Speaker 1: Misery is actually our ally because there's energy in there,
Speaker 1: there's carrying in there, there's motivation in there. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized
Speaker 1: the 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. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Stephen Hayes, and this
Speaker 1: is his second time on the One You Feed podcast.
Speaker 1: He's a professor of psychology at the University of Nevada Reno.
Speaker 1: Stephen is also the author of forty three books and
Speaker 1: more than six hundred scientific articles. He's served as the
Speaker 1: president of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy and
Speaker 1: the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science. He is one of
Speaker 1: the most cited psychologists in the world. His new book
Speaker 1: is A Liberated Mind, How to Pivot Toward What Matters. Hi, Stephen,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. I am good to be with
Speaker 1: you again again. Indeed, yes, one of my favorite interviews
Speaker 1: was our earlier interview, and you have a new book
Speaker 1: out called A Liberated Mind, How to Pivot Towards What Matters.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to jump into that. But let's start
Speaker 1: like we always do, with the parable. There is a
Speaker 1: grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: a battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. And the grandson stops and thinks about it
Speaker 1: for a second. He looks up at his grandfather. He says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says that the one
Speaker 1: you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking
Speaker 1: you what that parable means to you in the work
Speaker 1: that you do and in your life. Well, it means
Speaker 1: a lot. And I think it's becoming clear to me
Speaker 1: that both of those wolves within have a role. They
Speaker 1: both have a message for us, and yes, we want
Speaker 1: to feed one over the other, but we want to
Speaker 1: kind of listen to both and find even inside some
Speaker 1: of those dark places that they go, that we're yearning
Speaker 1: for something that is reflected in the positive places that
Speaker 1: we know how to take our lives wonderful. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: known for being one of the founders of acceptance and
Speaker 1: commitment therapy, which if I had to summarize, and I'm
Speaker 1: summarizing a lot in a very small amount, but a
Speaker 1: big piece of act is not to eliminate negative thought
Speaker 1: and emotion, but to learn to live with them in
Speaker 1: a more skillful way and then act sort of in
Speaker 1: a way that is in accordance with our values. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And that's been about a forty year journey of both
Speaker 1: science and clinical practice and extending it out almost any
Speaker 1: area that human beings can think of, you know, in
Speaker 1: sports and business and health matters and so forth. So
Speaker 1: it's now sitting on top of an enormous body of work,
Speaker 1: much larger than when we talked, because it's happening so
Speaker 1: fast now from the worldwide community. But part of what
Speaker 1: I've not really discovered, but that I've really kind of
Speaker 1: realized going forward is that it it's not so much
Speaker 1: just making room for what's negative, but as I said
Speaker 1: at the very beginning, even learning from it, because there's
Speaker 1: something inside our misery that is really important to us
Speaker 1: if we know how to see it. And it's basically,
Speaker 1: what is the problem we're trying to solve or trying
Speaker 1: to solve it in a way that creates problems, huge problems,
Speaker 1: But we're not trying to disturb ourselves. We're not trying
Speaker 1: to get stuck and called a sex. That's not the purpose.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a good purpose buried in there. And
Speaker 1: turns out those are the same purposes that are right
Speaker 1: inside the processes that we now know sitting on more
Speaker 1: than three thousand studies that lift up and carry lives forward.
Speaker 1: And if you see that, then you can be a
Speaker 1: little kinder with yourself when you're struggling, because you you
Speaker 1: realize there's actually something valuable in there. It's just you
Speaker 1: can't get there this way. And that's what's the intelibrated
Speaker 1: mind is building out that full realization which really sort
Speaker 1: of makes the whole act work feel a little more mature,
Speaker 1: and it makes it a lot easier to apply to
Speaker 1: lots of places that are beyond strictly mental health or
Speaker 1: substance abuse problems. Right. You say early in the book
Speaker 1: that the things that have the power that causes the
Speaker 1: most pain are often the things we care about most deeply.
Speaker 1: The other directly linked. I mean, it's easy to think
Speaker 1: about it. And all you've got to do is take
Speaker 1: something you really struggle with, start with the negative ones.
Speaker 1: It's one of the most powerful ways in and then
Speaker 1: just literally write it down a sheet of paper, flip
Speaker 1: it over, and then write down what does that suggest
Speaker 1: you care about? And yeah, you've got a solution for it.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're really feeling anxious given a talk,
Speaker 1: you know your solution might be to get rid of
Speaker 1: the anxiety. But when you flip over the sheet of
Speaker 1: paper and say, what does that really care about? You know,
Speaker 1: if I could just magically put fairy dust in your
Speaker 1: head and you wouldn't have any anxiety, you still wouldn't
Speaker 1: have accomplished what you came to accomplish. And so maybe
Speaker 1: what you're anxious about, for example, is being with people
Speaker 1: and being accepted in love. Maybe it's making a contribution.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's being genuine or authentic, or you know, being
Speaker 1: a whole person, or being more mindful and aware to
Speaker 1: be more present, to live your life more fully. I
Speaker 1: don't know what it is, but I know one way
Speaker 1: to find it is to take what you're struggling with
Speaker 1: and just flip it over and allow your pain to
Speaker 1: speak to you. And it will whisper to your messages
Speaker 1: about your purpose. And it reverses true too. If you
Speaker 1: think about where you really really care about, you'll realize
Speaker 1: that those are the places you're vulnerable. I mean you
Speaker 1: can feel it. I mean, if you, if you really
Speaker 1: care about being into intimate and committed relationships, as soon
Speaker 1: as somebody shows up where that might happen, you find yourself,
Speaker 1: you know, squirm and then creating fights for no reason,
Speaker 1: and you know, not answering the phone, I mean, what
Speaker 1: are you doing. What you're doing is protecting yourself from
Speaker 1: her because you know that, you know inside the suite
Speaker 1: is the end of it. You know we are going
Speaker 1: to die. Life is limited, and you know, just looking
Speaker 1: at your children in the face or the eyes of
Speaker 1: your lover you feel it, you feel vulnerable, and that's
Speaker 1: the way it comes. That's the package. And so Act
Speaker 1: is all about how to take the whole of it
Speaker 1: and to to learn from both sides of it and
Speaker 1: to focus on what's important and create a life worth living.
Speaker 1: So one of the fundamental ideas at the heart of
Speaker 1: this book is the idea of psychological flexibility. So tell
Speaker 1: me what psychological flexibility is. Well, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: a box with six sides, or you can sort of
Speaker 1: break it up into three pillars. It's really turns out
Speaker 1: it's one thing. It's like it's one box even though
Speaker 1: it has six sides. But the short version would be
Speaker 1: psychological flexibility is to be able to come into this
Speaker 1: moment consciously with your thoughts and feelings and memories and
Speaker 1: bodily sensations that that moment contains as they are, not
Speaker 1: as what they say they are you fear them to be,
Speaker 1: and then be able to direct your attention and the flexible, fluid,
Speaker 1: voluntary way towards what brings meaning and purpose into your
Speaker 1: life by choice, not by shoods and knots and must
Speaker 1: and have two is not by guilt and shame, not
Speaker 1: by mama telling you it has to be so, but
Speaker 1: by the choices you make, and then to build out
Speaker 1: habits of action, actual things you do with your life
Speaker 1: moments that contain those qualities. So you could say it
Speaker 1: more quickly, it's accepting, showing up, and moving on. And
Speaker 1: that combination of being open, aware, and actively engaged in
Speaker 1: life hangs together. They all fit together, just like puzzle pieces.
Speaker 1: You feel the missing if it's gone, it's like taking
Speaker 1: two sides out of a box. It would be a
Speaker 1: floppy box the same way. And we think we've kind
Speaker 1: of cracked the code. We think that those six things
Speaker 1: are the simplest formulation that does the most good in
Speaker 1: the most areas of human life. And I can say
Speaker 1: that not as a hope or a wish or a
Speaker 1: claim or personal experience. I'm now sitting on top of
Speaker 1: an enormous body of work by a very large community
Speaker 1: over nearly four years, and it comports with our wisdom traditions,
Speaker 1: it comports with our personal experience, but it also fits
Speaker 1: good old fashioned Western science. And that's a really cool combination. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it definitely is. And so psychological flexibility shows up and
Speaker 1: really correlates very well with people's ability to be successful
Speaker 1: in different things they're doing. You reference a ton of studies,
Speaker 1: but one of them showed that the level of psychological
Speaker 1: flexibility overweight people have correlates directly with their ability to
Speaker 1: lose weight, engage in exercise, and stop binging. Conversely, the
Speaker 1: opposite of psychological flexibility is psychological rigidity, and that predicts anxiety, depression,
Speaker 1: substance abuse, eating disorder, on and on and on. So
Speaker 1: what is psychological rigidity, Well, when you get entangled with
Speaker 1: your thoughts and they're of woidant of your feelings, memories,
Speaker 1: bodily sensations, and you allow your attention to be jerked
Speaker 1: to the past or future through rumination or worry, you
Speaker 1: sort of buy into that story of who you are
Speaker 1: and how you're different, special from other people, whether it's
Speaker 1: especially disturbed or difficult, or or needy, especially wonderful and
Speaker 1: perfect either way, that kind of storied self and then
Speaker 1: harnessing all of that to trying to get approval and
Speaker 1: achievement instantly, without trial and error, without failure, slipping, falling
Speaker 1: and learning springing forth from the head of zeus. You're
Speaker 1: just gonna march on with this uh competence. That's going
Speaker 1: to give you not necessarily a deep sense of values
Speaker 1: and purpose, but applause, money, fame, and all those kind
Speaker 1: of superficial things that the mind grasps after or just
Speaker 1: plain happiness to find as a happy, happy joy joyce
Speaker 1: Miley face button, not the real kind of happiness, which
Speaker 1: is this life well lived as a whole person. So
Speaker 1: it's pretty much a direct inverse. And those six processes
Speaker 1: also hang out together. They feed on each other. They
Speaker 1: are like more like a pack of wolves than a
Speaker 1: single wolf, and they will eat anything you put in
Speaker 1: front of it. I mean, if you want to have
Speaker 1: relationships at work, or you want to be able to
Speaker 1: have a successful business, or lose weight or diet or exercise,
Speaker 1: or get through cancer diagnosis, or deal with a substance
Speaker 1: use problem or anxiety or depression, on on. It accounts
Speaker 1: for a large share, and compared to other sets of processes,
Speaker 1: more than any other that science can name. So it's
Speaker 1: the There's a lot of other things we can add
Speaker 1: and you can build on it, and I'm very friendly
Speaker 1: to that and open to that, but let's get the
Speaker 1: basics down first. If you can get a solid foundation,
Speaker 1: it's a whole lot easier to then build on that
Speaker 1: solid foundation. And these flexibility processes are like building a
Speaker 1: house on rock and build it on inflexibility. It's like
Speaker 1: building on sand near the ocean. Good luck with that.
Speaker 1: So the six processes that you're talking about map towards
Speaker 1: a big part of the book, which you refer to
Speaker 1: as six key pivots. So before we start going into those,
Speaker 1: let's talk about what you mean by pivot. A pivot
Speaker 1: is a connection between a negative and the positive set
Speaker 1: of steps. That's why I call them a process just
Speaker 1: as a word meaning a procession like a parade. It's
Speaker 1: a series of things, but it's integrated that you're going
Speaker 1: from here and towards there. You have the negative ones,
Speaker 1: you have the positive ones, and they're paired. But you know,
Speaker 1: a pivot is a little pin and a hinge. And
Speaker 1: what a pivot does is it takes energy that's going
Speaker 1: in one direction and it moves it in another direction.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you want to move, you don't
Speaker 1: want to be standing still inertially kind of has to
Speaker 1: be overcome if you do that. If you're antsing with somebody,
Speaker 1: even if you're going to swing them around in a
Speaker 1: completely different direction, it would be a lot better to
Speaker 1: have them moving than to have them standing still. And
Speaker 1: in the same way, it turns out that misery is
Speaker 1: actually our ally because there's energy in there, there's carrying
Speaker 1: in there, there's motivation in there. I mean, there's being
Speaker 1: screwed up in there too, but that's not what the
Speaker 1: way it has to be. And just like if you
Speaker 1: push on a door in one direction, the hinges move
Speaker 1: the door in another direction, that opens up who you
Speaker 1: can move forward. And those are the pivots that I
Speaker 1: talked about in the book. And so those six things
Speaker 1: end up being six pairs, and underneath them are six
Speaker 1: what I call yearnings. You could call them needs, or
Speaker 1: you just could call them motives. Needs sounds to me
Speaker 1: a little demanding, but I call them yearnings because that's
Speaker 1: the way they often show up. I think if you
Speaker 1: sort of settle down and really listen to yourself, you
Speaker 1: can kind of feel yourself yearning for up. Can I
Speaker 1: give you a sad example, sure, please, Well, this is
Speaker 1: one of the saddest, it's one of the most basic
Speaker 1: because it's the kind of monkey we are. We yearned
Speaker 1: to belong where the tribal primates, where the small group
Speaker 1: primates where the cooperative primates, and we come into the
Speaker 1: world in such a way that if others don't kick
Speaker 1: care of us, we die. But even as adults, we
Speaker 1: get cast out from the troop. Literally when the wild
Speaker 1: monkey land, you get cast out from the troop. Is
Speaker 1: in the hominid species, you very likely are not going
Speaker 1: to live very long. We're even wired for it. Our
Speaker 1: brain is wired for it. You know, if you look
Speaker 1: at the eyes of a brand new baby, they start
Speaker 1: dumping natural opiates in their brain as soon as your
Speaker 1: eyes lock onto them. Your genetics are basically saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that's what you want. You want that, you want that,
Speaker 1: and you need to because otherwise you're not going to
Speaker 1: be able to connect with others around you. Right, So
Speaker 1: we come into that naturally. But then we've got this
Speaker 1: new thing on the block that you and I are
Speaker 1: doing right now, symbolic reasoning, language, and cognition, and that's
Speaker 1: probably on late Golli two two million years old. That's
Speaker 1: the best guesses. And when you're not too old, not
Speaker 1: when you're a baby, not when you're a one year old,
Speaker 1: not when you're that sweet innocent thing where you just
Speaker 1: know how to connect and care, you start talking to
Speaker 1: yourself about how you're going to belong, and for the
Speaker 1: first time you start to lie. For the first time,
Speaker 1: you put on a mask. The Greek name for a
Speaker 1: mask is the root of our word personality. That's how
Speaker 1: basic it is, you know. The claimant unmovable masks were
Speaker 1: called personas, and what that is is the logical mind
Speaker 1: trying to belong by producing specialness. I'm smart, I'm loving,
Speaker 1: I'm kind. You're kind all the time with everybody. No,
Speaker 1: you're lying. Of course you're not kind all the time
Speaker 1: with everyone, but you dare not even admit it yourself.
Speaker 1: That persona, that clay, a fixed rictus of a mask
Speaker 1: you put on has to be maintained or otherwise you're
Speaker 1: not going to be let in. And sometimes people try
Speaker 1: to get let in by having stories that are all negative.
Speaker 1: Oh i'm so help so we have been abused. It's sad,
Speaker 1: help me, help me. And yeah, people will let you
Speaker 1: in if you claim that your guy grand or the
Speaker 1: weakest of the week. Either way, you do get brought in.
Speaker 1: But very soon people tire of it. They see that
Speaker 1: it's a clown suit you're wearing, that it's not a
Speaker 1: real whole open person. They don't feel uplifted when they're
Speaker 1: around it. Plus they themselves are struggling with the same issue.
Speaker 1: So when you produce belonging that way, it hollows out.
Speaker 1: I can give you a really sad statistic. I mean
Speaker 1: it just made me roll my eyes when I saw it.
Speaker 1: Something like one out of four, one out of five
Speaker 1: of your conversations, especially when you're young, contain at least
Speaker 1: a little white lie and exaggeration. Oh, I only slept
Speaker 1: four hours last night when you show up to your meeting,
Speaker 1: Now you slept four and a half and you know it,
Speaker 1: but you said four. Why because then you're special. You're
Speaker 1: someone who can function no sleep. Here's like that. Well,
Speaker 1: the people you tell those tiny little white lies too
Speaker 1: you now are significantly less interested in ever speaking to again.
Speaker 1: So isn't it sad We're trying to earn our way
Speaker 1: in by these little pretense and masks and all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Afraid if we're just seeing as whole persons,
Speaker 1: that will be rejected, which is the exact opposite, because
Speaker 1: people yearn for connections like that. You wake up when
Speaker 1: you have connections like that. When people put aside the pretense,
Speaker 1: but it's almost like we can't stop it because the
Speaker 1: logical mind says you have to be special, you won't
Speaker 1: be included, especially bad, especially good, And then it hollows
Speaker 1: it out. Even if it works and they applaud and
Speaker 1: say you're so wonderful, part of you says yeah, but
Speaker 1: if they really knew your fraud, if they saw through it,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't want to be with you. So here you're
Speaker 1: trying to produce belonging, and even if you get it,
Speaker 1: you don't get it. So what I do in the
Speaker 1: book is walk through how are you going to get belonging?
Speaker 1: How can you get a real experience of belonging? And
Speaker 1: it turns out you can get it by kind of
Speaker 1: a birthright, which is consciousness itself. You go back to
Speaker 1: that moment when your mamma looked in your eyes metaphorically,
Speaker 1: you belonged at that moment that you're seen by another
Speaker 1: conscious being who's bringing you into consciousness. And if you
Speaker 1: stop dancing and prancing, and you know all of the
Speaker 1: stories that you're buying into and trying to make other
Speaker 1: people believe, and you just slow down, open your eyes
Speaker 1: and look in the eyes of the other people around you.
Speaker 1: You're gonna see people wanting to connect with you, and
Speaker 1: you're gonna see consciousness there and similarity there. Why because
Speaker 1: you're part of the troop, you belong by birthright, you're
Speaker 1: one of us, You're one of the goofy CONTs as people,
Speaker 1: and so you know, instead of playing for the pretense
Speaker 1: and then getting nothing, why don't we go for the substance.
Speaker 1: It turns out to be a lot easier, it's a
Speaker 1: lot more off lifting, it's a lot more real, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's more vulnerable. It is more vulnerable, but it's so
Speaker 1: important how the real thing, and you can feel your
Speaker 1: life shift when you get it. So let's turn to
Speaker 1: the first pivot, and it's one that we talked about
Speaker 1: a fair amount in our previous conversation, but I think
Speaker 1: is a really important one, which is this idea of diffusion.
Speaker 1: So it requires pivoting from cognitive fusion to diffusion. So
Speaker 1: let's first talk about kind of what that is, because
Speaker 1: it's a pretty core part of all of this work.
Speaker 1: It's key and underneath the acceptance and commitment therapy work
Speaker 1: as a whole research program on a thing called relational
Speaker 1: frame theory. Geeky stuff but we think we've kind of
Speaker 1: figured out what is the core of human language and cognition,
Speaker 1: and so we've taken the time to build an edifice
Speaker 1: that includes a really active basic science program about how
Speaker 1: is the world different when you begin to do what
Speaker 1: you and I are doing right now. You know, even
Speaker 1: non human animals want to understand. They want things to
Speaker 1: fit together, They want them to be predictable. You know,
Speaker 1: non human animals will work for signals that tell them
Speaker 1: what's going to happen, even if it's going to tell
Speaker 1: them that something bad is going to happen. You would
Speaker 1: think you would not want to know the bad news.
Speaker 1: Humans often don't, but non human animals will work and
Speaker 1: work for little signals that will just tell them things
Speaker 1: like you're hardly going to get any food over the
Speaker 1: next ten minutes, or there's a shock coming, uh, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't stop the shock, but at least you kind
Speaker 1: of know the lay of the land, right And you
Speaker 1: think of how important that would be to a non
Speaker 1: human animal to be able to survive. To do that,
Speaker 1: you can see why you would want to explore your environments,
Speaker 1: know what's going on and how it fit together, know
Speaker 1: how they all kind of relate one to the other.
Speaker 1: Once we've got language going, we want to do the
Speaker 1: same thing. But here's the problem. Language is something that
Speaker 1: isn't just learned by experience. It's learned by derivation. Anything
Speaker 1: can relate to anything in any possible way. Let's see
Speaker 1: if we play a little game. Let's see if we
Speaker 1: can do it. I want you to think of a
Speaker 1: noun any now, but don't tell me what it is.
Speaker 1: I'll think of one too. It's one of my desktop here,
Speaker 1: and then I'm going to say mine, and I'll ask
Speaker 1: you to say yours. But we'll think of a relationship.
Speaker 1: Let's do a weird one, like is the father of Okay? So,
Speaker 1: how is a pen the father of an apple? An apple? Okay?
Speaker 1: If you can't come up with an answer, your life
Speaker 1: is going to end. So Eric better, you better produce
Speaker 1: pen drew the apple? Awesome? Pretty apt fits right? Perfect? Yeah,
Speaker 1: except here's the problem. I've done this hundreds of times
Speaker 1: and there's always an answer. So either God so arranged
Speaker 1: the world that everything is related to everything else in
Speaker 1: all possible ways. Let's just do it. How's the apple
Speaker 1: the father of a pen? It produces the ink for
Speaker 1: the pen. Good? Yeah, it's good. Actually, when they came
Speaker 1: in my mind is that you ate from the tree
Speaker 1: of knowledge, and that gave you the capacity to produce
Speaker 1: things like pan Then you absolutely could make apple based ink.
Speaker 1: Of course you could, so you see the game. So
Speaker 1: now here's the problem if language allows, is that there's
Speaker 1: a two way street between everything, but not just same
Speaker 1: as also different from opposite to better than every possible
Speaker 1: relation you can think of, even goofy ones like is
Speaker 1: the father of I mean, how often do you say
Speaker 1: that you can always come up with an answer and
Speaker 1: the answer is good. I mean, it fits, it's right,
Speaker 1: it's real. No, it's not real. You made it up.
Speaker 1: And so how are you going to rein in that
Speaker 1: kind of a wild horse. If what you seek is
Speaker 1: this experience of understanding and everything fitting together, so let
Speaker 1: me apply it. Think of something that you're proud of,
Speaker 1: and let's just do self esteem the way people usually
Speaker 1: try to do it. I'm and then say the rest
Speaker 1: of the sentence, that's so great and you're proud about
Speaker 1: go ahead, and let's do it. I'm kind, I'm kind.
Speaker 1: Listen real carefully, and what do you hear? Does your
Speaker 1: mind just settle down on that say, yeah, you are,
Speaker 1: I'm kind accept when I'm not exactly For example, when
Speaker 1: I you may not want to share this one when
Speaker 1: I get irritated with my girlfriend. Awesome, But what that
Speaker 1: was right there earlier? I just brought it out right?
Speaker 1: You with me on this, okay. So if you're yearning
Speaker 1: for coherence and understanding, that's built into you even before
Speaker 1: language shows up. But then language gives you two opinions
Speaker 1: about everything. Do you know four year olds understand goofy
Speaker 1: on one shoulder with horns and goofy on the other
Speaker 1: shoulder with halos. Four year olds they understand that it
Speaker 1: means they've already got the argument going on inside their head.
Speaker 1: So how are you going to get to peace of mind?
Speaker 1: Never mind? Purpose? And that's really what people want. I
Speaker 1: think it's people peace of mind, but purpose, that's what
Speaker 1: people really want, is a big part of what they want.
Speaker 1: And so what we teach an act is to give
Speaker 1: up on coherence in it all fitting together inside the
Speaker 1: language world literally, because there's always a yep, but there's
Speaker 1: always a pro and con list. If you try to
Speaker 1: go all pro will give you cons. If you try
Speaker 1: to go all con, it'll give you pros I'm the
Speaker 1: worst of the worst, the lowest, lower human scum. No
Speaker 1: one's lowered me. No, I'm not that bad. I mean,
Speaker 1: you'll argue with both sides, right. So what we teach
Speaker 1: instead is to learn how to be guided by language.
Speaker 1: Take what's useful, allow that to be a kind of understanding.
Speaker 1: It works, it's helpful. This is useful. And then the
Speaker 1: cacaphony continues and you notice it. Thank you mind very
Speaker 1: much for trying to figure this all out. And I've
Speaker 1: got some other things to do. I've heard that story before.
Speaker 1: But if it says something in that cacaphony like, oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, uh, the text headline is one week away,
Speaker 1: This is a good thing, you might miss it otherwise. Oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, you've gotta the one you feed podcasts.
Speaker 1: Remember that that that was right there in your Google candle.
Speaker 1: Thank you mind. I appreciate that. But a lot of
Speaker 1: stists say it's just useless to live in your life.
Speaker 1: So can we instead learn how to take what's useful
Speaker 1: and leave the rest. It turns out we can, and
Speaker 1: it's a big part of what the mindfulness traditions are doing.
Speaker 1: It's a big part of the wisdom traditions are spiritual traditions,
Speaker 1: or prayer traditions are psychotherapy traditions. And when we've kind
Speaker 1: of cracked that code, we've created several hundred goofy little
Speaker 1: things that you can do in thirty seconds that sort
Speaker 1: of bumping in that direction, Like take a negative thought
Speaker 1: that really grabs way too much attention and sing it,
Speaker 1: say it in the voice of your least favored politician,
Speaker 1: to still it down to a single word, to say
Speaker 1: it over and over again rapidly on an articoast. We have,
Speaker 1: you know, example after example after example of ways that
Speaker 1: you can essentially put a leash on that word machine
Speaker 1: in between your ears and allow yourself to breathe even
Speaker 1: as it keeps chattering. And so what we're trying to
Speaker 1: do here with diffusion, then is to I'm going to
Speaker 1: quote part of what you said, seeing thoughts as they
Speaker 1: actually are ongoing attempts at meaning making, and then choosing
Speaker 1: to give them power only to the degree that they
Speaker 1: genuinely service. So what you're basically saying is that our
Speaker 1: whole thought process, as you described in the relational piece before,
Speaker 1: we're trying to make meaning, we're trying to make narrative
Speaker 1: out of what's happening. And it's easier to then see
Speaker 1: through that process than it is to untangle that process.
Speaker 1: And the examples you just gave of this is linked
Speaker 1: to this, which is linked to this, you can create relationships,
Speaker 1: is that that linkage is so vast and so complex
Speaker 1: that when we start trying to pull on part of it,
Speaker 1: we're pulling on all of it. So it's easier just
Speaker 1: to see through the whole mechanism. Yeah exactly. I mean,
Speaker 1: suppose apples really freaked you out for some reason. Well,
Speaker 1: now we've got a whole another way to get to it,
Speaker 1: and you and I just did it. All I have
Speaker 1: to do is say pen you know, so it's just
Speaker 1: helpless that you're gonna be able to clean that mess up.
Speaker 1: And when you go in and try to rearrange this,
Speaker 1: it's like trying to rearrange a black widow spidernest. Have
Speaker 1: you ever seen one of those things? That they exist
Speaker 1: here in you know? And I've taught my son to
Speaker 1: recognize it when it's quite young, because babies can be
Speaker 1: hurt by back back widows and very old people. Maybe
Speaker 1: I could be heard, but but they have a very
Speaker 1: characteristic web. It looks like an insane web, you know,
Speaker 1: like they've been eating their own poison or something, because
Speaker 1: it's just a tangled nothing of a well, welcome to
Speaker 1: the human mind, and you're gonna go in there and say, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't like this thread. No, because when you we've
Speaker 1: one more thing, the whole thing may rearrange like a
Speaker 1: fractal disc. And you've had that happen, you know, You've
Speaker 1: had things like a bad experience and now everything looks
Speaker 1: different or a dream even so it's happening when you're
Speaker 1: not even controlling it, and then your whole day is
Speaker 1: influenced by the freaking dream, even if you can't remember,
Speaker 1: it has a felt sense that goes with it, and
Speaker 1: things look different. So instead of trying to, you know,
Speaker 1: rein in that wild horse, let's learn to back up
Speaker 1: a little bit and watch it. Take what's useful and
Speaker 1: respectfully leave the rest, not leave it like an eraser,
Speaker 1: like getting rid of it. I don't want to put
Speaker 1: my hand in that web to try to get rid
Speaker 1: of it. I'm just going to make more of a
Speaker 1: mess of it, and I'm going to be building lots
Speaker 1: and lots of connections to things that I've hoped it
Speaker 1: would be smaller in my life, thus making them bigger
Speaker 1: in my life. Like I've just made apple bigger for
Speaker 1: everybody who's listening, kind of stupidly bigger and bigger. But
Speaker 1: it's bigger now and in a way that is not
Speaker 1: very useful. Pen Apple is just not very full. But
Speaker 1: somebody in this audience is going to think pan apple
Speaker 1: over the next hour. In fact, many many people, right,
Speaker 1: And in fact, if you try not to, there's data
Speaker 1: on this. It's really important not to think apple, pan
Speaker 1: or pan apple. I now have doubled the likelihood that
Speaker 1: you'll think that, Thank you very much, professor, right. But
Speaker 1: of course we do that inside our own struggles. We
Speaker 1: try not to think about the betrayal of a former lover,
Speaker 1: or the traumatic experience we've had, or the painful emotion
Speaker 1: we felt, the scary thought that showed up. So we
Speaker 1: need to learn to do something else with that, meaning
Speaker 1: making engine in between our ears. You gave a couple
Speaker 1: of strategies for cognitive diffusion then, and and the examples
Speaker 1: we just kind of walked through are sort of one
Speaker 1: of the critiques of cognitive behavioral therapy, which part of
Speaker 1: cognitive behavioral therapy is is hey, just change your thoughts
Speaker 1: in your life will get better. My question for you
Speaker 1: is is there a place for that though if your
Speaker 1: thoughts that you're having are clearly mistaken. So as an example,
Speaker 1: let's say I say Bob passed me in the halliday
Speaker 1: and did not look at me, so Bob hates me,
Speaker 1: when the truth is Bob had a stomach ache. Isn't
Speaker 1: it helpful for me to know the truth in that case?
Speaker 1: And I see your point about you start to weigh
Speaker 1: into the web, But I'm kind of curious when you think, like,
Speaker 1: sort of all right, it's worth if our thoughts are
Speaker 1: just playing incorrect to to sort of correct them versus
Speaker 1: completely disengaging. Yeah, there's two places. If you actually look
Speaker 1: at the data on cognitive reppraisal, cogn modification, etcetera. In
Speaker 1: cognitive therapy CBT, CBT is the most powerful set of techniques.
Speaker 1: Act as kind of part of that family, part of
Speaker 1: that tradition. I've been president of those societies, etcetera. We
Speaker 1: kind of play nice with that larger tradition, but we
Speaker 1: have some different assumptions than classics CBT. But if you
Speaker 1: look at the data on it, when reappraisal and cognitive
Speaker 1: modification of cognitive restructuring is helpful. It's helpful because of
Speaker 1: cognitive flexibility, of being able to think multiple things and
Speaker 1: then be guided by the ones that are useful. And
Speaker 1: it's even there in classic CBT, for example, to still
Speaker 1: down to an irrational thought, do a behavioral experiment. This
Speaker 1: is even before people are trained to the technological errors
Speaker 1: and challenge the thoughts, and already that's producing some of
Speaker 1: the larger effects sizes that are in CBT, and some
Speaker 1: of the most movements. So we found in controlled research
Speaker 1: that here the critical parts of this. If you truly
Speaker 1: are ignorant, you truly don't know, information can be helpful.
Speaker 1: And if you're thinking too narrowly and you're not staying
Speaker 1: open up, open enough to be guided by experience, thinking
Speaker 1: more flexibly is helpful. But the problem is, and the
Speaker 1: reason I've always been a little concerned about it, is
Speaker 1: not that traditional CBT he is trying to make people
Speaker 1: get into these artificial thought loops. But boy, you don't
Speaker 1: have to go very far on the internet before you
Speaker 1: find a lot of people who have internalized this rule
Speaker 1: in CBT kind of messages, which is don't think that,
Speaker 1: think this. Yeah, But as soon as you say don't
Speaker 1: think that, you just thought that again, yeah. And if
Speaker 1: you link it to thinking this, thinking this will remind
Speaker 1: you of that. And so you're right on the edge
Speaker 1: of these suppressive, self amplifying, artificial processes that are known
Speaker 1: in the literature. And why go social close. It's like
Speaker 1: we're playing on the edge of the cliff. Come back
Speaker 1: away from the edge of the cliff. And the part
Speaker 1: of reappraisal modification, now that's really important is thinking flexibly.
Speaker 1: So for example, if the person passes, you know, one
Speaker 1: possibility is they're mad at you. Another possibility could be
Speaker 1: they had a bad sleepless night, or they have gas,
Speaker 1: or they're thinking about something else. And now the next
Speaker 1: time you've got multiple possible alternatives. Let's let experience teach
Speaker 1: you which of these thoughts are most workable, which one
Speaker 1: help you the most move you forward? And you know,
Speaker 1: not what's literally true, because to get in there, we
Speaker 1: really have to get into the pros and colm lists
Speaker 1: and all of that. I mean, we're into fully into
Speaker 1: the spider web when we really now there's times there
Speaker 1: are times, I know, for figuring out where the thoughts
Speaker 1: are really true. But mostly it's holding them more lightly
Speaker 1: and getting more evidence and allowing to be guided by you,
Speaker 1: and also remembering there's a lot more to you than
Speaker 1: your logical mind. You know things at the level of
Speaker 1: your guts, of your intuition. It's not magic, it's not
Speaker 1: woo woo, it's experience that goes beyond language. Can I
Speaker 1: give you an example, please? All right, there's a little
Speaker 1: exercise I do in the book and Imagination that have
Speaker 1: done it actually in a research study that's going to
Speaker 1: come out soon, to ask people to picture something they
Speaker 1: struggle with it's really difficult, and then to show me
Speaker 1: with their body, them at their worst with that issue,
Speaker 1: as if their body is like a sculptor, and the
Speaker 1: only thing people would get is not a story from you,
Speaker 1: not a word, but just to see your body, and
Speaker 1: then they would know what's going on inside. And then
Speaker 1: they asked them to do the same thing you at
Speaker 1: your best with that same exact issue. Now here's what
Speaker 1: shows up. Almost universally, you at your best, your head
Speaker 1: is up, your eyes are open, your arms and hands
Speaker 1: are out, it's an open posture. Almost universally. You at
Speaker 1: your worst, your head is down, your eyes that are closed.
Speaker 1: You may fall fold it over like a fetal position,
Speaker 1: your arms and hands around your fists, maybe clenched. You're
Speaker 1: in a defensive posture. Okay, we all know that, but
Speaker 1: we all defend ourselves when these things show up. So
Speaker 1: we have the knowledge, but we don't know how to
Speaker 1: implement the knowledge. In fact, we don't even know we
Speaker 1: have the knowledge, because when we say we know it,
Speaker 1: we mean no. Verbally, we mean can say the sentence. Well,
Speaker 1: there's more to us than that. That's what emotions are for,
Speaker 1: That's what memory is for, that's what felt sense is for.
Speaker 1: This is not woo woo. It's other learning processes that
Speaker 1: are a thousand times more ancient than what you and
Speaker 1: I are doing right now. Let let them play too,
Speaker 1: and they'll be helpful to you in producing a real
Speaker 1: sense of coherence and understanding and feelings and competence in
Speaker 1: the other things that are inside the other pivots. We
Speaker 1: don't have time to walk through all six, but every
Speaker 1: one of them, every pair has a deep yearning that
Speaker 1: everybody's got, And if you mismanage it, life gets screwed up.
Speaker 1: Maybe you manage it while life opens up and the
Speaker 1: book walks through the data on that and how to
Speaker 1: do it. Let's pick another pivot to talk about, because
Speaker 1: we are going to run out of time here soon.
Speaker 1: What do you think self acceptance values? Why don't we
Speaker 1: take values just because it's so central? Okay, it's really
Speaker 1: close to a word evaluate, and it's almost the exact
Speaker 1: opposite of that, because values have to have this quality
Speaker 1: of just because assume if you don't like it, meaning
Speaker 1: by choice between me and the person in the mirror.
Speaker 1: It's informed by our culture, it's informed by our family.
Speaker 1: It's informed by I don't mean you alone in the corner,
Speaker 1: but I mean taking responsibility. This is what I want,
Speaker 1: not what I want as an outcome, but what I
Speaker 1: want right now to be revealed in my behavior. And
Speaker 1: you know I mentioned earlier flipping over pain and finding
Speaker 1: purpose there. You can do it with sweet spots too,
Speaker 1: but let me do one that's kind of neat. I
Speaker 1: think that comes from this sense of belonging and connection.
Speaker 1: Especially if you can get some of the diffusion in there,
Speaker 1: you begin to see people around you who you respect,
Speaker 1: who you view as heroes and as guides. So take
Speaker 1: anything that you're struggling with, anything that's difficult, any place
Speaker 1: where you're you know, threatened by meaninglessness or depression, or
Speaker 1: where you know this logical thing that tells you you're
Speaker 1: going to die, the world is going to die, et cetera.
Speaker 1: That's also doesn't know how to channel that into a
Speaker 1: sense of vitality and purpose. And here's my question. If
Speaker 1: you could pick anyone as a guide who would help
Speaker 1: you in that anyone ideally someone you know, but it
Speaker 1: could be a spiritual leader or something you only read about.
Speaker 1: Who would you pick? And then if you slow that
Speaker 1: thing down, here's one thing you're going to see. The
Speaker 1: way that person carries themselves, holds themselves, moves through the world,
Speaker 1: contains things that reflect how you want to be manifest
Speaker 1: in the world. You pick guides who are your heroes?
Speaker 1: Think about it. I bet you did, and I bet
Speaker 1: you it's kind of what you would hope other people
Speaker 1: I would see in you. And there it is. There's
Speaker 1: that sense of meaning and purpose by choice, the whole
Speaker 1: of you, not just your mind telling him you have
Speaker 1: to or mommy's you know, shaking her finger at you.
Speaker 1: But you're owning your own life purpose, really purposes, because
Speaker 1: we have many, and that will lift you up. We
Speaker 1: have so much day now that if you connect to
Speaker 1: what brings meaning and purpose into your life by choice,
Speaker 1: it's sometimes called autonomous choice. I kind of don't like
Speaker 1: that because it sounds too western and individualistic, but but
Speaker 1: I know what they're getting to. What they really mean
Speaker 1: is by choice, not by shame and blame or have to.
Speaker 1: But between you and the person in the mirror, these
Speaker 1: are the qualities I want to what I want to
Speaker 1: get as a result. Yeah, of course things will happen,
Speaker 1: but these are the qualities I want to have reflected.
Speaker 1: When you own that, everything lifts up. Right. Examples of
Speaker 1: that being things like being a caring parent or a
Speaker 1: dependent friend, or being loyal and honest. Right. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: not goals. They are, you say, qualities of being and doing.
Speaker 1: Qualities of being and doing. You can almost always find
Speaker 1: them by could they easily be an adjective or an adverb?
Speaker 1: So with your kids, you know, lovingly I, or genuinely I,
Speaker 1: or with care I you know? So what would take
Speaker 1: for you to put lovingly in your life? A part
Speaker 1: of what's cool about that at the moment you say
Speaker 1: you want that, you're already doing it. To see it,
Speaker 1: I mean, at the very moment you own that you're
Speaker 1: already doing it because part of the doing it is
Speaker 1: to take responsibility in its original sense. Do you know
Speaker 1: the word responsibility used to be two words. There's a
Speaker 1: response space ability. You have an ability to do this.
Speaker 1: You can respond. I mean, if you're Nelson Mandela in
Speaker 1: a cage, you can still decide the one thing that
Speaker 1: captors can't take away. You can decide what is this
Speaker 1: about for you? And if it's about hate and retribution,
Speaker 1: when they let you out, you could produce a civil war.
Speaker 1: If it's about justice and caring and connection humanity, when
Speaker 1: they let you out, you can produce something different. So
Speaker 1: you know, life can conspire against you, so you can't
Speaker 1: see what comes out. You know, it's like water in
Speaker 1: a bowl. It's contained. If you drill a hole in it,
Speaker 1: then you can see that gravity matters and the water
Speaker 1: kind of wants to go down. In the same way,
Speaker 1: if I put you in a cage, it's not very
Speaker 1: much loving you can do, except maybe to your guards.
Speaker 1: I picked Man Deevil, and it turned out he was
Speaker 1: pretty loving towards his guards. You know. In fact, some
Speaker 1: of the guards have written stories about how it was
Speaker 1: to care for him and how that moved They were
Speaker 1: by him and his dignity, and that's an example of
Speaker 1: a hero, right, So why did that come to mind?
Speaker 1: And why do we resonate the heroes like that? Why
Speaker 1: do these stories that we tell? But when you started
Speaker 1: your podcast with because right inside those stories are our heroes,
Speaker 1: our our our cultural guides as to how to be
Speaker 1: whole and free, how to be human. So in the book,
Speaker 1: I kind of walked through how to do that, what
Speaker 1: gets in the way, and show the ginormous amount of
Speaker 1: data that says, boy, this matters everywhere. You want to
Speaker 1: hollow out a human life, turned it into a valueless life,
Speaker 1: and you'll see what happens, and you know, acceptance and
Speaker 1: commitment therapy to sort of kind of come back to
Speaker 1: it as a whole. Is this idea of accepting what
Speaker 1: we feel and what we think and then committing to
Speaker 1: act according to our values exactly? Sounds like a simple formula,
Speaker 1: it's and it kind of is simple, but it's not
Speaker 1: simple in this way. It's tricky because you've got this
Speaker 1: problem solving engine in between your ears that claims it
Speaker 1: knows everything, and Mr smarty Pants will just constantly be
Speaker 1: tempting you into doing things that are give you the
Speaker 1: short term gain and the long term pain, and how
Speaker 1: to flip that from smaller sooner at the expense of
Speaker 1: larger later too. Now I'm doing larger later and you know, so,
Speaker 1: for example, there's research on things like this. You make
Speaker 1: the values choices, now people are more willing to do
Speaker 1: emotionally hard things. The smaller sooner problem is immediately there.
Speaker 1: For example, let's say it's really your values, in your
Speaker 1: values to be loving and caring, and you've been noticing
Speaker 1: that you haven't talked to a friend who's headed into
Speaker 1: an addiction, and you can see him heading into it,
Speaker 1: and you know it's not going to be a good
Speaker 1: conversation to talk to him lovingly about your concerns. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well you're just going to watch this train layer and
Speaker 1: slow motion? Is that what you want to be about? Well,
Speaker 1: it'll be emotionally hard to have a conversation, Yeah, it would.
Speaker 1: But if you go in there in a posture of
Speaker 1: love and care, not judgment and shaming and blaming, who
Speaker 1: knows what you could do? And if you don't, what
Speaker 1: happens when you get that text message video? Did so?
Speaker 1: You know, values it's not a happy, happy, joy joy.
Speaker 1: None of these things are. It's happiness the way happiness
Speaker 1: really is, which is the whole of us, sweet and sour,
Speaker 1: all of us, you know, never a cartoon. And that
Speaker 1: empowering journey is what people seek and don't know how
Speaker 1: to get to. And as I say, I think we've
Speaker 1: kind of cracked part of the code um and I'm
Speaker 1: really pleased to see that some of these processes are
Speaker 1: inside lots of other traditions. So I'm not here of
Speaker 1: saying act uberallis we've got the answer. I'm saying, you know,
Speaker 1: dealing with this mashup of language and cognition and these
Speaker 1: other processes is kind of our life's journey, and let's
Speaker 1: use all the tools, all hands on deck. No need
Speaker 1: to get grabby about credit or naming. I don't care
Speaker 1: if you call act anything or nothing. I don't care
Speaker 1: if you call it act at all. But I do
Speaker 1: care about whether or not you have what you need
Speaker 1: to be lifted up and empowered. I hope that the
Speaker 1: research work in the book that I that I summarize
Speaker 1: there reaches people that way. Whatever particular journey there on, right,
Speaker 1: So much of what's here does resonate through or come
Speaker 1: through in in lots of other traditions. I mean, if
Speaker 1: we just look at the first few pivots, you know,
Speaker 1: diffusion self and you know, acceptance in presence. I'm a
Speaker 1: Buddhist practitioner. Those things are right in the heart of
Speaker 1: the whole thing about being able to pivot on what
Speaker 1: those things are, you bet you, And you know I'll
Speaker 1: take to the Buddhism thing. You know, although I've been
Speaker 1: exposed to as any hippie was you know, Suzuki and
Speaker 1: Watts and people like that as a you know, and
Speaker 1: I've lived on a religious commune with a Yogi split
Speaker 1: off from Paramahansi organanda, so I've been exposed all that
Speaker 1: hippie dippie stuff. I'm old enough to have been part
Speaker 1: of that are and lived in California. But uh, you know,
Speaker 1: all of the wisdom traditions, you know, whether it's Sufi's,
Speaker 1: the Jewish mystics or the Christian mystics, all mess around
Speaker 1: the literal, analytical, judgmental thought. All try to produce a
Speaker 1: quality of presence. They all include some sort of contemplative
Speaker 1: practice or dancing or repeated prayer, cohens or something that
Speaker 1: messes around with a logical problem solving mind. And so
Speaker 1: the only thing that we brought to the table really
Speaker 1: that's any different than anything else is we took the
Speaker 1: time over nearly twenty years of what looked to the
Speaker 1: world like silence. I tell that story in the book,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't. It was just we were off doing
Speaker 1: geeky stuff that nobody cared about until later on where
Speaker 1: it saw our atlant of trying to create a psychology
Speaker 1: more adequate to those questions so that we can move
Speaker 1: them over into Western science. And what it's really good
Speaker 1: at Western science can validate things that are out there,
Speaker 1: and that's good. You can do a randomized trial on
Speaker 1: a meditation retreat, that's good. That's fine. And you can
Speaker 1: put the monks in an fMRI I and show how
Speaker 1: the brains are different. That's fine. But I wanted, not
Speaker 1: in a sacrilegious way, but in a caring way to
Speaker 1: pull these things at their joints and to find what
Speaker 1: are the processes underneath, and then see could I move
Speaker 1: it with other processes? Uh. You know John Kebot's in
Speaker 1: I had a conversation with the years ago and I said, John,
Speaker 1: do you care more about the process of the technique,
Speaker 1: you said, the process, I said, And you want to
Speaker 1: put it out there in the world that I can
Speaker 1: go right under the factory floor with Joe six pack,
Speaker 1: or you only want ten days silent retreats. They're mostly
Speaker 1: for the educated elite or for the young. And he said,
Speaker 1: I want it for everybody. I said, Okay, John, You've
Speaker 1: got me for the rest of your life. I'm with you,
Speaker 1: you know, because if that's what we're up to, this
Speaker 1: is cool work. Yesterday, my colleague David Sloan Wilson, who's
Speaker 1: I've written several books with, is kind of in this work,
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biologists have a beautiful conversation with the Dalai Lama.
Speaker 1: And so you see these kind of coming together. A
Speaker 1: very different Western science, evolution science, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: geeky stuff is now met up for the first time
Speaker 1: the history of the planet with these ancient wisdom traditions.
Speaker 1: And who knows what we can create by doing that. Yep,
Speaker 1: not in the sacrilegious way. We're not coming there to
Speaker 1: tear down, pull apart in any kind of not no, no, no,
Speaker 1: but but I you know, I worked for many years
Speaker 1: in the South and if somebody wants to run the
Speaker 1: other way. If you say the word Buddhism, well then
Speaker 1: let's not say the word Buddhism. Yeah. Yeah, let's say
Speaker 1: another word, situational awareness exactly. You know. For me, I
Speaker 1: find this time to be very exciting because we are
Speaker 1: seeing some of this more ancient wisdom being validated by science.
Speaker 1: And I find it when when I see those two
Speaker 1: things sort of come together, I feel like a sturdiness
Speaker 1: to it. Right. If it's just some ancient wisdom and
Speaker 1: there's nothing really on the science side, then I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to explore it, but it's it's not doesn't
Speaker 1: feel as sturdy. And same thing if I see something
Speaker 1: scientifically that sort of doesn't tie back into that. But
Speaker 1: when I see those two things come together for me,
Speaker 1: but this is just me personally, right, given my interests,
Speaker 1: When I see these two things come together, it feels
Speaker 1: really sturdy to me. Well, that's awesome, And can I
Speaker 1: add a third thing please? And we are part of
Speaker 1: the development of it. So your ideas about new things
Speaker 1: that have never been done before, but that you think
Speaker 1: touched the deep processes that are inside the things you
Speaker 1: know about in the science actually, so it's helpful to you.
Speaker 1: They have a place at the table too, But we
Speaker 1: but we need to evaluate them. We need to look
Speaker 1: at and giving a fair look, look at the data.
Speaker 1: Let's see. You know, that third piece is important because
Speaker 1: I don't want to just live inside a traditional thing.
Speaker 1: I can with my spiritual religious work. I'm in a
Speaker 1: particular particular dharma or whatever. But when we're talking about
Speaker 1: the modern world, you know, the world people are living
Speaker 1: in now, I'll give you an example. We're living inside
Speaker 1: a world where there's more prosperity physically ever in the
Speaker 1: history of the planet. If you had to pick a
Speaker 1: time to be born on, and you can only decide when,
Speaker 1: but not where, this moment is the very best choice
Speaker 1: on almost any measure health, violence, malnutrition, starvation, you just
Speaker 1: make it. Make a list, okay, except anxiety, depression, substance abuse,
Speaker 1: and accept mental well being. Those things are going to
Speaker 1: the opposite direction. You know, our young people are a
Speaker 1: standard deviation worst than they were just a decade or
Speaker 1: two ago. And it's not just blah blah blah. They're
Speaker 1: actually killing themselves. So don't just be telling me it's
Speaker 1: self report. It is not in that modern world. I
Speaker 1: think comes that this fact that science and technology has
Speaker 1: given us a huge exposure to pain, to comparison, and
Speaker 1: to judgment and difference, and those put together have attacked
Speaker 1: this the core sense of we that this you know,
Speaker 1: this tribal primate relied on. We better invent a new way,
Speaker 1: We better invent things that have never been done on
Speaker 1: the planet, because our challenges on the planet are different
Speaker 1: than have ever been and now we have the capacity
Speaker 1: to do things like make the planet unlivable, blow ourselves off,
Speaker 1: off off the planet, etcetera. So you know, time's up.
Speaker 1: You know, we've got to get serious about it. So
Speaker 1: it's all hands on deck, and that includes you know,
Speaker 1: folks who are underneath the tree thousands of years ago,
Speaker 1: but it also includes you. What are your ideas? And
Speaker 1: I think Western science is a cool way to vet
Speaker 1: that we can't rely on the slow traditions of religious evolution,
Speaker 1: for example, that takes hundreds of of years, and we
Speaker 1: need some of these answers in a matter of tens
Speaker 1: of years. So that's my little rant, and it is
Speaker 1: what we've tried to do inside the act work. Yep, yep. Well,
Speaker 1: that is a great place for us to wrap up.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming on the show against
Speaker 1: even It's been a real pleasure, been awesome to talk
Speaker 1: to you again. And I do want to say to
Speaker 1: the listeners when I said that includes you, I'm talking
Speaker 1: to them too. So what are your ideas and how
Speaker 1: can we move the ball down the down the field?
Speaker 1: Because humanity requires something different. I think we all know it,
Speaker 1: we all sense it, and Western science can be of help,
Speaker 1: but it's not the whole answer. It's going to take
Speaker 1: all of us. Amen to that. Amen to that. Well,
Speaker 1: Thank you Stephen, thank you bye. If what you just
Speaker 1: heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation
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