Streamlined Solopreneur: Tips to Help Solopreneurs Automate Their Business

“People who are successful do these 6 things. And if you're not successful, you have nobody to blame but yourself because you didn't do number 3. And that's absolute garbage. That's absolute garbage. There are people who do all of the things harder than anybody else and still don't get the result, capital t, capital r, that's kind of been put on the pedest”l - Lindsey Carnick

Joe Casabona: Has this ever happened to you? You're playing with your kids or you're out on a date with your partner, and you suddenly think about that email you forgot to send. Of course, it has. It happens to all of us. These intrusive thoughts can feel like we don't have a good grasp on work life balance. Like, we can't shut work off, not even for an evening. But according to today's guest, Lindsey Karnick, that's not true. See, we can't help but have these thoughts. It's part of what makes us who we are as human beings.
So how can we fix it? Well, that's not the right question to ask. The actual question to ask is, do we need to fix it?

Welcome to the Streamlined Solopreneur, a show for busy solopreneurs to help you improve your systems and processes so you can build a business while spending your time the way you want. I know you're busy, so let's get started.

All right. I'm here with Lindsey Carnick, licensed clinical social worker and owner of Onward Psych Services. Lindsey, how are you today?

Lindsey Carnick: Hi. I'm awesome. How are you, Joe?

Joe Casabona: I'm fantastic. We had a wonderful preshow conversation, and I'm really excited to talk to you about this because, as a self employed person who often is trying to make more money to support his family while having a family, sometimes I can't stop thinking about work. So the first question I wanna ask you to level set a little bit is, what's the difference between being outside of the office and actually stepping away from work?

Lindsey Carnick: The first question is is, how do you want it to be? What do you want the difference to be? Because if we can't identify a difference, right, there's there's an implied, aspirational quality to that question, right, of, like, I want these things to be different. And so I think a really important task for all of us is to firstly identify, how do you want them to be different. Right? Not how does anybody else say they should be different because

Joe Casabona: Yeah.

Lindsey Carnick: That's pretty relative. So how do you want it to be different?

Joe Casabona: Yeah. That's that's a good point. Right? Also, like, outside of the office could mean different things. I work at a coffee shop. I'm outside the office, but I'm deliberately working. So I think, the way that I think about it is when I decide I'm working versus when I decide I'm not working, but I, you know, I mean, the whole thing we're gonna talk about here is you decide you're not working, but sometimes your brain can't help it. Right?

Lindsey Carnick: Yeah. Your our our minds, our internal worlds don't really respect where our bodies are. It's the remarkable thing, right? Your body can be one place, you could be riding a water slide, and usually that's not the place where people are thinking about work, but it is hypothetically possible that you could be, riding a waterslide and also thinking about work because the our internal worlds don't really respect these sort of external constraints. Yeah? So despite the fact that, I think, to your point, you've physically removed yourself from a work environment, whichever one we've sort of identified as the work environment, your mind is unaware of whether your body is in the office or at home or on an exercise bike or playing golf or playing with your kids. The mind has no internal constraints or parameters about where it goes.

Joe Casabona: Yes. That's that's perfect. Right? Yeah. It's and it's usually that. Right? Like, I'll be playing with my kids, and I'll be like, oh, I need to send that client email. Right? Yeah. And now what do I do? Do I stop what I'm doing and write it down? Do I send it? Do I hope I remember later? Like, these are these are some things that, and you know, I've I've worked from home almost my whole life. Well, I've worked remotely. Right? Almost my whole life. Right? There was, like, a 3 year stint where I worked in the IT department at the University of Scranton where I they had to they wanted me to be in the office.

Lindsey Carnick: Mhmm.

Joe Casabona: And so I feel like I'm pretty used to working from home, certainly more than people who have just started in recent years, due to a thing that prevented them from going to the office. But, are do do you think that people who work from home are more susceptible to this, or is this like a universal human problem?

Lindsey Carnick: I think it's more universal than maybe not. I because here's the flip side of the coin. How many years cumulatively did folks who spent time in offices spend in the office not thinking about work? So the sort of psychological flexibility for our bodies to be in one place, but our minds to be somewhere else. Right? You're you're sitting at a desk. This is the office space scenario. Right? You are daydreaming about anything other than what is in front of you. You can have your hands on the keyboard. You can be in a meeting with people talking, and your minds can be completely elsewhere.

So everybody, I think, is fighting the same battle, whether it's my body's in a workspace, a designated workspace, and my mind is not, or my mind is not, and my body is, and all the the combination thereof of having our bodies and our minds not be in alignment in terms of what they're doing, which is really what you're talking about. Right? Like, I want my body and my mind to be in the same place. If I'm playing with my kid, I want my mind to be on playing with my kid. And perhaps part of the real frustration comes from this expectation we have or this, aspirational desire to always have our minds be where our bodies are, except when we don't want it, except when you're in the dental chair and you want your mind to be on a Asian island. Right? Or ever. But we can't have it both ways. Right? Our ability to sort of abstract and be in a place that we're not is wonderful when you're in the dentist chair and aggravating when you're playing with your kid or on vacation and and still thinking about work even though you're not there. So perhaps part of the game is to recognize that most of the time, we really enjoy that kind of psychological flexibility to sort of be in 2 places at once.

Sometimes it's really quite delightful depending on what's going on, and and perhaps to reevaluate our expectation of how we think things should be. Because often, and I'm willing to bet, you know, you gave the example of, playing with your daughter and then, all of a sudden, having sort of an intrusive thought about something work related, and then sort of having this additional set of intrusive thoughts about, now, what should I do about that? You know, no, no, no. What probably bothers you more than having the thought about work when you're playing with your daughter is your judgment that you shouldn't. That somehow that is, derailing your quality of family time or that you should be more present because everybody's always trying to be more present. And if you've had this intrusive thought about work, that means you're not present. And what does that mean? And are you, you know, like, failing as a father? You probably have a lot of judgments about what that thought means that it showed up. And now what does it mean that I'm gonna do something about it? And as I consider my options about what to do about it, what are the meaningful consequences of that? Which really, ironically, only prolongs the time you're spending mentally away from your daughter. Mhmm.

If we could, using your example, because I think it's a really good one because it's so concrete. If we could just accept playing with my daughter, playing with my daughter, Legos, Legos, Legos, whatever we're doing. Need to write that thing down about work. Don't forget to and simply recognize it and immediately go, okay. I'm gonna write it down. We would be done with it so much faster and back to playing with our daughter or whatever the activity is that we're trying to be present for versus sort of angsting about what it means that that popped in there and also what we should do about it and what it will mean if we do any one of those five things that we can think of. We could be back to our lives much sooner if we just sort of went with the flow as opposed to saying that shouldn't happen.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. I I really like that. This is really, this is already, like, really concrete advice. Right? And like you said, there are sometimes where this is a very good thing. Right? You're doing mindless work. Right? My brother-in-law works in a machine shop where, it's some parts of it are pretty mindless. Feed the thing into the machine and do the thing. Right? And so he's listening to podcasts and letting his mind wander a little bit when it's

Lindsey Carnick: He's not working with anything sharp, is he? Like

Joe Casabona: Not not sharp and

Lindsey Carnick: high speed.

Joe Casabona: Not in this example.

Lindsey Carnick: Okay. Just checking. Right. Because I am not advocating for, mindlessness, when it comes to sharp spinning objects. I just wanna be really crystal clear about that.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. Disclaimer. If you are doing something that requires your full attention, give it the full attention.

Lindsey Carnick: Operating heavy dangerous machinery.

Joe Casabona: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No. This is largely, like, you know, there are parts of the job where he can do this. Right?

Lindsey Carnick: Sure.

Joe Casabona: Where and and I'll I'll also say, like, when I worked in a deli I'm a New York stereotype, so I worked in a barbershop, in a deli, in construction. Like, it was I I hit all the The trifecta. That I missed waste management. But, you know, I didn't really find myself thinking about work after I left the deli because there was literally nothing for me to do, like, no action to take. Right? I can't make a sandwich for someone who's not standing in front of me asking for a sandwich. Right? Yes. But a lot of us are knowledge workers now or do some sort of work on on the computer, And, it's it's easy for us to be like, well, this is something I can do right now, so maybe my brain's gonna think about it. So I I like I like what you've set up here.

Joe Casabona: Right? That we should evaluate the fact that or reevaluate the fact that we're getting mad when this thought comes into our brain when maybe we can't control it. Right? We can't control it.

Lindsey Carnick: No. I I've never met anybody who's successful at controlling what shows up in their brain, like, controlling thoughts before they start. I've never met anybody who can do that, and

Joe Casabona: Yeah.

Lindsey Carnick: The, you know, sometimes the people we think of or the idea of the people we think of, you know, people who are very experienced meditators or very experienced in mindfulness practices, we imagine, or the average sort of lay lay person, imagine that that person sits there for hours at a time with not a thought in their head. And those folks would tell you that's completely categorically incorrect. Meditation is not about not having a thought. It's about what you do with it when you notice that it's popped in there, not about somehow managing to block it out. That would mean you're in a coma. That's not what we're going for here. Right? Like, thinking, congratulations, yay, us humans. We got to be the dominant species on the planet through this remarkable thinking thing we've got going on.

We've got some some updated frontal lobe things and some interesting equipment developments here that some other critters don't have that have allowed us to control our environments and our destinies to, like, really shockingly striking degree. And Right. Also, the consequence of that is a couple other things that sometimes we judge as unpleasant or unwanted.

Joe Casabona: Yes. The the consequence for me is usually right before I fall asleep, I think of the most horrifying thing that could happen to me or my family. I'm like, great. I'm glad this is crept in. I'm gonna put, scrubs on and watch them until I fall asleep.

Lindsey Carnick: Right. Yeah. Because that is, you know, negative sentiment override, you know, our our our tendency to skew towards what's gonna go wrong because those are the critters who survived, was the critters who went, well, I don't know if that rustling sound behind that rock is is a predator or, you know, a cute little squirrel, but I'm gonna go ahead and on the side of caution on that one. And if it's a squirrel, great. And if it's a predator, I'm gonna already be halfway down this, you know, path I've already run started running. I'm gonna be ahead of it. That's who survived. Yay us.

Joe Casabona: This is a rabbit hole that I'm just gonna, like, lightly touch on before we move on to the next topic, but, my therapist has told me that I'm a catastrophizer, and, I'm going she's giving me a way to, like, manage that, but I wanna be like, hey, that's evolution.

Lindsey Carnick: Right. I mean, you know, there's a maybe one of the really interesting paradoxes of being what I would call sort of, like, a modern human, like, living in this day and age, is we still have this really old hardware, and we're trying to run new software on it. Yes? And so maybe because of the degree of success that many people in many parts of the world, not all parts of the world, have had in making their lives generally safer, right, with their very much fewer things that literally threaten many people's existences in many parts of the world. The old equipment, the brain stem, the lizard brain doesn't know that. Right? And so while we can say, like, oh, that's a paper tiger, not a real tiger, the brain goes, I don't know about any of that. A tiger is a tiger is a tiger, and I'm going to warn you about all of them. Right? So our modern self sort of judges are catastrophizing as, like, of course, that's catastrophic with that bent. We know that's disproportionate to the actual concern or unlikely, etcetera, etcetera.

And the lizard brain is going, don't care. That's how I kept us alive. We're gonna go ahead and freak out about everything. Just stick with me, and you'll stay alive. Because remember, the lizard brain's job is to keep you alive, not to keep you happy.

Joe Casabona: Right.

Lindsey Carnick: Not to keep you worry free. Right. That's the that's sort of a modern luxury. Right? Is to think you're supposed to be worry free, and the lizard brain is sort of going, like, look, fool. Worry free people, giddy. We're gonna worry. It's it's advantageous. A 100%.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. You know, that this is really interesting. Something that I think, like, started the seed of this thought for me was I think it was, Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens is maybe where he talked about this. Okay. This idea that, like, what's that?

Lindsey Carnick: Not familiar. But go on.

Joe Casabona: Oh oh, it's really good. Yeah. He has he has a couple books. One's called Sapiens, and one is called Homo Deus. It's about, like, how we got to where we are today and where we're going in the future. Mhmm. Really dense books, but I think he does, like, a really good job of, like, laying it out nicely. And he basically said, like, humans essentially evolved way faster than species ever evolved, which, like, put us at the top of the food chain really quickly.

Joe Casabona: And as a result, like, other species, like, haven't caught up to us. And it's just, like, a really interesting thing to think about and the problems that we have and no longer have to worry about. Right? You said, like, I mean, for the most part, like, war, famine, and disease are not population killing events anymore from like, in the last maybe 100 years. So, like, really interesting that our brains think like that. And now to bring it back to stepping away versus, quote, unquote, stepping away, When when does so we've level set here that, like, maybe we shouldn't say, like, these fleeting thoughts that we have about work when we're not at work are bad, but when does the inability to actually step away become a bad thing?

Lindsey Carnick: Well, I think that's for every individual to kind of, right, decide bad thing is pretty relative. Right? One person's bad thing is another person's, this is how I got to the top. Right? Right.

Joe Casabona: Right. Yeah.

Lindsey Carnick: So it's all very relative and contingent on one's vantage point. We could maybe ask some questions about quality of life and say, relative to you, the individual, and your life and my life, when does this start to impact my sort of daily way of being in the world and my ability to engage in the things I care about or have the life that I care about or live out the values that I care about. You know, I think values, or sort of values impeding is a really interesting one because one of the things I would wonder is when you go back to the example of your, of your daughter and playing with your daughter, like, clearly, it bothers you that that happens because you have a value about spending time with your daughter. Right? That's something that's really important to you that you connect with. Right? That you're working hard to make happen, that you it's connected to a real value. And so because people's values are very individual, yes, we we have to be curious about at what point a certain way of being in the world is congruent or incongruent with their values. That, to me, is the most reasonable metric of sort of when it's a, quote, problem because problem's pretty relative. Subjective at least.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. This is a really good point. Right? Because, like, it's you know, I hate and have always hated hustle culture, but I also recognize that I'm, like, probably not gonna be the richest person in the world because, I have decided I'm not going to work all the time. Right? Or, like, even, like, you know, I mentioned Disney in the preshow. Like, Bob Iger is pushing 70 and works constantly because he's the the CEO of a massive global company, and, I you know, my my value is that I would hate to miss, my daughter's cello recital or my son's baseball game or my youngest daughter's soccer game or whatever, because I had to work. Like, that's just not something that's in me. But I I guess there is the idea that everyone is susceptible to burnout. Right? And if we, you know, is that I guess if we're not stepping away appropriately, does every I this is too general of a question, but it'll it'll get us to where we're trying to go. Does that or could that necessarily lead to burnout, or is it about how you balance things?

Lindsey Carnick: It's an interesting question. I I would be hesitant to make any sort of categorical yes, nos. And I think the example of of Baum Iger or other people, you know, who are maybe, you know, at an age where other people might be retiring or slowing down or doing other things with their time besides working is a really interesting one. Because I bet if we were to sit down with Bob Iger, he would tell you that working quote all the time is also an expression of his value about taking care of his grandkids or something. Like, I bet you guys have similar values. Right? It's it's a different perhaps conception about what it means to live those values, whereas you've made I don't wanna say a decision, but for you right now at this point, you're saying, how I live out that value is by being present with my kid during these events, during these times that are a one time only deal. Right? She's only gonna be this age. There's only going to be this cello cello concert over.

Lindsey Carnick: It's over. Right? Like, each one down is we can't get it back. Whereas I don't know the Bob Iger's of the world might say, same. And also, I'm working this hard because I want to give my kids x y z opportunity that I see tied to me working this hard, etcetera, etcetera, if then flowchart, so on and so forth.

Joe Casabona: Right.

Lindsey Carnick: So people's ideas about what it means to live out these values or live in congruence with these values could be really different, and certainly, I don't think there's a right or wrong. I also just want to loop back for a second to your point about hustle culture as it relates to maybe burnout and what it means to live your values. There's a very interesting book called The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, I don't know if you've heard of it. And one of the many things he talks about is, our misreading of data and our misreading of outliers. And I just wanna point out that for every Bob Iger who's hustled himself or, you know, I don't know anything about Bob Iger, I'm going with what you said, But for every person who's in his seventies still working really, really hard and hustling and making bajillions of dollars, there are way more people who did that and didn't make that. It's like saying that if you if you go to Hollywood and you just work hard enough and try hard enough, you'll be famous. That is untrue.

Joe Casabona: Right. You play enough gigs and your band will make it. Right?

Lindsey Carnick: Exactly. There are lots of people who are very talented, who work very hard, and do not become a famous fill in the blank. And it's not because they didn't do all those things, it's because there's something called luck, there's something called right place, right time. There are a lot of outlier variables that contribute to people, you know, and I'm not saying those people don't work hard and and, you know, struggle and all of those things. But there are a lot of people who do all the same things and and don't get to that point. So I think one of the sort of mythologies surrounding, working hard all the time or pouring yourself into something or doing all the things, which these days are unlimited, right? I mean, every 5 minutes somebody there's this culture of FOMO around hustle culture, right? If you're not doing this thing with your business and this thing with your business and this thing and hiring these people and attending these things, you will not make it. People who are successful do these 6 things. And if you're not successful, you have nobody to blame but yourself because you didn't do number 3.

And that's absolute garbage. That's absolute garbage. There are people who do all of the things harder than anybody else and still don't get the result, capital t, capital r, that's kind of been put on the pedestal. Right? So I think it's important to, like, also be aware that we live in this culture that has sort of, in almost every domain there is, identified things that you ought to do in order to be x y z, and it's you can punch holes in that all day long because there are more there are more examples to the contrary than than usually not.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. Love that. I think, I've the moment I feel like, we started healing a little bit from hustle culture was an interview that Tim Ferris did. Tim Ferriss wrote the book 4 Hour Workweek. Right? Yeah.

Lindsey Carnick: Mhmm.

Joe Casabona: But he did an interview and it was, like, how do you someone asked, like, how he stays successful or how does he, you know, do what he does, as well as he does it. And he said, well, I meditate for 2 hours every morning when I wake up. And I I said, cool. You don't have kids. Right? Like, most parents are I wake up at 5:30, and my my I'm lucky my children obey the green clock that says they can't leave their room until

Lindsey Carnick: 7. Yes.

Joe Casabona: And so I know I have about an hour before like, to enjoy my coffee. But I also know that there are some parents whose kids wake up at 5:30, and they would prefer to sleep longer. So, like, but he got, a little lampooned for for that statement just because it's so, like, okay. Like, that's cool. I you that's not that's not a recommendable thing, and I think part of the problem that we just stated here is that people will tweet something or post something on x. That sounds a lot like prescriptive advice until they get pushed back. And they're like, well, that's just what I do. And I'm like, but you didn't frame it that way.

Lindsey Carnick: Sure. And and we could say, like, look, Tim Ferris, I'm sure that is what he does every day to be successful, and I'm sure it's very helpful to him. Right? And that doesn't make it, bad a bad observation or bad advice for somebody who's in his position. Right? I think maybe what we, some of us chase at a little bit is, to your point, the idea that that's everybody's situation. Right.

Joe Casabona: Right.

Lindsey Carnick: You know, most working parents I know don't have 10 minutes. And Right. We can acknowledge that people are in different places and that, you know, Tim Ferriss is should absolutely be doing what he needs to do to take care of himself, and he's got his own struggles, whatever, you know, other luxuries he might have because of what how well he's done. Certainly, there are people who have done all the things Tim Ferris has done and not been as successful as Tim Ferris. Right? And that's just always the case. It has nothing to do with Tim Ferris. Right? We could just say for every person who has made it, whatever it is in your particular little niche or world or circle, there are a bazillion who didn't make it to that and doing the things that that person did would not have gotten them this and or didn't get them the same results. We just know that.

Joe Casabona: Right. Yeah. I mean, I I think about this. I feel like I've given this example on this show recently a lot because the Yankees are good this year. But if, you know, we've got 2 baseball players, Aaron Judge, he's, like, 6 foot 7, 200 something pounds. Just, like, amazing. Can, like, flick his wrists and hit a home run. Wow.

And then we have Anthony Volpi, who's short for a baseball player, but that basically that basically puts him close to 6 foot. Anyway, not as built as Aaron Judge. If Anthony Volpi tried to swing like Aaron Judge, he would just, like, fall down at the plate. Right? Like like, he doesn't have that power. What he can do is different. Mhmm. And so it's, you know, trying to copy the successful people, like you say, is not may not help you because you are not built like them. I'm not built like Tim Ferris or Bob Iger. Right?

Lindsey Carnick:I'm And your life does not go lives. Right.

Joe Casabona: Right. Exactly. And so I think that's a really right. Yeah. And I think that's a really important thing to think about. And so, we've talked a lot about this framing it this way. I think this is really good. Right? Because, like, just saying, like, this is bad, this is bad, is not helpful, and it also makes it seem like, hey. There's, like, one weird trick that you can do to not think about work when you're at work. Right? And that's not necessarily the case. But if someone does want to try to be more mindful, and not let these intrusive thoughts, let's say, take over. Right? Because I think maybe that's the the problem. That's how we framed the problem earlier now. I wanna talk about the cause and then some actionable advice. So, like, first, like, what what is would you say, what is the cause or how can we each find the cause of us being unable to step away from work?

Lindsey Carnick: Yes. I think for many, many, many people, thinking is really addictive. We're really sold on thinking as a strategy. And in fact, if you pay attention to, sort of how we speak, we will say things that suggest that thinking as a strategy is completely infallible as long as you do it right. Right? I'll say, like, oh, I didn't think that through. Parentheses. If I had thought it through, I would have gotten good results. Right? Or, like, I didn't think about that from quite the right angle. Parentheses. If I thought about it from the right angle, the thinking would have been right. The thinking is never default. It's always the thinker. Yeah? And so because we and look, thinking serves us really well a lot of the time. Right? We do amazing things with thinking on sort of the micro level and the macro level from, you know, deciding what you're gonna have for lunch or what you're gonna make your kid for lunch to people winning the Nobel Prize. It's all thinking. I'm on board.

Joe Casabona: I'm a fan. Yeah. And also, there's a point of diminishing returns on thinking. There's a wonderful psychologist, a working psychologist named Chad, Chad Lejeune. And he's got this great thing he says, which is, you know, if you're not making a plan, you're not planning. And if you're not coming up with solutions, you're not problem solving. Anything else is just worrying no matter what you call it. Right? Or, I call it some other people call it the treadmill.

Lindsey Carnick: Yes. It's just like a treadmill. You are running over the same territory for hours and hours and hours. You are getting exactly nowhere. But when you step off, you'll be exhausted, sweaty, and unhappy. It's the treadmill. Right? So Yeah. Part of our addiction to thinking is, this bankrupt idea that there's always a solve at the end of the thinking.

If I just think long and hard enough about something, I'm gonna get to the end, and there's gonna be a fix or a solution or a resolution, and then I can feel better. So there's this myth that in order to feel better, we have to have the thing wrapped up with a bow and solved and fixed and resolved. You know, that's also something that's our language is so telling, you know, are are sort of, like, common parlance. But how many times a day do you hear someone say or you say or think to yourself, once fill in the blank is over, then I can fill in the blank, relax, feel better, unwind, kick back, call that person, have a nice ringtone, whatever it is you sort of do in your mind once you've solved that problem. And so for a lot of people, they have tied remember, the only reason we care about solving problems is because we wanna feel better, and we find it hard to imagine feeling better without solving the problem. Right? Like, what would happen if we could just, like, let the thing be out there unresolved and go on about our business and be fine even though it's in this state of unresolution. But we don't like that. Certainty is security. Right? We wanna have a fix. And if we can't execute the fix, we will temporarily settle for having, like, identified the thing. Like, I got my eye on the fix, so I feel better because I know it's I'm gonna go exit pounce on that thing as soon as humanly possible. Right?

Joe Casabona: I have to ask you this now. Did my wife tell you to reach out to me? Because

Lindsey Carnick: Yes. No. She tells how to answer that.

Joe Casabona: She tells me all the time, like, I you know, when she's talking to me and I try to solve the problem, she's like, we don't need to solve this problem right now. And I'm like, my brain tells me I do. Like

Lindsey Carnick: Yes.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. So, like, I mean, that what you said is me to a t. Like, like, the way I process stuff is by finding the solution. But like you said, there may there's not always a solution.

Lindsey Carnick: Well, there's there's often not, and maybe more meaningfully, there's always another problem. So if you're waiting to feel better to, like, sort of get clear of all the things, like, okay, great news, everyone. I've solved all of these things. So now we can all kick our feet up. That's not a thing. There's always more. Right? It's like the human experience. There's always another bend in the road.

There's always however you wanna sort of conceptualize it. So we would be well served to start thinking about how we can feel okay when things are in a state of disresolution, unsolvateness, whatever you wanna call it, total chaos, disarray, whatever whatever, because that is frequently the case and sometimes, ruminative thinking, you know, the sort of treadmill, makes us feel like at least we're doing something. Thinking is doing something. It's doing something. Alright? It's wearing you out and making you crabby. Right? And it's not getting you any further. It kinda reminds me do you remember the joke about, taking tests? I don't know. I feel like this is high school kind of thing, SATs.

And it was like, look, if you don't know the answer, you don't know the answer. And staring there, staring at these things, yeah. Okay. You can eliminate less likely, more likely. But basically, if you don't know the answer when you look, you don't know the answer. Right? And so many parts of our daily lives, and we're not talking about, like, big intellectual inquiries here, we're talking about daily functioning lives, are spent on things we don't know the answer to, but we latch onto as, like, I I gotta I gotta, like, solve this before I can move on with my day and feel any sense of relief.

Joe Casabona: And it keeps us in a constant state of…

Lindsey Carnick: Yeah. Terror Yeah. And agitation. I'm gonna use the word agitation, maybe terror is a little. For some people, it's terrible. Agitation is definitely the case.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. Yes. We can we can talk offline about the thing this the exact thing I have in my brain, right now that I can't possibly solve and will not have a resolution, for a while. So it sounds like we're moving into the actionable advice side of things, and it sounds like the first kind of piece of advice is more of a mindset shift, which is we need to be okay with being, I think you said, in a state of dissolution. Right? In a in a state where there may not necessarily be a solve to the problem we're thinking about.

Lindsey Carnick: Yeah. I would say in a state of of unresolvedness. Yes. In a state of uncertainty. Most things are Yeah.

Joe Casabona: I guess dissolution is really strong.

Lindsey Carnick: That's a, that might be another concept.

Joe Casabona: Yes. Yes. I do

Lindsey Carnick: not recommend a state of disillusion.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. Good point.

Lindsey Carnick: It lets us, like, a thing you do when you're in a David Copperfield audience. Right. In in which case, I'm all for it. 100%.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. Absolutely. Solid reference. I saw David Copperfield in 7th grade. It was a lot of fun.

Lindsey Carnick: So good. Right? So good. That was such an era. I think that era well, no. He's still going in Vegas, actually.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. That's true. But, like, I mean, like, the era of, like you know, in the nineties, there was no TikTok videos showing you how he did it. Right?

Lindsey Carnick: But there was David Copperfield breaking out of Alcatraz.

Joe Casabona: That's right. Yes.

Lindsey Carnick: Classic. Awesome. So classic. Yeah. With the German Shepherd. Like the drums.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. I don't know how many 20 year olds are listening to this. Right? This is very, like, niche for business and parents. Yeah. Yeah. Well, for

Lindsey Carnick: any 20 year old, you'd be well served to go and find yourself a YouTube video of David Copperfield doing the breakout from Alcatraz because it is performance art of the highest award.

Joe Casabona: Yes. It's so wonderful. So good.

Lindsey Carnick: The walk through the Great Wall of China was pretty great too.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. Absolutely. Oh, man. Well, now I know what I'm doing over lunch. And then so, so so I like this. And then something that I've been trying to do, is a shutdown routine of sorts. Right? Where I kind of brain dump at the end of the day. It's like I have a little alarm set for 10 minutes before I'm supposed to go upstairs or 10 minutes before I'm supposed to get my kids.

Joe Casabona: And I just have, like, 4 questions. Right? What did I accomplish today? What's on my mind? What are the open threads? What do I want to accomplish tomorrow? And I found that, like, if I if I do that, I can't say it's foolproof, obviously, because we can't control what we think at any random point. But I do feel better about the fact that it is captured somewhere. And so are there are there other exercises like this? I I'm also very aware that I'm asking for a solution to and we just spent, like, 10 minutes talking about not necessarily needing 1, but are there are there exercises or practices, to help us with this mindset shift, let's say?

Lindsey Carnick: I think the one you're pointing to is a good one, because writing things down is incredibly helpful. People underrate the helpfulness of writing things down, and that may be because some people think of it as journaling, and for some people, journaling has a little bit of a, wishy washy quality that is not attractive. The beauty of writing things down is that unless you have an incredibly magic pen, and I do mean Harry Potter level magic, once you write something down, it's not going to morph on you. The the 12 words that made up your sentence are gonna stay exactly as you wrote them. Whereas, when you try and work with these things in your head, they're incredibly elusive. Right? Thoughts are like wet bars of soap. The tighter you squeeze it, the faster it shoots out of your hand, ricochets off the wall, clubs you in the face, and then cracks you in the toe on the way to the floor. Right? So when we try and sort of, like, grip thoughts, we get really frustrated.

Lindsey Carnick: They just morph really quickly. When you write them down, you have captured them in a very meaningful way, and you've it's reassuring, I think, to the self to do that in a couple of ways. A, you just feel a sense of relief that you have it. You've, like, got your eye on it, and it's not gonna morph into 46 other things because you have actually captured it. I call this fear capturing when we do it with anxiety beliefs. Right?

Joe Casabona: Mhmm.

Lindsey Carnick: And then you have something that you can really count on being there tomorrow to your point. You have also sort of cleared your mental desk in a way. Right? You've you've sorted through your mental desk and put things in in places mentally speaking, so you can sort of stop thinking about it. And you've also, done yourself a real favor by giving yourself a very literal concrete record that you can look at and contest when it's bonkers. Mhmm. Because now you can see it in black and white, and you can look at it and go, oh, no. That's not the way that is. Right? Or or whatever the case may be, or you can say, like, oh, my goodness.

Wasn't I catastrophizing when I that's wow. That's I mean, it's possible, but it's unlikely. Right? It's at the long bottom of a long list of other possibilities that are much more probable. Yeah. So you've given yourself a way to work much more effectively with whatever it is that's rattling around in your brain.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. I, this is great. I have, like, an example from this morning of that, which is I texted a friend I hadn't texted in a while. And, you know, there's, like, a there's a lot of, quote, unquote, drama happening in this one niche space that we're both a part of, and I sent him some thoughts on that. But I hadn't texted him in a while, so I'm, like, does he still have this number? Oh my god. What if it's somebody else? What if it's what if it's, like, somebody who strongly disagrees with me? What if they publish screenshots and then he publishes, like and then he wrote back and he's like, hey, man. Thanks so much. I really appreciate your words.

Joe Casabona: And I'm like, that was bonkers. Like, what I just did there. Like

Lindsey Carnick: Yeah. Who

Joe Casabona: well, I've had the same number for, like, the same cell phone number. I got it in when I was 13, or 12 or whatever. Like, for 25 years, I've had the same cell phone number. How many people get new numbers these days straight up? And then I was like, and what are the odds that they would also know me and have an opinion about this? Like, it was it was just a very yeah.

Lindsey Carnick: Sorry. I I just wanna say that's a really interesting example you brought up, which which would lead us to a second thing that you asked about because what you mentioned there was an example not just of catastrophizing, but of something called cognitive fusion. And cognitive fusion is where we have a thought about something. Okay? So I think what you're describing is the thought is like, rut row, it could be that this is not my friend's number anymore. It could be somebody else's number, and then it could be that somebody else will have a dog in this race, and it could be that somebody else will then take screenshots of this and do something nefarious with that. Right?

Joe Casabona: Right.

Lindsey Carnick: And then you started to believe that as if it were true, not as if it were a possibility. Because none of us panic about the idea this could be somebody else's number. That's not panic inducing. What's panic inducing is when you go, it is somebody else's number, and you're sort of like nervous system is off to the races on it's not that that was a thought about the way things might be, that's the way things are. When we confuse a thought about reality with reality itself, And then the nervous system goes, that's scary, and kicks on, and that's when you start to have those feelings you're describing. Right? Is when you start believing that the thought you've had about what is possible is what's happening before you have any other sort of data, confirmation or denial. Right? And so being aware of the fact that we, as humans, remarkably and this kind of gets back to erring on the side of caution when it comes to survival. Right? Because imagine, you know, one of our early ancestors, like, sort of strolling across the savannah and having the thought, well, that sound from over there could be a predator.

Joe Casabona: Mhmm.

Lindsey Carnick: That thought does not inspire you to start running. What inspires you to start running is, that's a predator, and you're out of there. Right?

Joe Casabona: Right.

Lindsey Carnick: So, our ability to go from, like, having a thought about how things could be because we're aware that we don't know, you didn't know for a fact it was or was not somebody else's number, or that it was a working number. Right? We could come up with

Joe Casabona: Right.

Lindsey Carnick: Probably a dozen weird little possibilities about how things could be. But you went right from this, it could be someone else's number to, it is somebody else's number before you even consciously realized it because if you hadn't, you would not have had that anxious response in your body.

Joe Casabona: Right. Right. And then And so Yeah. And then to your point, right, like, writing things down, I just typed, like, who who is the last person you know who actually changed their cell phone number? Like, that I was like, alright, it's probably my friend.

Lindsey Carnick: Yes. Yes. Yeah. And and recognizing being able the the ACT folks ACT is a really interesting school of therapy and philosophy. The ACT folks call it diffusion, when we can recognize that we've fused with our thoughts and that we're mistaking a thought about reality for reality itself. Even before we get any kind of confirmation or disconfirmation about whether this is true or false, we can actually sort of observe ourselves and go, oh, wow. I am reacting to a thought that I just projected onto reality as the way things are. But the truth is, it's one thought among many.

I have a little do you wanna see something cool? Yeah. A little thing that makes me if you imagine this jar of beads is your head and all that was kind of awkward. All the, I'm under, I'm under, if you imagine this jar of beads is your head and these are all the thoughts, right? Yeah. I mean, that's all that's a lot of thoughts and some of them we judge as good, bad, ugly, right, wrong, up, down, helpful, unhelpful. Some of them we like, some of them we don't like. And when we get when we get hyper focused oh, here's one. When we get hyper focused on a bead we don't like, I dislike this bead, I don't think it's attractive. When we get hyper focused on one bead, though, it it starts to resemble, in the case of the bead, an asteroid hurtling towards your head But in the case of the thought, the truth. This is it.

Joe Casabona: This is the truth.

Lindsey Carnick: Right? This is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God. And it's really easy to forget that it's one of a bunch of thoughts that might be a little bit true, sort of true, kinda true, somewhat true about reality itself. And so if we can start to sort of remember and try and remind ourselves that we've got all of these thoughts about reality and most of them are not even 10% true at any given time, it sort of helps us deescalate that asteroid hurtling towards the head sensation, that absolute truth, panic mode sensation.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. Wow. I really like that. I like that, and I like the so we're you know, when this episode, I think, will come out at a very good time, for people to really wrap their head around this and understand this. So, I really loved this conversation. I usually don't ask this, but we've covered a lot of things. So, I will open the door a little bit and say, like, is there something that we didn't cover here that maybe is additive to the final thoughts of this conversation?

Lindsey Carnick: I think one of the most powerful things that any of us can start to work with for ourselves is becoming aware of our beliefs about how things should be. And that includes relative to ourselves, relative to the world around us, relative to other people, but particularly the shoulds by which we judge our own experience. Most people that I know are really sort of troubled by shoulds and shouldn'ts about the experience they're having, which makes them feel terrible. Here's the experience I'm having, and I shouldn't.

Joe Casabona: Right.

Lindsey Carnick: And I don't know if you've ever read the work of Byron Katie. Really interesting thinker. She has a book called Who Would You Be Without Your Story, which is just doesn't that kind of give you goosebumps, that title? I mean, it's really incredible. She does some very interesting work and, sort of, like, testing this idea that there's the set of ways that we should be and there's a set of experiences we should be having, And if that's not what's happening, that there's something wrong that we need to fix, or there's something wrong with us that we need to do something about. And one of the reasons I'm so glad that Byron Katie talks about this is because the idea that the experience you're having is wrong, that's a violent idea. That's a kind of violence towards yourself to say, I shouldn't feel the way I feel or I shouldn't be having the thoughts I'm having. I shouldn't be experiencing what I'm experiencing. That's that's what you're experiencing.

Lindsey Carnick: Those are the feelings you're having. Those are those are the thoughts you're having. And we're so as creatures, sort of heartwarmingly terrified of of being rejected by others, including the people who can't see what you're thinking or feeling. But, God, if only they knew. Right? They would they would judge us terribly because we're judging ourselves terribly, ergo. Right? Everyone must be true. You know? If we could, like, learn to have some real grace and compassion for our own experience and recognize that often, when we feel distressed because we've judged the experience we're having, it's not a reflection that we're doing something that's contrary to our values. It's a reflection that we're actually really in touch with our values. Right? So when people say things like, oh, I shouldn't feel like that because I shouldn't be worried about things like that because, actually, my life is really good. Right? And I have lots of advantages and lots of privileges. And if I'm worried about that, that makes me petty or ungrateful or something like this, and you go, oh, no. That that doesn't make you petty or ungrateful. What that tells me is that you're a conscientious person who's really in touch with your value of being grateful and appreciative. And that makes you aware and conscientious that, yes, you may be suffering in this moment, and there may be other people, other places suffering as well. But to recognize that doesn't mean we have to say your suffering doesn't count. This is not a contest.

This is not this is not a competition. And it it makes me, so, sort of emotional for humans as critters when I think about how deeply we want to feel the right things that say the right things about who we want to be. Yeah? We want to be known as grateful. We want to be known as appreciative, and so we're horrified when we have a feeling that strikes us as contrary to that. What a beautiful testament to the people we wanna be, but not actually a commentary on being petty.

Joe Casabona: I think that's a really good place to leave it. Lindsey, this was great. Thank you so much. If people wanna learn more about you, where can they find you?

Lindsey Carnick: Well, it's my absolute pleasure, Joe. Thanks for having me. It's been great chatting with you. I hope we get to chat again about any one of a number of things. Folks can find me on the web at onwardsykeservices.com. I'm on Instagram at onwardsykeservices, where if you like my little bead demo, I like to make fun little things that have very practical and tangible, demonstrations. It's super fun. So that's on Instagram.

And you know what? I have, believe it or not, a working phone number. I like talking to people on the p h o n e. That thing makes calls. Who knew? And so if somebody wants to reach out by phone, I'm at 720-362-8164. You're welcome to give me a call and leave a voice mail. And, you know, any, I think I'm on LinkedIn, probably a couple other places. Pretty easy to find.

Joe Casabona: Awesome. Well, I will link to that. And a bunch of stuff we talked about, including the books that we mentioned over on the show notes, you can find them in the description wherever you're listening, or over at [streamlined.fm/444].

Thanks so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it.

Lindsey Carnick: Thanks, Joe. It's been amazing.

Joe Casabona: And thank you for listening. Thanks to our sponsors. And until next time, I'll see you out there.