This is an iHeart Podcast.
When news broke earlier this year that baby KJ, a newborn in Philadelphia, had successfully received the world's first personalized gene editing treatment, it represented a milestone for both researchers and patients.
But there's a gripping tale of discovery behind this accomplishment and its creators.
I'm Evan Ratliff and, together with biographer Walter Isaacson, we're delving into the story of Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna, the woman who's helped change the trajectory of humanity.
Listen to Aunt CRISPR, the story of Jennifer Doudna with Walter Isaacson on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey guys, it's AZ Fudd.
You may know me as a gold medalist.
You may know me as an NCAA national champion.
You may even know me as a people's princess.
Every week on my new podcast Fudd Around and Find Out.
I'll be talking to some special guests about pop culture, basketball and what it's like to be a professional athlete on and off the court.
Listen to Fun Around and Find Out a production of iHeart Women's Sports in partnership with Unanimous Media on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Do we really need another podcast with a condescending finance bro trying to tell us how to spend our own money?
No thank you.
Instead, check out Brown Ambition.
Each week I, your host Mandy Money, gives you real talk, real advice, with a heavy dose of, I feel uses, like on Fridays when I take your questions for the BAQA.
Whether you're trying to invest for your future, navigate a toxic workplace, I got you.
Listen to Brown Ambition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
We all talk to ourselves like our worst enemy.
We talk to ourselves like someone we hate.
We talk to ourselves like someone we don't believe in.
You would never talk to your friend like that.
Now, I'm not saying that you want to falsely cheer yourself up either.
I'm not saying you just want to look at yourself and be like, no, I'm amazing and they were wrong.
But you want to have an honest assessment.
So saying, no, you're the best isn't true.
And saying you're the worst also isn't true.
Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose.
I'm Jay Shetty, the author of New York Times bestselling books Think Like a Monk and Eight Rules of Love.
And I'm so glad you're here today, because I think one of the biggest challenges that I'm hearing so many of you dealing with right now is not the voices outside.
It's not the voice of your friends.
It's not the voice of your families.
It's the voice inside your head.
If you've ever felt that you've got a critic sitting in your head 24-7, finding a way to overanalyze criticize, complain about every move you make, every thought you have, every decision you're about to make and you find that that critical voice is blocking you from living your best life, is blocking you from unleashing your potential, is blocking you from making that idea happen.
Maybe you have an idea for a podcast, but the voice in your head always says, don't do it.
Maybe you have an idea about how to impact the world positively and you have a voice in your head saying you're not good enough.
Maybe you have the desire to build your own business, to start your own company, And the voice in your head says it's a stupid idea.
Whatever it is, we all go through moments in life where we keep beating ourselves up.
If you're someone who wants to silence that critic in your head, this episode is for you.
If you're someone who wants to break through that negative spiral in your mind, this episode is for you.
And if you're someone who wants to stop beating yourself up and start lifting yourself up, this episode is for you.
Let's dive in.
The first thing I want to talk about is that self-criticism feels like control, but it's actually sabotage, right.
When we criticize ourselves, we think we're in control.
We think we know everything.
We think we're correcting ourselves.
What we don't realize is we're actually sabotaging ourselves.
Imagine a top tennis player keeps berating themselves after every missed shot.
Instead of focusing, they actually are just beating themselves up about the last point.
That self-criticism that they thought would motivate them actually destroys their rhythm.
There's an incredible speech that was given by Roger Federer at Dartmouth University.
And he said... that in his career, he has missed so many points.
He has lost so many points, but he said the biggest skill he had is that he never focused on the last point he missed.
He said if I'm focused on the last point that I missed, or if I'm focused on the future point that I might miss, then guess what?
I miss the present shot.
I miss the present moment.
So many of us are beating ourselves up for the past.
So many of ourselves are beating ourselves up for not having the future we thought we were going to build.
What does that do?
It makes the present lose time, money, energy, everything.
Ask yourself to stop seeing self-criticism as motivating and control.
Kristin Neff's research on self-compassion from 2005 shows that students who forgave themselves for procrastinating studied more effectively for the next exam, while harsh self-critics repeated the same cycle.
Imagine that forgiving yourself makes you more focused.
Forgiving yourself allows you to move forward.
Resenting yourself holds you back. criticizing yourself demotivates you.
And think about it when you're talking to someone else or when someone's speaking to you.
If someone criticizes your every move.
I remember I've not played golf very often, but I took a lesson once.
And I had a coach who criticized me every quarter of a swing.
So even before I swung and hit the ball, he would criticize every single time.
And every time I was about to hit the ball, he'd have another criticism.
It demotivated me.
Think about yourself.
If every time you share an idea with a friend, they just pull it apart, even if they're well-intentioned, It demotivates you.
How many of you have called yourself stupid after making a mistake at work?
And instead of fixing it quickly, you spiral into self-doubt, which means you make more errors.
And what's really interesting to me about this is that it's not just about performance.
It's not just about focus.
It's even in relationships.
Maybe you're beating yourself up for staying in a relationship for too long.
Maybe you're beating yourself up for allowing someone to walk all over you.
Maybe you're beating yourself up for allowing someone to mistreat you.
When you beat yourself up for someone already treating you badly, it only gets worse.
Forgive yourself for confusing attention with love.
Forgive yourself for ignoring red flags because you wanted it to work.
Forgive yourself for chasing validation instead of connection.
Forgive yourself for being loyal to people who weren't loyal to you.
Forgive yourself so that you can move on.
Because we don't forgive ourselves, we don't heal.
Healing is not just about forgiving others, about letting go of what's outside of ourselves.
It's about saying, you know that mistake I made?
That's all I knew then.
That's all the information I had then.
And maybe I even knew better.
But guess what?
I'm now learning that lesson.
I'm now applying it. that will free you from actually blocking yourself from growth.
The second thing I wanna talk about is you wouldn't talk to a friend like that, so why talk to yourself like that?
Imagine your best friend failed a job interview.
Would you say you're useless?
You should have prepared better.
You'll never get hired now.
You would never say that to a friend ever.
Yet that's how we all talk to ourselves.
We all talk to ourselves like our worst enemy.
We talk to ourselves like someone we hate.
We talk to ourselves like someone we don't believe in.
You would never talk to your friend like that.
Now, I'm not saying that you want to falsely cheer yourself up either.
I'm not saying you just want to look at yourself and be like, no, I'm amazing and they were wrong.
But you want to have an honest assessment.
So saying, no, you're the best isn't true and saying you're the worst also isn't true.
In the Bhagavad Gita, one of the books I studied as a monk.
It talks about how attachment and aversion are two sides of the same coin.
The feeling of I'm the best or I'm the worst are two sides of the same coin.
It's just the ego playing games with you.
When the ego makes you believe you're the best, well, you become complacent and fallible.
When the ego makes you believe you're the worst, Guess what?
It doesn't help you grow.
It's the honest introspection, the honest assessment that we all need.
Hey, this is what I got right in the interview, but you know what?
I didn't really nail these three things.
You're now not assessing it as you, you're assessing it as something you took part in.
There's research on self-talk that found athletes who used positive instructional self-talk improved performance, while negative self-talk led to choking under pressure.
Think about that.
So we all have self-talk.
You can't stop the self-talk.
But those that were constructive, those that were positive, those that were focused forward, made a difference.
Imagine before a date you tell yourself, I'm boring.
I'm not sure they're going to like me.
So what happens?
You walk in nervous and awkward.
It's a prophecy you help fulfill.
And what happens in that scenario?
You end up being boring. you end up feeling more boring.
Now I'm not saying you walk in there and think you're the most interesting person on the planet, but you think hey, you know what?
I've got a couple of things that are interesting to talk about.
I've got a couple of things in my life that are important to talk about.
Encourage yourself when no one else is clapping.
Validate yourself when no one else is noticing.
Challenge yourself when no one else is pushing.
Forgive yourself when no one else understands.
Believe in yourself before anyone else does. push yourself without punishing yourself.
Because if you don't do it, you'll always be waiting for someone else.
Strong people did the difficult thing when no one was watching.
Strong people did the challenging thing when no one was clapping.
Strong people did the hardest thing when it was just in private.
Do the hard thing.
Do the right thing when no one's there to notice, and you'll be able to do it brilliantly when they're all watching on the sidelines.
The third thing I wanted to talk about is how beating yourself up doesn't build accountability, but it does build shame, right?
When you keep beating yourself up, you think, and by the way, we do this to other people as well.
Sometimes we'll be mean to someone or we'll criticize them, hoping that helps them improve, but it just keeps beating them down.
You can't beat someone down and lift them up at the same time, which is what we're trying to do.
Right, we're trying to beat ourselves up so that we do more or more productive or more effective.
It doesn't work that way.
Imagine a teenager caught cheating an exam.
They feel so much shame and they think, I'm a terrible person.
Instead of changing, they hide their mistakes and cheat again.
Brene Brown's work distinguishes guilt, I did something bad, from shame.
I am bad.
Guilt drives corrective action.
Shame fuels secrecy and withdrawal.
Notice the difference.
I did something bad, I am bad.
Every time you say I am and follow it up with a negative word, you start believing that is your identity.
Every time you say I did something bad, you're able to recognize it as a habit or a pattern that you can change.
It's a lot harder to feel we can change ourselves than change something we did.
Let me give you a real life example.
Imagine you snap at your partner.
And then afterwards, you feel shame.
You think I'm a horrible partner.
What happens?
Instead of apologizing, you avoid them because you feel so bad about yourself.
What does that do?
It only makes things worse.
When you just shame yourself as a bad person, you actually want to spend less time doing the good.
It's almost like you get so comfortable in the dark that the light kind of exposes you.
So you move away from the light.
We don't want to move away from the light.
When the light comes on, you see things for what they are.
And shame blocks us from seeing the way things they are because it's too scary.
It's too hard.
I'll give you a really interesting example.
I remember the first time I went to Vegas.
At night, there was all this glitz and glam and all the rest of it.
In the morning I remember, with the lights on the casino floor, seeing people glued to the slot machine, seeing vomit or drinks and popcorn all over the floor and seeing people passed out.
It just wasn't the same sight because the light shows us what's actually there.
So we move away from the light when it shows us what's actually there.
But if we can not let shame take over, we can actually look at things for what they are.
Don't shame yourself. it won't change you, compassion will.
Don't blame yourself, it won't change you, accountability will.
Don't criticize yourself, it won't change you, action will.
Don't beat yourself up, it won't change you, challenges will.
You don't grow because of guilt.
It just slows you down.
Welcome to the You Versus You podcast.
I'm Lex Barrero, and every week we sit down with some of the biggest names in entertainment to talk about the real stuff the struggles, the doubts and the breakthroughs that made them who they are.
We go deep.
Exploring childhood trauma, family, overcoming loss, and the moments that shaped their journey.
These honest conversations are meant to take the cape off our heroes, with the hope that their humanity inspires you to become a better you and therefore set you free to live the life of your dreams.
Here's a sneak peek.
I'm trained to go compete.
I'm trained to go harder.
But sometimes that mentality stops you from stopping and smelling the flowers in your own garden.
Is it wrong to want more?
We migrated.
Our family migrated here.
I'm like second generation.
Listen to You Versus You as part of Michael Tudor Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
It may look different, but Native culture is very alive.
My name is Nicole Garcia, and on Burn Sage, Burn Bridges, we aim to explore that culture.
It was a huge honor to become a television writer because it does feel oddly very traditional.
It feels like Bob Dylan going electric, that this is something we've been doing for hundreds of years.
You carry with you a sense of purpose and confidence.
That's Sierra Teller Ornelas who, with Rutherford Falls, became the first Native showrunner in television history.
On the podcast Burn Sage, Burn Bridges, we explore her story, along with other Native stories, such as the creation of the first Native Comic Con or the importance of reservation basketball.
Every day.
Native people are striving to keep traditions alive while navigating the modern world, influencing and bringing our culture into the mainstream.
Listen to Burn Sage.
Burn Bridges on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Jonathan Goldstein and on the new season of Heavyweight, I help a centenarian mend a broken heart.
How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again?
And I help a man atone for an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old.
And so I pointed the gun at him and said, this isn't a joke.
And he got down, and I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, okay, this is power.
Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother try to solve my problems through hypnotism.
We could give you a whole brand new thing where you're like super charming all the time.
Being more able to look people in the eye.
Not always hide behind a microphone.
Listen to Heavyweight on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I've come to realize that food is never just food.
It's a memory, a love language, a way we express who we are without saying a word.
Some of the most meaningful conversations I've ever had happened around a table.
That moment when someone passes you a dish that's been in their family for generations, or when a flavor takes you back to childhood, that's connection, that's presence.
That's why I love what Chase Sapphire Reserve is doing.
They're not just creating dining experiences.
They're creating opportunities to feel something deeper through food.
When we look back on our lives, we rarely remember what we had for lunch on a random Tuesday.
But we do remember the meals that made us feel seen, the ones where we lost track of time, where the food was just the beginning of something more.
A moment with someone we love, a conversation that opened our heart, a reminder of where we came from.
With Chase Sapphire Reserve card members get access to those kinds of moments, the ones where food becomes a story.
Imagine sitting at a dinner where the chef doesn't just cook, they share.
They tell you where the dish came from, what it means to them and how it shaped their journey.
That's what it's really about.
Not just tasting something new, but stepping into someone else's world for a moment and maybe understanding your own a little better too.
If you want to experience dining that's more than just a meal, something that nourishes your mind, your body and your connection to others, visit chasecom forward slash Sapphire Reserve.
Food connects us not just to each other but to a part of ourselves.
We sometimes forget the part that slows down, that listens, that feels.
With Chase Sapphire Reserve, you're not just making a reservation, you're creating a memory, a moment of presence, a moment of purpose.
The fourth point today is your brain is wired to focus on mistakes.
How many times have you had this?
You do something right and your brain will barely notice it.
You do something wrong and your brain will think about it all day.
Let's say you were great in a meeting today at work.
You'll forget about it in the next meeting.
You say something sloppy or made a mistake at a meeting in work you're now thinking about for the rest of the day, rest of the week, thinking that's all anyone can think about.
Your brain is wired to focus on mistakes.
Imagine this, a musician finishes their concert.
Hundreds of thousands of people are clapping.
One person frowns.
One person isn't happy.
One person posts on social media that they want their money back. guess what the mind obsesses over?
It obsesses over the negative comments.
You may even see this on your social media.
You'll have 10 of your friends respond.
One of them doesn't in the group chat and you're thinking about that one friend.
Why didn't they respond?
Don't they like me?
You're forgetting about the 10 people over here who responded immediately.
It's your birthday.
Seven people show up to the party that you wanted to see.
Three people don't show up.
Where does your mind go?
To the three people who didn't show up.
One study showed that negative events weigh three to five times more heavily in our minds than positive ones.
This is known as the negativity bias.
So what do we do with that?
Here's what I've learned.
You remember the bad times more than the good times, because when things go well, you celebrate for a night.
But when things go bad, you cry for a month.
We're used to going deeper into our harder emotions than we are into our happier emotions.
We've got to learn to rewire our mind.
How do we do this?
When something good happens to you, share it.
When something good happens to you or someone does something good to you, share it.
Talk about it.
You're training your mind to spot what will change it positively.
I could look around this room and I can think about all the mistakes in how the furniture is placed and what I need to change.
That's important.
But at the same time, I can look around and see how beautiful it is.
That's also important.
It's valuable to know what needs to change in your life.
It's valuable to know what's not going in the direction you want it to go in your life.
But if that's all you have, then you'll just create more of it.
There's something known as the frequency illusion.
How many times have you said to yourself oh, I really like that color, or I really like that shirt or pants or whatever it is.
And now you see them everywhere.
Everyone's wearing them, everyone's wearing that color.
Or you want to get a car and you want to get a black car and now you see black cars everywhere.
It's not like there's more black cars on the road or more people are wearing those skirts or shirts or whatever it may be.
It's just that you have a heightened awareness of it.
This is why gratitude works so well.
Gratitude doesn't work because it's magic.
It's that when you become grateful for something, you notice more things to be grateful for.
Right now, your brain is wired to spot negative things.
So you spot more negative things than you do positive.
Not because there are more negative things in the world, just because you're trained to notice it.
One of my favorite quotes from Wayne Dyer is this You don't see things as they are.
You see things as you are.
When you are focused on the negative, you see more negative.
When you focus on the positive, you notice more positive.
This isn't positive thinking.
Positive thinking is pretending like the negative doesn't exist.
Noticing good things is learning to tune yourself in to higher vibration and frequency.
Point number five is that progress is not linear.
Thomas Edison tested over 1,000 prototypes before the light bulb worked.
If he saw setbacks as failure, he'd have quit after attempt number 10.
There's an amazing study that talks about the stages of change model shows that relapse ie slipping back into smoking, for example isn't failure.
It's part of how lasting behavior change happens.
Think about this for a second.
You commit to running three times a week.
One week, you only manage once.
And what usually happens is you quit.
You go, I messed up this week.
Next week, I won't run at all.
But what happens, you actually lose track.
Whereas when you recognize that that's part of the process of change, when you set a new goal, when you set a new habit, you are going to have days that you fall back.
When you break up with someone, you might feel healed in a month.
And then in seven months, you're going to be sitting there thinking about your ex.
That's part of the healing journey.
When you realize that healing is three steps forward, two steps back, four steps forward, three steps back, sometimes one step forward, four steps back.
When you realize that's what healing looks like, you're actually free to heal.
When you want it all to happen today, when you want healing to all happen tomorrow, it will last forever.
So when we fall off track, we beat ourselves up.
Oh, I did three times last week, but this time I only went to the gym once.
I was eating really, really healthy, but last night I just crashed.
Guess what?
The week doesn't matter, right?
How many times have you done that?
And it all happens because you beat yourself up.
You don't fall back into bad habits because you're lazy.
You fall back into bad habits because you beat yourself up when you have a bad day.
Don't turn a bad day into a bad week.
Don't turn a bad week into a bad month.
And don't turn a bad month into a bad year.
Let it be a bad day.
That's okay.
But tomorrow, pick yourself up and make it a great one.
It's when you don't beat yourself up that you keep the power of turning a bad day into a good month, a bad day into a good week.
I hope that resonates with you.
Next time you set a goal, a habit, a change or whatever you want to do and you fall off, know that that's part of it.
Give yourself grace and you'll be able to get back on track much quicker.
The sixth thing I wanted to share with you today is that rest is part of progress, not the opposite of it.
So many of us think that rest means we're not moving forward.
My monk teacher used to say if you want to move three steps forward, you have to go three steps deep.
So if you're struggling to move forward, ask yourself if you've gone inward already.
Elite athletes schedule recovery days as strictly as training days.
Serena Williams even naps before matches because rest is strategy, not laziness.
For most of us, though, rest isn't something we plan.
It's something we end up doing when we're exhausted.
When you're resting, when you're exhausted, that's not rest, that's survival, that's recovery.
That's why it's so stressful.
Whereas the highest performers in the world have scheduled rest.
That scheduled rest is what helps them perform at their best in all the other times.
On the podcast, I've interviewed Matthew Walker, who has done a lot of research on sleep.
And his study on why we sleep from 2017 shows deep sleep consolidates learning and strengthens memory.
Without it, performance and creativity drop.
Some people think, oh, I'll sleep when I'm dead, or I'll sleep when I'm tired.
That sleep is the reason you can be so productive.
That sleep is the reason you can be proactive.
That sleep is the reason you can be so effective.
So no, don't beat yourself up for wanting to rest.
Don't beat yourself up for wanting to take a break.
Don't beat yourself up for wanting to slow down.
And don't beat yourself up for wanting to have your own time.
Allow yourself to slow down.
Give yourself permission to be still.
That's where your power is.
Let me give you an example.
You work late every night to get ahead, but you're so burned out you're starting to make sloppy mistakes.
A rested version of you would finish faster with fewer errors.
Working more doesn't achieve more.
Losing sleep doesn't achieve more.
Trying to do everything doesn't achieve more.
Sometimes you achieve more by more rest, more stillness, and more calm.
Point number seven is that self-kindness builds resilience more than self-criticism ever will.
Navy SEALs in training who used encouraging self-talk were far more likely to complete Hell Week than those who tore themselves down.
Now for those of you who don't know, Hell Week is the most grueling training that a Navy SEAL goes through.
I interviewed David Goggins and if you wanna know more about it, you can go back to that episode and watch and listen to what that week actually entails.
It's a five and a half day period during the first phase of SEAL training.
Candidates average about four hours of sleep for the entire week, less than one hour per night.
They're constantly exposed to cold water, mud, sand, physical drills, and team challenges.
Training goes day and night running in formation, carrying boats and logs, swimming in the Pacific obstacle courses.
The goal isn't just to push the body, it's to test the mind and spirit under exhaustion.
Instructors want to see who breaks under stress, who stays calm when freezing, exhausted and in pain, who can lead and support teammates when everyone is suffering.
About 70 to 80 of candidates quit during Hell Week.
Those who survive don't necessarily have the strongest bodies.
They have the strongest mental resilience because their self-talk is not negative.
They found that breaking down the week into moments just get through the next meal, not survive five days.
Nef and Jerma in 2013 found people who practiced self-compassion meditation increased resilience, life satisfaction and reduced anxiety.
Imagine after bombing a presentation, you tell yourself, it's one talk, not my whole career.
Next time I'll be sharper.
That mindset keeps you moving forward instead of giving up.
You don't get stronger by beating yourself down.
You get stronger by giving yourself the same kindness you'd give to anyone you love.
I really hope that this episode is able to help you quiet that inner critic.
It's not going anywhere.
It's not going away.
We're not trying to get rid of it.
What we're trying to do is that we make sure we have the new scripts in our mind, that have positive self-talk, that focus on what we can be grateful for, that look for opportunities more than problems.
And that when they look for problems, they look for systems and solutions not criticism, not shame.
Thank you so much for listening.
I hope you'll share this with a friend who struggles with this too.
I hope you'll discuss it with them and I'll see you on the next episode.
Thanks for being here.
I'm forever in your corner and I'm always rooting for you.
Do we have to forget until we stop forgetting and start remembering?
That's the moment of change.
No one cares how many times you fell off the bicycle.
If you ride the bicycle now, you ride the bike.
The risks they took would be unthinkable to any doctor today.
But odds are, someone you know is alive because of them.
Welcome to the Wild West of American medicine.
I'm Chris Pine, and this is Cardiac Cowboys, a podcast that tells the gripping true story behind the birth of open-heart surgery and the maverick surgeons who made it happen.
Listen to the Cardiac Cowboys podcast starting February 6th on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Jonathan Goldstein and on the new season of Heavyweight, And so I pointed the gun at him and said this isn't a joke.
A man who robbed a bank when he was 14 years old.
And a centenarian rediscovers a love lost 80 years ago.
How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again?
Listen to Heavyweight on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
It's important that we just reassure people that they're not alone and there is help out there.
The Good Stuff Podcast Season 2 takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a nonprofit fighting suicide in the veteran community.
September is National Suicide Prevention Month, so join hosts Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission.
One tribe saved my life twice.
Welcome to season two of The Good Stuff.
Listen to The Good Stuff podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is an iHeart podcast.