Yesterday, I was ellipting on the elliptical and to make the process less maddening, I listened to a podcast, which turned out to be surprisingly valuable.
It was a health podcast. The guest was a psychotherapist, a certain Dr. Glenn Livingston, PhD.
That name was familiar to me.
Turns out it was the same Dr. Glenn Livingston, PhD, who was also a successful direct marketer a while back.
I checked for his name in my inbox just now. He has at different times partnered with or been named-dropped by direct marketing rhinos and mammoths like Terry Dean, Ryan Levesque, Ken McCarthy, and Perry Marshall.
But back to the podcast. Like I said, it was a health podcast, about how to quit overeating.
Turns out Dr. Glenn is an expert on the matter.
Not only has he battled overeating his whole life, but he has written a bunch of books on the topic. The best selling one, Never Binge Again, has 19,224 reviews on Amazon.
Perhaps you’re wondering whether this email will ever get to a point. The point is this:
For years, Dr. Glenn used his psychotherapeutic training to try to quit overeating.
Never worked.
After years of therapy, introspection, and digging into his family history, Dr. Glenn finally unearthed the surprising root cause of why he was overeating his whole life (mommy issues).
And it still didn’t fix a damn thing. If anything, it made his overeating worse, because he now had a legit excuse, where he didn’t have one before.
And yet, Dr. Glenn did manage to get his eating under control.
I’ll tell you how:
He isolated, named, and in fact shamed the part of his mind that was craving and reaching for chocolate, for chocolate was his weakness.
Dr. Glenn told himself, “That is my Inner Pig talking. The Inner Pig wants its slop. But I am not one to be ruled by farm animals.”
The effect wasn’t immediate — few things outside direct marketing promises are. But the effect was there, and after a bit of time, this inner-piggization cured Dr. Glenn Livingston, PhD, of his overeating habit, making him a healthier, happier, better person.
The bigger point, as Dr. Glenn says on the podcast, is that identity is stronger than will power.
You can use this truth if you’re trying to influence and persuade others.
Or you can use it to fix your own bad habits.
I’ve just told you the main highlight of this surprisingly valuable podcast with Dr. Glenn Livingston. But there are more good things inside that podcast. And there’s more development of that core idea, that identity is stronger than will power, in a way that might help it actually sink into your head.
If you want to influence and persuade others better… or if you want to improve your own life and control your mind better, this podcast is worth a listen. Here’s the link: