Speaker 1: You know, there's so much pulling our awareness outward, especially
Speaker 1: these days with all of the media coming at us
Speaker 1: constantly and our lives being at high speed, that it
Speaker 1: is very easy to live life on automatic, unaware and reactive.
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 wealth. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2: Our guest on this episode is a returning guest, Emma Sepola.
Speaker 2: She's the science director of Stanford University's Center for Compassion
Speaker 2: and Altruism Research and Education. She's also co director of
Speaker 2: the Yale College Emotional Intelligence Project. At the Yale Center
Speaker 2: for Emotional Intelligence and a lecturer at Yale College where
Speaker 2: she teaches the psychology of happiness. Today, Eric and Emma
Speaker 2: discuss her new book, Sovereign Reclaim Your Freedom, Energy and
Speaker 2: Power in a Time of Distraction, uncertainty, and chaos.
Speaker 3: Hi Emo, welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Thank you, it's great to be back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm really excited to have you on again. We're
Speaker 3: going to be discussing your book, which is called Sovereign
Speaker 3: Reclaim Your Freedom, Energy and Power in a Time of distraction, uncertainty,
Speaker 3: and chaos. And so we'll be getting into that in
Speaker 3: a second, but we'll start like we always do, with
Speaker 3: the parable. And in the Parable, there's a grandparent who's
Speaker 3: talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there
Speaker 3: are two wolves inside of us that are always a battle.
Speaker 3: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 3: and bravery and love, and the other's a bad wolf,
Speaker 3: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 3: the grandchild stops. They think about it for a second.
Speaker 3: They look up at their grandparents. They say, well, which
Speaker 3: one wins And the grandparent says, the one you feed.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 3: that parable means to you and your life and in
Speaker 3: the work that you do.
Speaker 1: I think this parable and I've heard it before the
Speaker 1: last time that I came on the show, And in
Speaker 1: many ways, my new book, Sovereign is about feeding the
Speaker 1: wolf that in turn will feed you. Right, Because the
Speaker 1: wolf that is the anger and the fear and the
Speaker 1: destruction is also simultaneously depleting you, and the one that
Speaker 1: is the kindness, the ethics, the compassion, the wisdom. When
Speaker 1: you feed that wolf, it feeds you back and creates
Speaker 1: a life of greater well being but also of sovereignty,
Speaker 1: of inspiration, of power.
Speaker 4: I love that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So tell me about the term sovereign. Why is
Speaker 3: that a term you sort of picked is the title
Speaker 3: of the book, and what does it mean to you?
Speaker 4: Thank you, Eric. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, I've been in the field of psychology, and
Speaker 1: specifically the psychology of happiness, of well being, trauma reduction,
Speaker 1: anxiety reductions, things like that that I've looked at in
Speaker 1: my research, and I felt that there was something beyond
Speaker 1: just the psychology of well being, that there is something
Speaker 1: beyond just looking at what creates for mental health or
Speaker 1: what creates for thriving because you can be doing all
Speaker 1: of the practices, you can be meditating and going out
Speaker 1: in nature and doing all the things. But if you
Speaker 1: are still buying into beliefs about yourself, about your life,
Speaker 1: and you're also engaging in activities or addictive behaviors, we're
Speaker 1: getting caught up in stuff like the many different options
Speaker 1: and addictive substances or entertainment or media that's out there.
Speaker 1: You can still be living a life in which you
Speaker 1: live in fear or in anger or in like I said,
Speaker 1: addiction without realizing it and still wondering, well, why am
Speaker 1: I still not feeling like I'm living the life that
Speaker 1: I want to live? And you know, seventy percent of
Speaker 1: people on their deathbed feel that they didn't live the
Speaker 1: life they wanted to live. And sovereignty is reclaiming, reclaiming
Speaker 1: in this time of distraction, because we take in over
Speaker 1: sixty thousand gigabytes of information every day across our media channels,
Speaker 1: which is insane when you think about it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: can crash a small computer in a week, right, And
Speaker 1: this is what we're doing to our mind every single day.
Speaker 1: But also a time of uncertainty on the global front
Speaker 1: and chaos, and it's so easy to go down the
Speaker 1: negative spiral of the fear, of the anger, of the
Speaker 1: many ways in which we can be trying to distract
Speaker 1: ourselves in ways that are destructive to us. And yet
Speaker 1: sovereignty is reclaiming your ability to live the life that
Speaker 1: you want as you wish. And that's what I break
Speaker 1: down chapter by chapter in the book, and I felt
Speaker 1: like it needed its own term, because I don't know
Speaker 1: a term in psychology that equates that.
Speaker 3: What you were saying there really made me think of something.
Speaker 3: You know, in the fitness world, there's a phrase, you
Speaker 3: can't out train a bad diet, right, And when you're
Speaker 3: talking about these practices meditation and going out into nature,
Speaker 3: those are the exercises. So it's the equivalent of being
Speaker 3: on a treadmill or on a bike, right. And they're
Speaker 3: really good. But if you're consuming four thousand calories a day,
Speaker 3: that's not going to make a dent in it, right,
Speaker 3: And I think what you're saying here is something similar.
Speaker 3: These practices are really good, and we need to be
Speaker 3: orienting towards the beliefs that are holding us back, the
Speaker 3: content that we're consuming that is holding us back.
Speaker 4: Right, absolutely so.
Speaker 1: For example, I teach executives, that's my job at Yale,
Speaker 1: and I teach these high level leaders that come in
Speaker 1: for a week or two to get some more education
Speaker 1: and management and.
Speaker 4: Leadership and so forth.
Speaker 1: And they are talented, high performers if they were chosen
Speaker 1: to come to this program. I mean, they're really amazing.
Speaker 1: And what I see stands the most in their way
Speaker 1: is their relationship with themselves. And whenever I ask them,
Speaker 1: are you self critical? For example, ninety to ninety five
Speaker 1: percent of them raise their hand. And when you look
Speaker 1: at it from a psychological perspective, self criticism is self loathing.
Speaker 1: Self loathing. That's a pretty strong term. And you know
Speaker 1: some people will think, oh well, self criticism, it's leads
Speaker 1: to self improvement, isn't that a good thing? I'm differentiating
Speaker 1: between self criticism and self awareness. Self awareness is oh hey,
Speaker 1: you know, my stats aren't that great. I need help
Speaker 1: with that that self awareness. Self criticism is those words
Speaker 1: that people use for themselves when they screw up, or
Speaker 1: when they're fail at something, or when they make a mistake,
Speaker 1: when they do something embarrassing. The words people use are brutal.
Speaker 1: You know, you're such an idiot. You know those kinds
Speaker 1: of things and much much worse right that people say
Speaker 1: to themselves that's also feeding the dark wolf.
Speaker 4: But your relationship with.
Speaker 1: Yourself is the only one that's guaranteed twenty four to
Speaker 1: seven for the rest of your life. And if it's
Speaker 1: a toxic one, then you are depleting your energy. It's
Speaker 1: like you said, you can be on the exercise bike,
Speaker 1: but you're eating the trash.
Speaker 3: So something I'm going to be doing a little more
Speaker 3: often is ask you, the listener, to reflect on what
Speaker 3: you're hearing. We strongly believe that knowledge is power, but
Speaker 3: only if combined with action and integration. So before we
Speaker 3: move on, I'd like to ask you what's coming up
Speaker 3: for you as you listen to this. Are there any
Speaker 3: things you're currently doing or feeding your bad wolf that
Speaker 3: might make sense to remove, or any things you could
Speaker 3: do to feed your good wolf that you're not currently doing.
Speaker 3: So if you have the headspace for it, I'd love
Speaker 3: if you could just pause for a second and ask yourself,
Speaker 3: what's one thing I could do today or tonight to
Speaker 3: feed my good wolf. Whatever your thing is. A really
Speaker 3: useful strategy can be having something external, a prompt or
Speaker 3: a friend or a tool that regularly nudges you back
Speaker 3: towards awareness and intentionality. For the past year, I've been
Speaker 3: sending little Good Wolf reminders to some of my friends
Speaker 3: and community members, just quick, little SMS messages two times
Speaker 3: per week that give them a little bit of wisdom
Speaker 3: and remind them to pause for a second and come
Speaker 3: off autopilot. If you want, I can send them to
Speaker 3: you too. I do it totally for free, and people
Speaker 3: seem to really love them. Just drop your information at
Speaker 3: oneufeed dot net slash sms and I can send them
Speaker 3: to you. It's totally free, and if you end up
Speaker 3: not liking the little reminders, you can easily opt out.
Speaker 3: That's one you feed dot net slash sms. And now
Speaker 3: back to the episode. It's an interesting idea because those
Speaker 3: people have gotten to where they are right the top
Speaker 3: performers as executives, right, so there's something in their way
Speaker 3: of doing things that is working, and yet it tends
Speaker 3: to get in the way. And I often think of
Speaker 3: it as like there's that business book that came out
Speaker 3: right like what got you here won't get you there? Meaning, yeah,
Speaker 3: whatever you were doing to get you to this level, right,
Speaker 3: it's usually the jump into you know, executive leadership. Right,
Speaker 3: everything you did up till then, yeah, it worked, but
Speaker 3: it's not going to get you to the next level.
Speaker 3: And that's what I've seen in my coaching practice working
Speaker 3: with people is yeah, the self criticism sort of you know,
Speaker 3: maybe it did its thing for a while, but then
Speaker 3: it just stops working, and it tends to be the
Speaker 3: thing that sort of gets in the way. And I
Speaker 3: had an experience driving over here today. I was listening
Speaker 3: to you on James Doti's podcast. I know he's a
Speaker 3: mentor of yours, and I just had a memory and
Speaker 3: it was of my father and I playing golf. And
Speaker 3: I played golf with him a lot as a kid,
Speaker 3: and I both loved it and hated it because he
Speaker 3: was very angry, very critical. But it occurred to me
Speaker 3: today that when he would make a bad shot or
Speaker 3: a putt, like, the things that would come out of
Speaker 3: his mouth to himself were really awful. I was like, well,
Speaker 3: of course, that's where I learned that. Like again, just
Speaker 3: a memory to me of like sort of where some
Speaker 3: of this stuff starts to get formed.
Speaker 1: Thank you for sharing that. You know, when if you
Speaker 1: don't want to do it for yourself, do it for
Speaker 1: your children or those around you, because we have such
Speaker 1: a toxic relationship with ourselves, such a brutal one. When
Speaker 1: we are highly critical like that, then we're also going
Speaker 1: to be highly destructively critical with the people we love
Speaker 1: the most and want to hurt the least. And then
Speaker 1: we pass the programming on. And I always think the
Speaker 1: self loathing is I think of it as social conditioning,
Speaker 1: or could think of it as a program programming that
Speaker 1: you inherit from your parents, as you mentioned, or society
Speaker 1: at large, because it's very well accepted to have that
Speaker 1: kind of relationship with yourself, and it's so destructive, you know.
Speaker 4: It's like if a.
Speaker 1: Terrorist walks into the room fully armed, it's going to
Speaker 1: set off your fight or flight response, your sympathetic nervous system.
Speaker 1: But if the terrorist is living inside of you, then
Speaker 1: you are activating your stress response for yourself. And that's
Speaker 1: what we're up to. It doesn't make any sense. It
Speaker 1: just doesn't make sense to have a destructive relationship with oneself,
Speaker 1: and yet many people do have one like that. And
Speaker 1: one of the invitations I give in the first chapter
Speaker 1: of my book is to deprogram that because that is
Speaker 1: a fundamental basis of your existence is how you relate
Speaker 1: to yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean one of the things you talk about
Speaker 3: with sovereignty which will bring different aspects of your life
Speaker 3: to a new level. One of them, right, is your energy.
Speaker 3: And obviously what we know about motivational theory says that
Speaker 3: we do better and we're more motivated when we feel
Speaker 3: good about ourselves, and we become less motivated, less energetic
Speaker 3: in a sense when we feel bad about ourselves.
Speaker 1: Right, exactly are you relating to yourself in a way
Speaker 1: that's energizing, that's filling your tank, or that's depleting you Again,
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you're not aware of your shortcomings or if
Speaker 1: you're being lazy and you feel like, okay, I'm being lazy,
Speaker 1: you know, just like a parent is very loving to
Speaker 1: their child, but also make sure they brush their teeth.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean going easy on yourself, but it means
Speaker 1: having the same kind of relationship you have your with
Speaker 1: yourself with your best friend. Because I often will ask
Speaker 1: the audiences that I teach. Okay, so now that we've
Speaker 1: heard the words that you use to speak to yourself
Speaker 1: when you make a mistake, Now tell me what words
Speaker 1: you use to speak your best friend or your child
Speaker 1: who just made the same mistake. The words that come
Speaker 1: out of their mouth are you've got this, You're okay.
Speaker 1: Everybody makes mistakes, it's no big deal. Really compassionate, kind, friendly,
Speaker 1: supportive words. Why is it that we can't speak to
Speaker 1: ourselves like that? What's the difference between you and your
Speaker 1: best friend? The only difference is that you live in
Speaker 1: different bodies.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 3: Yep, you just mentioned that sort of distinction between self
Speaker 3: criticism and self awareness. I was interviewing somebody yesterday and
Speaker 3: they quoted doctor Spock, who is the pediatrician right that
Speaker 3: was so big back in the sixties and seventies, and
Speaker 3: he was saying, when it comes to dealing with two
Speaker 3: year olds, you want to be firm but friendly, right,
Speaker 3: And I think that sort of speaks to how our
Speaker 3: interior life can be, right, Like, yes, we do want
Speaker 3: to hold ourselves accountable, right, we do want to live
Speaker 3: up to our values, and we can do that in
Speaker 3: a friendly way.
Speaker 2: But it's hard to.
Speaker 4: Do absolutely, you know it is.
Speaker 1: And when I first heard about this theoretically, I thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: that all sounds good in theory, but how do you
Speaker 1: break this down, and I'm very pragmatic. I want things
Speaker 1: to be clear and grounded. I want to understand what
Speaker 1: it means, and I want the same firm whover I'm
Speaker 1: teaching or writing for. And so the way that I
Speaker 1: break it down is simply thinking about your needs and
Speaker 1: meeting them. Like if you have a child that you
Speaker 1: haven't fed in five hours, you know that child's going
Speaker 1: to melt down any moment, right, But do we do
Speaker 1: the same for ourselves, you know, just the basic needs
Speaker 1: next time that you feel anxiety, or feel down, or
Speaker 1: don't feel well, or feel like you just failed at something.
Speaker 1: Instead of asking you know, am I good enough, which
Speaker 1: is a question that eighty percent of millennials endorse for
Speaker 1: almost every aspect of their life. By the way, instead
Speaker 1: of am I good enough? Asking what's good for me
Speaker 1: right now?
Speaker 4: What do I need right now?
Speaker 1: That's a radically different question and also allows you to
Speaker 1: come back to the here than now, the practical. Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe I need a meal. Okay, maybe I need to
Speaker 1: just take a walk outside and take a breather. Maybe
Speaker 1: I need to step away from my computer for a
Speaker 1: second and just lie down on the floor for a
Speaker 1: minute and just calm down. Whatever it is, right, the
Speaker 1: basic physiological needs are a great place to start, you know,
Speaker 1: so make it less theoretical.
Speaker 3: You say something in the early part of the book,
Speaker 3: which is that awareness plus courage equal sovereignty. Right, So
Speaker 3: say more about those two aspects why those are so
Speaker 3: critical to this process.
Speaker 1: Awareness is critical if you want to see where in
Speaker 1: your life you're bound. So I differentiate between the bound
Speaker 1: state and sovereign state. So we've just been talking about
Speaker 1: the self, right, So a bound state is a toxic
Speaker 1: relationship with yourself because it leads to this downward spiral
Speaker 1: of less resilience, more anxiety, more depression, less ability to
Speaker 1: show up at your fullest potential. And yet having a
Speaker 1: sovereign relationship with yourself leads to you being able to
Speaker 1: really move forward in your life in a way that
Speaker 1: does allow you to express your best self. And so
Speaker 1: sometimes that needs courage in the sense that it needs
Speaker 1: both awareness because you need to be aware of what
Speaker 1: you're doing, but also the courage to step out and
Speaker 1: do things differently. And that might be difficult for you,
Speaker 1: but it might also be surprising to other people around
Speaker 1: you who are used to you being a certain way
Speaker 1: So how many people will sacrifice their own desires or
Speaker 1: their own beliefs in order to fit in somewhere, and
Speaker 1: then they pay the price. They are aware of what
Speaker 1: they're doing, and they're deciding, now, I'm not doing that anymore.
Speaker 1: I'm not sacrificing myself anymore. Then that does require courage.
Speaker 1: But you can't really have sovereignty without courage, because sovereignty
Speaker 1: inevitably will lead you to being aligned with yourself, which
Speaker 1: is not necessarily always something you're used to or that
Speaker 1: other people expect, right, especially people who've seen you always
Speaker 1: do things a different way. So that's in that first
Speaker 1: chapter where I talk about relationship with ourselves. But in
Speaker 1: another chapter, for example, when I talk about the sovereign
Speaker 1: mind and I talk about the bound state. The bound
Speaker 1: state in terms of our sovereign mind is when we
Speaker 1: allow our mind to be completely imprinted by everything that's
Speaker 1: coming our way without awareness. So, for example, I had
Speaker 1: a colleague who had insomnia, and I asked him what
Speaker 1: his bedtime routine was, and he said, he watched the
Speaker 1: eleven o'clock news. And so we know from research that
Speaker 1: you're going to remember what you saw right before going
Speaker 1: to sleep. That you're going to remember it very well
Speaker 1: the next morning. That's just how our brain works. And
Speaker 1: so he's watching the sad and the scary right before
Speaker 1: sleep and wondering why his sleep is not good. But
Speaker 1: he's not even realizing that he's binding himself with what
Speaker 1: he's choosing to ingest. Because you are what you eat
Speaker 1: is also true your mind. It's whatever it is that
Speaker 1: we take in right. So, but our mind can also
Speaker 1: be bound by things like trauma. So so many of
Speaker 1: us have gone through traumatic experiences. And then when we
Speaker 1: engage in our daily life.
Speaker 4: Let's say you.
Speaker 1: Were in a traumatic relationship, then in the next relationship
Speaker 1: you go into, you go in with fear and it
Speaker 1: doesn't allow you to be your sovereign self in that
Speaker 1: relationship because you're in the bound state. Now that trauma
Speaker 1: is something inevitable that happens, and one of the first
Speaker 1: things is to be aware of that, and then secondly
Speaker 1: is to be able to of course start to heal that,
Speaker 1: which does take courage. And then in order to have
Speaker 1: a sovereign mind, a mind in which you have awareness
Speaker 1: about what you are choosing or not choosing, to nourish
Speaker 1: your mind with to imprint your mind with and are
Speaker 1: taking steps to make sure to heal those imprints, including
Speaker 1: the traumatic ones, and also thinking about very consciously about
Speaker 1: how you are choosing to interact with your world in
Speaker 1: order to cultivate your mind in the way that you
Speaker 1: wish to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you mentioned something there about the desire to belong.
Speaker 3: You talk about this in the book, and I thought
Speaker 3: it was really helpful, because we do, as humans have
Speaker 3: a desire to belong. We know how destructive loneliness can be, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, there's no shortage of writings about that enough
Speaker 3: to terrify you. If you're ever by yourself for ten minutes,
Speaker 3: I know that it's not really what it's intended to say.
Speaker 3: So there is this need for others, and yet you're
Speaker 3: also saying there's a need to sort of not go
Speaker 3: along to get along.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: It makes me think of doctor Gabormante, who wrote about
Speaker 3: this in the way that was really compelling to me,
Speaker 3: which was sacrificing authenticity for attachment, right, and that those
Speaker 3: two things are always in some kind of balance, right, Like,
Speaker 3: if you're like one hundred percent authentic, you might drive
Speaker 3: everybody away. Right, How do you think about balancing those
Speaker 3: two needs? Right? To be sovereign, to be ourselves, and
Speaker 3: to be in healthy relationship with other people because we
Speaker 3: know how important that is to our growth and development.
Speaker 1: Also, absolutely it is a balance, you know, I often think,
Speaker 1: you know what pain is worse, the pain of not
Speaker 1: being who you are in order to fit in or
Speaker 1: the pain of not fitting in and choosing to be
Speaker 1: who you are.
Speaker 4: That is a balance.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you think about it, even the
Speaker 1: society's quote unquote rebels do so much to fit in.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about like the motorcycle gangs, right, they have
Speaker 1: this sort of rebellious lifestyle, and yet they're wearing a uniform,
Speaker 1: They're wearing the same clothes, they have strict hierarchies in
Speaker 1: their gloves. They are definitely doing what they are doing
Speaker 1: to fit in. But you don't want to adapt your
Speaker 1: behavior to the point of it sacrificing you. And I
Speaker 1: mean that in the real term of sacrificing. Because I
Speaker 1: knew someone who had a disease which could have been
Speaker 1: helped with a change of diet, who chose not to
Speaker 1: do the change of diet so she could continue to
Speaker 1: look quote unquote normal. Is there a more heartbreaking example
Speaker 1: that we would prefer to potentially die rather than not
Speaker 1: fit in. And so that's again where courage does need
Speaker 1: to come into play.
Speaker 3: Some of those I'll just call it go along to
Speaker 3: get along habits, right, are at the level that I
Speaker 3: have to really think a lot about, like what am
Speaker 3: I doing and why, because they become sort of habit
Speaker 3: routines that I don't even notice.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: An example I often give is that back to my
Speaker 3: father again, I would get on these like, all right,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have a better relationship with my father, kick right.
Speaker 3: I would be like, all right, that's what I'm gonna do,
Speaker 3: and we're gonna go out and we're we're gonna be together,
Speaker 3: and I'm just going to bring up, like you know,
Speaker 3: I'm just going to take the conversation deeper than it
Speaker 3: normally goes. I'm just going to do that, right, And
Speaker 3: I would get there and then the desire would just disappear.
Speaker 3: It just I suddenly would be like, well, why would
Speaker 3: I even want to do that? And it was because
Speaker 3: at some deeper level, at a really deep level, I
Speaker 3: didn't think it could happen, and so I talked myself
Speaker 3: out of even wanting it. But it took me years
Speaker 3: to see that, to actually see that this unconscious program
Speaker 3: was running. And I think that's the awareness is we
Speaker 3: often don't know. You know, I always find it really
Speaker 3: difficult as a person who's really kind and thinks that's
Speaker 3: a really good value and a person who's generous. I
Speaker 3: mean that sounds unhumble, but those tend to be traits
Speaker 3: that most people who know me would say those are
Speaker 3: traits of mine. I also then have to go but
Speaker 3: when is that becoming my greatest weakness? You know, when
Speaker 3: am I okay with the way things are because I'm
Speaker 3: kind of laid back, and when am I unconsciously repressing
Speaker 3: that I feel differently? I just think this one's very
Speaker 3: difficult to sort out.
Speaker 1: Sometimes, yes, And that is why in order to cultivate awareness,
Speaker 1: contemplative practices are essential. You know, there's so much pulling
Speaker 1: our awareness outward, especially these days with all of the
Speaker 1: media coming at us constantly and our lives being at
Speaker 1: high speed, that it is very easy to live life
Speaker 1: on automatic, unaware and reactive. Even workplaces are cultivating that.
Speaker 1: You know, you have to be on slack all the
Speaker 1: time and answering messages constantly. I mean, you're putting people
Speaker 1: on autopilot with very little awareness ability to even handle
Speaker 1: things with emotional intelligence because there's no discernment. So most
Speaker 1: of the time, you know, the attention networks in our
Speaker 1: brain are deployed outward listening, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting. We're
Speaker 1: constantly outward, and yet there's a part of our brain
Speaker 1: that's focused just on paying attention on the inside, our
Speaker 1: self awareness. And for many people, they don't cultivate it
Speaker 1: at all, and you can tell, you can tell when
Speaker 1: you interact with them. Wow, that person has no awareness
Speaker 1: of what they're doing or saying. They're so lost in
Speaker 1: the outside world. And is so critical to cultivate awareness
Speaker 1: and discernment through things like meditation or contemplative practice of choice,
Speaker 1: because then you start to be aware. But I mean, look,
Speaker 1: you are already aware. You're like, wow, look I'm with
Speaker 1: my dad, and I'm like falling right into the good
Speaker 1: boy roll because that's where I'm going right now. That's awareness,
Speaker 1: you know, That is awareness. That awareness allows you to
Speaker 1: make a choice. You're making the choice. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna stay here right now. This is what is going
Speaker 1: to feel right for him and for me today. So
Speaker 1: this is where I am but you're aware. But I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people don't have that self awareness
Speaker 1: that you have, and it is so critical because without awareness,
Speaker 1: like you said, you can't make a change and you
Speaker 1: don't have a choice. You're choiceless. You are on automatic.
Speaker 1: And sovereignty is not being on automation. Sovereignty is living
Speaker 1: eyes wide open.
Speaker 4: Even if you choose.
Speaker 1: To still continue having a superficial relationship with someone like
Speaker 1: your dad, it's your choice. It's a sovereign choice. What's
Speaker 1: not sovereign is being on autopilot and wondering why life
Speaker 1: feels so overwhelming and why you're not happy.
Speaker 3: And to be clear, that awareness took me a long
Speaker 3: time to get. You know, there were years of me
Speaker 3: having no idea what was actually going on there. Right,
Speaker 3: eyes were not wide enough open, you know, Or to
Speaker 3: say it differently, you know, when we talk about traumatic
Speaker 3: experiences or difficult experiences, right, we revert to previous conditioning
Speaker 3: and almost don't even know it, right, And so awareness
Speaker 3: is critical. You talk about contemplative practice, as you mentioned meditation,
Speaker 3: but you've also talked about how for a lot of
Speaker 3: people seated meditation in the way that we normally do
Speaker 3: it isn't really the thing you talk about. You being
Speaker 3: in New York City after nine to eleven and sit
Speaker 3: down and close your eyes was really made you much
Speaker 3: more anxious. So what are some contemplative practices that are
Speaker 3: not seated meditation, but that can also help sort of
Speaker 3: train this muscle of self awareness?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, you know, especially in these times where anxiety is
Speaker 1: so high, sitting and meditating can feel really overwhelming and
Speaker 1: more anxiety producing. I was in New York during nine
Speaker 1: to eleven and after that I would shake every morning
Speaker 1: with anxiety, and sitting and meditating was not an option
Speaker 1: I tried. I gave it a good go, but it
Speaker 1: was just making me more anxious to try and be
Speaker 1: mindful of my crazy anxious mind. And it wasn't until
Speaker 1: I walked into a breathing class, breathwork class called Art
Speaker 1: of Living, that I suddenly had a handle on my
Speaker 1: mind and my nervous system. And when I went to
Speaker 1: psychology in graduate school and then became a research scientist
Speaker 1: ten years later, I was working with veterans with trauma
Speaker 1: and noticed similar pattern that you know, people were trying
Speaker 1: to do mindfulness meditation with them and they were all
Speaker 1: dropping out. And I thought, you know, breathing worked for me,
Speaker 1: let's try for them. It's a breathing technical sky breath meditation,
Speaker 1: and it involves actively changing your breath in different rhythms,
Speaker 1: different patterns, And we found that after one week their
Speaker 1: trauma had normalized and their anxiety remained normalized a month
Speaker 1: and a year later, suggesting sort of this reprogramming of
Speaker 1: the nervous system. And that's why when I talk about
Speaker 1: gaining sovereignty over our trauma so it no longer governs us,
Speaker 1: that there are ways that we can do that. And
Speaker 1: it's extraordinary because I saw some of these veterans going
Speaker 1: from being bunkered up in their basement, self medicating with
Speaker 1: alcohol and weed to moving on, getting married, going to school, graduating,
Speaker 1: becoming successful professionals, and moving on like nothing happened. We
Speaker 1: have the ability to regain sovereignty over our nervous system.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think the research is still not
Speaker 1: yet quite so known yet we've replicated that study with
Speaker 1: the Palo Alto va and it showed that it was
Speaker 1: akin to the gold standard therapy for trauma. It was
Speaker 1: at least as good, if not better, and it was
Speaker 1: actually better than the gold standard therapy for trauma, which
Speaker 1: is cognitive processing therapy for emotion regulation at the level
Speaker 1: of the brain. So yes, there are other techniques. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of the breathing simply because we've
Speaker 1: done research on it and I've practiced it every day
Speaker 1: for twenty years now because it has helped me so much.
Speaker 1: And in fact, this morning I had the incredible fortune
Speaker 1: of sharing it with someone, a really amazing person who
Speaker 1: grew up working in sweatshops, extreme trauma, no childhood and
Speaker 1: a lot of abuse, and just witnessed how is she
Speaker 1: after learning the breathing is able to just She's hasn't
Speaker 1: slept with three hours in her whole life. She slept
Speaker 1: seven hours for two nights in a row now and
Speaker 1: it's just extraordinary. We can regain sovereignty over our nervous system.
Speaker 1: Other practices that I think bring people into that mindset
Speaker 1: of contemplation is a putting away your phone and going
Speaker 1: out into nature, taking walks on your own, but going
Speaker 1: by the beach or wherever a natural environment is, and
Speaker 1: spending time there and doing it on a regular consistent basis,
Speaker 1: not just once a month, but regularly training your nervous
Speaker 1: system in your mind to go into a place of receptivity,
Speaker 1: of quiet, of coming back into the here of the
Speaker 1: now and present moment. And I think nature. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of research on nature's benefits for well being,
Speaker 1: for cognitive function, all sorts of things, even for pro
Speaker 1: social behavior. You're going to be kinder when you spend
Speaker 1: time in nature. But I think one thing that it does,
Speaker 1: especially in our lives that are so virtual in so
Speaker 1: many ways, is it brings you back to the concrete
Speaker 1: like here, now there's a tree, Like this is reality.
Speaker 1: Much of what we do is simply in a cloud that.
Speaker 4: Doesn't even exist, you know. A virtual cloud.
Speaker 3: Is the idea with the sky breathing, that you are
Speaker 3: turning your nervous system in essence down enough that you
Speaker 3: are then able to actually be aware of what's happening,
Speaker 3: because if your nervous system is turned up too high,
Speaker 3: you don't really have awareness so much as you have
Speaker 3: some sort of hypervigilance.
Speaker 4: Two things.
Speaker 1: So, if you were to do a simple breathing exercise,
Speaker 1: then I can just give a quick example so people
Speaker 1: can try this on their own. Let's say you take
Speaker 1: five minutes, close your eyes and you breathe in for
Speaker 1: account of four and you breathe out for account of eight.
Speaker 1: As you do that, you're going to calm your heart rate.
Speaker 1: In five minutes, your heart rate will be down. You're
Speaker 1: going to feel calmer and clearer. Guaranteed. I've done this
Speaker 1: with many people, and this is a physiological process of
Speaker 1: downregulating your heart rate and activating your parasympathetic nervous system.
Speaker 1: And that's great and you should use it. And you
Speaker 1: could use it anytime between meetings, as you transition from
Speaker 1: work to home, anytime before a difficult phone call, whatever,
Speaker 1: it's going to help. But the sky Breath protocol is
Speaker 1: a twenty minute practice and in the when you do
Speaker 1: the class, it's longer than that during the class, and
Speaker 1: that is I think a much more profound sort of
Speaker 1: reconditioning of the nervous system. And a lot of the
Speaker 1: veterans that we worked with, and if anyone's interested to
Speaker 1: learn this, you can look up a nonprofit called Project
Speaker 1: Welcome Home Troops. They teach veterans militi or their families
Speaker 1: and no cost. It's really lovely. But when you're doing
Speaker 1: the sky Breath meditation, what the participants report is that
Speaker 1: they may sometimes have traumatic memories or smells or emotions
Speaker 1: that occur. But usually when you have a traumatic memory,
Speaker 1: it is accompanied by a nervous system that is highly
Speaker 1: activated and in sympathetic fight or flight mode. So you
Speaker 1: remember what happened, your heart rate's racing, and you're activated.
Speaker 1: And what happens with the sky breath meditation is, we
Speaker 1: believe from a scientific perspective, it puts you in a
Speaker 1: deep parasympathetic mode. And so the memory may be coming up,
Speaker 1: but you are reprogramming your relationship to the memory. You're
Speaker 1: decoupling the anxious physiology from the anxious memory. And so
Speaker 1: what participants report after going through the program is that, oh,
Speaker 1: I remember what happened, but it's no longer right here
Speaker 1: in front of my face stopping me from walking into
Speaker 1: the mall because the mall is a crowded place where
Speaker 1: there could be a bomb. Do you see that? So
Speaker 1: we know that memory is malleable. And you know, if
Speaker 1: you see a scary movie, it's scary in the moment,
Speaker 1: and then later you're like, yeah, that was a scary movie,
Speaker 1: but you're not thinking about it right now. When you
Speaker 1: have trauma, it's like you saw the scary movie and
Speaker 1: you're in the scary movie constantly. And what's happening here
Speaker 1: is you're reprogramming the nervous system to decouple itself from
Speaker 1: the scary movie so it can come back to a
Speaker 1: place of normalcy.
Speaker 3: So listener, consider this. You're halfway through the episode integration reminder.
Speaker 3: Remember knowledge is power, but only if combined with action
Speaker 3: and integration. It can be transformative to take a minute
Speaker 3: to synthesize information rather than just ingesting it in a
Speaker 3: detached way. So let's collectively take a moment to pause
Speaker 3: and reflect. What's your one big insight so far and
Speaker 3: how can you put it into practice in your life? Seriously,
Speaker 3: just take a second, pause the audio and reflect. It
Speaker 3: can be so powerful to have these reminders to stop
Speaker 3: and be present, can't it. If you want to keep
Speaker 3: this momentum going that you built with this little exercise,
Speaker 3: i'd encourage you to get on our Good Wolf Reminders
Speaker 3: SMS list. I'll shoot you two texts a week with
Speaker 3: insightful little prompts and wisdom from podcast guests. There are
Speaker 3: a nice little nudge to stop and be present in
Speaker 3: your life, and they're a helpful way to not get
Speaker 3: lost in the busyness and forget what is important. You
Speaker 3: can join at oneufeed dot net slash sms and if
Speaker 3: you don't like them, you can get off a list
Speaker 3: really easily. So far, there are over one and seventy
Speaker 3: two others from the one you feed community on the list,
Speaker 3: and we'd love to welcome you as well. So head
Speaker 3: on over to oneufeed dot net slash sms and let's
Speaker 3: feed our good wolves together. There's that idea that every
Speaker 3: time we retrieve a memory, when we sort of you know,
Speaker 3: put it away or restore it, right, we've altered it
Speaker 3: in some way, right, And so what you're saying is
Speaker 3: by bringing it up and then the nervous system reaction
Speaker 3: being lower during that time, is that then we've subtly
Speaker 3: changed that memory in such a way or I think
Speaker 3: you said it best, we've decoupled it, right, the nervous
Speaker 3: system reaction.
Speaker 1: Yes, And that is how you regain sovereignty.
Speaker 4: It's so powerful. I think it's quite revolutionary.
Speaker 1: And these are practices that you know, come out of India,
Speaker 1: out of you know, ancient traditions that have been around
Speaker 1: for decades and are so helpful.
Speaker 3: In the chapter about sovereign emotions. You tell a story
Speaker 3: about in your adolescence in college that you struggled with
Speaker 3: emotional eating, Will you tell us that story?
Speaker 1: Yes, so you know, when it comes to emotions, no
Speaker 1: matter how many PhDs, mds or black belts someone has,
Speaker 1: chances are they have as much formal education about what
Speaker 1: to do with their big, bad, negative emotions as a
Speaker 1: five year old, which is none. And most of us
Speaker 1: don't know what to do with our emotion and so
Speaker 1: most audiences that I've spoken to, and most people what
Speaker 1: they learned from society is to suppress their emotion. Just
Speaker 1: suck it up buttercup, like push it down, you know,
Speaker 1: pretend it's not there. And of course that's what leads
Speaker 1: to all sorts of problems like blowing up inappropriately at
Speaker 1: some point, or passive aggression or migrain stomach aches. You know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't go away because emotion is energy and motion.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're not going to feel it, it's
Speaker 1: going to stay with you. And that's what research shows.
Speaker 1: It actually makes the emotion stronger at the level of
Speaker 1: the brain. And you know, a child is angry for
Speaker 1: five minutes, two minutes, maybe an adult can be angry
Speaker 1: for the rest of their lives because a child lets
Speaker 1: the emotion move through them, right, So let me go
Speaker 1: back to the story because it relates to this point.
Speaker 1: I did not know what to do with my big, bad,
Speaker 1: negative emotions when I was in college. I'd learned suppression,
Speaker 1: just like everybody else, and so I got into this
Speaker 1: addictive cycle of binging whenever I would feel down, so
Speaker 1: using food, and then at the end of the binge,
Speaker 1: I would inevitably cry. And you know, you could think
Speaker 1: of it for yourself. I mean, how many people when
Speaker 1: they feel bad and they just watch a ton of
Speaker 1: entertainment or overwork or drink or whatever drug of choice.
Speaker 1: At the end of that, you're still feeling bad, but
Speaker 1: you're feeling worse because you're beat up by your drug
Speaker 1: of choice. I don't care if it it looks holy,
Speaker 1: you know, like I volunteer fifty five hours a week.
Speaker 1: You know, whatever it is that you're doing to escape
Speaker 1: how you're feeling is a drug, and it's beating you
Speaker 1: up and is still there. So that's a problem. So anyways,
Speaker 1: I would notice that I would binge and then I
Speaker 1: would cry, and this was a cycle. And one day
Speaker 1: I attended a meditation session, and meditation was considered very
Speaker 1: weird at the time. I was one of three undergraduates
Speaker 1: who meditated. The only reason I went was because I
Speaker 1: had a crush on another undergraduate and I wanted to
Speaker 1: meet this person, and so I went to this weird
Speaker 1: thing where we had to sit for an hour and
Speaker 1: stare at the carpet. It was Korean Zen meditation, very strict,
Speaker 1: don't move, look at the carpet, no instruction, and it
Speaker 1: was the most painful and uncomfortable experience of my life.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to run out of there. I really
Speaker 1: didn't like it, and I thought I would never meditate again.
Speaker 1: And when I left, I felt a little more peaceful,
Speaker 1: you know, but I was like, I'm never doing that again.
Speaker 1: And then the next day I walked into my dorm
Speaker 1: room and I was feeling down, this was often the
Speaker 1: case at that time, and I spotted I left over
Speaker 1: pizza that looked gross, like something I wouldn't want, and
Speaker 1: I thought, perfect my chance to binge like it didn't
Speaker 1: matter of what it looked like, because I was going
Speaker 1: to go into that addictive, impulsive behavior again and in
Speaker 1: that moment, and I attribute this very much to the
Speaker 1: meditation because we know meditation, even one session increases your
Speaker 1: awareness and self awareness. I had this insight, an insight
Speaker 1: I had never had before, which was you always cry
Speaker 1: after you binge. Why don't you just switch it around
Speaker 1: and cry first and binge later. And I thought, okay, fine,
Speaker 1: I'll do give this a try, no problem, And I
Speaker 1: went on my bed and I cried. And when I
Speaker 1: was done crying, I sat up and the impulse to
Speaker 1: binge was gone. I never binged again. That moment of
Speaker 1: awareness had completely shifted my understanding of emotion and I'd
Speaker 1: gained sovereignty over that addiction. And it was really fascinating.
Speaker 1: And as I went into the field of the psychology
Speaker 1: of emotion in graduate school, which was the labs that
Speaker 1: I was in were all specialized in motion research, understanding
Speaker 1: that emotion is energy and motion, and that's why a
Speaker 1: child is angry for only two minutes or three minutes
Speaker 1: a small child, because they're completely feeling the emotion and
Speaker 1: then they're allowing it to move through them, whereas an
Speaker 1: adult is going to try and push it down, push
Speaker 1: it away, eat it away, drink it away, play it away,
Speaker 1: whatever it is they're going to do, and it stays
Speaker 1: stuck inside of you. Not that you should have a
Speaker 1: tantrum in the middle of your office because you're upset
Speaker 1: at your boss, but feeling it, allowing yourself to feel it,
Speaker 1: you know the expression, feel it to heal it, allowing
Speaker 1: yourself to be with it. And we don't like that.
Speaker 1: We don't want to feel pain. We don't want to
Speaker 1: feel bad. Ever, we don't, and that's why we do
Speaker 1: all these other behaviors to try and stop that. But
Speaker 1: in the process we're actually holding on tight to the pain.
Speaker 1: We're binding ourselves to it. So sovereign emotions, one of
Speaker 1: the steps at sovereign emotions is having the courage, the awareness,
Speaker 1: and the courage to be with the pain and the
Speaker 1: emotions that come up as they come up, and that's
Speaker 1: how you become free from them.
Speaker 3: Let's dive a little deeper on this one, because that
Speaker 3: idea of feel your emotions is pretty common wisdom in
Speaker 3: the contemplative world, or whatever world we want to call it,
Speaker 3: the psychological world. Right, it can't speak to how prevalent
Speaker 3: is outside of that, it sounds like maybe not not
Speaker 3: a whole lot. However, as an adult, I have found
Speaker 3: that I will feel an emotion. But that's not the
Speaker 3: end of the story necessarily, right, meaning that I'm not
Speaker 3: like a three year old. I mean maybe if it's
Speaker 3: like a very small thing that happens and I get
Speaker 3: upset about it and it kind of passes through. But
Speaker 3: take something big that happens right the end of a
Speaker 3: relationship as an example, right, you can feel that emotion,
Speaker 3: at least in my experience, you know, it just kind
Speaker 3: of comes back for like a long time, and I
Speaker 3: think people get discouraged in the midst of that because
Speaker 3: I think a lot of us here feel your emotion
Speaker 3: as the shortcut our brain takes is feel that emotion
Speaker 3: and then it will be gone. Right, And so it's
Speaker 3: just a different strategy of trying not to feel something right.
Speaker 3: It's just a different approach. So what is it like
Speaker 3: for adults in complex systems where you give yourself over
Speaker 3: to it. Maybe you allow yourself that good cry and
Speaker 3: two hours later you're kind of feeling back into that.
Speaker 3: What does that process look like for a more complex
Speaker 3: emotional situation, you know, like.
Speaker 1: Take grief, it's not going to go away overnight, and
Speaker 1: just knowing that feel it, be with it, wait it out,
Speaker 1: you know, that's where the courage piece comes in. It's
Speaker 1: like labor, you're delivering it. And if it's grief or
Speaker 1: someone you've loved your whole life, it's not going to
Speaker 1: go away overnight. It's just not but drinking your way
Speaker 1: through it is going to make it last, possibly your
Speaker 1: whole life, you know, And that's where the courage piece
Speaker 1: comes in, because if we're really honest with ourselves, almost
Speaker 1: everyone's an addict eric almost everyone, whether they're addicted to
Speaker 1: their phone, or they're addicted to their fame, or they're
Speaker 1: addicted to money, or they're addicted to food or sweets, oh,
Speaker 1: you name it. This world has a multitude of things.
Speaker 1: And if we're really aware and really look, yeah, you
Speaker 1: need courage for that. But it is going to go
Speaker 1: by faster than if you were not to feel it,
Speaker 1: if you were to masket, if you were to do
Speaker 1: all the things. And you know, the truth is, we're
Speaker 1: not used to feeling pain, and we don't want to
Speaker 1: feel pain. And it's even in the US in particular,
Speaker 1: you know, in the pursuit of happiness. In other countries
Speaker 1: like China, India, even Germany, there's an understanding that's suffering
Speaker 1: it's part of life. And when you can really take
Speaker 1: that in, then it's a different approach. I think here
Speaker 1: in particular in the US, there's this idea of just oh,
Speaker 1: I'm down, therefore there's something wrong with me. No, not always.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you're just going through life and life has ups
Speaker 1: and downs. That is just the truth of it. And
Speaker 1: in that chapter I'm sure you saw. I mean I
Speaker 1: put in a ton of tools. It's not that you
Speaker 1: can't have tools. You know, tools like breathing, like meditation,
Speaker 1: like creative expression, like movement. You know, there's so many
Speaker 1: ways that you can help the energy process through your system,
Speaker 1: and you should, but not by blocking your awareness. You're
Speaker 1: doing it with awareness.
Speaker 3: You know. Another thing that I see when you mentioned
Speaker 3: like adults you know, can be angry for the rest
Speaker 3: of their lives. A child's angry for five minutes. I
Speaker 3: thought a little bit about that, and it made me think,
Speaker 3: you know, I know adults who have been angry for
Speaker 3: you know, forty years. They're still angry at their divorce
Speaker 3: at twenty five, right, and yet on some level they're
Speaker 3: not repressing that because they talk about it all the time.
Speaker 3: So what dot is not being connected there? Right? Because
Speaker 3: they're aware of it, and they will tell you all
Speaker 3: about it, and yet it's not passing or healing. So
Speaker 3: what's getting missed there?
Speaker 1: The blame game. If you blame your pain on someone else,
Speaker 1: you're also binding yourself. You're not taking responsibility. That person
Speaker 1: may have done something shitty, but it's up to you
Speaker 1: to heal your own emotion around it, because otherwise you're
Speaker 1: their victim for the rest of your life and you've
Speaker 1: signed up for it. And this is hard for people
Speaker 1: to hear. They don't like to hear that, and I understand.
Speaker 1: But when I say, like, don't be a victim of it,
Speaker 1: it's out of compassion because even if you you know
Speaker 1: we're in a very traumatic situation or abusive situation, if
Speaker 1: you continue to constantly identify as the victim of that person,
Speaker 1: you're victimizing yourself. You're shackling yourself again. This is hard
Speaker 1: to hear it, and I'm saying it with full compassion
Speaker 1: because it is very hard to be sovereign if you're
Speaker 1: constantly identifying as someone who's been abused by someone else.
Speaker 1: And I have to tell you I was in abusive
Speaker 1: relationships and if I constantly identify as a victim. I
Speaker 1: am keeping myself there. I am no longer in those relationships.
Speaker 1: I choose no longer to be in those relationships. But
Speaker 1: I'm claiming my sovereignty by not identifying as someone who's
Speaker 1: a victim.
Speaker 4: Do you see the difference?
Speaker 3: Yep? And it sounds like there's an essence here of
Speaker 3: it's an advice. I think I first read in a
Speaker 3: Pama Cholderren book like thirty years ago, right, which is
Speaker 3: like feel the feelings, draw the storyline, right, like you
Speaker 3: own the feeling right of what you're feeling, and you
Speaker 3: know that you're responsible for that, and you try and
Speaker 3: let go of necessarily the whole story around it, because
Speaker 3: that story can change in the effect that you can
Speaker 3: reappraise it. But what actually happened is what actually happened.
Speaker 1: Yes, And so often when we're triggered, sometimes it has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with the person, but it has one
Speaker 1: hundred percent to do with our own triggers due to
Speaker 1: our own past traumas or challenges. So let's say you
Speaker 1: were a child that grew up feeling not respected, and
Speaker 1: you become an adult and that's your big button and
Speaker 1: anyone could push it. And I don't even mean to
Speaker 1: push it. But it's very easy to push it because
Speaker 1: it's sticking out, big and fat from your chest, and
Speaker 1: no matter what someone says, you suddenly go into this
Speaker 1: deep shame or anger that you're not being respected.
Speaker 4: A child could do it?
Speaker 1: Is it the child? And so that's where awareness comes in.
Speaker 1: It's like, what are my buttons? What am I letting
Speaker 1: run my life? Am I going to take back the reins?
Speaker 1: Or am I going to let my own buttons, my
Speaker 1: own triggers, run the show and upset my relationships?
Speaker 4: Again. I'm not making excuses.
Speaker 1: For people who are abusive, Absolutely not, But I am inviting
Speaker 1: us to think about where we get triggered and why
Speaker 1: and then owning that, owning that and healing that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as you were talking, I was thinking about you
Speaker 3: were talking about addictions, So I of course reflect on
Speaker 3: my own addictions. At twenty four, I was a homeless
Speaker 3: heroin addict, right, and so I played that game pretty hard.
Speaker 3: Talk about freedom from addiction, right, It's sovereignty, right. And
Speaker 3: what I've said many many times is that, like the
Speaker 3: key turning point to me is that I know that
Speaker 3: I can face whatever feelings come up without running back
Speaker 3: to that thing. And that's where the freedom is, right.
Speaker 3: It's the sovereignty to say, Okay, you know what, whatever
Speaker 3: this is that i'm feeling, okay, I can live with
Speaker 3: this without turning back to that. Now again, we can
Speaker 3: have a hierarchy of addictive tendencies, right. You see this
Speaker 3: all the time in people. You give up heroin and
Speaker 3: you take up you know, cigarettes, or you give up
Speaker 3: alcohol and you now eat two pipes of ice cream
Speaker 3: a day. I'm not calling anyone out, Christopher. No, it's
Speaker 3: our editor, Chris. He's five years sober at this point. Congratulations, Chris.
Speaker 3: But we can all sort of, you know, keep turning
Speaker 3: these things different directions, right, But there is a fundamental
Speaker 3: element of okay, no matter what, I don't have to
Speaker 3: do that. And I think that's kind of what you're
Speaker 3: speaking about when you talk about sovereignty of emotion.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Eric, and thank you for sharing your story. And
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful that you claim your sovereignty because that
Speaker 1: means you got to live, you know, and it means
Speaker 1: you realize I'm bigger than the pain. That's one thing
Speaker 1: that we sometimes forget when emotions are really hard, they
Speaker 1: feel like they're bigger than us, and that they claim us,
Speaker 1: but they don't. We're bigger than our emotions. They're just
Speaker 1: energy moving through us, and we can help it move,
Speaker 1: and we can move with it, and we can We
Speaker 1: are bigger than them, you know. I share this analogy
Speaker 1: in the book How the first time I gave birth
Speaker 1: without meds both times because my mom had done that
Speaker 1: with four kids, and I wanted to experience that and
Speaker 1: also just preferred that for many reasons. And the first
Speaker 1: time I was just feeling so sorry for myself going
Speaker 1: through the labor. I was screaming and I was cursing
Speaker 1: like a sailor and feeling so sorry for myself the
Speaker 1: whole time. And then the second time I gave birth,
Speaker 1: I actually had done a hypnosis program that helped me
Speaker 1: fully accept everything, and that birth was so calm that
Speaker 1: my midwife decided to take a nap with her helper
Speaker 1: right before the baby came out, because they were telling
Speaker 1: my husband, oh, she won't come till tomorrow, given how
Speaker 1: calm she is. And now that was such a difference.
Speaker 4: What happened.
Speaker 1: Like that hypnosis program, I had trained myself to be
Speaker 1: in full on acceptance and welcoming of the pain. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is physical pain. We're talking about emotion, but
Speaker 1: it's the same. You realize, Wow, this is a sensation,
Speaker 1: and emotion is a sensation. And when you're giving labor,
Speaker 1: you're like, this is a massive sensation where I feel
Speaker 1: my body is splitting opens. It's a very dramatic experience,
Speaker 1: and an emotion is the same. You can observe it
Speaker 1: as a sensation and it's extremely freeing because you're like, Wow,
Speaker 1: this is a sensation.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 3: How do we balance that, right? Because on one hand,
Speaker 3: you're observing the emotion and you know, there's the whole
Speaker 3: idea of like bypassing right, so spiritual bypassing, which would
Speaker 3: be like I am just the sky right and you
Speaker 3: are right and right, but you also have to feel
Speaker 3: the emotion right. There's there's some nuance subtlety here of
Speaker 3: I'm allowing the emotion to be here and I'm feeling it,
Speaker 3: and I'm also at the same time recognizing I'm not
Speaker 3: drowning in it. To me, that feels like it's an
Speaker 3: interesting dance to be able to pull off.
Speaker 1: I love what you're saying, Eric, because it's really easy
Speaker 1: when you're feeling unwell to want to jump out of
Speaker 1: your experience, jump out of your body, just like a
Speaker 1: leave right, and that is what addiction is. But you
Speaker 1: could do it in multiple ways. The bypassing you're talking about,
Speaker 1: and that's not going to work. What's going to work
Speaker 1: is staying with your body, staying with your experience. And
Speaker 1: but like I said, you can move it. So I
Speaker 1: give you examples. Like you know, I had times when
Speaker 1: I struggled with extreme feelings of loneliness, and as a writer,
Speaker 1: I remember the day I walked into my office and
Speaker 1: I was feeling so much painful loneliness and I sat
Speaker 1: down and I decided to write, and I wrote an
Speaker 1: article on what to do when you're feeling terribly lonely.
Speaker 1: And I channeled that energy into that article. And years later,
Speaker 1: to this day, I get people telling me thanks for
Speaker 1: that article, and it really helped me today. I had
Speaker 1: no idea that it was going to help people like this,
Speaker 1: but I channeled the emotion through my writing, which is
Speaker 1: what I do now. Everybody has different things that they
Speaker 1: do create about let's you know, but there's so many
Speaker 1: ways we can help midwife the feeling. You know, it's
Speaker 1: not that you escape the pain, you stay in it.
Speaker 1: You stay grounded. You don't feed it. You don't blame
Speaker 1: others feeding it. You don't blame yourself because that's all
Speaker 1: feeding it. You let it happen else you get. Like
Speaker 1: I said earlier, you also give it time. And sometimes
Speaker 1: what you need is a nap, or you need to
Speaker 1: eat some food, or you need to go to a
Speaker 1: yoga class, or you need to sit in a bath
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. You know, a physical nourishing thing
Speaker 1: that you would do for your child who's going through
Speaker 1: the same thing and that you don't know how to help,
Speaker 1: but you know how to make them a good meal.
Speaker 3: That's really helpful. Let's turn to sovereign mind. You mentioned
Speaker 3: it a little bit before, but I want to talk
Speaker 3: about a core idea in that chapter, which is we
Speaker 3: are constant certainly accumulating imprints in our minds. And then
Speaker 3: you go on to talk about deprogramming imprints. So what
Speaker 3: do you mean by imprints? And then let's maybe share
Speaker 3: a strategy or two for starting to deprogram some of them.
Speaker 1: So well, we talked a little bit about trauma already,
Speaker 1: and trauma is a very significant imprint. So imprint is
Speaker 1: a thought, memory, behavioral pattern that you have along the
Speaker 1: way of your life learned and it has created an
Speaker 1: imprint in your mind in the sense that you've integrated
Speaker 1: it as a belief system. So, for example, a trauma
Speaker 1: would be something that you know. I give the example
Speaker 1: of walking with a veteran who we were going to
Speaker 1: a restaurant with a group of friends and I look
Speaker 1: up and one of the veterans in the group is
Speaker 1: sweating profusely from his forehead and I said, what's going on?
Speaker 4: And he said, oh, I just I can't go over bridges.
Speaker 1: So he had had an experience on a bridge, and
Speaker 1: he just seeing a bridge in the middle of Wisconsin
Speaker 1: in a safe neighborhood was enough to trigger that that imprint.
Speaker 1: So trauma is very deep imprint, right, and I've talked
Speaker 1: about ways that we can deprogram that. But other imprints
Speaker 1: are ones that we pick up along the way. For example,
Speaker 1: I had an executive who she's an African American woman
Speaker 1: who had real, big dreams and aspirations for her life,
Speaker 1: and who was staying in a job that she considered
Speaker 1: safe because she said, as a black woman, she had
Speaker 1: learned that it was important to stay in a safe
Speaker 1: place and not overreach because of the repercussions that could ensue.
Speaker 1: So those are some things that she had learned, that
Speaker 1: she had learned in her community, that she had lived by.
Speaker 1: And she was working as this lawyer, very brilliant woman,
Speaker 1: but working as a lawyer for the government in a
Speaker 1: position where she wasn't very happy and she knew she
Speaker 1: wanted more for herself. I would meet her often theano
Speaker 1: during the breaks on our program, and she'd be sitting
Speaker 1: there by herself, like thinking about things, and I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, we got in a conversation and she would
Speaker 1: say she was staring that imprint in the face, and like,
Speaker 1: is this going to control me for the rest of
Speaker 1: my life? This belief that's keeping me so small? And
Speaker 1: after our program a couple months later, I get a
Speaker 1: text message from her and she said, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: doing interviews and she's not just anywhere at the very large,
Speaker 1: you know, Fortune five hundred company, and they not only
Speaker 1: gave her offered her one position, they offered her three positions,
Speaker 1: one of which was going to be in the legal field,
Speaker 1: keeping her in her comfort zone, and one of which
Speaker 1: was going to be not in the legal field. So
Speaker 1: not only did she take the leap to go from
Speaker 1: government to this big corporation. But she then chose the
Speaker 1: job that was not the legal job to further stretch
Speaker 1: her boundaries and further stretch into discomfort, but towards growth
Speaker 1: and opportunity and so forth. And she's excelling. But how
Speaker 1: many of us have such imprints, such beliefs, behavior patterns
Speaker 1: that are keeping us so much smaller than we want
Speaker 1: to be if we're really honest with ourselves that we
Speaker 1: need to be, you know, And that's just an example.
Speaker 1: Other imprints. Where do we get them from? We can
Speaker 1: get them from our societies and communities. We get them
Speaker 1: from our you know, religious or philosophical or societal or
Speaker 1: cultural norms, and oftentimes you don't know them because they're
Speaker 1: just what's normal.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: Everybody thinks this or does this, so I guess it's normal.
Speaker 1: And it's not until you enter a different context, cultural
Speaker 1: context that you realize, oh, like, the whole world doesn't
Speaker 1: do this. Maybe I have a choice, or you know,
Speaker 1: you realize it through your own awareness.
Speaker 3: And give this one strategy for deprogramming and imprint. We're
Speaker 3: nearly out of time, but I would love to hear
Speaker 3: just like one approach people could take away with them.
Speaker 3: That would be one way of thinking about starting to
Speaker 3: deprogram some of those imprints.
Speaker 1: In what areas of your life are you driven by fear?
Speaker 1: Do you feel contained in a cage smaller than the
Speaker 1: one you want to be in, then you feel constrained?
Speaker 1: Look at that. Look at that as a source for
Speaker 1: your imprints. In your relationships, they are great mirrors for
Speaker 1: your prints. For example, I mentioned that person who feels
Speaker 1: that they're not respected. They could be in a relationship
Speaker 1: with the child and experience that same thing. Your relationships
Speaker 1: are mirrors for your buttons, for your imprints that are
Speaker 1: ruling your life that I was sitting on the throne
Speaker 1: of your life. Those are some examples, and I just
Speaker 1: want to end with one one quick story that I
Speaker 1: interviewed a colonel in the military for this chapter. In
Speaker 1: this person's job was to control the mind of the enemy, so,
Speaker 1: in other words, create information that was brainwash condition the
Speaker 1: minds of the Taliban. And I said, oh wow, so
Speaker 1: how do you go about consuming information that comes at you?
Speaker 1: And he said, oh, well, I always look for intent,
Speaker 1: because that's his job, right, he creates intentional material. And
Speaker 1: then he told me about how he raises his child,
Speaker 1: and they'll be in the supermarket and the child will
Speaker 1: want some unhealthy sugary cereal and he'll say, okay, so
Speaker 1: why do you want that cereal? And the child will say, well,
Speaker 1: because it's so colorful and it's like fun, it's got
Speaker 1: these cute animals. And the dad will say, okay, So
Speaker 1: why do you think that it has that?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Because it makes you happy when you look at it,
Speaker 1: and you just want to keep looking at it.
Speaker 4: Okay, So why do you think they did that? Oh?
Speaker 1: Because because kids love it. It's so nice, you know.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, okay, so why do you think that
Speaker 1: they want kids to love it?
Speaker 4: You know? And go on down the list.
Speaker 1: I was like, Wow, nothing like getting lessons on how
Speaker 1: to decondition yourself from someone whose job it is to
Speaker 1: brainwash others.
Speaker 3: So listener and thinking about all that and the other
Speaker 3: great wisdom from today's episode. If you were going to
Speaker 3: isolate just one top insight that you're taking away, what
Speaker 3: would it be? Not your top ten, not the top five,
Speaker 3: just one?
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 3: Think about it?
Speaker 2: Got it?
Speaker 3: Now? I ask you, what's one tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny
Speaker 3: little thing you can do today to put it in practice,
Speaker 3: or maybe just take a baby step towards it. Remember,
Speaker 3: little by little, a little becomes a lot. Profound change
Speaker 3: happens as a result of aggregated tiny actions, not massive
Speaker 3: heroic effort. If you're not already on our good Wolf
Speaker 3: SMS list, I'd highly recommend it as a tool you
Speaker 3: can leverage to remind you to take those vital baby
Speaker 3: steps forward. You can get on there at oneufeed dot
Speaker 3: net slash sms. It's totally free, and once you're on there,
Speaker 3: I'll send you a couple text messages a week with
Speaker 3: little reminders and nudges. Here's what I recently shared to
Speaker 3: give you an idea of the type of stuff I send.
Speaker 3: Keep practicing even if it seems hopeless. Don't strive for perfection,
Speaker 3: aim for consistency, and no matter what, keep showing up
Speaker 3: for yourself. That was a great gem from recent guests
Speaker 3: Light Watkins. And if you're on the fence about joining,
Speaker 3: remember it's totally free and easy to unsubscribe. If you
Speaker 3: want to get in, I'd love to have you there.
Speaker 3: Just go to oneufeed dot net slash sms. All right
Speaker 3: back to it, Emma, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 3: It's always such a pleasure to have you on. I
Speaker 3: really enjoyed the new book Sovereign, and I love spending
Speaker 3: some time with you.
Speaker 4: Thanks Eric, the pleasure is mind.
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