Speaker 1: The inner critic tells so many lies, one of which
Speaker 1: is that you're the only one. You're the only one
Speaker 1: that struggles with this or that. But the truth of
Speaker 1: the inner critic is everyone has some component of it,
Speaker 1: and now how much it trips you up. It can
Speaker 1: vary from person to person, but it is ubiquitous. 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, self pity,
Speaker 1: jealousy or fear. We see what we don't have instead
Speaker 1: of what we do. We think things that hold us
Speaker 1: back 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 Jenny Gay, a certified
Speaker 1: mindfulness teacher who has worked with Eric to create content
Speaker 1: here at the one you feed for the past eight years.
Speaker 1: Prior to that, she spent thirteen years in the corporate world,
Speaker 1: where she thought climbing the corporate ladder equated to success
Speaker 1: in life. Instead, that approach ultimately led her to a
Speaker 1: place of severe burnout, addiction, anxiety and depression. Now she
Speaker 1: knows that for her, success in all aspects of life
Speaker 1: comes from living from a place of authenticity and integration,
Speaker 1: where meaningful work in relationships are the fruit and contribution
Speaker 1: to the world. Jenny loves creating horses, programs, workshops and
Speaker 1: written content to help people live life more skillfully and
Speaker 1: to help them navigate the difficulties that come from the
Speaker 1: inherent challenges of being human so that they can experience
Speaker 1: more peace, purpose and joy in their daily lives. Hi, Jenny,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Hi Eric, this is so fun. Yes, so, listeners,
Speaker 1: you will have heard Jenny on a couple of podcast
Speaker 1: interviews and if you've received anything from the one you
Speaker 1: feed that's been written in the last seven years, six years,
Speaker 1: Jenny's little typing fingers have been all over it, and
Speaker 1: you're running your mindfulness course for the second time soon
Speaker 1: and taking more of an active role in putting things
Speaker 1: out into the world with the one you feed. So
Speaker 1: I just want to give listeners a chance to know
Speaker 1: you better and of course you are my partner in
Speaker 1: business and in life. And so, yes, welcome. Thank you.
Speaker 1: It's wonderful to be here. You know how we start
Speaker 1: with a parable, so I'm still going to read it
Speaker 1: or I don't. I don't read it, I actually recite
Speaker 1: it since I know it. In the parable there's a
Speaker 1: grandparent who's talking with a grandchild and they say in
Speaker 1: life there are two wolves inside of us that are
Speaker 1: always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents
Speaker 1: things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other
Speaker 1: is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 1: hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about
Speaker 1: it for a second and looks up at their grandparents says, well,
Speaker 1: which one wins, and grandparents says the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. I love that parable other
Speaker 1: than you. It's what caused me to fall in love
Speaker 1: with the show for the first time. But it is
Speaker 1: so important, I think, to who I am and how
Speaker 1: have you the world and how have you my life,
Speaker 1: because what that parable tells me is that we have
Speaker 1: choice and we have impact in the way we show
Speaker 1: up and the way we experience life, and the more
Speaker 1: aware we are of what's happening inside of US and
Speaker 1: around us in the moment, the more choice we have.
Speaker 1: And then the more choice we have often the more
Speaker 1: skillful we can be. So life can feel better and
Speaker 1: be better than it does in this moment, right, if
Speaker 1: we have the ability and the skillfulness to choose and
Speaker 1: to know how to make it so. I always get
Speaker 1: this like hit of like euphoric liberation when I remember
Speaker 1: that in real time, which is like, Oh, I'm not
Speaker 1: stuck here, you know. Oh, okay, it doesn't feel great.
Speaker 1: Now I can actually make this feel better or be better.
Speaker 1: It's life changing right. And I think the other thing
Speaker 1: that I've come to really understand at a deeper level
Speaker 1: about the parable is that it's not about casting out
Speaker 1: the bad wolf. It's about integrating the two, integrating ourselves
Speaker 1: in a way that all can be held in some
Speaker 1: loving awareness. You know, we may not like or we
Speaker 1: may not want to cultivate certain unskillful states, but we
Speaker 1: can be with it. All right, and we don't have
Speaker 1: to put anything out of our hearts, and in that
Speaker 1: way we can really transform so it's become my like
Speaker 1: worldview and my life experience. You've certainly heard it enough time,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'm always amazed at all the different
Speaker 1: interpretations that this parable has, like that every guest has
Speaker 1: a slightly different or more or nuanced kind of perspective,
Speaker 1: and I'm surprised by that because it seems so clear
Speaker 1: to me and so simple, yet it's really rich. I
Speaker 1: think that's the other reason I love it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think you honed in on the main part of it
Speaker 1: for me is choice. Yeah, you know, because I think
Speaker 1: that parable just points to we have a choice, but
Speaker 1: we often forget we have a choice and remembering it
Speaker 1: is so important. In order to remember it, we have
Speaker 1: to use mindfulness, we need to be aware, we need
Speaker 1: to be paying attention. Or we just didn't know we
Speaker 1: had a choice right like not only maybe we forgot,
Speaker 1: but maybe we never knew and then when we realized,
Speaker 1: like wait a minute, this could be different, it really
Speaker 1: could be different. It's not like wishful thinking, it's just revolutionary.
Speaker 1: So let's let listeners get to know a little of
Speaker 1: your backstory that brought you to the point that you
Speaker 1: really started to engage with this work in a meaningful way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where do you want to start? Well, let's start with
Speaker 1: very brief sort of biographical sketch, where you grew up.
Speaker 1: You come from some of those basics, and then I
Speaker 1: want to get through to the ideas sooner than well,
Speaker 1: as you know, I do love to talk and this
Speaker 1: we could start back and like, uh, I was born
Speaker 1: February Fourth v nine Um. No, I was born and
Speaker 1: raised in Atlanta, Georgia, by to really loving, devoted parents
Speaker 1: who really just gave me a sense of what support
Speaker 1: and love meant, and I'm so grateful for that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think every family has issues and problems and wounds
Speaker 1: and areas of rub and of real problem. But like,
Speaker 1: when I distill it all down, what I know is
Speaker 1: my parents are and we're loving, supportive parents and people,
Speaker 1: and so I'm really grateful for that start. You know,
Speaker 1: it gave me the ability to feel my feet starting
Speaker 1: on the ground from the get go. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think there's an interesting nuance in what you just said there, though,
Speaker 1: which is you can acknowledge that your parents were very
Speaker 1: loving and you've got a lot of benefit from them
Speaker 1: and you can also acknowledge ways in which their parenting style,
Speaker 1: the wounds that they carry, the issues that they had,
Speaker 1: still impact on our lives and I think we often
Speaker 1: get stuck in a either I had a terrible childhood
Speaker 1: or I had a great childhood. My parents were good,
Speaker 1: they weren't good, and I think there are some cases
Speaker 1: where it's clearly almost all good. You had just outstanding parents,
Speaker 1: but it's not, you know, not that common and we
Speaker 1: certainly know the horror, yes, but for a lot of
Speaker 1: us there's a lot of nuance and so, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to find both the good and the bad in
Speaker 1: it can be really positive instead of just only focusing
Speaker 1: on one of them. Yeah, because I mean, as we
Speaker 1: grow up we start to realize how human our parents
Speaker 1: are and you know, they have their own wounds, they
Speaker 1: have their own conditioning and patterning and life experience and,
Speaker 1: just like me, those things could come in the way
Speaker 1: of love or those things could trip them up in
Speaker 1: ways that made it so that the heart of them,
Speaker 1: which to this day I still feel like I connected
Speaker 1: with and know, which is loving, just couldn't show up
Speaker 1: in the fullness that that it wanted to. And so,
Speaker 1: if anything other than blame, I have compassion and I
Speaker 1: have gratitude for how they continued to try and show up. Okay, so, okay, childhood,
Speaker 1: and that's well, right, exactly. So adolescence was hard. Let's see,
Speaker 1: that's about it was hard. It's hard for everybody, right.
Speaker 1: I mean I think that the wounds of my life,
Speaker 1: the pain of my life, again on the spectrum of pain,
Speaker 1: could be minimized. Right, depending how far out you zoom,
Speaker 1: I will say that sensing my own pain and discomfort
Speaker 1: in my own internal world and not wanting to be
Speaker 1: with it or not wanting to experience it has driven
Speaker 1: me a lot in my life. Yeah, so, okay, adolescents,
Speaker 1: some of that pain comes. Yeah, let's keep moving forward. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm starting to think of all the things I could share. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so then I went to college in Mississippi and, being
Speaker 1: the oldest child, I had the very like I want
Speaker 1: to do a good job, I want to like please
Speaker 1: people and I want to like be successful and, you know,
Speaker 1: make my parents proud. And so just show me the
Speaker 1: rule book, show me what I should do, I'll do
Speaker 1: it and then you'll be happy and I'll be successful right.
Speaker 1: So that was kind of my approach and as it
Speaker 1: turns out, life I don't really work that way, fortunately
Speaker 1: or unfortunately. And I graduated college, I got married right
Speaker 1: out of college and got my first job right out
Speaker 1: of college. We're talking two days after I graduated, and
Speaker 1: it was in the corporate world, in the pharmaceutical industry,
Speaker 1: and there was so much about the corporate world in
Speaker 1: the pharmaceutical industry that I loved and I'm so grateful
Speaker 1: for that. Marriage was very short lived. A lot of
Speaker 1: it was sort of connected to how dogmatically we had
Speaker 1: been members of our Christian church. This branch of a
Speaker 1: Presbyterian church was a very, as it turns out, fundamentalist
Speaker 1: kind of branch of the Presbyterian Church, and I feel
Speaker 1: like that was problematic because not being allowed to show
Speaker 1: up fully as ourselves caused there to be secrets and
Speaker 1: those secrets in the marriage caused the marriage to sort
Speaker 1: of crumble and I filed for divorce and the Church
Speaker 1: did not support that and did not reach out in sympathy,
Speaker 1: empathy or compassion and did not want to know why
Speaker 1: and just sort of wanted to judge and dictate. And
Speaker 1: it was at that point that I kind of said,
Speaker 1: wait a second, you know, like if there's a God,
Speaker 1: this is between me and God, not me and a
Speaker 1: bunch of at the time, you know, white middle aged
Speaker 1: men telling me in the elders of the church, telling
Speaker 1: me what could and couldn't be according to God. And so, yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of rebelled against all that and said like
Speaker 1: forget it, I can't live like this, I don't want
Speaker 1: to live like this the rest of my life. got
Speaker 1: a divorce and continued on in the corporate world, trying
Speaker 1: to sort of sort out what's what if it's not
Speaker 1: what I thought it was. The church had been an
Speaker 1: important part of your life. I mean up till then
Speaker 1: you were very involved, and now all of a sudden
Speaker 1: it's just gone. Yeah, I mean there were a couple
Speaker 1: of years in high school when I was like super
Speaker 1: rebellious and wasn't Super Church going, but then the last
Speaker 1: part of high school I really identified as like Oh,
Speaker 1: that's the right way to do things and I'll do
Speaker 1: it that way, and I kind of just jumped in wholeheartedly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so you were the corporate world a number of
Speaker 1: years and we're fairly successful at it. Yeah, and there
Speaker 1: were some good things about it, but it ultimately did
Speaker 1: not end well. Yeah, it's soured. Yeah, kind of climbed
Speaker 1: the corporate ladder pretty early on and I really loved
Speaker 1: so much of the jobs that I held, both in
Speaker 1: sales and in sales training and then in sales management.
Speaker 1: Largely it was the people that I loved, you know,
Speaker 1: but I also loved the ability of making a real
Speaker 1: difference in in pharmaceuticals. You know, there's going to be
Speaker 1: all kinds of feelings about that as I speak at
Speaker 1: you know, it's a polarizing industry right the part of
Speaker 1: it that I really connected to was the part that
Speaker 1: does a lot of good and brings medications or ways
Speaker 1: to alleviate people suffering into the hands of the people
Speaker 1: that can get it to the patients that need it,
Speaker 1: and so I felt very mission driven in that way
Speaker 1: at every level of of the industry in which I worked.
Speaker 1: And then the people that were around me became like
Speaker 1: my family, it became really my identity until really I
Speaker 1: hit kind of that glass ceiling every buddy talks about.
Speaker 1: My experience was that, you know, I got to a
Speaker 1: certain level of climbing ladder and then there were no
Speaker 1: more rungs on that ladder for me to climb, though
Speaker 1: I saw them, they weren't available to me. You know,
Speaker 1: other men that were less successful or less experienced. We're
Speaker 1: getting promoted and put in for opportunities before and instead
Speaker 1: of me. And then it became an environment of having
Speaker 1: some bosses that were really toxic and they did not
Speaker 1: believe in me and every bit of me that was
Speaker 1: out in the world and outspoken and assertive. The way
Speaker 1: it felt to me was that those edges were too
Speaker 1: sharp and that needed to be dulled down, and that's
Speaker 1: when everything soured and started to turn. Is Because, you know,
Speaker 1: I kept trying harder and harder and harder to please
Speaker 1: and do right and be successful and do good, and
Speaker 1: I just kept getting dulled more and more put down criticized,
Speaker 1: and I hit a point to where I felt like, okay,
Speaker 1: so my lack of enthusiasm about this industry, this job,
Speaker 1: and my lack of engagement with it, my inability to
Speaker 1: sort of focus on it and stay with it, I
Speaker 1: was diagnosed in high school with a d D so
Speaker 1: I was like maybe this is my a D D s.
Speaker 1: So I went to a doctor. This doctor agreed. They
Speaker 1: prescribed me this stimulant similar to adderall called vivance, and
Speaker 1: it worked. I mean, you know, it worked to help
Speaker 1: all of those things in the short term, it was
Speaker 1: really helpful. In the long term, that was not a
Speaker 1: great massive for me because it became something that I
Speaker 1: leaned way too heavily on, began to abuse and then
Speaker 1: began to medicate the abuse of that with things like
Speaker 1: alcohol to come down off of the high that that
Speaker 1: stimulant gave me during the day. And then later it
Speaker 1: became I needed ambience to be able to go to
Speaker 1: sleep because I was taking so much stimulant. And so
Speaker 1: my week days were medicated my ups and my downs,
Speaker 1: my consciousness and my and my sleep, and weekends I
Speaker 1: was just completely dead to the world to try to
Speaker 1: recoup so that I could start all over again on Monday. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: I was in a relationship that I really had identified
Speaker 1: myself with, had become very enmeshed with this person, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't a great match and that crumbled, unlike now,
Speaker 1: which is truly a very different story, which we can
Speaker 1: get to. But yeah, so that crumbled. Everything around me
Speaker 1: was sort of crumbling and I was living so far
Speaker 1: outside of myself that I caused a lot of pain,
Speaker 1: not only for myself but others, and I carry a
Speaker 1: lot of shame and wait around those days when I
Speaker 1: just I was not showing up in the world in
Speaker 1: the way that my best self would want me to.
Speaker 1: I was struggling to figure out how to survive, forget thriving,
Speaker 1: just survive in this world. I just couldn't see any
Speaker 1: other world. I couldn't see any other way to exist.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what other industries were out there are jobs.
Speaker 1: I didn't think I could find any other way to be.
Speaker 1: I certainly thought, well, I better figure out how to
Speaker 1: moderate my vibance usage because I don't know how to
Speaker 1: live without this medicine. I feel dead and side. I
Speaker 1: look at the next thirty years of my life and
Speaker 1: I feel exhausted, not excited. I felt completely detached and
Speaker 1: empty and I didn't see another way forward. And all
Speaker 1: of that ended in sort of a crash and burn
Speaker 1: and landed me back home in my parents house. It
Speaker 1: probably around thirty years old, my early thirties, and I
Speaker 1: had to kind of figure out what next. So, okay,
Speaker 1: you are now addicted to vivants. have an alcohol problem
Speaker 1: because you're using alcohol to cope with it. You have
Speaker 1: lost your job, which was kind of your identity and career,
Speaker 1: if you lost this relationship that was sort of another
Speaker 1: part of your identity, and you're back living with your parents.
Speaker 1: So things are going well, things I'm really living the dream.
Speaker 1: Uh No, I'm sort of back home. Thank God I
Speaker 1: had a home to go back to where I could
Speaker 1: sort of pick up the pieces and sort things out,
Speaker 1: which I began to do. I mean, I will say
Speaker 1: that it's always been my experience and therefore it has
Speaker 1: always been my belief and the thing I've held on too,
Speaker 1: that we grow through difficulty, and so I did think,
Speaker 1: Oh boy, like I'm probably gonna be doing some really
Speaker 1: big growth and and through this, and I was. I
Speaker 1: really held on with faith this hope that like on
Speaker 1: the other side of this is a fuller, more beautiful
Speaker 1: like soul of me. You know, I don't know how
Speaker 1: to get to that yet, but I know it's there
Speaker 1: and I think that hope and that knowledge and that
Speaker 1: faith and that experience, having seen that for yourself, is
Speaker 1: really critical to grow and as opposed to like calcify
Speaker 1: through difficult times. And so I've always been spiritually sort
Speaker 1: of attuned and connected to things that speak to a
Speaker 1: deeper realm of life. I mean back in my days
Speaker 1: of Christianity, but then even now. I mean I was
Speaker 1: searching through all kinds of things in the spiritual realm
Speaker 1: of things to help find a thread to grasp onto,
Speaker 1: and so I began to explore mindfulness and meditation, and
Speaker 1: that's how I began to put the pieces of my
Speaker 1: life in place to begin building a foundation that was
Speaker 1: stronger than the one I had had before. So what
Speaker 1: do you think were some of the key things that
Speaker 1: allowed you to sort of transform from that till now? No,
Speaker 1: I know it's been a long journey to get there,
Speaker 1: but what are some of the key ideas or key learnings?
Speaker 1: You know, as you started to kind of put things together,
Speaker 1: you just identified one which is at least been willing
Speaker 1: to identify this as a possibility for growth. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean to minimize the pain that we're in, but to
Speaker 1: at least have part of one eye on. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: this could be a growth opportunity. So that's one. What
Speaker 1: were some other things? Well, I have a seminal moment
Speaker 1: that I remember. Of course you know this. I've told
Speaker 1: you this many times, but it's this moment sitting watching
Speaker 1: an interview of Pemma children. It's the beloved Buddhist teacher,
Speaker 1: and she was talking about difficult feelings and how we
Speaker 1: have a tendency to not want to feel them right
Speaker 1: and she posed this question, which was when we sense
Speaker 1: difficult feelings, they're just asking can I be with this?
Speaker 1: And I just remember it was like an Acorn drop
Speaker 1: to my head, you know, and I was like what
Speaker 1: I mean? It had never occurred to me. Can I
Speaker 1: be with this? The message I had always gotten somehow
Speaker 1: was do not be with that. In fact, if you do,
Speaker 1: you will probably never recover that abyss of sadness or
Speaker 1: or fear or whatever that unpleasant feeling was was something
Speaker 1: that you just don't recover from, so you just don't
Speaker 1: go there. But when she was like can I be
Speaker 1: with this, it sparked my curiosity and I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, can I? And I thought, why don't
Speaker 1: I just try, and not like try to open to
Speaker 1: it fully, but like try to like slide my toe
Speaker 1: over into that area and just like see what it
Speaker 1: kind of feels like. We'll just take it from there.
Speaker 1: And that was a turning point because instead of running
Speaker 1: away from those uncomfortable, unpleasant, difficult, scary feelings. I started
Speaker 1: to turn towards them, and that shift is radical and
Speaker 1: critical right because I stopped running from things. I often
Speaker 1: think that is the seminal critical will shift in every
Speaker 1: alcoholic addicts life, that sobriety is not possible until there
Speaker 1: is some grasp of okay, whatever comes, I can be
Speaker 1: with it. I may not like it, I may hate it,
Speaker 1: it may be awful, but I can be with it.
Speaker 1: I don't have to escape it, because as long as
Speaker 1: we think we have to escape, we've got a very
Speaker 1: convenient escape that we've often gone to, you know, one
Speaker 1: that does for a period of time and in some
Speaker 1: ways actually work for a very short time. So it
Speaker 1: makes it very difficult to achieve lasting sobriety until we
Speaker 1: get that okay, I can be with this. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't like immediately I knew I could be with
Speaker 1: it all fully, but what I started to see was
Speaker 1: I can be with a bit of it and it's
Speaker 1: not nearly as obliterating as I thought it was going
Speaker 1: to be. In fact, I might even say in that
Speaker 1: moment for me I was like this isn't nearly as
Speaker 1: bad as I thought it was going to be, and
Speaker 1: so that showed me I could be with a little
Speaker 1: more of it and a little more of it and
Speaker 1: a little more of it. As I look back on
Speaker 1: it now, what I really wies is it was the
Speaker 1: building of that skill and sort of ability to tolerate
Speaker 1: discomfort that everything else unfolded. I mean, it is so
Speaker 1: true that where the wound is, that too is where
Speaker 1: the healing is. Though we may not have all the
Speaker 1: knowledge in the world, it has been my experience that
Speaker 1: I do have wisdom inside of me and that wisdom
Speaker 1: can help guide me right. I can grow that wisdom.
Speaker 1: I'm not like you know, a finished product here and
Speaker 1: just tap into it and you'll know everything you need
Speaker 1: to know, but there is some wisdom there, there is
Speaker 1: some discernment and you can begin to tap into that
Speaker 1: when you begin to open to the wounds in a
Speaker 1: skillful way. That has some support. So fast forward a bit.
Speaker 1: One of the ways I found support was in the podcast.
Speaker 1: I was first a listener and we can save our
Speaker 1: story of how we've connected for perhaps another episode, because
Speaker 1: that's the whole story in and of itself. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the parable when I first heard that I realized. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's name some things here. Let's name that we
Speaker 1: have choice. Let's name that we all have all the
Speaker 1: tendencies inside of us right and that we have the
Speaker 1: ability to nurture the life we want to live and
Speaker 1: have in the way we want to experience things. And
Speaker 1: so starting a meditation practice where I sort of began
Speaker 1: regularly sitting with myself, connecting to myself, because up until
Speaker 1: then I live so far outside of myself, with my
Speaker 1: north story being somewhere out there. I don't even know
Speaker 1: if I could have identified it. But I began cultivating
Speaker 1: a connection to it within myself. And so that was,
Speaker 1: you know, give or take, ten years ago. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the Short version of our meeting story is we met online,
Speaker 1: but not in the way people normally meet online, not
Speaker 1: through a dating service, but through the podcast. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I had started a blog and I did a blog
Speaker 1: post on the parable and I tagged you in it
Speaker 1: and you shared it and I was thrilled and yeah,
Speaker 1: began diving deeper into some of the episodes of the
Speaker 1: one you feed like. One of the first I remember
Speaker 1: is the first episode with Emily White on loneliness. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I realized I had no idea what
Speaker 1: it was I was necessarily feeling other than inside of me.
Speaker 1: It just felt bad. But when I listened to that
Speaker 1: episode I was like, Oh wait, part of this is
Speaker 1: loneliness because I had sort of walled myself off from
Speaker 1: the world and so much of everything. It's so powerful
Speaker 1: to be able to name a problem, name of human experience.
Speaker 1: It's like, instead of it then having a lot of
Speaker 1: power because you've named it, like you've given it power,
Speaker 1: it's actually the opposite of at least in my experience,
Speaker 1: what happens is you have then the power to recognize
Speaker 1: it when it shows up, figure out how to have
Speaker 1: worked skillfully with it. You're not so in Mesh and
Speaker 1: entangled and identified with it. It's like you and then
Speaker 1: that thing over there. You know, it's really powerful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you talk a lot about the power of naming things
Speaker 1: and I think some people struggle with naming because naming
Speaker 1: can become labeling and can become identity. But when we
Speaker 1: don't take it that far, it's an enormously helpful tool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really is. So let's move into one of the
Speaker 1: areas that you really specialize in working on and helping
Speaker 1: people with, which is the inner critic. You refer to
Speaker 1: yourself as an inner critic survivor. Yeah, I mean not
Speaker 1: to yeah, not to not to like make the word
Speaker 1: survivor or anything trite, but I do feel that way
Speaker 1: in terms of like the inner critic can be so
Speaker 1: corrosive that it feels like a slow death inside, and
Speaker 1: to come back from that does feel like you've fought
Speaker 1: a good fight and survived, at least from my experience.
Speaker 1: You've said that you think the inner critic is perhaps
Speaker 1: the number one cause of self created suffering. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean that would be a hypothesis. I don't have
Speaker 1: evidence behind that, but I do know it speaks to
Speaker 1: a couple of things. The first is how common it is.
Speaker 1: The inner critic tells so many lies, one of which
Speaker 1: is that, like you're the only one, you're the only
Speaker 1: one that struggles with this. So that. But the truth
Speaker 1: of the inner critic is everyone has some component of it.
Speaker 1: And now how much it trips you up, it can
Speaker 1: vary from person to person, but it is ubiquitous and
Speaker 1: in terms of suffering, your inner critic might want you
Speaker 1: to think that it's showing up for your own good,
Speaker 1: but as an adult, it actually does the opposite. It
Speaker 1: keeps you small, it keeps you in pain, very painful
Speaker 1: and it tells you lies about who you are and
Speaker 1: who you aren't, and so you don't really ever step
Speaker 1: out into who you could be. And so how do
Speaker 1: we work with the inner critic versus the inner I
Speaker 1: don't know what the word I would call it is,
Speaker 1: inner guide, conscience, you know, the part of ourselves that
Speaker 1: does genuinely reflect on when we've made a mistake, when
Speaker 1: we need to do something better, when we need to apologize.
Speaker 1: How do we differentiate the inner critic, which is a
Speaker 1: destructive force, from, I'll just use the word conscience, which
Speaker 1: is a good force? Yeah, well, I mean, I could
Speaker 1: talk a long time about this, but I'll say a
Speaker 1: couple of things. The first is you have to sort
Speaker 1: of discover for yourself that indeed you actually are enough.
Speaker 1: You are whole. You may not be a complete work
Speaker 1: of a human yet, but you are whole. You are
Speaker 1: not missing key pieces, you are not lacking in a
Speaker 1: way that would give you the right to show up
Speaker 1: in the world with dignity right like. You are whole.
Speaker 1: You are worthy, as Burnet Brown says, of love and
Speaker 1: belonging and you are enough, and that's one of the
Speaker 1: things I love about mindfulness is that it orients towards
Speaker 1: you having a direct experience of something. And so you know.
Speaker 1: The first thing is to know that, because until you
Speaker 1: know that you have that basic in Buddhism it would
Speaker 1: be called basic goodness, it might be easy to believe
Speaker 1: the lives of the inner critic. The second part of
Speaker 1: the answer, I would say is, and this is a
Speaker 1: key distinction, is the inner critic attacks who you are
Speaker 1: as a person, your identity and your worthiness to take
Speaker 1: up space and belong. It is who you are. That's
Speaker 1: who the inner critic is talking about. Your inner discernment,
Speaker 1: Your Inner Wisdom, would actually point to behaviors or actions
Speaker 1: and how they could be more skillful, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: question your basic goodness as a human being. Right, and
Speaker 1: so it can be useful to reflect on how we
Speaker 1: can be more skillful or how we can act and
Speaker 1: show up in a way in this world that more
Speaker 1: closely aligns with our values, how we can be more kind,
Speaker 1: any number of things. That's really important. Territory a quantatories.
Speaker 1: But instead of I did something bad, for lack of
Speaker 1: a better word, the inner critic would say I am bad.
Speaker 1: That is not helpful, untrue and really keeps US wounded. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as you were saying that, it hit me that another
Speaker 1: key distinction is, or another way of thinking about that,
Speaker 1: is that the inner critic does not have a growth mindset. True, right,
Speaker 1: like if I'm examining my past behavior for ways that
Speaker 1: I could do it differently, inherently there's a growth mindset.
Speaker 1: There's a belief in there that I can change. But
Speaker 1: to your point, the inner critic doesn't believe that we're
Speaker 1: going to do better, right. It actually thinks that that
Speaker 1: thing that you did is a reflection of who you are.
Speaker 1: It's the best you can do, that's what you are,
Speaker 1: whereas that internal conscience or that holding ourselves accountable or
Speaker 1: all that is inherently growth oriented. Yeah, that's such a
Speaker 1: good point and you know, it makes me think about
Speaker 1: how the inner critic is not always holding you back
Speaker 1: in the world. Sometimes it's propelling you forward with such
Speaker 1: a frantic fear and fury that you're trying to overcompensate
Speaker 1: for some inner deficiency. And both are like you say,
Speaker 1: I love this term. It's running on dirty fuel that,
Speaker 1: over time, that causes an engine to collapse. But both
Speaker 1: tell you that you're you're not good enough. You know,
Speaker 1: and you either have to overcompensate or you're not good enough.
Speaker 1: So why even try? Right? Um, the other the other
Speaker 1: thing about the inner critic is it would have you
Speaker 1: believe that it's actually acting on your behalf. Like if
Speaker 1: you didn't have the inner critic, you would not get
Speaker 1: out of bed that day, or if you didn't have
Speaker 1: the inner critic, you would not work as hard at
Speaker 1: your job or you wouldn't ever hit the gym, like
Speaker 1: you need to win in actuality. There are much better
Speaker 1: ways to motivate ourselves than shaming ourselves into doing something.
Speaker 1: And My background and education tells me, and I think
Speaker 1: personal experience might inform everybody, that you know, you actually
Speaker 1: don't perform better in an environment where you don't feel safe. Right,
Speaker 1: if safety is in jeopardy in any level, you shut down,
Speaker 1: and so we cannot possibly realize our fullest potential if
Speaker 1: we're always stuck in a shamy kind of place. So
Speaker 1: that's another lie of the inner critic. So where does
Speaker 1: it come from? I mean, I know this is just
Speaker 1: a speculation, but you know, why do we have this? Well,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of theories. The most common quota that
Speaker 1: I've heard is that it does go back to Freud
Speaker 1: and the Super Ego. Right, this part of us when
Speaker 1: we're young that keeps us in line with our family
Speaker 1: of origin or any caregivers that we have, that helps
Speaker 1: us to act and behave and relate in such a
Speaker 1: way that we don't jeopardize the connections that give us
Speaker 1: care and love and food and shelter and all of
Speaker 1: these important things. And so that is the case up
Speaker 1: until about age eight. And at age eight that part
Speaker 1: is pretty fully developed and we begin to be able
Speaker 1: to operate in a more nuanced way, with more wisdom
Speaker 1: and discernment. So we continue to grow and we really
Speaker 1: outgrow the usefulness of this Super Ego or this inner critics,
Speaker 1: so to speak. But this eight year old super ego
Speaker 1: continues to live on inside of our minds. It doesn't
Speaker 1: really evolve, but it continues to tell us and dictate
Speaker 1: what is good or bad about us, what's right and
Speaker 1: wrong about our inner world and outer world. And we
Speaker 1: end up being bossed around by a really boss the
Speaker 1: eight year old self right, that doesn't have the adults
Speaker 1: wisdom to live and discern an adult life. Right. It's
Speaker 1: a conditioning, it's a habit of mind that we really
Speaker 1: have to sort of wake up out of and begin
Speaker 1: to work skillfully with. So we'll move on from the
Speaker 1: inner critic in a minute, but you have actually produced
Speaker 1: some videos about working with the inner critic where you've
Speaker 1: got a variety of strategies. Can you share one of them? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Oh man, how to pick one? So the fur thing
Speaker 1: I would say is maybe going back to the power
Speaker 1: of naming something, it can be really helpful to sort
Speaker 1: of name your inner critics so that you begin to
Speaker 1: recognize it. Now I'll say one more thing, because I
Speaker 1: would be remiss if I didn't describe this. I wish
Speaker 1: I had heard this long before I actually did, which
Speaker 1: is the inner critic can show up as a voice
Speaker 1: and actual like we hear the words in our head.
Speaker 1: It can also show up as more of an atmosphere,
Speaker 1: and that's how it shows up for me. So I
Speaker 1: needed to begin to recognize a name like this inner
Speaker 1: weather system, this inner atmosphere that felt really icky. It
Speaker 1: just felt dark and heavy, like I was wrong and
Speaker 1: something was wrong and just bad, you know. And so
Speaker 1: when I began to recognize that feeling as the inner
Speaker 1: critics showing up. Then I began to learn how to
Speaker 1: work skillfully with that. But but know that it can
Speaker 1: show up in a variety ways, right, but however it
Speaker 1: shows up for you, you can name it, and I
Speaker 1: mean I encourage you to be playful with this, like,
Speaker 1: because humor is just a wonderful way to poke a
Speaker 1: pinhole and deflate things pretty quickly. And I wish I
Speaker 1: could have like a visual aid right now to show you,
Speaker 1: because the visual of this is funnier even than you
Speaker 1: can imagine. But for some reason, when I just like
Speaker 1: close my eyes and think of my inner critic, the
Speaker 1: image that I get is like the wicked witch from
Speaker 1: Snow White, from Disney Snow White Cartoon back in the day,
Speaker 1: the old, old one, and then I went and googled
Speaker 1: it just to get like am I remembering her correctly,
Speaker 1: and like she is even more wretched, lecherous and just
Speaker 1: hilarious looking, like as an archetype and caricature of like
Speaker 1: the wicked witch than I even remember. But now that's
Speaker 1: who I think of when that part of me kind
Speaker 1: of comes up, and it helps me take it a
Speaker 1: little less seriously and it also helps me name it
Speaker 1: so that I can begin to work skillfully. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I put together this video series and you can get
Speaker 1: that free training at one you feed dot net slash
Speaker 1: inner critic, and I plan on, you know, diving even
Speaker 1: deeper into the work in the future, because it has
Speaker 1: been the primary pain point of my internal world in
Speaker 1: the last I don't know, in my adult life, let's
Speaker 1: just say, and I have come to realize for myself
Speaker 1: that you can live without it, that you don't have
Speaker 1: to have its oppressive tyranny tearing you down all the time,
Speaker 1: and it is wonderful. So I want to help other
Speaker 1: people like find their way to that way of being
Speaker 1: so that they have a fighting chance in this life
Speaker 1: of feeling into their truest, fullest selves, free from that burden.
Speaker 1: So a big part of the inner critic work has
Speaker 1: emerged from the deep work you've done with mindfulness. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about mindfulness. It's very much a Buzzword, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, and it's a buzzword that I sort of
Speaker 1: react to a little bit, but I don't think you do.
Speaker 1: I think it's original and beautiful potential is still very alive,
Speaker 1: and you tell me what you love about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh my Gosh, how do I count the ways? So
Speaker 1: I love so much about it. What mindfulness is, as
Speaker 1: I know it now, is not as much an intellectual
Speaker 1: exercise of life. Like it's not about like, cognitively, intellectually
Speaker 1: knowing about something or letting your mind pay attention to
Speaker 1: things during your everyday life. I mean that's a piece
Speaker 1: of it, to be able to be present with our minds,
Speaker 1: but even more so it's about an embodied presence, an
Speaker 1: embodied awareness in and of the present moment, in and
Speaker 1: of our experience in the present moment, both inside of
Speaker 1: ourselves and also what's going on around us, without judgment, right,
Speaker 1: without the inner critic or really any kind of judgment.
Speaker 1: That allows us to open fully to what is, know
Speaker 1: it directly and clearly, experience it directly and clearly and
Speaker 1: just to know the fullness of life in that way.
Speaker 1: Now that's a little bit of a departure from the
Speaker 1: word mindfulness. Sounds very intellectual and it's actually opposite of
Speaker 1: that in the terms of like, it's one thing to
Speaker 1: know or to think. We have stories about the world
Speaker 1: and stories about people and stories about the way things are,
Speaker 1: and so often the stories that our minds sort of
Speaker 1: make up based on our conditioning of various sorts. It's
Speaker 1: not the truth of that thing, it's not the essence
Speaker 1: of that thing, gets lost because it's it's obscured by
Speaker 1: our stories and our conditioning, and so we can either
Speaker 1: miss out or we cause a lot of suffering, both
Speaker 1: for ourselves and others. And again back to kind of
Speaker 1: the beginning of the conversation when I said that, like
Speaker 1: my own aversion to feeling unpleasant and uncomfortable sensations and
Speaker 1: feelings and emotions has driven me a lot of my life. Well,
Speaker 1: now it's finally driven me to alleviate suffering in a
Speaker 1: way that is not an addiction, not amasking, not a
Speaker 1: running but in a healing way, in a way that
Speaker 1: makes your whole right. And so I think I'm all
Speaker 1: about trying to suffer less myself, like cause less harm
Speaker 1: to myself and also less harm to other people. I
Speaker 1: don't want other people to suffer either, and mindfulness has
Speaker 1: proven for me to be the most skillful way to
Speaker 1: do those things, realizing all of the ways that we
Speaker 1: create suffering for ourselves. I'm just like show me those
Speaker 1: ways so I can stop that. I don't want anymore.
Speaker 1: I mean, life is hard, life is painful in and
Speaker 1: of itself. It just is and it always will have
Speaker 1: moments of that and I don't want to make it
Speaker 1: harder and more painful than it is right. So, if
Speaker 1: there are things I'm doing that are causing more pain
Speaker 1: and suffering and are keeping me from living fully and
Speaker 1: experiencing even the beauty and joy of life and the
Speaker 1: fullness of who I can be, let me figure those
Speaker 1: things out so I can be more skillful. It's ultimately
Speaker 1: me just being sort of pragmatic, practical and like really
Speaker 1: hating to suffer mindfulness. Also, it's a really instructive way
Speaker 1: to show up in life, like, in other words, in
Speaker 1: my past, with previous like religions and churches and things,
Speaker 1: and not to paint them in any kind of negative picture,
Speaker 1: because I think everybody has to find where they fit
Speaker 1: and where they flourish, and it just wasn't there for
Speaker 1: me because I did not know how to do a
Speaker 1: lot of the things that the church told me were
Speaker 1: good things to do or how to stop doing the
Speaker 1: bad things that were causing me. I just I knew
Speaker 1: what maybe to do, but I didn't know how mindfulness
Speaker 1: has taught me the how, the how to be really
Speaker 1: skillful in life so that we suffer less. That's another
Speaker 1: thing I love about it. And finally, it's not about
Speaker 1: just have faith and believe and don't ask questions. It's
Speaker 1: all about ask the questions, bring curiosity and see for
Speaker 1: yourself and your direct experience. Like don't believe what anybody
Speaker 1: tells you. Right, like discover for yourself. It really points
Speaker 1: you towards your own experience. There is a critique these
Speaker 1: days of mindfulness. They call it make mindfulness right, where
Speaker 1: mindfulness has been pulled out of its original buddness container,
Speaker 1: you know, depending on how you want to frame it,
Speaker 1: it's been watered down, it's become a tool of the
Speaker 1: corporate patriarchy. It lots of different things and one of
Speaker 1: the criticisms is it has been divorced from what you
Speaker 1: were just talking about. That seems to be most apparent
Speaker 1: in a lot of churches and in the church one
Speaker 1: of the things that's most apparent, and again I'm painting
Speaker 1: with a broad brush, churches are different, but there's a
Speaker 1: big focus. We hear a lot about morality, but morality
Speaker 1: is pretty deeply baked into Buddhist thought too. So for you,
Speaker 1: how important is when learning mindfulness and using mindfulness, to
Speaker 1: have other aspects of the true issue it came from
Speaker 1: baked into that approach, or do you feel like it
Speaker 1: stands alone on its own pretty well and is a
Speaker 1: pretty powerful tool that way? Yeah, it's such a good question. Actually,
Speaker 1: in the training program where I got my certification to
Speaker 1: be a mindfulness teacher, we were divided into pods of
Speaker 1: other students in groups, small groups, and someone in that
Speaker 1: small group asked the question I think you're kind of asking,
Speaker 1: which is like, if we strip mindfulness of its Buddhist roots,
Speaker 1: is that kind of cultural appropriation? What are we doing here?
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to pretend to like say like
Speaker 1: I know the answer to this, but a couple of
Speaker 1: reflections I'll offer. I was trained in a secular mindfulness practice.
Speaker 1: That you can practice these tools, which are very skillful,
Speaker 1: and not have to like officially affiliate yourself with a
Speaker 1: Buddhist religion. Right, that there are universal truths that we
Speaker 1: can all recognize. Like in life, they're suffering, it's hard,
Speaker 1: things are impermanent, they're always changing. Right, there are certain
Speaker 1: truths that we can all learn and then begin to
Speaker 1: practice out of in a skillful way that can make
Speaker 1: life easier and more full and better for us all.
Speaker 1: There are other traditions besides Buddhism that practice meditation and
Speaker 1: mindfulness under a different name. These principles are found in
Speaker 1: the works of a lot of teachers researchers, and so
Speaker 1: it is most often associated with Buddhism. Buddhism doesn't have
Speaker 1: the exclusive rights to it. At this point in my life,
Speaker 1: I do find myself most closely like relating to the
Speaker 1: Buddhist tradition in terms of Buddhist psychology and the way
Speaker 1: the Buddha taught for us to live, so that we
Speaker 1: might suffer less and live more. But I don't think
Speaker 1: that's a requirement to be able to benefit from or
Speaker 1: practice these things right. It's not necessarily a religious experience.
Speaker 1: It is a spiritual practice of being able to unburden
Speaker 1: ourselves from suffering and live more fully. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if that speaks to your question and I'm not even
Speaker 1: sure if I fully like have explored that to rain
Speaker 1: enough to come to a real definitive conclusion, but it's
Speaker 1: certainly a question to or and like keeping the conversation.
Speaker 1: I just find it an interesting one. Some people will
Speaker 1: be like, well, mindfulness is talked to soldiers to make
Speaker 1: them kill better. What do you do with what do
Speaker 1: you do with that? I pretend to know that and
Speaker 1: it's really just more philosophical discussion than it is anything.
Speaker 1: It's not real practical. So mindfulness is though, as well
Speaker 1: as being associated with the Buddhist tradition. Can I pause
Speaker 1: you actually really quick because I will say that one
Speaker 1: orienting question around mindfulness is like becoming aware of in
Speaker 1: any given moment, like where does this lead and do
Speaker 1: I want to go there? Realizing that our actions have
Speaker 1: impact and that with every moment we are practicing ways
Speaker 1: to relate to ourselves in the world. Your favorite world
Speaker 1: word neural plasticity, right, but our our ability for our
Speaker 1: brain known, kidding, but the ability for our brains to
Speaker 1: form connections that then, with repetition, strengthened and it's those
Speaker 1: connections in our brain that really take the way we
Speaker 1: see and experience the world and show up in the world.
Speaker 1: So in a lot of ways we are practicing these
Speaker 1: things in any given moment. So when we become aware
Speaker 1: of the impact that what we're doing is having, we
Speaker 1: can then begin to ask that question earlier and earlier
Speaker 1: on in the process, which is, where is this leading
Speaker 1: and do I want to go there? And if I don't,
Speaker 1: let's re Orient to where I do want to go. So,
Speaker 1: like to your point about soldiers killing, I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know the answer to that right. That's again kind
Speaker 1: of a philosophical situation and certainly not pro killing over here. Um,
Speaker 1: I couldn't even kill the praying Mantis in our apartment
Speaker 1: the other night. I had to like escort him out
Speaker 1: in a mason jar delicately and I'm still afraid that
Speaker 1: he may have fallen too far and hurt himself. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I don't know. But I do know that we can
Speaker 1: bring awareness to things and shining the light of awareness
Speaker 1: on something illuminates aspects of it that we kind of
Speaker 1: can't unsee once we've seen them. And once something is
Speaker 1: brought into the light of awareness, it just doesn't have
Speaker 1: the same power over us as it did before. So,
Speaker 1: if anything, you know air on the side of more
Speaker 1: rather than less awareness, right, and that's what mindfulness will
Speaker 1: help you do. Yeah, yeah, I think that's kind of
Speaker 1: where I come down on the whole topic. Two is
Speaker 1: that being more aware, being more reflective, is a positive thing,
Speaker 1: no matter. It doesn't matter where you get it, how
Speaker 1: you get it. We need more of it in the
Speaker 1: world and you know, like, let's just get it out there.
Speaker 1: Nothing in the world is ever perfect, nothing is ever pure.
Speaker 1: It's just that's not the way things are. But you know,
Speaker 1: particularly in a culture that is driving us further and
Speaker 1: further away from any time in our own experience, any
Speaker 1: quiet time, any antidote to that, seems positive to me. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really true. I think so too. So mindfulness is
Speaker 1: often associated with Buddhism. It's also associated with meditation. Tell
Speaker 1: me the ways that they are linked in that they
Speaker 1: are not the same. Well, I mean there's certainly a
Speaker 1: ton of overlap. I look at meditation as a daily
Speaker 1: practice that helps me come back to the very simplest
Speaker 1: aspects of my direct experience, both inside myself and what's
Speaker 1: going on around me, that I can practice being in
Speaker 1: my body in a very somatic, embodied way. I can
Speaker 1: ground myself there, I can practice noticing what's coming up
Speaker 1: and how I'm relating to it and finding a way
Speaker 1: to have that daily stillness. Practice is really the laboratory
Speaker 1: and the training ground, in the practice field, for a
Speaker 1: lot of the skills that we hope will grow out
Speaker 1: and become our default in the rest of our life.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, it's not just about the insights
Speaker 1: you have, like on the Mat as you're meditating and
Speaker 1: the as it will inevitably happen, but you're just sort
Speaker 1: of practicing the way to relate to things and connect
Speaker 1: with yourself and be grounded and present and who and
Speaker 1: where you are. That then allows us to do more
Speaker 1: and more of that in a maybe unconscious way, in
Speaker 1: a mindfulness way, you know, during the rest of our lives.
Speaker 1: Now we can also have very meditative experiences that are
Speaker 1: off the map in our lives. In Buddhism that's talked
Speaker 1: about like you have a work practice or like Karma,
Speaker 1: Yoga it's called, or you can take some sort of
Speaker 1: activity you do every day and do it mindfully, meaning
Speaker 1: like you're not thinking about the future, you're not ruminating
Speaker 1: on the past, not analyzing the present, and when you
Speaker 1: catch yourself doing that, you bring yourself back to your
Speaker 1: direct experience of that activity. You know what it feels like,
Speaker 1: what you're hearing, you know the sensations that come with
Speaker 1: it and being very present in that moment to the
Speaker 1: very smallest details of it, so that we aren't absent minded,
Speaker 1: but we are very present for that moment in our life.
Speaker 1: And again, as we practice these things, they do begin
Speaker 1: to grow in the rest of our lives. so meditation
Speaker 1: can be an active practice in midst of your day,
Speaker 1: it can be a set aside practice that you do,
Speaker 1: you know, in the quiet of a place in your home,
Speaker 1: and it's also a way of living. So what would
Speaker 1: you say your definition of spirituality is? I love this question.
Speaker 1: So for me, spirituality is anything that simultaneously both draws
Speaker 1: me deeper into myself, the depths of myself, and connects
Speaker 1: me with that which is larger than myself. So those
Speaker 1: moments feel spiritual to me, and that can be anything from,
Speaker 1: you know, hearing poetry read. That feels really deeply spiritual.
Speaker 1: You know you're recognizing some aspect of yourself and also
Speaker 1: the universality of it, and it can be religious, but
Speaker 1: it's so not limited to that. Spirituality is and can
Speaker 1: be in any moment of connection with others and with
Speaker 1: ourselves and with the world. I mean, I feel that
Speaker 1: the arts are very spiritual because they tend to speak
Speaker 1: to the bigger pains and beauties of what it means
Speaker 1: to be human in a way that is broadening and
Speaker 1: not reductive. But yeah, that's spirituality for me. That's what
Speaker 1: I'm landing on right now. Anyway, that's my definition. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I happen to like your definition a great deal. Thanks.
Speaker 1: You're running a program called the well trained mind. Spiritual
Speaker 1: Habits is taking the fall off folks. Sorry if you
Speaker 1: were planned signing up. I hate, I hate to break
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to wait till next we hate to
Speaker 1: break it to you over the air waves, but but
Speaker 1: the good news is. The good news is it will
Speaker 1: run again in the spring. But the even better yeah, is, yeah,
Speaker 1: that the well trained mind. I'm going to offer that
Speaker 1: again this fall and I'm so excited about it. It
Speaker 1: was one of the most wonderful experiences to run that
Speaker 1: program this last time, and so to do it again
Speaker 1: feels really exciting to me. We essentially walk through the
Speaker 1: foundations of mindfulness and of mindful meditation. So I've ever
Speaker 1: been interested in what that really means how you actually
Speaker 1: do it. If you have wanted to start a meditation
Speaker 1: practice but just sort of have never gotten attraction, or
Speaker 1: maybe you're looking for a way to reinvigorate your own
Speaker 1: practice bring some life back into it. All of those reasons,
Speaker 1: it would be great reasons to join me and everybody
Speaker 1: else in this program. Because another thing I love about
Speaker 1: mindfulness of these teachings is that, though foundational, they are
Speaker 1: not elementary in the sense of like, Oh, beginners learn
Speaker 1: that and then everybody else goes on to learn something else.
Speaker 1: Right like, if you're advanced, to learn something else. These
Speaker 1: concepts are rich and deep and, depending on where you
Speaker 1: are in your life, when you meet them and encounter
Speaker 1: them for yourselves, they will mean something different for you.
Speaker 1: They will open up something new for you. So, even
Speaker 1: if you've been practicing for a while, it's a wonderful
Speaker 1: time to revisit the foundations of mindfulness at this place
Speaker 1: in your life. And so we do that in a
Speaker 1: group format and it'll be live sessions, six of them,
Speaker 1: two hours each, on Sundays, so six Sundays. And it's
Speaker 1: also really nice used to connect with other people who
Speaker 1: are also seeking to learn and deepen themselves in kind
Speaker 1: of this unifying topic, this really deep and rich topic
Speaker 1: of mindfulness and mindful meditation. So that's another exciting part,
Speaker 1: is to be able to like see those connections form
Speaker 1: in the group. We live in such a virtual world
Speaker 1: now that, like you, don't need to live in the
Speaker 1: same neighborhood as your new closest friend. You know, I
Speaker 1: have a friend who's been doing a virtual learning program
Speaker 1: and one of her best friends now is someone that
Speaker 1: she actually has not met in person but that she
Speaker 1: talks with almost every day virtually, and she lives in
Speaker 1: another country, you know, than she does, but they would
Speaker 1: not have met if not for this program. So all
Speaker 1: of that's really exciting and I invite people to see
Speaker 1: if it's for them and check it out. Well, you
Speaker 1: had a similar experience. I mean I guess you met her,
Speaker 1: but she's primarily a virtual friend, friend, Dear Anna World. Yes,
Speaker 1: she's on the other side of the world, but never
Speaker 1: far from my heart. I don't know what I would
Speaker 1: do if I had not met my dear friend Anna,
Speaker 1: and she'll be a for life now, I just know it.
Speaker 1: And we're connected through this deeper topic of mindfulness. Right. So,
Speaker 1: like we met over kind of like you and I
Speaker 1: like we met over a topic that feels really deep
Speaker 1: and important and like values driven and those are deep
Speaker 1: roots for a relationship to take soil and take they
Speaker 1: certainly can be. Why do you call the program the
Speaker 1: well trained mind? That term, I've come across it a
Speaker 1: couple of times. Just this idea that the mind is
Speaker 1: a wonderful servant but a terrible master, I think is
Speaker 1: the quote. I can't remember who to attribute it to,
Speaker 1: but the idea of being like if left on its
Speaker 1: own to run wild and free, our minds are kind
Speaker 1: of a like chaotic bit of suffering to like exist
Speaker 1: in right. Like you, we're all familiar, like you, just
Speaker 1: all you have to say is monkey mind, and most
Speaker 1: people know what that feels like. Or if we believe
Speaker 1: our thoughts right all the time, then how much suffering
Speaker 1: can come from that? So when we have a mind
Speaker 1: that we aren't so in Mesh with, we can disentangle
Speaker 1: ourselves from and we can begin to practice ways of
Speaker 1: being and connecting with, an orienting with the world. In
Speaker 1: this way we are training our minds so that the
Speaker 1: world in which we live is less chaotic and suffering
Speaker 1: and that, you know, all of the things that a
Speaker 1: mind left to its own would read. So in this
Speaker 1: way we're learning to train the mind we can do that.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. We can practice things like back to the parable.
Speaker 1: You know, we can choose the wolf we want to feed.
Speaker 1: We can choose the things we want to train. So
Speaker 1: let's learn to do that. Beautiful listeners from around the
Speaker 1: world have insisted that you now sing opera for us.
Speaker 1: Oh my God, Rascal, I will not do it. I
Speaker 1: will not do it. Let's see if we hit how
Speaker 1: many people in the program, if we had a hundred
Speaker 1: and Rowley's in the program, maybe I'll sing some opera. Well,
Speaker 1: let's be clear. You can sing opera and I can.
Speaker 1: I do it. was like the thing that was my
Speaker 1: thing in high school. We skipped right over high school.
Speaker 1: There was so much more there. Dated a guy who
Speaker 1: wore a cape. Oh my God, look, look, nothing against
Speaker 1: Cape now, nothing. They're very yet. Well, maybe not for men.
Speaker 1: I don't really know. I mean, let's put you in
Speaker 1: a Cape. You ever wear a cap? We're in a studio.
Speaker 1: Oh my God, that's the funniest story. I will say,
Speaker 1: like I grew I grew up in a very conservative
Speaker 1: family and I had I have this memory of this
Speaker 1: really crazy guy. I dated, very theatrical guy. My Dad's
Speaker 1: sitting in his recliner by a window but which is
Speaker 1: by our back door. This guy comes to pick me
Speaker 1: up for a date and he like comes, like pretending
Speaker 1: to fly in towards the back door and runs up
Speaker 1: to the window where my dad is with his cape
Speaker 1: kind of flared out. It's like Hello, and my dad
Speaker 1: just turning around, like barely reacting other than look in
Speaker 1: his eyes like what in God's and I'm like that's
Speaker 1: my date. Your Dad's pretty dead Pan and it explains
Speaker 1: why he is so happy to have me around. You
Speaker 1: and my dad, do you get along quite well? Oh,
Speaker 1: I had so much where. I want to say. Can
Speaker 1: I come back and do this again? Sure, another time.
Speaker 1: Should we tell people where they can learn about? I
Speaker 1: guess we should my program. Yes, so if you are
Speaker 1: interested in learning more about the well trained mind program
Speaker 1: and potentially signing up Um this fall, you can go
Speaker 1: to when you feed dot net slash mindfulness. Again, when
Speaker 1: you feed dot net slash mindfulness, will put the link
Speaker 1: in the show notes right folks that that are interested
Speaker 1: and yeah, I invite you to come and check it out.
Speaker 1: I would, of course, love to connect with you there.
Speaker 1: All right, well, Miss Jenny, thank you. Thanks. I appreciate it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was really, really fun. Let's do it again. Okay, okay, right.
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