Speaker 1: Where we repeatedly dwell for better or worse, becomes what
Speaker 1: dwells within us. Because neurons that fire together, we are together,
Speaker 1: especially negatively, because the brain is negatively biased. As you know,
Speaker 1: it's like velcro for bad experiences, but teplon for good ones.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 1: like 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, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Dr Rick Hansen, a
Speaker 1: guest who's been on numerous times. He's a senior fellow
Speaker 1: at u C. Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center and an
Speaker 1: expert on positive neural plasticity. Rick's work has been featured
Speaker 1: on CBS, NPR, BBC, and all the other major platforms,
Speaker 1: and he is a New York Times best selling author.
Speaker 1: His six books have been published in thirty languages. Today,
Speaker 1: Eric and Rick discuss his new book, Making Great Relationships,
Speaker 1: Simple Practices for Solving Conflicts, Building Connection, and Fostering Love. Hi, Rick,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Eric again, I'm really glad to
Speaker 1: be here. We were yacking it up before we started officially,
Speaker 1: and oh, it's great out. I want to keep going. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we should have captured some of that. However, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know how many times you've been on now. You know,
Speaker 1: we've had you on with Forest and it's always a pleasure.
Speaker 1: And we're going to have a chance today to discuss
Speaker 1: your new book called Making Great Relationships, Simple Practices for
Speaker 1: Solving Conflicts, Building Connection and Fostering Love. But before we
Speaker 1: do that, let's start like we always do with the
Speaker 1: Parable and the Parable. There's a grandparent who's talking with
Speaker 1: their grandchild and they say, in life, there's two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 1: grandchild stops and they think about it for a second,
Speaker 1: look up at their grandparents. They say, well, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandparents says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what does that
Speaker 1: parable mean to you in your life and in the
Speaker 1: work that you do. Oh, it's it's central for me
Speaker 1: as well. And we have the two wolves, and much
Speaker 1: of life is about feeding the qualities inside the wolf
Speaker 1: of love, of mindfulness, of resilience, of determination, commitment to
Speaker 1: social justice, all of those things of the wolf of
Speaker 1: positive emotions. Emotionally positive experiences are one of the best
Speaker 1: medicines of all for both mind and body authentic ones.
Speaker 1: So we want to cultivate one and we want to
Speaker 1: increasingly disengage from the other. If we hate it, we
Speaker 1: feed it, but we can withdraw food from it and
Speaker 1: fuel for it. And for me, there's a resonance of
Speaker 1: this that relates to my own background in the Buddhist
Speaker 1: contemplative tradition that has to do with where you dwell
Speaker 1: becomes increasingly what dwells within you. And also this resonates
Speaker 1: for me very much in terms of my background and
Speaker 1: neuropsychology and what's called positive neural plasticity, in that it's
Speaker 1: really important to rest in what calls your heart, to
Speaker 1: rest your mind and what calls your heart for a
Speaker 1: breath or longer, to help the mental neural pattern of
Speaker 1: the time that underlies that experience, to help that leave
Speaker 1: residues that last behind in physical changes in your brain
Speaker 1: in terms of altered neural structure and function, because without
Speaker 1: that actual physical changing your nervous system, you may have
Speaker 1: momentarily fed the wolf, right, but there's no lasting learning,
Speaker 1: there's no development of cultivation. The wolf has not gotten
Speaker 1: any bigger bigger. The good wolves get bigger when we've
Speaker 1: taken the good and we turned positive states into positive
Speaker 1: traits by resting in them for a breath or longer.
Speaker 1: And I've written a ton about that and Hardwaring Happiness
Speaker 1: and other books. As you know, you are right up
Speaker 1: my alley. You know, I am right up your alley
Speaker 1: with the one you feed. So say that about the
Speaker 1: dwelling piece again, what was that quote that you just said. Basically,
Speaker 1: if you just think about it, think of it as dwelling.
Speaker 1: There's a technical word in the language of early Buddhism
Speaker 1: of Brahma, vihara. Of vihara is a dwelling place of
Speaker 1: Brahma being a really positive dwelling place. So vihara, where
Speaker 1: do we dwell? And I find for me that this
Speaker 1: is a very emotionally rich and embodied sense like dwell
Speaker 1: It's like a dwelling place. Where do you abide? What's
Speaker 1: home for you? We long to come home. It sometimes
Speaker 1: said that all sickness at bottom is homesickness. Do you
Speaker 1: understand that in different layers of meaning? So where do
Speaker 1: we want to dwell? And where we repeatedly dwell for
Speaker 1: better or worse becomes what dwells within us because neurons
Speaker 1: that fire together wire together, especially negatively, because the brain
Speaker 1: is negatively biased. As you know, it's like velcro for
Speaker 1: bad experiences, but tephlon for good ones. So it's really
Speaker 1: important to rest in beneficial experiences, particularly the ones that
Speaker 1: you hope to grow and table eyes inside yourself, so
Speaker 1: that you rest in them either because they're already happening.
Speaker 1: Usually like right now it feels really good with you, Eric,
Speaker 1: it's good. I'm resting in this. It's camaraderie's companionable nows.
Speaker 1: You know, we're spiritual friends as well as worldly friends.
Speaker 1: It's good, so they're On the other hand, you can
Speaker 1: create a beneficial experience deliberately by mobilizing compassion for somebody
Speaker 1: or mobilizing gratitude for something or anything else. Okay, once
Speaker 1: you're having that experience, don't waste it on your brain.
Speaker 1: Slow it down, so that as you dwell in it,
Speaker 1: stay with it, not out of attachment to it or
Speaker 1: clinging to it, more like a gentle openness to it
Speaker 1: and an establishing of yourself in it or protecting of it,
Speaker 1: often for a breath or longer. Right, doesn't take a
Speaker 1: lot of time to change the brain for the better.
Speaker 1: We just need to give it some time initially, especially
Speaker 1: with positive experiences, and then do this repetitively, so as
Speaker 1: you do well, increasingly in what calls your heart becomes
Speaker 1: increasingly what dwells within you in a sense of growing
Speaker 1: stable trades that operate in the background, or you can
Speaker 1: call upon them quickly as needed. Traits again like the
Speaker 1: trade of mindfulness, the trade of compassion, the trade of resilience,
Speaker 1: the trade of being determined, the trade of emotional intelligence, right,
Speaker 1: becoming more skillful in relationships, the trade of patients, the
Speaker 1: trade of fundamentally positive mood, inner peace. Yeah. The more
Speaker 1: we dwell on experiences of these things, the more we
Speaker 1: dwell on experiences of them as strengths, we grow those
Speaker 1: durable strengths within ourselves. Yeah. That idea of just these
Speaker 1: brief moments underlies a lot of what I've really focused
Speaker 1: on in the Spiritual Habits program, where you know the
Speaker 1: core mantra there is little by little, a little becomes
Speaker 1: a lot, right, which is these little moments? Right? Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it's a Tanzanian proverb. I didn't make it up,
Speaker 1: but kind of what you're saying. Most of us don't
Speaker 1: have big chunks of time to devote to spiritual practice.
Speaker 1: Our lives are busy, but we can, little by little,
Speaker 1: make a lot of progress. And that's what you've talked
Speaker 1: so eloquently about for so many years. Well, I love
Speaker 1: that proverb. I'm gonna remember it. A little by little,
Speaker 1: a little becomes a lot. The thing I see a
Speaker 1: lot is a psychologist therapist. And you know, longtime husband,
Speaker 1: longtime father, longtime business person as well, is that we
Speaker 1: tend to just race on we don't value enough, and
Speaker 1: we don't have the humility to stay with key beneficial experiences.
Speaker 1: We race onto the next one before internalizing the current one,
Speaker 1: which leaves us endlessly hungry for more. And so it's
Speaker 1: really important to value key beneficial experiences and because you
Speaker 1: value them, internalize them, rest in them. And we also
Speaker 1: have a culture that kind of poopoo is the sole idea,
Speaker 1: you know, culture that basically says, you know, what doesn't
Speaker 1: kill you will make you stronger. You know, you learn
Speaker 1: through pain. Actually most pain has no think of it,
Speaker 1: and most pain actually tears us down. Stress, anxiety, depressed mood, anger,
Speaker 1: chronic anger is terrible for cardiovascular health. Shame, feeling inadequate,
Speaker 1: feeling less than others, feeling endlessly driven to impress others,
Speaker 1: and you know, win their approval again and again. You know,
Speaker 1: whatever their approval was yesterday, you need to rewin it
Speaker 1: today to fill that hungry whole in your heart. That's
Speaker 1: deeply problematic. And I find so many people when they
Speaker 1: first start to slow down to take in the good,
Speaker 1: they start to realize that it's hard. Initially it's just
Speaker 1: not their habit. It is hard, but it's wonderful you know,
Speaker 1: it's good news, just like why not stay with the experience,
Speaker 1: but like we want to race on to the next thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I've been hearing that feed the wolf. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been hearing that teaching from you for i mean
Speaker 1: how many years now, at six eight, right, And it's
Speaker 1: still it's not natural to me to dwell and stay
Speaker 1: and sav yeah, and let it sink in. And sometimes
Speaker 1: what we rest in, what we dwell in, you know,
Speaker 1: what we stay with is not technically something you could
Speaker 1: actually savor, like, for example, the feeling of healthy remorse
Speaker 1: or disenchantment, Like, hey, it's fun to get buzzed, but
Speaker 1: you know, it's fun for twenty minutes, and then after
Speaker 1: that it's all just contraction and wanting more. And then
Speaker 1: the next day feeling you know, foggy, and your pardner
Speaker 1: looks at you and goes your breast smells, and there
Speaker 1: you are, well realizing that may not be an experience
Speaker 1: you savor per se. And yet it's an important to
Speaker 1: let it land, not out of beating yourself up, but
Speaker 1: by letting the resolution and the disenchantment sink into you.
Speaker 1: So the next time you walk a higher road, one
Speaker 1: that's kinder to your future self, right, is going to
Speaker 1: be paying the price for that pleasurable twenty minutes, and
Speaker 1: also to the other people around you. Um, sometimes ideas
Speaker 1: are really also used to internalize. So I'm just kind
Speaker 1: of building all what you said. They're about savoring against it,
Speaker 1: just adding what else people can be aware of, you know,
Speaker 1: like the idea that you're not responsible for your partner's alcoholism, right,
Speaker 1: or the idea that your contribution to a rocky relationship
Speaker 1: with an adult child perhaps was real and worth remorse,
Speaker 1: regret and correction, and that contribution that has your name
Speaker 1: tag on it, you know, was one of many significant
Speaker 1: factors and whatever has turned out that idea that understanding
Speaker 1: is also something to really let a land so you
Speaker 1: can form conviction around it. Anyway, we feed many wolves
Speaker 1: in many ways, and little by little, a little becomes
Speaker 1: a lot. Just like you said, yeah, yeah, I love
Speaker 1: that idea though, about staying with things a little bit
Speaker 1: more purposefully and consciously, both what we would consider positive
Speaker 1: things and things that we might consider negative in the
Speaker 1: sense that they don't feel good necessarily. But to me,
Speaker 1: that is sort of the point of a lot of
Speaker 1: the negative emotions, right used correctly, is that there's something
Speaker 1: to be learned there if we can you know, not
Speaker 1: all the time, not in every case, but in a
Speaker 1: lot of them, that there is, but our desire to
Speaker 1: not feel them means that we also won't learn from
Speaker 1: them exactly. Give you a little example. So last night, however,
Speaker 1: regular Wednesday meditation program online. People can check it out.
Speaker 1: It's free, no big deal, and it's very open and
Speaker 1: inviting Wednesday night. So last night, the first one of
Speaker 1: the year, I gave a talk on what matters and
Speaker 1: what doesn't because that's really central and in a fact,
Speaker 1: we want to help ourselves disengage from what truly doesn't
Speaker 1: matter those wolves metaphorically speaking, we want to disengage from
Speaker 1: what truly doesn't matter, and we want to rest increasingly
Speaker 1: in and feed and cultivate in practice what truly does
Speaker 1: matter to us. Okay, So I gave that talk, and
Speaker 1: then my wife and I have a little kind of
Speaker 1: time together. She goes to bed a little earlier than
Speaker 1: I do, so we hang out and we also do
Speaker 1: a little brief meditation on the way to bed. It's
Speaker 1: like I'm putting her to bed. It's kind of is sweet.
Speaker 1: And we were talking and I'll spend the exact detail.
Speaker 1: But she made a little passing comment about a situation
Speaker 1: that I could just kind of deal with and put
Speaker 1: up within effect that wasn't that great for me? And
Speaker 1: right there I was at a crossroad. What matters most?
Speaker 1: Which wolf am I going to feed? Am I going
Speaker 1: to get a little irritated and a little snarky and
Speaker 1: push back on this thing that she thought I could
Speaker 1: just put up with that would be uncomfortable for me?
Speaker 1: Or do I just sort of let it go by
Speaker 1: and know that actually I'm not going to do that thing,
Speaker 1: but I don't need to make a deal out of
Speaker 1: it right now. What matters more now which wolf do
Speaker 1: I want to feed? I want to feed a pleasant
Speaker 1: way of ending our day together. I don't feel the
Speaker 1: need to get into an argument just before bad. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to manage my tendency to drop in exasperated input.
Speaker 1: No input is one thing, but adding exasperation. Maybe the
Speaker 1: input matters, But does the exasperation truly need to matter
Speaker 1: to you? Do you want to really feed the wolf
Speaker 1: of exasperation? So that was a little moment, and basically
Speaker 1: I could just feel myself initially wanting to chase the irritable,
Speaker 1: kind of exasperated reply and to feed that wolf and
Speaker 1: to make that wolf matter in the moment, and I
Speaker 1: just slowed it down to kind of disengage from that
Speaker 1: reactive cascade and rest more in a Hey, I'm okay, Still,
Speaker 1: I don't need to chase this one. I don't need
Speaker 1: to go to war over this one. We're all right,
Speaker 1: and you know, slide into making that matter instead. That's
Speaker 1: the wolf I've fed, and I'm I'm really happy now
Speaker 1: twelve hours later being able to talk about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I actually want to come back to that story in
Speaker 1: a minute, because I think it's central to a lot
Speaker 1: of things in the book. But I think we first
Speaker 1: have to start with the elephant in the room, which
Speaker 1: is you writing a book about relationships is ironic given
Speaker 1: you've been married five times. What you're joking, I've been
Speaker 1: married forty years to the same person. I'm confusing you
Speaker 1: with the professional wrestler Rick Flair. I'm sorry, worry about it.
Speaker 1: There's also Rick Hanson, who's the police chief of Calgary, Canada.
Speaker 1: And then there's another Rick Hanson who you know, uh
Speaker 1: disabled a play went across the country. Well, that it
Speaker 1: was a stupid joke, Rick Flair, I couldn't resist. Um
Speaker 1: right here, right here? What are we going to chase
Speaker 1: and which is one of the central themes in the
Speaker 1: book making great relationships? Right here? Am I going to
Speaker 1: get snarky about that? Am I going to take it personally?
Speaker 1: Or am I going to know that you're a good guy? Right? Um?
Speaker 1: And if I actually had been married five times, it
Speaker 1: would be ironic to write a book about making great
Speaker 1: relationships right there, right there. We have that choice hundreds
Speaker 1: of times each day in all kinds of relationships, all sorts,
Speaker 1: and which one do you tilt? Where? Which choice do
Speaker 1: you make? And that's what that book is so much about.
Speaker 1: What do you do with your thoughts? And you're basically
Speaker 1: your your thoughts, words and deeds, what you say and
Speaker 1: what you do well you know, with your mind and
Speaker 1: your mouth essentially, I don't mean that's sexually uh again
Speaker 1: and again and again, and the consequences that those little things,
Speaker 1: as you just said, yeah, build something that's a lot
Speaker 1: over time. Yep, yep. Now that was a pre planned,
Speaker 1: dumb joke. I know you've been married a long time.
Speaker 1: Just thinking of you and Ric flair in the same breath.
Speaker 1: It just was too good to resist for me. Let's
Speaker 1: go back to that story about your wife there though,
Speaker 1: because there's something interesting in that, And as I was
Speaker 1: reading your book, I sort of kept seeing both these
Speaker 1: things reflected. And what they are is I feel like
Speaker 1: it's a real tension that I have certainly faced in relationship.
Speaker 1: I think everybody does to some degree, right, And it's
Speaker 1: this tension of on one hand, we want to pause,
Speaker 1: slow down, rain in our tongue, think about what's important,
Speaker 1: choose what do I want to feed right now? And
Speaker 1: we're presented with something in a relationship that tendency, though
Speaker 1: taken too far, becomes a tendency where we don't talk
Speaker 1: about the things that we're unhappy about, we don't talk
Speaker 1: about what we need, we don't talk about what we want. So, Mike,
Speaker 1: rationale is a little bit like the one you just did,
Speaker 1: which is like, I want to feed this peaceful moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm not going to bring up this thing. And
Speaker 1: then I say to myself, this isn't the right time,
Speaker 1: which may be very wise in a lot of cases.
Speaker 1: It is I'll bring it up later, which then I
Speaker 1: never do. I thought we could talk about that essential
Speaker 1: tension of thinking through when do I say something about
Speaker 1: what's going on? When do I not? How do I
Speaker 1: determine what the right time is. I just love to
Speaker 1: kind of explore that because I think that's a big deal.
Speaker 1: I think it is a big deal, and I think
Speaker 1: that's an example of a really big deal, which is
Speaker 1: the whole thing of what do I do when? What
Speaker 1: do I say when? And you know, besides being married
Speaker 1: for forty years, I've been doing counseling for roughly the
Speaker 1: same amount of time. That's a lot of experience, including
Speaker 1: a lot of couples and families and other kinds of
Speaker 1: relationships including business relationships, partners or you know, the manager
Speaker 1: person they manage or to work team. A lot of
Speaker 1: experience there. And there are thousands of books on relationships.
Speaker 1: I wanted to write a book that no one has written, really,
Speaker 1: which is fifty simple practices for solving conflicts, building cooperation,
Speaker 1: and fostering love practices specific to do fifty two dus
Speaker 1: that answer the question what do I do win right?
Speaker 1: So in this particular case, I think you're right. People
Speaker 1: can air on either side. They can air on the
Speaker 1: side of come and in too hot or too cool.
Speaker 1: They can err on the side of, you know, saying
Speaker 1: too much or saying too little. Which way do we go?
Speaker 1: And there's kind of a saying, uh. I put it
Speaker 1: in my book Resilient, my saying which is very often
Speaker 1: we're choosing harmony or truth in our relationships, and there's
Speaker 1: a place for choosing harmony. There's a sequel to my
Speaker 1: story about my wife last night, actually I'll tell it
Speaker 1: to you, But at first I chose harmony over truth.
Speaker 1: Ye all right, But there's a problem that if we
Speaker 1: routinely choose harmony over truth, over time, we often end
Speaker 1: up with neither. Exactly. That was an insight I had,
Speaker 1: which was, like I was thinking I was keeping the peace.
Speaker 1: What I realized I was doing was driving all the
Speaker 1: conflict inside. It wasn't peace. There was external peace, but
Speaker 1: there was not peace. I for that time was taking
Speaker 1: all of it, you know, which turns out to be
Speaker 1: a losing game for me and the relationship. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so exactly right. So again, long term therapist, it's like
Speaker 1: learning a skill, you know, if you want to learn
Speaker 1: to ski, which I'm bad at, you know, But when
Speaker 1: I was trying to learn it, um, there's the foundational
Speaker 1: things you learned along the way, right. So in the book,
Speaker 1: it starts with befriending yourself. Yeah, because if we don't
Speaker 1: have that fundamental quality of being on our own side,
Speaker 1: not against others, but for ourselves, and kind to ourselves
Speaker 1: and recognizing good in ourselves and having compassion for ourselves
Speaker 1: and supporting ourselves like a good coach or a good guy,
Speaker 1: not a critic, but a good coach or guide, and
Speaker 1: a cheerleader as well, that's foundational. And then certainly their
Speaker 1: general capabilities around warming the heart toward others, you know,
Speaker 1: the cultivation of compassion, the skills of empathy, have seen
Speaker 1: the good in others, seen good intentions and others even
Speaker 1: though they are expressing them in ways that are problematic.
Speaker 1: You know, it's on that foundation and definitely that then
Speaker 1: you get to okay, all right, something happened, We're going
Speaker 1: to interact about it. How do we do that? And
Speaker 1: there's a lot in the book about the actual how
Speaker 1: of moving to a conflict effectively or negotiating wants you
Speaker 1: want X, they want why? Or you felt kind of
Speaker 1: hurt or you felt let down, uh, you felt really wounded?
Speaker 1: What do you do and even ultimately, how do you
Speaker 1: resize the relationship in key ways? Uh, maybe if only
Speaker 1: in your mind. Like, I don't know about you, if
Speaker 1: you want to go public with this, you know, but
Speaker 1: I could go public to There's certain areas where I've
Speaker 1: just sort of given up the asshole about something, like
Speaker 1: I I like to sort of need in orderly, partly
Speaker 1: because I'm dealing with a million things, and that's how
Speaker 1: I manage a million things. My wife grew up in
Speaker 1: a family where it was his chaos everywhere, and it
Speaker 1: was not a problem. It was a happy family. So
Speaker 1: we're different that way. So I've given up about vast
Speaker 1: areas of our home. You know, my closet is organized,
Speaker 1: my office is clear and neat. That's a form of
Speaker 1: resizing other people. You just resize and you realize, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to talk to them after they've been
Speaker 1: drinking or you know. Yeah, we're gonna have lunch maybe
Speaker 1: once or twice a year, and we're not going to
Speaker 1: talk about Donald Trump. We're just gonna let that one
Speaker 1: go right by. Uh, and that will be enough with
Speaker 1: that kind of old friend from college, for example, So yeah,
Speaker 1: and we could talk more about it. Thanks for letting
Speaker 1: me kind of give an overview of the book. And
Speaker 1: I'm happy to give marital advice if you wanted, and
Speaker 1: happy to receive it from you as well. Yes, yes, well,
Speaker 1: I'm teasing you about being married multiple times. I have
Speaker 1: been married and divorced twice, so I may have more
Speaker 1: war stories than you. But you've met Jenny, she's interviewed you.
Speaker 1: I'm enormously happy now. The thing that was coming up
Speaker 1: for me is you were kind of talking through this
Speaker 1: and we were thinking about it is a little bit
Speaker 1: of this sense. And I think we do this in
Speaker 1: many aspects of life, right, which is discernment around like
Speaker 1: you said earlier your core talk last night or earlier
Speaker 1: this week, which was you know what matters and what doesn't,
Speaker 1: Because that's what we're really talking about figuring out here
Speaker 1: is what really matters? What things can I let go
Speaker 1: of that don't compromise me in any meaningful way? Right.
Speaker 1: They may cause me to have to do some adjustment,
Speaker 1: they may cause me to have to relax a little bit,
Speaker 1: but they don't compromise me in a fundamental way. But
Speaker 1: there are other things that might. And I think we
Speaker 1: do this in all relationships and even in things like work, right,
Speaker 1: Like the work is a compromise for most people in
Speaker 1: some way, it's like, well, there's all these really good things,
Speaker 1: but then there's these three bad things, and which wa
Speaker 1: ways which, and so there's this this sort of discernment
Speaker 1: process that feels challenging. And I think that's part of
Speaker 1: why as I was reading your book, the early parts
Speaker 1: are very much as you said about internal steadiness, focus, work,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Because I do think that steadiness is needed
Speaker 1: to make these difficult discernments, because we don't make them
Speaker 1: well when we are out of whack. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it might be helpful, since you've been so kind actually
Speaker 1: to talk about the book, just going to name some
Speaker 1: of the simple practices. Then. The chapters in this book
Speaker 1: are really short, you know, usually three d five pages each,
Speaker 1: so that each one of them is a specific thing.
Speaker 1: So I'll just kind of just start naming chapter titles
Speaker 1: starting in part four, stand up for yourself, so let
Speaker 1: go of needless fear, use anger, don't let it use you,
Speaker 1: tell the truth, and play fair, don't be bullied. For example,
Speaker 1: these are really foundational, you know, or past that In
Speaker 1: terms of the section on speak wisely that's the longest
Speaker 1: part of the book, six parts total. Speak from the heart,
Speaker 1: ask questions, express appreciation, try a softer tone, Admit fault
Speaker 1: and move on. That's been one of the best for me.
Speaker 1: Stay right when you're wrong. That goes to practicing unilateral virtue,
Speaker 1: not out of being a doormat, but in part because
Speaker 1: it puts you in the strongest possible position. Say what
Speaker 1: you want, come to agreement, forgive them, forgive yourself to
Speaker 1: anyway you get. Just see that kaboom of those things,
Speaker 1: and they really are a kaboom. The longer I've done
Speaker 1: therapy with people, I think I've become kinder. I've also
Speaker 1: become blunter er. Yeah, and that bluntness, that kind bluntness
Speaker 1: definitely runs throughout the entire book, like this is what
Speaker 1: we'll do, this is what's in your power. There's so
Speaker 1: much that's not in our power. Right, other people are
Speaker 1: going to do what they do. Many people disappoint That's reality, Okay,
Speaker 1: what's in your power with what you think and what
Speaker 1: you say and what you do, And that's what the
Speaker 1: book is really about. In that way, you can make
Speaker 1: a great relationship even if the other person is problematic.
Speaker 1: For you, even if you want to disengage from them.
Speaker 1: For you, it's a great relationship because you've practiced with
Speaker 1: it in various ways. We could all use the occasional nudge,
Speaker 1: a little wake up from the autopilot we fall into
Speaker 1: in our day to day routine. That's why we send
Speaker 1: brief text reminders to listeners of the show for free.
Speaker 1: The texts help you stay on track with what you're
Speaker 1: learning from the podcast episodes we release on Tuesdays and Friday's.
Speaker 1: They periodically prompt you to pause for a second and
Speaker 1: become more present and mindful, and encourage you to engage
Speaker 1: with the week's podcast topics in a bite sized, short
Speaker 1: and simple manner. We've heard from listeners that these texts
Speaker 1: help them take a moment to reconnect with what's important
Speaker 1: amidst the business of daily life. Someone said, it feels
Speaker 1: like a little bit of wisdom is being whispered into
Speaker 1: my psyche, which I thought was cool. So if you'd
Speaker 1: like to hear from us a few times a week
Speaker 1: via text, go to one new feed dot net slash
Speaker 1: text and sign up for free. You pulled out some
Speaker 1: chapter titles and maybe we could go deeper into a
Speaker 1: few of them, because I've picked a few out myself
Speaker 1: that I wanted to kind of touch on. And one
Speaker 1: of them is this admit fault and move on. You say,
Speaker 1: remember it's in your own best interests to admit fault
Speaker 1: and move on. Admitting fault might seem weak or that
Speaker 1: you're giving others a free pass for their faults, but
Speaker 1: actually it takes a strong person to admit fault, and
Speaker 1: it puts you in a stronger position with others. You know.
Speaker 1: You also then go on to talk about try not
Speaker 1: to make the fault bigger than it actually is, be
Speaker 1: specific about what it is. Talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about this ability to admit fault and do it in
Speaker 1: a wise way. Well, you know this is saying in medicine.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about your two marriages so far. Good judgment
Speaker 1: comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment. You've
Speaker 1: had a lot of experience. I've had a lot of
Speaker 1: experience to it that has come from my own bad judgment.
Speaker 1: So in the moment we do stuff, you know, a
Speaker 1: tone slips in, or we dropped the ball. You know,
Speaker 1: we're supposed to remember to get the milk on the
Speaker 1: way home or something, right or we've just kind of
Speaker 1: more globally been tuning out our partner because we're preoccupied
Speaker 1: with work, or we're thinking about TV we want to
Speaker 1: watch later tonight, whatever it might be. You know, a
Speaker 1: lot of faults are morally innocent. You just slipped our
Speaker 1: mind right about something, and okay, and it's about acknowledging
Speaker 1: that and being committed to correction in the future rather
Speaker 1: than arguing about the past. And so it's in that context.
Speaker 1: Just two examples. One is how we say it has
Speaker 1: much more impact than what we say. Generally, much research
Speaker 1: on that tone and communications about the nature of the relationship,
Speaker 1: who's on top, who's on the bottom, who's the dominant
Speaker 1: person in the relationship in the moment. So you know,
Speaker 1: maybe we said something that we stand behind. Maybe we
Speaker 1: just said to our partner, you keep leaving your shoes
Speaker 1: in the middle of the doorway. All right, that's a
Speaker 1: fact statement, but the tone around it could be really problematic,
Speaker 1: way beyond just the reasonable exasperation. After the fifth time
Speaker 1: your roommate does that or your teenage child does that, okay,
Speaker 1: and then the other person winces or they get on
Speaker 1: your case about it, like, oh, you you're so mean,
Speaker 1: or you said that you're so mad all the time,
Speaker 1: and okay, so you might say, okay, you're right, you're right.
Speaker 1: I don't want to use that tone. I never want
Speaker 1: to use harsh tone. One of the earlier chapters is
Speaker 1: called watch your Words. I use the guidelines in early
Speaker 1: Buddhism about what constitutes white speech or right speech. One
Speaker 1: of the kind of five key characteristics is not harsh tone.
Speaker 1: So what is harsh depends on culture and setting so forth.
Speaker 1: But you could go, you know, okay, yeah, I I
Speaker 1: was cranky. My tone wasn't good. You admit that fault.
Speaker 1: It clears the decks. Now the person has to deal
Speaker 1: with the actual content that they keep believing their shoes
Speaker 1: in the doorway, and they can no longer eva dealing
Speaker 1: with that content, that actual truth, that fact, because they're
Speaker 1: you know, critiquing your tone for example. Right. Another one
Speaker 1: is where you know you did something that really warrants
Speaker 1: some remorse. You know, it's not just about putting correction in,
Speaker 1: but it's about, wow, I'm really sorry, And I just
Speaker 1: find if there's going to be a healing in relationships,
Speaker 1: it's important to feel that the other person gets it.
Speaker 1: This book in a lot of ways is about being
Speaker 1: that person that other people really want to be with
Speaker 1: over time, because that person you are is someone who's
Speaker 1: prepared and is big enough and strong enough to experience
Speaker 1: and express genuine guilt and remorse that's in proportion to
Speaker 1: what happened, you know. Like for example, let's suppose you
Speaker 1: know you're routinely late, you know, for something, and your
Speaker 1: partner's calling you on it, like, hey, you're always ten
Speaker 1: minutes late, or you'd say you'll be home at a
Speaker 1: certain time, or you know you'll be ready for a
Speaker 1: certain time, and you always keep me waiting, and maybe
Speaker 1: you realize, you know, the truth is, I just have
Speaker 1: not made timeliness as important to me as things that
Speaker 1: my job, where I'm always on time. What's with that?
Speaker 1: Why am I making my partner or my kid, or
Speaker 1: my dear friend or my aging parent less important to
Speaker 1: me than some jaboni down the hall at work? Jaboni jaboni?
Speaker 1: I don't know what that means. I just made that.
Speaker 1: That's a California slang term from somewhere in my youth
Speaker 1: junior high. I have no idea, Sorry, I I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't. It's just a made up anyway. The point
Speaker 1: is what And then you start you start to really
Speaker 1: feel it like wow, and you start to feel how
Speaker 1: much you care about your partner. You'd start to become
Speaker 1: aware of your impact on your partner. It wasn't your
Speaker 1: intent to be cruel, and yet the impact caused harm,
Speaker 1: caused suffering, and you start to feel a little like
Speaker 1: a WinCE and you go no, sorry, sorry, sorry honey,
Speaker 1: or sorry friend, or sorry mom. I got it, I
Speaker 1: got it. And it's that healthy remorse that will motivate
Speaker 1: you to not do that again and to be that
Speaker 1: person who won't do that again and when other people
Speaker 1: see that about you. Just to finish here, here's the
Speaker 1: moving on part where when you've acknowledged it, you can
Speaker 1: move on. Now. They may not be ready quite yet
Speaker 1: to move on because they don't trust you. And what's
Speaker 1: useful about admitting fault and moving on is to say
Speaker 1: I get it, but I'm not going to try to
Speaker 1: prove this to you. I'm just going to demonstrate it.
Speaker 1: It landed, I got it. I'm not admitting fault just
Speaker 1: to brush you off and make you go away. I
Speaker 1: really get it. And it's it's the admission of fault,
Speaker 1: including sometimes with proportionate remorse that enables me to say, hey,
Speaker 1: I've done my part, or you know, I've acknowledged it, confessed,
Speaker 1: I've fled guilty, however you want to say it. I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to minimize how it landed on you. I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to get into some big, long, defensive explanation.
Speaker 1: You know, internally, I'm reserving my right to judge for
Speaker 1: myself how big a fault it is. And if the
Speaker 1: other person thinks, oh a, on the zero to ten
Speaker 1: scale of faults, it was at least an eight. And
Speaker 1: you're thinking, hey, I just added a little exasperation in
Speaker 1: my tone about your shoes in the middle of the
Speaker 1: doorway for the fifth time today. But okay, you know,
Speaker 1: for you, it's maybe a one or two. But whatever
Speaker 1: it is, you acknowledge it and then you move on
Speaker 1: from it, and it's great. You know, you're just moving on.
Speaker 1: They can think what they think. You're walking the high road.
Speaker 1: You know, you're practicing unilateral virtue on your own and
Speaker 1: that gives you a real feeling of worth in yourself.
Speaker 1: Plus over time, it removes reasons for others to find
Speaker 1: fault with you. You know, less than less to find
Speaker 1: fault with the ben if they go looking as some
Speaker 1: people will unfortunately, and you're just you're impeccable, you can
Speaker 1: enjoy what's called the bliss of blamelessness deep in your bones.
Speaker 1: In twelve step Recovery, we talked all the time about
Speaker 1: keeping our side of the street clean, right, like beautiful,
Speaker 1: and what comes from that is a degree of peace. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. And the foundation of that is like a
Speaker 1: phrase that you'll relate to, of course, fearless and searching inventory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of yourself, which means because you're willing to do that,
Speaker 1: fearless and searching inventory, you can stand strong and what
Speaker 1: you're not going to take on, you know, you're not
Speaker 1: going to say that you're responsible for that or be
Speaker 1: guilt tripped into feeling inferior to others because they're lamb
Speaker 1: basing you about something that you're like, No, honestly, I
Speaker 1: don't think it was that bad, And I have authority
Speaker 1: to say I don't think it was that bad inside
Speaker 1: my own heart because I'm fully prepared to say what
Speaker 1: is bad based on a sincere and searching inventory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to make sure we hit unilateral vertu you
Speaker 1: because I love that idea. But I want to stay
Speaker 1: here for a second and talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: a couple of words that you used in there that
Speaker 1: that are part of a cultural conversation to some degree
Speaker 1: these days, which is around impact versus intent exactly. There
Speaker 1: are differing schools of thought and and I tend to
Speaker 1: think people land on one extreme or the other on
Speaker 1: this right versus a middle ground, which is there's one
Speaker 1: idea which says, if what you did impacted me negatively,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter what your intent was, you are wrong.
Speaker 1: There's another school that tends to say, but I didn't
Speaker 1: mean it that way, so it didn't hurt you, right,
Speaker 1: Or it shouldn't hurt you. It shouldn't hurt you because
Speaker 1: I didn't mean it that way. That wasn't my intent.
Speaker 1: And I think in relationship this becomes very difficult at
Speaker 1: times because we go, well, my intent was and you
Speaker 1: took it X way and you know, so there is
Speaker 1: this searching and fearless moral inventory where we go, well,
Speaker 1: you know, to me, that's a two, but to my
Speaker 1: partner it was an eight. Now, how much of that
Speaker 1: do I need to take on or not take on?
Speaker 1: Because we know that people respond to things from a
Speaker 1: variety of factors. Right, the tone about the shoes in
Speaker 1: the doorway might be a two on its own, but
Speaker 1: if you've talked with that tone for five years, it
Speaker 1: might be an eight now, right. Or if your partner
Speaker 1: had a dad who was slightly angry when you use
Speaker 1: a very mildly angry tone, they might react it in eight.
Speaker 1: So impact and intent can very often be mismatched. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just I just love to hear you sort of
Speaker 1: elaborate on that or kind of you know, talk through that, yeah,
Speaker 1: or just add another thing. Let's suppose that you are
Speaker 1: a white person and the person you're saying that too
Speaker 1: is a person of color. Let's say, so there's another
Speaker 1: element in the max in which someone who belongs to
Speaker 1: much more of the dominant side and managed privileged side
Speaker 1: and the culture including his store kally has then criticizing
Speaker 1: and in effect commanding another person to do something. So
Speaker 1: you're write multiple airs of that up. For me, having
Speaker 1: worked through this territory a lot, including in terms of
Speaker 1: kind of classic diversity trainings and considerations about it, let's see,
Speaker 1: one of the keys for me that's been helpful has
Speaker 1: been to internally cut to the chase about Okay, what's
Speaker 1: my correction from now on? That kind of is independent
Speaker 1: from the emotional charge and some as the accusations that
Speaker 1: are flying or in disagreements about what something means, let
Speaker 1: alone disagreements about what happened right, And also, can I
Speaker 1: put it disengagement from the understandable backlog that a person
Speaker 1: who's been shoved down and had the boot on their
Speaker 1: neck and their parents and their grandparents and their ancestors
Speaker 1: and all the rest of that to kind of effect
Speaker 1: acknowledge that while zero in on Okay, what am I
Speaker 1: going to do next time? Yeah, well, you've got a
Speaker 1: line that says you don't have to fight about the
Speaker 1: past to agree about what you'll do from now on.
Speaker 1: And that line just jumped off the page at me,
Speaker 1: because how powerful is that idea? Like, Okay, your fault,
Speaker 1: my fault. We're rehashing what may have happened. My memory,
Speaker 1: your memory of what happened. It's all muddled ground, right.
Speaker 1: What we can do is say, let's talk about what
Speaker 1: we do now moving on, and let's create you talk
Speaker 1: about agreements in the book, let's create an agreement about
Speaker 1: what's going to happen. You can't reset the emotional clock entirely.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that, but you are resetting it in
Speaker 1: a sense, and you can then from that agreement then
Speaker 1: have conversations about, you know, how we're doing with our
Speaker 1: new agreement, about how this happened. That's right. A second
Speaker 1: key distinction for me is to kind of tease apart
Speaker 1: what the experience of the other person is from maybe
Speaker 1: there are accusations around it, right, I don't have to
Speaker 1: necessarily buy into the accusations you know that I was
Speaker 1: an agreed just asshole or promulgating a bunch of microaggressions
Speaker 1: from my privilege or something. I don't have to necessarily
Speaker 1: agree with those accusations while being really interested in and
Speaker 1: sincere about understanding the experience of the other person and
Speaker 1: in a context of a kind of unconditional grounding in
Speaker 1: good will and kindness and compassion, not from a pity place,
Speaker 1: not from a superiority place, but just from a naturally
Speaker 1: open heart. That distinction between what's the experience of the
Speaker 1: other person and being interested in it sincerely and trying
Speaker 1: to learn from it, distinguishing that from whether or not
Speaker 1: their accusations are founded or whether they're over the top,
Speaker 1: or whether I need to feel guilty about it, you know,
Speaker 1: separating that out I found super helpful too. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll give you an example of that. I grew up
Speaker 1: in a home in which my parents had a monopoly
Speaker 1: on the expression of anger, and so I entered adults
Speaker 1: super uptight, really pinched, and I saw myself also, I
Speaker 1: was very young going through schools, this nerdy young kid,
Speaker 1: and I did not have any sense really of my
Speaker 1: personal power. Didn't get it. And then it was really
Speaker 1: in my marriage, including the early years of our children.
Speaker 1: Now thirty five or so years ago, for our oldest,
Speaker 1: my wife started pointing out to me that actually I
Speaker 1: had an intensity that I was totally unaware of. And
Speaker 1: I also grew up in a home where my parents
Speaker 1: let fly a fair amount of emotional intensity. It was
Speaker 1: not a big deal to me, and I had to
Speaker 1: realize that the experience of other people was that they
Speaker 1: were shaken. I wasn't abusive, but I was just intense,
Speaker 1: and I didn't realize the impact of that intensity. And
Speaker 1: so I learned over time to stop being so defensive
Speaker 1: about the fact that I had every right in the
Speaker 1: world to say that, because it's really true. You left
Speaker 1: your shoes in the damn doorway again, right. I had
Speaker 1: to separate out the validity whatever it was, let's say,
Speaker 1: which usually there is some validity and what we say,
Speaker 1: even if it comes out in a sort of messy,
Speaker 1: turbocharged way, and then focus on and learn from. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: that's how it landed on you. That's how it landed
Speaker 1: on you. You know. That was really helpful and more
Speaker 1: broadly helpful to realize that man were so affected by
Speaker 1: each other. We're vulnerable. We're social primates who are evolved
Speaker 1: to be, in effect, the most affected by other species
Speaker 1: on the planet by design. Of course we're affected. Of
Speaker 1: course you are affected. It's not because you're weak or
Speaker 1: a whiner or needy. Of course you are affected by
Speaker 1: what they do. And flip the other way, they are
Speaker 1: really affected by what you do. The micro expressions across
Speaker 1: your face of you know, contempt, derisiveness, you know, disdain,
Speaker 1: like the little exasperate ration, you know, not really being present,
Speaker 1: your eyes start wandering away, you're not showing up for them.
Speaker 1: They get affected by that, let alone, if you start
Speaker 1: adding significant anger into the mix. Yeah, and anyway, it's
Speaker 1: just been helpful for me to have that feeling of
Speaker 1: almost the tenderness of other people while also finding ways
Speaker 1: to be strong and be clear and to say what
Speaker 1: needs to be said. There's such an art to that,
Speaker 1: that ability to say what you need to say and
Speaker 1: do it in a way that has the most likelihood
Speaker 1: of being received. It is a real skill. It is
Speaker 1: a real skill to learn. But I do think it
Speaker 1: really can be learned, and I think it's one of
Speaker 1: the most valuable things you can learn to do. Is
Speaker 1: you know, how do you have difficult conversations in a
Speaker 1: effective and productive way. There is a book that's been
Speaker 1: out a long time called Crucial Conversations. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you're familiar with that one, but so many great
Speaker 1: pieces in there too, about you know, how do you
Speaker 1: approach this. You know, there's some parallels to what you're
Speaker 1: talking about in your book and in their book, because
Speaker 1: you know, they do say you've got to start internally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you've got to start internally getting clear on
Speaker 1: getting to a settled place, to a strong place. You've
Speaker 1: got to get clear on what do you actually want,
Speaker 1: what matters here, what's important. So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: work ideally that is done now. It can be done
Speaker 1: very I'm not saying you've got to set aside hours
Speaker 1: to do it necessarily, but I do think it needs
Speaker 1: to be done. It can be done fairly quickly. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it needs to be done over a longer period of
Speaker 1: time where there's some real thought about, like this is
Speaker 1: an important thing to me, and how I'm about to
Speaker 1: communicate this actually matters because I want it to be
Speaker 1: both kind, but I also want it to be effective. Right,
Speaker 1: it's good. So I'll just say from a lot of
Speaker 1: couples counseling and different kinds of couples, including parents and
Speaker 1: teenagers and family members, and also in work environments. So
Speaker 1: first classics it up. A and B walk into the office. Right,
Speaker 1: A says I want you to change. B says I
Speaker 1: want you to change, and then B says, yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: change you. First book deadlock. That's where unilateral virtue comes in,
Speaker 1: where you practice I think of it as the world
Speaker 1: of your attention on what you want from them. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: put eighty percent of your attention on how you could
Speaker 1: be a better partner or friend or worker or boss
Speaker 1: or sibling and so forth, Because that is unilateral virtue,
Speaker 1: and you'll feel so much better by doing that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so good. T Actually I read that in the
Speaker 1: book too, and I loved it because you hear people
Speaker 1: say it's fifty fifty, or then you'll hear other people
Speaker 1: say no, no, no, no, it's a percent you, zero
Speaker 1: percent the other person, and neither of those to me,
Speaker 1: is right. So I think feels about right, like eight
Speaker 1: percent of my effort really should be on me and
Speaker 1: what I'm doing. And but you know what, I'm a
Speaker 1: human being. I'm not like a robot, and I'm not
Speaker 1: going to respond and pay attention to it. For it
Speaker 1: reframed everything to realize that the strongest, most badass kind
Speaker 1: of way to be is to zero out the other
Speaker 1: person's complaints to the maximum reasonable extent you can going forward, Right,
Speaker 1: whatever happened in the past, focus on the future from
Speaker 1: now on rather than arguing about the past. That was
Speaker 1: the best thing you can do for yourself, and think
Speaker 1: about what is it like to be with someone who
Speaker 1: sincerely wants to sort out what is the maximum reasonable
Speaker 1: correction to put in going forward without necessarily beating themselves
Speaker 1: up with a lot of guilt. Just Okay, how can
Speaker 1: I prevent that next time? Or what can we do
Speaker 1: going forward. When you're with that kind of person, you
Speaker 1: want to give them everything in the world, you know,
Speaker 1: because they're chill and cool and reasonable to work with
Speaker 1: or live with or sleep with. Okay, So that's one.
Speaker 1: Here's another one that I've just seen a lot. People
Speaker 1: don't make requests. They tend to make demands. You need
Speaker 1: to get your shoes out of the door rather than hey,
Speaker 1: I request that from now on you make an effort
Speaker 1: to keep your shoes out of the doorway. Okay. Can
Speaker 1: we have an agreement about that? And is there anything
Speaker 1: I could do maybe even that could help you keep
Speaker 1: that agreement, Like not rushing you so much in the morning,
Speaker 1: pick up my damn shoes. Yeah, like not buy you
Speaker 1: any more shoes? Kid, No, no, I'm just killing but
Speaker 1: you see what I mean. But focus on requests, requests,
Speaker 1: not to mounds now the other. If the other person
Speaker 1: doesn't meet your request, there could be consequences, And those
Speaker 1: consequences are not a threat, they're just reality. Right. If
Speaker 1: you have a roommate who keeps leaving their shoes in
Speaker 1: the doorway or the equivalent times ten, after a while,
Speaker 1: you're going to either get you know, kick him out,
Speaker 1: of the apartment that you have the lease on, or
Speaker 1: you know, find somewhere else to live, or something like that.
Speaker 1: There could be consequences that people don't meet your requests.
Speaker 1: Here's the third one. If I slip it in really fast,
Speaker 1: I'm just seeing it a million times. People routinely do
Speaker 1: not actually speak from their heart. They don't share their experience.
Speaker 1: They say things like you're wrong, or you know you
Speaker 1: made me something, you made me mad, you hurt me,
Speaker 1: or you're bad in some ways you did something wrong.
Speaker 1: They find fault rather than what is much more effective,
Speaker 1: even though it's harder and more courageous, is to just
Speaker 1: slow it down and go with dignity inappropriately say more
Speaker 1: like what your actual experiences, how you feel. So in
Speaker 1: the structure, as you will know of non violent communication,
Speaker 1: it's called non violent communication. It's really helpful here the structure. Basically,
Speaker 1: when X happened or happens, I feel why because I
Speaker 1: need Z in other words, and X is described objectively.
Speaker 1: So when you know you roll your eyes at me
Speaker 1: when I'm talking or when you interrupt me, which is factual,
Speaker 1: I feel frozen, I feel startled, I feel kind of
Speaker 1: flooded like I was with my kind of scary stepfather
Speaker 1: coming at me, I feel like I don't matter enough
Speaker 1: for you to slow down and actually give me an
Speaker 1: extra ten seconds to finish my sentences. You know, I
Speaker 1: feel this inside. I feel kind of scared of you.
Speaker 1: It feel scary a little. I feel mad honestly as well.
Speaker 1: I feel like I just want to back away. I
Speaker 1: don't want to be with you. I don't want to
Speaker 1: have anything to do with you. I'm not saying that's
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna do, but I feel that because deep down,
Speaker 1: like you, like everybody common humanity, I need to feel
Speaker 1: like I exist in the minds of others who matter
Speaker 1: to me, that I matter to people who matter to me.
Speaker 1: You know. I need to feel that I have standing,
Speaker 1: that I'm not voiceless and pushed around like I was
Speaker 1: when I was young, as a young girl in my family.
Speaker 1: These are things I need. So from now on, I
Speaker 1: request that you let me finish my sentences before you
Speaker 1: interrupt me. You know, I'm happy to make as much
Speaker 1: time for each of us in conversation. I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to claim more time. I'm just trying to have as
Speaker 1: much time back and forth as you could. We do
Speaker 1: that going forward. That's a very powerful framework with a
Speaker 1: lot of dignity and gravity and self respect, and it's
Speaker 1: very effective. You've got another line in the book that says,
Speaker 1: if the results in our relationships are not so good,
Speaker 1: it's our process that needs improving. And I think all
Speaker 1: this that we're talking about to some degree is process, right.
Speaker 1: It's about how do we interact with each other, how
Speaker 1: do we talk to each other, how do we express
Speaker 1: needs not being met, etcetera. And my experience has been
Speaker 1: also that when a relationship, people can be oriented almost
Speaker 1: as if there's this third thing that's out there, which
Speaker 1: is our dynamic and if you and I can unite
Speaker 1: on we're on one side, are problematic. Dynamic is on
Speaker 1: the other side, not I'm on one side, you're on.
Speaker 1: So by talking about process, it moves it out into
Speaker 1: this thing my fault, your fault, and becomes this other
Speaker 1: thing that is a different thing that we've co created,
Speaker 1: of course, but that we can co resolve. There's something
Speaker 1: about that shift that I think is really powerful. And
Speaker 1: so I just think that line in the book about
Speaker 1: you know, it's a process issue can be really powerful
Speaker 1: and healing. Oh, that's right, good process creates good product.
Speaker 1: So if you have good product, you know you have
Speaker 1: good process. If you have bad results, bad outcomes, bad product,
Speaker 1: take a look at your process with each other. How
Speaker 1: you interact. Yeah, relationships are built from interactions, and interactions
Speaker 1: are built from kind of turn taking. All right, you
Speaker 1: said this, then they did that. Okay, now what do
Speaker 1: you do right? And there's kind of like a range.
Speaker 1: How can you be maximally skill full back and forth
Speaker 1: like tennis or ping pong or something the volley, back
Speaker 1: and forth given you know what they've offered to you.
Speaker 1: And if you look at people who are really effective
Speaker 1: in the world historically like Gandhi or today the Dalai Lama,
Speaker 1: Michelle Obama, these are people who again and again say
Speaker 1: what they need to say, but they do it clearly
Speaker 1: from a place of dignity, gravity and self respect without
Speaker 1: adding all the top spin that enables other people to
Speaker 1: avoid the actual crux of their message. That's really effective. Yeah,
Speaker 1: take a quick story A long time ago, years ago,
Speaker 1: I got to meet the Dalai Lama and I was
Speaker 1: on a board a meditation center, Spara Rock Meditation Center,
Speaker 1: and we had a meeting where Dalai Lama came into
Speaker 1: a room with maybe a d fifty teachers of various kinds,
Speaker 1: and I was a small frog in that big pond, obviously,
Speaker 1: and the Dali Lama came in with his translator and
Speaker 1: a third man I didn't pay much attention to. And
Speaker 1: after a while, though, I started to notice the third
Speaker 1: man who looked kind of athletic. He was wearing a suit.
Speaker 1: He looked like a middle linebacker and a small college
Speaker 1: football team. And he just stood there in the front
Speaker 1: of the room, radiating loving kindness, and his eyes never
Speaker 1: stopped moving. And he was the Dolli Llama's ninja. He
Speaker 1: was there to take a bullet for him if need be.
Speaker 1: And you could feel there was no sense of menace.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like he was scowling. He was just there
Speaker 1: with this grounded presence. And you knew he was like
Speaker 1: a black belt and seven things or something like that.
Speaker 1: You know he could do anything. But he just radiated
Speaker 1: kindness and goodwill while his eyes kept scanning the room. Right.
Speaker 1: And I think about people who have that quality of
Speaker 1: strength of character, who are fully prepared. They mean business
Speaker 1: and they're fully prepared to do what's needed to serve
Speaker 1: the greater good and to, you know, be protective and
Speaker 1: supportive and and provide as well. That's how we can
Speaker 1: kind of live into. Right, that's the wolf we feed.
Speaker 1: What does it feel like? You know, you just feel
Speaker 1: immediately I'm sitting up a little straighter. I'm channeling the
Speaker 1: Dali Lama's nine little bit here, you know, and and boom,
Speaker 1: You're aggressed in that way of being. And as we
Speaker 1: dwell there, increasingly that becomes the habit of our heart,
Speaker 1: that becomes more and more a way we do all ourselves. Yep, yep,
Speaker 1: that's beautiful. I want to hit just a couple other
Speaker 1: lines that came out in the book before we wrap up.
Speaker 1: One of them is you say large issues are often
Speaker 1: resolved through a series of small agreements. Say more about that.
Speaker 1: Oh that's great. So let's say that you're in a
Speaker 1: work setting, right, and you know you're part of a team,
Speaker 1: and the team's discombobulated and other people's not getting the
Speaker 1: job done, lands on your desks. How makes it harder
Speaker 1: for you? And you know it's a big mess. Right,
Speaker 1: Maybe that has to do with the culture of the company.
Speaker 1: So you just start with small agreements, like when do
Speaker 1: you have meetings? Is an agreement to come on time,
Speaker 1: to end on time, do the meetings conclude with a
Speaker 1: statement of who's going to do what by when. So
Speaker 1: you start building in a structure of accountability and personal
Speaker 1: accountability that's results oriented. It's about producing tangible results that
Speaker 1: are identifiable, and you do it step by step by step.
Speaker 1: That would be an example there or in your home life,
Speaker 1: let's suppose, kind of classically, after you have children. My
Speaker 1: first book was about taking good care of mothers over
Speaker 1: the long haul after kids come along, which means taking
Speaker 1: care of the partner if there's a partner involved, and
Speaker 1: more broadly, the village it should take to raise a child,
Speaker 1: the village it does take and should be present, and
Speaker 1: often is more like a ghost town in the developed
Speaker 1: countries of the world these days. In any case, very
Speaker 1: often in a couple, let's say heterosexual couple, there's a
Speaker 1: kind of you know, movement over time that maybe is
Speaker 1: a lack of erotic interest on the part of one
Speaker 1: person and on the part of another person a kind
Speaker 1: of disengagement and a lack of interest and emotional connection.
Speaker 1: And so you start to realize, oh, if we start
Speaker 1: making little agreements about emotional connection, spending more time at
Speaker 1: least every day where we're just hanging out with each
Speaker 1: other for at least ten minutes in a row, even
Speaker 1: though the kids are pulling on us and life's crazy
Speaker 1: and we both have jobs. But we're going to set
Speaker 1: aside that time or we're gonna give each other listening.
Speaker 1: We're going to practice a deeper kind of listening where
Speaker 1: we're really attentive for five minutes in a row. It's
Speaker 1: not forever, and you know, we're gonna connect more. We're
Speaker 1: going to touch each other affectionately, not as a prelude
Speaker 1: to a request for sex. We're going to connect physically
Speaker 1: like we're gonna make that important to us. We're gonna
Speaker 1: do things that we're both interested in. Maybe my wife
Speaker 1: and I were interested now in Jack Ryan, so we're
Speaker 1: like going through the Jack Ryant TV stuff whatever, like
Speaker 1: blows my mind. My wife's interested in an accent film.
Speaker 1: But okay, we are shared interests. Maybe it's you play cards,
Speaker 1: maybe you go for walks, maybe you have a cat
Speaker 1: or dog you care about together. Okay, fine, And then
Speaker 1: on the basis of those small agreements, then suddenly the
Speaker 1: erotic dimension of your life has more of a foundation
Speaker 1: for it, and you can start coming to mutual understandings.
Speaker 1: They're not like you're trying to mandate some sort of
Speaker 1: forced thing, but you start having understanding. It's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: at a certain frequency, we're going to connect in that way.
Speaker 1: Once a week, once a month, twice a week. You
Speaker 1: know we're going to connect in that way. Uh. Then
Speaker 1: you know, a bit by bit you start making those
Speaker 1: little understandings. It creates more of a sort of a
Speaker 1: field of mutuality with another person that's really hopeful, instead
Speaker 1: of feeling like, you know, the proverbial elephant has to
Speaker 1: be swallowed in one byte, Uh, you don't need to
Speaker 1: eat elephants, should not eat elephants. Obviously, big pilot tofu,
Speaker 1: let's say, Uh, he's just a bit by bit, spoonful
Speaker 1: by spoonful. Right, And as you put it, I love
Speaker 1: that proverb. A little by little, a little becomes a lot.
Speaker 1: Yea certainly ties back to that. You say that in
Speaker 1: your experience as a therapist, poor empathy is the core
Speaker 1: problem in most troubled relationships. Let's not talk about how
Speaker 1: the couple got there, but let's talk about the path forward.
Speaker 1: If empathy turns out to be the core problem. How
Speaker 1: do you start building that back. That's great, and that
Speaker 1: goes to your topic earlier about impact distinct from intent,
Speaker 1: you know, for example, just about that when you start
Speaker 1: to imagine, you know, what's it like to be you
Speaker 1: you over there, the you that you're living with, sleeping
Speaker 1: with maybe, or the you that you're now in the
Speaker 1: middle of this kind of awkward conversation where maybe you're
Speaker 1: a person who has a lot of advantage in the culture,
Speaker 1: and you're suddenly like, I didn't mean any harm, like
Speaker 1: what you know, And what's it like to be that
Speaker 1: other person? What's it like to have grown up in
Speaker 1: the ways that they've grown up. What's it like to
Speaker 1: know that their parents and grandparents have not great grandparents,
Speaker 1: were enslaved, were property, you know, and had their children
Speaker 1: taken away, sold themselves, their own children sold into slavery,
Speaker 1: for example. It's really staggering to enter into the world
Speaker 1: of others and you start to understand, of course they've
Speaker 1: had it up to here with all that. And it's
Speaker 1: not that you personally are doing a bad thing. It's
Speaker 1: just that you're interacting with someone who's had so many
Speaker 1: bad things happened to them and to their parents, and
Speaker 1: grandparents and great grandparents. Of course understandably they feel that way,
Speaker 1: and so empathy is really important entering into the world
Speaker 1: the mind of another person. Technically, so now the how to,
Speaker 1: I'll do the quick how to here. Empathy basically boils
Speaker 1: down to three circuits in your brain. That's a real
Speaker 1: how to write. So we have empathy for actions, we
Speaker 1: have empathy for emotions, that we have empathy for thoughts.
Speaker 1: To simplify a lot of stuff, three major neural substrates
Speaker 1: are involved in those things. So one thing you can
Speaker 1: start doing is tracking the body language and the micro
Speaker 1: expressions of the other person. Imagining what would you be
Speaker 1: feeling if your body was moving or sitting or being
Speaker 1: contracted in that way, if your shoulders were coming forward,
Speaker 1: hunching over yourself like theirs are, and their head is
Speaker 1: kind of ducking a little, how might you be feeling
Speaker 1: like you might be feeling beleaguered and less than and
Speaker 1: not powerful, and kind of like you're trying to appease,
Speaker 1: but underneath that is a growing seething rage and having
Speaker 1: to freaking appease yet again, how might you feel or
Speaker 1: looking at the expressions right around their eyes or on
Speaker 1: the corners of their mouth, the main areas of micro expression.
Speaker 1: A great TV show speaking of is Lie to Me,
Speaker 1: especially the first season where they really go into Paul
Speaker 1: Ekman's work about micro expressions and really tracking what's going
Speaker 1: on in another person in expressions that last half a
Speaker 1: second or a couple of seconds at most, but you
Speaker 1: can really learn a lot so right there. Empathy for actions,
Speaker 1: mirror neurons, mirror like networks get involved in that, empathy
Speaker 1: for feelings, like what are their feelings, especially beneath the surface?
Speaker 1: They're coming at you all hot and heavy, angry, angry?
Speaker 1: What's underneath that? Are they frustrated? Are they anxious? Do
Speaker 1: they feel hurt? Have they just had it up to
Speaker 1: here with you being the next person in a long
Speaker 1: line of folks who have been disrespectful, who haven't slowed
Speaker 1: down to really listen? What might they be feeling underneath
Speaker 1: it all? And with training and practice, you become more
Speaker 1: comfortable with that kind of empathy, and last, empathy for
Speaker 1: thoughts that it's called theory of mind, or basically you
Speaker 1: kind of imagine what might they be thinking, given what
Speaker 1: they're saying or how they're acting, or given their personality,
Speaker 1: and you can think of personality in lots of ways,
Speaker 1: like the angiogram point or the Myers Briggs or that
Speaker 1: this is or that their their horoscope. Who knows, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, their upbringing, given how they were
Speaker 1: brought up, given their situation in life right now, given
Speaker 1: the fact that they've got chronic pain, let's say, physical pain,
Speaker 1: given the fact that their previous partner cheated on them massively.
Speaker 1: You know, given that fact, what are their hot buttons? Understandably,
Speaker 1: what are the questions running in their mind? You know,
Speaker 1: the thought balloon over their head, like in a cartoon,
Speaker 1: write the thought balloon over their head? What could be
Speaker 1: cooking in that thought balloon? You're forming hypotheses, you're speculating
Speaker 1: a little bit about what could be happening. These are
Speaker 1: things we can all do. It doesn't mean you're trying
Speaker 1: to do mind reading. You're not being a therapist. And
Speaker 1: actually what promotes empathy is boundaries, because if you feel
Speaker 1: more rooted, like a tree, deeply rooted, you can be
Speaker 1: more open to the storms blowing at you from other
Speaker 1: people or happening inside their minds, the hurricane in their head, right,
Speaker 1: you can be more open empathically to it. If you
Speaker 1: feel deeply rooted, and you're also clear that's their mind,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily my mind. And just because they're upset
Speaker 1: does necessarily mean it was my fault. Just because they
Speaker 1: want something, because you contune into the wants of others,
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean I have to give it to them.
Speaker 1: Just because they think things things have a certain meaning
Speaker 1: for them doesn't necessarily mean they have to have the
Speaker 1: same meaning for me. You know. It's the establishing of
Speaker 1: that differentiation. Is the technical term that boundary fences make
Speaker 1: for good neighbors, the old proverb right. And I find
Speaker 1: this so exciting. I'm a longtime rock climber. It's about
Speaker 1: the courage to venture past your point of protection, to
Speaker 1: enter into the world of the other person, and to
Speaker 1: feel the nobility in that a little bit, the moxie,
Speaker 1: you know, the badassery a little bit, and at being
Speaker 1: brave enough and strong enough and caring enough, really kind
Speaker 1: enough to really enter into the world of the other person.
Speaker 1: These are ways to help yourself enter into that world
Speaker 1: and train so that increasingly you're just much more rapidly empathic.
Speaker 1: You feed the wolf of empathy, and you can become
Speaker 1: more empathic over time, and then when people feel jan
Speaker 1: segel is a great phrase. When we feel felt, feeling
Speaker 1: felt right, when you give others the experience of feeling
Speaker 1: felt by you, they tend to cool their jets because
Speaker 1: very often that's what people really want. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they want you to give them what they want, but
Speaker 1: really they want you to understand what they want and
Speaker 1: recognize why they want what they want through empathy. And
Speaker 1: then also empathy gives you a lot of useful information.
Speaker 1: You start realizing that the real issue here is not
Speaker 1: about the shoes in the doorway. It's not about that
Speaker 1: at all. It's about the fact that you're physically big
Speaker 1: and they're physically smaller. It's the fact that they've been
Speaker 1: bullied when they were young. It's the fact that all
Speaker 1: kinds of haughty white people have been telling them what
Speaker 1: to do their whole life one way or another without
Speaker 1: even recognizing the fact that they were doing that, and
Speaker 1: they've had it up to hear and you suddenly realize, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's useful information. You know, I can take it into
Speaker 1: account going forward. Yeah, yeah, empathy can be so helpful.
Speaker 1: Let's end with one last idea here, or you start
Speaker 1: with this very early in the book. And this goes
Speaker 1: back to being with ourselves and handling ourselves. And you said,
Speaker 1: everything I've learned about practicing with the mind fits into
Speaker 1: three categories, being with what you're experiencing, reducing what's harmful
Speaker 1: and painful, and increasing what's helpful and enjoyable. And so
Speaker 1: I love these three basic things. Can you run us
Speaker 1: through those three real quick? Oh? Sure, that's really foundational.
Speaker 1: And by the way, it's a very astute conversation, Eric,
Speaker 1: no surprise, and you know I appreciate it a lot. Yeah.
Speaker 1: A good metaphor is imagine your mind and the brain
Speaker 1: mind go together as like a garden. Well, we can
Speaker 1: witness what's happening in the garden with mindfulness, kindness. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we're not trying to do anything to the garden, we're
Speaker 1: just simply being with it. Second, we can pull weeds, right,
Speaker 1: we can pull weeds or prevent them from landing in
Speaker 1: the garden in the first place. Third, we can grow
Speaker 1: flowers right. So right there, In terms of the two
Speaker 1: wolves metaphor, we can be with the two wolves without recoiling.
Speaker 1: Doesn't mean we're agreeing with them. We can see what's there,
Speaker 1: we can be with what's there. We can also withdraw food.
Speaker 1: We can stop feeding certain wolves. And third we can
Speaker 1: start encouraging and even breeding if I dare say that
Speaker 1: other wolves the flowers and fruit that we hope to
Speaker 1: grow in the rest of our mind. So those three
Speaker 1: are really helpful to recognize and in effect. The second
Speaker 1: and third are about working with your mind. The first
Speaker 1: is about being with your mind. Being with your mind
Speaker 1: is primary, but it's not enough. Many people in the
Speaker 1: mindfulness new age self help world overvalue just witnessing. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know, you can witness your mind forever and it
Speaker 1: isn't going to change because the structures in it are
Speaker 1: baked into your brain. There physical especially the negative ones,
Speaker 1: which are designed to really sink in deep roots. The
Speaker 1: brain is very fertile for weeds by design, because that's
Speaker 1: what kept our ancestors alive back in the Jurassic Park
Speaker 1: and the Stone Age essentially. So it's important to work
Speaker 1: with your mind actively, not just be with it. Second,
Speaker 1: very often there's a natural flow. Something has bothered you.
Speaker 1: So your partner, let's say you left the shoes in
Speaker 1: the doorway. Okay, so your partner, you know, reads you
Speaker 1: the riot actor about the shoes yet again, and uh,
Speaker 1: which you could do first to slow it down in
Speaker 1: your own mind, by yourself ten seconds by yourself, five
Speaker 1: seconds by yourself, five minutes to kind of go whoa
Speaker 1: and be aware of Man, you're getting so piste off,
Speaker 1: so many reactions are arising. You're having a flashback to
Speaker 1: your childhood where you're angry. Parents kept constantly criticizing you,
Speaker 1: and you became rebellious about it. So now it's like,
Speaker 1: screw the world, I'm gonna leave my freaking shoes wherever
Speaker 1: I want. Let's say, so you become aware of these
Speaker 1: things in you. You're not acting them out, you're not
Speaker 1: trying to change them. Being with them, that's where you start.
Speaker 1: And then at a certain point, often after a few breaths,
Speaker 1: maybe a few minutes, you start moving into releasing. You
Speaker 1: start letting go of that angry reactivity. You start disengaging
Speaker 1: from that turbo charger from your childhood, you know, even
Speaker 1: traumatic history and childhood. You start disengaging from these thoughts
Speaker 1: you have about your partner that they're a total assholet
Speaker 1: and you've had it up to here and you're not
Speaker 1: gonna tell me what to do anymore, you know, you
Speaker 1: just let it go, let it go, let it go, disengage,
Speaker 1: and then after you've kind of released that for a while,
Speaker 1: after a few breaths or maybe a few minutes, you
Speaker 1: start to let in. You start to replace what you've
Speaker 1: released with something beneficial, like, Okay, the feeling that you
Speaker 1: can stand up for yourself reasonably without being a jerk
Speaker 1: about it, that there's a middle way between being a
Speaker 1: jerk or a doormat. Okay, I'm gonna let that in.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna know what that feels like, just to be there.
Speaker 1: You can also let in that, Yeah, in the scale
Speaker 1: of wrongdoing, this is like a one I left my
Speaker 1: shoes in the doorway, but the fact that I keep
Speaker 1: doing it maybe makes it a two or three. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna let that land, and I'm gonna correct. I'm going
Speaker 1: to commit to not doing that in the future. You
Speaker 1: could let that in, right, You could let in more
Speaker 1: empathy for the other person, Like, given their history and
Speaker 1: their background, the fact they're juggling a million balls, maybe
Speaker 1: they're the primary homemaker and caregiver for the children. The
Speaker 1: last thing in the world they need is your shoes
Speaker 1: in the doorway. On top of em anything else they're
Speaker 1: dealing with. Okay, you let that in and then you know,
Speaker 1: you come to some kind of resolution. So, in effect,
Speaker 1: three steps, let be, let go, let in. It's a
Speaker 1: wonderful structure, and to really make sure you let in
Speaker 1: a lot of people focus on letting be and letting go,
Speaker 1: but they don't grow the flowers. And as any gardener knows,
Speaker 1: if you don't replace your weeds with flowers, the weeds
Speaker 1: come back. So it's very important in the space that's
Speaker 1: left after release to focus on what is the wolf,
Speaker 1: your metaphoric gap that you want to feed to grow
Speaker 1: and fill in in that space. Yeah, yeah, I love
Speaker 1: those three things that I love that garden analogy. I
Speaker 1: think it's a really powerful way to think about how
Speaker 1: to work with the mind. And I agree with you,
Speaker 1: I think mindfulness taken too far that it's only about
Speaker 1: seeing is incomplete. I think it gets such an emphasis
Speaker 1: as because what most of us do is we don't
Speaker 1: do that first step and we start either wildly pulling
Speaker 1: at weeds or throwing seeds all around trying to find
Speaker 1: something positive. Yeah, instead of actually spending enough time to go, okay,
Speaker 1: this is what is the feelings that come with it
Speaker 1: I may not like them, but I can be with
Speaker 1: them from there. And this is the sort of to
Speaker 1: recap your book, right, is from that place now of strength,
Speaker 1: of grounded nous, of consideration, I can now think about
Speaker 1: what is the best strategy in my relationship? Is it
Speaker 1: to go plants and flowers? Is it to go talk
Speaker 1: about a difficult issue? You know? But I'm doing that
Speaker 1: from a place of wisdom and strength. Yeah, that's great,
Speaker 1: And I know we're finishing. I'll just maybe finished with
Speaker 1: a plug here at least, not so much for my book,
Speaker 1: although I invite people to check it out. Actually it's
Speaker 1: the result of forty years of work, and it's my
Speaker 1: first book that's entirely focused on relationships, and I just
Speaker 1: kind of packed into it everything i'd want someone to
Speaker 1: know and I wished I had known. You know, my
Speaker 1: own good judgment that's embedded in the book has come
Speaker 1: from my own experience as a bad judgment anyway. It's
Speaker 1: that I think we can get caught up also in
Speaker 1: fighting with the weeds. And the truth is the mind
Speaker 1: is inherently imperfectible. It just unfolds, it keeps unfolding, and biologically,
Speaker 1: you know, we have tendencies of various kinds. We do
Speaker 1: the best we can with them. But where the great
Speaker 1: opportunity is really is to deepen in our capacities, to
Speaker 1: be with our minds not identified with first and second,
Speaker 1: to grow more flowers there, to really tend to the garden,
Speaker 1: and to focus on beneficial experiences in which we can
Speaker 1: dwell right and then increasingly become we dwell within us
Speaker 1: as we turn beneficial states to trades. And I would
Speaker 1: really encourage that for people, because it's so hopeful. You know,
Speaker 1: we could be pulling weeds forever in the garden, never mind,
Speaker 1: and certain weeds will never leave, you know, the impact
Speaker 1: of certain traumatic experiences. It will always hurt to think
Speaker 1: about what happened, let's say. But what we can do
Speaker 1: is grow the good alongside all that is else there,
Speaker 1: and then we have more of the good inside ourselves
Speaker 1: to offer to others too. Beautiful, Well, Rick, thank you
Speaker 1: so much. It is always such a pleasure to have
Speaker 1: you on same here. We'll have links in the show
Speaker 1: notes to your book, to your website, to all your stuff.
Speaker 1: But again, thank you so much, and such a pleasure
Speaker 1: very much myself. And you're growing and feeding a lot
Speaker 1: a lot of good wolves in this world. Eric. If
Speaker 1: what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider
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