Happy Monday and welcome to your mental Health mini.

This weeks guest is Doctor Angela Duckworth and we were talking about how to reverse engineer your life for success in just 5 minutes.

In 2011, I go to this meeting at Yale, and I remember it was a cold November day, and I and, you know, passed the agenda.

And at the top of it was the theme of the conference.

There about maybe a dozen or two dozen scientists, and we all studied aspects of motivation or goal pursuit.

And at the top of the agenda was the simplest question, how do we change?

It was like in italics, like, how do we change?

And the very first talk on the agenda was a Stanford professor.

His name was James Gross.

And he puts up this PowerPoint slide.

And he says, you know, everyone knows that emotions are really hard to manage.

And I'm thinking to myself, like, oh, my gosh, I have such a bad temper.

Like, that is the emotion I struggle with.

And he said, you know, we all know what it's like to try to, like, suppress an emotion.

And we all know how, you know, badly that usually turns out.

And I'm thinking to myself, Yep, it almost never works for me.

I like find it very hard.

It's like I feel like the horses have left the barn when I lose my temper, you know, especially honestly with like my, my husband or, or, you know, like my kids.

So, so he says like, but you know, if you really understand where emotions come from, then you can be much more effective in managing them.

And he puts up this boxes and arrow diagram.

And I'll simplify, but let's just say that there are three boxes.

And the last box is how you respond to your situation, like with anger, with fear, with anxiety, with sadness, but also includes like actions like I pick up the cup, I put down the cup, I eat the ice cream.

I I go for the run.

So the box 3 in these three boxes is your response to your situation, right.

And he was like, you know, most people when they, you know, feel like they're getting really mad, just try to like not be mad when they feel like they're lazy.

They just try not to be lazy when they feel like they want to eat ice cream, they just try not to eat the ice cream.

He's like, OK, you can use willpower.

You can use brute force willpower.

But what if you understood what happened before box 3?

And then he points to the box before he's like, box 2 is your thoughts.

It's like how you make meaning of your like, what's going on here, right?

And it's all in your head.

So you're like, oh, hey, cat video or like, wow, I you know, I hate my brother-in-law.

Like whatever it is that's in your box 2 sort of sets up box 3.

So for me, I realized after many more hours of thinking about it than I had at that one conference in November 2011, is that when I get really mad?

I think that what's through Box 2 for me, my thought is that my rights are being violated, that I that I'm not being appreciated, right.

So when I actually trace back, like when I've really lost my temper with my kids or my husband, it's because I feel like I have been like a St.

and I have not been appreciated, right?

So I'm thinking to myself, wow, this is pretty revolutionary.

And by the way, Sadie, as you well know, a lot of therapy is about changing box to thoughts, right?

It's like, wait, why are you feeling that way?

Like, why do you not want to get out of bed or why do you lose your temper?

But James wasn't done yet because there was another box on the screen and he said, but where do our thoughts come from, right?

Obviously we have schemas.

We have like habits in our mindsets.

He's like, but really what you want to think about is that every response and every thought about, you know, that leads there's starts in a situation like where are you?

And you know, I, I looked around and I was like, well, I'm, I'm in a darkened amphitheater with a lot of other professors.

That is a certain kind of situation.

Box 1 is your situation.

So where am I?

Right before I have the thought that I'm not being appreciated.

And I remembered this one time that I really lost my temper with my husband, Jason.

So Box 3 was losing my temper, like, really losing my.

I won't describe it because it's embarrassing.

And then Box 2 was this thought of some version of like, you know, hey, you don't appreciate me.

Like, do you see how hard I'm trying?

Like, I'm a St.

And Box 1 was he had come home late and I had made dinner and it had gone cold and he hadn't called.

And I thought to myself, like, well, yeah, but I can't change that situation, right?

Like, that happened.

So.

So why are you emphasizing in this talk that if you want to control your emotions and control your behavior, you should go all the way to Box 1?

Like, I was like, I can't change that.

But as James continued speaking, it became clear to me that, like, maybe that night, I couldn't change that situation, but I could change it in the future.

I could actually, for example, you know, at that time, Jason and I were both working very hard.

I could, for example, at the end of my day, like, literally pick him up to go home for dinner, right?

So now we're in a situation where we're like, just together.

I could actually change box 1 by like making dinner together, right?

So I guess I'll say this, Sadie, I think the three boxes model situation is box one.

Thoughts are box 2.

Your response is box 3.

I have come to believe that this is a blueprint for all human behavior.

Everything we do, everything we say, and every feeling we have can be traced back to this kind of situation that leads to the thought that leads to response.

And when I teach my classes now, I say like, we should try to reverse engineer the life we want.

And instead of using willpower or even just like change your mindset and your attitude, which of course we should try to do.

We should set ourselves up for success.

We should set ourselves up to be our best selves by putting ourselves in situations and creating situations that naturally, in a way, bring out our best.

If you enjoyed this mental health mini, you can listen to the full episode.

It is #228 featuring Doctor Angela Duckworth.

A link to the full episode is in the show notes.

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Thanks for listening.