Speaker 1: If you can train yourself to walk through life being
Speaker 1: kind of on the lookout for tiny little moments of delight,
Speaker 1: you start seeing them everywhere you go. Welcome to the
Speaker 1: one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the
Speaker 1: importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking
Speaker 1: our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf m Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Shauna Nyquist, the New
Speaker 1: York Times bestselling author of many books such as Present Over,
Speaker 1: Perfect Bread and Wine, Cold Tangerines, and others. Today, Shawna
Speaker 1: and Eric discuss her book I Guess I haven't learned
Speaker 1: that yet, discovering new ways of living when the old
Speaker 1: ones stopped working. Hi, Shaanna, Welcome to the show. Hi,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. I am really excited to have
Speaker 1: you on. We're going to be discussing your latest book
Speaker 1: called I Guess I haven't learned that yet, Discovering New
Speaker 1: ways of Living when the Old Ways Stopped Working, which
Speaker 1: is such a great title. Every part of it, and
Speaker 1: we'll get to it in a second, but let's start
Speaker 1: like we always do with the parable. In the Parable,
Speaker 1: there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. What is a good wolf represents
Speaker 1: things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other
Speaker 1: is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 1: hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about
Speaker 1: it for a second, looks up at their grandparents. Which
Speaker 1: one wins, and the grandparents says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: does that parable mean to you in your life and
Speaker 1: in the work that you do. I love that parable,
Speaker 1: and the first thing I think of is how and
Speaker 1: maybe this is just where I am in my life
Speaker 1: right now, but how much what we feed and what
Speaker 1: grows in our lives, what blooms in our lives is
Speaker 1: sort of a group project. That goodness and kindness are
Speaker 1: contagious and inspiring, but so are greed and frustration, and
Speaker 1: so one of the best ways to feed that good wolf,
Speaker 1: that good impulse toward kindness, towards generosity, toward compassion is
Speaker 1: to surround yourself and align yourself with people who are
Speaker 1: bringing out the same and aspiring to the same. I
Speaker 1: notice how much my mood and my energy and my
Speaker 1: choice is affect and are affected by the people I'm
Speaker 1: surrounded by. The parable obviously has so much to do
Speaker 1: with how we conduct ourselves, but also who we choose
Speaker 1: as our guides and our companions on the journey. I
Speaker 1: love that answer and that thought about who's feeding us
Speaker 1: in essence, and also who are we feeding? You know,
Speaker 1: you talk a pair amount in your book about I
Speaker 1: don't know if I love this word, but our responsibility
Speaker 1: to others. There's a word that you use that I
Speaker 1: really love, and you emphasize how valuable you think hospitality is.
Speaker 1: Say what that word means to you, because obviously you
Speaker 1: don't mean, like, you know, going into a career in
Speaker 1: hospitality and you know to be a server in a restaurant, right,
Speaker 1: So what does hospitality mean do you? Is that word
Speaker 1: resonant for you? Well, I mean, first of all, I'm
Speaker 1: delighted that you asked about it. In recent years, my
Speaker 1: husband and I am a handful of other friends have
Speaker 1: been talking about like, Okay, if you had to define
Speaker 1: your thing all the way down to one word, it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily the job you do, it's not the things
Speaker 1: you make, but it's it's the deepest who you are.
Speaker 1: I would say my deepest vocation or calling in the
Speaker 1: world as hospitality. And so I practice hospitality when I write,
Speaker 1: I practice it when I gather people. Everything I do
Speaker 1: is an extension of that kind of fundamental identity of hospitality.
Speaker 1: And the way that I use that term is there
Speaker 1: are several different definitions that I like, but one that
Speaker 1: I like for what we're talking about right now is
Speaker 1: giving people a place to be when they would otherwise
Speaker 1: be alone, or making sure that everyone has a place
Speaker 1: at the table in order to be nurtured and nourished
Speaker 1: and fed. I also think it's especially coming out of
Speaker 1: the season that we're coming out of as a whole culture,
Speaker 1: hospitality is the antidote to mother ng and to isolation. Um,
Speaker 1: we are so fractured as a community, as a culture
Speaker 1: right now, and hospitality is the needle and thread that's
Speaker 1: going to knit us back together, get us listening to
Speaker 1: each other again, learning from each other again, showing up
Speaker 1: around the same tables again. I think it's a really
Speaker 1: fundamental way of living in our world. That's beautiful. Let's
Speaker 1: change direction for a second and talk about the title
Speaker 1: of the book. I guess I haven't learned that yet.
Speaker 1: Why did you title your book that? Well? There are
Speaker 1: lots of different reasons, but one of the easiest ways
Speaker 1: to explain it is, you know, I had made my
Speaker 1: career for a long time as a writer. I've been
Speaker 1: writing books for you know, fifteen years, been speaking and
Speaker 1: podcasting and leading retreats and traveling. And when you do
Speaker 1: that kind of work, whether or not you intend to,
Speaker 1: you start to become kind of an expert in things,
Speaker 1: or at least that's how people treat you. People expect
Speaker 1: you to be an expert. The same is true when
Speaker 1: you hit like midlife. The same is true when you've
Speaker 1: been living in your hometown for a long time. The
Speaker 1: same is certainly true when you're a parent, you know,
Speaker 1: you become the answer person in a lot of different
Speaker 1: scenarios in your life. And then my life changed so
Speaker 1: dramatically in so many ways, both in like external ways
Speaker 1: like we moved from the Midwest to Manhattan, but also
Speaker 1: internal ways. A lot of my ideas about life we're
Speaker 1: shifting about faith, about family, about culture, about how to
Speaker 1: live in the world. And I realized, oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: I've got a book to write, and people want answers,
Speaker 1: and I also want them to and I don't have any.
Speaker 1: And so I had to find an honest way to
Speaker 1: speak about and write about what I was living, but
Speaker 1: very quickly debunked the myth that I was going to
Speaker 1: be the expert to guide anyone through it. I needed
Speaker 1: the title right at the beginning to say I'm not
Speaker 1: the expert you're looking for. I am a fellow traveler.
Speaker 1: I'm happy to be a fellow question asker. But if
Speaker 1: you want answers, I don't have any either. I think
Speaker 1: that's such an important point because anybody who has been
Speaker 1: somewhat successful in writing or speaking or doing anything like
Speaker 1: you were, and this happens to me. I I teach
Speaker 1: some programs of different things. Is it becomes this sense
Speaker 1: of we should be at a certain level and then
Speaker 1: we were not. That can be very disconcerting, and so
Speaker 1: I love that you, you know, right away, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of set out to say like, hey, I'm kind
Speaker 1: coming from a difficult place here and that I don't
Speaker 1: know it all and I'm exploring it here. And I
Speaker 1: think you also talk about in the book how when
Speaker 1: we're struggling and we're trying to heal, we want to
Speaker 1: be there faster and our expectations of where we should be,
Speaker 1: and those expectations can come from lots of different places.
Speaker 1: How quickly we should heal, the culture tells us, or
Speaker 1: the fact that we have seen ourselves or people have
Speaker 1: seen ourselves as the person other people go to for advice.
Speaker 1: All those things, I think set expectations for where we
Speaker 1: should be. And those expectations are almost without fail, damaging
Speaker 1: when it comes to healing. Oh absolutely. You know. One
Speaker 1: of the reasons I had an expectation that I wanted
Speaker 1: to heal faster than I could or than I was,
Speaker 1: is because I wanted to be healed up faster. You know,
Speaker 1: It's it's hard. It's like you break a bone, and
Speaker 1: you get a cast on your arm, and you want
Speaker 1: that cast off immediately right that the healing process is terrible.
Speaker 1: And so I think a lot of the expectations, certainly
Speaker 1: they come from all other places, but I wanted out
Speaker 1: of the painful, messy middle as badly for my own self. Yes, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: you know, when we're in pain, we want that pain
Speaker 1: to end. The thing I love about the title, and
Speaker 1: you reference it multiple times in the book, is you know,
Speaker 1: it's really a path to self compassion. It's really a
Speaker 1: way of being kinder to ourselves. Talk to me about
Speaker 1: the role of self compassion in your journey, because it
Speaker 1: seems like it's become very important to you more recently.
Speaker 1: And the more I've been on my own and helped
Speaker 1: other people along in life, I've become more and more
Speaker 1: convinced of how critical it is for us to have.
Speaker 1: So share a little bit about self compassion, what it
Speaker 1: means to you, how you practice it. I came to
Speaker 1: it late and out of great necessity. It's not my
Speaker 1: natural bent. I grew up with and kind of have
Speaker 1: a you know, firstborn, hard working Midwestern I used to
Speaker 1: just ride myself like a utility player, like a workhorse, like,
Speaker 1: you know, like a linebacker like. These are not compassionate
Speaker 1: images that I had of myself. I was the person
Speaker 1: who could get their first, stay the latest, carry the most,
Speaker 1: put it all on my shoulders. It was really important
Speaker 1: to me to be seen as very capable, very responsible,
Speaker 1: someone you could depend on um, someone who never missed
Speaker 1: a beat, someone who was never too sick or too
Speaker 1: tired or too fragile. Being fragile felt like such a
Speaker 1: terrible thing to be, and so I developed a way
Speaker 1: of living that was profoundly not self compassionate. It was
Speaker 1: based a lot on earning and proving and pushing and shame.
Speaker 1: And you know, it worked in some ways. I was
Speaker 1: a tremendously productive person, and I was rewarded professionally. And
Speaker 1: then I hit this terrible, terrible set of converging changes
Speaker 1: in my life where I couldn't push myself anymore. It
Speaker 1: didn't work. My sadness and my heartbreak and my grief
Speaker 1: were so heavy that I had to find a new
Speaker 1: way to motivate myself, to connect with myself, to heal myself,
Speaker 1: and self compassion was the way through. Andy Colbert wrote
Speaker 1: this wonderful book and the title of it. I love
Speaker 1: it so much. Is called try Softer, and the title
Speaker 1: comes from a moment where she was with I Believe
Speaker 1: her therapist and she kept using the phrase she was
Speaker 1: just trying so hard. She was trying harder and harder
Speaker 1: and harder. And he said to you, I've watched you
Speaker 1: try hard for such a long time. What if instead
Speaker 1: of trying harder, now we try softer? And I think
Speaker 1: that's a beautiful way to look at self compassion and
Speaker 1: her phrase has become very, very important to me. But
Speaker 1: what I'm finding now is I used to use pushing
Speaker 1: and kind of energy, and now I really try to
Speaker 1: use kindness and tenderness toward myself, towards my body, towards
Speaker 1: my spirit, towards my failures. And it's a totally different
Speaker 1: way of moving yourself through the world and through the day.
Speaker 1: It still surprises me how much of a change it is,
Speaker 1: and I'm so grateful to be learning that practice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes such a difference to be in a brain,
Speaker 1: since we're sort of stuck inside with our own brain,
Speaker 1: to be in one that's actually sort of hospitable. Back
Speaker 1: to your word has some has some hospitality towards itself,
Speaker 1: it just makes such a fundamental difference. And your experience
Speaker 1: rings so true to me from what I've seen with
Speaker 1: so many people, and I think me to some degree,
Speaker 1: pushing worked for a while. And the best analogy I've
Speaker 1: ever heard for this, I love it. It says that
Speaker 1: that sort of pushing yourself, being hard on yourself, all
Speaker 1: that is a type of fuel, and so it will
Speaker 1: propel you. But it is a dirty fuel, and you
Speaker 1: burn a dirty fuel and an engine long enough, the
Speaker 1: engine is going to clog up and break down. And
Speaker 1: that is what I see in so many people who
Speaker 1: are like but this worked for me, And you know,
Speaker 1: this goes back to the title of your book, right
Speaker 1: New Ways of Living when the old ways stopped working.
Speaker 1: This way of pushing myself and being hard on myself,
Speaker 1: but it worked for me, and it doesn't anymore. That
Speaker 1: is always difficult. And one of the things I find
Speaker 1: interesting about life and about any sort of process is
Speaker 1: that what worked for a while often doesn't work anymore,
Speaker 1: and you have to change, even if that thing was
Speaker 1: actually good, not even that it was like if we
Speaker 1: could say, well, pushing too hard is not a great thing,
Speaker 1: but even good things like say twelve step program like
Speaker 1: it was an unquestionable good. The efficacy of it sometimes
Speaker 1: stops working and you're like, oh boy, that's a little frightening.
Speaker 1: What's the next thing? But being willing to change like that,
Speaker 1: and you talk about that in regards to your faith,
Speaker 1: you set faith at a seven and it just stays
Speaker 1: at a seven and you just follow it all through
Speaker 1: your life, and that there are all these ups and
Speaker 1: downs in the process. Maybe say a little more about that,
Speaker 1: you know. I was just talking with a friend about this.
Speaker 1: One of the biggest gifts I was given in my
Speaker 1: experience of faith is I watched my mom do a
Speaker 1: like pretty dramatic, full deconstruction and reconstruction of her own
Speaker 1: faith when I was a teenager and she was in
Speaker 1: her forties, and she was at the time a very
Speaker 1: public pastor's wife. This was a little bit controversial. She
Speaker 1: completely stopped attending our family's church with the permission of
Speaker 1: the elders and our family, and she went on a
Speaker 1: very honest, very brave journey to dismantle the parts of
Speaker 1: the faith that she had been given in a very
Speaker 1: conservative environment, and to find poets and musicians and writers
Speaker 1: and sections of scripture and ways of living and practices
Speaker 1: that felt much more authentic and meaningful to her, and
Speaker 1: the tremendous gift that she gave me by getting to
Speaker 1: witness that was it seemed and seems normal to me
Speaker 1: that your faith changes, It should change. Every fundamental relationship
Speaker 1: in our life changes along the way. You would never
Speaker 1: say to someone, I hope your marriage is exactly the
Speaker 1: same twenty years in as it is on your wedding day. Right.
Speaker 1: You would never look at someone and and and say like, oh,
Speaker 1: what a surprise that your body looks different twenty years later.
Speaker 1: Like every things changing all the time, and to expect
Speaker 1: your faith to stay static is crazy, right, But we
Speaker 1: do that. We treat people like if that part of
Speaker 1: our life is evolving in a meaningful way, it must
Speaker 1: be wrong. I think it's actually very right and very admirable.
Speaker 1: I always say that if something is not valuable to you,
Speaker 1: it's easy to walk away, but if you're willing to
Speaker 1: fight for it. I esteem people who are willing to
Speaker 1: fight to make their faith work another way. And so
Speaker 1: I think for me, as my life was changing so deeply,
Speaker 1: there was a stubborn part of me that said, I'm
Speaker 1: not willing to give up on this part of my
Speaker 1: life just because it's been painful. The most valuable things
Speaker 1: in our lives are worth fighting for, and a faith
Speaker 1: that bolsters and nourishes me is worth fighting for. And
Speaker 1: so to anyone who feels like they're in a little
Speaker 1: bit of a wilderness, that's how it is for all
Speaker 1: of us. And it's something to normalize and to make
Speaker 1: peace with and to celebrate because it means you're heading
Speaker 1: somewhere even better. My primary spiritual practice orientation is in Buddhism,
Speaker 1: and there's a phrase we have in and we talk
Speaker 1: about three essentials, and I love these because one of
Speaker 1: them ties to this. We talk about great faith makes sense.
Speaker 1: We talked about great determination also makes sense. We talk
Speaker 1: about great doubt. I've always loved that because it's finally
Speaker 1: for me, it was like, oh, those parts of me
Speaker 1: that do question, that are skeptical, that say, well, I
Speaker 1: don't know about that, or I don't believe that, or
Speaker 1: that is part of my practice, is part of my
Speaker 1: spiritual life and my spiritual journey. And for someone like me,
Speaker 1: I really needed that because otherwise I would feel on
Speaker 1: the outside of everything because I didn't believe in the
Speaker 1: same way or all the same things are only believed
Speaker 1: part of it, and I would end up walking away.
Speaker 1: And it was really wonderful for me to find something
Speaker 1: that said, hey, your doubt is part of this, oh absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I think that's something that Zen Buddhism has to
Speaker 1: offer to many other faith traditions that haven't done that
Speaker 1: as well. I think every faith tradition should have meaningful
Speaker 1: language for doubt and make space for it within our communities.
Speaker 1: And it shouldn't be something that we use to keep
Speaker 1: people out. It should be a really tender time and
Speaker 1: experience when we draw people in, When we make space
Speaker 1: for questions and for uncertainty, or for grief, or for
Speaker 1: pieces that don't fit anymore. That should be some of
Speaker 1: the best work that a faith community does together, not
Speaker 1: the time when you get left outside in the cold.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. You say in the book that I believe
Speaker 1: in seeking out beauty absolutely every chance we get, as
Speaker 1: an act of prayer, as an act of worship, as
Speaker 1: an act of resistance. You also say, I'm learning to
Speaker 1: put myself in the path of joy and beauty. Talk
Speaker 1: to me a little bit about the role of joy
Speaker 1: and beauty and the way that those things are in
Speaker 1: some cases a practice, not just a state. You know,
Speaker 1: I tend to be on the continuum, probably a fairly
Speaker 1: naturally joyful and naturally optimistic person. I have been in
Speaker 1: most seasons of my life, and it's been easy to
Speaker 1: feel a sense of joy or to notice something beautiful
Speaker 1: around me again. And then I hit this season where
Speaker 1: what was right in front of my face were a
Speaker 1: lot of broken things, a lot of ugliness, a lot
Speaker 1: of grief, a lot of sadness, and joy didn't bubble
Speaker 1: up unbidden, and I realized that if I was going
Speaker 1: to feel it, I was going to have to go
Speaker 1: out and find it. But you can't man handle it
Speaker 1: right like, you can't force it into your life. And
Speaker 1: so I had to learn the phrase that was helpful
Speaker 1: for me was to put myself in the path of it,
Speaker 1: kind of give yourself the greatest chance to find it.
Speaker 1: And a lot of that is sort of trial and error.
Speaker 1: And what brings one person joy is not necessarily what
Speaker 1: brings another person joy. But it's also being an active
Speaker 1: participant in the process of joy or the process of beauty,
Speaker 1: or the process of healing. A lot of times we
Speaker 1: want those things to happen to us like lightning striking right.
Speaker 1: I hope the joy comes. I hope the healing comes.
Speaker 1: I hope the forgiveness comes. But we have to participate
Speaker 1: in our own healing, in our own forgiving, in our
Speaker 1: own joy seeking. I wanted sometimes to sit at home,
Speaker 1: on my couch and for great beauty to come PLoP
Speaker 1: itself in front of my eyes. It finds me when
Speaker 1: I participate in it, when I put on my shoes
Speaker 1: and I get outside and I go for a walk,
Speaker 1: and I choose to be a person who lays herself
Speaker 1: open to beauty anywhere I can find it. But it
Speaker 1: doesn't happen usually just by staying home. And that's been
Speaker 1: a meaningful practice for me to just get out and
Speaker 1: trust that something good will emerge when I get a
Speaker 1: little bit outside of myself. Yeah, there's another place that
Speaker 1: you talk about this from an inspiration perspective. You talk
Speaker 1: about inspiration being your responsibility and that you have to
Speaker 1: put yourself in the way of it. And you say, so,
Speaker 1: this means it's my job literally to go to art
Speaker 1: galleries and read poetry and go for walks and spend
Speaker 1: time with interesting people, and that if we want these things,
Speaker 1: we do have to put some effort into seeking them out.
Speaker 1: There's another phrase that you use where you say, I
Speaker 1: want to be a person who is this isn't I'm
Speaker 1: not quoting exactly, but easily delighted. How might we make
Speaker 1: that transition if we're not somebody who's easily delighted? What
Speaker 1: are some ways of thinking about lowering sort of our
Speaker 1: delight standard, you know, so that we are more easily delighted. Well,
Speaker 1: almost everything that we're talking about today is a practice,
Speaker 1: not a natural personalities trait or way of being right,
Speaker 1: Like it's easy to think, well I either am or
Speaker 1: am not self compassionate. No, these are skills that you
Speaker 1: can practice and develop. And the same is true with delight.
Speaker 1: Experiencing delight is a practice that you can develop and
Speaker 1: get better at overtime. And like we were talking about
Speaker 1: right in the very beginning, in the same way that
Speaker 1: like goodness and kindness are contagious, delight is contagious. One
Speaker 1: of the very simple things I do is before I
Speaker 1: go to bed at night, I try to write down
Speaker 1: three glimpses of my day that we're beautiful in some way.
Speaker 1: It could be this a line from a song, it
Speaker 1: could be something I saw something visual, a beautiful flower,
Speaker 1: it could be something I tasted. But you notice over
Speaker 1: time that if you train your mind and your spirit
Speaker 1: to find three moments of delight in your day within
Speaker 1: even just a week, it's easier to find the three,
Speaker 1: and then you can find ten, and then you can
Speaker 1: find twenty. And so that's what I mean. If you
Speaker 1: can train yourself to walk through life being kind of
Speaker 1: on the lookout for tiny little moments of delight, you
Speaker 1: start seeing them everywhere you go. And the opposite is true,
Speaker 1: right If it takes like the Eiffel Tower or Maui
Speaker 1: in order to get you to feel delight, you're not
Speaker 1: going to feel very much of it in like your office,
Speaker 1: you know. And so I'm just really committed to taking
Speaker 1: responsibility for that. It's possible, based on how I live
Speaker 1: and what I practice, to experience delight all through the day,
Speaker 1: but it's up to me. It's all there, all the time.
Speaker 1: It's just up to me to be on the lookout
Speaker 1: for it. I love that phrase glimpses of beauty because
Speaker 1: I often think about and talk about gratitude, but that
Speaker 1: phrase doesn't quite sum up what I'm trying to do
Speaker 1: when I'm looking for gratitude. I actually often use the
Speaker 1: word I'm looking for appreciation. What do I appreciate? What
Speaker 1: did I appreciate? But I actually like that phrase even better.
Speaker 1: Where were there glimpses, small glimpses of beauty throughout the day.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really useful reframing for me, or
Speaker 1: a useful phrase for me to sort of orient the
Speaker 1: practice that I try and do. And as you say,
Speaker 1: the more we look for something, the better. I went
Speaker 1: through a practice for a while of trying to take
Speaker 1: a beautiful picture every day. And I mean, I'm not
Speaker 1: a photographer, right, That wasn't the point. The point was
Speaker 1: I was looking for something beautiful every day. And the
Speaker 1: more I did that, the more that was the way
Speaker 1: as I looked around, what's beautiful in this where my
Speaker 1: eyes fall? What might be beautiful in here? What angle
Speaker 1: might I look at? What shadow might I look at?
Speaker 1: What makes this beautiful? And I think it's such a
Speaker 1: valuable practice, and maybe this would be a place to
Speaker 1: transition too. Your water colors, since I just brought up
Speaker 1: art for art's sake, my terrible, terrible water colors. Yes,
Speaker 1: so you know I'm a writer, so most of what
Speaker 1: I do is type and I love to cook. That's
Speaker 1: another like creative outlet for me. But at a certain
Speaker 1: point my therapist, who I just adore, said, I want
Speaker 1: you to make something that's not word based and that's
Speaker 1: not productive in any way. Like cooking is kind of
Speaker 1: a cheat, right, Like you can enjoy the process, but
Speaker 1: it's also deeply practical, right you're feeding people. Yes, he's like,
Speaker 1: I want you to do something that's just no words
Speaker 1: and no inherent like productivity angle to it. And so
Speaker 1: I took my kids at the art supply store and
Speaker 1: we each got to pick out a set of paints
Speaker 1: that we like to krilla so oils or because one
Speaker 1: of the one of the boys got like charcoals, I
Speaker 1: got watercolors, and we got the right you know, canvases
Speaker 1: or paper or whatever. And I am just terrible at it.
Speaker 1: I mean absolutely terrible, Like I don't even know like
Speaker 1: basics of like I just kept making like terrible designs.
Speaker 1: Um if I tried to do any like representation of anything,
Speaker 1: it was like, you don't even know how to do
Speaker 1: a stick figure that's not even like an apple. And
Speaker 1: there was something really freeing over time. First it was frustrating,
Speaker 1: and I was not having fun, and I was like,
Speaker 1: my kids are way better artists than I am, and
Speaker 1: this is not fun for me, and when can I
Speaker 1: stop and do something else? And then over time I
Speaker 1: started to realize again, like the theme of everything in
Speaker 1: my life right now, something really profound to be learned
Speaker 1: when you're terrible at something and it's utterly unproductive, and
Speaker 1: it sort of reminds us a bunch of the good
Speaker 1: lessons in life, that not everything should be beautiful and
Speaker 1: not everything should be productive, and we're not all about
Speaker 1: to become famous doing X Y Z thing, and you
Speaker 1: don't have to set up an at C shop just
Speaker 1: because you made three watercolors. It can just be an
Speaker 1: hour that you spent being grateful for having an hour
Speaker 1: to play with color. And it's not always about a bigger, brighter,
Speaker 1: faster next way to monetize it. So that's the story
Speaker 1: of my terrible watercolors. One of the people I work
Speaker 1: with in publishing was like, you know what I think
Speaker 1: we should do. We should um post some of them.
Speaker 1: And I was like, I know, you think that's a
Speaker 1: good idea. You don't know how bad they are, and
Speaker 1: we're not doing that I'm not even willing for it
Speaker 1: to be an object lesson They're that bad but a
Speaker 1: great thing to learn about. I love what you say here.
Speaker 1: You say that they're horrible, and that's the point that
Speaker 1: there are spaces in my life that help heal me
Speaker 1: and help me and don't build or provide or create
Speaker 1: anything beyond that. Healing me is enough. Helping me is enough,
Speaker 1: and I love that. I think it's beautiful. I'm a
Speaker 1: guitar player and I love it. But for the early
Speaker 1: part of my life as a guitar player, it was
Speaker 1: supposed to go somewhere. I had to work really hard
Speaker 1: to reclaim it from that. When I realized, like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get paid to be a guitar player.
Speaker 1: That's not going to be my living I'm sort of
Speaker 1: setting that aside. You know, I had to really work
Speaker 1: hard to get back to the sheer pleasure of just
Speaker 1: playing the thing and what it does for me inside.
Speaker 1: I feel very happy that I have reclaimed it. You know,
Speaker 1: there's no real purpose to it. It's not going anywhere now.
Speaker 1: I'm often learning and trying to get better, but not
Speaker 1: because they're somewhere for it to go. But because of
Speaker 1: the pleasure of being actually able to play a little
Speaker 1: bit better. And so as someone who's been you know,
Speaker 1: very identified at points in my life with as you say,
Speaker 1: like grind culture, hustle culture, productivity culture, I often joke
Speaker 1: I have to work really hard not to turn my
Speaker 1: hobbies into a job. I was just gonna say that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I took up rock climbing about I don't know, a
Speaker 1: year ago or so, and I've had to work really
Speaker 1: hard to be like just relax, like go and climb
Speaker 1: and enjoy it, like you do not need to get
Speaker 1: a trainer, You do not need I'm learning these lessons,
Speaker 1: but it's taken me a while. My husband's a musician.
Speaker 1: He's a pianist, he plays guitar as well, and our
Speaker 1: boys right now are learning to play the guitar. So
Speaker 1: I am surrounded by guitar all day, all the time,
Speaker 1: which is really fun. But so many of our friends
Speaker 1: who are musicians have articulated those same things or the opposite,
Speaker 1: that it becomes their profession and it stops being a joy.
Speaker 1: And that's not true for everyone. There are certainly people
Speaker 1: for whom it's both. I would say, like in my
Speaker 1: life as a writer. I like being a writer, and
Speaker 1: the professional side of that does not spoil my joy
Speaker 1: of it in any way. But like I love to cook,
Speaker 1: and every once in a while people will say, like,
Speaker 1: you should open a restaurant, and I say, oh, well, never,
Speaker 1: I would be a terrible restaurant owner. The joy of
Speaker 1: it is that it feels like play, and I don't
Speaker 1: want to take that away from it. Play is really important.
Speaker 1: But we live in a culture that says like, as
Speaker 1: soon as you develop a skill, it needs its own
Speaker 1: Instagram account right for you to make money on that
Speaker 1: skill or be known for that skill. And I think
Speaker 1: there is something so valuable it's saying like I'm gonna
Speaker 1: play the guitar for an hour because I am going
Speaker 1: to love that hour. Yes, not because it's building something
Speaker 1: else somewhere else. That feels to me when I think
Speaker 1: of worship or gratitude, what it means to be grateful
Speaker 1: to the creator for creating this world and creating us,
Speaker 1: loving an hour feels like valuable worship, a valuable offering
Speaker 1: of gratitude to me. I love that idea of thinking
Speaker 1: of it that way, or I love the word devotion,
Speaker 1: so thinking of it in terms of a devotion. I
Speaker 1: want to read something else you wrote, because I really
Speaker 1: love this idea and maybe we can talk about it
Speaker 1: a little bit more. You say, there are a million
Speaker 1: ways to be a responsible parent, There are a million
Speaker 1: ways to build a thriving marriage, there are a million
Speaker 1: ways to lead a meaningful life. But when you've lived
Speaker 1: only one way for a long time, the messaging gets
Speaker 1: really loud, and anything different starts to seem suspect. It's
Speaker 1: easy to get stuck in like a little world where
Speaker 1: we mostly all eat the same dress, same work in
Speaker 1: similar ways, view the world from similar vantage points, and
Speaker 1: you start to think that's normal. And then some of
Speaker 1: why I love traveling, it's especially why I love traveling
Speaker 1: with my kids, is you realize there are a million
Speaker 1: different normals. Right We're talking with one of my kids
Speaker 1: and they were like, they don't eat peanut butter in Italy,
Speaker 1: and it was like their mind just exploded. But like
Speaker 1: the you know, my kids have peanut butter and jelly
Speaker 1: every single morning, and so it's hard for them to
Speaker 1: think that there's an entire culture that doesn't value peanut butter.
Speaker 1: And that's just the tiniest example. Some of what I
Speaker 1: love about living in a big city is that you
Speaker 1: encounter people every day who are living according to really
Speaker 1: different values, who want different things, who think different things
Speaker 1: are important, whose lives look utterly different than yours, And
Speaker 1: it just keeps reminding you number one, yours is not
Speaker 1: the only way, and number two, you can change and
Speaker 1: find a new way, and that's really freeing. I think
Speaker 1: we don't all have to be on the same plan
Speaker 1: or the same path at the same pace. For me,
Speaker 1: I've learned so much from the people around me that
Speaker 1: there's so many good and honorable and meaningful ways to live.
Speaker 1: We don't all have to be hitting the same like
Speaker 1: pace points at the same time. I think what you're
Speaker 1: describing there being in a big city gives you the
Speaker 1: opportunity to see the world that way. But I also
Speaker 1: think there's an orientation and a practice to actually open
Speaker 1: into that instead of sort of looking at everything you
Speaker 1: see around you as wrong. There's something you're doing in
Speaker 1: your heart that's different, because I know lots of people
Speaker 1: who live in big cities who can have a different
Speaker 1: experience of it. You know, one of the things we
Speaker 1: talked about, and I wrote about this in the book,
Speaker 1: is we we decided that one of our values in
Speaker 1: the course of our move was going to be always
Speaker 1: asking what's the New York way to do this. Our
Speaker 1: hometown was named Barrington, and we knew that if we
Speaker 1: walked into every situation and tried to do things the
Speaker 1: Barrington way in New York City, we'd be frustrated all
Speaker 1: the time. Nothing would work, everything would be like a weird,
Speaker 1: lesser version of the life we used to have, and
Speaker 1: harder because it's not available to us a thousand miles away.
Speaker 1: And we do that a lot with people. Right you
Speaker 1: expect someone to be a certain person, and you punish
Speaker 1: them over and over for not being that person you
Speaker 1: have in your head. One of the phrases my friend
Speaker 1: Laurie says that true spiritual maturity is nothing more and
Speaker 1: nothing less than consenting to reality. And I love that,
Speaker 1: And so we wanted to consent to New York City
Speaker 1: reality every chance we got, instead of always expecting it
Speaker 1: to be just like our previous hometown. And I want
Speaker 1: to do that in my relationships. I want to encounter
Speaker 1: my husband and say, this is who you are, not
Speaker 1: who I wish you were sometimes, and I hope that
Speaker 1: he can do that for me say this is exactly
Speaker 1: who I am, not who he wishes I could be.
Speaker 1: I think that that way of seeing people and seeing
Speaker 1: the world is really respectful and honoring to consent to
Speaker 1: the reality. I love that phrase and the idea of
Speaker 1: consenting to reality. I'm thinking back to what you said
Speaker 1: about when everything around you looks a certain way, you
Speaker 1: think that's the only way to do it. And I
Speaker 1: had an experience a couple of years ago, and it
Speaker 1: really drove this home to me how much who were
Speaker 1: around can shape our perspective. Because I spent the first
Speaker 1: part of the week in a training to be a
Speaker 1: spiritual director, and so it was at this pretty rundown
Speaker 1: kind of retreat center, and most people there were people
Speaker 1: who valued lots of things much more than they valued money.
Speaker 1: I'm not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but
Speaker 1: as somebody who's sort of upper middle class, I had
Speaker 1: a little like this is the wrong way to be.
Speaker 1: And then I left and I went and spent the
Speaker 1: second half of that week with friends of mine who
Speaker 1: are very wealthy, and I spent that whole time thinking
Speaker 1: like I just don't have enough money, you know, and
Speaker 1: so like within like a day of each other. I
Speaker 1: was able to see that the frame that was held
Speaker 1: up around me, when I put it in one frame
Speaker 1: or the other, I looked at it and felt towards
Speaker 1: it very differently. Oh. Absolutely, this is totally an urban legend.
Speaker 1: I don't know that it's true, but I love this story,
Speaker 1: and we experience feels true to meet they say that,
Speaker 1: or I've heard that when you two finishes a tour bono.
Speaker 1: Over the years, they've learned his wife asks him to
Speaker 1: check into a hotel for a full week when he
Speaker 1: finishes the tour to just decompress and get used to
Speaker 1: life without like a microphone and a crowd. And then
Speaker 1: when he gets home from that week, the first thing
Speaker 1: he does is he has to take out the trash,
Speaker 1: and that's the signal that he's ready to engage family
Speaker 1: life and home life as a normal guy and not
Speaker 1: a rock star guy. Right. But I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot of wisdom in that. I can't imagine what it's
Speaker 1: like to fill a stadium every night and have people screaming,
Speaker 1: but I can imagine that it starts to shape the
Speaker 1: way you think about yourself and what you deserve in
Speaker 1: the world, and that you might not come home from
Speaker 1: that experience and immediately want to take out the trash.
Speaker 1: And I love that over time they've figured out the
Speaker 1: way to like re enter back into healthful, whole, meaningful
Speaker 1: family life. I love that story. I was introduced to
Speaker 1: a term this week that I had not heard before,
Speaker 1: called audience capture, and when I heard it, I thought
Speaker 1: it meant about going out and getting an audience, but
Speaker 1: it was the opposite. What it meant was that once
Speaker 1: you build an audience, that audience, if you're not careful,
Speaker 1: starts to shape who you become. You start to want
Speaker 1: to fit the mold of what your audience expects of you.
Speaker 1: And we all have audiences. Our audience might be three people,
Speaker 1: that might be in Bono's case, you know, thirty million people,
Speaker 1: but but we all have one. I think that speaks
Speaker 1: to that thing of like who am I and who
Speaker 1: do I want to be outside of that? And back
Speaker 1: to my story about being around the spiritual direction people
Speaker 1: versus the very wealthy people. Right, if I don't have
Speaker 1: a strong sense of myself and what's important to me,
Speaker 1: then it's very easy to fall into either of those
Speaker 1: and then I'm just kind of getting dragged around by
Speaker 1: whoever I'm around most often. Absolutely, on the topic of
Speaker 1: audience capture, this may sound like a rabbit hole and
Speaker 1: we don't have to go down it for long. But
Speaker 1: have you seen the new Elvis movie? No. If there
Speaker 1: is one key theme to that movie, that's what it is.
Speaker 1: It's beautifully done. I just watched it last night, so
Speaker 1: it's in my head. But one of the main themes
Speaker 1: the narrator refers to the audience as you, and he
Speaker 1: keeps saying, the only thing Elvis loves is you. The
Speaker 1: thing he loves most is you. Um, the thing that
Speaker 1: gets him up in the morning is you. And there's
Speaker 1: this idea that the love from the audience is the
Speaker 1: most sustaining and important thing in his life. Anyway, I
Speaker 1: think that idea of audience capture and who we become
Speaker 1: based on the feedback that we get, it's a really
Speaker 1: important thing to consider, especially if you're doing anything that
Speaker 1: has a lot of immediate feedback, right whether it's podcasting
Speaker 1: or social media. You know, back in the olden days
Speaker 1: when I used to you know, the first book I
Speaker 1: wrote was pre internet, if you can even imagine that world,
Speaker 1: and so I wrote it and then you know, occasionally
Speaker 1: people would like write about it on their blogs or
Speaker 1: like I would get Amazon reviews, but it was not
Speaker 1: the same as it is now, where you can write
Speaker 1: something on social media and within an hour, thousands of
Speaker 1: people will tell you what they love or hate about it. Psychologically,
Speaker 1: that's a very precarious place to put yourself. In terms
Speaker 1: of audience capture, it's very easy to five or six
Speaker 1: times a day fit ourselves into those little squares and
Speaker 1: boxes in order to accommodate an audience that has very
Speaker 1: strong opinions about who we should be. And so I
Speaker 1: think what I love about some of the work you're
Speaker 1: doing is that it's the antidote to that. It's choosing
Speaker 1: to be who we want to be, separate from those
Speaker 1: voices based on our own values and our own practices.
Speaker 1: That feels really really important work right now. M m
Speaker 1: m h. We've been exploring with some consultants who are
Speaker 1: experts in how you grow a podcast more we've done
Speaker 1: very well kind of on our own and sort of
Speaker 1: looking at others, and a lot of them come back
Speaker 1: and say, well, we want to really mind all your episodes,
Speaker 1: and we want to find out what really performed well,
Speaker 1: and we want to do more of that, you know,
Speaker 1: And I said, well, I'm open to look in at that,
Speaker 1: but my criteria for eight years has been doing I
Speaker 1: want to read that book. Like if I'm going to
Speaker 1: talk to somebody, the question is am I interested in
Speaker 1: reading that book? Because if I'm not, it's not gonna work.
Speaker 1: It's not going to work. Just to say, well, my
Speaker 1: audience really prefers episodes that are like this. And again
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that I don't care what the people
Speaker 1: who listen think I do deeply, but fundamentally I have
Speaker 1: to know what I want to do or it's not
Speaker 1: going to translate. You know. I luckily just got that
Speaker 1: idea very early on and have managed to sort of
Speaker 1: stay with it over eight years, which is trust my
Speaker 1: intuition on where my curiosity That's another word you use
Speaker 1: a lot in the book. Where's my curiosity right now?
Speaker 1: And that seems to be a pretty good proxy for
Speaker 1: me of than what people want to listen to. In
Speaker 1: the same way for you, you can't write a book
Speaker 1: that you're not invested in or that you don't care about,
Speaker 1: right It's too much effort. One of the greatest pieces
Speaker 1: of advice someone gave me when I was putting in
Speaker 1: my first proposal, As they said, you absolutely cannot consider
Speaker 1: what you think the market needs, what will get you
Speaker 1: on Oprah, what will finally make your parents proud of you,
Speaker 1: what your college professor wishes you were writing about. It
Speaker 1: has to be something so deeply held inside of you,
Speaker 1: because not only do you have to think about it
Speaker 1: and feel about it and wrap your whole life around
Speaker 1: it for like a year and a half, then you
Speaker 1: have to talk about it for like another year. And
Speaker 1: if people sense that you're like, oh, I mean that
Speaker 1: old thing, dad, like it just doesn't work, you have
Speaker 1: to care about it. When you talk about like fuel,
Speaker 1: there has to be enough internal fuel to keep you
Speaker 1: going through a quite arduous process. And it has to be,
Speaker 1: in my experience, something you want to learn, not something
Speaker 1: you want to teach. I'm endlessly curious about how we
Speaker 1: grow and how we connect to each other and how
Speaker 1: we make our worlds better. I don't have a lot
Speaker 1: to teach each on that, but I have a lot
Speaker 1: to learn on it, and so that's the fuel that
Speaker 1: keeps me going. Yep, yep. For me, it's the same thing.
Speaker 1: Do I want to learn that or do I want
Speaker 1: to read that or am I interested in that that
Speaker 1: works well? And trying to avoid the idea of audience capture.
Speaker 1: I want a deep relationship with my audience, but I
Speaker 1: don't want to be captured, because I'm sure you don't either.
Speaker 1: Let's change directions. I want to talk about a line
Speaker 1: that you wrote. You said, I've been training all my
Speaker 1: life to pretend I'm fine, and I have let my
Speaker 1: body suffer for it. Talk to me about the role
Speaker 1: of the body in all of this, because you reference
Speaker 1: it multiple times. You talk about our religious and spiritual
Speaker 1: life being headheart, and body. Share a little bit about
Speaker 1: why that emerged for you. Well, I think for at
Speaker 1: least two reasons, one of them driven by the experience
Speaker 1: of having a body. And there are a lot of
Speaker 1: really great things about the faith tradition that I grew
Speaker 1: up in and I'm still a part of. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of things that I really treasure about it.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I think is really unhelpful
Speaker 1: is this dichotomy between like spirit and body, or spirit
Speaker 1: and flesh. The idea is that like, if we can
Speaker 1: work it all out in our brains, everything is good,
Speaker 1: but the carrying system is bad. You know, the body
Speaker 1: is just the thing that walks around the important stuff,
Speaker 1: and that it's not valuable. It's not to be trusted,
Speaker 1: it's not to be listened to, it's to be mastered.
Speaker 1: You know, I knew that part of the reason, going
Speaker 1: back to the glimpses, I'm always looking for sense details
Speaker 1: because I want to connect my body and my senses
Speaker 1: and my emotions to the world around me. So instead
Speaker 1: of saying I'm grateful for my family, I say I
Speaker 1: love the way my son's fingers felt when we were
Speaker 1: holding hands and he was telling me that funny story
Speaker 1: in the Hammock, Because then we're in the senses were
Speaker 1: in my body and my fingers um not just the
Speaker 1: idea of family. So I've always wanted, through my writing
Speaker 1: and in my life to sort of reknit together the
Speaker 1: mind body connection in terms of my faith experience. I
Speaker 1: love the world we live in. I love the physical
Speaker 1: natural world. I think it's a gift from God. I
Speaker 1: think it's worth celebrating. You know, you don't have to
Speaker 1: hold a baby for very long to realize that bodies
Speaker 1: are extraordinary, not just spirits and minds, you know, And
Speaker 1: so I wanted to do that for a long time,
Speaker 1: and then my own relationship to my body became very difficult.
Speaker 1: I've never been like a supermodel, and I've never been
Speaker 1: like wild about my appearance. But my body at least
Speaker 1: worked for a long time. It got me where I
Speaker 1: needed to go, and I always had enough energy, and
Speaker 1: I could always do everything I wanted to do, and
Speaker 1: I was an active person. And I realized how much
Speaker 1: that was not even on my radar. Just worked. And
Speaker 1: then I hit this convergence of chronic pain and insomnia
Speaker 1: and early menopause and long COVID and they were all
Speaker 1: mixed together and I couldn't figure out what was what.
Speaker 1: And I was in New York, and I had all
Speaker 1: new doctors that I didn't know, and a health insurance
Speaker 1: system that is just like so complicated to figure out.
Speaker 1: And also it was in the middle of a pandemic.
Speaker 1: The body part of my life stopped king pretty dramatically,
Speaker 1: and I had to figure it out. I had to
Speaker 1: untangle it. I had to go to a lot of
Speaker 1: doctors and try a lot of things, and I had
Speaker 1: to try physical things and mental things and holistic things
Speaker 1: and traditional things, and a medication that offset that medication
Speaker 1: and I just got stuck in that swirl of trying
Speaker 1: to problem solve a lot of complicated things at the
Speaker 1: same time. And it gave me tremendous empathy for the many,
Speaker 1: many people who have been experiencing that and trying to
Speaker 1: figure that out for a long time. But it also
Speaker 1: showed me that I needed to attend to my physical
Speaker 1: and mental health with more care than I had been previously.
Speaker 1: And I'm still not all the way through that process
Speaker 1: by any means, I haven't nailed it at all, but
Speaker 1: it's something I did not have to give a lot
Speaker 1: of thought or energy to for like the first forty
Speaker 1: years of my life. And now when I look at
Speaker 1: my calendar, part of where my energy goes is to
Speaker 1: trying to figure out this part of my life. And
Speaker 1: it's difficult and also worthwhile. Yeah, I think as we
Speaker 1: get older, even in some degree of health, if I
Speaker 1: were to think about how much of my time goes
Speaker 1: into trying to make sure that the body is well
Speaker 1: cared for. Certainly it's more when you're sick, but even
Speaker 1: being healthy to stay healthy as I'm older is a
Speaker 1: fair amount more. You know, the exercise, the stretching boy,
Speaker 1: this shoulder hurts, So now I need to do these
Speaker 1: exercises and the diet and the getting enough sleep, and like, jeez,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a desire to occasionally be like, you know,
Speaker 1: can I do without this thing? So you were sort
Speaker 1: of driven to it by necessity to some degree. Talk
Speaker 1: to me about the pleasures of it, or the joys
Speaker 1: or the consolations that have come from that deeper attending
Speaker 1: to it, if there are any Yeah, like um, I
Speaker 1: would say, I have a lot of gratitude when I
Speaker 1: do feel good. I don't take it for granted. When
Speaker 1: things are not bad and like sort of medium good,
Speaker 1: I feel really grateful for that. And I have a
Speaker 1: lot of empathy again for people who have struggled for
Speaker 1: a long time. The other thing, I'm trying to do it,
Speaker 1: I'm really not good at it. But a friend of mine,
Speaker 1: Hillary McBride, does beautiful writing and work. She's a therapist.
Speaker 1: She works on to the Wisdom of the Body. One
Speaker 1: of her book titles is the Wisdom of the Body,
Speaker 1: and she talks about how like pain is a gift
Speaker 1: that can show us what needs care and attending. And
Speaker 1: I think for such a long time I've had that
Speaker 1: divide between the mind and the body, like pain is
Speaker 1: just something to either ignore or overcome, not something to
Speaker 1: listen to, not an invitation, not a gift. But I'm
Speaker 1: learning a lot about how to listen to my body,
Speaker 1: how to listen to pain, how to be open to
Speaker 1: learning new practices, and how much of the mind and
Speaker 1: the body are really connected. Now, before I take some advil,
Speaker 1: I stopped for a minute and say, like, are there
Speaker 1: any feelings that I might not have given myself the
Speaker 1: space to feel that might be just like shouting from
Speaker 1: my shoulders right now? And might that be the solution
Speaker 1: instead of medication? And it's not always, but those are
Speaker 1: helpful questions along the way. You mentioned in the book. Actually,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if it was in the book or
Speaker 1: it was another interview you did about learning about the
Speaker 1: work of Dr John Sarno in your reference the documentary
Speaker 1: on him. We had the creator of that documentary on
Speaker 1: It's been a long time now, it's been amazing six
Speaker 1: years ago or so, but there can be a link
Speaker 1: between chronic pain and emotional state. We also had an
Speaker 1: interview recently that I found fascinating by somebody at Columbia.
Speaker 1: I think it was at Columbia University, and they call
Speaker 1: it pain reprocessing therapy. But what they say is that
Speaker 1: the pain, you're still in pain, but the signal for
Speaker 1: that pain is no longer coming from the part of
Speaker 1: the body that it originally came from. It's coming from
Speaker 1: within the mind. It's still there, it's still real, but
Speaker 1: it's been learned at that point. It's a memory in essence,
Speaker 1: which is just both fascinating and mildly horrifying that our
Speaker 1: brain could do that. But it just gets to the
Speaker 1: point that this stuff is so complex how to work
Speaker 1: out some of the elements that we feel and take on.
Speaker 1: It's so complex it is. And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I am by no means saying like I used to
Speaker 1: do it this way, and now I do it only
Speaker 1: this way. I think what I'm saying is I used
Speaker 1: to not really do anything, and now I at least
Speaker 1: have a whole new toolbox of things to try, you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's listening or meditation or stretching or therapy. I
Speaker 1: have a whole set of tools in the toolkit, and
Speaker 1: and it's worth learning and widening that set of tools
Speaker 1: as we age, and specifically as we hit tough points
Speaker 1: in our physical and mental health. It's worth learning more
Speaker 1: of those just so that we have options. You know
Speaker 1: the old adage about if you're a hammer, everything's a nail, right.
Speaker 1: If all you're ever trying to do is eliminate and
Speaker 1: ignore pain, you've only got one play, right, It's like advil.
Speaker 1: But if you were in to listen a little bit more,
Speaker 1: if there are other solutions, you can find other ways through.
Speaker 1: And that feels valuable. Yeah. I've dealt with depression throughout
Speaker 1: my adult life, and I often say with it like
Speaker 1: I just kind of throw the kitchen sink at it.
Speaker 1: Everything you know, like medicay check, exercise, check, positive mental
Speaker 1: attitude check, being in nature. And I don't know what
Speaker 1: does what you know that approach leads me to go.
Speaker 1: I don't know what helps. I'm not sure exactly, but
Speaker 1: I do know that I'm okay. Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: do know that I'm finding my way through. But it
Speaker 1: is by trying lots of different things. I think that
Speaker 1: is the way through. You Know. Every once in a
Speaker 1: while someone will imply or say that they wish my
Speaker 1: book had a little bit more more of a how to,
Speaker 1: and I'm always like, oh no, no, no, um, that
Speaker 1: wasn't an accident. I didn't forget to give you the
Speaker 1: how to. I gave you seventy five how to and
Speaker 1: you get to pick the six or seven or twelve
Speaker 1: that work for you. That's how it is. You know,
Speaker 1: it would never say that I know the how to
Speaker 1: for you. I barely know it for myself. But I'm
Speaker 1: willing to give you a whole bookshelf of options. And
Speaker 1: that's how we all get through. Yeah. I think that
Speaker 1: is such an interesting point, because I think most people
Speaker 1: wish we could just go to one person and I
Speaker 1: would say, do these five things and done whatever your issue,
Speaker 1: whatever your problem solved. And so we know that life
Speaker 1: isn't that simple, or at least we learn life isn't
Speaker 1: that simple. You know. The other problem that I see
Speaker 1: is that we are deluged by so many ideas and
Speaker 1: options and approaches that sometimes we can chase solutions around
Speaker 1: one after the other after the other, after the other
Speaker 1: after the other, without necessarily committing to any of them
Speaker 1: to the degree we might need to. And you write
Speaker 1: about this, You're talking about your writing. You say, writing
Speaker 1: like yoga and prayer. I've mostly experienced the healing part
Speaker 1: in the long term and a sort of boring but
Speaker 1: worthwhile away. And so I think this raises that paradox
Speaker 1: of like being willing to try on different things, but
Speaker 1: also being willing to do certain things long enough that
Speaker 1: they have a chance to work. I think breathing exercises
Speaker 1: are a great example of this. Breathing can actually be
Speaker 1: fairly helpful. However, if you wait till you're having your
Speaker 1: first near panic attack and you try and take ten
Speaker 1: deep breaths and it doesn't go away, you're gonna be like, well,
Speaker 1: breathing doesn't work. That's not kind of help, right, But
Speaker 1: had you been practicing breathing for three months, it might
Speaker 1: be a different story. And so I just always find
Speaker 1: this paradox of like trying to find specific enough information
Speaker 1: that can help me and that I can commit to
Speaker 1: and stick to, but not getting too narrowly focused and
Speaker 1: not believing that what worked for somebody else will necessarily
Speaker 1: work for me absolutely. And it's it's easier to do
Speaker 1: that when you're not desperate, right, when you're just like
Speaker 1: the worst place, You're like, give me the silver bullet,
Speaker 1: find it for me and get to me, you know.
Speaker 1: And that's not how life works. That's not available to us.
Speaker 1: But but that's why it's worth learning five or six
Speaker 1: of those things before you get desperate, so that they're
Speaker 1: at your disposal when you need them. My partner, Jenny's
Speaker 1: teacher often says, practice while you can for the times
Speaker 1: that you can't. I think that's a great insight. I
Speaker 1: feel the same way actually about getting a therapist. It's
Speaker 1: great to meet a therapist when you're not in crisis,
Speaker 1: so that they can get to know you and your
Speaker 1: whole story, so that then when the crisis comes, you're
Speaker 1: not like, Hi, this is my name, this is the
Speaker 1: thing that fell apart in my life. You know, you
Speaker 1: have a basis of information, and you a foundation of
Speaker 1: relationships so that you can come into a point of
Speaker 1: familiarity right when you need it. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: end by talking about a phrase that you use near
Speaker 1: the end of the book, and it's I still say yes.
Speaker 1: I'd love to first talk about just saying yes broadly
Speaker 1: and in general, and then maybe we can name a
Speaker 1: couple of things that you still say yes too. Because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of beautiful writing all through the book,
Speaker 1: and then right at the end, it's particularly in the
Speaker 1: way and in it's beautiful. So talk to me about
Speaker 1: saying yes to life more broadly or generally and how
Speaker 1: you work on that. Yeah, So, you know, I want
Speaker 1: to be a person. You know, I mentioned I tend
Speaker 1: to be kind of open hearted, joyful, you know, at
Speaker 1: my best, I like to be a person who says
Speaker 1: yes to life. That feels like kind of my default position.
Speaker 1: And then I went through this several year stretch where I,
Speaker 1: you know, I think very influenced by like productivity culture
Speaker 1: and grind culture, and I let my lifestyle and my
Speaker 1: schedule become too detached from my values. I wanted to
Speaker 1: be a really present parent and partner, wanted to be
Speaker 1: a good neighbor and a good daughter, and I wasn't.
Speaker 1: I was a good person who worked, is what I was.
Speaker 1: And um, I was isolated and I was exhausted, and
Speaker 1: I had to spend about eighteen months saying no to
Speaker 1: almost everything. And I hated it. I hated saying no.
Speaker 1: I hated being the kind of person who said no.
Speaker 1: I hated for that to have to be my default
Speaker 1: position in life. And so I got this tattoo in
Speaker 1: the middle of that process that says yes. And I
Speaker 1: can see it every day and It's in my friend's handwriting,
Speaker 1: and I love it. And what it reminded me was
Speaker 1: that I'm saying all of these nos, but they're in
Speaker 1: service of a much bigger yes. The yes is meaning,
Speaker 1: is beauty, is family, is connection, is creativity. The no
Speaker 1: is no, not this meeting, no, not this trip, no,
Speaker 1: not this speaking event. But the s is to life
Speaker 1: around the table, to forgiveness, to second chances, to watching
Speaker 1: the sunset, to being with my kids, still holding hands
Speaker 1: with my husband. I needed a reminder that saying all
Speaker 1: the nose was in service of a much bigger, more
Speaker 1: beautiful yes. And then, you know, through this whole journey
Speaker 1: of the last couple of years, there were moments when
Speaker 1: I thought, I'm amazed that anyone can even recognize me
Speaker 1: on the street, because I feel so unfamiliar to myself.
Speaker 1: I look in the mirror and I almost don't recognize
Speaker 1: this face in front of me. And writing that last
Speaker 1: essay was sort of a way of saying, like, one
Speaker 1: million things have changed, but a handful of things haven't. Fundamentally,
Speaker 1: I'm still a person who says yes to the best, biggest,
Speaker 1: most beautiful things, and this is a handful of things
Speaker 1: that I'm going to keep saying yes to over and
Speaker 1: over and over again. Well, I think that is a
Speaker 1: beautiful place to end. So Shanna, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for coming on the show. It's been such a pleasure
Speaker 1: to talk to you. I really enjoyed the book. Will
Speaker 1: have links in the show notes to your website to
Speaker 1: where people can find the book and all of that.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: This has been really a pleasure. If what you just
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