Speaker 1: Once you really kind of create a mainline to the heart,
Speaker 1: you do have an anchor that you can tap into
Speaker 1: that will start giving the air that you need, the
Speaker 1: breath that you need to keep walking, and it will
Speaker 1: actually start to carry you forward.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 2: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 2: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 2: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 2: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 2: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 2: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort
Speaker 2: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 2: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 2: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2: Our guest on this episode is Sarah Blondin, a writer
Speaker 2: and videographer from British Columbia. She's also the creator of
Speaker 2: the well known podcast Live Awake. Today, Sarah and Eric
Speaker 2: discuss her book Heartminded, How to hold Yourself and others
Speaker 2: in Love.
Speaker 3: Hi, Sarah, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hi so nice to meet you.
Speaker 3: Eric. It's great to have you on. We're going to
Speaker 3: discuss your new book, which is called Heartminded, how to
Speaker 3: Hold Yourself and Others in Love, And we will talk
Speaker 3: about that in just a moment, but let's start like
Speaker 3: we always do, with the parable. There is a grandmother
Speaker 3: who's talking to her grand son and she says, in life,
Speaker 3: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 3: at battle. What is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 3: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 3: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 3: and fear. And the grandson stops and thinks about it
Speaker 3: for a second. He looks up but his grandmother and
Speaker 3: he says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says,
Speaker 3: the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 3: by asking you what that parable means to you in
Speaker 3: your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: I love this parable so much because I'm currently trying
Speaker 1: to train or teach my three year old and my
Speaker 1: six year old this very thing. And how I really
Speaker 1: interpret this is, you know, the kindness and the bravery
Speaker 1: and the love are really attributes of the heart, So
Speaker 1: I see that more of the inner spiritual life. And
Speaker 1: then the qualities of greed, hatred, and fear are really
Speaker 1: you know, separation, alienation from the heart and from the
Speaker 1: inner self. And we often kind of spiral into that
Speaker 1: place when we're more focused on the external realms. So
Speaker 1: for me, I've known, you know, how to dance with
Speaker 1: these two because they actually do serve one another. I
Speaker 1: spent most of my younger life kind of in the
Speaker 1: external realms, and then I was more, you know, in
Speaker 1: the realms of hatred and greed and trying to achieve
Speaker 1: in all of those things. And I realized that it
Speaker 1: was only in turning to the inner world, so the
Speaker 1: good wolf, to nurture the heart and the spiritual life
Speaker 1: within myself that I actually felt like life was worth living.
Speaker 1: But I needed that bad wolf quote unquote to actually
Speaker 1: encourage and force me to look to the inner spiritual realms.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that. Listener, as you're listening, what resonated
Speaker 3: with you in that? I think a lot of us
Speaker 3: have some ideas of things that we can do to
Speaker 3: feed our good wolf. And here's a good tip to
Speaker 3: make it more likely that you do it. It can
Speaker 3: be really helpful to reflect right before you do that
Speaker 3: thing on why you want to do it. Our brains
Speaker 3: are always making a calculation of what neuroscientists would call
Speaker 3: reward value, basically, is this thing worth doing? And so
Speaker 3: when you're getting ready to do this thing that you
Speaker 3: want to do to feed your good wolf, reflecting on
Speaker 3: why actually helps to make the reward value on that
Speaker 3: higher and makes it more likely that you're going to
Speaker 3: do that. For example, if what you're trying to do
Speaker 3: is exercise, right before you're getting ready to exercise, it
Speaker 3: can be useful to remind yourself of why, for example,
Speaker 3: I want to exercise because it makes my mental and
Speaker 3: emotional health better today. If you'd like a step by
Speaker 3: step guide for how you can easily build new habits
Speaker 3: that feed your good wolf, go to Goodwolf dot me,
Speaker 3: slash change and join the free masterclass. Yes, I think
Speaker 3: the bad wolf, as we say, often can can do.
Speaker 3: That can be the way of pointing us back. And
Speaker 3: your book is very much about this idea that, in
Speaker 3: order to avoid pain and difficulty, that we have learned
Speaker 3: to turn away from. You describe it as the one
Speaker 3: place within us intended to be our safehold. We orphan
Speaker 3: the part of us that flows with the current of
Speaker 3: life itself, which you say is the heart.
Speaker 1: Very much so, I mean, speaking for myself, that has
Speaker 1: been my experience, and I'm not sure what it was
Speaker 1: like for you. Did you feel like you separated from
Speaker 1: your heart in your life? Was that something that's happened
Speaker 1: to you.
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, yes, and it's something that still happens, right,
Speaker 3: you know, but pretty severely. Yeah. I mean at twenty four,
Speaker 3: I was a homeless heroin addict. So yeah, that's pretty
Speaker 3: pretty strong, pretty wrong separate and yeah, yeah, you know
Speaker 3: that's that's avoiding feeling it at all costs. Although what
Speaker 3: I think is actually interesting about a lot of my
Speaker 3: drug and alcohol uses, I actually think a lot of
Speaker 3: it was it was the way back to feeling for me,
Speaker 3: because I had separated so strongly that life felt dead,
Speaker 3: and it woke my heart up a little bit. Now,
Speaker 3: maybe that's not quite the way to say it, but
Speaker 3: I always feel like so much of that was about
Speaker 3: trying to reconnect more than it was about just trying
Speaker 3: to avoid.
Speaker 1: I totally understand that I think sometimes are reasons for
Speaker 1: disassociating and are actual the pain behind that is our
Speaker 1: longing to be at one with ourself again. So again
Speaker 1: we can see how the bad wolf is actually leading
Speaker 1: us back toward our heart in a very kind of
Speaker 1: perverted way, right right, But ultimately that's what we're all
Speaker 1: striving for. So you know, the really beautiful thing about
Speaker 1: this is any way you look at it, the heart
Speaker 1: is actually working through all of it. If we are
Speaker 1: willing to actually start listening to the longing that's guided
Speaker 1: us to the dark place in the first place, which
Speaker 1: you have done, correct, Like you've kind of muscled your
Speaker 1: way back toward the light and you continue to do
Speaker 1: so because of the wisdom of the heart.
Speaker 3: Yes, totally, totally yep.
Speaker 1: Which is fascinating, right because that's an intelligence living within
Speaker 1: you that's kind of essentially propelling us forward and forward
Speaker 1: and forward if we're willing to listen. I mean, what
Speaker 1: caused you to actually really listen? Do you remember? Was
Speaker 1: it just a rock bottom or yeah?
Speaker 3: That was certainly part of it. You know, I often
Speaker 3: say that I think like a bottom is part of
Speaker 3: what I think causes recovery. Although you know, the idea
Speaker 3: of a bottom is can be misleading because you can
Speaker 3: always keep digging, right, But I think it was a
Speaker 3: combination of like a bottom or enough consequence that came
Speaker 3: together with enough hope For me. It seems that when
Speaker 3: those two things come together, that's sort of the fertile
Speaker 3: soil that recovery can grow out of. Just one or
Speaker 3: the other doesn't seem to really do it.
Speaker 1: So that has a lot to do with grace also,
Speaker 1: and I talk about that in my book. Right, is
Speaker 1: this kind of wind that comes to support us and
Speaker 1: carry us into the lighter realms of the heart. I
Speaker 1: guess that make it possible for us to actually visit
Speaker 1: that place again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, grace is a concept I think is really interesting,
Speaker 3: and I certainly highlighted it in the book with you
Speaker 3: and wanted to cover. It's a concept I have a
Speaker 3: very mixed relationship with.
Speaker 1: Oh I want to hear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, what it is is that, like I got
Speaker 3: sober and twelve step programs, and the essence of a
Speaker 3: twelve step program is that God comes along and gets
Speaker 3: you sober, right that it's the grace of God. You know,
Speaker 3: people will say that all the time, by the grace
Speaker 3: of God, I'm sober today, and I always found that
Speaker 3: challenging to fully internalize because I watched lots of people
Speaker 3: die of it. I watched lots of people who showed
Speaker 3: up and went to treatment like I did, and went
Speaker 3: to meetings like I did, and seemed to really be trying,
Speaker 3: and I watched them sort of die, And so I went, well,
Speaker 3: I don't know about the idea of a god that
Speaker 3: saves me but lets them go. And yet despite that feeling,
Speaker 3: there's something unnamable that occurs. I don't have a better
Speaker 3: word than grace. So the whole thing is sort of
Speaker 3: confusing for me, because I think anybody who spends enough
Speaker 3: time close to addiction goes. I have no idea. I
Speaker 3: cannot figure out what why some people get this and
Speaker 3: others don't. So this idea of a grace that some
Speaker 3: of us get but others don't get is challenging for me.
Speaker 3: But I think your idea of grace is it seems
Speaker 3: to come more from within.
Speaker 1: Grace almost feels like a wind or a levity that
Speaker 1: comes and kind of lifts my gaze and my being
Speaker 1: up from the mire. It almost stops me from looking
Speaker 1: downward at the ground and at my feet and at
Speaker 1: my suffering and says, look up, and that wisdom wasn't
Speaker 1: chosen by me, It's actually put in me, and whether
Speaker 1: I am receptive to that wisdom or not is up
Speaker 1: to me. And I think a lot of people that
Speaker 1: may be suffering with addictions and such, you know, we
Speaker 1: don't really know what's going on internally with them and
Speaker 1: how much they're either open to receiving that wisdom calling
Speaker 1: that always is there, or whether they're shutting down. They
Speaker 1: may be trying on the outside, but there may be
Speaker 1: internally a very big no to the healing and a
Speaker 1: very big no to the grace that's coming. And I
Speaker 1: know that for myself that you know, when I first
Speaker 1: kind of woke up to my spiritual self and my
Speaker 1: spiritual life and my spiritual responsibility, I remember having this
Speaker 1: massive no, and it was such a strong because I
Speaker 1: was scared to death about what that would mean, and
Speaker 1: I was scared mostly of my responsibility, realizing the agency
Speaker 1: was mine and it was my job. And I think
Speaker 1: in recovery from anything and healing from anything, that job
Speaker 1: can be very daunting and big, and the pain can
Speaker 1: feel insurmountable, and we can dance with the light and
Speaker 1: dance with the dark. And sometimes the dark ultimately wins.
Speaker 1: But either way, you know, I don't look at death
Speaker 1: as a you know, horrible thing either. You know, we
Speaker 1: have to just kind of see all of it as
Speaker 1: you know, some sort of beautiful dance. But we don't
Speaker 1: really know what's going on for everyone. But for me,
Speaker 1: grace is really something that just says, look up, look up,
Speaker 1: look up, and it's up to me. Yeah, whether I'm
Speaker 1: hearing it or not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think what you bring up in the book,
Speaker 3: you say it at one point, you say, all this
Speaker 3: hurt and heartache I'd been living with, as it turns out,
Speaker 3: or under my ownership, the onus to change was on me.
Speaker 3: And it's this idea of responsibility, and I think this
Speaker 3: is a really critical point. I interviewed somebody just a
Speaker 3: couple of weeks ago who wrote a book about recovery
Speaker 3: called We Are the Luckiest Laura Macowan. I don't know
Speaker 3: if you know her, but it's a beautiful book. But
Speaker 3: she says that in her mind, the difference between who
Speaker 3: gets sober and who doesn't are the people who take
Speaker 3: full responsibility for their healing. And people often hear this
Speaker 3: and react sort of strongly, like, well, I'm not responsible
Speaker 3: for all the bad things that happened to me. And
Speaker 3: on one hand, certainly, no, we're not at fault at
Speaker 3: all for all the bad things that happened to us.
Speaker 3: But we are the only ones who can heal.
Speaker 1: It one hundred percent. I mean, that is what is
Speaker 1: so scary for most of us. And I think that's
Speaker 1: why we don't actually start to venture within, because we
Speaker 1: know that all the fingers we've been pulled pointing will
Speaker 1: start being pointed back at us. We will see that
Speaker 1: our hand is the one pointing, and that our eyes
Speaker 1: are the one seeing things the way they're seeing. And
Speaker 1: that is almost like, oh, my goodness, I have to
Speaker 1: rebuild the foundation of my entire being. And you know
Speaker 1: that's like saying you have to tear your house down
Speaker 1: and rebuild it with your bare hands. And you know
Speaker 1: that again is going to provoke so much fear and
Speaker 1: helplessness and hopelessness. But that's why I kind of wanted
Speaker 1: to write this book. It's because once you really kind
Speaker 1: of create a mainline to the heart, you do have
Speaker 1: an anchor that you can tap into that will start
Speaker 1: giving the air that you need, the breath that you
Speaker 1: need to keep walking and it will actually start to
Speaker 1: carry you forward. There is a force within you that
Speaker 1: is actually helping you move forward. You just have to
Speaker 1: start learning to be aware of it. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: you met with that yourself, because you've recovered, you know,
Speaker 1: as esoteric as it seems, there is something truly there.
Speaker 1: And I think it's by way of the heart that
Speaker 1: we can access that benevolent force.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the point you make in the book so well
Speaker 3: is that this sort of looking to others to blame
Speaker 3: for what's happening to us. You say that, you know,
Speaker 3: we don't realize that this act will take from us
Speaker 3: a large sum of our power, and that power will
Speaker 3: be held hostage by the thing we've named is responsible
Speaker 3: for our distress. But the opposite is equally true. When
Speaker 3: we do take that responsibility, that becomes our strength.
Speaker 1: It helps us excavate us self that actually learns to
Speaker 1: believe in itself, a self that learns to forgive and
Speaker 1: kind of let go, and it actually helps us see
Speaker 1: that everybody is flawed, and it helps us forgive the
Speaker 1: people that have hurt us because they have been hurt.
Speaker 1: You know, when we start seeing from the perspective of
Speaker 1: of the heart, we start looking beyond not just the
Speaker 1: thing that happened to us, but the pain that was
Speaker 1: hidden within that thing, within that person, and you see
Speaker 1: the kind of ripple effect of our pain and the
Speaker 1: lineage of our pain, and you're able to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: you know we're all flawed, and I can forgive this,
Speaker 1: and I can move through this, and I can sit
Speaker 1: in the seat of my heart and I I have
Speaker 1: the power to comfort, console and move myself into the
Speaker 1: life that I want, into the being that I want.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's ultimately what we're learning is a mastery
Speaker 1: of the self, right, And.
Speaker 3: I think I see that people tend to often maybe
Speaker 3: one one of these is way more dominant than the other,
Speaker 3: and some people oscillate between them. But the fault is
Speaker 3: out there, and then there's the equal or I just
Speaker 3: am terrible and I'm the reason that everything is as
Speaker 3: bad as it is in me. And so we've talked
Speaker 3: about put the responsibility out there, But how do you
Speaker 3: respond to somebody who's internalizing it not in an empowering way,
Speaker 3: but in a I'm broken kind of way.
Speaker 1: I think that's a very you know, natural part of
Speaker 1: any sort of self introspection or starting to look at ourselves.
Speaker 1: Is we notice that, you know, we're kind of doing
Speaker 1: that on a daily basis all the time, like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I screwed up with my kid, I said something horrible
Speaker 1: to him. I'm a bad mother. You know, We're doing
Speaker 1: it on large and small scales all day long. We
Speaker 1: just have to understand that that's a natural part of
Speaker 1: the process of starting to look within ourselves and starting
Speaker 1: to develop a spiritual relationship with ourselves. But if we
Speaker 1: keep at it, there is a tenderizing that starts to
Speaker 1: take place again. We see the grace starting to work.
Speaker 1: I think when you have both feet planted in front
Speaker 1: of the heart and you start saying what is true
Speaker 1: for you in that moment. And that's why I have
Speaker 1: these chapters on admitting our feelings and speaking what is
Speaker 1: true for us to try and get that to move through.
Speaker 1: So if we're going within and all we can see
Speaker 1: is our own fault and how we've brought the pain
Speaker 1: and instigated the pain and we are wrong, if we
Speaker 1: start speaking that externally, you know, light begins to thread
Speaker 1: through our darkness, and there's this incredible vulnerability that comes
Speaker 1: with admitting how in pain we feel, and eventually that
Speaker 1: does turn to beauty if you are willing to, you know,
Speaker 1: really muscle yourself to see the goodness in that. But
Speaker 1: if you're keeping your eyes, you know, downcast in the pain,
Speaker 1: in the victimization of yourself, then that's where we get stuck.
Speaker 1: That's why I wanted to create you know, the importance
Speaker 1: and really say you have to feel what you are feeling.
Speaker 1: You have permission to feel these things because in just
Speaker 1: feeling and just speaking and giving yourself permision and you
Speaker 1: actually begin the healing process that has a very natural
Speaker 1: rhythm on its own.
Speaker 3: I love what you just said there, and I wanted
Speaker 3: to get into this point a little bit because I
Speaker 3: think it's a nuanced point and i'd like to talk
Speaker 3: about it because what you're saying is and you've got
Speaker 3: a great line here. You said, this was all for
Speaker 3: you about addressing, not avoiding your afflictions, right, And just
Speaker 3: a moment ago, you said, you know, we go into
Speaker 3: the pain and we allow it to be there, and
Speaker 3: we speak what's true for us, but we don't look down.
Speaker 3: We sort of look up. And you know, I'm curious
Speaker 3: this idea of going into feeling our emotions addressing our emotions.
Speaker 3: I certainly hear a lot of it in the guests
Speaker 3: that come on the show. It's certainly been a big
Speaker 3: part of my work. But I think it's interesting to
Speaker 3: talk about how to sort of go into those emotions,
Speaker 3: allow them to be there. But like you said, not
Speaker 3: get lost in our own pain and darkness. How do
Speaker 3: you do both those things?
Speaker 1: I'm going to give an annoying answer. It is literally practice,
Speaker 1: and it is a willingness to you know, ride it out,
Speaker 1: so to speak. So if you're just beginning the process
Speaker 1: of trying to heal you know, some deep and painful wounds,
Speaker 1: and you're sitting there and you're just repeating all that's
Speaker 1: wrong and all that's heavy and all that's dark within you,
Speaker 1: I mean, you're going to feel in a dark place
Speaker 1: for a bit. And I remember once having this experience
Speaker 1: where I actually watched myself willingly go into my darkness.
Speaker 1: And I actually did this a lot when I was
Speaker 1: first starting my journey. Is that I would say, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm nose diving, and I could feel it, right, you
Speaker 1: knew when you were going into your suffering and when
Speaker 1: you were trying to escape, I'm assuming right, so and
Speaker 1: I would say, yeah, you know I'm going in, so
Speaker 1: I would give my permission, my self permission to go
Speaker 1: headlong into this horrible dark place, and then I would
Speaker 1: expect to stay there for two or three willingly, and
Speaker 1: then I'd feel bad about myself, and I'd roll around
Speaker 1: in this pit of despair and think nothing good could
Speaker 1: possibly come from this place, and I'm going to be
Speaker 1: here forever, and this is way too hard. But I
Speaker 1: noticed that something incredible would start to happen in my
Speaker 1: agreeing to even go into the darkness. Is that I
Speaker 1: was learning somehow to take my own chains off. And
Speaker 1: I don't know what else to say. Then, with practice
Speaker 1: and with time, it actually does get easier, and you
Speaker 1: start not wanting to stay as long in the dark places,
Speaker 1: and you start untying yourself quicker and quicker, and you
Speaker 1: stop needing to go as deep and as dark because
Speaker 1: you realize that the only one that lifts you out
Speaker 1: of that place anyway is yourself. So it's up to
Speaker 1: you how long or how short you're actually living in
Speaker 1: that kind of murky land. And with time, you actually
Speaker 1: start to be empowered to stop choosing it, and you've
Speaker 1: visited the pain enough to learn how to untie yourself.
Speaker 1: So again we see how the dark or the bad
Speaker 1: wolf is actually helping the light wolf. There is no
Speaker 1: right and wrong, black and white right.
Speaker 3: You say at one point in the book, we can't
Speaker 3: think our way back to our hearts. We have to
Speaker 3: feel our way there. And that's kind of what you're
Speaker 3: saying here. There isn't a prescription elsewhere you say that
Speaker 3: there's no right or wrong way of to approach our feelings. No, absolutely,
Speaker 3: And and you know where I wrestle is this idea,
Speaker 3: because I do find this point to be a nuanced one,
Speaker 3: and it's one that I think, particularly if we have
Speaker 3: developed some sort of spiritual life to a point, is
Speaker 3: that you know the term that's used as spiritual bypass right,
Speaker 3: It's like, okay, well I feel that, but I also
Speaker 3: recognize that maybe if I took this perspective about it,
Speaker 3: or I took this, you know, and then it's a
Speaker 3: way of potentially of bypassing. And I find this, you know,
Speaker 3: a lot of clients I work with is a little
Speaker 3: bit of this wrestling like what's the right way to
Speaker 3: do it? And so I find it's almost always helpful
Speaker 3: to go to the emotion first. What do I feel
Speaker 3: and allow that feeling to be there and inhabit the feeling,
Speaker 3: and then if there is a different way to look
Speaker 3: at it or view it or perspective to take, then
Speaker 3: you use that, as you say, to sort of lift
Speaker 3: you back up out. But the descent seems to be important.
Speaker 1: I think the descent is important, and I just think
Speaker 1: it's the beginning phase. I mean, that's why we're kind
Speaker 1: of starting to even bother to look within ourselves in
Speaker 1: the first place, is because we're visiting the dark too
Speaker 1: much or life feels too painful, and we're kind of
Speaker 1: escaping our lives and that forces us to look inward.
Speaker 1: So I think there's no really you know, skipping over
Speaker 1: that step.
Speaker 3: You talk a lot about the heart and the mind,
Speaker 3: and you say, we're not trying to pit the heart
Speaker 3: and mind against one another. We're trying to marry their aptitudes.
Speaker 3: But you describe a couple ways that you see the
Speaker 3: difference between the heart and mind. Could you sort of
Speaker 3: share the heart and the mind, you know the differences
Speaker 3: between the two.
Speaker 1: So you said something really important about not trying to
Speaker 1: pit the heart and the mind against one another. We're
Speaker 1: actually trying to bring the mind down into the heart
Speaker 1: so that it's acting more from the heart's wisdom and
Speaker 1: from the consciousness of the heart. But the mind on
Speaker 1: its own, so the unharnessed mind, and the mind by
Speaker 1: default is very frantic. It's concerned with scarcity and lack
Speaker 1: and how we look and how we feel, and what's
Speaker 1: dangerous and what's not. It's telling us to approach or not.
Speaker 1: It's like a dog chasing its tail kind of problem
Speaker 1: seeking and solving. So on its own it's quite an ungrounded,
Speaker 1: unhelpful companion. But once it's married to the heart and
Speaker 1: the wisdom of the heart, we can actually begin to
Speaker 1: bring the consciousness of the heart, which is more of
Speaker 1: that benevolence, that kindness, that courage, that love. You know.
Speaker 1: I call it in the book the two point zero
Speaker 1: version of ourselves. So I think we each have a
Speaker 1: version of ourselves, an idealized version of ourselves which we
Speaker 1: can see, and we're always measuring ourselves against this version,
Speaker 1: and that is kind of the call of the heart.
Speaker 1: That's the us. If we really step into the heart,
Speaker 1: this is the us that starts to live embodied in kindness.
Speaker 1: It's courageous, it's taking risks, it's living with love and
Speaker 1: leading with love. So if we start to bring that
Speaker 1: consciousness and tell the mind this is what we want.
Speaker 1: We don't want to keep seeking our problems. We don't
Speaker 1: want to keep being worried and fearful about the unknowns
Speaker 1: and reaching to the future. We want to be seated
Speaker 1: in the present moment with this kindness at our center
Speaker 1: and just kind of unfazed by what's going on in
Speaker 1: the world. I know, when I really sit in my heart,
Speaker 1: I remember really going to a state of just distress
Speaker 1: around COVID and what's going on in the world right now,
Speaker 1: and my mind started to take over. I left the
Speaker 1: seat of my heart. I kind of went into a
Speaker 1: frantic place and looking to the future and the unknowns
Speaker 1: and starting telling stories and dialogues and conspiracy, and I
Speaker 1: just went ooh. I started to feel sick because the
Speaker 1: energy and the momentum can be so potent and so strong.
Speaker 1: And I walked to my cabin and I lay down
Speaker 1: on the floor, and I got so calm, and I
Speaker 1: started blessing my body and blessing my being and really
Speaker 1: trying to calm down the nervous system. And I could
Speaker 1: feel when I shifted into the heart center, because all
Speaker 1: of a sudden I started to see, you know, the
Speaker 1: beauty that was coming from this crisis and what it
Speaker 1: could create. And I started having like empowered visions and
Speaker 1: heart centered ideas, and I wasn't afraid anymore. I was
Speaker 1: in my heart. I was calm, I was courageous, and
Speaker 1: I was able to withstand this. I was able to
Speaker 1: The heart kind of gives us a very very strong
Speaker 1: spine and helps us kind of maneuver through some of
Speaker 1: the hardest places in our lives. So the point is,
Speaker 1: the mind is going to have its own agenda, but
Speaker 1: we have to start training it to start having the
Speaker 1: heart's agenda. And that's the whole point of my book, Heartmind,
Speaker 1: is to essentially start training the mind to start do that.
Speaker 3: I want to pause for a quick good Wolf reminder.
Speaker 3: This one's about a habit change and a mistake I
Speaker 3: see people making. And that's really that we don't think
Speaker 3: about these new habits that we want to add in
Speaker 3: the context of our entire life.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Habits don't happen in a vacuum. They have to fit
Speaker 3: in the life that we have. So when we just
Speaker 3: keep adding I should do this, I should do that,
Speaker 3: I should do this. We get discouraged because we haven't
Speaker 3: really thought about what we're not going to do in
Speaker 3: order to make that happen. So it's really helpful for
Speaker 3: you to think about where is this going to fit
Speaker 3: and what in my life might I need to remove.
Speaker 3: If you want to step by step guide for how
Speaker 3: you can easily build new habits that feed your good Wolf,
Speaker 3: go to good Wolf dot me, slash change and join
Speaker 3: the free masterclass. You mentioned this enhanced version of ourselves
Speaker 3: that the heart sees something like you know me two
Speaker 3: point zero right, Yeah, And I think that's a great idea,
Speaker 3: But you say that we often miss you this because
Speaker 3: I'm just going to read what you said because I
Speaker 3: think it makes so much sense. Unfortunately, the problem with
Speaker 3: this fantasy image is that we tend to misuse it.
Speaker 3: It often becomes something we use to belittle ourselves rather
Speaker 3: than inspire ourselves. We measure who we are against this
Speaker 3: fantasy self and feel failure and incompetence when we should
Speaker 3: be grateful for being gifted this vision of a more
Speaker 3: loving and able self. So talk about how to accept
Speaker 3: those shortcomings. Because I love this idea because I think
Speaker 3: a lot of us we see this better version of ourselves.
Speaker 3: I do a lot of work with people about setting
Speaker 3: intentions for who do we want to be? What's the
Speaker 3: kind of person we want to be? And inevitably we
Speaker 3: don't live up to those all the time. And so
Speaker 3: how do we use those like you say to inspire
Speaker 3: us versus make us feel bad about ourselves?
Speaker 1: Well that was a lesson I learned for myself. I
Speaker 1: really started to see that I was using this vision
Speaker 1: that I had of myself as an instrument of abuse,
Speaker 1: and I was like, wow, I'm abusing myself for being
Speaker 1: gifted something that's actually there to help me move up
Speaker 1: into it. And it took me a long time to
Speaker 1: stop doing the normal thing, which is focusing on the
Speaker 1: shortcomings and how we're falling short, and really see that
Speaker 1: this vision is always there, This map is always there
Speaker 1: for us. It's like our north star. It's like there,
Speaker 1: this is where you need to be, this is how
Speaker 1: you need to look, feel, see, and it's always there.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really move, it doesn't really falter. And again
Speaker 1: we see our fear of our agency and not wanting
Speaker 1: to take full responsibility, and we see how going down
Speaker 1: to belittle and beraate ourselves is actually a powerless kind
Speaker 1: of representation, and we kind of go into this persona
Speaker 1: of powerless victimhood and we wallow in that again. But eventually,
Speaker 1: you know, I think with this, at least for myself,
Speaker 1: I've really started to keep shifting, keep pivoting, keep reorienting
Speaker 1: myself toward the wisdom of the heart and the vision
Speaker 1: of the heart, and we start losing interest in all
Speaker 1: the darkness. Eventually, we start losing less and less interest
Speaker 1: in needing to go there and needing to really feed
Speaker 1: those places. You know, the heart starts to really blazoon
Speaker 1: within us. Once it really starts to bloom and grow,
Speaker 1: it actually does start to kind of infiltrate our consciousness,
Speaker 1: our cells, our memory, our atoms, everything starts to kind
Speaker 1: of start to move into a more harmonious state of homeostasis.
Speaker 1: You know, these dead cells, if you will, kind of
Speaker 1: start to die off. I mean, I think there is
Speaker 1: science that's even proving this, right, Like we create new
Speaker 1: pathways in the brain which actually don't have room for
Speaker 1: those kind of old patterns of hurt.
Speaker 3: Essentially, Yeah, you say at one point in the book,
Speaker 3: the struggle and suffering are always present. I've yet to
Speaker 3: meet a day where one or the other is not
Speaker 3: offered to me. And I know this is true for
Speaker 3: most of us. So let's talk about this vision that
Speaker 3: you've just described in this opening of the heart and
Speaker 3: this blooming and these good things that are happening, with
Speaker 3: the fact that struggle and suffering tend to show back
Speaker 3: up pretty often, how do you work with that within yourself?
Speaker 1: This has been an ongoing learning for me. And like
Speaker 1: I kind of professalate earlier, was that I tended to
Speaker 1: go to the dark place often when it would show up.
Speaker 1: It would say, Okay, here's your suffering, and I'd go, okay,
Speaker 1: let's do it, and I would get lost in that suffering.
Speaker 1: But now I've become it's almost like it's a hard line.
Speaker 1: You're creating boundaries now. You know, once you start to
Speaker 1: see the whole network of things that are kind of
Speaker 1: going on within you, you know you're more aware. You
Speaker 1: know you're no longer in the dark. You have the
Speaker 1: light on in the closet. You start to really create
Speaker 1: boundaries for yourself and you know, hardship, suffering, heartache are
Speaker 1: all going to be there. Honor them, be with them,
Speaker 1: but keep like I was saying, reorienting and pivoting. Otherwise
Speaker 1: you're just going to end up lost in that suffering again.
Speaker 1: And that's not really somewhere where we're trying to be anymore. Right,
Speaker 1: the whole point of healing is trying to kind of
Speaker 1: rise up to a higher level of consciousness or a
Speaker 1: higher frequency, so we don't have to embody that anymore.
Speaker 1: But I don't think they're going to go away. And again,
Speaker 1: that's the compassion, that's the gentleness, that's the understanding that
Speaker 1: we're really trying to create a muscle memory with too.
Speaker 3: Right, you write that if we cannot transform, the moments
Speaker 3: of discomfort, will forever be running from our life. But
Speaker 3: if you learn to stay, you learn how to be.
Speaker 3: And I absolutely love that idea that if we learn
Speaker 3: to stay, we learn how.
Speaker 1: To be, because this is the human experience and we
Speaker 1: can't keep running from you know, every pain or every wound,
Speaker 1: or every memory or every outcropping of something. You know,
Speaker 1: if we can learn to actually take a deep breath,
Speaker 1: sit down, let the feelings move up and out under
Speaker 1: you know, the gaze of our loving awareness, we actually
Speaker 1: start to you know, transmute the experience of our life.
Speaker 1: To one of like an inner hospitality, and you know,
Speaker 1: and then and then that hospitality starts to leak outward
Speaker 1: and everyone who's suffering feels welcome, and you know, there's
Speaker 1: no lines anymore, and it just becomes this great big dance,
Speaker 1: you know, unfurling in front of you.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I love that inner hospitality idea. It's a phrase
Speaker 3: I actually use about. You know, we become more hospitable inside.
Speaker 3: Our internal environment becomes one that is more hospitable and
Speaker 3: more pleasant to live in.
Speaker 1: Beautiful, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: But that is from sitting and staying right, like that
Speaker 1: is from learning to sit your butt down.
Speaker 3: Totally, Totally. There. We talked a little bit earlier about
Speaker 3: ideas about what it is that causes you know, some
Speaker 3: people to be able to recover and others not, you know,
Speaker 3: from addiction, and to me, that's the one that I
Speaker 3: see the most is that everybody who finally transforms it
Speaker 3: gets to the point where they go, oh, I don't
Speaker 3: feel good, but okay, I can handle that. I don't
Speaker 3: have to move away from this. I don't have to
Speaker 3: because addiction is just one constant, like I don't feel good,
Speaker 3: give me some I don't feel good, Give me some.
Speaker 3: I don't feel good, give me some. And we can
Speaker 3: be addicted to lots of different things, you know. Addiction
Speaker 3: happens along a spectrum, but that is the fundamental movement
Speaker 3: of I don't like how I feel, Give me something
Speaker 3: to make it different, and learning to be able to
Speaker 3: go well, you know what, don't I don't have to
Speaker 3: run away from this to me is one of those
Speaker 3: fundamental things that changes inside of us.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's revolutionary. It changes your entire experience. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean it's always easy or right. You know, sometimes the
Speaker 1: big scaries come up, or the big sticky ickies as
Speaker 1: I like to call them, the sticky ones that you
Speaker 1: know are really deeply entrenched and very scary. But I
Speaker 1: know well enough now that you know these are also
Speaker 1: transient things, which is only from sitting and staying and
Speaker 1: watching them come and watching them go.
Speaker 3: You quote one of my favorite Mary Oliver phrases of
Speaker 3: all time, which is that attention is the beginning of devotion,
Speaker 3: that I think is brilliant. But you also quote a
Speaker 3: book that I just finished reading, which is suemunk Kid's
Speaker 3: book called When the Heart Weight spiritual direction of her
Speaker 3: life's sacred questions that I just had a conversation with
Speaker 3: her the other day and I had just read that
Speaker 3: book for the first time, and when I saw it,
Speaker 3: I was like, well, wow, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: Isn't that a gorgeous book?
Speaker 3: Oh, it's stunning. Yeah, and it's like thirty years old.
Speaker 3: I mean she wrote it a long time ago.
Speaker 1: Oh and just her level of understanding of the heart
Speaker 1: was beyond eloquent. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Her new novel that just came out days ago is incredible.
Speaker 1: Is that she's just horful later? Oh my god.
Speaker 3: So I want to wrap us up here with talking
Speaker 3: a little bit about a moment you describe in the book,
Speaker 3: and you talk about you you sit down and you're
Speaker 3: trying to calm and cool your overly active mind. And
Speaker 3: you say, you know, for months you've been pouring yourself,
Speaker 3: your thoughts, your inspiration into the book that we're discussing,
Speaker 3: and that very little else was allowed in. And you
Speaker 3: talk about how you had to sort of settle yourself
Speaker 3: down and that I'm going to just read a little
Speaker 3: bit of what you wrote and then I'm going to
Speaker 3: ask you to talk more about it, because I think
Speaker 3: this sort of overheated, like pouring ourselves into something we
Speaker 3: love has its beauty, but it also tends to cause
Speaker 3: us to be very overly active. And you say, if
Speaker 3: I could not tend lovingly to the quiet, I would
Speaker 3: spend a lifetime collecting things that would hold little if
Speaker 3: any worth. In the end, reflecting on how we treat
Speaker 3: ourselves without the security blanket of our achievements will expose
Speaker 3: how we are treating the foundation of our life.
Speaker 1: Now that's a really hard one for me to learn.
Speaker 1: It's incredible to watch how we really, you know, circle
Speaker 1: from one achievement to the next, and one relationship to
Speaker 1: the next, and then we're never really dropping down to
Speaker 1: meet ourselves. And then I realized that the life in
Speaker 1: between was actually my relationship with my own self. And
Speaker 1: I know that at the end of the day, I
Speaker 1: have this very vivid image of dying for some reason
Speaker 1: and kind of lying there in my deathbed and really
Speaker 1: knowing what it is to let go and seeing that
Speaker 1: you know, all these things we fill our days with,
Speaker 1: and beautiful enough, they hold very little value compared to
Speaker 1: what we actually create within ourselves, our kind of relationship
Speaker 1: to our spirit and ourself. That is where the real
Speaker 1: value is. For me, that's what actually gives me the
Speaker 1: feeling of vitality and a liveness, not my pursuits. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I had to really learn that. I always kind of
Speaker 1: step back when I'm about to start creating a project
Speaker 1: and realize, Okay, you're gonna be going into this very
Speaker 1: momentous force that is creativity. But creativity in a sense
Speaker 1: while you are creating is also a sort of it
Speaker 1: has a depleting quality. It's like a draining. You know,
Speaker 1: you're excited you're writing a zephyr, but you're also draining
Speaker 1: life force from yourself on a level I believe, and
Speaker 1: then you have to be able to become still enough
Speaker 1: to come back and replenish. And that's by way of spirit,
Speaker 1: by way of heart, by way of soul, and that connection,
Speaker 1: that deep connection. And I remember going to a retreat
Speaker 1: with Natalie Goldberg, a writing retreat and she incorporates zen
Speaker 1: and we were doing slow walking and I felt this
Speaker 1: incredible joy starting to rise just by like walking so
Speaker 1: slowly and being able to see the cracks and the
Speaker 1: concrete and the way the sun danced in shadows, and
Speaker 1: I felt this joy just like wanting to burst out
Speaker 1: of my body and I wanted to skip and dance
Speaker 1: and run, and Natalie said, oh, isn't it beautif full
Speaker 1: to feel joy? You know, but try and embody and
Speaker 1: contain that joy, and then it actually kind of builds
Speaker 1: a surplus of it in the body. But so long
Speaker 1: as we're kind of spinning out on that, we're kind
Speaker 1: of depleting ourselves and we're running rampant. So it does
Speaker 1: have you know, you know, those two qualities the paradox
Speaker 1: of creation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's a good way of saying it.
Speaker 3: Creativity is, like you say, it can ultimately be depleting,
Speaker 3: but in the moment it's this beautiful like a drug.
Speaker 3: A drug, yeah, yeah, but different than a drug in
Speaker 3: that I do feel like we can meet oneness through creativity.
Speaker 3: There's a place in creativity where the self as we
Speaker 3: think of it melts away and there's just the creating,
Speaker 3: which is a beautiful thing. But I always find that
Speaker 3: like when we're creating and at the same time we
Speaker 3: can't help but care about how that creation is received
Speaker 3: and seen, And so it feels like this razor's edge
Speaker 3: to walk of, Like on one side of it, it's
Speaker 3: this beautiful generative merging with with life force, because the
Speaker 3: life force feels creative, and then you just veer a
Speaker 3: little bit one way from there and you're like worried
Speaker 3: about how it's going to be, and you're like, jeez, go,
Speaker 3: my goodness. It's just very tricky.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It's because it's easy when we're pursuing something, when you know,
Speaker 3: when we're just like, well, we're just pursuing something because
Speaker 3: it's going to give us something and we can feel that,
Speaker 3: and that's pretty easy to be like, ah, I shouldn't
Speaker 3: probably do that, Maybe I should. But it's when we're
Speaker 3: pursuing things that we deeply love and have meaning and value.
Speaker 3: That's where I think it gets a little bit trickier.
Speaker 3: At least I'm finding it to be a little bit
Speaker 3: trickier to find the right way to inhabit that space
Speaker 3: that doesn't, like you said, sort of burn me out
Speaker 3: or you know, cause me to get so sort of
Speaker 3: crazed with the thing I'm doing. I think it's a
Speaker 3: balance that I think a lot of creative people have
Speaker 3: to figure out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and struggle with, you know, because I feel like
Speaker 1: creativity also can have like an addictive quality to it, right,
Speaker 1: and this kind of like and then, you know, I
Speaker 1: realized my relationships with my loved ones were suffering. My
Speaker 1: relationships with the present moment were suffering. I couldn't sit
Speaker 1: and be still and watch a flower or the dew
Speaker 1: on the grass. You know, I didn't want to. There's
Speaker 1: this kind of childlike, you know, brattiness that wanted to
Speaker 1: jump up and just keep riding this, you know, essentially
Speaker 1: infinite wind, right, you know. So I realized, you know
Speaker 1: that it really does require I feel better. As much
Speaker 1: as I love being creative and as much as I
Speaker 1: love doing my work, I do feel better when I
Speaker 1: am well seated inside. And I think maybe there's a
Speaker 1: way to marry the two where you're actually kind of
Speaker 1: pulling it down and into the body. But for now,
Speaker 1: you know, I see that it Yeah, exactly like you said,
Speaker 1: the razor sharp you know, between addiction and need and not,
Speaker 1: you know, the rest of your life suffers dramatically, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I really like that. So listener and thinking about
Speaker 3: that and all the other great wisdom from today's episode.
Speaker 3: If you were going to isolate just one top insight
Speaker 3: that you're taking away, what would it be. Remember, little
Speaker 3: by little, a little becomes a lot. Change happens by
Speaker 3: us repeatedly taking positive action. And I want to give
Speaker 3: you a tip on that, and it's to start small.
Speaker 3: It's really important when we're trying to implement new habits
Speaker 3: to often start smaller than we think we need to,
Speaker 3: because what that does is it allows us to get victories.
Speaker 3: And victories are really important because we become more motivated
Speaker 3: when we're feeling good about ourselves, and we become less
Speaker 3: motivated when we're feeling bad about ourselves. So by starting
Speaker 3: small and making sure that you succeed, you build your
Speaker 3: motivation for further change down the road. If you'd like
Speaker 3: a step by step guide for how you can easily
Speaker 3: build new habits that feed your good Wolf, go to
Speaker 3: Goodwolf dot me slash change and join the free masterclass. Well,
Speaker 3: thank you so much for coming on and talking with us.
Speaker 3: You and I are going to continue into the post
Speaker 3: show conversation and you are going to lead us through
Speaker 3: what you are probably best known for is your guided meditation.
Speaker 3: So you're going to lead us through a guided meditation
Speaker 3: in the post show conversation. Listeners if you'd like access
Speaker 3: to that, as well as exclusive episodes, I do ad
Speaker 3: free episodes and the joy of supporting something you love.
Speaker 3: You can become a member of our community by going
Speaker 3: to one you Feed dot net slash join. Sarah, thank
Speaker 3: you so much for coming on. I really have enjoyed
Speaker 3: talking with you.
Speaker 1: Likewise, Eric, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: If what you just heard was helpful to you, Please
Speaker 2: consider making a monthly donation to support the One You
Speaker 2: Feed podcast. When you join our membership community. With this
Speaker 2: monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits.
Speaker 2: It's our way of saying thank you for your support now.
Speaker 2: We are so grateful for the members of our community.
Speaker 2: We wouldn't be able to do what we do without
Speaker 2: their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted.
Speaker 2: To learn more, make a donation at any level and
Speaker 2: become a member of the one you Feed community, go
Speaker 2: to oneufeed dot net slash Join. The One You Feed
Speaker 2: podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting
Speaker 2: the show.