Alex Lickerman- The One You Feed

This week we talk to Alex Lickerman about building an indestructible self.

Alex Lickerman is a physician, former assistant professor of medicine and director of primary care, and current assistant vice president for Student Health and Counseling Services at the University of Chicago. He’s also been a secular Buddhist since 1989. His first book is The Undefeated Mind: On the Science of Constructing an Indestructible Self.

In This Interview Alex and I Discuss…

The One You Feed parable.
Neither wolf wins permanently, the battle always goes on.
How things that don’t kill us can make us stronger but it doesn’t happen automatically.
Building an indestructible self.
How our inner life state has much more to do with how we cope with adversity than the nature of that adversity.
Suffering doesn’t automatically cause us to grow.
Learning to accept unpleasant feelings.
How our strategies to avoid pain usually make it worse.
Non judgmental awareness of our feelings is often better than resistance.
The secret to success is not avoiding pain but carrying on in spite of it.
That our internal pep talks have to be believable.
The difference between optimistic and pessimistic explanatory styles.
How obstacles always arrive on our path.
That the last thing we do is look internally to see what we need to change in order to achieve a goal.
Sometimes the way to solve a problem is not to fix it but to change how much we allow it to suffer.
How suffering ceases to be suffering when it acquires meaning.
Using comparison to be a positive force versus a destructive force.
The difference between determination and willpower.