Speaker 1: If you are quiet enough and still enough, you will
Speaker 1: know what's important to you and what you want, and
Speaker 1: you'll know what you don't want. And very often what
Speaker 1: you don't want is the thing the culture tells you
Speaker 1: you do. Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time,
Speaker 1: great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 1: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people will keep themselves moving
Speaker 1: in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 1: David Coon's, a former director and presenter of Inside Track
Speaker 1: seminars and a former clergyman turned author. David has sold
Speaker 1: more than a hundred and thirteen thousand books in English, Spanish,
Speaker 1: and Japanese and established a psychotherapy practice in Berkeley, California. Today,
Speaker 1: David and Eric discussed his book The Art of Stopping,
Speaker 1: How to Be Still When You Have to Keep Going. Hi, David,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Thank you great to be here.
Speaker 1: It's a pleasure to have you on. We are going
Speaker 1: to be talking about your book, The Art of Stopping,
Speaker 1: How to Be Still When You Have to Keep Going.
Speaker 1: But before we do that, let's start, like we always do,
Speaker 1: with a parable. There's a grand father who's talking with
Speaker 1: his granddaughter and he says, in life, there are two
Speaker 1: wolves inside of us that are always at battle. What
Speaker 1: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 1: bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and she looks up at her grandfather and she says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Yes, you know, I've seen
Speaker 1: that parable a while ago, and I've always loved it,
Speaker 1: and I've been thinking about it, and you know, Eric,
Speaker 1: For me, it comes down to the idea of attention.
Speaker 1: To what and to whom do you give your attention?
Speaker 1: And maybe that's another way of saying mindfulness to what
Speaker 1: are you mindful at the moment or at any given moment,
Speaker 1: and the accumulation of those moments, The accumulation of that
Speaker 1: attention answers the question who do you feed? It answers
Speaker 1: where do you give your priority, What do you listen to,
Speaker 1: what do you read, who do you talk to? The
Speaker 1: daily ins and outs of one's life add up, and
Speaker 1: how you do one thing is how you do everything
Speaker 1: in some ways. So I like to think of the
Speaker 1: answer to that as to whom do you give attention?
Speaker 1: To whom do you give your mindful qualities of presence?
Speaker 1: That makes you who you are, and that answers the
Speaker 1: question of who wins. Oftentimes we talk about time being
Speaker 1: the most precious resource, but attention is right up there
Speaker 1: with time, and they're kind of indivisible from each other
Speaker 1: in a sense. Um. But but yeah, attention is really
Speaker 1: so important, and I think we'll spend a fair amount
Speaker 1: of time talking about attention as we move through this conversation,
Speaker 1: I want to lead us into the heart of your work,
Speaker 1: which is this concept of stopping. And you know this
Speaker 1: is your most recent book on it. I think you
Speaker 1: probably first introduced this idea. It's been a good number
Speaker 1: of years ago. So let's start by talking about what
Speaker 1: is stopping in the sense that you're using it here. Okay,
Speaker 1: stopping is defined as doing nothing as much as possible.
Speaker 1: It sounds good, long time. I'm just kidding, Okay, So
Speaker 1: doing nothing as much as possible for a short time
Speaker 1: or a long time in order to wake up, remember
Speaker 1: who you are and what you want. The whole purpose
Speaker 1: of stopping, doing nothing for a brief for a long
Speaker 1: time is so that when you're going, you're going in
Speaker 1: the direction you want to go in, You're going with
Speaker 1: the people you want to go with, and you're going
Speaker 1: to the place that you really want to be going to.
Speaker 1: In other words, stopping allows you. I believe, in our very,
Speaker 1: very distracted society, it's necessary to stop and be still
Speaker 1: in order to access the wisdom that I believe we
Speaker 1: all have within us that tells us what we need
Speaker 1: to know to have a successful life. It's there we
Speaker 1: all have it. I believe we're born with that. That's
Speaker 1: a human characteristic, but we don't hear it because the
Speaker 1: noise and the distractions of the world, which are intense
Speaker 1: and attractive and and everywhere, So we miss it, and
Speaker 1: we wind up some cold gray morning when we're too
Speaker 1: old to make many changes and say, oh, no, I
Speaker 1: missed it. To me, that's very tragic. That's the one
Speaker 1: thing you don't want to say when you wake up
Speaker 1: some cold gray morning when you're an old man. So
Speaker 1: that's the whole purpose of stopping wonderful. And you bring
Speaker 1: up early in the book this idea of this modern
Speaker 1: problem of too much right, too much of everything, too
Speaker 1: much to do, too many choices, too much information. The
Speaker 1: list kind of goes on and on, and you say that,
Speaker 1: you know, part of the problem of too much these
Speaker 1: days is that we tend to treat it as if
Speaker 1: it's just the same problem it's always been. And you
Speaker 1: say that it's really not the same problem it's always been,
Speaker 1: And what way is it different? Well, I think just
Speaker 1: the amount of it has changed its characteristic. It's the
Speaker 1: same kind of problem. There's more and more and more
Speaker 1: and more and more. But at one time I call
Speaker 1: it the mountain of too much. That little hill that
Speaker 1: you could surmount when you were younger, or when times
Speaker 1: were more simple. You could climb over that little hill,
Speaker 1: you could walk around that little hill. You cram things in,
Speaker 1: or you can cut things out. But it gets to
Speaker 1: a point where that little hill really has now become mountain,
Speaker 1: and it's in your way and it's stopping you in
Speaker 1: that sense. It's something new, and we get discouraged because
Speaker 1: we say I should be able to do this. I've
Speaker 1: always been able to do this before. Why can't I
Speaker 1: do this now? Well, you can't do it now because
Speaker 1: there's too much. Nobody can do it. We can't do it.
Speaker 1: Human beings can't. The amount of things facing us in
Speaker 1: life has reached the point where the human mind and
Speaker 1: soul and the hell, the whole human reality can't cope
Speaker 1: without help, without being doing or going in some direction
Speaker 1: in some place that allows us the access to our wisdom.
Speaker 1: And so we're going to get into how we stop later.
Speaker 1: There's there's actual different components of stopping, and we're going
Speaker 1: to get to the method here in a little bit.
Speaker 1: But I first want to ask how does stopping help
Speaker 1: with the problem of too much. Does it allow is
Speaker 1: to clarify what's really important and thus we are able
Speaker 1: to let go of lots of things that aren't important?
Speaker 1: Or does it give us some stability as we climb
Speaker 1: them mountain? If too much? In what ways is stopping
Speaker 1: help us? It helps us with the problem of too
Speaker 1: much because it allows us access to make decisions and
Speaker 1: to cut out and to make a distinction between those
Speaker 1: things that are truly important to us and those things
Speaker 1: that are not. So it gives us the power and
Speaker 1: the insight to say no to this and yes to that,
Speaker 1: rather than just taking everything as it comes into our
Speaker 1: life as the popular culture would present it to us.
Speaker 1: It gives us discernment, I'd say, would be the word.
Speaker 1: And I don't think we can have real, true discernment
Speaker 1: until we have solitude, quiet created space so that we
Speaker 1: really can make an honest, informed decision, decision based on
Speaker 1: the reality of our life rather than on what somebody
Speaker 1: wants us to believe. You talk about some of the
Speaker 1: consequences of the type of life we are leading, and
Speaker 1: I love what some of these are. I'm just going
Speaker 1: to read a couple of them because I think they
Speaker 1: speak to what a lot of us are feeling right.
Speaker 1: You say that our wisdom never finds its voice, that's
Speaker 1: drowned out by distractions. We forget what's truly important to us.
Speaker 1: And this is a really big one I know in
Speaker 1: the coaching clients I talked to in the Spiritual Habits
Speaker 1: work that we do the way you phrase it as
Speaker 1: we feel as though we are moving through life but
Speaker 1: not actually experiencing it. Yes, there's sort of a numbness
Speaker 1: that I think is really the result of trying to
Speaker 1: cope with the mountain of too much without first stopping.
Speaker 1: It numbs us because there's just too much. There's just
Speaker 1: too much of everything. There's too many choices, there's too
Speaker 1: many opportunities, there's too many of the good things as
Speaker 1: well as too many of the bad things. And with
Speaker 1: the internet life and the social media that is so
Speaker 1: pervasive now, it just adds more and more and more
Speaker 1: and more, and it's overwhelming. It's just overwhelming. And my
Speaker 1: whole theory is based on if you are quiet enough
Speaker 1: and still enough, you will know what's important to you
Speaker 1: and what you want, and you'll know what you don't want,
Speaker 1: and very often what you don't want is the thing.
Speaker 1: The culture tells you you do. Absolutely. You make an
Speaker 1: interesting point as we talk about going slower versus going fast,
Speaker 1: and you say slowness fosters remembering and speed in genders forgetting.
Speaker 1: Say more about that. Absolutely. That's a quote from Milan Kundera.
Speaker 1: He's a check novelist. His equation is, if you slow down,
Speaker 1: you remember, if you go fast, you forget. And I
Speaker 1: think that rings true to human experience. Just imagine yourself.
Speaker 1: You're walking down the street, You're not particularly thinking of anything,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden you remember something, or
Speaker 1: you want to remember something. What was the name of
Speaker 1: that person that I wanted to call? And as you
Speaker 1: try to remember, you automatically slow down. You might even
Speaker 1: stop and say, okay, that's it. Then then you go
Speaker 1: on your way. It's an equation that the slower you are,
Speaker 1: the more you're going to remember, and the faster you go,
Speaker 1: the more you forget. Chris must surely remember a lot
Speaker 1: at the pace he goes. He's our producer. You don't
Speaker 1: get that joke. He he's the guy who's got to
Speaker 1: edit this. He's like, right out loud. I slipped digs
Speaker 1: in at him from time to time. I think that's
Speaker 1: really true. The other thing that you mentioned about this
Speaker 1: sort of numbness that comes that numbness leads to forgetting too,
Speaker 1: because it is actual degree of emotion that makes things memorable.
Speaker 1: We actually kind of know the biochemistry at this point
Speaker 1: of what causes certain memories to get encoded, and it's
Speaker 1: it's certain neurochemicals that are triggered by things having an
Speaker 1: emotional experience. And so if everything is numb all the time,
Speaker 1: you just don't remember, you don't, which is as somebody
Speaker 1: who's dealt with depression for a lot of my life,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of memory that's not there. It's getting better,
Speaker 1: but a lot of it there. And I think it's
Speaker 1: a combination of yes, always moving fast and sort of
Speaker 1: being numb exactly. And there's so much that we lose
Speaker 1: that is so valuable when you stop, that can come back,
Speaker 1: if you slow down, that can come back and enrich
Speaker 1: your life. I want to get us here soon to
Speaker 1: the methods of stopping. Listeners are probably like, well, what
Speaker 1: does this mean stopping like, and we're going to get there,
Speaker 1: I promise soon, but I want to explore just a
Speaker 1: moment more some of the gifts of stopping. We've talked
Speaker 1: about the problem, but some of the gifts. You lay
Speaker 1: out six different gifts of stopping. Maybe we could run
Speaker 1: through what just a couple of those are, Okay. The
Speaker 1: most important one to me is the gift of attention.
Speaker 1: Slowing down, being still allows you to attend to the moment.
Speaker 1: It's it's another way of saying mindfulness. Really, it allows
Speaker 1: you to be mindful, in other words, to be present
Speaker 1: in the moment, to look the person in the eye
Speaker 1: that you're actually talking to, or to be aware as
Speaker 1: much as you can of what you're actually doing. For
Speaker 1: those who are religious. For me in my background, I
Speaker 1: was clergy for years, attention is another way of saying prayer.
Speaker 1: It's another way of praying. Attention is prayer, which is
Speaker 1: sort of it's elite for some people. But I see
Speaker 1: you nodding. I think for for for many it would ring,
Speaker 1: it would ring true. Yeah. The poet Mary Oliver said
Speaker 1: that attention is the beginning of devotion. Beautiful. I didn't
Speaker 1: know that line, thank you. Another of the benefits of
Speaker 1: stuffing is what I call relaxation. In other words, to
Speaker 1: really be in a relaxed state. And so many of
Speaker 1: us these days, I think never really get to a
Speaker 1: relaxed state. You think of people, especially who are caregivers,
Speaker 1: or for people who are dealing with people with chronic illness,
Speaker 1: or with tensions in the family or tensions at work,
Speaker 1: are now good Heavens, These married couples with three kids
Speaker 1: at home homeschooling to jaw. I don't want to be
Speaker 1: glib about this. I don't see how they do it,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm very cautious when I talk about stopping
Speaker 1: two people like that, because that's really challenging. They have
Speaker 1: a lot on their plate, and thank thank god, I
Speaker 1: think it's beginning to ease up a little bit now
Speaker 1: in our country, so I hope so. But anyway, that
Speaker 1: sense of relaxation, of true relaxation, of not really experiencing
Speaker 1: stress in the moment. Another of the gifts that I
Speaker 1: find very very important is I don't know if you know,
Speaker 1: James Hellman, but the union concept of embracing the shadow.
Speaker 1: So many of us, with our training and the way
Speaker 1: the kind of culture that we're brought up in, do
Speaker 1: not like to look at the dark sides of our
Speaker 1: lives and the dark sides of our character, the dark
Speaker 1: side of anything at all. We want to keep it
Speaker 1: bright and happy and moving. Moo, move it along, don't
Speaker 1: stop and think because it'll get dark. Well. Young's concept
Speaker 1: of embracing the shadow is just that to move into
Speaker 1: those things that seem dark in your life, Embrace them,
Speaker 1: understand them, incorporate them into your life, transform them from
Speaker 1: shadow to light and again. Stopping gives you a chance
Speaker 1: to do that, mainly because it gives you a chance
Speaker 1: to identify what exactly is your shadow? Who is your shadow?
Speaker 1: What are the characteristics of your shadow personality? Stopping, being still,
Speaker 1: being quiet, being alone helps you identify that perfect Thank you.
Speaker 1: Those are really important. The other ones are just hit
Speaker 1: him real quick, knowing, enjoying solitude, having better boundaries, and
Speaker 1: identifying and living out your purpose. All six of those
Speaker 1: are are really important. Okay, let's move into the method
Speaker 1: of stopping. The stopping, as you describe it has three components.
Speaker 1: Why don't you go ahead and tell us what the
Speaker 1: three of those are and and give us a little description,
Speaker 1: and then we'll dive into each of them individually. Great, Okay,
Speaker 1: Stopping is divided basically into three different parts, and their arbitrary.
Speaker 1: This is not written in stone and you can use.
Speaker 1: These terms are not It doesn't make any difference. But
Speaker 1: for the purpose of understanding what stopping is, I use
Speaker 1: these three terms. One is steal points, the next is stopovers,
Speaker 1: and the third is grinding halts. And they're divided, as
Speaker 1: you might guess, by the amount of time you spend
Speaker 1: doing each one, beginning with steel points, because that's the
Speaker 1: heart and soul of stopping. That's the entrance. That's where
Speaker 1: you get into stopping first is by doing still points,
Speaker 1: which are anywhere from a few seconds to a few
Speaker 1: minutes to maybe a few hours. In other words, a
Speaker 1: shorter amount of time, and that literally can be a
Speaker 1: few seconds in which you stop, close your eyes if
Speaker 1: it's safe and possible, turn your energy in and then
Speaker 1: just be still. Or you can say little prayer if
Speaker 1: that's what you like, or you can give yourself an
Speaker 1: affirmation if that's something that helps you, or you can
Speaker 1: think of someone you love. It doesn't make any difference
Speaker 1: what you do. This is the great thing about stopping.
Speaker 1: Stopping works on its own. All you have to do
Speaker 1: is shut up, be still, be quiet, be alone, and listen.
Speaker 1: That's so key, even if it's for a few seconds.
Speaker 1: So what I like to encourage people to do, and
Speaker 1: I've done this a lot with my clients. Is go
Speaker 1: to the bathroom, shut the door, lock the door, if
Speaker 1: you can, look in the mirror, look in your eyes,
Speaker 1: put a little coold water on your wrists, and give
Speaker 1: yourself the message you need at the moment, you can
Speaker 1: do this, or this will pass, this too will pass,
Speaker 1: or whatever you want or nothing. Don't do anything, just
Speaker 1: be still, breathe. That's a still point, and that can
Speaker 1: last for a few seconds, a few minutes. You can
Speaker 1: go and sit in a room for for an hour.
Speaker 1: This is the challenge that I used to give my
Speaker 1: people in my seminars. Plan a day some time within
Speaker 1: maybe a few days ahead, next week, early next week,
Speaker 1: or sometime in the near future. Plan a day so
Speaker 1: that you can spend a half hour alone in a
Speaker 1: room somewhere, no one else there, just you, and sit
Speaker 1: in a chair and don't do anything. Just sit there
Speaker 1: and see what that's like. Now, most people say, why,
Speaker 1: why in the world would I ever do that? That's
Speaker 1: the stupidest thing, because we're afraid of it. We're afraid
Speaker 1: of it. When there's nothing going on, we get afraid
Speaker 1: and we fill it up, so thank yourself. What would
Speaker 1: you do if you had to do that, sit in
Speaker 1: a chair for a half hour or an hour and
Speaker 1: do nothing, just sit there? Well, in about two minutes,
Speaker 1: you'd want to get up and walk around. I'm sure
Speaker 1: I would, most of us would. Will explore the still
Speaker 1: points in in more tail in a minute, because I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot in there. But yeah, let's move
Speaker 1: on to the second component. The second way to describe
Speaker 1: stopping is a stopover, and that's simply a longer time.
Speaker 1: That's a day, a week of going away or staying
Speaker 1: at home or whatever, of doing nothing as much as possible.
Speaker 1: I always add, as much as possible. Is it really
Speaker 1: possible to do absolutely nothing? Probably not, because the monkey mind,
Speaker 1: the chatter is going all the time in our minds.
Speaker 1: So is it really possible to do absolutely well? I
Speaker 1: don't even care about the answer to that question, because
Speaker 1: it isn't important do nothing as much as it's possible
Speaker 1: for you. I had one client once who said, you
Speaker 1: know that the only way I can really do nothing
Speaker 1: is playing golf, And I thought, well, that wouldn't do
Speaker 1: it for me, but you know, if it does it
Speaker 1: for you, fine, that's the key. Thing. Why I call
Speaker 1: it an art. You have to give it life. You're
Speaker 1: a playing golf is the best you can do. In
Speaker 1: regard to stopping ben do that. So that's a stopover
Speaker 1: is just a longer time. Somebody just recently told me
Speaker 1: every week they have a me day. In other words,
Speaker 1: they just do what they want to do. And sometimes
Speaker 1: that's nothing. Sometimes it's just fussing around. And you know,
Speaker 1: I often think in regard to stopovers, I often think
Speaker 1: of kids these days, and I feel badly for them, because,
Speaker 1: as far as I can understand it, they don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of free time of time just hanging out
Speaker 1: fooling around. You know, my parents used to say to me,
Speaker 1: go outside and play. You know, if that's what we
Speaker 1: don't do, nothing fuss around. But kids seem to be
Speaker 1: so programmed today, taken here and taken they're they're made
Speaker 1: to be competitive. And because when they're hanging out like that,
Speaker 1: they're learning something about themselves, they're learning about their world.
Speaker 1: They're learning about a lot of things. They don't recognize
Speaker 1: it at the time, but that's okay now. The third
Speaker 1: one is a grinding halt. And there are many people
Speaker 1: who will never have a grinding halt in their lives.
Speaker 1: Grinding halt is a very long time doing nothing. Most people, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: get to the grinding halt stage by getting sick or
Speaker 1: having an accident, or by being in a pandemic as
Speaker 1: we are. These are enforced grinding halts in many ways.
Speaker 1: For many of us, A grinding halt like a week
Speaker 1: or two weeks silent retreat, going into the mountains and
Speaker 1: camping alone for a week for you know, eight days,
Speaker 1: for ten days, for two weeks, for a long, a
Speaker 1: longer time. That's the best part of stopping. I think.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's how I discovered this whole idea of
Speaker 1: stopping is because I came to a crisis in my
Speaker 1: life and I didn't know what to do. I was
Speaker 1: I was a mess, frankly, and I was forty and
Speaker 1: a mess. And so, make a long story short, I
Speaker 1: went away, got a little cabin on the north coast
Speaker 1: of California, and I did nothing. I didn't know what
Speaker 1: else to do, so I did nothing. I enrolled in
Speaker 1: a watercolor class and made a few terrible watercolors. But
Speaker 1: that's all I did. Later, as I reflected on that,
Speaker 1: I said, boy, that was an important time. I like
Speaker 1: to use the analogy of a computer, but I don't
Speaker 1: think it's accurate. Computer people have told me it's not
Speaker 1: a very accurate analogy. But anyway, I think of my
Speaker 1: brains scanning scanning, scanning, scanning, scanning like a computer does,
Speaker 1: whipping across all those zeros and ones, and taking into
Speaker 1: account everything that's gone before and everything that might happen.
Speaker 1: I had. My original discovery of stopping was a grinding halt.
Speaker 1: I was there for a month. I didn't do anything,
Speaker 1: and I really mean nothing. I cooked my own food,
Speaker 1: I went for hikes every day, I walked on the beach,
Speaker 1: painted a few pictures. But during that time, what was
Speaker 1: happening for me was a clarification of getting in touch
Speaker 1: with my inner wisdom. I'm convinced, Derek, that we all
Speaker 1: are born with this inner wisdom. It's not something we
Speaker 1: have to work for and work for and work for
Speaker 1: and know. It's there. It's free, it's in the human being.
Speaker 1: We just have to be still enough to allow it
Speaker 1: to bring us the wisdom and the understanding that is
Speaker 1: already there. So that's a grinding halt, a longer one.
Speaker 1: And there's examples of those things that are in the book,
Speaker 1: but we might not go into those. Now, let's back
Speaker 1: up and hit a little bit on still points a
Speaker 1: little bit more, because I think that stopovers and grinding
Speaker 1: halts are harder for a lot of people to find. Certainly,
Speaker 1: grinding halts, as you said, I think stopovers are available.
Speaker 1: I think they're there. You know, most coaching clients I
Speaker 1: work with we're working on getting some period of quiet
Speaker 1: into every day, some period of stillness meditation of one
Speaker 1: type or another. But I really love the concept of
Speaker 1: still points, and it's something I have been really focused
Speaker 1: a lot on over the last year and a half
Speaker 1: as I develop up to a program called Spiritual Habits.
Speaker 1: And the part of the Spiritual Habits program is the
Speaker 1: idea that little by little, little becomes a lot. You
Speaker 1: talk about that a lot in the book, that these
Speaker 1: little still points really add up over time, they accumulate.
Speaker 1: So for people who are saying, well, you know what,
Speaker 1: life is really busy, I might get some stopovers here
Speaker 1: and there. But to your point, the purpose of stopping
Speaker 1: is to be able to go. A lot of times,
Speaker 1: still points are the only accessible point, at least to
Speaker 1: start for a lot of people, and so I want
Speaker 1: to go into a little bit more detail there, because
Speaker 1: I think they are really useful and really important, and
Speaker 1: you say that they are brief, and they're meant to
Speaker 1: be used anytime, all the time, and many times a day.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about some of the intervals that still points
Speaker 1: can occur. And you use going to the bathroom as
Speaker 1: a great one, you know, I certainly know I have
Speaker 1: used that countless times. And I've often used the walk
Speaker 1: to and from the bathroom as a great sort of
Speaker 1: still point or a moment to act or practice or
Speaker 1: whatever the term you want to use. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: some other places that people might find still points in
Speaker 1: their day. Okay, one of the things that I find
Speaker 1: most people really relate to is while driving, because most
Speaker 1: of us drive a car. When we're doing that, we're
Speaker 1: often stressed driving, especially in cities or really anywhere you
Speaker 1: have to be alert and there's a degree of stress
Speaker 1: in driving. So a still point while driving is when
Speaker 1: you're stopped. Let's take that as one example. When you're stopped,
Speaker 1: you're at a red light. Okay, there's a perfect time.
Speaker 1: Your hands on the wheel, close your eyes, turn your
Speaker 1: energy in, do your still point, Do say something, say nothing?
Speaker 1: Be still, breathe just a few minutes, open your eyes
Speaker 1: before the person behind you honks, and there you have it.
Speaker 1: While you're driving, if you're going long distance, you always
Speaker 1: have to, of course, be aware of safety. The safety
Speaker 1: is the most important thing. But driving can be monotonous.
Speaker 1: If you're on the freeway going a long distance, a
Speaker 1: perfect time to be still free your mind or another
Speaker 1: thing that really is great to do at still points
Speaker 1: is what I call noticing. Notice what's going on in
Speaker 1: your mind? What is your chatter about that you work
Speaker 1: at a desk, and you're at your desk working, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, a kid that you knew in
Speaker 1: eighth grade comes into your mind, and you think, I
Speaker 1: have thought about her for a long time. Don't miss that.
Speaker 1: What does that mean? Why did that happen? Why did
Speaker 1: you Why did that little friend come into your mind
Speaker 1: at that point? Oh, that's interesting. Notice that, because so
Speaker 1: often we don't notice those things that are in our
Speaker 1: mind that we're thinking about. I'm convinced most of us
Speaker 1: think about a lot of things from our past. Think
Speaker 1: about our parents, or we think about our youth, or
Speaker 1: we think about yesterday. Notice, why is it that you're
Speaker 1: thinking that you might not get an answer right away,
Speaker 1: but you've noticed it. Now it's more accessible to you
Speaker 1: and it will give you the wisdom that it might
Speaker 1: have for you at another time. You use a phrase
Speaker 1: to do in a still point, and I think it's
Speaker 1: a nice framework, which is stop breathe and remember. Stop
Speaker 1: breath and remember. Yes, Okay, that's the essence of it.
Speaker 1: It's so simple, Eric, As you know, all ancient spiritual
Speaker 1: traditions have taught this for eons, for ages. What I
Speaker 1: try to do with stopping is to give it a
Speaker 1: Western spin, for the Western mind and the Western life style,
Speaker 1: the lifestyle that's really given to us. We're born into
Speaker 1: this culture and we have to live within it. So
Speaker 1: how does the ancient wisdom get translated into my century life.
Speaker 1: You also say that in that remember phase, you know,
Speaker 1: you could remember, say a short prayer, you could say
Speaker 1: a message you need to hear at the moment. You
Speaker 1: could do some self encouragement, you could remember something that's
Speaker 1: important to keep referencing the spiritual Habits program. But only
Speaker 1: because as I read your book, I just kept feeling
Speaker 1: like there was such a synergy and it ties together.
Speaker 1: You know, the first principle in the Spiritual Habits program
Speaker 1: is intention and attention, and so a still point is
Speaker 1: a moment to remember, what's my intention? What was my intention?
Speaker 1: What's important about this? What matters here? Perfect? Perfect? I
Speaker 1: would often use still points. I did seminars for stress
Speaker 1: management for nurses. I'm basically an introvert, so doing all
Speaker 1: that extroverted stuff of giving a seminar was very challenging
Speaker 1: for me. So I would give myself still points during
Speaker 1: the whole presentation, maybe ten or twelve during the whole day,
Speaker 1: and no one even noticed that I was doing it
Speaker 1: because I would just stop for a moment. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: close my eyes. I just stop, maybe turn around and
Speaker 1: walk over to the podium and do this. But that
Speaker 1: was a still point for me. That was saying, as
Speaker 1: you indicated, that was reminding me, why do I do this?
Speaker 1: What's my motive? What am I trying to accomplish this event?
Speaker 1: And so forth? Ye the other thing you say, and
Speaker 1: I think this is really important you say, the more
Speaker 1: you use your creativity to imprint still points with your
Speaker 1: own uniqueness, the more effective they will be. I think
Speaker 1: that's a really important point, Like what do I want
Speaker 1: to do in my still points. Thank you for emphasizing that.
Speaker 1: That's so important. That's why we call it the art
Speaker 1: of stopping, because you bring to it yourself, your spirit,
Speaker 1: your way of doing it, and that's what's gonna work.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I believe happens is when
Speaker 1: you say still point is the essence of stopping, and
Speaker 1: it is is. Once you've experienced the cumulative power of
Speaker 1: still points, then you will be motivated to get a
Speaker 1: stop over. And if you're motivated, you'll get it if
Speaker 1: you really want it. If you want to sit in
Speaker 1: a room for a half hour, you'd find time to
Speaker 1: do it. You find time to watch television, you find
Speaker 1: time to read a book, you find time to do
Speaker 1: a lot of things if you really wanted to. And
Speaker 1: my conviction is once you've enjoyed the pleasure of still points,
Speaker 1: you'll say, boy, that would be nice to just do
Speaker 1: nothing for an hour. Yeah, that sounds sort of interesting,
Speaker 1: even though maybe now you're saying, no, that sounds pretty horrible, right,
Speaker 1: And I actually think it's interesting. You know, certainly a
Speaker 1: lot of people who listen to this show are going
Speaker 1: to be people who have tried meditation, are focused on meditation.
Speaker 1: They see some benefit in meditation, and so I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people in this programmer listening are likely
Speaker 1: rying for some stopovers. But I think that we underestimate
Speaker 1: the value of the still point. The reason I love
Speaker 1: the still points so much, and the reason I keep
Speaker 1: talking about it, is because even if we get to
Speaker 1: the point where we have a thirty minute stop over,
Speaker 1: you're calling it to stop over, I might say it's
Speaker 1: my thirty minutes en practice each day, whatever we want
Speaker 1: to call it, whatever, It doesn't make if I'm not
Speaker 1: finding a way to integrate these sort of still points
Speaker 1: throughout my day. It puts all of my spiritual practice,
Speaker 1: all of my deeper work, into that thirty minute window,
Speaker 1: and then it leaves twenty three and a half hours
Speaker 1: of the rest of the day that I just rumble
Speaker 1: along on autopilot. And I'm so interested in how do
Speaker 1: we take these spiritual ideas and infuse them into way
Speaker 1: more moments of life. And for that to happen, we've,
Speaker 1: as you're sort of saying, with still points, We've got
Speaker 1: to find lots of very short places to inject them. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that can help to put
Speaker 1: lots of those little still points in your day is
Speaker 1: to find triggers to which to attach them. Something that
Speaker 1: will remind you every time you put your hand on
Speaker 1: the telephone or after you hang up the telephone, a
Speaker 1: steel point, every time you go to the copy machine,
Speaker 1: a steel point every time you go to the car,
Speaker 1: every time you slam the car door, every time you
Speaker 1: put the key in the ignition, well, anything, all those
Speaker 1: rituals that we do every day, many many many every day,
Speaker 1: before dinner, before you eat, whatever, make those the trigger
Speaker 1: for your still point. Breathe and be still. I just
Speaker 1: made a quick note here of several different still point ideas.
Speaker 1: You know, on a scheduled break, walking from one task
Speaker 1: to another, in a tense situation, commuting bathroom breaks, we
Speaker 1: hit some of those. But I love all those things
Speaker 1: you point out. And I've said this on the show before.
Speaker 1: Listeners have heard this a few times. But I used
Speaker 1: to use walking to and from the car when I
Speaker 1: used to go out to a day job. I I
Speaker 1: would walk to and from the car, and that was
Speaker 1: always my time to be very present. I tried to
Speaker 1: sort of really take in a variety of sensory information,
Speaker 1: ground myself in my senses. Back and forth and it
Speaker 1: was just sort of like you said, it was just
Speaker 1: a very common trigger. And once I got that down,
Speaker 1: took a little while remembering, but soon I had it down.
Speaker 1: That was what I did in those those intervals, you know,
Speaker 1: as you were talking, it reminded me of another thing
Speaker 1: that's often can be very helpful for people, and that
Speaker 1: is pacing, or walking a definite path. In other words,
Speaker 1: you can do stopping while moving. If you pace, for example,
Speaker 1: you'll find very often in religious orders, you'll see monks
Speaker 1: walking back and forth praying the rods. We're praying their
Speaker 1: breathy or whatever it is. But pacing a safe path,
Speaker 1: a path that you know, a path that you don't
Speaker 1: have to watch where you're walking. There's something that's called
Speaker 1: the labyrinth, a land map of a trail that moves
Speaker 1: around and then finally ends up in the middle, but
Speaker 1: it's all predetermined. You don't have to think about what.
Speaker 1: You just follow the line in front of you, and
Speaker 1: it turns and it goes and it goes around in circles,
Speaker 1: and you don't have to think about it. You can
Speaker 1: just look down. That can be very very helpful for
Speaker 1: many people, especially people who are extroverts or people who
Speaker 1: have high metabolisms. I think people with high metabolisms have
Speaker 1: a harder time with this because their natural inclination of
Speaker 1: their body is to move. I have a friend who
Speaker 1: has a very very active metabolism, and he's always just jumping.
Speaker 1: It's like he's jumping around all the time, and that's
Speaker 1: just the way he's built. But what really really can
Speaker 1: help people like that is that pacing or just walk
Speaker 1: in a circle, and you can do it inside your house,
Speaker 1: walk around the dining room table, whatever is safe and predictable.
Speaker 1: Then that's a wonderful way to stop because you don't
Speaker 1: have to think about where you're going. Now. You with
Speaker 1: stopping say it's doing nothing as much as possible. And
Speaker 1: I'm curious whether you think meditation is stopping or is
Speaker 1: that doing something or somewhere in between, or depends somewhere
Speaker 1: in between. It depends. Uh, yeah, I think stopping is
Speaker 1: a form of meditation. Stopping in meditation are similar, different
Speaker 1: form is all. I've practiced meditation in my life at
Speaker 1: periods in my life, and I'm very very pro meditation
Speaker 1: in the sense of a formal meditation, sitting down and
Speaker 1: like za zen and so forth. The problem is for
Speaker 1: most contemporary Westerners. They don't do it. They might have
Speaker 1: great intentions, but they don't do it because it takes
Speaker 1: a good bit of discipline. It takes a good bit
Speaker 1: of motivation to really really sit down and do that.
Speaker 1: So let's say the purposes of stopping in meditation are
Speaker 1: the same. Yeah, and a lot of meditation teachers would
Speaker 1: say that the closer you are to your definition of
Speaker 1: actually doing nothing, the better you're doing in meditation. You know,
Speaker 1: certainly in my tradition, the one that I'm in nowadays,
Speaker 1: zen you know, we talk about zazen, and there's a
Speaker 1: form of zazen which is literally just sitting and that's
Speaker 1: about all the auction you'll get. Just sit there, right,
Speaker 1: Just sit there. That's it. You know. The other thing
Speaker 1: I want to emphasize about stopping in general is to
Speaker 1: go as much as possible into nature. If you have
Speaker 1: any way of getting into the natural world, you're going
Speaker 1: to just automatically up your success and the results of
Speaker 1: your stopping activity because nature is healing. And even if
Speaker 1: it's just the local park or or a walk around
Speaker 1: the block, if that's as much as you can do, okay,
Speaker 1: that's something. Look at the trees, listen for the birds,
Speaker 1: immerse yourself as much as you can in nature, and
Speaker 1: you'll find that stopping is very, very compatible with that. Well,
Speaker 1: we are at our stopping point. That's such a bad joke.
Speaker 1: I couldn't resist, Chris. You can resist and cut that
Speaker 1: one out if you have to, but we are at
Speaker 1: our stopping point here. We're going to continue in the
Speaker 1: post show conversation. We really talking about a definition of
Speaker 1: spirituality that you have that I really love and it boy,
Speaker 1: it brings a lot of things together into one great definition.
Speaker 1: So we're going to talk about that in the post
Speaker 1: show conversation. Listeners, if you would like access to the
Speaker 1: post show conversation to a weekly episode I do called
Speaker 1: Teaching Song and a Poem and the joy of supporting
Speaker 1: this show as well as ad free episodes, go to
Speaker 1: one you feed dot net slash joint. David, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for coming on the show. It has been
Speaker 1: such a pleasure to have you on and talk with you,
Speaker 1: and I really enjoyed your book. Eric, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed being with you. Thank you. If what
Speaker 1: you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making
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