Mindfulness and Mason Jars: Keys to a Meaningful Life - Dr. Adam Dell | Ep 9

Episode Description

Gain practical strategies for bringing more mindfulness and intentionality into your daily life from Dr. Adam Dell. As a former Air Force psychologist, Adam shares how small habits like keeping a gratitude journal have helped his family stay grounded during difficult times. You'll learn how mindfulness isn't just about clearing your mind, but about embracing thoughts and emotions to uncover your deepest values. Adam offers a fascinating perspective on how our environment shapes us, sometimes without our awareness.  He gives you permission to "disobey your mind" when it's holding you back. This conversation provides motivation and ideas for incorporating mindfulness in accessible ways in your own life.

Takeaways:

  • Mindfulness is about being present and aware rather than clearing your mind or relaxing. It involves embracing thoughts and feelings without judgment.
  • Small daily habits like keeping a gratitude journal can have profound impacts on well-being over time by cultivating gratitude.
  • Our environments strongly shape our behaviors, so it's important to be mindful of triggers and create supportive structures.
  • Mindfulness exercises like noting emotions without judgement can help "disobey your mind" and choose behaviors aligned with your values.
  • Taking mindful perspective of past and future selves can motivate positive changes and reduce shame about the past.

Resources:

  • Mindless Eating, by Brian Wansink (book)
  • Atomic Habits, by James Clear (book)
  • The Mindful Body, by Ellen Langer (book)
  • Switch, by Chip and Dan Heath (book)
  • A Liberated Mind, by Steven Hayes (book)
  • The Happiness Track, by Emma Seppala (book)
  • Emotional Agility, by Susan David (book)
  • The Yale course on Gratitude, taught by Dr. Laurie Santos (free on Coursera)

Connect with Dr. Adam Dell:

Episode Transcript

Caleb Roth  
Welcome back to the Stacking Habits podcast. We've got a very interesting guest today. I'm really excited to dig into his story and some of his insights and wisdom. Today on the show. We have Dr. Adam Dell. He currently serves as the Director of emotional wellbeing. That's a really cool title that we'll dig into momentarily at the Notre Dame Wellness Center with premise health and prior to taking this role. He served nearly seven years as an active duty psychologist with the US Air Force. So Adam, thank you for your service. And the reason we're having this conversation is we've been sort of looking for unique and interesting habits about how to build a more intentional and practical life. And so Matthew, David and I have been sort of looking in the weeds and trying to find just unique people. And Matthew sent this Instagram real light from the pre show here. We understand you've been putting a lot of content together over the last few months. And Matthew said, Hey, guys, check. Check this guy out. It's incredible. I think you'd make an incredible guest. I click the lake pull it up, and I'm like, I think I recognize this fella. I saw your name and was like absolutely I do. So we crossed paths a bit at Grace College in Winona Lake, Indiana. Your sister I believe was in my class, if not plus or minus a year. And so what a blast from the past. I that was That was incredible. It's such a small world and we're delighted to have you on the show. So welcome.

Dr. Adam Dell  
Thank you. Thanks, guys.

Caleb Roth  
So you're just up the road. I'm over in Fort Wayne Still, why don't you give us just a quick background on on what you're doing and how you got there and sort of what attracts you and draws you into that emotional space?

Dr. Adam Dell  
Yeah, well, thanks. Thanks again for for allowing me to be here. What an honor. The most important thing about me is I'm ginans husband and Addy and Amelia has dad. Prior to becoming their biological father, my wife and I were foster parents in three different states during my military career for about 10 years of of infertility. Just a real struggle and inability to get pregnant. I found as a psychologist the prevalence of of infertility issues for committed couples is a lot higher than maybe what some might suspect so sometimes I share that so that those who may be listening might understand that they're not alone in that journey. And it was a me issue. I just had a really low sperm count. And so what it was like a miraculous thing that we would get pregnant with Adeline and then her sister was born seven months ago. So yeah, and I also am a psychologist, which means I went to school for a long time. I have a terminal doctoral degree, which just means that I know almost everything there is to know about almost nothing in my little shred of almost nothing is clinical psychology. I wouldn't be able to change oil in my car, but I could ask you how that makes you feel. Anyway, I lead a team at the University of Notre Dame What a cool place. And we we provide sort of multifaceted, multidisciplinary health care opportunities for faculty and staff and their benefit eligible family members there. So there's a separate kind of University Counseling Center that works with students. But I work with primary care doctors, pediatricians, physical therapists, pharmacy, wellness coaches, social workers, chronic condition management, nurses, etc. And another couple of psychologists and students that are studying to become psychologists there at Notre Dame. I love working in the United States Air Force and I love working at a place like the University of Notre Dame because healthcare in these settings is almost free, and so it's really accessible. I also love the settings because most of the people we're working with are pretty darn average or above average. You know, there are a lot like anybody that might be listening to this podcast, they're employed, but they're not addicted to methamphetamine. They're bright, they're well educated. They're motivated and so as a clinical psychologist, although we're probably trained to tell people better what's wrong with them than what's right with them. This these types of settings allow us to not only ameliorate human suffering, but also certainly to help people to walk in the direction of flourishing which, you know, I think is much more important. So, so yeah, that's what I do during the week, but I'm not playing with the girls or hanging out with my wife.

Caleb Roth  
That's, that's fantastic. Flourishing is a very good word. Again, our show is primarily about habits and trying to be as practical as possible and as glamorous as it is to have the ice bath Outback or the red light sauna and brag about some of these healthy habits that we have. I think emotional well being sort of takes a backseat until it's broken and in a lot of ways, it's just like our healthcare system at large. We don't really go in and do a lot of prophylactic or preventative care. We just wait till something breaks and then we react to it. So that's going to kind of set the stage for what at least me personally, I'd love to dig in and follow my curiosity is for those that you know, aren't necessarily broken or at the point where they need therapy or they've been diagnosed with PTSD and just the average person that's trying to flourish and better their life. Let's just set the stage there. You mentioned that we're sort of coming up on an epidemic. I think that was the word you use pre show in terms of emotional health and well being. So can you kind of walk us through where we are primarily in the US but maybe globally as well. And then we'll kind of dig into some of the habits and pieces from there.

Dr. Adam Dell  
Sure, yeah. Well, there's no there's like no mistake about it. The World Health Organization now estimates that depression is the leading cause of disability globally. And all of the things that we might track in terms of rates of PTSD, depression, anxiety, substance use disorders, all of them have only been exacerbated in the context of the pandemic. And you know, circumstances thereafter. And so, I read an article recently that it for adolescents and we're seeing some of the largest increases in anxiety and depression and suicidality and people in America between the ages of 15 and 25. Like the average level of neuroticism for that age group neuroticism, meaning anxiety or depression is about what you would have found in a psychiatric hospital in the 1970s. So it's not really a matter of like, is this a phenomenon and man that it is and sort of the etiological pathways like how we got there, I think could be about 15 of these podcasts in terms of what might suck up some of the variance that explains how a culture like ours would be so increasingly fearful, So increasingly, dysphoric, or melancholic and hopeless. But yeah, I mean, like that's, that's, that's, that's sort of like globally nationally, 800,000 people a year across beside each year. And so, and so these are these are things that affect any one of us personally, and even if, even if we wouldn't put ourselves in that category of broken which, by the way, you know, like, having been a psychologist with fighter pilots or, you know, coaches, people in athletics or you know, individuals in really prominent places, even in a place is as amazing as a place like the University of Notre Dame, I am reminded again and again that even the best of people are people at best, and traumas cumulative over time, like exposure to adversity. Eventually, like there's a greater and greater weight that's carried with that until we get pretty wounded. So, you know, I think all of us experience like full range of psychiatric symptoms. I've never met anyone that had no anxiety or, or no depression. And so, yeah, the as your listeners are listening and leaning in, it's sort of like, yeah, even if I can't exactly relate to that someone I love or care for is really experienced sort of the darkest night of their soul recently or suffers in some of these ways. And so, I think taking the opportunity to do things like this as we mentioned, pre show, just feels like a privilege, man, because you know, it take me three hours just to talk to the three of you guys for one hour each in my day job. And if there's even 1520 3040 people that listen to this podcast, it would take me an entire week. To meet with them each individually, one hour at a time. There's got to be a better service delivery method to blast some of this information about not only coping with difficult things, but also like how to keep building a meaningful life. That's

Caleb Roth  
fantastic. So in I'm going to keep using the healthcare analogy to physical health because I think it just provides enough of a latch to sort of catch and hold on to here. You can go get you know, CT scans or MRIs and maybe not CT. I think there's too much radiation with that, but you can go in and get diagnostic imaging and they can start you know, detecting things. Like early signs of cancer or you know, liver disease or organ organ disease. Are there any equivalents when it comes to the emotional side of things, in terms of tests, or I know mindfulness and meditation has been kind of getting a new life lately, but are there some things that as listeners are kind of honing in going, huh? I wonder if some of these things are impacting me? Or maybe they are, how do you go about sort of finding your way to that and recognizing it?

Dr. Adam Dell  
Yeah, that's a great question. I would say our science is really in its infancy. I wish that like similar to diabetes or something you could just draw hemoglobin LNC or some lab tests and say, Oh, you've got Generalized Anxiety Disorder, extreme handsome disorder, something like that. We don't we're not there. And really, our diagnostic system is, I mean, one of my reels that I've gotten some heat, I got some heat from others and from various disciplines, just kind of pointing out that our diagnostic and statistical manual work that needs done. There's hundreds of 1000s of different combinations of symptoms, for example, that each would be labeled PTSD, you know, and so if you've got a line of 200,000 people who all have a different set of symptoms, but they all get the same label. It's like what are we? What are we describing there? I wouldn't say this, any mental health professional worth their salt, I think will pretty quickly help people to start recognizing maybe not just sort of the things that hurt that bring them in, in terms of I've got, you know, this much anxiety or depression, but but also the way in which that's getting in the way of really important functional domains in their life. We tend to think about these things in terms of social in terms of personal health and growth, in terms of occupational and even in terms of something like existential meaning and purpose oriented, like any mental health professional, that's worth talking to more than once is eventually going to start helping anybody to start recognizing how avoidance has increasingly increasingly kind of creeped in and, and the costs associated with avoidance avoiding things that we may remember avoiding circumstances that make us sad or anxious, avoiding, you know, fears of what might come into the future. So that to your point. You know, mindfulness is sometimes I think, a profoundly misunderstood construct. There's there's so many different camps associated with what mindfulness might be. I tend to think of mindfulness as drawing my attention, on purpose in a fluid way to something here and now so that I could be more aware of and participative with it. And so much of the psychiatric distress that I'll see as a clinical psychologist does not come from that kind of attentional awareness oftentimes comes from a preoccupation and a haunting, the things that came before or almost like a paralysis about what might be coming around the corner. And it really robs us the opportunity to be here and now, which is the only place that we have freedom.

Caleb Roth  
So Adam, let's let's dig a little bit into mindfulness. Our minds have the ability and maybe it's a problem to look at the past and dwell in shame. We also have the ability and propensity to look into the future and wonder what is going to come in the corner, and it gets very difficult at times to sort of focus in and just be there. I know I feel that with my kids I feel that even on podcast recording, my mind is flashing forward to you know, what's, what's going to be there for dinner. So have you found some really good practices for people to sort of hone in on the present? And then what do you do with the thoughts and the feelings and everything else that sort of emerges? When you do that?

Dr. Adam Dell  
Yeah. Well, I think that's a brilliant question. And I think it's neat that there's four guys on on this call right now. Because I found that men in general, whether it was Marines and soldiers and airmen, sailors that I worked with in Department of Defense or or other you know, I mean, they're just like, people on the fire department, police department Athletics Department at Notre Dame. I see a lot of men in therapy and I'm not sure that we're very good. Either at being very present, or at knowing what in the world to do with painful thoughts or emotions. You know, and so, and you know, frankly, we live in a culture that allows us many many expedient wildly effective strategies for avoiding that kind of thing. The average American spends over four hours a day on their phone doing non work related tasks. And, you know, like how many people in my career have hired alcohol for example, myself included after a 2016 deployment? You come back from something like that I had a good a good colleague of mine kill himself there. I was a medic on call responded to the scene found him you know, and what I found was six gauge shots of Jack before bed and then I didn't have to think much about it, and I certainly wouldn't dream about it. You know, so we hire various strategies to try to be mind less. This is also perhaps one of the reasons why 70% of American adults are overweight or obese because of a total lack of awareness, like a total lack of present connectedness to even like, how elbow deep I am in the Pringles can. And so, you know, like sometimes people conjure this idea of mindfulness as this like Zen kind of Buddhist like, cross your legs and sit in the grass and focus on your breath. And there's actually a terrific amount of empirical support and that's actually quite helpful. But, you know, I think like most of my training, and most of what I do, who is a dad, or as somebody who's lost 60 pounds, just in the last year, using these things, or as a husband or as a psychologist comes from the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy literature. Or even, you know, like if you're if you're, if your listeners are into good books, you know, like Steven Hayes wrote the best book, I got an email from him this week. He's like a hero of mine, and I asked him if I could publish a book and cite some of his stuff and he actually responded to me. I think his best book was written just a couple of years ago called a liberated mind how to pivot towards what matters to terrific book if you're if your listeners don't have all the time to read that big thing. I would just focus on part two. He's got a whole chapter in there on mindfulness. And also like Ellen Langer at Harvard is known by some as the mother of mindfulness and she published a book this year called the mindful body that will blow you away in terms of how how we think directly correlates to like, how good our eyes work, how good our years were, like whether or not we recover from illness, but she's also just done some brilliant stuff in terms of mindfulness related to decision making. So long story short, I think when I do this, right, and let me just say, I've never met anybody who is mindful all the time, but all of us could be a little bit more mindful. And yeah, and so I think about like taking back a few seconds or minutes every day, in times that really, really matter. So like a quick personal example is I lost 60 pounds in the last year. So partly because I was I was inspired by becoming a father. twice over and being old, recognizing like, I want to be able to play with my kids when they're still young enough that they live in my house but I'm in my 50s and when I'm approaching 60 at a high school graduation, right, I don't want to be there if I can help it with with a poor health status. But but also in part by just drawing attention to what I was eating, instead of just mindlessly going into a pantry or grazing. drawing attention to the here and then now, even in writing down Hey, it's it's 1400 on Friday afternoon, and I'm going to eat a handful of almonds. Instead of just mindlessly and kind of bombing around the house and eating things and having no idea at the end of the day, what I consumed. Mindfulness also helped me to realize like I was telling myself stories and living in autopilot about how often I would drink alcohol. You know, that was just last Friday. I always drink on Fridays. And so part of mindfulness I think, is being aware of our thoughts without needing our thoughts to change. I could talk for a long time about mindfulness, but I think sometimes it's helpful to dispel the wrong ideas people have about mindfulness like for example, mindfulness is not relaxation. In fact, mindfulness when done well, especially in a time of difficulty, turns the volume up in some ways on painful thoughts, emotions, memories and bodily sensations like we become aware of them without trying to avoid them. Mindfulness is also not like emptying our heads of thoughts. But I think it allows us to separate ourselves a little bit as a thinker from a particular thought. Like one of the most powerful things that I encourage people to do in therapy from a mindfulness based standpoint is when they're starting to notice that they're getting angry, for example, or they're getting frustrated, to simply just say out loud, like, I'm noticing that I'm getting angry again. Or if it's a thought that comes you mentioned shame, right and like, everybody on this call and everybody that's listening to this has some version in their head and hard about the I'm not good enough story that we've carried around with us since we were probably five that maybe didn't even originate in our own heads that came externally to us from people that we should have been able to count on as caregivers or friends. And when I noticed the I'm not good enough thing. I'm not smart enough. I'm not good enough. I'm an imposter, whatever that is to just simply say, like, I'm telling myself the story again, that I'm not going to be bright enough to be able to contribute anything meaningful on a podcast like this, right? Like, I'd be kidding you if I didn't hear from that part of my mind. When I'm connecting to this three minutes late, you know, it's like, I don't need that to go away. In order for me to be able to change my relationship to and to recognize that this is a part of my mind that flashes up that largely is just trying to keep me safe. But to say one final thing, when I'm able to feel fully and thankfully without needing to hire something to help me go into avoidance mode and what that means is that even the deepest darkest thoughts and emotions that I have are just signposts to significance in my heart. And here's what I mean by that. And I've stolen this from Susan David, who's also at Harvard, she wrote a terrific book called Emotional agility checking in with Susan David is her podcast. She's brilliant, easy to listen to. Grew up in South Africa, nice accent. She talks about how emotions are just indicators to values. So like as we're all sort of thinking about this through the lens of our own lived experiences, kind of like what's the thing that I've worried about the most in the last week? And if I can be aware of it, and then ask myself like, what does that tell me that I care about? All of a sudden, now I'm not just a person who's feeling anxious or insecure. I'm connected to something like, Man, I want to do something about human suffering in this world. Or like, I want to be competent and use some of the privilege of my own life in terms of education, clinical experience, to be able to offer something meaningful to the world all of a sudden now, instead of just being an insecure person who's mostly thinking about male pattern baldness, and how much shine is gonna be on my head for the podcast? Oh, all of a sudden, now I'm connected to things like Courage, values like compassion. And I'm able to like, build a meaningful life

Caleb Roth  
in defense of the bald dome, you do have a killer beard. So that is that is something of envy. Man, Adam, you just you just gave a lot of information. And it really connected in in a lot of ways. I love that concept of signposts of significance. But let me try and rephrase the mindfulness piece, because that's still something that is new for me. So I'm trying to come at it a different way. And mindfulness just sort of has this nebulous, kind of, I don't want to say foo foo, but it's just it's a, it's an overused term. So when I hear that and try and let it sit with me, the other words that come to mind are sort of just being aware of what's going on the idea of simply observing, so we always I tend to cast judgment and say, Hey, I'm feeling anxious, that's bad. I don't want to feel anxious. How do I stop? And instead of that, just step back and say, Oh, I'm observing that I'm anxious, and then get curious. I wonder why that is. And I wonder what that reveals about my values. Is that is that maybe a better way to sort of phrase that

Dr. Adam Dell  
that's certainly one way to do mindfulness. Caleb, you know like next time you're frustrated with your wife. If you are able to take a breath and say, What is this anger tell me that I care about for many of the people that I work with, and I'm not suggesting that you and your wife have some high conflict dynamic going on, but you know, for in my marriage anyway, when I'm feeling the most frustrated with my wife it usually traces down to something in my heart, like I'd like to be respected. And the invitation then, is to step in with a very next thing that I do or say, as a man who's respectable. But if I don't get down there, then the next thing that I do or say, comes from a person who's just wounded. Now, like, that's one form of mindfulness, and that's extremely cognitive. If someone came to me and they said, like, I'm addicted to porn, for example, or I'd like to lose weight, or I'd like to quit smoking, you know, or I've developed some kind of addictive type habit and it's just ruining my life. I would not initially tell them, you should do less of that thing. You know, partly because anytime we tell a human being that ages five to 95, they just come up with 25 reasons why if all I'm gonna ask somebody to do is to start engaging in more mindful awareness of when and how much they're using that particular stimulus. So it's like, I don't want you to stop looking at porn one minute less than the next week. Or if you smoke a pack a day, smoker, 20 Cigarettes all I'm gonna ask you to do, ideally in real time, not like at the end of the day by recollection, but in a little pad of paper in your pocket or whatever. Just want you to start writing down when you're turning to this thing, like what time and how long. They might say, like, you know, 1413, Friday afternoon, once again, got it. What's so fascinating about this and like for any, you know, geeks that listen to your podcast that are really curious about like, empirically supported things, or what does the research say? mean? Like mindfulness benefits, almost anything that can be measured from immune system functioning, certainly mental health symptoms like anxiety or depression. People who are more mindful in a cockpit, for example, as a former active duty Air Force psychologist, have a higher ceiling for performance. Like when people are able to engage in these things tactically they become the best versions of themselves, and perhaps, experienced the most out of life. You know, like, if you think about the last time that you were really connected to something that was novel that you were participating in and consumed by. It's like, time slows down. And like who the heck wouldn't want that? Whether you're eating a bowl ice cream, or making love to your intimate partner or playing with your kid in the backyard or listening to your favorite song, it's like, how can I be more present with this without like, getting pulled to the past, or the future? And what's fascinating about mindfulness by just simply drawing our attention to when things are occurring, is regardless of the target behavior, you know, like whatever the thing is you're trying to eradicate, there's usually about a 50% reduction in that behavior, just by doing because, like, here's what happens. People start realizing like, oh, man, I just had a cigarette like eight minutes ago, and I want to write it down again, like, do I really need one? I don't think so. You know, it's like, don't do that. Don't do that. 50% of the time. People come back into my office a week later, and they'll be like, all of a sudden, right? It's not cigarettes using me, it's me using cigarettes. And all of a sudden now like in this space between, I'm President aware of this and able to be participative with it, and whatever the behavior is, I found like a lot of freedom in there, the freedom to choose and so it like bolsters agency and allows us to feel like maybe we're were able to kind of wield our functionality a little bit more.

Caleb Roth  
Love that like

David Chung  
in the topic of mindfulness. I'm curious how much of the environment shapes the behavior and I guess encourages certain behaviors. For example, a few weeks ago, I saw my favorite cookie from childhood. You know, the uncooked dough and bake cookies and we have toaster oven and so for the last week and a half, I've been baking two cookies every night. Eating them and I know they're not the best for me, but they're delicious and I I've never eaten so many cookies in my life. And I feel like I could continue to eat these cookies forever, as long as they're in my refrigerator. Thankfully, I'm down to like my last eight cookies. But you know, we also spoke previously about how Fridays are protected or sacred for you. Fridays are family time time for your kids. And you make that expectation clear whenever you're taking a new job. And so, you know, how how important is environment in aiding behaviors and nating like creating a space for my life?

Dr. Adam Dell  
Yeah, I think that's a that's a great question, David. There's a book that's a little old now. It's called mindless eating. I think I can double check for you. By one saying you Yeah, mindless eating by one st man this thing, like the the overweight and obesity epidemic in most of the developed Western world, can largely be traced to things like ultra processed foods, which typically comprise about 60 to 80% of Americans diets, even little kids, and that's horrifying. And portion sizes and one things book is full of these just like amazing examples of how if you put someone in the right environment and even serve them something which tastes like garbage, if it's in a larger container, they'll eat way more of it. I think that I think that we as humans, especially in Western culture, where there are still these like very almost immutable tenets of rugged individualism and this idea that we become what we choose. I think that we oftentimes wrongly, misunderstand and undervalue the impact of environment on the choices that we make, and the things that we were the things that we eat, that people are the things that we spend our time focused on. And so and so in that way, right again, is anybody mindful all the time? No way. Could we all be a little bit more mindful, in terms of the things that really matter in our life? I'll share another book with ya. Maybe in part because I do this all the time as a psychologist too. I don't know when I was really Junior as a psychologist, I shared resources all the time, probably because 90% of the reason was, I was insecure. But it's like, don't take my word for it. Like, ah, you know, now it's just like, I mean, yeah, I think like if you if you listened to a podcast once, it can be insightful, if you have a book, you might have that forever. You can go back to it and that sort of thing. But one of the things that can be really powerful. Oh, my God, I just lost it. Sorry. Hopefully you edit this out. Are we talking about?

Caleb Roth  
We're talking about mindless eating and you were recommending some books there and then you were bringing up another book and you're pointing to them and saying, Hey,

Matthew Osborn  
environmental how to fix.

Dr. Adam Dell  
Well, there's certainly a really great Chip and Dan Heath called Switch love it that talks a lot about how to engage in behavior. Change. And there's three elements to that. But the path piece is definitely the environment. And I think that is perhaps one of the most insightful books. It's not written for clinical psychologists. That that I think really illuminates how critical it is if you want to start and maintain it changes certainly James clears book atomic habits. He has an entire chapter on there about how really kind of the environment is so influential that you know, if we don't shape that a little bit, we're gonna be in a lot of trouble. Another book that I was going to mention that I just remembered is from Peter A TIA, or adhia. That book honestly in the last year is probably the most profound book that I've read from my own personal development. And that in that book, he talks about four pillars of health, nutritional biochemistry, exercise, science, sleep enhancement, and emotional well being. And so you know, like when I think about individuals wanting to try to pursue mindfulness in any particular area, I just tried to think about like, well, what would be a meaningful thing that we could create a pathway process for, that would make the biggest difference that you can do and that you would would be willing to do today? And any one of these books that I've talked about or you know, even a close friend or a psychologist, therapist, whether it's somebody that cares for you that can help you to create the path and then help hold you accountable to it. It's amazing like what a human being can do when they're just a little bit more aware and they get out of autopilot. Kind of one day at a time.

Caleb Roth  
You know that I think that's really commercial for what we're after. With this entire podcast, we've talked about creating a habit menu. And so sort of the idea is to cast a wide net because most people when they think habits, they're thinking, at least in the business world, are thinking how do I be more efficient? How do I be you know, how do I get the same thing but more done in a day more productive? And you know, how can I get a six pack or you know, whatever goals that you may have, and a lot of times we just have too narrow of a frame and we miss out on the fact that there's so many other potential habits that could help us and so, really, our main criteria for guests is that they are intentional. And I think that word is about as spot on as it can be with you and what we're discussing here, I think mindfulness is being intentional and saying, hey, I want to just look at my life and take just a you know, an unemotional view of my own life. Be curious about it, and just observe and then pick some things to do based on that. And Socrates as a quote, we, we, I went to a nerdy high school and we studied Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, all those. He had a great quote that is stuck with me since high school and it's the unexamined life is not worth living. And I love that it's like if you're not going to be intentional, and you're just going to go on autopilot as you called it. I think we just we just skate through life. And we don't ever hit the brakes and kind of zoom out and say, Hey, am I living a life that I'm proud of something Alex or Mozi says is do the things today that future you would be proud of? So don't do things to win an Olympic medal or don't do things to you know, make a million dollars, whatever your goals may be, simply break that down and say what would future Caleb be proud of? And that that really informs decisions? I find that when I'm looking for meaning in the fridge or the pantry, and I'm about to grab some potato chips, and I go with future Caleb want me to eat these potato chips right now? The answer usually is no. He would not be happy with that decision. And I guess that's sort of mindfulness as well. And just being aware of it.

Dr. Adam Dell  
Yeah, I'll tell you, you know, I think like there is no self compassion or wise living without mindfulness. In fact, any theory of self compassion or wise living necessarily includes this. Certainly Kristin Neff smile comes to mind. And, you know, like within the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy framework, and what I do with people, sometimes we will engage in sort of self as context exercises where people will do perspective taking, you know, like, what do you think your older self would think about this now, and I've oftentimes found, you know, even with some of the toughest, you know, service members or people who are truly alpha, like, truly win all the time, always leading, which is intensely lonely and very costly, but they're extraordinary at it. It's amazing to me how many people get reduced to tears when they do that kind of perspective, taking based on a much younger version of themselves. It's like, how old were you? Or how tall were you? Or what kind of clothes Did you wear? Or what was your hair like, when you started hiring food to comfort you? Or when you started believing that you weren't good enough? And like one of the fascinating things in therapy sometimes in a mindful connected moment like that is kind of like if that young kid had the ability to see you now what would you want him to see? is careful to phrase it that way? Right? Because, like, what do you think he would see because then people get pretty judgmental, you know, like, what do you what would you want him to see in your being and doing like in the kind of father that you are? In the kind of nutrition that you put in your body? And the types of things you scroll to one in the morning on your phone? Like in terms of the quality of your relationships, like the deep friendships that Aristotle talked about? Not just kind of transactional relationships, in your ability to play, learn, grow? What would you want him to see? Or what would you want for somebody else that you cared a lot for, you know, like someone that you really cared for, that you really cared about? What happened next to them? What would you want them to do with alcohol? What would you want them to do with these things? They just can be such a powerful catalyst to starting to say like, you know, I think that I could start disobeying my mind a little bit. That's a phrase from act as well. Like, I'll give you an example of this. Like, I, I've got a history of, of overeating. You know, because I'm an American, probably and we venerate overeating in some ways, but, you know, like on a particularly difficult day for therapy, sometimes like I've got my own trauma history. I sit down with somebody and they tell me some of the hell of their own history. And it was just like almost clockwork, I would hit a fast food restaurant on the way home right zip through the drive thru. A couple of double cheeseburgers or whatever. All always knew, probably in some level that that wasn't a great idea would even have ambivalence about it in the drive thru, but I was like, I'm doing it, you know. And like, one of the things that I'll encourage people to do sometimes is like, if they've hired certain things like that, to comfort them, and they've told themselves the story like, yeah, like, you know, I deserve this or I need this or whatever. It's like, the next time you feel that way. Go to the drive thru, order your favorite meal, take one bite, and throw the rest of it away. Like, like disobey your mind in a present connected, choice oriented moment, to be able to say, I don't have to listen to the story, that I have to eat all of this thing. I can take a bite of it and get rid of it. Right like David, you don't have to eat the rest of us. Ate cookies, man, that's a story in your head. says like, I'm not I mean, you go home and eat all the cookies. If you're trying to be efficient, he's gonna be something right if it was like, Well, what if I made these cookies tonight? And I took one bite, and then I threw the rest away. Not because like you know, it's like, I love me, I hate me. I love me or hate me or anything like that, but it's just like, I get to make some choices here. Like I get to be more aware of and participative with this with a lot more freedom. And you know, like, I think when I was learning about some of this stuff, I oftentimes thought about this even like in terms of with my spouse, like an eye contact, like, married for a number of years, like, what would it be like for me to take three seconds of mindful connection just notice something unique or different about her eyes? You know, or what it feels like to hold her hand or what it sounds like you're breathing after she fell asleep. Like how could I be a little bit more aware of appreciative and even grateful for, you know, some of the stuff that typically I might understand as a stimulus nearby but not really pay much attention to? Can I share one thing that we do in my family in terms of mindfulness, please. This is perhaps the most utilized, well received intervention that I've shared with anybody and 20 years of working in behavioral health. Meaning of all the things like all the books, all the resources all the Hastings you know, try this, this single thing. More people have come back to me and said, had changed my life or even my family's life. And it's very simple. Like if you came to my house, there's well over a dozen of these all over the house. In fact, there's a couple I don't know if you can see it on the screen, but there's like four years worth of them back there. Dr. Laurie Santos at Yale teaches a class on gratitude. She's got like a similar exercise in there. You can take that class for free. Some most well attended course in Yale history. This thing will sit in a prominent place in our house and it sits in a prominent place so that we're visually cute that you know all this is important to us. And there's there's lots of little strips of paper next to it. And every year we started a new job. And at the beginning of the year in January, at some point, either my wife or iron our four year old will think oh, I'm grateful for something in particular, jot it down with a date folded up and stick it in there. And over the course of a year, man, they get pretty full. And so you know, like if you were in my office, we could go back there and find one that says like 2007. Sometimes like we find what we're looking for in cognitive science. teaches us that we will encode in more specificity and detail negative events than positive ones. And so like if we want to cultivate a habit, like gratitude, then like this is a really approachable way to do it. By the way, I've had a lot of men in my office that have felt like they've sort of lost their voice, their influence with their family and kids. Maybe they work outside the home a lot. Maybe they maybe are not as present during their kid's formative years. Mom kind of takes the reins in terms of how things go at home. I've challenged a lot of dads over my career, or a lot of husbands to think about around the dinner table or when giving a blessing over a meal or like how might you champion a gratitude oriented mindfulness type exercise, where for a moment you're able to pause and notice something. And what's really interesting is like when you start something like this it's pretty easy. It's like I'm thankful for my wife, but like, I'm not gonna put that in twice. So like, you can bet the one that's upstairs in my house. It's gonna be like, one of mine, and it's gonna say today's date. Caleb David Matthew. This podcast is special to spend some time and so it's a meaningful thing to do in the here and now it's an over joyful thing to do at the end of the year to spell out the contents but I'll tell you like, when trauma or grief or hardship visits your life to know that you have established a decade or more worth of a habit. I like when car home next because it's not a matter of if but when and I'm tempted to believe that life is all bad. That there's only room to despair. I've got like a jar back there that says 2010 and I can empty that out on the floor with tears streaming down my face and be reminded of things that I didn't even think of for a long time. That were connected to meaning and joy and beauty and art and music and love and it can be like such a centering process for us. So don't like get to where we about mindfulness. I think mindfulness could be approached in the same way that many of your listeners have actually cultivated different habits in terms of being successful professionally.

I check my email this number of times I exercise this number of times a week I do these things. And it's like, what if I were to be a little bit more present and aware and participative with something even as simple but profoundly impactful as gratitude and what have I got to lead my family in that as well. The second experiment may be worth trying.

Caleb Roth  
I think it's definitely worth trying. Well, Adam, thank you so much for coming. I feel like we could talk for hours and I don't know what our policy is on repeat guests. But we may need to have you back at some point in the future as this thing continues to grow. But mindfulness and Mason jars maybe the subtitle here really appreciate you coming on I'm glad you were you were kind of anti social media just didn't have it up until the last few months. And that's been blowing up so I'm glad Matthew found you. I'm glad we got to reconnect here. For those that want to follow you I've got your your Instagram up is that where you're mostly hanging out? Yeah, that's a great place to go. So we will link to that in show notes but it is Dr. Dr. Dot Adam Del Sol ADA M just like the first man and then Dell d e l l and it looks like you also have Dr. Adam dell.com as well. Okay, perfect. So again, I don't think you run a private practice right? You probably can't pick up clients necessarily from this

Dr. Adam Dell  
no, you know, up to this point. I've responded to every message on there not offer therapy. But yeah, I stayed pretty busy and I think like part of part of being the dad and the husband that I want to need to be means that I've got pretty strict limits about where the clinical stuff begins and ends but always happy to consult or nudge people in the direction of a resource or a particular modality for care. I

Caleb Roth  
love that and you also mentioned several books on this podcast. We will link to those in the show notes as well. So until next time, be a little more mindful, be a little more intentional. And Dr. Dell. Thanks again for coming on the show.

Matthew Osborn  
Thanks, guys. Thank you so much.

Caleb, David, and Matthew

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Caleb Roth, David Chung, and Matthew Osborn are the hosts of the Stacking Habits Podcast bringing you new episodes with wordl class guests every week.