None of it is quote unquote logical. If you explained the reality now to someone a hundred years ago, that is completely illogical.

So actually this reality is made from irrationality, from something beyond logic. It’s not like logic is not useful, it’s very, very useful, but we need to tap into something greater than logic to create a new world that we can’t perceive through logic alone. That’s what intuition is. It’s the source of all inventions, innovation, creativity, art, music, all the things that we love and make life so beautiful that are so difficult to describe and understand, come from intuition. That is the part of ourselves that is us, so I love talking about it so much because that’s the greatest source of fulfillment really, whenever we listen to it and follow that. So how do we actually cultivate our intuition and listen to it?

One of the things is, well, beginning to let go of the other voice and distinguishing what is your mind, your fear based mind? What does that voice sound like in your mind? Ask yourself that. And then what does intuition sound like to you? What does it feel like? If you ask yourself that right now, the mind always creates answers. So like, I love asking myself questions because somehow the answer pops up if you listen. So for me, the intuition comes from my chest or even my abdomen area. It just depends on whatever type of question I’m asking. But it feels more like the heart, and it feels like love.

It feels infinite. It feels expansive. But the mind, the fear-based mind, survival-based mind, the ego on the other hand feels very urgent. It feels rushed. It tries to coerce, it manipulates, it’s anxious, right? So that’s what the fear-based mind feels like. So when you start making decisions in life, you can feel that and know that that’s from the ego versus your higher self or the universe.

And on the other hand, intuition, ask yourself what that feels like. Intuition is always calm. It’s quiet. It’s never rushed. It’s unattached. It will never try to convince you to do something or coerce you or try to strong arm you into anything. It’s just there to guide you. And that’s what unconditional love feels like as well, right?

It’s not, I would love you only if you do these certain things, right? It doesn’t withhold any of that, but it will be there for you no matter what. Whether you acknowledge that or not, it’s always there. And that’s the beautiful part about it. So you can’t ever lose your intuition, which is like, a lot of people believe that I think I lost my inner voice. I think I can’t hear anymore. And that’s only because the mind is so loud. But as soon as you learn to quiet the mind, quiet the opinions, quiet the judgment, then this voice is then now heard. It’s like having a lot of radio static when you’re tuning it. There’s so much static and noise, but as soon as you tune right into the right channel, then there’s no more static and it’s just signal and then you can hear your intuition. So it’s gonna take a lot of fine tuning in order to find that, but the more that you ask yourself these questions of what does my heart say? What does my mind say, then you’ll know for sure which one is which, and you can begin to start listening to it.

And you’ll be surprised at how much it can transform your life and how quickly  when you begin trusting yourself in that way. It’s extremely liberating to not have to only listen to the fearful mind. It’s so expansive and so exciting to be able to trust your gut again, trust yourself again.

I think all of us are waiting for permission to do that. Permission to disappoint others, permission to not do what others say. Permission to allow others to be upset at our actions, especially if we’re doing things out of love. A lot of people won’t understand that, but if you give yourself permission to disappoint others, to maybe upset them while following and honoring your own truth out of love and you’re not harming anyone, then that’s where you’re going to really expand and to become who you’re meant to be, rather than restrained by the expectations of others. So there is a lot to unpack there, but I think hopefully I answered the question about intuition.

Katie: That was so beautiful. I think once again, you made so many wonderful points in learning to feel that difference between intuition and fear. I love that you talked about it as being unknowable, which I also kind of think of God or source in that way as well as like the highest knowing is knowing that it’s unknowable because that’s with your mind, and that this is what you’re talking about is more of like an essence, a deeper feeling.

And I love the analogy of like tuning into that. Also, I love that it brought us back to the idea of letting go and letting go of the expectations of others. I feel like that’s a really big one. I know many women especially talk to me about that and like caretaking and people pleasing and being so aware of the expectations of others. I know this is a tough thing to learn to let go of, so I’m curious if you have any strategies or methods for helping people learn how to begin to actually let go of that. And also as parents, are there ways that we can communicate with our kids in a way that hopefully doesn’t put so many expectations on them in the first place?

Joseph: Yeah. So one of the ways is to ask yourself the question: is living up to other people’s expectation of you while sacrificing yourself more important than your own inner peace and growth and liberation, because you can only ever choose one or the other. And so a lot of times we view self-sacrifice as this honorable thing and badge that we wear on our sleeve, but that only denies who we are.

And so that starts to empty our cup. And so the more that we self-sacrifice just to please others, just to live up to their expectations, we start to feel so strained, so stressed, and there’s so much pressure on our shoulders. And we feel this massive weight, but that’s not who we are. And you probably feel confined to that and feel like you want to get out of it, but you can’t escape it.

And so it’s beginning to realize that you don’t have to do that. But the only way you can break out of it is coming to terms that some people will be upset at you choosing yourself, at you choosing peace, at you choosing your own joy over whatever they might expect out of you. And so, I always like to come back to this truth of, you know, when you try to make… if your priority is making other people happy, you sacrifice your own happiness in the process.

The cost of making other people happy is your own happiness. And so, but a lot of people think that by pursuing your own inner peace and your own inner joy, that’s going to cost other people’s happiness. That’s actually not true. The more that…and you have to question that. It’s like, how would you act in the world, how would you show up? How much more can you give when you’re coming from a place of peace, love, and joy, and total fulfillment and total empowerment in yourself, complete trust. And you’ve given yourself enough rest, you’ve pursued your passions, and it doesn’t even take that long.

So a lot of times people assume that, oh, like if I’m gonna flip to the other end of the spectrum, I’m only gonna think about myself and only do things for me. But you don’t have to do that at all. Life is about balance, not going to the extremes. So it’s about restoring that harmony within ourselves and to say yes to ourselves as much as we’re saying yes to other people. That’s when how we can begin to shift the power back to ourselves and a lot of the joy back into our lives.

So as much as you’re giving to others, what would happen if you gave yourself just a little bit of that or just half of that amount, or even equal to that? Would you not have more to give to the world if you’re able to grant yourself a little bit of that space? So it’s about releasing the guilt of taking care of yourself and knowing that if you do that, you’ll have so much more. So much more love, so much more joy, so much more peace, that you can then share with other people.

So it is difficult in the beginning, but the more you begin to see that and practice it, it’s so true that you’ll be able to grow and flourish and give in ways that you could have never imagined before. And you have to ask yourself, if you are prioritizing your peace and starting to take care of yourself, and someone is not happy about that, what does that say about them?

So a lot of times when we are acting out of love and people are upset, what other people think of you is a reflection of them, not of you. And it’s very important to understand that distinction and to allow other people to be upset, to allow them to be who they are, to react in the way that they are in the moment.

And hopefully that acts as a mirror to them to say, why are they so upset at you prioritizing your peace? Maybe it’s because they haven’t had the opportunity to do that for themselves, but maybe over time, by you doing that for yourself, it acts as inspiration and permission for them to do the same.

And that’s how we can begin changing the world by starting with ourselves. And one person at a time seeing that and being inspired by how you had the courage to take care of yourself. To give yourself what you need so that then you can operate from a place of love and abundance, rather than fear and regret and anxiety.

But that’s the shift that we can make, that anyone can in any moment.

Katie: Yeah, as you were saying that, I was thinking this shift I feel like is especially profound for moms. Because especially when our kids are young, moms really kind of set the nervous system tone for the household. And we know that even children’s nervous systems are very entrained and dependent on their parents for those first at least seven years.

And so in that thought, like, this is not only not selfish, it’s in a sense selfless. And I think of that idea often with parenting is like, my kids might listen to some of what I say, but they pay so much attention to what we do, even if they pretend they don’t. And so when we as parents do these things, we are giving our kids permission to do that as well.

And I think that’s where the real strength of modeling comes in. And I think this also brings up that beautiful idea, that kind of the internal versus the external journey of this. I know it’s so easy when we have feelings to think that they’re dependent on something external. And to have that impulse, to try to change the external, to change the other person, to change the circumstance.

And yet all we really truly can change is ourselves. And those feelings don’t actually exist in reality, to your point, they exist within us. Which is awesome news because we have the ability to work within that then and to create change and to nurture more of that joy and that love and the peace that you talk about. I also know that for a lot of people, especially in the modern world, things like overthinking and rumination can come very easily and you’ve already given so many practical kind of things people can center in. And your book gives so many, and I’ll make sure I link to that as well. But anything specific that you would suggest for especially instances of overthinking or rumination?

Joseph: Yeah, so I have this five step framework in the expanded edition of my book, and it’s a five step process called pause. So I’ll take us through that now so that we can use it. And one of the best ways to use this is, like I was saying, in real time. So whenever you’re experiencing negative emotions or something triggering or anything like that, this is perfect for those times.

And the more that you use it in real time, the more that you start to rewire your mind in the new pathway so that over time it becomes second nature. And you don’t really have to think about it. And then your default will then be release, letting go and finding peace rather than a reaction to fear in all of these other things.

So the first letter is P, which is pause and take deep breaths. Again, you can’t take a breath in the past or the future. You can only take a breath in the present. And that’s where peace is. That’s where love is. That’s where you are. That’s where reality is. Actually,  when you are fully present the byproduct of that is peace. So taking deep breaths grounds us there.

And so the next letter is A, which is ask yourself, is this thinking helpful? Is this thinking, making me feel the way that I want? And if not, the next letter is U, which is understand that you have the ability to let that go. Let go of the judgment that you’re having of the situation, of yourself, of your thoughts, of other people.

We always have that ability. And so understand that you can let that go at any moment. And then S is say and repeat the mantra, thinking is the root cause of suffering. Or you can use any other truth-based mantra, like I choose peace and let go. Anything rooted in truth will dispel a lot of the negative thinking and to focus our minds on that singular mantra so that it can calm our minds down.

And just keep repeating that over and over while taking deep breaths. And you’ll see that it reduces the intensity of any negative emotion that you’re experiencing in the present. And then E, the last letter, is experience your emotions fully. So a lot of times people think that, oh, if I stop thinking, I’m like bypassing, I’m doing spiritual bypassing or bypassing our emotions. And that’s not true at all. What we’re trying to do is let go of the judgment to the emotions because what we resist persists. And so when we let go of the resistance, let go of the judgment or negative thinking of whatever’s going on, then we can experience what it is fully and then allow our bodies to process and let it go.

Neuroscience is now saying that it takes about 90 seconds for our bodies to process emotions. The only reason why it feels way longer than that is because we begin ruminating on the experience and thinking about it, perpetuating it, and restarting that cycle. But as soon as you let go and calm the mind and no longer judge it, there’s no longer any resistance for the emotion to get stuck within ourselves, and so it can then pass just as quickly as it came. And so that’s the whole entire framework.

So pause. So P is pause and take deep breath. A is ask yourself, is this thinking helpful or useful? U is understand that you have the ability to let it go. S is say and repeat the mantra thinking is the root cause of all suffering, and E, which is to experience your emotions fully without resistance.

And through that framework you can use it anytime, it only takes a few minutes to reset yourself and to come back to center, to groundedness. And this might not solve all of your problems, right, but it will reduce the intensity of the emotion that you’re experiencing and allow you to come back to yourself.

And from that point, you can then make progress in life and allow you to tap into your intuition so you know what to do next. So that’s the process that I use personally, and it’s worked for thousands and thousands of people. You know, don’t take my word for it, try it yourself and see what happens.

Information doesn’t do anything right?  It’s the application of information which creates a transformation. So try this out just for seven days. See if you can suspend judgment for the next seven days. That’s all you need to do. Try not to think negatively. Don’t judge anything. Just see things as they are and say whatever happens, even if it’s quote unquote bad.

Not ideal, just see it as it is. Don’t criticize, don’t judge and see what happens. See how much space there is left within you, in your mind, your body, your spirit to then surface more positive emotions, more positive perspectives. So just try that for seven days and follow the PAUSE framework and if it helps, amazing, keep using it. And if it doesn’t, that’s okay as well. You can find another thing that might work for you and resonate with you. So I always encourage experimentation and doing those micro experiments and to see the results so that you can have lived experience and you know that turning into wisdom for you.

Katie: I love that and it’s simplicity of to learn and I’m sure a lifetime to practice and a journey to go on. And I love that, I talk about that in the physical health world as well of like, you know, people wanna talk about double blind placebo controlled studies and data. And that can all be a really helpful starting point. And the most beneficial experimentation and study we ever undertake is that of ourselves, because it doesn’t actually matter if it works for 99% of people in a double blind study, what works for you is what’s important. And I love that you bring this to the inner world and really walk people and take them through that journey in the book.

I think it’s tremendously impactful. I absolutely loved it. And of course I’ll link to it in the show notes. Are there… I know we could talk for 12 hours and not cover everything, but are there any other top of mind things from the book especially that you wanna make sure we get to touch on in this interview today?

Joseph:  I think we covered the majority of it. There’s so much in it, that it can easily be overwhelming, but I think coming back to giving permission to trust yourself again, that inner voice. Because a lot of times when we let go of thinking, we don’t know what to follow anymore. It’s like if I stop thinking, how do I know what to do?

Who do I trust? And so I want to address that directly, which is, trust yourself. Give yourself permission that…  all the permission that you’ve been seeking from other people. To be yourself, to feel safe, to hopefully be yourself, the approval of others. You’re constantly trying to seek permission that only you can give yourself.

Only you can give yourself permission to be yourself, to be who you are, to grow into who you want to become, to give yourself the space, time,  and intention to be able to build the life that you want. No one else can give that to you. Give yourself permission to prioritize your peace, to do things that you love again.

And to give yourself permission to disappoint others. And it’s gonna be okay, they’re gonna be okay, I promise you. Whoever is gonna be disappointed, whoever’s gonna be upset, it’s gonna be okay. You’re not abandoning them. You’re loving, you’re showing them love in a different way than they’re used to.

And that’s going to cause some resistance, but that’s okay. They’re not gonna die. You’re not gonna die. Everything’s gonna be okay. And the more that you can come from a place of love, that’s only going to enhance your life and everyone’s life around you. So it might feel a little bit uncomfortable now, but soon you’ll start to see how much better you feel because you’re not constantly being confined by the expectations and opinions of other people and operating from that lens.

You’re now fully embodying who you are and who you want to become. And from that, you’re going to just experience so much more peace, love, and joy, and bring that to other people. And that will then, of course, inspire other people as well. And then they’re gonna start coming to you and asking what happened, right?

How are you living this way? How are you so unapologetic? So give yourself the permission that you’ve been seeking from others to love yourself, to be enough. Doesn’t matter what it is, your permission is is the one that you’ve been looking for. So that’s what I would leave with last.

Katie: I have loved this conversation so much. I hope we get to have future conversations and share those as well. But like I said in the beginning, your book was tremendously impactful for me. I will link to it in the show notes for any of you guys listening on the go, or it’s available anywhere you buy books. Joseph, this has been such a joyful conversation. I love the work that you do. I love all that you’ve shared today. Thank you so much for your time and for being here.

Joseph: Thank you so much, Katie. I absolutely love your energy, your passion, just the radiance that you bring. And so thank you so much for your perspective, just for your love, care, generosity and everything that you’re bringing, and your mission, right? And just helping so many people, right?

And so it means so much more than you know, to be able to be invited here by you, and to be able to share this space with you. And so hopefully it will help some people and help make the world a little bit of a better place. So thank you so much.

Katie: Oh, thank you. And thank you as always for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did, and I hope that you’ll join me again on the next episode of The Fit Bottomed Zone Podcast.