Speaker 1: No one's turning to us and say you should be anxious,
Speaker 1: you should be stressed. All the time we do it
Speaker 1: to ourselves, and once we realize that, we say, I
Speaker 1: can choose the other wolf. Welcome to the one you feed.
Speaker 1: Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 1: thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 1: you are what you think, ring true. And yet for
Speaker 1: many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 1: episode is Lodro Wrinsler, co founder of M and DFL Meditation.
Speaker 1: He has taught meditation for twenty years in the Buddhist
Speaker 1: tradition and is the award winning author of seven books.
Speaker 1: Lodro has spoken across the world at conferences, universities and
Speaker 1: businesses as diverse as Google, Harvard University, and the White House.
Speaker 1: His new book is Take Back Your Mind, Buddhist Advice
Speaker 1: for Anxious Times. Hi, Lo dro Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for having me back. I'm excited to
Speaker 1: be here with you. Erc. We're going to be talking
Speaker 1: about your new book that is called Take Back your Mind,
Speaker 1: Buddhist Advice for Anxious Times. But before we do that,
Speaker 1: let's start like we always do, with the parable. There
Speaker 1: is a grandfather who's talking with his granddaughter and he says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us. They
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. The granddaughter stops and she thinks
Speaker 1: about it for a second, and she looks up at
Speaker 1: her grandfather says, a grandfather, which one wins? And the
Speaker 1: grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: start off by asking you what that parable means to
Speaker 1: you in your life and in the work that you do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you for asking, And I have to admit you
Speaker 1: know our time together. I think, gosh, we first recorded
Speaker 1: a bazillion years ago. Yes, you know. It always stuck
Speaker 1: with me when we started talking about this, and it
Speaker 1: carried through into this book that you just mentioned, take
Speaker 1: Back your Mind Buddhist Advice r Anxious Times, because it
Speaker 1: was this realization that I don't think many of us have,
Speaker 1: which is that there's a choice, and so many of
Speaker 1: us wake up in the morning and the first thought
Speaker 1: is what do I need to do? What do I
Speaker 1: need to accomplish? What stressed? Should I already be trying to,
Speaker 1: like Matt, navigate my life as opposed to WHOA WHOA? Whoa?
Speaker 1: My mind doesn't have to be in that state. Could
Speaker 1: I make a different choice? And I think that choice
Speaker 1: that you present of like what do I feed on
Speaker 1: a given day, is really a beautiful one. So that
Speaker 1: conversation we initially had really did feed into the early
Speaker 1: chapters of this book. In particular, there is this opening
Speaker 1: where I say, Hey, if you were going to choose
Speaker 1: between happiness and stress, what would you choose? I choose happiness.
Speaker 1: Oddly enough, this has a hundred percent success rate your question,
Speaker 1: But it's like, of course, with your choose happiness, and
Speaker 1: in that moment, you just made that choice the same
Speaker 1: as the two wolf choice, right, like, what are we
Speaker 1: choosing to feed? And you know, coming in from a
Speaker 1: meditation teacher background, not surprisingly there's a lot of meditation,
Speaker 1: a lot of shorter techniques that are not necessarily formal meditations,
Speaker 1: but all of them are directed to how can we
Speaker 1: continue to make that choice instead of just reacting and
Speaker 1: so spinning out into the anxiety of the day. Could
Speaker 1: we actually start to move our mind out from the
Speaker 1: stories that bury us in that state into the pressent
Speaker 1: moment long enough to then start to choose to feed
Speaker 1: the wolf that's actually based in happiness. I appreciate the
Speaker 1: work that you've been doing because it really is highlighting
Speaker 1: to people like, oh, I get to work with my mind,
Speaker 1: I get to choose how I live my life. And
Speaker 1: I started going on so long, I'm just very excited
Speaker 1: to talk to you. But you don't get an email
Speaker 1: from your boss that says, hey, here's all the things
Speaker 1: I need from you. By the way, please be stressed
Speaker 1: out the entire time you do it. No one turning
Speaker 1: to us and saying you should be anxious, You should
Speaker 1: be stressed all the time. We do it to ourselves,
Speaker 1: and once we realize that, we say, oh, I can
Speaker 1: choose the other wolf right, we do it to ourselves.
Speaker 1: But a lot of times it doesn't feel like that
Speaker 1: choice is there, you know, I'm sure you do. I
Speaker 1: hear all the time people saying, well, I'm trying not
Speaker 1: to worry about this all the time. I'm trying not
Speaker 1: to just let these thoughts spin in my head over
Speaker 1: and over and night. I feel like I try and
Speaker 1: stop it, and then boom it's right back, and boom
Speaker 1: it's right back. So I think that, well, on one hand,
Speaker 1: we have a choice of which we feed. As we
Speaker 1: know about thoughts, there's an automatic nature to them. We
Speaker 1: don't really choose them. They just sort of show up.
Speaker 1: I'll let you respond to that, and then we'll sort
Speaker 1: of dive into some of the points of the book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to that's I mean, it's a great point,
Speaker 1: because I think one of the key distinctions here is
Speaker 1: again meditation teacher talking, let's acknowledge the length through which
Speaker 1: I'm viewing the world. All these like mindfulness techniques that
Speaker 1: are coming out and are in the news. He says,
Speaker 1: Everyone's like, oh, that's stress reduction. Which is a bit
Speaker 1: of a misnomer because it makes it sound like all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you don't have to pay your taxes.
Speaker 1: You know, your rent doesn't come do like there's no stress. No,
Speaker 1: that boss doesn't actually expect anything. There's stressors in our life,
Speaker 1: there's thoughts that arise around them, and the key distinction
Speaker 1: here is how long do we hold ourselves in that
Speaker 1: state the stressor causes us stress? My landlord says the
Speaker 1: rent is late. That stresses me out. I need to
Speaker 1: figure out I'm gonna pay the those fine. How much
Speaker 1: time do we actually spend I'm going to actually be
Speaker 1: purposeful in getting my finances norm And how much time
Speaker 1: do we spend walking around the world completely blind into
Speaker 1: what's going on around is because all we're doing is
Speaker 1: having a conversation with the landlord in our head. It's
Speaker 1: not benefiting us, it's not benefiting anyone. The bill isn't
Speaker 1: getting paid, but we're locking ourselves in. At that point,
Speaker 1: it's no longer a stressor. It's a state of anxiety.
Speaker 1: So that's the thing. Can we unhook ourselves from that
Speaker 1: state of anxiety? The stories, the NonStop stories we tell
Speaker 1: ourselves around head long enough to say, oh, I can
Speaker 1: deal with the situation at hand, I can actually relate
Speaker 1: to the stressor I can relate to the person front
Speaker 1: of me, I can relate to my morning coffee, can
Speaker 1: be present for all of it. And actually that makes
Speaker 1: it feel a little bit less of awhelming. Also, yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. I think I make such a distinction between
Speaker 1: useful and non useful thoughts in this sense. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's a point if we use your example about the
Speaker 1: landlord and I don't have the money to pay the rent,
Speaker 1: there is a point that the thinking about that is
Speaker 1: very useful. I do need to think about it because
Speaker 1: I have a problem that needs to be solved, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put my mind on it, and I need
Speaker 1: to solve the problem. Where things tend to go wrong
Speaker 1: is that we go well beyond useful there's nothing else
Speaker 1: to solve, or we've we've already come up with an answer,
Speaker 1: but we continue to obsess. I often give this example
Speaker 1: of it. It's a meditation class example. I was in
Speaker 1: a meditation class ones and we started doing the walking meditation,
Speaker 1: and the guy in the front, you know, the sort
Speaker 1: of the front of the circle was walking so slow.
Speaker 1: I mean it would have been a great meditation skit.
Speaker 1: The problem was that nobody behind him could move. I
Speaker 1: could just see everybody was frustrated and they were standing there,
Speaker 1: and so I finally was like, I just went up
Speaker 1: to the guy and I said, excuse me, sir. You know,
Speaker 1: if you could move just a little bit quicker, everybody
Speaker 1: could kind of walk. And I was really uncomfortable doing
Speaker 1: and I didn't know what to do. So then we
Speaker 1: sit back down to meditating, and I got thirty minutes
Speaker 1: to think about what I've just done, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: gos Shire, you know, should I have done that? And
Speaker 1: within a couple of minutes, I went, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go up to him. I towards I'll
Speaker 1: just say I'm sorry if that seemed rude, here's why
Speaker 1: I did it. I hope it didn't upset you. I'll
Speaker 1: just set it right. That's that problem solved, except of course,
Speaker 1: that I continue to ruminate on it for twenty five
Speaker 1: more minutes. All that twenty five more minutes after I
Speaker 1: decided my course of action to me was in that
Speaker 1: not useful thinking because I didn't cover any new ground.
Speaker 1: I didn't uncover a new solution. I just fretted, and
Speaker 1: I think that's kind of what you're speaking to here
Speaker 1: when you're making that distinction, and you know, I'll kick
Speaker 1: the dead horse early on in the conversation, which is
Speaker 1: meditation really does help us do exactly what you just said,
Speaker 1: which is to acknowledge, Oh, I've become repetitive. I've gotten
Speaker 1: completely lost in what if thinking, what if they think
Speaker 1: this about me? What if they are going to complain
Speaker 1: about me? Whatever? And we acknowledge those thoughts and we
Speaker 1: come back into something a little bit more stabilizing, such
Speaker 1: as the breath, and we can return into the present
Speaker 1: moment i e. Reality, And that's really helpful for unhooking
Speaker 1: ourselves over and over again. The more people say, oh,
Speaker 1: I've got too many thoughts to meditate, you have a
Speaker 1: hundred thoughts pop up in a meditation says you have
Speaker 1: a hundred opportunities to retrain the mind not to chase
Speaker 1: after every anxiety producing story that comes up. And for
Speaker 1: people that are like, no, I'm bored with this meditation,
Speaker 1: than thank you. In terms of like on the spot techniques,
Speaker 1: you just named something that's in the book, which is
Speaker 1: we could catch ourselves. You know, we're in the shower,
Speaker 1: we're on a long drive, we're washing the dishes, we're
Speaker 1: doing these one of stories. At some point we can
Speaker 1: ask one of two questions. I find the question is
Speaker 1: this helpful? Is this helpful? Oh no, this isn't actually
Speaker 1: helping me, This is actually causing you more stress. Somehow.
Speaker 1: Becoming that gently inquisitive shifts us, It unhooks us again
Speaker 1: long enough to come back into the present moment. And
Speaker 1: the other one is exactly what you just named. Is
Speaker 1: this useful? It's not useful. Maybe it's useful the first
Speaker 1: two times, but not the fiftieth time. Cool, Maybe that's
Speaker 1: any time done hook myself. What's the distinction you're making
Speaker 1: between helpful and useful? It's absolute semantis. People just themselves
Speaker 1: into one or the other. I find helpful because if
Speaker 1: I'm not actually helping myself and I'm not helping anyone,
Speaker 1: then for me personally, it's like, but I think the
Speaker 1: useful thing is, as you noted, maybe the first couple
Speaker 1: of times we say okay, yeah, well here's how I'm
Speaker 1: going to actually respond to that person. She's we're gonna do.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go talk to that person after just clear
Speaker 1: the air, and then after that we say, well, now
Speaker 1: it's no longer useful. So there there's an acknowledgment that,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe there is information from our emotional states
Speaker 1: that we can learn. There's a whole two chapters, I
Speaker 1: guess in the book around actually being with some of
Speaker 1: the emotions like anxiety or fear or worry or whatever
Speaker 1: might be in that scenario. Can we be with it,
Speaker 1: learned from it, and move through it. You do make
Speaker 1: a distinction in the book between stress and anxiety, and
Speaker 1: we sort of covered it there, but maybe we could
Speaker 1: just go through it again. How you're using those two terms.
Speaker 1: The way that I talked about it is exactly what
Speaker 1: I was referred to before the sense of there's stress
Speaker 1: in our life, and unfortunately this is like the bad news.
Speaker 1: Atleas give the bad news, which is stress exists if
Speaker 1: we somehow magically maneuver our work situation so it's no
Speaker 1: longer stressing us out. All of a sudden, we notice
Speaker 1: that there's something going on in our family situation that's
Speaker 1: stressing us out. Family situations doing well, everyone's healthy over there, Okay,
Speaker 1: how about our romantic relationship? And so there's always going
Speaker 1: to be stressors and then out of those stressors arise anxiety,
Speaker 1: which is us holding ourselves in the state of stress.
Speaker 1: It is again, no one other than us saying here's
Speaker 1: what we're gonna do. The brands of prom solving device,
Speaker 1: so the brand goes into overdrive and says, I'm going
Speaker 1: to solve for any potential situation. And yet I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've ever had this happen. It certainly happened
Speaker 1: to me. You know, you have this conversation coming up
Speaker 1: with a business partner, a friend or whatever, and you
Speaker 1: play through, Okay, here's what we're going to talk about.
Speaker 1: Here's what they're gonna say. I know what they're gonna say.
Speaker 1: That's I'm gonna here's my counter, and here's what I'm
Speaker 1: going to If I've ever spent you know, minutes, two
Speaker 1: hours playing and replaying and prom solving around the conversation,
Speaker 1: never once has it ever gone the way I thought
Speaker 1: of one. Never once did they respond exactly as I thought,
Speaker 1: and vice versa. So again, if it's not helping us,
Speaker 1: we need to actually start to rewire the brain and
Speaker 1: retrain the brain not to hold ourselves in the state
Speaker 1: of anxiety. I agree with so much of what you
Speaker 1: said there. I think that idea there's always something, you know,
Speaker 1: there's always some stresser, there's always a problem to solve.
Speaker 1: The writer, she's not a Buddhist writer, but she's a
Speaker 1: spiritual writer. Mary O'Malley. She has a phrase that I
Speaker 1: ever since she said it and it's probably been five
Speaker 1: years ago, is never you know, it's just always with me.
Speaker 1: She's like, the mind is a problem factory, and I
Speaker 1: was like, that's my brain. Solve one and it just
Speaker 1: cranks out another. Your description you were just talking about,
Speaker 1: Like I've got this conversation coming up with somebody. I'm
Speaker 1: just like, if I could just get through that conversation,
Speaker 1: I get through that conversation, I feel relief for a
Speaker 1: couple of minutes, and then boom, new problem shows up.
Speaker 1: I'm like, Wow, okay, better get to work on solving
Speaker 1: that one. So you're right, if if we don't manage
Speaker 1: then for me, if I don't manage my mind, I
Speaker 1: stay in constant problem solving mode, or at least figuring
Speaker 1: out mode. Like the brain is just always trying to
Speaker 1: figure something out. And that's not bad, except that it
Speaker 1: does sort of take me completely away from moments of joy,
Speaker 1: peace and what's actually happening. Yeah, that's exactly it. So
Speaker 1: going back to this choice, if I'm in the shower
Speaker 1: and I'm playing out these subs at the moment I'm
Speaker 1: actually able to hook myself, I'm like, oh, it's nice
Speaker 1: in here, the warm water hitting my skin is it
Speaker 1: feels nice. When we actually drop some of the stories
Speaker 1: that we keep ourselves locked in pain around, we find
Speaker 1: that there's this great, wide open world that we can appreciate,
Speaker 1: that we can actually feel some sense of gratitude contentment.
Speaker 1: But again it's it's like a two step process here.
Speaker 1: That's step one unhook ourselves from that story so that
Speaker 1: we can come into the present moment long enough to
Speaker 1: step to start to notice and appreciate something. And there's
Speaker 1: also like multiple chapters and there around gratitude practices, appreciation practices,
Speaker 1: even just simple things that we can do in this moment.
Speaker 1: We could say, oh, I never really appreciate that piece
Speaker 1: of art that's hanging above my desk, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of just rest there for a moment, give myself thirty
Speaker 1: seconds of contentment. And it sounds silly when I say
Speaker 1: thirty seconds of contentment, and any mus don't even do that.
Speaker 1: We don't do that when we taste the morning coffee.
Speaker 1: You don't do that. When we're climb into bed with
Speaker 1: our spouse. You don't do that while we're petting the animal.
Speaker 1: You know, mentally, we're not there. So if we actually
Speaker 1: want to live a very full and meaningful life, we
Speaker 1: actually have to be present for absolutely. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about getting better at this, because again, I know a
Speaker 1: lot of people listening, a lot of coaching clients I
Speaker 1: work with, will say, yeah, I get it, Okay, yes,
Speaker 1: I need to move out of my thinking brain and
Speaker 1: my problem solving brain and be a little bit more present.
Speaker 1: So fine, I do that, and it lasts for about
Speaker 1: a quarter of a second, and then I'm sucked back
Speaker 1: into the anxiety and it just feels like I can't
Speaker 1: get out. And so let's talk about starting to unwind
Speaker 1: that attern because I think it's unrealistic to think that
Speaker 1: you or anybody is going to offer us like, well,
Speaker 1: you're just do this one little thing and that problem
Speaker 1: is going to just vanish. Right, So how do you
Speaker 1: go about, you know, walking somebody who says, you know what,
Speaker 1: I've got no ability to direct my mind where do
Speaker 1: I start? What do I do? I guess the first
Speaker 1: is to disavow them of that belief. And don't get
Speaker 1: me wrong, I have close friends who love my work,
Speaker 1: even by the books, but they're like, yeah, I can't
Speaker 1: actually meditate, thank you, you know, and they have a
Speaker 1: belief that their mind is too busy, that the anxiety
Speaker 1: actually does get to control their life. And it's the
Speaker 1: first that really is to say, well, when we just
Speaker 1: do that, do you want choose happiness? You want to
Speaker 1: choose stress? Thing? That person makes a choice, they say happiness.
Speaker 1: So can we actually just look for a thousand different
Speaker 1: ways of choosing happiness? And it starts with that. It
Speaker 1: can start with as simple as like just verbally saying it,
Speaker 1: and move into any number of tips, tricks, techniques. You know. There's,
Speaker 1: for example, what I call in the book the hiccup meditation,
Speaker 1: which is not formal term, but it's just Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: super stressed, this angry email lands in my inbox. What
Speaker 1: do I do? I close the laptop and I take
Speaker 1: three deep breaths in through the nose, out through the mouth.
Speaker 1: Again a thirty second situation, and yet it really radically
Speaker 1: shifts our focus. Now here's the thing, mindfulness, meditation, this
Speaker 1: whole thing where we could do it for twenty minutes whatever,
Speaker 1: where we notice the stories come up. We acknowledge when
Speaker 1: we come back that literally trains the brain. But along
Speaker 1: the way there's going to be little winds that we
Speaker 1: need to celebrate. So even if we have those three
Speaker 1: deep breaths and all of a sudden we feel a
Speaker 1: little bit like the body's calm or the mind is
Speaker 1: a little calmer because of the thirty second intervention. Now
Speaker 1: we know we can have intervention. Now we know we
Speaker 1: can have times of relaxation that we don't have to
Speaker 1: always be in stress. So where do we pledge our
Speaker 1: mental allegiance. Do we pledge it to developing more stories
Speaker 1: around stress, or do we start to say, well, no,
Speaker 1: it's not a load row or an eric or anyone
Speaker 1: saying here's how you're going to change your life. It's me.
Speaker 1: I just had that experience. You know. When we're coming
Speaker 1: out of the Buddhist tradition we talk about faith, faith
Speaker 1: is often referring to our own experience. I have a
Speaker 1: moment of relaxation while I'm practicing meditation, while I'm doing
Speaker 1: the three D press, whatever it is in that moment,
Speaker 1: it's me I've discovered that and I liked it, and
Speaker 1: I can go further with it. The faith is that
Speaker 1: I have an experience that I am confident existed that
Speaker 1: I can go further. And if I had one moment
Speaker 1: of relaxation, maybe I can make it too. It's two
Speaker 1: moments of relaxation in a day, maybe I can make
Speaker 1: it five. And we just started to build our life
Speaker 1: in this direction. And again, the bad news here is
Speaker 1: that it isn't a quick fix. It's like a constant
Speaker 1: working and reworking with the mind. Sometimes it feels like
Speaker 1: we just wade into the ocean or trying to push
Speaker 1: back the tide of their own two hands. That's where
Speaker 1: we all start, don't get me wrong, And I get it.
Speaker 1: A lifelong meditation practitioner, I've been doing meditation for thirty
Speaker 1: plus years, and only in the last few years I
Speaker 1: really really get serious and say, okay, not just during meditation,
Speaker 1: but in my post meditation experience, I eat the rest
Speaker 1: of my waiting hours. I got to really address this
Speaker 1: otherwise it's going to take over my life. And it's
Speaker 1: that it's like, once we make a real commitment, we
Speaker 1: start to notice how anxiety and all the what of
Speaker 1: stories come up. And there's so many different modalities expanding
Speaker 1: beyond meditation, therapy, all sorts of exercises, journaling, things like
Speaker 1: that that can help take us from different angles of
Speaker 1: working with the mind and bring us into the present
Speaker 1: moment long enough to again choose happiness. I love that
Speaker 1: idea of what am I pledging allegiance too, because I
Speaker 1: do see a lot of arguing for our own limitations.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of arguing for why anxiety gets to win.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of arguing. I see that in a
Speaker 1: lot of people. Instead of, like you said, sort of
Speaker 1: saying no, I'm gonna I'm gonna put my my allegiance,
Speaker 1: my faith, and my energy over here, that says, no,
Speaker 1: that's not the way it has to be. You know,
Speaker 1: it feels that way a lot of the time, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be that way. And little bit
Speaker 1: by little bit, I can reclaim the mind. And I
Speaker 1: think that for me, that's so much of it is
Speaker 1: just lots and lots of things where my favorite phrases
Speaker 1: is a little by little, a little becomes a lot,
Speaker 1: And so ten minutes of meditation here thirty seconds of
Speaker 1: reclaiming my mind here, five minutes of breathing here. I
Speaker 1: mean little by little, because most of us are not
Speaker 1: in a position where we go, well, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: go away for three years to the monastery and train
Speaker 1: my mind, and I'll then have a little bit of
Speaker 1: a steadier place to come from. We have to we
Speaker 1: have to carve it out a little bit by little bit,
Speaker 1: and to go completely different analogy. You know, if we
Speaker 1: are a vote and we set off from one dock
Speaker 1: and we're going to sail across the ocean, and the
Speaker 1: way that our momentum, the way we were raised, the
Speaker 1: way their schooling happened, are work situa, aation or living situation.
Speaker 1: All of that has come together so that we are
Speaker 1: on course to live in land of complete anxiety. But
Speaker 1: I'm not saying turn the ship around. I'm saying we're
Speaker 1: turning this ship one degree at first, two degrees, and
Speaker 1: then what happens as we sail over the course of
Speaker 1: the ocean, we end up going to a dramatically different land.
Speaker 1: A friend and person who admire very much Dan Harris
Speaker 1: wrote the brilliantly titled book ten Percent Happier, Right like
Speaker 1: that's it's like ten percent less dressed out, ten percent
Speaker 1: more engaged in our life and in more present and
Speaker 1: more appreciative. Like that's where we're going. If we took
Speaker 1: one percent of our day and said, no, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to chase after anxiety. I'm just going to hook
Speaker 1: myself a little bit, coming to the present moment, sit
Speaker 1: my coffee, take the doctor, walk and be like again,
Speaker 1: all this is in the book to where it's like
Speaker 1: there's ten thousand different ways we can beyond just a
Speaker 1: simple meditation technique that we could start to retrain the
Speaker 1: mind to be present, not to chase after anxiety. That
Speaker 1: one percent today means all of a sudden, we're one
Speaker 1: degree in a completely different course than living our life
Speaker 1: based anxiety to degrees, and it goes over time. We
Speaker 1: turned into months intern in two years, and the people
Speaker 1: I've worked with over the last twenty years I've been
Speaker 1: teaching meditation now it's a situation where I've seen them
Speaker 1: over and over again. Say, for example, here we are
Speaker 1: in the midst of the pandemic. I can't imagine how
Speaker 1: I would be able to handle this without actually having
Speaker 1: this established meditation practice. With that the ability to work
Speaker 1: with my mind, it would be completely overwhelming me. Which
Speaker 1: is actually a big part of what inspired this book,
Speaker 1: which is there's so many people who aren't working with
Speaker 1: their mind in any way, shape or from the mind
Speaker 1: is working them is taken over and it's overwhelming them.
Speaker 1: So can we at least take ourselves down to a
Speaker 1: state of relaxation, if not complete joy, bliss, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So you and I have both had in our illustrious
Speaker 1: past lots of debt. Yes, absolutely, And I think you
Speaker 1: got out of yours the honorable way by actually paying
Speaker 1: it off. I did, and the way I did it
Speaker 1: was with loan consolidation, and it's really really effective because
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, instead of having all these multiple
Speaker 1: credit cards with these really high interest rates and if
Speaker 1: I miss one, I incur an extra penalty and I'm
Speaker 1: just never going in the right direction. With a loan consolidation,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I have one simple payment with
Speaker 1: one lower interest rate. So upstart is the fast and
Speaker 1: easy way to get a person alone to pay off
Speaker 1: your debt. All online kind of makes me want to
Speaker 1: run out open five new credit cards and then really
Speaker 1: just go crazy over there. I don't think that's the
Speaker 1: way it's supposed to work. But if it's paying off
Speaker 1: credit cards, consolidating high interest debt, or funding a personal expense,
Speaker 1: Over half a million people have used upstart to get
Speaker 1: a simple, fixed monthly payment. They find smarter rates with
Speaker 1: trusted partners because they assess more than just your credit score,
Speaker 1: which in your case would be a real benefit. You mean,
Speaker 1: my eleven credit score, Chris was known as the lowest
Speaker 1: credit score in North American history. You can get approved
Speaker 1: the same day and receive funds as fast as one
Speaker 1: business day. So if debt is taking over your life,
Speaker 1: it's time to get a fresh start with Upstart. Find
Speaker 1: out how Upstart can lower your monthly payments today when
Speaker 1: you go to upstart dot com slash wolf, and make
Speaker 1: sure to use that you are l to let them
Speaker 1: know that we sent you. Loan amounts will be determined
Speaker 1: based on your credit, income, and certain other information provided
Speaker 1: by your loan application. Go to upstart dot calm slash wolf. Eric,
Speaker 1: did I tell you that I made three of the
Speaker 1: Green Chef organic meals? You did tell me, actually, because
Speaker 1: you were pretty excited about how enjoyable it was to
Speaker 1: make them and how delicious. They were. I made up
Speaker 1: three nights in a row basically, but the porcini mashed
Speaker 1: potatoes and the orange miso tofu were just so great.
Speaker 1: My wife loved them everything. She was very impressed thinking
Speaker 1: that I could cook that well. The interesting thing about
Speaker 1: Green Chef is that they have all kinds of different
Speaker 1: plans to fit every lifestyle. So the one you mentioned
Speaker 1: was the vegetarian one because that's what we like to have,
Speaker 1: but they've also got Keto, Paleo, vegan, vegetarian, or if
Speaker 1: you're just looking to eat healthier. There's a range of
Speaker 1: recipes to suit any diet or preference. And Green Chef
Speaker 1: is the first U. S D A certified organic meal
Speaker 1: kit company. Yeah, which is important certainly to us is
Speaker 1: that you know, if we can get it organic, it's ideal.
Speaker 1: And then it's also very stainable because they offset one
Speaker 1: of their carbon emissions and plastic packaging in every box,
Speaker 1: so you can feel great about what you're eating and
Speaker 1: how it got to your table. One distinction I want
Speaker 1: to make two between Green Chef and some of the
Speaker 1: other meal kit plan companies that I've made is the
Speaker 1: instructions and the packaging are absolutely fantastic on this. You
Speaker 1: really would have thought that I knew a ton about cooking.
Speaker 1: It's got these beautiful print outs, very simple step by
Speaker 1: step instructions. I'll have to make you one some day. Yes,
Speaker 1: So go to green chef dot com slash ninety wolf
Speaker 1: and use code ninety wolf to get ninety dollars off
Speaker 1: including free shipping. Again, that's green chef dot com slash
Speaker 1: ninety wolf and use the code nine wolf to get
Speaker 1: ninety dollars off and it has free shipping. Green Chef
Speaker 1: the number one meal kit for eating well. I want
Speaker 1: to explore two areas here. I want to talk about
Speaker 1: what you just mentioned a few minutes ago, this idea
Speaker 1: of I can't meditate, because I think that's a really
Speaker 1: important one. And then I'd like to explore some of
Speaker 1: the on the spot practices that you recommend. I mean,
Speaker 1: my obsession over the last couple of years has been
Speaker 1: um something I call spiritual habits. But spiritual habits is
Speaker 1: finding those on the spot practices things we do in
Speaker 1: the midst of our lives that allow us to change.
Speaker 1: Not things that we have to take time away from
Speaker 1: and go do, like meditation, which is critical, but things
Speaker 1: that we do as we're going about our day. So
Speaker 1: let's start first with I can't meditate, my brain is
Speaker 1: too busy. Yeah, I think we have to start small.
Speaker 1: And there's also this part of the book which is uh,
Speaker 1: I keep saying, here's something that you can do. And
Speaker 1: by the way, if you go to a load room
Speaker 1: into dot com lash anxiety, you get like me talking
Speaker 1: to you through this. So a lot of times people
Speaker 1: say I can't do it. And I watched the thing
Speaker 1: on YouTube and I put it down and just felt
Speaker 1: like too much to have supportive guides, have people that
Speaker 1: can talk to I made a commitment when my first
Speaker 1: book came out nine years ago that I was gonna
Speaker 1: respond to everyone who ever wrote to me about my books.
Speaker 1: And it does keep me ridiculously busy, but I still
Speaker 1: do it. People say, you know, Lord Romnt team, like
Speaker 1: I'm the team books. Um, you know it's me. So
Speaker 1: when people are like I can't do it, if they've
Speaker 1: taken the time to read one of my books, I
Speaker 1: can take the time to actually help you guide them
Speaker 1: a little bit. I'm a bit of a tangent, but
Speaker 1: like I'm there for whoever is listening, wants to explore
Speaker 1: the book wants to actually learn these techniques. It's not
Speaker 1: like I'm just a podcast guest. I'm happy to engage.
Speaker 1: All of these things are now like recorded and their
Speaker 1: live and we can actually talk about like someone's going
Speaker 1: to talk you through this. And it can start with
Speaker 1: five breaths, like we could just count five cycles of
Speaker 1: the body breathing. Maybe the mind wanders during that. We
Speaker 1: try it again, but it's just we've got to start
Speaker 1: with a bite sized thing. And as I talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: that's how we breed confidence. Oh I was able to
Speaker 1: be with my breath for five cycles. Five in breadth
Speaker 1: of operas. Okay, no, I can move to ten. Now
Speaker 1: I can sit for ten minutes. You know. And often
Speaker 1: what happens with long time meditattion, so they look over
Speaker 1: their shoulder. They don't know how they've changed through from
Speaker 1: the last people to acknowledge it. It's almost like they're
Speaker 1: wading into the water centimeter by centimeter, and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden they have no idea what how they're
Speaker 1: up to their neck in it. It's just this gradual change.
Speaker 1: I've seen it happen over and over again for many years.
Speaker 1: I co founded a network of meditation studios that particularly
Speaker 1: the pandemic as have now closed down, called Mindful, and
Speaker 1: there are all these sorts of people and they'd come
Speaker 1: in with friends and I would say, what, you know,
Speaker 1: what's going on? How do you two know to learn?
Speaker 1: Because you know it's so interesting. We'll say. The guy's
Speaker 1: name is Ethan. Ethan here. You know, he was always
Speaker 1: such a jerk, and yet you know he's a longtime friend.
Speaker 1: We go to lunch every Tuesday. And I know as
Speaker 1: they started listening to me more, he started following up
Speaker 1: on things and actually really caring about like what we
Speaker 1: had talked about, because he was sort of hearing me more.
Speaker 1: And as someone I was like, what's going on with you?
Speaker 1: Because I don't know just because you've been doing this
Speaker 1: meditation thing. And then of course he said, yes, I
Speaker 1: guess that must be it. That's the only thing that's changed.
Speaker 1: He didn't know that he was becoming kinder or a
Speaker 1: better listener or any of it. And now she wants
Speaker 1: to do it right because she saw the change in
Speaker 1: someone else. So I do think that again, surrounding ourselves
Speaker 1: with people who are going to support us in these
Speaker 1: endeavors could be really helpful. It doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: a load of a rentler. It can be going to
Speaker 1: a local meditation center or meditation studio. It could be
Speaker 1: you know, there's so many online communities, including my own
Speaker 1: these days, that you can actually start to work with
Speaker 1: a teacher and have someone hold your hand. And it's
Speaker 1: not like there's certainly not me, but many of the
Speaker 1: people I often refer how individuals over to. It's like
Speaker 1: there's some guru on the top of the mountain. Their
Speaker 1: individuals who are just a little bit further down the
Speaker 1: path than you, who might have been doing this and
Speaker 1: are still so close to where you are that they
Speaker 1: understand exactly what you're going through. So if I walked
Speaker 1: into a room full of meditators of all ages and
Speaker 1: ranges and backgrounds, said, who here thinks that they're the
Speaker 1: worst meditator of all time? I would put good money
Speaker 1: on every hand going up and that if it's everyone,
Speaker 1: then there's no one right, So we sort of all
Speaker 1: have to be in it together. And I think that's
Speaker 1: why I'm pushing the community support and teacher support during
Speaker 1: all this. Yeah, I love that idea that everybody would
Speaker 1: think they're the worst meditator. Ever, because you're in your
Speaker 1: head and you know, like, well, jeez, I am trying
Speaker 1: to stay focused on this thing, and yet my mind
Speaker 1: wanders anywhere from every two or three seconds too, you know,
Speaker 1: best case scenario, every two or three minutes. Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: it extends a little bit longer. But I think when
Speaker 1: we realize that that's what happens, but that's just the process,
Speaker 1: then we can relax with it. And I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the biggest things for me with what change
Speaker 1: my meditation practice, and I've seen change a lot of
Speaker 1: other people's meditation practices, is to stop judging it and
Speaker 1: just to go, yeah, okay, so yes, I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: thirty five times in a ten minute meditation, because if
Speaker 1: we feel like we're failing, nobody likes to do something
Speaker 1: they feel like they're really bad at, like, you know,
Speaker 1: so I'm like, well, if I'm failing every ten seconds,
Speaker 1: I'm going to develop an aversive relationship. And if I've
Speaker 1: developed an inversive relationship, it's gonna be hard to stick
Speaker 1: with it. It's exactly it. And I think there's so
Speaker 1: many areas of our life already where we're unkind to ourselves.
Speaker 1: Meditation in my mind should be a judgment free zone.
Speaker 1: You know, if we even look at like the classic
Speaker 1: definitions around mindfulness that are bandied about in the West,
Speaker 1: it's often that we are present to what is currently
Speaker 1: occurring dot dot dot without judgment. So why are we
Speaker 1: judging ourselves in this practice? Like, there's actually a beautiful
Speaker 1: moment in meditation. That's such a giggy thing to say,
Speaker 1: but most people like, oh, this trains me to be present.
Speaker 1: It also trains me to be kind because this moment
Speaker 1: I drift off and I catch myself. What do I
Speaker 1: do with that? Do I say, you jerk? Why are
Speaker 1: you so bad at this? You're bad at everything? No
Speaker 1: surprised that you'd have your mind? You're not the person
Speaker 1: that commending. Or do I actually infuse that sense of friendliness? Hey,
Speaker 1: it's not a big deal. Happens to everyone, generate thoughts
Speaker 1: all day long. It's what the mind does. Not a
Speaker 1: big deal. Come on back, relax. That moment is planting
Speaker 1: one of two possible seeds to come back to our
Speaker 1: our parable right, Like, am I planning the seeds for
Speaker 1: aggression towards myself? That will, ultimately, if I don't feel
Speaker 1: good about myself, lead to me causing harmon and causing
Speaker 1: aggression towards others? Been there no that one? Or that
Speaker 1: I've gradually gotten better at over time, planting the seeds
Speaker 1: of deep kindness toward ourselves. And that's the moment that
Speaker 1: we say, oh wait, I actually have a deep well
Speaker 1: of loving kindness for myself. Then I can actually go
Speaker 1: and offer that to others. I love that. I think
Speaker 1: that's a great thing to really draw attention to. Is
Speaker 1: that that moment really matters? What do I do? How
Speaker 1: do I respond to my mind having wandered off again?
Speaker 1: You know? And it's so funny. I've I've said this
Speaker 1: on the show many times. I know that I heard
Speaker 1: meditation teachers were saying, your mind's going to wander, not
Speaker 1: a big deal, Be friendly to yourself, bring it back.
Speaker 1: I know that's what they were saying. And yet I
Speaker 1: don't know why it took me twenty or as I
Speaker 1: feel like, to really get that message, to really get
Speaker 1: that that moment that my mind wandered, the more friendly
Speaker 1: I could be to myself and the more relaxed about
Speaker 1: it I could be the better at what was. I
Speaker 1: almost feel like we can't go too far in stressing
Speaker 1: that I'm with you on that, and you know, maybe
Speaker 1: even to answer the other question that you asked about.
Speaker 1: So I have short practices. You know. One of the
Speaker 1: things that's in the book is just a mindfulness of
Speaker 1: emotions practice, because often when we feel something like anxiety, stress, fear,
Speaker 1: whatever it might be, we started to say, oh, something
Speaker 1: wrong with me, I'm bad. Now, these are emotions that
Speaker 1: come up, and we could actually learn to be with
Speaker 1: them that we're not somehow broken or bad, are or
Speaker 1: wrong for feeling what we feel. And this particular phrase
Speaker 1: was bandied about by Joseph Goldstein, who's one of the
Speaker 1: hunders Insite Meditation Society, wonderful organization here in the West,
Speaker 1: and he says, um that when we noticed this, we
Speaker 1: can just say it's okay to feel this. So the instruction,
Speaker 1: if I may, is to drop the story, feel the feeling.
Speaker 1: And by that it's like, oh, you know, here, I
Speaker 1: am raither in the meditation practice. Or let's say, actually,
Speaker 1: perhaps more accurately, since we're talking in this realm in
Speaker 1: my day to day life, and I'm either beating myself
Speaker 1: up or feeling bad, I should have said that thing
Speaker 1: last night. Oh God, I feel weird can I drop
Speaker 1: the story and actually come into feeling the energy of
Speaker 1: the feeling itself, can actually feel it in the body
Speaker 1: and just rest with that. When we aren't throwing fuel
Speaker 1: on the fire of our emotions, it tends to just
Speaker 1: naturally burn out. And that's how we do it. The fuel,
Speaker 1: of course, is the stories that keep us locked there.
Speaker 1: What if I do this, But what if maybe I
Speaker 1: should tell them that we drop, that we feel the feeling.
Speaker 1: The fire naturally just does its things like holding our
Speaker 1: hands to the warmth of it, feeling it as opposed
Speaker 1: to add in fuel. So that's one I'm just even
Speaker 1: acknowledging on the spot. It's okay to feel this, dropping
Speaker 1: the story, feeling the feeling, That's a really important one
Speaker 1: terms of offering ourselves a sense of kindness. M One
Speaker 1: of the greatest loves of my life that I've had
Speaker 1: forever besides Chris is reading great children's books can open
Speaker 1: up new worlds for discovery, and with Literati Kids, your
Speaker 1: child can explore uncharted places every month with spell binding
Speaker 1: stories handpicked by experts. Literati Kids is a try before
Speaker 1: you buy subscription book club. Each month, they deliver five
Speaker 1: vibrantly illustrated children's books, bringing the immersive magic of reading
Speaker 1: right to your home. They're wonderful because each bundle is
Speaker 1: thoughtfully tailored by education experts, with five stories meant to
Speaker 1: spark new interests and nurture a healthy curiosity. I sent
Speaker 1: these to my niece and nephew and they absolutely loved them,
Speaker 1: and my sister in law said that they were just
Speaker 1: such great books, far better than she would have picked
Speaker 1: on her own. And on top of that, not having
Speaker 1: to sort through hundreds of titles trying to guess what
Speaker 1: your child will like. Literati sends you the best books,
Speaker 1: and then you choose to purchase the ones you love
Speaker 1: and send the rest back for free. How cool is
Speaker 1: that It's like a book fair delivered to your house,
Speaker 1: without those stupid forms you have to fill out. Head
Speaker 1: to literati dot com slash wolf for off your first
Speaker 1: two orders, select your child's book club, and start them
Speaker 1: on a literary journey. Like no other, Literati dot com
Speaker 1: slash wolf is the only place to find off your
Speaker 1: first two orders of this one of a kind book subscription.
Speaker 1: The most joyful way to foster a lifelong love of learning,
Speaker 1: and what could be better for a kid than that.
Speaker 1: It has served me so well in my life. That's
Speaker 1: literati dot com, slash wolf what I get a lot
Speaker 1: from listeners or people are saying like, well, it's great,
Speaker 1: I try that, but here's the problem, here's what's not working.
Speaker 1: So I love to get folks like you on and
Speaker 1: explore these things in a little bit more depth. Because
Speaker 1: drop the storyline, feel the feeling. We all get it
Speaker 1: and like why it makes a lot of sense. The
Speaker 1: challenge that I have in my own life with it
Speaker 1: sometimes is it's like I try and drop the storyline,
Speaker 1: feel the feeling. I drop into the feeling for about
Speaker 1: a quarter of a second, and then boom, I'm back
Speaker 1: up at the story and then I'm down and I'm
Speaker 1: you know, and it goes back and forth, and maybe
Speaker 1: sometimes I even managed to stay in the feeling a
Speaker 1: little bit, but when I come back up, the story
Speaker 1: is still They're just doing its thing. Is it just
Speaker 1: that the fuel takes a while to burn out? And
Speaker 1: this is something we have to just back to that
Speaker 1: word of practice. We just have to keep trying. It's
Speaker 1: exactly it. Yeah, And I think I don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: I wish that we could wave a magic wand and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden say, this makes the story disappear.
Speaker 1: Anyone who says that though my experience is not accurate,
Speaker 1: I was gonna swear on your show, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: do that, but you know it's not accurate. We do
Speaker 1: have to gradually retrain the mind. We spend decades, many
Speaker 1: of us saying I'm just gonna let the mind run
Speaker 1: around like a wild animal. And now we're trying to
Speaker 1: tame the wild animal. Were trying to say, you know,
Speaker 1: it's one back, let's let's come on inside, let's get warm,
Speaker 1: you know, like it's it's hard because the animal doesn't
Speaker 1: know what we're even talking about it first, but we say,
Speaker 1: you know, come on, if you would treat At some
Speaker 1: point they say what I like treats and they come
Speaker 1: back in and and they run off and they do
Speaker 1: their wild thinging come on, and you know, so we're
Speaker 1: actually going back to what we're talking before. We really
Speaker 1: do have to be quite gentle with ourselves, like there's
Speaker 1: no whipping the mind is to shape. This is not
Speaker 1: a book about beating ourselves up to the point of
Speaker 1: mind submitting to us. It's it's actually just befriending ourselves.
Speaker 1: It's just been really kind to ourselves and to the
Speaker 1: best of our ability, moving the mind in the direction
Speaker 1: that actually feels like what is that treat? You know?
Speaker 1: First almost it's like a gratitude practice every morning when
Speaker 1: I wake up, before I put my feet on the bed,
Speaker 1: before I look at the phone, before I do a thing,
Speaker 1: I just rattle off some of the things I'm grateful for.
Speaker 1: And it's the world's shortest contemplation practice. It's a minute.
Speaker 1: But what am I grateful for? I sit with that question.
Speaker 1: I noticed what arises from within my own mind. Sometimes
Speaker 1: there's a few things. Sometimes there's many. Sometimes I'm surprised.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's very basic things. I'm healthy right now, there's
Speaker 1: a rouful from my head. There's quiet in my home
Speaker 1: right now. It doesn't have to be, you know, something
Speaker 1: hyper specific, that's you know, we're we've always want to know.
Speaker 1: It's just starting the day by being present long enough
Speaker 1: to appreciate what's right under our nose. And then what
Speaker 1: happens when I swing my feet over there and they
Speaker 1: touched the floor. I actually I am already starting my day,
Speaker 1: not from a place of stress, from a place of appreciation.
Speaker 1: So simple things like that that are in the book
Speaker 1: as well. So let's talk about a couple more on
Speaker 1: the spot practices. You've got a couple more you could
Speaker 1: share with this along those lines. Another question I think
Speaker 1: is really helpful. What can I enjoy right now? You know,
Speaker 1: we're going through a day. You know, we're sort of
Speaker 1: bousing between this meeting and that meeting and this thing,
Speaker 1: and then there's a gap, and it could be the
Speaker 1: simple gap of you know, when we get off the
Speaker 1: line today, there's going to be a gap, and it
Speaker 1: becomes what can I enjoy right now? Can we train
Speaker 1: the mind to just ask that question again? You're looking
Speaker 1: over at this painting that's above my desk. You know
Speaker 1: that my wife and I got, and it's something that
Speaker 1: we saved up for, and there's something really sort of
Speaker 1: sweet about having like a grown up piece of art
Speaker 1: work here, you know, and there's deep appreciation for the
Speaker 1: whole experience. It's that simple. Well, there's flowers over there,
Speaker 1: there's fresh flowers. They perk up the room. They uplifted me.
Speaker 1: I feel blifted looking at them. So what can I
Speaker 1: enjoy right now is a really important question, particularly for
Speaker 1: those moments that are as I'm saying like gaps gap
Speaker 1: moments like I'm in an elevator commuting, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: in the waiting room, well before the doctor calls you in,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Those are moments that we could just
Speaker 1: start to notice, what can I appreciate right now? What
Speaker 1: kind of enjoying right now? That's a really helpful one
Speaker 1: in my own experience, alongside the what am I grateful for?
Speaker 1: And then there's one that I probably should have mentioned
Speaker 1: for the people who are still like this guy's you know,
Speaker 1: full of it and you know I can't actually ever
Speaker 1: meditate or any of it. There's a practice in here
Speaker 1: called the thought party, which I love, which is um
Speaker 1: so I think I was introduced you when I was
Speaker 1: eighteen years old, and it's the idea of not trying
Speaker 1: to stop the thoughts but actually to invite them all in.
Speaker 1: It's like to get it to the point where it's
Speaker 1: almost extreme where we're sitting like and again, you could
Speaker 1: be in the waiting room. This doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: a formal meditation, but we're like, oh my gosh, someone
Speaker 1: so said this, and I'm gonna do that, and then
Speaker 1: after this, I've got to do that thing, and then
Speaker 1: all of a suddenly say, let me invite in all
Speaker 1: the thoughts, let me see if I can think every
Speaker 1: thought that could possibly think. And it becomes very very
Speaker 1: very very very big, and there's someone it pops because
Speaker 1: it's just like, it becomes so ludicrous that we start
Speaker 1: to develop a sense of humor about it. And that's
Speaker 1: been my experience, has been the experience of any number
Speaker 1: of meditations students that I work with, that if we
Speaker 1: get to the point where we say I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: make it really, really really big, at some point it
Speaker 1: becomes ludicrous. My favorite example of this is when I
Speaker 1: start talking to someone around work and they say, oh,
Speaker 1: if you know, sort of drop the ball on this project,
Speaker 1: and there's so much anxiety around it. Okay, let's been
Speaker 1: this out, let's do it. If they are mad that
Speaker 1: I dropped the ball on this project, then not going
Speaker 1: to get a bad review? What happens if you get
Speaker 1: a bad review. I get a couple of bad reviews,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna lose my job. What happens if you lucy job,
Speaker 1: I'm never gonna get another job like this again? What
Speaker 1: happens even never get a job, Well, then I'm gonna
Speaker 1: lose my mortgage, I'm gonna be destituted. And it always
Speaker 1: ends with people living in a box on the street.
Speaker 1: It could be I, you know, sent an email late
Speaker 1: at night and my boss is gonna be bothered them
Speaker 1: and it ends there, you know. So it's like at
Speaker 1: some point we almost have to laugh and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: this isn't reality. So we make it big enough so
Speaker 1: that we realize how far we are from reality, and
Speaker 1: then it pops and then we can come home to
Speaker 1: reality again. So that's another one that I think could
Speaker 1: be helpful for people that are like I have too
Speaker 1: many thoughts to meditate, think all of them, bring them
Speaker 1: all in, and then they come back home to reality.
Speaker 1: Feel the breath for a moment. See if that's helpful.
Speaker 1: One of the notions that really underlies Buddhism as a whole,
Speaker 1: but is particularly important in Shambala Buddhism, which I think
Speaker 1: is at least the path that you spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time, and I don't know if you would describe
Speaker 1: yourself as part of that path. Now, is basic goodness?
Speaker 1: So explained to us what basic goodness is and how
Speaker 1: does it help us in dealing with anxiety? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a great question. This term basic goodness is really profound,
Speaker 1: and it's something that was developed by children trump or
Speaker 1: a bishet who is a tobent Buddhist teacher, and it's
Speaker 1: you know, very well known from bringing these teachings here
Speaker 1: to the West. But we look at other traditions, even
Speaker 1: within Tibetan Buddhism, for example, we could sometimes say, oh,
Speaker 1: this is Buddha nature, the fact that underneath all of
Speaker 1: these stories were inherently awake. That's just who we are.
Speaker 1: The Buddha didn't attain some sort of enlignment out there.
Speaker 1: He just discovered that he was already wakeful and developed
Speaker 1: a relationship to that. We two can do that. And
Speaker 1: then the famous contemporary of drunk Mbichase Zuki Roshi, would
Speaker 1: refer to it as universal nature or original mind or
Speaker 1: you know, perhaps famously known in his book n Mind
Speaker 1: Beginner's Mind. It's the sense of complete openness and wakefulness
Speaker 1: that is inherent to all human beings. So that's what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. But I do like the term basic
Speaker 1: goodness because basic is not sort of um swearing apologies,
Speaker 1: like it's not like a basic bitch. It's not like,
Speaker 1: you know, we have this term here, it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not uncouth, it's a sense of fundamental it's foundational
Speaker 1: to who we are. It's inherent, primordial innate to who
Speaker 1: we are. So it's a part of us. And the
Speaker 1: goodness is not a good versus bad star wars thing, right,
Speaker 1: that's not what it is. It's wholeness, completeness, like we're
Speaker 1: basically okay. And I think most of us walk around
Speaker 1: and saying I'm not basically okay, I'm basically messed up.
Speaker 1: So this view can be really radical and profound for
Speaker 1: people who may not have contemplated this possibility before that
Speaker 1: inherently I'm okay, I'm not basically a mess We can
Speaker 1: mess up at times, we can be completely blocked from
Speaker 1: our goodness, our basic goodness are put in nature and
Speaker 1: act confused. I have, Lord knows I have. I've made
Speaker 1: many mistakes, but that's not who we are. And in
Speaker 1: those moments, can we say, oh, I can acknowledge it.
Speaker 1: I can say I don't want to do that anymore.
Speaker 1: I can say, can I even hopefully make some sort
Speaker 1: of reparation in connection to these people who have fine
Speaker 1: good None of that negates our basic goodness. And this
Speaker 1: is is horrible for most people right now because they're like, well,
Speaker 1: surely you don't mean that you and on people basic,
Speaker 1: but surely you don't mean this politician has basically, surely
Speaker 1: you don't mean this person who committed this atrocity. And
Speaker 1: the unfortunate thing, according to the Buddhist view, is that
Speaker 1: we actually all possess basic goodness and some of us
Speaker 1: just act really, really really eving confused. So we can't,
Speaker 1: unfortunately control who has complete access to their basic goodness
Speaker 1: who's blocked from it. But we can work with our
Speaker 1: own minds and hearts. And that's the beautiful thing that
Speaker 1: on one hand, yes, we're treating the disease of anxiety
Speaker 1: in this book and this conversation, but in the other
Speaker 1: it's like, what do we find underneath the stories that
Speaker 1: keep us loft in anxiety? Own goodness, our own wholeness.
Speaker 1: And again, this is not a low driven by saying
Speaker 1: this is what you're gonna experience. Here's a philosophy. When
Speaker 1: we are able to relax with ourselves in the moment,
Speaker 1: maybe this during meditation, maybe we're just there with the
Speaker 1: breath for a moment, we say, oh, I feel okay,
Speaker 1: I'm a whole, complete good in this moment. That's it.
Speaker 1: It's not you know, I'm shooting laser beams out of
Speaker 1: my eyeballs. I'm just a whole, complete good in this moment.
Speaker 1: Then you know it for yourself, and then you can
Speaker 1: develop more and more of a relationship to it. As
Speaker 1: far as I found in my limited experience with these teachings,
Speaker 1: the point that we started on the path is that
Speaker 1: moment where we say, oh, I can actually relax, I
Speaker 1: can be with myself and who I am is basically good.
Speaker 1: And then the entirety of the path going forward is
Speaker 1: can I develop deeper relationship and confidence in that experience
Speaker 1: and be more in touch with that as supposed to,
Speaker 1: more in touch with my anxiety and the fruition that
Speaker 1: would be that we would leave to life living and
Speaker 1: interacting with people through that lens. I would agree with you.
Speaker 1: That's my understanding of of the path. Also, I'm more
Speaker 1: of a Zen practitioner these days. But the same thing, Yeah,
Speaker 1: everything you said there is you know, it's that's that
Speaker 1: basic idea. It's already here. What we're seeking is already here.
Speaker 1: It's rereadings in my beginner's mine, the other day and
Speaker 1: Suzuki Roshi talks that we're not attaining enlightenment, right, We're
Speaker 1: not attaining Buddha of nature or any of it. It's
Speaker 1: sort of like saying, I'm going to go attain a
Speaker 1: box of cereal from the grocery store when my coupverards
Speaker 1: full of it. You know, it's right there, it's already here.
Speaker 1: I don't have to go anywhere, I don't have to
Speaker 1: get anything. I'm actually already, it's already. You're waiting for
Speaker 1: me to die. Yeah, the spiritual teach your audio. Shanti
Speaker 1: once did this thing one of his retreats I was at,
Speaker 1: and he said, all right, I can't remember whether he
Speaker 1: had a stand up or not, but for the purposes
Speaker 1: of it, let's imagine everybody stands up and he says, okay,
Speaker 1: now take one step closer to yourself, and you suddenly
Speaker 1: realized like, well, I can't. I I'm as close as
Speaker 1: I can be. I'm here because everybody's prepared to move,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, tork closer to yourself, You're like, well,
Speaker 1: you know the end. Then we talked about the backwards step.
Speaker 1: You know, the backwards step, which is just stepping inside
Speaker 1: instead about beautiful. As I mentioned before, the book is
Speaker 1: called Take Back your Mind, Buddhist Advice for Anxious Times,
Speaker 1: And not only is it something that you are publishing yourself,
Speaker 1: but you're also doing something special with the proceeds. Say
Speaker 1: a little bit about that. Yeah. So the beauty of
Speaker 1: this going through the new imprint that I'm founding with
Speaker 1: some colleagues called Dharma Club Publications, is that we can
Speaker 1: actually determine where the proceeds go. And I think sometimes
Speaker 1: when you go through a larger publisher, I'll just say, often, uh,
Speaker 1: you don't often realize that the author gets very little
Speaker 1: of the proceeds and it goes to everyone that generates
Speaker 1: the book, which is totally fair. But our current situation,
Speaker 1: you know, with the pandemic, we want to get this
Speaker 1: book out very quickly, and we wanted it to help
Speaker 1: the most people. So part of that is that all
Speaker 1: of the proceeds, which is, you know, everything that is
Speaker 1: not going directly into the production of the book, the
Speaker 1: vast majority of every dollar that's spent when someone buys
Speaker 1: it goes to one of two charities that split between
Speaker 1: the two. The first is the Feeding America Organization, which
Speaker 1: is food banks around America for those who are in need.
Speaker 1: And the other is the Loveland Foundation, which is a
Speaker 1: really wonderful and beautiful organization that is committed to offering
Speaker 1: therapeutic support to black and brown women girls. This is
Speaker 1: a funny story that I reached out to both organizations.
Speaker 1: I said, you know, I would love to offer the
Speaker 1: proceeds from this book so that when people buy it,
Speaker 1: they're helping others in additions helping themselves, and both organizations
Speaker 1: were delighted and small world situations that the currency secutive
Speaker 1: director of the level And Foundation had read The Buddha
Speaker 1: Walks into a Bar a number of years before and
Speaker 1: got inspired and got into philanthropy and then as this
Speaker 1: organization and never would have predicted that one. But I
Speaker 1: think it's a really sweet story. So I'm hoping that similarly,
Speaker 1: this book has ramifications that actually do really help people,
Speaker 1: both the readers and then hopefully we can raise a
Speaker 1: lot of good money for these excellent organizations. That is
Speaker 1: a great story that is really wonderful. Well load Grow,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming back on the show.
Speaker 1: It's always a pleasure. I think we've had two full
Speaker 1: interviews and you've come on a couple of times for
Speaker 1: our little, short, little moments. I'm happy to have you all.
Speaker 1: Always enjoy talking, so thank you so much. Hey, my
Speaker 1: absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me. If what you
Speaker 1: just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a
Speaker 1: monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When
Speaker 1: you join our membership community. With this monthly pledge, you
Speaker 1: get lots of exclusive members only benefits. It's our way
Speaker 1: of saying thank you for your support now. We are
Speaker 1: so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to do what we do without their support,
Speaker 1: and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To
Speaker 1: learn more, make a donation at any level and become
Speaker 1: a member of the one you Feed community. Go to
Speaker 1: when you feed dot net slash Join The One You
Speaker 1: Feed Podcast. Would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for
Speaker 1: supporting the show.