Don’t Tell People Your Shoes Changed Your Life
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement about why you shouldn’t tell people your shoes changed your life.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
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Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
What do meditation and minimalist shoes have in common? Well, let me answer that very odd question on today’s episode of The MOVEMENT Movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting feet first, because you know, those things are your foundation. We’re going to break down the propaganda, the mythology, sometimes the outright lies that you’ve been told about what it takes to run or walk or hike or play or do yoga or CrossFit, whatever you like to do, and to do that enjoyably and efficiently and effectively. Did I mention enjoyably? I know I did. It’s a trick question, but look, if you’re not having fun, just do something different till you are. Life’s way too short. By the way, this is called The MOVEMENT Movement because we are creating a movement that involves you. I’ll tell you how, it’s really easy, in just a sec, about natural movement.
Basically, your body works really, really well if you let it do what it’s supposed to do and support it appropriately, and don’t support it too much. The movement part of this is about you, we’re creating this grassroots groundswell of people who start to understand that natural movement is the obvious, better, healthy choice, the same way natural food is. If you want to find out more, go to our website, www.jointhemovementmovement.com. The way you join is simple. Opt-in, subscribe, give us a thumbs up or hit the bell icon on YouTube, all the things you know how to do to interact with podcasts. In short, if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe. What does meditation and minimalist footwear have to do with each other? I used to do a lot of long meditation courses like 10, 12 days, where you just sit on your butt for 18 hours a day and watch your breathing, watch your sensations, et cetera, et cetera.
I had a lot of friends who did those courses as well. Whenever they would come back, they would talk about how it changed their life and they wanted to tell everyone. Well, after I had done like 30 of these, I learned to say to those new meditators, why don’t you just shut up for about two weeks? Because what you’re experiencing now, a lot of it is going to fade. You don’t want to come across as some crazy new age propagandist, whatever, who’s just forcing people into. Well, first of all, telling people your life has changed when they pretty much know it probably hasn’t. It’s just not a good play. What does that have to do with minimalist footwear? Well, many, many people when they put on a pair of Xero shoes, when they experience what it’s like. I’m going to grab a shoe. When they experience what it’s like to have a shoe that has a wider foot shape toe box that let your toes spread and relax, or something low to the ground for balance and agility, or crazy, crazy, flexible, or really, really lightweight.
Something that gives you ground feedback, so your brain knows what’s happening with your feet, so it knows how to effectively move your whole body. Without elevated heel, so it’s not messing with your posture. When you have that natural experience, it’s often life-changing, like legit life-changing. Well, just go check out the reviews on xeroshoes.com and you’ll hear from people who tell you what happened for them. But the point is unlike in the meditation world, in the footwear world, I’m okay with you going and telling people, but you got to do it in the right way. Here’s the interesting thing. Human beings, we are, what’s the technical term? A bunch of morons. Here’s how I’m going to back that up. Our fundamental thing that we’re trying to figure out is what we need to do to be safe and happy. And so way, way back when, when we were out in the savannah and you’d see grass moving in some weird way, we had to make a split-second decision.
Is that thing that’s making the grass move in some weird way something that’s food for us, or are we food for it? Now you could make the wrong decision. You could decide that’s I’m food for it and run away even though that was like a saber-tooth bunny and you’d survive and pass on your genes to other scaredy-cat idiots. Or you could make the crazy decision and think, oh, that’s food for me, and you go after the saber-tooth tiger. Somehow you survive, and then you pass on your risk-taking stupid genes to your offspring. I mean, if you look at the four possible things that you could do to make the right decision to that, at least half of them, half to three quarters are proof that we’re a bunch of morons. We want to be careful about how our moron genes affect us. Now, here’s the other thing about that split-second decision. Once we make that decision, we’re wired to make that same kind of decision over and over and over. The purpose of thinking is to stop thinking.
In other words, to learn something about the situation so that the next time we see a situation like that, we don’t need to process it because that could take time that could lead to our demise. We want to just respond as close to immediately as we can. The problem with that is that we do the same thing with basically any belief. In fact, we hold on to these things so tightly because it’s energy inefficient to try to change our minds, that when we come up with a belief, we tend to hold onto it despite contradictory evidence. In fact, when someone gives you contradictory evidence to something you believe, you tend to believe it even more strongly. You’ll find the tiniest little knit to pick in that evidence that they’re providing for you, and then just dismiss the whole thing and believe what you currently believe even more strongly. Now I know that you’re probably already thinking about how to extrapolate that to all manner of things that you see human beings doing out in the world, politically and religiously and socially and economically, et cetera, et cetera.
But I’m just here to talk about shoes. That raises an interesting point. You can’t just tell people their shoes are wrong. You can’t just tell people what you’ve discovered is amazing and life-changing even if it is. You got to do it differently. I’m going to give you a quick story about this. Dr. Irene Davis at Harvard, she and a couple of other doctors, Chris Powers and Dr. Brian Hiderschide, who’s been both of whom have, well, both Irene and Brian had been on the podcast at jointhemovementmovement.com. You can find their episodes. They do an event called the Science of Running Medicine. It’s for physical therapists who want to learn how to be better physical therapists by helping treat running injuries, by learning what causes them and how to treat them. Each one of us has a slightly different take on what to do. The physical therapists are getting continuing education units for taking the class.
Irene does this unbelievably detailed presentation about what she does with runners in her Spaulding running lab at Harvard about showing how modern footwear, things that look like this with an elevated heel and flared sole and heel lift and toe spring and a stiff sole that doesn’t let you feel anything and pointy thing that squeezes your toes together, pointy toe box. That was the little phrase I was looking for. About how those can actually cause the very injuries that the shoe companies claim they are curing. How one of the most important aspects of getting these injured runners to be uninjured runners is getting their feet to move naturally in something like a pair of Xero shoes. I said to Irene, after your presentation, the physical therapist in this room should run to my booth, tackle me and steal all my stuff, but they don’t. Half of the room comes and checks me out. Half of that group actually eventually takes action, gets a pair of Xero shoes and starts recommending them to their patients and clients.
What’s with the other 75%. Well, those people, especially that first 50% who never even come to check me out at all, they are completely convinced. They have the belief that the shoes that they’re wearing, they made a rational decision to wear those shoes even if you ask them how they came to that rational decision. They will tell you that some 20 year old kid in a shoe store who did some motion gait analysis on a treadmill, that’s a whole other story we’ll talk about in another podcast, told them, recommended that that’s the shoe for them and they’ve been wearing it. They’ve been dealing with whatever they’ve been dealing with, maybe problems, maybe not, and recommending it to their clients. And so now what Irene just basically did is tell them they’re wrong. Humans don’t like being told they’re wrong. Most of them, a lot of them. Now they’re going to take the tiniest little knit they can pick from Irene’s presentation and use it to lock in the belief that what they’re doing is correct.
I mean, after all, it’s part of their professional persona now. They’ve been wearing them. They’ve been recommending them. To go back to their clients and patients and say, “You know, I was wrong. Here’s what you should be doing instead.” It’s going to take a little bit of time. Instead of just buying those shoes, and I’m going to tell you, they’ll be fine. Then fitting you with a pair of custom made orthotics that cost a few hundred dollars. That’s a whole other podcast. I think we’ve actually already done that one. They’re going to stick to their guns and believe what they already believe even more strongly. How does that apply to you? If you go in and tell your friends, oh my God, these things changed my life and here’s why. You say that there’s something wrong with their shoes. You’re going to basically be talking to that 50 to 75% of the people at the Science of Running Medicine event, who at best, you know, maybe come and look at what we’re doing but mostly just ignore the whole thing. What do you do instead?
If you’ve watched any of the videos that I’ve done or listen to other podcasts. God, that always sound so egocentric when people say that. My apologies. I’m not expecting that you’ve seen what I’ve done or heard what I’ve said before, so ignore that part. Anyway, what I often do is try to just, well, the one thing that can help people change their mind is their own experience, and more something called cognitive dissonance, where people discover that what they believe and what they’re experiencing don’t fit together. They are mutually independent. They are mutually exclusive. There’s a great book called Catalyst by Jonah Berger, J-O-N-A-H B-E-R-G-E-R, I believe. The subtitle, How to Change Anyone’s Mind. Jonah has some amazing examples of why people believe what they believe, what not to do to get them to believe something different. For example, humans don’t like being told what to do. Don’t give people a mandate. Don’t tell people what to do, because most of them will then go, yeah, no, I’ll do it my way.
Again, you may have seen evidence of that recently. Actually, here’s my favorite example of cognitive dissonance from Jonah’s book. I might be getting all the specific details a little bit off, but you’ll get the gist of it. There was a Thai anti-smoking campaign that started with a camera walking up to the back of somebody and they were smoking. You hear the person who’s basically the camera saying to that smoker, “Hey, can I get a light?” The smoker turns around, faces the person slash camera, and immediately starts talking about why they shouldn’t smoke and how horrible smoking is and just do not smoke. They will not give you a light. Seems a little odd. Until the camera turns around and you see that the person who said, can I get a light is like a nine year old kid. Then that kid hands the smoker a folded up piece of paper, that when they unfold it, it says, if that’s the advice you’re giving to me, why aren’t you following it yourself?
Here’s the number for a smoking cessation hotline. Increased participation in smoking cessation programs dramatically. That’s an example of cognitive dissonance. They’ve just told someone why smoking is bad and here they are with a cigarette and their brain can’t hold these two ideas at the same time and they’ve got to resolve it in some way. Now that doesn’t mean that everyone who did this stopped smoking or stopped telling people, or started giving lights to nine year olds. But it increased the number of people who had to change the way they behave, change the way they think, change their beliefs because they couldn’t handle the cognitive dissonance and they landed in the direction of not smoking. I try to do similar things when it comes to telling people about footwear. Hopefully you use these. Maybe you’ll come up with other versions of these. If you do, I want to hear about them. You can email them to me at move@jointhemovementmovement.com.
Here’s examples of things that I’ve done. One of the things I often say to people, in fact, whenever someone asks me what I do for a living, this is what I say. I go, “This will sound weird, but let me ask you a question back. Do your feet feel better at the end of the day than they did at the beginning of the day? I’ve never had anyone say yes.” I go, “That’s because you’re wearing the wrong shoes. What I do for a living, I make shoes and boots and sandals that are so lightweight and so comfortable.” We’ve had people email us to tell us they forgot they were wearing them and they went to bed with their shoes still on. Not because they passed out drunk. Although that probably happened a couple of times too. I say that too just for the fun of bringing a little laugh to it. Then people start thinking about what it is with their shoes. Now you’ve invited the opportunity and you can tell your stories. Like, I used to have that same experience but now at the end of the day, I come home and I sometimes forget I’m wearing my shoes. That’s how comfortable these things are.
Now you’ve opened up the possibility. Then if you want to get into the story, wider toe box, flat sole, low to the ground, et cetera, et cetera, they’re more open to that story. The first thing I point out when people say, “No, I don’t feel better at the end of the day.” I go, “Well, take a look at the shape of your foot and then take a look at the shape of your shoe, and tell me what the relationship is between those.” If your foot is the shape of a shoe with a big pointy toe like this, it’s because you’ve been shoving your foot into shoes like that like Chinese foot binding that they used to do to women. Why would you do that? People don’t have a good answer for that. Now they’re in a state of cognitive dissonance that they need to resolve. Another thing that I like to say to people, I say, “If you elevate your heel, that changes your posture and can put stress on your lower back. Why would you want to do that?” They can’t figure that out.
I go, “You know, you have more nerve endings in the soles of your feet than anywhere but your fingertips and your lips, so you’re supposed to feel things there. Basically, to tell your brain what’s happening with your feet so your brain knows how to control your body, but your shoe isn’t letting you feel things, is it?” They go, hmm. They’re starting to get the hint about the natural movement idea. Also, my favorite thing to say is, do you remember being a kid on a warm summer day and going outside and kicking off your shoes and playing and feeling the grass between your toes or the sand around your feet or water around your ankles? Whatever you did, and you’d stay out until it was so dark that you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, let alone the ball you’re trying to kick or throw, and your parents would have to drag you home. Well, I can tell you, you can have that experience almost at any age by letting your feet do what’s natural.
I say sometimes, have you ever watched little kids run? I can tell you as a running coach, they do it beautifully. First of all, look at their faces. They do a weird thing that most adult runners don’t do. It’s called, what’s that word? Smiling or laughing. They’re doing it for fun. They run until they get tired. Then they stop for a very short amount of time and then they start again. There’s a track meet that they have here in Colorado. I hope they have it this year. It’s an open meet. There’s Olympians and there’s tiny little kids. The only thing that would be cuter than the little kids running is if they replace them with puppies and kitties, because, oh my God, they are adorable. It’s so fun. You watch them, the gun goes off and they don’t know what that means. They’re like shocked. Then someone says run and they start to run. They will run until they’re done. Then they stop. Then they start again. When they get to the finish line, they’re like, ah, and they’re so happy they got to the finish line. They don’t know if they were first or last. They just know that they finished.
We’re all going ah with them because we’re living vicariously through them. We’re remembering how much fun it was just to have fun. When people remember that. Remember, that was like mostly barefoot. We can say, well, these shoes are designed to give you that same natural movement, barefoot-like, fun experience. That’ll make them think of the next time they put on a shoe that looks like this one. Some big, thick, heavy, stiff motion that are all padded, arch supporting thing. Arch support, that’s another thing. You can say to someone, did you ever break a limb or break your arm or break your leg or ever see anyone who did? Of course, most people have broken something. They’ve had a cast on some joint for some reason. You can say, so when you got the cast off, did that joint come out stronger or weaker? They’re going to go, well, weaker. You go, I know it’s a trick question, because you don’t want to ask people questions that are set up. People don’t like being set up either. You can say, this is a trick question. Then you say, so, think about it. Your foot has more bones and joints than, well, a quarter of the bones and joints of your whole body in your feet and ankles.
If you’re supporting the joints that make up your arch, isn’t that going to do the same thing that happens when you put your arm in a cast? It’s not exactly the same because your foot still getting some movement, especially if you take off your shoes, but it does the same basic thing. Then if you want, you can present the research once they’re in that little cognitively dissonant state, you can say, by the way, there’s research that shows that when they put arch support in healthy athletes, their foot muscles got up to 17% weaker in 12 weeks. There’s also research that shows that if you use your feet, because it’s use it or lose it, just like any other part of your body. If you want your bicep to get stronger, you do bicep curls or pull-ups and chin-ups. There’s research showing that just by walking in shoes like Xero shoes, minimalist footwear that lets your feet bend and move and flex that you can build foot muscle strength in as little as eight weeks, as much as if you did an actual foot strengthening exercise program.
We’re starting with that cognitive dissonant thing, starting with their own experience that somehow does not jive with what they’re doing or what they’ve been told. Then you can present information that will give them the opportunity to go, huh. The thing you’re going for is, yeah, that makes sense. Or, yeah, that’s right. Once that happens in their brain, once they literally say that, then you know your job is done. You can go back to enjoying your shoes. You can go back to meditating. You don’t have to tell people how much your life changed unless you’re in the mood. Hopefully that’s a helpful primer on how to talk to humans about the experience that you’ve had or hope to have, or will have when you slip on a pair of Xero shoes and, or frankly just walk around barefoot. Because you get just as much fun, if not more, from doing that. The difference is it’s trickier to get into restaurants, which by the way, totally legal to get into restaurants in bare feet.
If they tell you it’s a health code thing, they’re wrong. But that’s again, topic for another podcast. Until then. I hope that was helpful. If you have any questions or comments or you have a recommendation for someone that you want on the podcast for when I’m not just doing a rant like this, send me an email, move@jointhemovementmovement.com. Again, go to that website to find out all the places you can find the podcast, all the places that you find podcasts as well as where you can find us on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Most importantly, again, like I said, if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe. But most, most importantly, go out, have fun. Live life feet first.
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