Jon Acuff: Don’t Overthink It — Part 2

Don’t miss Part 1 of our interview, where Jon Acuff talks about his formative years and how he became a writer.

That brings us to your two most recent books, Soundtracks and then the youth expression of that, Your New Playlist. Why the topic of overthinking?

Because I am an overthinker. Again, I write books that I need first, and then I go see if a bunch of other people need it, too. I’ve been an overthinker forever—that’s why the epigraph to the book is my wife saying, “Jon, I think you might be overthinking this.” I went to the marketplace, and I was surprised at how many books and resources just basically said, “Stop it, stop it, stop it.” And I thought, No. 1, that’s impossible. I mean, I love quiet time, meditation, whatever phrase you want to use. That’s 10, maybe 20 minutes of your day. What about the other 23 1/2 hours?

Then second, I thought, Why would I ever turn off this amazing thinking machine? God designed me to think. What if I could use those thoughts in a good way? What would that look like? So that launched this multiyear exploration of, “What does it look like to change how you think, in a real way, a tangible way?” It was about mindset.

There’s a man named Mike Peasley who helps me do research. Mike has his Ph.D. Now, I’m not a social scientist. There are no beakers involved or electrodes on people’s heads. I don’t want to exaggerate that. But Mike will help me, saying, “Hey, let’s figure out what people are really struggling with.” We decided to look into the topic of overthinking. Each of us tends to think that we are the only one who overthinks. Well, we asked 10,000 people if they overthink, and 99.5% of people said yes. Right away, doesn’t that make you feel a little better?

Soundtracks came out 18 months ago, and I still examine my mindset daily. I am still using it.

Unpack the titles for us: Soundtracks? Your New Playlist?

Well, I love music. I think it is powerful. There was this study that talked about how the music you listen to when you’re a teenager leaves a deeper impact on you than music you hear during other periods of your life. Something you listen to when you are 15 stays with you longer than something you listen to when you’re 35.

I started to think about how the things we believe about ourselves are the same. I started to see 45-year-olds that I work with, leaders who’d be given a better leadership opportunity in the company, but they’d pull back and say things like, “Well, I’m not a natural leader.” If you pull the thread far enough, you usually find out thoughts like that started about [age] 14. Somebody in a position of authority told them, “Hey, you are not a natural leader,” and by now they have listened to that same soundtrack 10,000 times. By the time I am talking to them at 45, they have two or three decades of playing that same song. If you listen to a song for 30 years, you know every lyric. And I started to really say, “That is what we are doing. We’re all walking around with these soundtracks.”

So for “playlists,” we really wanted to ask what would it look like for you to have a handful of thoughts that you could listen to regularly?

And then the other thing with the soundtrack, I was able to say, “A soundtrack has the power to change an entire moment, and often we didn’t even notice it is happening. We don’t even notice it is playing.” I can use the movie metaphor and say, “A movie opens up on a quiet, small house, a white picket fence, kids frolicking in the yard, and then you play an ominous soundtrack. That changes the entire feel, doesn’t it?” And people instantly go, “Oh, you’re right.” Because what was just a quiet house, when they play an ominous soundtrack, becomes too quiet. Now it’s dangerous. Don’t go in there. There could be a creepy clown in the sewer. [Laughs.]

I was able to very clearly say, “Regardless of the age, you get how powerful soundtracks are.” And people [say] yes, and I [say], “Did you know your brain is also playing soundtracks? You have a soundtrack for every part of your life. Every city you’ve ever lived in. Every relationship you have had. Every boss you’ve had. Every job you’ve had. Every opportunity, every challenge, every skill.” 

So how do we identify if we are listening to a broken soundtrack?

Here’s a 30-second exercise your readers can do right now. A soundtrack is a repetitive thought you listen to again and again. If you want to find out if you have a broken soundtrack, all you do is write down a goal. Go ahead, grab a piece of paper. Write down any goal. Anything.

Got it? Great. Now listen to the first thoughts that come when you think about that goal. Are they positive? Do they push you forward? Do they say, You should do that. You’re qualified to do that. You would be great at that. Or are they negative? Do they say something like, Who are you to do that? You think you can do that? You are going to fail like you always fail.

Just the other day I gave somebody that exercise. They said, “I wrote that I want to get healthier. I want to get in shape.” And then he said, “Immediately I heard, I’m too old to lose weight. I’m too injured to exercise. I tried before and failed. What is the likelihood that I will actually accomplish this?

That is a perfect example. You listen to your first thoughts. Listen to the reaction, because every reaction is an education. That’s why the easiest way to find a broken soundtrack is to write down a goal, write down a dream, and then listen to the first thoughts that come. Because the thoughts will come. Most people are going to be surprised and say, “Wait a second. I really don’t believe I can do this.”

Once you have identified a couple of broken soundtracks, that’s when the easiest next step is to ask them three questions. And these are Trojan-horse questions. On the outside they look super simple. Everybody has heard these words before. No one will be amazed by these words. But if you sit with them, if you actually do a little bit of this, you will be surprised what you will learn.

The first question to ask is: “Is it true? Is the thing I am telling myself about myself true? Is the thing I am telling myself about this opportunity, about this challenge, is it true?” One of the greatest mistakes you make is assuming that all your thoughts are true.

The second question is, “Is it helpful? When I tell myself this again and again, does it push me forward, or does it pull me back?” Because there are some things in life that are true but not helpful. An example of that that we put in Your New Playlist was when my younger daughter failed a test. That was true. That happened. The next time she got ready for a test, she had this broken soundtrack saying, You are going to fail again. You are going to fail again. You are going to fail again. Now, is it true she failed the first test? It is. Is it helpful for her to tell herself that a hundred times the night before the next test? Of course not.

Third question is, “Is it kind? Would I say this to a friend? And if I did, would they still want to be my friend?” So you ask those three questions, “Is it true?” “Is it helpful?” “Is it kind?” And if you can’t say a pretty quick yes to all three of those questions, it might be a broken soundtrack. What the book ultimately teaches you to do is to retire broken soundtracks, to stop listening to them and how to replace them with new ones because your brain wants to think things. It’s designed to think things. It teaches you how to repeat those new ones so often they become as automatic as the old ones. 

Now, many people sadly undervalue teens. Tell me about writing Your New Playlist with your daughters.

Soundtracks is my seventh book, but it is the first one that, when it was released, prompted parents to just come out of the woodwork, asking, “Do you have a version for teenagers?” What they understood faster than I did was that if you can teach a teen truth, it changes the entire arc of their life. If you can nudge them, it is like tilting a rocket: If you move it six feet, it lands thousands of miles elsewhere.

Years ago, I used to speak at Big Stuff Camps. I would ask kids, “What are your thoughts telling you?” They would write them down on notecards anonymously. I kept a box of those cards on a shelf in my office for 10 years and never opened it. I never got rid of it, but I wasn’t sure why I kept it. And then I felt as if God was like, Tap, tap, tap. Hey, time to open the box. And when I did, I realized that inside it were thousands of real soundtracks from thousands of real teenagers from across the country.

I was able to spread those cards out and ask, What are the patterns? What are they saying? What are they up against? For instance, the No. 1 word repeated on more cards than any other was the word “enough.” “I’m not pretty enough, I’m not talented enough, rich enough, popular enough, smart enough.” Very soon, I felt as if I had some key pieces to create this book. Again, the big thing with teenagers is that if you teach them truth, they can sprint with it. They can run with it. And then the other thing is that kids today are up against more than we ever faced when we were their age.

Think about this: At our kids’ elementary school, one of the rules was that children couldn’t invite other kids to their birthday party while they were at school. They couldn’t go to class and hand out birthday party invitations, because some kid would get left out. You had to invite the kids outside of the school property. Great rule. 

But with Snapchat, you can see geo-tags and see where people are that you’re not. You can see a map of people attending parties you weren’t invited to. Can you imagine seeing that as a teenager? So I think mindset has always been important for teens. I think it is even more so because of the influences, the opportunities they have, because there are good parts and challenging parts.

We are the first generation of parents that has to talk to their kids about having a digital footprint. My parents never had to say that to me. Their parents never had to say that to them. People think the internet has been around for a long time, but it hasn’t. It is still a toddler, and toddlers cause messes. I think it is even more important than ever to engage a kid in setting a healthy mindset.

One of our soundtracks in our family is “If you want a kind 16-year-old, then teach a six-year-old kindness, and then give them 10 years to practice.” And so, we think about that. For instance, if you want a 25-year-old who understands challenges, give a 15-year-old challenges, and then give them 10 years to practice in the safety of your home and the encouragement of your home. We always talk about [the fact that] we are not raising kids, we are raising adults. Mindset is a big part of being an adult. I mean, that was kind of the biggest surprise of the book: Great thoughts turn into great actions, great actions turn into great results.

My encouragement is for parents to listen for absolutes. If you hear a teenager say things like, “I’ll never get better at geometry,” “I am the dumbest person in the entire class,” “I am the only kid who doesn’t have an iPhone,” “Everyone else got invited to the party but me,” you are likely dealing with broken soundtracks. That is a moment for you to step in.

What advice would you give church leaders about overthinking?

I would say it is an important topic, especially now. I mean, the study we did was back in 2019. Already, 99.5% of people were overthinking, and then the pandemic hit. And 2020 was catnip for overthinking. Like, you weren’t overthinking before? Well, you are now because every part of life has extra thought. 

A line that I have tried to help pastors understand is the emotional supply chain is disrupted, too. It’s not just the physical. I think that is one of the things that I have tried to help pastors with. For them specifically, there’s this old-school mentality that says, “If I share my weaknesses with my congregation, they won’t trust my strengths.” But I think new-school leadership is, “If I pretend I don’t have weaknesses, they won’t trust my strengths.” 

If you asked me to summarize leadership in two words, they would be “go first.” Because when you go first with your congregation, you give everyone else in the room the gift of going second. Because it is hard to go first. That’s a challenge. It is a lot easier to go second. 

I think for pastors, an encouragement is, “What are some ways that you can engage in the conversation, that you can open the conversation and be honest about the challenge to get rid of your broken soundtracks?”

So consider your mindset. Go first.

Paul J. Pastor is editor-at-large of Outreach, an award-winning writer in multiple genres, and author of several books. He lives in Oregon.

Paul J. Pastor
Paul J. Pastorhttp://PaulJPastor.com

Paul J. Pastor is editor-at-large of Outreach, senior acquisitions editor for Zondervan, and author of several books. He lives in Oregon.

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