THE IMPERFECT SHOW NOTES

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Tom Asacker  00:00

Uh, it’s a very deep process of inquiry and curiosity to try to understand, why am I thinking what I’m thinking, Why am I feeling what I’m feeling, and why am I doing what I’m doing? And if you can unwind all of that and understand where these thoughts are coming from, then you can learn to move through the world without listening to those thoughts. And when you do that, the thought, the thoughts start losing strength, and they lose influence, and they just get quieter and quieter and quieter. That’s what happens.

Achim Nowak  00:36

Welcome to the MY FOURTH ACT PODCAST I’m your host, Achim Nowak and I have conversations with exceptional humans who have created bold and unexpected lives. If you like what you hear, please subscribe on any major podcast platform so you won’t miss a single one of my inspiring guests, and please consider posting an appreciative review. Let’s get started. I am so happy to welcome Tom isacker again to the my fourth act podcast. Tom is a best selling author, keynote speaker, branding strategist, and in my mind, a provocateur. Tom has spent most of his career in the fascinating world of belief and behavior change and how it impacts both personal and professional lives. Tom is focused on helping people and organizations break free from self deceptive thinking and reclaim their creative freedom and joy. His best selling books include the business of belief, sandbox wisdom and I am Keats. Tom’s TEDx talk, titled Why TED talks don’t change people’s behaviors, has garnered just shy of a million views. Tom’s new book unwinding. Want is just out. Hello, Tom, hello. It’s

Tom Asacker  02:12

good to see you again. Good

Achim Nowak  02:14

to see you too. Used a bunch of you know, we had labels to describe your career, your success, and part of what I’m thinking after reading your book, which we’ll talk about, is, does that matter to you? How does it matter to you? How do those words land with you as I in a way, you do this little narrative summary.

Tom Asacker  02:36

That’s a great question. As a matter of fact, there’s a concept in the book, later in the book, that came to me while reflecting on the different things I’ve done during my lifetime. In essence, what the message was was that all of these things that you do are just something that facilitate relationship with yourself in your learning and your growth, relationship with other people, relationship with the environment around you, that’s all it is. It’s nothing more than that, because 1000 years from now, it’s all irrelevant. It’s gone. It disappears, whether or not we are enhancing and embracing relationship in our lives. That’s what everybody’s been struggling to find this idea of meaning and purpose. That’s it. It’s all bundled into that one word, yeah, when you read it, I said, Great. And you know what? There are 10 things you missed, but they’re irrelevant. They were relevant at the time, because they helped me do what I was doing enhance my relationship.

Achim Nowak  03:46

I appreciate how you related it all to relationships. As a writer, you have to use words. I want to throw something back at you that you wrote, because I know this is such a tightly crafted book. But since we’re decoding want and unwinding want, here you go. Words tangle. They can be used to enlighten or manipulate, conceal or reveal, confine or release. As a writer, as you put words on the page, how do you know that it’s going to do one and not the other?

Tom Asacker  04:25

Well, you don’t know how people are going to pick up what you’re putting out. The only thing that you really have any type of influence over is what your intention is when you put something into the world. That intention should influence your words. For example, if your intention with other human beings is to enhance relationship, that’s the primary intention, then would you ever use any kind of words with another human being for whatever reason? That somehow diminishes or destroys that you wouldn’t because that’s your intention. So you see what I mean, it’s it, just it conditions your intention. Will condition what comes out of you. I mean, yeah, you have to be very selective. But the reason that I used the fewest words possible is because I do understand that words can twist people up.

Achim Nowak  05:31

Well, our listeners who haven’t read the book, and I’ve had the privilege of reading unwinding one, I’m going to throw out four words that are sort of help organize it, a section called words, a section called delusions, a section on feelings, a section on reality. So I’m sure all of us just hearing those words, we have reaction to those we might imagine what Tom might be writing about when we hear those words of your subtitle, using your mind to escape your thoughts, someone might immediately go, well, heck, that’s impossible, because when I use my mind, I’m thinking, how do you use your mind to escape your thoughts? When thinking is part of what the mind does?

Tom Asacker  06:17

Yeah, this is a difficult one conceptually to communicate. But if your thinking mind is somehow moving you through the world, making decisions for you, creating anxiety, creating worry, creating regrets, if your thinking mind has control of you and you’re not aware of it, then it’s going to move you wherever it’s moving you. If the external world is influencing your thinking mind and you’re not aware of what’s going on, you’re just going to be pushed and pulled by the external world. I mean, that’s exactly what marketers do on the internet. They’re doing it all day long, to people right on their smartphones, wherever. So if your thinking mind is not doing that to you, now, this is where it gets interesting, right? Because if you’re not aware of it, then maybe you think it’s not doing that. Like, for example, if I’m hanging around with children, you know, three year old children, their thinking mind is not pushing and pulling them around. They’re just responding to the world in a natural way, whatever that way happens to be. But for the rest of us, most adults, we are being pushed and pulled around by our thinking minds. Now, some people get to the point where they see it. They see it like I’ve gotten calls from people Tom I can’t sleep. Three in the morning I wake up. My mind is going crazy with these thoughts. So they’re aware of it. Once you become aware of it, now you have to try to use your thinking mind to make itself aware of what it’s doing, right, so that it doesn’t so that it leaves you alone and doesn’t take control. It’s a very deep process of inquiry and curiosity to try to understand, why am I thinking what I’m thinking? Why am I feeling what I’m feeling, and why am I doing what I’m doing? And if you can unwind all of that and understand where these thoughts are coming from, then you can learn to move through the world without listening to those thoughts. And when you do that, the thoughts start losing strength, and they lose influence, and they just get quieter and quieter and quieter. That’s what happens.

Achim Nowak  08:44

Since you mentioned children, you tell well, you write this beautiful story about children eating strawberries that illustrates some of what you just said. Would you just give us a snapshot of that story? I would love people to read it, but it it’s so simple and so beautiful and so clear.

Tom Asacker  09:05

Again, I’m always looking out for any insights that come from the world, from people. Children are great teachers, if you pay attention to them. I was at a recital for a neighborhood child, and there were a bunch of parents and a bunch of children there. I just got bored with all the adults, and I saw the children all lined up at these low to the ground plastic little tables, and they were eating strawberries, and they were dipping them into chocolate fondue. I said, Well, that looks like fun. So I went over, and I grabbed a little blue chair, a little plastic chair, and I pulled up, and nobody even looked at me. None of the kids even turned and looked they were just absorbed in what they were doing. And at one point I turned and I looked at this little girl next to me, and I said, Hey, why do you have so many strawberries stuffed into your mouth? Because her cheeks were puffed out. A squirrel or something, and she just turned and looked at me and smiled, and she said, I like them Tom. And it was just so beautiful. It was just innocent. It was true. It was authentic. It came from her feelings. It came from her wants. She wasn’t thinking, Oh, he’s scolding me. He’s making me feel bad about this. That thought wasn’t in her head. Look, you have a question, yeah. What’s your question? Why do you have all those strawberries in your mouth? Here’s the answer, the logical answer. I like them, and it was just so beautiful. And we don’t get that from people, and I think we really like to get that from each other, which is just tell me, be true with me. You

Achim Nowak  10:44

make a statement later in the book that goes to how far removed we are from the strawberry experience. I want to read it back to you and invite you to contemplate this a little for us, you see, the majority of people spend most of their lives subconsciously not wanting their life.

Tom Asacker  11:04

Yeah, I I believe that to be true. I do

Achim Nowak  11:08

too. So why is that so?

Tom Asacker  11:11

Well, here’s what happens if you spend your day telling yourself in your inner mind, right? Your own thoughts in your head, which, by the way, you listen to right? It’s what actually moves us to be a certain way. Are these thoughts in our head that we keep repeating. If, when you’re doing something during the day, you keep saying to yourself, I don’t want to do this. I have to I don’t want to do this. I was asking someone just for kicks. I said, Hey, let me run the day by you real quickly, and I’ll mention something, and you tell me whether you want to do it or not, right? It was really, I was just mentioning anything like, Okay, you got up. You’re flossing your teeth. Do you want to do that? No, I don’t want to floss my teeth. Okay, you’re going downstairs and emptying the dishwasher. No, I don’t want to do that. Okay, you’re driving to work. No, I don’t want to drive to work. You’re at work. No, I don’t want to be at work. You’re in a meeting. No, I don’t want to be at meeting. Everything. I said it was I don’t want that. And so subconsciously, you’re telling yourself, I don’t want my life. I do not want the majority of my life. And by doing that, you create internal tension that you’re not even aware of. And that’s where all of this inflammation and illness and aging, all of this comes by not being free and saying, Yeah, I want my life. If I’m doing it, I want it otherwise. Why wouldn’t I do something else? It’s hypnotic. It’s untrue, and it is the biggest delusion that I’ve discovered in many decades of trying to understand human behavior, you

Achim Nowak  12:56

have a whole section on delusions and on the hypnotic nature of them. There’s a related quote that I also love. Say your maladaptive thinking mind gives you what it thinks you want. What are some of these delusions you have? Three different polarities that you describe. Why don’t you just walk us through them in a snapshot? Because I think we all one thing you see so beautifully book, when what is deep down true, we recognize immediately we don’t need an intellectual analysis. And I think your delusions are one of those things. When you describe them, you go, shit, that’s really true.

Tom Asacker  13:36

Yeah, I’m glad that you see it. That’s the most difficult thing is to get people to see something that’s right in in front of their eyes. I look I when I got out of college, I was a professional magician, and I would do things in front of people and they couldn’t see it even though I was doing it right. So that’s it’s similar with a delusion, you don’t see it even though you it’s happening right in front of you. So there’s three basic delusions of want. First one I call the delusion of this and that, and that’s when we say, I don’t want this, but I do want that. For example, I don’t want my job, but I do want the money. So we break things up into like little pieces. I actually had somebody say to me once, I’m going to piano practice. And I said, Great. And they said, Well, I don’t want to go to piano. I don’t want to practice the piano, but I do want to learn to play. And I said, Well, that’s insanity. What do you mean? You don’t want to practice the piano, but you do it, right? So that’s the this and that one. And you hear that, you’ve heard people say, Oh, I would love to have such and such a person’s like, a celebrity’s money or popularity. And I say, oh, okay, yeah, do you want their body? No, no, no, I don’t want their body. I don’t know they could be sick. I said, Oh, you don’t want their body, but you want their money. Do you want their this? No, I don’t want that. So this is what we do. We pick and. Lose things which is unreal. It is a delusion. It’s not true. If you want the thing, you want it all of it, or you don’t want it, one of the other that’s this and that, that one’s it’s all over the place. Another one is now and then, now and then is a really good one, right? It’s like, I don’t want what I’m doing now, but someday I’m going to have this so I don’t want my job, but someday I’m going to have enough money to not have to work or whatever. I don’t know. It’s always about later. It’s hypnotic. It’s hypnotic. It’s like, okay, when’s this later? When is I’ve never met anybody who said, Okay, that’s it. What do you mean? That’s it? Well, there’s, I’m done. There’s no later. I’ve got it. Everybody has this idea that it’s always out there someplace that somehow motivates people to keep going, never to look at their life and say, Hey, I like now. Now is really cool. No, it’s always well, it’ll get better. It’ll get better. That’s another delusion, a big one. That’s what creates regret. That’s why, when people are dying, they look back and they say, I wish I had been this. I wish I did that, because they kept pushing it off. And the last one is right and wrong. It’s like, I don’t want this, but it’s the right thing to do. I’ve had people say to me, I don’t want to invite this person to my wedding, because I don’t, we don’t get along. And I said, Well, why are you doing it? And they’ll say, well, she’s a friend of mine. Well, he’s a friend of mine. And it’s, it’s the right thing to do. And they don’t even see the delusion. The way things are done in your mind are the right ways to do these things. That doesn’t mean that it’s the way you want to do it, the way you will benefit most from it, the way you’ll improve relationship. It’s they’re all delusions. It’s difficult to get it across in a podcast, but I mean, I told somebody the other day, I said, human beings want war. And this person said, What are you crazy? Of course, human beings don’t want war. I said, Well, there’s war. I said, if they didn’t want it, there wouldn’t be war, right? So there’s a delusion.

Achim Nowak  17:19

Let’s play with that, because are you well, this is my interpretation. You intentionally push our buttons early in the book when you say your definition of want is the things that we do, which follows on what you just said about war, if we if nations, consistently engage in war, or is something we want. You know I just moved to Portugal four weeks ago? So there isn’t a day when somebody doesn’t say to me, and I’ve got a messages today, I’ve always wanted to go to Portugal. Now, the person who said this today, he is very successful, has a lot of money. Could get on a plane next week and fly to Portugal, or people say stuff like Portugal is on my bucket list, and I’m going, what the hell is the bucket list? If you want to do it,

Tom Asacker  18:09

they don’t want it to see this is the thing people think. They conflate the idea of want with fantasizing. That’s not want fantasize, is fantasize. I would rather somebody just be honest and say, you know, I’ve always fantasized going to Portugal. Don’t say you’ve always wanted to, because if you want to, and you have the resources, then you go, like you said, but we use that word, so that’s why words are critical.

Achim Nowak  18:35

One of the messages from your book, you said, because people on say, Well, I don’t really know what I want. You assert, in my opinion, rightfully so, that deep down, we absolutely know the things we don’t need to understand, we don’t need to analyze. We just know what it is we want. But somebody could be listening to this right now. Go Easy for these two old guys to say that. Can you play with that little more

Tom Asacker  19:05

sure, all you have to do is look at someone and see whether they’re lit up by life and whether what they’re doing is something that they enjoy doing, and whether they are authentic with you. And if they’re not, I can tell you what’s going on is that they’re doing things they don’t well, this is the paradox. They’re doing what they want, but they’re not aware that that’s not truly what they want. There’s something inside of them that wants something else, but they have hypnotized themselves, and they use the word, have to, I have to do this anytime you meet someone and you say, how are you doing? And they say, I’m not doing too good. You dig down deep enough you’re going to find they don’t want deep down what’s going on in their life. They don’t. Want it. That’s what’s making them the way they are. When you say deep down, they know, yeah, of course they do, because that’s where all the tension comes from. That’s where all of the frustration comes from. That’s where all the anger comes from. All of this is coming from this place that wants out, but it’s subconsciously. You’re hiding it from yourself by deluding yourself. Saying, no, no, I have to do this. I can’t do that, or whatever. It’s not true.

Achim Nowak  20:30

You use two words, and it’s funny, because we play with language. Language, it’s so easy to trivialize language until it means nothing. But you use the word curiosity, and you use the word innate intelligence, which, in my mind, is connected to the knowing. And perhaps you’re suggesting that some people are disconnected from their innate intelligence. I don’t want to just put that on you with What’s your understanding of innate intelligence?

Tom Asacker  20:57

Well, first, let me answer when you say people are disconnected. They are and what’s disconnecting them is their thinking mind, the thoughts in their heads, disconnecting them from that innate intelligence. Listen, I wrote an article once, and I got some pushback on it, but in essence, what I was saying is that we can improve the world immediately, if everyone would just stop talking. No, I believe this. I think that we were all lost our sense of speech, we would have to use our innate intelligence, our facial expressions, our body language, touch, hugs, all of these different ways that children, animals, they’re intelligent. Their plants are intelligent. We’re the only ones that use these words that disconnect us in a large way from the knowing that’s inside of us. We know things. It’s just obvious. We know that it’s better to be outside, for example, and walking around, than it is to be sitting on a couch scrolling through the internet or whatever, or looking at our phone. We know this, but we’re not doing it because the thinking mind has grabbed us. It’s grabbed onto us and we don’t know this is happening. This is the most interesting part I’ve asked people, there’s a funny clip on YouTube of an old TV show. You know the comedian’s name? I can’t remember his name, but he’s Bob Newhart, and he’s he’s playing a psychiatrist, and people come into his room, into his office, and he only charges them $5 but he they get to tell him one problem. He’ll give them the answer for $5 so people come in the room and they say, I’m doing this, you know, over and over, whatever it is that they don’t want to do. And he basically, he just looks at them and he says, stop it. And they look at and he says, give me my $5 and they say, Well, what are you talking about? Stop it. And then someone else will come in and says, Yeah, I keep smoking. I don’t want to smoke. And he’ll say, stop it. And then he’ll ask for the $5 and that’s all he says to everyone that comes in, is stop it. If you don’t want to do this anymore, stop it. And that’s my point about the thinking mind, this thing grabs control, and you keep doing it. You’re not really aware that you’re doing it. For some reason you like I said, you say things like, no, no, I have to. I have to. I can’t, not. And that’s is simply not true. And I’m not dismissing people that have addictions, and I’m not all I’m saying is to get aware of what it is that’s creating this pattern, this because it is, it’s a mental pattern of behavior. Try to get a handle on that, and then you can be free of it.

Achim Nowak  23:55

As I understood it, one of the pathways to unwinding. Want is about feeling more rusting feelings more the senses, which is why I love the strawberry story in chocolate, which is all about that. And you may or may not know there’s been I was trained as an actor and worked as an actor for 12 years, and actors are taught to become fully alive, because they’re supposed to do that as a part their profession. So they spend years getting in touch with their five senses, because they’re the connectors to emotion and feeling. So I was delighted to see how you connect us to the importance of that. Can you talk about a little more about these feelings can be manipulated, feeling you come from the branding world where, yeah, that’s the big part of it. So how do we know that a feeling is pure and not and not another delusion?

Tom Asacker  24:54

No, I understand. Look, all we are are feeling creatures. We’re not thinking. Creatures like people think we are. That’s not who we are. We’re not like computers. We can use our thinking mind, but what we want are feelings. That’s what we’re after, right? If somebody tells you they love you, but you never feel it. Who cares? It doesn’t resonate with you, right? Here’s the trick, though, and this is, I think, what people miss, what we want is are for those authentic feelings to happen in the moment. We want to feel it. We want to feel alive in each moment. We want to feel true to ourselves. We want to feel passionate. We want to feel curious. All of these things that you say actors are trained to allow because they’re all there, they’re trained to allow it to happen. We all want that. But you know what? We instead of understanding that that’s what we want and figuring out how to allow it, we go and think we’re going to go get feelings. I can get these and see that’s where marketers grab you. They say, haha, they want to get the feelings. I’ll run this commercial that shows somebody winning at the whatever baccarat table, and then they’ll come and play and get the feelings. No, it’s a lie. No one wins in Vegas. That’s a lie. They’re just showing you that someone wants one, but we want these feelings so they show us through everything, through alcohol, through food, through entertainment, through gambling, come and get the feelings we’ve got them in. What really we want is no I want to allow these feelings out when I walk in my backyard, when I’m meeting with friends, when I’m at work, wherever I am, let the feelings out authentically. And at the end of my life, I had a great life. I didn’t suppress anything. I lived fully. You have

Achim Nowak  26:58

this wonderful parable in the book about the businessman and the fishermen, that I think illustrates so much of what you were just talking about. Can you briefly tell us that story? Because it’s powerful and it makes so many points in a very clear way.

Tom Asacker  27:16

In essence, it’s some businessman shows up, probably in a little town like where you live, it’s early in the morning, and he sees a fisherman come in with a big no, say, a tuna or something that he caught. And fisherman’s looking at the boat, and he sees just like this, one or two fish. And he says, The businessman says to the fisherman, hey, that’s beautiful. That fish is beautiful. And he says, Thank you, sir. And he said, Why you in so early? And he said, What do you mean? He said, Why didn’t you stay out and catch a whole bunch of fish? And the guy says, No, this is enough for me to, you know, to take care of my needs and my family and friends. Oh, well, what do you do with all this extra time that you’re not fishing? Oh, he says, I have a very full life, you know, I take walks with my wife on the beach, I play with my children, I go into town and meet my friends, play guitar and laugh. And this guy’s going, Oh, look, look, I see what you’re doing. I’ve got an idea for you. You know, I have a Harvard NBA, whatever. But what you should do is you should catch more fish, and then take those fish, sell them, and use the investment from the catch. You can buy more boats, fleet of boats, and then you can buy a cannery. And then you can, you know, you’ll have to move to New York City, and you’ll have to move to, you know, Los Angeles. And then you can do an IPO, and then you can make millions. And this guy, the fisherman, suppressed like millions, sir, really? He says, Yes. He says, How long will this take? He said, Oh, I don’t know, 2030, years. And then he says, and then what he said, then you’ll be able to take walks on the beach with your wife, play with your children, go into town and play with your guitar, with your friends. Do you see? Do you see how silly it sounds when you tell that story?

Achim Nowak  29:07

One thing, you start the book after the subject, you know the title and all that with. There’s a page where you simply say, I love you, and that was very powerful for me. But then on the next page, you follow up with a James Baldwin quote about the context of love, and I think that might be a beautiful way to end this chat right now. Would you talk a little bit about love and the way James Baldwin talks about it and why you chose that particular opening to your book.

Tom Asacker  29:45

I don’t want to butcher it, so let me read. Please don’t butcher James Baldwin, let’s not Yeah, exactly anyone else I would, but not Paul. So Baldwin wrote, the role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the love. Are, if I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see. And so love is a desire to accept, embrace and enhance the potential in everything that you see, everything, every living creature, the oceans, the people in your life, your children, are you somehow allowing and enhancing their flourishing, their growth, that the whatever’s in them? Are you letting that out? Are you helping them let it out? And in some cases, the way to help is to show people what’s in their way. Because if something’s in their way and preventing them from flourishing, point it out and say, Here it is, so that they can then get it out of the way and then move forward and be the the happiest, freest life force that they can be. That’s my idea of love

Achim Nowak  30:57

and and in that spirit, I believe that is something you’re doing with your book. I believe your book is a gift of love, and you’re inviting all of us in a, think, very sweet way, to look at what blocks we might have, and you take us there in many different ways. I love, love, love. This book called unwinding. Want. It is just out as we wrap up. Is there anything that’s important to you in terms of ideas or things you’re saying in the book that we haven’t touched on that you want to mention before I say goodbye?

Tom Asacker  31:36

Well, only that. And you know this because you’ve been watching for it for a long, long time, as long as I’ve known you, the hardest things for us to see are things that are right in front of our eyes. And what I’m hoping with this book is to just open people’s eyes to what’s right there in a way that can never be hidden again. Because I honestly believe that if they can see this, really, truly see this, it will change people’s lives. It i There’s no doubt in my mind that it’ll have psychological, behavioral and physical benefits to people to let go of that hypnotic internal tension that they’re not aware of and live freely with the strawberry stuff in their mouth, if that’s what they want. Amen.

Achim Nowak  32:35

Tom asacker, on that note, I invite our listeners to read unwinding. Want it’s a short book. It’s Chris Tom is incredible writer, so go and get it and thank you so for this conversation. Okay,

Tom Asacker  32:53

thank you so much. Bye. Bye, for now. Bye.

Achim Nowak  32:58

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The my fourth act podcast. If you like what you have heard, please like us and leave a review on your preferred podcast platform. And if you would like to engage more deeply in fourth act conversations, check out the mastermind page at Achim nowak.com it’s where fourth actors like you engage in riveting conversation with other fourth actors see you there and bye for now you.