Speaker 1: Mussara is a Jewish spiritual practice that goes back about
Speaker 1: a thousand years, and it helps us identify those things
Speaker 1: inside which cause us to get stuck, and then it
Speaker 1: gives us a process to bring those things into balance
Speaker 1: and healing by taking mindful action and everyday life. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have
Speaker 1: recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like
Speaker 1: garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 1: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity and
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, con
Speaker 1: assistant and creative effort to make a life worth living.
Speaker 1: This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving
Speaker 1: in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 1: Our guest this week is Greg Marcus, who is a practitioner, facilitator,
Speaker 1: and innovator of American Moossar, a twenty one century spiritual
Speaker 1: practice for an authentic and meaningful life. He has a
Speaker 1: BA in biology from Cornell University and earned his pH
Speaker 1: d in biology from m I T. He worked for
Speaker 1: ten years as a marketer in the Silicon Valley genomics industry,
Speaker 1: after which he became a stay at home dad, writer,
Speaker 1: life balance coach, and biotech consultant. His latest book is
Speaker 1: called The Spiritual Practice of Good Actions Finding Balance through
Speaker 1: the Soul Old Traits of mooss Are. And this is
Speaker 1: our second time talking with Greg, because I thought the
Speaker 1: first conversation was so good that I wanted to do
Speaker 1: it again, So please enjoy our conversation with Greg Marcus. Hi, Greg,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1: It is nice to have you on a second time.
Speaker 1: We interviewed you before. I don't remember when we did it,
Speaker 1: but I think it was a great interview. And we
Speaker 1: talked about your book that I really got a lot
Speaker 1: out of and still really enjoy, which is called The
Speaker 1: Spiritual Practice of Good Actions Finding Balance through the Soul
Speaker 1: Traits of muss Are. And we will talk more about
Speaker 1: that in a minute, but let's start like we always do,
Speaker 1: with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his
Speaker 1: granddaughter and he says, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred, fear. And the grand
Speaker 1: understops and thinks about it for a second. She looks
Speaker 1: up at her grandfather. She says, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. Thanks for asking. I absolutely love the
Speaker 1: parable and it has a lot of meaning for me.
Speaker 1: One of the fundamental assumptions that drives my Mussar practice,
Speaker 1: my Mussar spiritual practice, is the idea that we have
Speaker 1: this conflict inside between what's called the good inclination and
Speaker 1: the evil inclination. And the evil inclination isn't like evil
Speaker 1: in terms of terrorism or murder. It's our base instincts,
Speaker 1: it's our anger, it's our selfishness, um it's kind of
Speaker 1: sexuality when it's out of control. It's all of these
Speaker 1: sorts of drives. And then on the other side, the
Speaker 1: good inclination is our compassion, it's our ability to think
Speaker 1: about the needs of other people, and we are constantly
Speaker 1: driven by this conflict between the two. So that's exactly
Speaker 1: what I think the Parable of the two Wolves is
Speaker 1: talking about. And it's our choices that drive our behavior,
Speaker 1: and it's our choices that drive which one of these
Speaker 1: is in control. One of my favorite teachings from the
Speaker 1: the Old Testament, from what Jews called the Torah, is
Speaker 1: something where Moses said, I placed before you a blessing
Speaker 1: and a curse. Choose the blessing that you may live.
Speaker 1: And for me, that means that at every moment, we
Speaker 1: have this choice about whether we're going to feed the
Speaker 1: good wealf or whether we're going to feed the bad wealth.
Speaker 1: And I had this came up for me in a
Speaker 1: very interesting way recently, which i'd love to share with
Speaker 1: you and your listeners. Yeah please. I was on a
Speaker 1: break from some work I was doing, and I was
Speaker 1: walking around the block and it was an absolutely beautiful day.
Speaker 1: It was honey, it was warm, and I started thinking
Speaker 1: about this blessing and curse idea, and I said, well,
Speaker 1: what's the curse? Right now here? I am I'm out
Speaker 1: taking a walk, it's very nice and sunny. And then
Speaker 1: I realized that up until that point on the walk,
Speaker 1: I had just been ruminating about something. I was still
Speaker 1: thinking about the work that I've been doing, and I
Speaker 1: hadn't been paying any attention to the beautiful day. So
Speaker 1: the curse was getting kind of hung up in my
Speaker 1: work thoughts. And when I was able to realize that
Speaker 1: and rearient myself, I could choose to experience the blessing,
Speaker 1: which was the beautiful day. That's a great example and
Speaker 1: I can relate so much with that. And one of
Speaker 1: the things you say in the book is about the
Speaker 1: evil inclination, And again I think that term always sort
Speaker 1: of my initial reaction to it is like, all right,
Speaker 1: hold on, settled down, too strong. But I get the point.
Speaker 1: You talk about how the evil inclination not only causes
Speaker 1: us to do things we don't want to do, but
Speaker 1: it's also the cause of not doing things that we
Speaker 1: want to do or that are important to us. And
Speaker 1: I think that's such an important point and your walk
Speaker 1: sort of illustrates that a little bit, like there's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with taking a walk and thinking about your work, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, sometimes it's a really good thing to do.
Speaker 1: And I love that idea of thinking of our thought
Speaker 1: pattern is the blessing or the curse? Yeah? Yeah. The
Speaker 1: whole point of me taking that walk was I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I need to take a break from work,
Speaker 1: right right, absolutely, there is nothing wrong with thinking about work.
Speaker 1: If that's what we're going to do, then we should
Speaker 1: mindfully be thinking about work at that point. You know,
Speaker 1: what is it? How do I want to balance these
Speaker 1: different things? What's my strategy for a B or C? Yep?
Speaker 1: So let's talk about Mussar for a minute, because you know,
Speaker 1: I love the title of your book. It's one of
Speaker 1: my favorite titles of any book, The Spiritual Practice of
Speaker 1: Good Actions. So you know, Mussar is a program to
Speaker 1: really develop our maybe you won't agree with this, but
Speaker 1: to develop our spiritual life. It's also very focused on
Speaker 1: actions in the world. But tell me, you know a
Speaker 1: little bit more about in a short sentence or to
Speaker 1: what Mussar is to you. Mussara is a Jewish spiritual
Speaker 1: practice that goes back about a thousand years, and it
Speaker 1: helps us identify those things inside which cause us to
Speaker 1: get stuck, and then it gives us a process to
Speaker 1: bring those things into balance and healing by taking mindful
Speaker 1: action and everyday life. That's a great summary, and so
Speaker 1: the essence of it, at least the way that you
Speaker 1: present it is there these eighteen soul traits, these different
Speaker 1: traits that we have, and you then maybe it's is
Speaker 1: it eighteen? It's yeah, there's actually more than you know.
Speaker 1: There's lots of them. In my book, I cover thirteen, right,
Speaker 1: And so you do each of them for two weeks.
Speaker 1: So essentially, for two weeks you focus on a sol
Speaker 1: trait and then you after two weeks you go into
Speaker 1: the next one, and that gives you a half a
Speaker 1: year program. Like, first, give me a trait that we
Speaker 1: could talk about. Just pick one that you're interested in
Speaker 1: choosing right now. Yeah, So one that I think relates
Speaker 1: to what we were talking about before is a trade
Speaker 1: called enthusiasm. It's about getting energy up to really do
Speaker 1: something mindfully and with a lot of consciousness. And having
Speaker 1: too much enthusiasm can be just as bad as having
Speaker 1: not enough. So if we have too little enthusiasm, we
Speaker 1: might be procrastinating, we're not going to start projects, or
Speaker 1: we might not finish projects. Will kind of get started
Speaker 1: and get going, but then we won't kind of put
Speaker 1: in the grind it takes sometimes to sort of finish
Speaker 1: all the little bits and really do things in a
Speaker 1: high quality way. So that's the danger of too little enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: But then if we have too much enthusiasm, we can
Speaker 1: be rash and frenetic and just really not thinking things
Speaker 1: through through and doing a lot of look before you
Speaker 1: leap behaviors and getting so spontaneous and impulsive that we
Speaker 1: can't really bring an equality to what we're doing either. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I love that idea that you present in the
Speaker 1: book that is so true, which is that any of
Speaker 1: these traits you don't want too much or too little.
Speaker 1: It really is the middle way, right, And I love
Speaker 1: that teaching in general that too much enthusiasm, as you said,
Speaker 1: is a problem, too little is a problem. Where is
Speaker 1: the midpoint? I think that's a very wise way to
Speaker 1: look at these traits. But yeah, and I think that's
Speaker 1: very counterintuitive for a lot of people because we tend
Speaker 1: to think of, you know, a trait like truth as well.
Speaker 1: You want to be as truthful as possible, or arrogance
Speaker 1: as bad. Therefore, you want to be as humble as possible,
Speaker 1: And that's not um this teaching gives a very different
Speaker 1: perspective on that, and I think that gives people choices
Speaker 1: that they might not get if they were following a
Speaker 1: different teaching. Yep, yep, it's one of the things I
Speaker 1: really So we take enthusiasm and we work on it
Speaker 1: for two weeks. And and this is really where I
Speaker 1: want to dig in a little bit deeper and talk
Speaker 1: about what does it mean to work on a soul
Speaker 1: trait for two weeks? How do you do it? Because
Speaker 1: one of the things that I see is one of
Speaker 1: the biggest challenges for people, for me, for listeners, for
Speaker 1: lots of people, right is we have a spiritual idea
Speaker 1: or a principle or a thing that we want to do,
Speaker 1: and our biggest challenge is remembering to actually do it,
Speaker 1: remembering to actually bring it into our day. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about how moose are addresses that kind of what
Speaker 1: we do in a two week period to work with
Speaker 1: a sultry Yeah. So, by way of introducing this, I
Speaker 1: want to share a teaching from one of the great
Speaker 1: Moosar masters of the twentieth century. His name is Rabbi
Speaker 1: Elie Lopean, and he used to say that Moossar teaches
Speaker 1: the heart what the head already understands. So many of
Speaker 1: these ideas. It's exactly what you were talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know in my head us, I really shouldn't be
Speaker 1: doing this. You know, here I am again, you know,
Speaker 1: making the same mistake, but I don't really remember it
Speaker 1: until after the fact. So how is it that we
Speaker 1: can get that knowledge into our heart? And the way
Speaker 1: that we do that is by taking action. We treat
Speaker 1: moossar like a practice, like a yoga practice for example,
Speaker 1: something that you would do. You know, you want to
Speaker 1: get on the mat every day, and you want to
Speaker 1: do this day after day, so that on a day
Speaker 1: when maybe we're not feeling so great or feeling a
Speaker 1: little sluggish about doing it, it's become a habit. So
Speaker 1: we will do these things on a regular basis. So
Speaker 1: that being said, what is it that we do then
Speaker 1: when we're doing this regular mossar practice? And there's three parts.
Speaker 1: The first part is a morning mantra. It's a recitation
Speaker 1: phrase that you can write on a sticky note or
Speaker 1: an index card and you can put it on your
Speaker 1: bathroom mirror or next to your bed table. So for enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: One of the phrases that I like. It's called run
Speaker 1: to do good. If there's something that needs to be done,
Speaker 1: you want to really get after it and run to
Speaker 1: do it. So I'll begin my morning by saying that
Speaker 1: out loud for two minutes. Or maybe I'll put it
Speaker 1: to the music of some pop song that I like
Speaker 1: and i'll sing it in the car. But by opening
Speaker 1: your day this way, we frame the day, and it
Speaker 1: helps me be aware of you know, I've been procrastinating
Speaker 1: on this particular issue, or I have to write this
Speaker 1: uncomfortable email to a coworker and I find myself gravitating
Speaker 1: towards my Facebook page. Well, I need to run to
Speaker 1: do good. You know, even though it doesn't maybe feel comfortable,
Speaker 1: it really is for the best that I say what
Speaker 1: I need to say in this email. So that's, um,
Speaker 1: that's kind of the mantra part, and that's part of
Speaker 1: the action part. So let me pause. Here, are you
Speaker 1: tracking with me so far? I am tracking with you totally.
Speaker 1: So far? Okay, fantastic. So then we want to pick
Speaker 1: one very specific action to take. And I was just
Speaker 1: emailing someone about this today where they were having a
Speaker 1: big issue with patients. That's another soul trade. So they're
Speaker 1: having a lot of inpatience and a lot of different situations,
Speaker 1: and so what we want to do is we want
Speaker 1: to pick one particular situation and we want to make
Speaker 1: a small change. So this person was having a lot
Speaker 1: of inpatience when they were in traffic, and they were
Speaker 1: having a lot of inpatients like dealing with family members
Speaker 1: at the dinner table, and so it's like, okay, well
Speaker 1: pick one of those two situations. And if you're picking
Speaker 1: the family members, pick which family member you want to
Speaker 1: be more patient with. I'm going to be more patient
Speaker 1: with my daughter when she brings up X situation so
Speaker 1: that it becomes something small and manageable. And we think
Speaker 1: about that, and we focus on just that one thing,
Speaker 1: and we're much much more likely to be able to
Speaker 1: make a difference. And maybe ideally I'd wait five seconds
Speaker 1: before I answer this answer my daughter, but maybe at
Speaker 1: first I'm only able to wait one or two seconds,
Speaker 1: where before I wasn't waiting any seconds. So that one
Speaker 1: tiny littill change that's the whole game, because even one
Speaker 1: second delay will help you answer in a better way
Speaker 1: than you would have if you hadn't had a delay
Speaker 1: At all right. The third part, and this is the
Speaker 1: one which people struggle with the most, is journaling. So
Speaker 1: then at night you would write and your journal Okay, well,
Speaker 1: how did enthusiasm show up for me today? How did
Speaker 1: patients show up for me today? In what ways? Was
Speaker 1: I tested? And then how did I handle it? And
Speaker 1: it could be just a couple of words, it could
Speaker 1: be a paragraph. Journaling is you know, some people do it,
Speaker 1: some people don't. But like all of these things, the
Speaker 1: more you do, the more benefit you get. But even
Speaker 1: if you only do a couple of the things, they're
Speaker 1: still going to get some benefit from it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's a really good and you stay with the
Speaker 1: same thing for a couple of weeks, which I think
Speaker 1: is really important. We ran a Spiritual Habits workshop in
Speaker 1: the spring that will probably run again soon. It was
Speaker 1: really about taking spiritual principles and tying the principles of
Speaker 1: behavior change to them so that we can actually really
Speaker 1: embody spirituality these things that we believe. And one of
Speaker 1: the ideas with it is less less spiritual ideas, right,
Speaker 1: and take one and go really deep with it, which
Speaker 1: is what you're doing with the soul trait. You're taking
Speaker 1: one idea enthusiasm, and you're going really deep with it
Speaker 1: for two weeks. And I really love that idea. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: And I love the way that you're doing that in
Speaker 1: your workshops as well. That's a great way to go.
Speaker 1: An advantage of rotating every two weeks is then it
Speaker 1: doesn't become stale, right, right, So it's like I've done
Speaker 1: some which are so uncomfortable for me that like every
Speaker 1: day I'm counting down until I can get to the
Speaker 1: next one, and and uh, you know it's uh, the
Speaker 1: saying goes, there's no growth in the comfort zone, so
Speaker 1: we want to push ourselves out of the comfort zone.
Speaker 1: But there are some soult traits where for me it's
Speaker 1: not that big of a challenge and I actually have
Speaker 1: to work a little bit harder to grow. And so
Speaker 1: either way, by moving on to a different one and
Speaker 1: then at the end of the thirteen you go back
Speaker 1: to the first one, so it's not like then you're done.
Speaker 1: You cycle back through again and you come back to
Speaker 1: it from a whole new perspective. Right. I want to
Speaker 1: ask you about something as you go through this process.
Speaker 1: You call it the Great Wall of Moossar. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: many many people that I've worked with, that I've practiced with.
Speaker 1: When you get started, it feels like this is like
Speaker 1: the answer to everything, Like you start and you make
Speaker 1: all this progress, and your life starts getting better. And
Speaker 1: it's actually when that starts to happen. One of the
Speaker 1: ways that the evil inclination works is it tells you
Speaker 1: you're doing a really good job. So then you hit
Speaker 1: eventually you hit some kind of setback, and then it's like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I'm still so broken. This Moosear stuff
Speaker 1: is nonsense. It doesn't work at all, and why am
Speaker 1: I even bothering with this? And that's what I call
Speaker 1: the great wall of Mussar. It's like that first real
Speaker 1: point of resistance, or your even inclination will try to
Speaker 1: trick you into thinking that you can just keep going
Speaker 1: and keep making progress without actually doing the practice anymore. Well,
Speaker 1: I have all this internalized, so I can just kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, save my two minutes in the morning and
Speaker 1: not you know, right, do all of this. And um,
Speaker 1: that's another way of the great walla Mossa are works
Speaker 1: out and it's something which we have an opportunity to overcome,
Speaker 1: and then when we work through it, we continue to
Speaker 1: grow and make progress. Yeah. I love that idea. I
Speaker 1: see that with coaching clients, and it's the reason I
Speaker 1: structure my coaching engagements to be a little bit longer
Speaker 1: than I used to, because what I would find is
Speaker 1: we get off to a really good start, right, we
Speaker 1: were very effective, like you know, we're out of the
Speaker 1: gates and running and everything is good. And then, like
Speaker 1: you said, there's a point where, whether it's a plateau
Speaker 1: or you hit a wall, it gets hard, you know,
Speaker 1: and we have an inclination to stop or we start
Speaker 1: to make a mistake. And that's why sort of knowing
Speaker 1: how to handle those things is really important. So you
Speaker 1: advise for people when they hit the great wall, how
Speaker 1: do they rEFInd the enthusiasm or the will to kind
Speaker 1: of keep putting the work in. I think one way
Speaker 1: to do it is to kind of know it's going
Speaker 1: to be there. Is to really understand that nothing stays
Speaker 1: good forever and that this is a lifetime learning practice
Speaker 1: and understanding that they're going to be some ups and downs.
Speaker 1: I know, for example, that I've gone through multi month
Speaker 1: periods where I don't journal, and because I know that,
Speaker 1: I can accept it and say, okay, well, yeah, it
Speaker 1: would be better than that, I journal, but this is
Speaker 1: just part of my current resistance. This is the way
Speaker 1: the wall is shown up for me today, and I
Speaker 1: know that eventually I'm going to overcome it. So that's
Speaker 1: one way. Another is knowing that the wall is coming,
Speaker 1: is to just really reinforce your practice, because the wall
Speaker 1: is just another kind of challenge, you know. It's like
Speaker 1: that child of yours which is always triggering you at
Speaker 1: the dinner table. You know it's going to happen at
Speaker 1: some point. You don't know what it is. But if
Speaker 1: you practice enough, then when the curtain goes up and
Speaker 1: you're put on trial, you'll be ready to answer it.
Speaker 1: So when that voice says, hey, you know, do you
Speaker 1: really need to keep going? Or oh you're so broken,
Speaker 1: you know this all must not be working, you can say, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course I'm still broken, you know, but that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that I'm going to be as broken tomorrow as
Speaker 1: I am today. We just keep going, yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think that's the last two words. They're the really
Speaker 1: big ones, right, keep going and and recognizing, like you said,
Speaker 1: that we're never perfect with anything, and the tendency a
Speaker 1: lot of us have if we're doing really good, Like
Speaker 1: to say, we were doing the moose Oar journal and
Speaker 1: we're doing really well, right, and then we miss a day,
Speaker 1: and then we miss another day, right, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: now we're like, uh see, like you said, see I
Speaker 1: I can't do it. I'm not good. You know. We
Speaker 1: reinforce the behavior instead of going like, of course I
Speaker 1: missed a couple of days. Inevitably that happens. So now
Speaker 1: let me just start again with as little emotional baggage
Speaker 1: attached to it as I can. That's right. I love
Speaker 1: that I'm trying to detach from the emotional baggage. And
Speaker 1: I was flipping through my journal earlier, and for a
Speaker 1: number of days I have two or three words written down,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's like I'm too tired tonight. I don't
Speaker 1: feel like it. Okay, well that's fine. That's where I
Speaker 1: was at that point, But at least I was. I
Speaker 1: kept the habit of opening the book, you know, and
Speaker 1: and kept going, you need to work on your soul
Speaker 1: trade of enthusiasm when it comes to your JOURNALI I do.
Speaker 1: I definitely do. Um kidding I uh yes, you know.
Speaker 1: It reminds me once um. I was having lunch with
Speaker 1: with someone who was helping me out with my website marketing,
Speaker 1: and we were sitting at a coffee shop and someone
Speaker 1: came tearing around the corner. You know, our tires are
Speaker 1: screeching and they're going way too fast. And as she
Speaker 1: said to me, well, there's a person who needs moss Are,
Speaker 1: And I answered her and I say, without moss Are,
Speaker 1: would be that person. Yeah. Yeah, it's a great way
Speaker 1: to look at it. Let's let's transition just a little
Speaker 1: bit here, because I want to ask you a question
Speaker 1: about a line that you wrote in the book, and
Speaker 1: I'm really interested in it. And you say, the more
Speaker 1: significant the emotional disruption, the less access we have to
Speaker 1: our free will, and thus there's more drastic the impact
Speaker 1: on our behavior. So I'd love to talk about handling
Speaker 1: significant emotional disruption. This has been sort of a key
Speaker 1: topic for me lately, this idea of emotional regulation, right like,
Speaker 1: how do we have emotion? How do we allow it
Speaker 1: to be there and then still act according to our values?
Speaker 1: So i'd love to get your perspective on that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know the reason I was writing that, and
Speaker 1: to put it in a little bit of context for
Speaker 1: people who maybe aren't familiar with the whole mooser backstory.
Speaker 1: I didn't want people to have to, you know, read
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of books, or to read chapters and chapters.
Speaker 1: So I created a couple of rule of thumb assumptions,
Speaker 1: and one of them we talked about before the good
Speaker 1: inclination and the Evil inclination. Another one is that we
Speaker 1: all have free will, but it's not always accessible, and
Speaker 1: similar to what we were talking about with the Great Wall,
Speaker 1: I think we need to understand that. You know, when
Speaker 1: we get angry or emotional, we really can and do
Speaker 1: lose control. Now, sometimes it's losing control in small letters,
Speaker 1: like I'll start yelling or I'll say some things that
Speaker 1: I really regret, and it could be very hurtful to someone,
Speaker 1: and it might you know, in the worst cases. You know,
Speaker 1: if you really say the wrong thing to somebody, or
Speaker 1: you go after them for their real weakness and you
Speaker 1: bring up the worst thing that ever happened to them,
Speaker 1: you can damage that relationship forever. So I'm not trivializing
Speaker 1: the words week to people. But thankfully, most of the
Speaker 1: time when I say things that I regret, it doesn't
Speaker 1: have that kind of big impact. But if I can
Speaker 1: understand that if I let that emotional train really get going,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of danger to be be had. So
Speaker 1: it's learning to recognize when that emotional train starts going,
Speaker 1: because you know, some really unpleasant things can happen when
Speaker 1: it does. And so what are some of your ways
Speaker 1: for slowing down or stopping the emotional train. I think
Speaker 1: what you said there is one part of it is
Speaker 1: really important you catching it at an early enough point
Speaker 1: because at a certain point, like you said, we're kind
Speaker 1: of out of control, you know. I think the psychologists
Speaker 1: that I've talked to it would use the term flooded. Right.
Speaker 1: We used to talk about this with the kids. You know,
Speaker 1: kid would be at a point where it's like, you're
Speaker 1: not going to reason with this child at this point
Speaker 1: right there, well beyond that, so we've got to calm
Speaker 1: the disturbance. So what are some of your ways for
Speaker 1: either going down the emotional train or calming the disturbance
Speaker 1: kind of once you're in that disruption. One of the
Speaker 1: ways actually is is through regular practice, because as I
Speaker 1: go through this cycle of the different soul traits, I'm
Speaker 1: going to become more aware of the things that trigger
Speaker 1: me and I can pick those things as something to
Speaker 1: work on. So, for example, one of the soul traits
Speaker 1: is honor. It's about respecting other people. One of the
Speaker 1: dangers of that is chasing on or or feeling like
Speaker 1: you constantly have to be treated in a certain way.
Speaker 1: So if I find that I get triggered if people
Speaker 1: say something which is maybe critical or disrespectful, especially if
Speaker 1: it's a family member, the more that I can become
Speaker 1: comfortable with that, the more that I can sort of say,
Speaker 1: all right, when this kind of thing happens, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: understand that the circuit breaker might get tripped and I
Speaker 1: might need to just step out of the room for
Speaker 1: a few minutes. And that isn't like an ideal thing,
Speaker 1: like when I step out of the room, my my
Speaker 1: wife doesn't like that particularly, But it's much better than
Speaker 1: me staying in the situation and saying something which is
Speaker 1: going to make things worse. Right, So you're kind of
Speaker 1: talking about, in some sense, their prevention. Right by working
Speaker 1: your soul traits, by being aware of these things, you
Speaker 1: sort of almost headed off. Yes, these kind of losing
Speaker 1: control things that we're talking about, those are all in
Speaker 1: the realm of the evil inclination. And there are some
Speaker 1: things which can strengthen the good inclination, like meditation and
Speaker 1: being mindful in general. And again that is looking learning
Speaker 1: to recognize when thoughts are coming into your head and
Speaker 1: not taking action based on those thoughts. So I wish
Speaker 1: I had like a silver bullet that I could share
Speaker 1: with the whole community here and say, oh, well, if
Speaker 1: you just do this, it's never gonna happen anymore. And
Speaker 1: if you know any I would love to hear them.
Speaker 1: But in my experience, it's really small gradual changes where
Speaker 1: we get a little bit better over here and we
Speaker 1: get a little bit better over there, and over time
Speaker 1: those things can really add up pretty quickly. And this
Speaker 1: idea of access to our free will, one of the
Speaker 1: main assumptions that you say, you know is underlying the
Speaker 1: book is we all have free will, but it's not
Speaker 1: always accessible. And is that largely what you mean? Our
Speaker 1: emotions make our free will less accessible or there other things.
Speaker 1: The thing that I most often think about this in
Speaker 1: terms of our emotions, but it's not always negative emotions either.
Speaker 1: It could just be we're so happy and excited about this,
Speaker 1: Like you know, a while back, I went to the
Speaker 1: retirement ceremony for Bruce Bocci, who was the manager of
Speaker 1: the San Francisco Giants, and like one of my favorite
Speaker 1: players came out, Tim Linds to come and it was
Speaker 1: a total surprise he'd been there, nobody had seen him
Speaker 1: in a couple of years. And he walked out on
Speaker 1: the field with a bunch of other players, and I
Speaker 1: started crying. And I'm like, this fifty year old guy
Speaker 1: crying in the baseball stands, and I'm like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to be crying right now. But it was just
Speaker 1: I was so emotionally overcome that that's kind of how
Speaker 1: how it happened. I mean, there was nothing destructive about that,
Speaker 1: and I could sort of tried myself that it's silly
Speaker 1: to be embarrassed about that, but being who I am,
Speaker 1: I was a little bit and so, um, it's not
Speaker 1: always you know, really not always a bad thing. I
Speaker 1: guess that's what I'm trying to say, right right, Let's
Speaker 1: talk about some work you've done since the book came out,
Speaker 1: which is really around this idea of shadow traits. What
Speaker 1: does that mean and what are a couple of them
Speaker 1: and how have you kind of worked on them? Yeah? So, um,
Speaker 1: in the book, I talked about some very big, you know,
Speaker 1: beginning soul traits, things that we all have, things that
Speaker 1: we can all work on. It's a book which beginners
Speaker 1: and non beginners can read. But I, in my own
Speaker 1: personal work have taken classes and did some work on
Speaker 1: some of the shadow side soul traits. The shadow is
Speaker 1: what Carl Young called kind of the darker part of
Speaker 1: our personality. So these are things like, you know, worry, impatience, anger.
Speaker 1: These are the very much in your face negative of
Speaker 1: emotions and one of the really interesting things that I found.
Speaker 1: At first, I was very judgmental about, well, why is this?
Speaker 1: You know, why do you have to take all these
Speaker 1: other classes before you can take this? You know, these
Speaker 1: are the things that people really struggle with. You know,
Speaker 1: I coach people, you coach people Worries, anger, I mean,
Speaker 1: these these really this is the hard part. These are
Speaker 1: the hard things. But if you've never it really is
Speaker 1: jumping in the deep end of the pool, I guess.
Speaker 1: And if you really start to work on this and
Speaker 1: I come face to face with like, I didn't think
Speaker 1: of myself as a fearful person. I didn't think of
Speaker 1: myself as a warrior. But when I started working on worry,
Speaker 1: I realized that all kinds of decisions I was making,
Speaker 1: you know, well, I'm a procrastinator. Well why are you
Speaker 1: procrastinating about sending this email out? Well, I'm afraid that
Speaker 1: the person's going to ignore me, or I'm afraid that
Speaker 1: they're going to think that I can deliver more that
Speaker 1: I can deliver, or all kinds of irrational fears that
Speaker 1: come out. So and I need to be able to
Speaker 1: say to myself, Okay, yes, I guess worry is a
Speaker 1: much bigger part of my life. I need to be
Speaker 1: able to have that realization from a place of healthy
Speaker 1: self esteem. And when my self esteem isn't healthy enough,
Speaker 1: at least I have other practices or other things that
Speaker 1: I can bring to bear to kind of combat you know,
Speaker 1: these parts of myself which I don't like or I'm
Speaker 1: not proud of. So when it comes to a shadow
Speaker 1: soul trait, right, we talked about the other traits, there
Speaker 1: can be too much and there can be too little.
Speaker 1: When you're talking about a shadow soul trait, is that
Speaker 1: also there or we just kind of look at those
Speaker 1: as like, you know what, there's not a good part
Speaker 1: of that. You know, I know this is not about
Speaker 1: demonizing parts of ourselves. So I don't love the way
Speaker 1: I just phrase that, but it was the best I
Speaker 1: could do. I think you get the point. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I do, And I think it's a great question. Um.
Speaker 1: My definition of soult trade is for it to be
Speaker 1: a soult trade, having too much of it must be
Speaker 1: as bad as having too little. What sets the shadows
Speaker 1: sultrates apart is the balance is nowhere near in the middle.
Speaker 1: But if we really lived the life without worry, or
Speaker 1: if we lived a life without fear or concern, then
Speaker 1: that's a very reckless life. I mean, sometimes we should
Speaker 1: be worried. Um, if I lose my job and I
Speaker 1: have a mortgage to pay and I don't have a
Speaker 1: lot a lot of money in the bank, that is
Speaker 1: a very good reason to be worried. And if I
Speaker 1: just think, oh, well, everything will work out and I'll
Speaker 1: just wait for something to happen, you know, that's not
Speaker 1: a not a healthy place to be. You used a
Speaker 1: phrase inverting the shadow, So tell me what inverting the
Speaker 1: shadow is in relation to this type of work. Yeah. So, um,
Speaker 1: I read something and I can't remember where it was.
Speaker 1: The quote was something like the deeper the shadow, the
Speaker 1: brighter the light. Reminds me of a Zend quote, the
Speaker 1: greater the doubt, the greater the awakening. Yeah, something something like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of these things. And I really thought about it,
Speaker 1: and I said, well, if I have this place of darkness,
Speaker 1: or if I have all of these fears, then there
Speaker 1: must be something. There must be some way that I
Speaker 1: can flip it on its head, because there must be
Speaker 1: some equal reservoir of kind of goodness or light which
Speaker 1: is on the other side. And often I think the
Speaker 1: psychologists would tell us that if I have this kind
Speaker 1: of fear reflex, it must have been built as a
Speaker 1: defense mechanism for something that happened when I was younger.
Speaker 1: So it came from some strong self preservation instinct. So
Speaker 1: understanding that you know, I really do count for something,
Speaker 1: I want to have a good impact, and being able
Speaker 1: to say that, you know, there's a light in this
Speaker 1: drive to kind of do something which is hind which
Speaker 1: paradoxically gets twisted into me not doing something. Um, I
Speaker 1: found to be very empowering. So it's finding a way
Speaker 1: to kind of look at what is that light which
Speaker 1: is casting the shadow, what's happening on the other side
Speaker 1: of this, which is causing this to happen. Does that
Speaker 1: make any sense? It does. There's an interesting example I
Speaker 1: found of that with um anger, and there's this teaching
Speaker 1: that a divine presence flees anger. So we may not
Speaker 1: believe in the divine presence, and we may not believe
Speaker 1: that even if we do believe in that, that we
Speaker 1: not believe that it leaves when when we get angry.
Speaker 1: But when I thought about it, and I said, well, certainly,
Speaker 1: if I think of the divine presence is my best
Speaker 1: self as the person that I would like to be
Speaker 1: when I get really angry, that person is not in charge.
Speaker 1: The anger is in charge, right, So if I think
Speaker 1: about how can I invert this shadow of the anger
Speaker 1: back to this other person. I actually created a little
Speaker 1: song that I would sing or hump to myself, where
Speaker 1: I put the words of the uh, the divine presence
Speaker 1: drives the anger away. And I put that to the
Speaker 1: tune of a Spoonful of Sugar, which I don't know
Speaker 1: where I came up with this. I am not a
Speaker 1: Mary Poppins fan. I never liked that song. But somehow,
Speaker 1: if I'm really angry and I remember that and I
Speaker 1: start humming, you know, the divine presence will chase the
Speaker 1: anger away. Suddenly I'm less angry and I'm in a
Speaker 1: different place. Yeah, putting things to song is a really
Speaker 1: good idea that I don't do often enough, but it
Speaker 1: is an enjoyable thing to do. And in your book,
Speaker 1: you actually there are multiple points where there are you know,
Speaker 1: there's some Jewish tradition around singing, like, hey, sing more,
Speaker 1: it's good for you. That's right, that's right, And not
Speaker 1: everybody has a good voice, but singing is a good
Speaker 1: thing to do. And being able to step away from
Speaker 1: kind of embarrassment about our singing or sing by yourself.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've never met anyone who had a bad
Speaker 1: voice in the shower, that is true. Shower is a
Speaker 1: good place for singing. Well, I think that is a
Speaker 1: good place for you and I. To wrap up this conversation,
Speaker 1: we're gonna keep talking in the post show conversation. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk about shame and sadness, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about three reasons why people do not feel gratitude.
Speaker 1: You know, we all work on gratitude lists, and you know,
Speaker 1: I guess we don't all, but a lot of us
Speaker 1: do and there's times there's no juice there and I
Speaker 1: want to explore that, So we'll do that in the
Speaker 1: post show conversation listeners. If you like access to that
Speaker 1: many episodes. Add free episodes and the joy of being
Speaker 1: part of our community and supporting the show, go to
Speaker 1: one you feed, dot net slash Support. Greg. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for coming on a second time. It's been
Speaker 1: a pleasure to talk to you. It's been a pleasure
Speaker 1: for me to Eric. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Bye.
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