Things You Learn in Therapy
Things You Learn in Therapy
Rethinking New Year's Resolutions: Embracing Growth with Dr. Michael Alcee
This is a throwback episode that I will probably always post around this time because I always need this reminder!! Hope you enjoy this conversation around New Year's resolutions!
Want to transform the way you view New Year's resolutions? Join us for an enlightening conversation with Dr. Michael Alcée, who returns to share his captivating insights into the tradition of setting annual goals. Dr. Alcée helps us navigate the emotional rollercoaster of resolutions, from the excitement of self-improvement to the weight of societal expectations. Get ready to rethink your approach with fresh perspectives on blending self-acceptance and growth. We'll explore how the rigidity of conventional resolutions might stifle creativity and discover ways to harmonize the enthusiasts and skeptics among us.
Amidst discussions on SMART goals and the cultural phenomenon of "Quitter's Day," Dr. Alcée invites us to embrace a mindset filled with playfulness and curiosity. Imagine resolutions as an ever-evolving journey rather than a strict deadline. Together, we reevaluate the traditional calendar-bound mindset, celebrating the essence of continuous personal development. By the end, you'll learn how high achievers find fulfillment in the process itself, leading to sustained innovation and success. Prepare to leave this episode with renewed motivation and a fresh perspective on how to craft resolutions that truly resonate with your unique rhythm and needs.
Michael Alcée, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Tarrytown, NY and Mental Health Educator at Manhattan School of Music. He specializes in the psychology of artists and everyday creativity and the professional development of therapists. His contributions have appeared in The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, The New York Post, NPR, Salon.com, and on the TEDx stage. His book from Norton entitled Therapeutic Improvisation: How to Stop Winging It and Own It as a Therapist is available wherever books are sold.
Book Link
Therapeutic Improvisation
Website
https://michaelalcee.com/
This podcast is meant to be a resource for the general public, as well as fellow therapists/psychologists. It is NOT meant to replace the meaningful work of individual or family therapy. Please seek professional help in your area if you are struggling. #breakthestigma #makewordsmatter #thingsyoulearnintherapy #thingsyoulearnintherapypodcast
Feel free to share your thoughts at www.makewordsmatterforgood.com or email me at Beth@makewordsmatterforgood.com
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www.bethtrammell.com
Hey everyone, welcome back to things you learn in therapy. I am so excited that I just randomly I basically just randomly emailed you, michael, and was like, hey, you want to come on the podcast this week? And you remarkably said yes, and so I am so happy to have you back, because every time you come, we just are like, yeah, it's just fun, and I hope that listeners actually you your episodes continue to be episodes that people email me about and they say that guy is so brilliant.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's sweet.
Speaker 1:They really do, they really do, so anyway, I.
Speaker 2:Is my mom emailing you? No?
Speaker 1:Is your mom? I don't think it is. I think they're real people. Yeah, so I am Dr Beth, I'm the host here and I'm a licensed psychologist and an associate professor of psychology at IU East in Richmond, indiana, and I really focus on trying to make words matter for good, and this podcast is really meant to kind of fill some gaps for folks, right. I try to interview awesome people to share some good information with the public, and so Dr Michael Alcee is here again. You have two other episodes. Both were very different but very awesome. So if folks want to kind of listen to those two, that'd be, that'd be great. But tell us a little bit about you. And then we didn't talk about this before I started recording, but are you ready for one fun fact about you?
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, definitely Go for it, let's see. So fun fact throughout my life I've played piano, jazz, classical and recently some therapists in the area and I have started a little fun almost midlife crisis garage band and fun almost midlife crisis garage band and we've been playing everything from Beatles Don't Let Me Down to Psycho Killer by the Talking Heads and you name it, and it's just such a treat.
Speaker 1:They're all therapists who are part of this band.
Speaker 2:Oh there's one person who's in finance and we joke because we sort of like use all sorts of professional jargon all the time, and she's like listen, guys, I'm not on the meter. You're not on the meter, stop it.
Speaker 1:It's hysterical, I can only imagine, you know, when you're in a group of friends and, like the bulk of you are therapists or psychologists, and then you have one or two that aren't, you're like I'm sorry, just can't help it.
Speaker 2:We can't help it. We can't help it. And the puns are flying all over the place. You know, because we love that stuff.
Speaker 1:And I know that you and music are very deeply rooted and that was part of our first talk together and I know it's a big part of your work. And while I want to just talk about all those things, part of why I asked you to be here is because you are on the news. It's very fancy.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Talking about New Year's resolutions, and that's exactly what I was kind of looking forward to talking about this week. So I just want for you to just, you know, start us off Like let's talk about New Year's resolutions and what do you typically say to people about them?
Speaker 2:Yeah, most people either love them, hate them, leave them, keep them. Yeah, that's true, that's true. There's usually not an in-between. And you're right, I have a love-hate relationship with New Year's resolutions, and let's explain why. I think most of us do. You either love them because you're like that's right, I'm going to get into shape this year physically, emotionally, spiritually, anything and everything you can think of. Emotionally, spiritually, anything and everything you can think of.
Speaker 2:People will make resolutions about right, maybe you're going to write the great American novel, maybe you're going to shed a few pounds, maybe you're going to be a better parent or a better worker or something. And that's great because, on the one hand, when we track something, we back something, so to speak, right. When we follow and measure something, we tend to improve it and we tend to show more results because we're being specific and measurable about it. Like right, that's great.
Speaker 2:On the other hand, the people who hate resolutions and I'm in this camp as well is we hate them because they are a little bit too decisive and shouldy Resolution. You must resolutely do this. Yeah, now, most of us who have any connection to a creative process know that these things must unfold, and there's also a hidden kind of meta message that some people in Nears resolutions are like you're not really good enough as you are, so I want you to change. Yeah, true, so those of us who hate resolutions are like how dare you not accept me for who I am, internally or externally, and I want freedom from this thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, but there's a cool surprise that hopefully, as we've talked about, I think you can do both and do them well, and I think there might even be a way that we can politically bring the New Year's resolution haters and the New Year's resolutions lover to pass an interesting bill of joint legislation to say what we can do.
Speaker 1:This is going to be a remarkable episode if we can do that. We're going to try, we're going to do our best, yeah, okay. So I mean I'm right there with you, right? I think there is something that happens for people when we get through the holidays and we start a new year that I think our resolution lovers are like, yeah, I'm going to do all the things and I'm going to be like so amazing. I mean, what is it that happens? I mean especially around this year, because it's this phenomenon that I think all of us can resonate with that it's like after the holidays, we're like, yeah, we're going to do all the things.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:What is that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's almost like this overcompensated kind of bluster and swagger that people some people have and maybe all of us have a little bit of like. It's sort of the go big or go home aspect of new year's. Like no, no, this is gonna be my year, man, I'm going keto right, like you know, I'm lifting or I'm, you know, getting clients left and right or whatever, insert XYZ, it doesn't matter. And I think there is something a little like there's on the positive sense. There's some healthy ambition there.
Speaker 2:I like the healthy ambition part, but there's also a little bit of a comic grandiosity about all of us when we do this, and it's so overcompensated from the sort of dead week between Christmas and New Year's, right, it's like the deadest, least productive week of the year, and so there's such an interesting psychological overcompensation for like no, no, no, no, this is it man.
Speaker 2:And I think there's a lot of us that see the kind of um like, like sort of false bravado and an illusion of being able to really maintain that there's something that seems a little bit disingenuous, right, and there's also a little bit of a shadow side of toxic positivity operating too. Yeah, like I think we talk about. Like there's healthy positivity, there's healthy optimism. Also a little bit of a shadow side of toxic positivity operating too. Yeah, like I think we talk about. Like there's healthy positivity, there's healthy optimism, there's healthy, you should have goals and it's good to have healthy ambition. I think there's a little bit of a side order of toxic positivity that you know can can kind of be an allergen here, do you?
Speaker 1:think that that's where the New Year's resolution haters kind of live? Do they kind of live in that camp where it's like man, y'all are being too much right now and you're never going to achieve that? Do you think that that's where a lot of them kind of live?
Speaker 2:I love that. I think there is a sense of get over yourselves, yeah, and it's a way carl carl jung always said, like something really interesting, like whenever we were acting in our conscious life in a way that was too narcissistic or too inflated, you'd have a complimentary dream of yourself falling off a cliff. Yeah, and. And I think the haters are saying, whoa, bring this back down to human scale. Yeah, and I think they also overdo it by hating it completely, because I don't think it's really a bad thing or problematic to hate it, and that's why I don't think new year's resolutions in of themselves are bad, but it's like, how do you relate to and how can you make them a little bit more not only process driven, but also more mindful, more compassionate and also more, like I said, more human? Yeah, right, and I think that's where, again, I think both camps have it a lot right and a lot wrong. Yeah, or maybe a little right and a lot wrong. Yeah, or maybe a little right and a lot wrong.
Speaker 1:I don't know, yeah, one or the other, yeah, I, yeah, I like I mean I remember this about you being so grounded in this humanness uh, kind of philosophy, right that, like so much of your work, really does come back to this idea of humanness, and so I love that you're relating that to this both sides of that, that story and I think I love this idea of coming back to being human about it, whether you are all in with a resolution or you're not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean we've talked about this before too that we are foolishly beautiful and beautifully foolish as human beings, and when we embrace that and integrate that, we are at our best. Ironically, we are at our best when we are most grand and humble at the same time, and that's why I think actually integrating from both camps is really the best way to go. I do have some general resolutions for myself, but I also think it's really important to kind of say, hey, what am I going to have fun with and play with this year? What am I going to expand? What am I going to track? And some of that is also like Hmm, I want to have a nice relationship with these goals, and it's more like falling in love.
Speaker 2:You don't compel your significant other to fall in love with you, you try to help it unfold, and so if you're staying closer to the process, that's the thing that's really driving it. The resolution part sometimes gets a little bit too alpha, and the alpha part, yes. And so the healthy part of the alpha, I think, is to say, yeah, I want to have like that healthy authority with like kind of like kind of keeping accountable, but also keeping like discriminating and not get too lost in the process, yeah, when it's out of human scale, like you said, when it gets too grandiose, like you think you can do this, it's really compensating for a place that is afraid of our own humanity and imperfection.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, we are imperfectly perfect or perfectly imperfect, right? So if we can embrace it from that space, because a lot of people don't realize that some of their resolutions are sort of internalized critics or internalized bullies that they are now celebrating- yeah, that for me is the part that is kind of the most interesting when I consider the resolution.
Speaker 1:Dislikers right that they're not doing it. They don't want to do it. For me, you know me, resolution is really just the restart of goal setting and I don't know how you live life without some sort of goal. And that doesn't necessarily mean it's a new big thing I'm going to do. It may be a continuation of a thing I'm already doing, but for me it still comes back to having continual goals. I don't know, michael, am I just too biased around always wanting to grow? Can people live without a goal?
Speaker 2:Us therapists are very much like this and it's funny. Just before I was speaking to you today, I was speaking to a very reflective, introverted, introspective client and we were both having fun sport of this, and she said to me something very similar like how do people like not just do this more generally and regularly, like don't you focus on goals and don't you like think about how, making adjustments throughout? And I laughed at her and I said, yeah, you're right, because as someone who's really introspective and somebody who is trying to process things, this should be much more every day.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think maybe that's another part of this. There's two things that I think come from this. One is that there's a very defined, easy ritual marker here of time is changing, where everyone collectively can see it in a tangible way, and this becomes a reminder, and that's part of it. Like any holiday, if you will, the ritual space is active, but the problem is how, if you look at the other side, when you're saying, hey, how come people don't do this? It's because I think the reason that sometimes people also hate it or don't understand it is one we're a little biased as therapists because we presume everybody's going to be introspective and maybe interesting on how they can like not just improve but to expand and grow and like get to know your fuller range. That's true as well.
Speaker 2:The other reason I think we start to judge it is because it very much reminds us of a college sophomore saying they're going to cram and do all their work in one night, yeah, yeah. And there is a little bit of that mentality, which is why it's sort of funny that we know that January 19th, as I've researched, is known as Quitter's Day, because some surveys show 80, 90%, 91% even of people really ditch their resolutions, yep. And so the funny thing about it is that we're given all this kind of like sophomore swagger to the fact that, yeah, we're going to cram and get this all done, and it's sort of a little bit of a mirror on wait. Why aren't we, as individuals in a culture, seeing this as just an everyday part of life? Yeah, and yet, at the same time, one of the cool things about the new year is it's an opportunity for all of us to take inventory and reset and restart, and I think that can still be a very positive thing.
Speaker 1:I love this. I love kind of thinking for those of us who are, I mean, really honestly on either side of that, but thinking about New Year's resolutions being just a collective ritual that we kind of reset right. So New Year's is the time, it's just the time that we kind of reset. And I think there are some people listening that are going to be like yeah, that's why I hate it, like why do you have to wait till a Monday to start your diet? Like why can't you just be this all the time? And I think there are other folks that really appreciate that time sensitive part, right, and the ritualistic part that we're like everybody's trying to be a better version of themselves. So I love this idea of it being kind of time specific. And I also can hear the folks in the back. You know they're rolling their eyes like yeah, y'all will be quitting on January 19th, just like he said.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and you're right. It's also. It reminds me of like in the 19th century, like when Emily Dickinson was writing poetry in some ways, like she was probably thinking well, why do you feel like you have to go to church to see God or to connect with God? Or, like you know, Henry David Thoreau right, Like, why couldn't you go into the forest and seek God? And why do you? And why, how do you not notice that there's something very arbitrary about you over-inflating this thing when it's right before, right at your feet all the time. And I think that's where some of the people like say like, this is overblown. And yet there is something important. And the funny thing is, as a culture, we don't have many, many big, collectively unifying rituals, and so I think this also takes on a bigger weight for that.
Speaker 2:And also a bigger way. Think about it across the world.
Speaker 1:Right, it's something that unifies everybody, no matter what time zone you live in, no matter what country, and so it's something that takes on a so much religious significance, without a sense of of any healthy mythology to connect to it too okay, so our our goal at the beginning of this was to set out to bring these two camps kind of closer together, and I like, how can we do that kind of irrespective of how we stand, or how do you talk about this, how do people do it, kind of regardless of where they're coming from?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think it's. It's important for people to say listen, if you're the, if you're the kind of person that really gets pumped and amped about being able to reset your goals at this time, great, and I hope you can respect that I'm doing it throughout the year or I'm doing it at whatever way it is, and that's no less than right. Yours is no better and mine is no better. And then, on the other hand too, of also the people who are the real gung-ho in years resolutions, people understanding that there could be some possible hurtful baggage in some of the implied ways in which resolutions can feel very shooting on us, very. If only you were this, you'd be a better person which could map out to things that we do to ourselves, things that we've internalized with trauma, things that we've internalized with parents, teachers, the culture not prizing or valuing us, even in places where we're not as fully put together, and to recognize that those realities can coexist without having to have a victor on either side.
Speaker 1:It's okay to not have to keep striving for more, more, more, better, better, better. Maybe who you are, where you are right now, is exactly how you should continue to operate, and that doesn't mean you're without a goal. I mean creating and maintaining where you're at is also a you know. It's also a great goal and it doesn't have to be more, more, more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think you know it's also possible to live in the paradox of both, of both, really, just, you know, I think that's also where artists can attend to be too. Is that, like? Artists are constantly like, thinking about, like hmm, I accept this. I recently saw Steven Spielberg's the Fablements, right, it's this wonderful, like sort of very autobiographical picture about his relationships to his parents and his falling in love with film, and there's something really beautiful about it, because what's neat is that when you accept and love who you are and where you've come from, but you also find a way to expand at the same time. That is the art.
Speaker 2:And there's this brilliant scene for any who haven't seen it yet but judd hirsch plays an uncle who worked for the circus or something, and he has this amazing dramatic monologue with the young boy who's playing the Steven Spielberg character and he is basically laying out before us how challenging it is to expand and choose your art and to love your family at the same time. In a certain way, is, can you love yourself as you are without changing it, and can you not be satisfied and restless and to be able to work with both those, which I think Spielberg has done throughout his career, right, whether it's in ET or you know so many of the films that he has done. Catch Me, if you Can like. He's always kind of connecting to the ways in which his childhood has stayed with him, but also finding new and inventive ways of re-imagining what's possible in his own vision, and I think that's a really, really interesting place to be coming from.
Speaker 2:So if I'm a person who is kind of hearing, so if I'm a person who is kind of hearing, how do I practically live in both right, where I'm like I don't know how to do a goal without the mindset of more moreweck's growth mindset, fixed mindset thing? Right, there's a way in which sometimes, if we get, if we make the goal thing to fixed mindset or to objectifying, let's say yeah, I think that's another reason. By the way, I think you stumbled on something that I hadn't put into words quite before. I think the haters of resolution notice how resolutions can easily tend to objectify us. And aren't we a culture that really has moved beyond that or at least tried to recognize the ways in which we objectify women or objectify ourselves as workhorses, or you name it? And I think there is still a vestige of possible objectification going on if you are not very mindful and clear. And that's where I think the growth mindset of, yes, this is an object, this is something that I can objectively work with, but this is fluid as well.
Speaker 2:And again, this comes back to the inherent paradox of being human too, which is, we are both objects and subjects. We are, both have static elements to us and we are dynamic, right, it's sort of like when somebody says you're such a this. It might be true, right, there might be aspects of you like, or you might have a certain personality organization that leans towards this. That's true, but it's also part of a constellation of moving parts at the same time, and I think to be able to hold on to the fact that we can both have these static, objective parts and these constantly flowing moving parts, right, as William James says, the stream of consciousness. It's a dynamic creature. That's the beauty of being human.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I'm going to shift gears a little bit here and talk about something else that I hear a lot about New Year's resolutions, and it's actually something that I have been talking about on social media and it's also like, even though I'm talking about it, right which is smart goals. Okay, so I'm going to, like, lay this out there. So one thing that comes up a lot in goal setting and psychology, especially as we talk about creating, you know, specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time-sensitive goals, right, smart goals.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And I guess I'll also say that, even though I spend countless hours talking to people about how to create good smart goals, it feels like one out of 10, michael. I mean, it feels like it's so hard to write a good goal. How does a person like how do I live in this place of yes, I'm going to kind of promote and talk about and encourage people to write smart goals but then still have what you were just describing right, like we do have to have some fluidity, otherwise it does become a pass fail sort of scenario, and I think that's what causes the January 19th thing to happen. Right, people are like F it I'm, you know.
Speaker 2:I suck.
Speaker 1:I'm done, you know. So how do we you know? First of all, do you, do you also use the SMART goal framework? Do you encourage that? Or if you don't? Or if you do, how does that play into what we were talking about just a minute ago?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think it's cool to do it. I think you know this has been a tension with the psychology since the beginning, right? Like if this isn't measurable, is it really important and is it really worth talking about? And also, are we really making progress on it, right?
Speaker 1:Right, how would we know?
Speaker 2:How would we know? Yeah, but I do think you know again, we don't want to go to the other side and and so like, for example, I mean, this is just what comes to mind, I've never gotten my sort of taxes done early and I'm like all right, let me see. So I was working on like just looking at things and I, while I was doing it, I was telling the number of sessions I saw like over the year and I was doing all these sort of calculations. But for me it's not like looking at goals, just like that. It's looking at like appreciating the qualitative mix of all these interesting stories and all these interesting places of progress, as I thought about the clients and what their stories were and how they emerged, and I really think it's important to not get too fixated on the thing. But then also there is something really healthy, just like if you're a runner, you want to objectively, you know, get faster.
Speaker 1:Yeah, increase your pace, but like decrease your pace, not increase your pace. Decrease your pace.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the thing is also like you want to be, and there is something about measuring, something helps us notice it more. Yeah, like I use like um, an app, like sometimes to like watch my eating, and what I know learn about it is it's not like it's so much about like gaining or losing weight so much it's about being a little bit more mindful and noticing. And then it turns out that the side effect is oh, okay, cool, quantitatively. So again, I think they can be wedded a bit more, and I think sometimes, even in our field, we've gotten a little cagey of like wait, but if you're not this, and so I think we should be as equally enamored of process as we are being concrete and specific.
Speaker 1:I love that every question I ask, you're always like it's both.
Speaker 2:It's always both. It's always both. Yeah, it's pretty much because creative space happens in both end.
Speaker 1:I answer every question in exactly the same way. My students always ask me a question and I'm like, well, or I'll say it depends. It depends or it's both. So what I love about your response and what I want to make sure that I clarify, at least for me and maybe for anybody else it's like you have to have some structure around a good goal, right? I mean, it has to have some relevance to you, and maybe you don't have every single S-M-A-R-T part of it, but it has to have some sort of structure to it. But I think what I also hear you saying is sometimes, if we put too much structure on it, that is the part that keeps us from really valuing the whole process of the reason you have the goal in the first place. Right, if the reason you have the goal in the first place is because you want to be better, there are so many things to appreciate along the way beyond just running 10 seconds faster now.
Speaker 2:Completely yeah, completely, and I think you're right that we can do more of both, as you're saying, and I was thinking just as you were talking about quantitative.
Speaker 2:It was interesting when I worked on writing a book, I was surprised that I started to fall in love with the process, but I also had these background kind of sort of expectations for how much I should be producing. But what I was doing was I made it flexible. If you're working on the writing in some way over the week, whether it's actually writing words or reading, or even something that's emailing somebody with a question, that all counts. So the process is very, very interconnected with cool. All right, good job, keep on going. And so I think I told you this in one of the other episodes. Robert Frost said poetry without rhyme or meter is like playing tennis without a net, and so limits and constraints also propel us to find ingenious ways of solving problems, and so we don't want to. We want to use that as something that can help us, and so structure and specificity is the net on the tennis, but we also want to sometimes not care about hitting into the net, to just enjoy the process of learning our strokes.
Speaker 1:Do you think that this, you know, the process of learning to enjoy it. Do you think that that is one of the pieces that keeps people continually moving past January 19th?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. So it's interesting. I have this colleague, her name is Ruth Gotian and she wrote a book called the Success Factor and it's all about these very big high achievers like Nobel laureates, olympic medalists, like innovators, and the surprising thing in her book that she finds is that a lot of these people aren't really motivated by the externals, by the status or the power or even the outcome. They fall in love with the process so much and they become so intrinsically motivated that of course they're curious. It's like I mean, why wouldn't Spielberg be excited about what I can do next? But then of course, after a while he's like, oh my gosh, I have a whole oomph of of all these films. And so I mean there was an.
Speaker 2:I think there was a funny quote I forget who it was, but it was like about a musical composer and that he was saying, just as he was finishing up with composing his symphony, he was already getting excited about the next one. And you'd think that's sort of crazy. And that's why, when you look at like someone who was like a prolific composer, like a Beethoven or Mozart or you know Brahms or something like that, you're like how could they have done this? It's because creativity is the sort of I don't know I'm going to say it's the restless flow of imagination coupled with reality in ways that surprise and delight you. Yeah, and you're right, that is sort of the magic that children start with that we lose hold of. But if we unite that children magic, that childhood magic, with adult expertise, that's where we're really cooking and that's also where we feel most fulfilled. We don't feel as close to problems as we feel close to possibilities, but also as to these. These are riddles.
Speaker 1:You know. So what I hear you saying is for those folks who might be listening, and you're, you're a little nervous that January 19th is going to be you. I mean, I hear this conversation being like it's both. You know. For those of you who really like the external motivators, it's okay. Like you can be excited about losing the three pounds on the scale. You can be excited about you know getting accolades from your spouse, about you know making extra money, whatever it might be, yeah.
Speaker 1:But if you're struggling to feel like you want to keep going, maybe it's because of that lack of intrinsic motivation for that specific goal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let one feed the other. Yeah, right, yeah. Of intrinsic motivation for that specific goal. Yeah, let one feed the other. Yeah, right, yeah. Isn't there other? Isn't there? An old kind of uh I don't know if it was a joke or so much as a as a reality of the difference between heaven and hell is is being, uh, having soup with these long spoons and you can't feed yourself, but heaven is when you're feeding the person next to you. So I think sometimes we think it's a design flaw when it's this is how we're meant to work and structure is meant to feed process and process is meant to feed structure. Again, we can't have one without the other and that's why it's a sort of funny, it's a funny argument we're having with ourselves. These resolutions are the best. These resolutions suck. Well, it's like saying gravity, you stink, gravity, you suck, but also you can't ski without it. Yeah, it's true, can't walk without it.
Speaker 2:Can't do anything without it Can't do anything without it. So I think it's really about how you coordinate these things together and recognize the possible strengths and weaknesses of how they're mobilized, yeah, and interconnected.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's kind of what you have been saying throughout, like you recognize the possible strengths and weaknesses of how they're mobilized, yeah, and and interconnected. I mean that's kind of what you have been saying throughout, like you keep doing this thing with your hands where you're like webbing them together. You know, I think it's great, okay, you, you and I. I mean I know that you and I always kind of can't continue to talk all afternoon.
Speaker 1:How do people find out about the work you do, about your book, your speaking, any of the work you do? How do people find you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a good question, I forget. No, you can. So you can find me at my website, which is just michaelalceycom. I also write a regular blog for psychology today called live life creatively, which is fun and has all sorts of different topics. And then my book which just came out with Norton it's. It's called therapeutic improvisation and you can find it anywhere books are sold. It's had lovely, lovely endorsements from like Lori Gottlieb and Daniel Pink and Tal Ben-Shahar. Like these people I would have never. I'm just like, wow, cool.
Speaker 1:It's amazing. I mean, I I'm always like in awe of you for that. That's just incredible. And I would probably have the same like oh my gosh, I can't believe these people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 1:It's amazing. Yeah, it's amazing. Thank you for saying yes to being here.
Speaker 2:Thanks for this random, this random act of coolness. This was fantastic.
Speaker 1:It's great. It's great, and you can find anything that I'm doing on makewordsmatterforgoodcom. And until next time, everyone, stay safe and stay well. Michael, thanks for being here.
Speaker 2:Pleasure.
