Speaker 1: If you focus on what you lack, you will lose
Speaker 1: what you have. If you focus on what you have,
Speaker 1: you will gain what you lack. Welcome to the one
Speaker 1: you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true. And yet
Speaker 1: for 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 m Thanks for joining us. Our guest on
Speaker 1: this episode is Greg McEwen, an author, public speaker, and
Speaker 1: leadership and business strategist. Greg often speaks on how to
Speaker 1: live and lead as an essentialist. His books include two
Speaker 1: thousand tens Multipliers and two thousand fourteen Essential is Um
Speaker 1: and Today Greg and Eric discuss his new book, Effortless
Speaker 1: Make it easier to do what matters most. Hi, Greg,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. It's great to be with you.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I am really happy to have you on.
Speaker 1: We're going to be discussing your book Effortless make it
Speaker 1: easier to do what matters most. But before we do that,
Speaker 1: we'll start, like we always do, with a parable. And
Speaker 1: in the parable, there is a grandfather who's talking with
Speaker 1: his granddaughter and he says, in life, there are two
Speaker 1: wolves inside of us that are always a battle. One
Speaker 1: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 1: bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second.
Speaker 1: She looks up at her grandfather there. She says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Well, this is the great
Speaker 1: choice of life. I had an experience a few years
Speaker 1: ago where we moved to quite an idyllic area just
Speaker 1: north of Malibu. It's this area that was built in
Speaker 1: the ninetifies the whole world moved on, and no one
Speaker 1: told anyone here. So it's got white picket fences, it's
Speaker 1: more horseways than Rhodes. And our four children really seemed
Speaker 1: to thrive, especially one of my daughters who was always
Speaker 1: climbing trees and naming our chickens, yes we had chickens,
Speaker 1: and and just always writing journals, reading, constantly interested in animals,
Speaker 1: voluminous in her talking, and all of this is how
Speaker 1: it was until she turned fourteen, and then she started
Speaker 1: being slower in doing her chores. She dancers in more
Speaker 1: sort of one word answers, and we just thought pretty
Speaker 1: age appropriate behavior until in a routine physical therapy appointment,
Speaker 1: the therapist pulled my wife andero side and said, look,
Speaker 1: I don't want to alarm you, but she just failed
Speaker 1: a reflex test and so I just think you should
Speaker 1: go see a neurologist just to be sure and you
Speaker 1: don't have to be worn twice. What began that day
Speaker 1: was a let's call it an agonizing experience, because she
Speaker 1: had a free fall in her capability, like just every
Speaker 1: single day. We were watching it differently now, so we
Speaker 1: were seeing it differently. But also there was more to see.
Speaker 1: So eventually, you know, within a couple of months, she
Speaker 1: was maybe it would take her seconds to write the
Speaker 1: last three letters of her name, two minutes to write
Speaker 1: out her whole name, hours to eat a meal. Her
Speaker 1: personality wants so vibrant, just full of light, just became monotone.
Speaker 1: A lot of emotional complexity. And to make it even
Speaker 1: more challenging, neurologists, some of them thirty five year experts
Speaker 1: in their field, to shrugg her shoulders, all tests coming
Speaker 1: in in the normal range, they didn't even offer as
Speaker 1: even the beginning of a diagnosis. So in the midst
Speaker 1: of that, what I experienced was the opening of two paths.
Speaker 1: It became clear that there were two parts. I think
Speaker 1: it's probably pretty analogous to the two wolves. One wolf
Speaker 1: is saying being worry, panic, blame. Doctors get so obsessed
Speaker 1: about these things that we can't control about it just
Speaker 1: puts you in a state of anxiety and fear, a
Speaker 1: scared state, let's call it. If you feed that wolf,
Speaker 1: that just makes everything harder. The problem itself isn't served
Speaker 1: by that. So you've taken a problem which is already
Speaker 1: immensely challenging, and you just make it worse, or on
Speaker 1: the other side, we found that there was this other path,
Speaker 1: this other wolf. To use the metaphor that you introduced,
Speaker 1: which says, can we be grateful in the midst of this?
Speaker 1: Can we still focus on what we can control? Can
Speaker 1: we still have a lighter spirit? Can we adopt a
Speaker 1: lighter way of living life? Where we'll still laugh together,
Speaker 1: will still get around the piano and sing, will still
Speaker 1: play together, and pray together and go on walks. And
Speaker 1: although it seems obvious which wolf you ought to feed,
Speaker 1: the temptation was to feed the first. For sure, that
Speaker 1: was the path of least resistance. But quite fortunately, early
Speaker 1: on I felt inspired to read a chapter of a
Speaker 1: compilation book by Gordon B. Hinckley, and there was a
Speaker 1: chapter in that about cultivating an attitude of happiness and
Speaker 1: a spirit of optimism something like that, and I felt
Speaker 1: quite inspired to listen to that every day, and for
Speaker 1: the next four months I did. I think I listened
Speaker 1: to almost every single day for four months, and I
Speaker 1: felt that that was in a sense, feeding the right
Speaker 1: wolf and rewiring my brain in the midst of this extremity.
Speaker 1: And what I saw happen almost immediately was almost magical.
Speaker 1: There was a positive force, a sense of hope of
Speaker 1: faith that was tangible in myself and in our family.
Speaker 1: There were plenty of tears along the way. We're not
Speaker 1: talking about positivity here where you just pretend everything's okay. No,
Speaker 1: we're facing the facts. But we weren't taking a hard
Speaker 1: situation and making it harder. And that really is what
Speaker 1: sent me down the path of researching and writing effortless.
Speaker 1: Is just this idea that you know, just because something's
Speaker 1: essential doesn't mean you have to then do it the
Speaker 1: hard way. Something can be essential and then you still
Speaker 1: have a choice to make you know what really matters.
Speaker 1: We knew what really mattered in this case was was
Speaker 1: helping our daughter to become fully well again. So the
Speaker 1: goal isn't ambiguous for us, but there were still two paths,
Speaker 1: broadly speaking of how to handle it. And if we'd
Speaker 1: taken the harder path, the heavier path, if we'd fed
Speaker 1: the wrong wolf, then we would have been burned out
Speaker 1: in half a minute, would have been in such a
Speaker 1: state of anxiety, we would have burned out our own
Speaker 1: mental state. Well then what happens to your marriage? Well, okay,
Speaker 1: then that gets harder and then that life isn't even
Speaker 1: almost worth living if your marriage is this is just
Speaker 1: hard enough and gets tough enough, and the culture in
Speaker 1: the family that we've invested so much in could easily
Speaker 1: have been demolished too. And then what does that do
Speaker 1: for our daughter? I mean, if you're in that state
Speaker 1: of exhaustion mentally, emotionally, in that kind of traumatic state,
Speaker 1: well then you can't help her either because you can't
Speaker 1: make good decisions, your discernment has gone, and so your
Speaker 1: chance of actually being successful is lower. All of that
Speaker 1: goes with the first path the second path. We just
Speaker 1: saw so much good come out of being in what
Speaker 1: I now would call the effortless state. So much good
Speaker 1: came of it, and we were able to in the end.
Speaker 1: It was a long journey, and that's an important part
Speaker 1: of the story. It took two and a half years
Speaker 1: ups and down along the way, but we had the
Speaker 1: energy and the light. We've fed the right wolf so
Speaker 1: that we were able to be there, and we saw
Speaker 1: her come back to full health and now to be
Speaker 1: thriving and to be moving forward in her life. You know, superbly,
Speaker 1: that story is what comes to mind when you asked
Speaker 1: me a question about the one you feed. I'm glad
Speaker 1: you went there right away, because it's kind of at
Speaker 1: the end of your book, and I was going to
Speaker 1: bring it around to the front of our conversation. So
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you did that. I'm curious, as you
Speaker 1: were early on in that process and you talk about
Speaker 1: that eventually that led you to sort of seeing this
Speaker 1: easier path versus the harder path. I'm curious would you
Speaker 1: been able to define it that way early on, or
Speaker 1: would there have been a different way you looked at
Speaker 1: it or phrased what you guys were choosing to do.
Speaker 1: I think we could have defined it as something close
Speaker 1: to the lighter path than the darker path. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure I would have said easier versus harder in the moment,
Speaker 1: but it reminds me a little bit of that movie.
Speaker 1: I can't remember the name of it, but it's the
Speaker 1: story of a spy from Russia who's here in the
Speaker 1: United States, and it's his story, and he has this
Speaker 1: extraordinary ability to maintain equanimity in the midst of all
Speaker 1: of these crazy ups and downs, and the phrase he
Speaker 1: uses all the time when he's asked, why why are
Speaker 1: you so calm right now? And he said, well, would
Speaker 1: it help, you know, to get all emotional, to get angry?
Speaker 1: Would it help? And I think that that's the right
Speaker 1: beginning place, as you said, well would it help to overreact?
Speaker 1: Does it help to get all negative? Or does it
Speaker 1: just take a hard situation to make it harder? Life
Speaker 1: is hard. I've got no questions about that. Life is
Speaker 1: full of challenge. And every person listening to this is
Speaker 1: dealing with something pretty hard right now, or maybe many
Speaker 1: things that are hard right now, And even if they
Speaker 1: don't share it with other people, even if it's quite secret,
Speaker 1: people are suffering. And I think that that is true
Speaker 1: for most people most of the time. In a hundred ways.
Speaker 1: You don't write a book on effortless of life is effortless.
Speaker 1: You write a book on effort lists because it's full
Speaker 1: of challenge. And so to me, the key decision in
Speaker 1: every moment is whether to make it harder than it
Speaker 1: needs to be, or whether you can at least open
Speaker 1: yourself up to the idea what is there a better way?
Speaker 1: Is there an easier way? Is there a lighter path?
Speaker 1: And as soon as you start to open up, you
Speaker 1: find that there are all sorts of simple strategies. There
Speaker 1: are all sorts of better approaches, and so you're you're
Speaker 1: still achieved results that you want in life. You still
Speaker 1: get to focus on the things that matter most, but
Speaker 1: you find yourself better, able to do them, better, able
Speaker 1: to cope. You can achieve even breakthrough results. I mean, imagine,
Speaker 1: if you can start training yourself to look for effortless solutions.
Speaker 1: Then let's say someone who is already on the edge
Speaker 1: of exhaustion, somebody who has burned out with the challenges
Speaker 1: of life, and maybe they're overachievers, but they've just run
Speaker 1: out of space. They're already working effectively as hard as
Speaker 1: they can. So what if they want to achieve as
Speaker 1: many overachievers do, ten x results, much better results. Can
Speaker 1: any of the people listening to this who want that
Speaker 1: level of results work ten times harder. Nobody listening to
Speaker 1: this can work ten times harder. They wouldn't even put
Speaker 1: in the effort to be here. So for those people,
Speaker 1: my brother Justin calls the hit squad, hard working, intelligent,
Speaker 1: talented group of people. For those people, they can't work
Speaker 1: ten times harder. So suddenly you say, well, if you
Speaker 1: can't work ten x harder, let's find ten x easier
Speaker 1: way to achieve the results, then you can achieve extraordinary
Speaker 1: things and still without burning out. That sort of becomes
Speaker 1: the the value proposition of effortless is that impossible things
Speaker 1: start to seem within reach because we don't have to
Speaker 1: do them the old paradigm way of just through grinding effort.
Speaker 1: I'm fully in favor of effort, but it will only
Speaker 1: take you so far past a certain point. You just
Speaker 1: have to find better, smart to simpler. In fact, yes,
Speaker 1: easiest strategies. And so what would you say are some
Speaker 1: of the things that were most important as you applied
Speaker 1: this idea to you and your family's life. Because I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people listening to this, certainly people
Speaker 1: who are listeners of the show on any kind of
Speaker 1: regular basis, are going to be people who at least go, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want to make life any harder. We talk
Speaker 1: on this show all the time about all the ways
Speaker 1: we make things worse. Sometimes I feel like everything I
Speaker 1: teach people is about how to not make things worse,
Speaker 1: which sounds kind of pessimistic, except we are incredibly good
Speaker 1: at making lots of things in life worse and sometimes
Speaker 1: simply not adding to the burden is a really big deal.
Speaker 1: So what sort of things helped you, guys to either
Speaker 1: not add to the burden or actively lighten it sort
Speaker 1: of in your family life? And I think then we'll,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll turn our attention to some of the
Speaker 1: strategies in the book that I wanted to hit on,
Speaker 1: But I'm kind of curious which of them were closest
Speaker 1: to sort of you and your family's experience that we're useful.
Speaker 1: We'll let me offer to when we've all heard surely
Speaker 1: that thankfulness and gratitude are important. But it's a principle
Speaker 1: that is unique among principles because there's no way to
Speaker 1: overdo it. Most principles have a point of breaking, where
Speaker 1: if you do it too little, that's not good. If
Speaker 1: you do it too much, now it's a problem. Most principles,
Speaker 1: most characteristics are like that, Most truths are like that.
Speaker 1: I have not found a place that gratitude breaks. I
Speaker 1: haven't come anywhere close to that point. It's enormously powerful.
Speaker 1: It can be applied far more broadly and deeply than
Speaker 1: it's obvious. For example, so I've done for years a
Speaker 1: gratitude journal, and past ten years now I think we're
Speaker 1: probably at eleven years, and I don't think missed a
Speaker 1: day in eleven years, right. And in that journal, I'm writing,
Speaker 1: you know, all the things I'm thankful for, So I'm
Speaker 1: way past ten items. Now that's great, I mean it.
Speaker 1: It is so centering. And all the way through this
Speaker 1: situation with our daughter, I was doing that. That's level one.
Speaker 1: Let's say what's level two? It's what do you do
Speaker 1: in between? You know, what I describe is a ritual
Speaker 1: that means something to me. Right, That's more than a habit.
Speaker 1: A habit is a thing you do consistently. Ritual is
Speaker 1: something you do that you enjoy the doing of it.
Speaker 1: The way you do it matters. A ritual is a
Speaker 1: habit with a soul. And so writing, you know, my
Speaker 1: journal in the way that I do is a ritual.
Speaker 1: I enjoy the process of it, not just the fact
Speaker 1: that I've done it later good, I've I've written today.
Speaker 1: That's a good feeling. Doing it is good. But in
Speaker 1: between that ritual, you've got the real life. Right, most
Speaker 1: of life is not in the journal writing process. It's
Speaker 1: in between. So how does gratitude play and that and
Speaker 1: one of the habit recipes that we began that is
Speaker 1: still a part of our family culture. Woven into the
Speaker 1: fabric of it now is that after I complain, I
Speaker 1: will say something I am thankful for. And what I
Speaker 1: noticed when I started doing that myself is that I
Speaker 1: complain much more often than I realized. So I think
Speaker 1: of myself as quite positive, quite grateful person. In some ways,
Speaker 1: it was just the easiest thing to walk into the
Speaker 1: other room and you see a child doing the wrong thing,
Speaker 1: and you focus on that the meeting goes too long,
Speaker 1: or the temperature is too hard or too cold, I mean,
Speaker 1: endlessly just begin with the complaint. Well, this recipe accepts
Speaker 1: that as a sort of natural tendency in humans and
Speaker 1: builds on it. You just take advantage of that. You
Speaker 1: turn let's call it a negative tendency into a positive tendency.
Speaker 1: Every time you complain, you say something you're thankful for.
Speaker 1: I mean, even if you change is the ratio to
Speaker 1: the impact is instant, and what begins as just a
Speaker 1: nice new technique quickly changes the culture and dynamic around you.
Speaker 1: Barbara Frederickson called this the broaden and build theory, and
Speaker 1: it basically means that if you can get into what
Speaker 1: I call now an effortless state, but into a state
Speaker 1: of gratitude in this moment to positive emotions that it
Speaker 1: creates a natural upward momentum. So it doesn't just say oh,
Speaker 1: I feel better, which gratitude will instantly do. You will
Speaker 1: instantly feel happier. You will instantly feel better about your
Speaker 1: life and about yourself and about circumstances. Well, that means
Speaker 1: that you show up differently. It means the next interaction
Speaker 1: you have with somebody is more positive. So that increases
Speaker 1: your optionality with them, It improves your relationship with them,
Speaker 1: and that materially improves the resources you have at your
Speaker 1: disposal in life. And so this is why she calls
Speaker 1: it broaden and build. There's an upward momentum. And it
Speaker 1: all begins by just catching yourself. When there's something you know,
Speaker 1: you complain, you catch yourself and you say something you're
Speaker 1: thankful for. I've done it now with our children. I
Speaker 1: remember one time doing it. The ante was that if
Speaker 1: you complain, that's fine. You know, you have to say
Speaker 1: three things you're thankful for. And I remember my son
Speaker 1: at the time and I said, okay, now gives you
Speaker 1: three things you thankful Okay, Number one, I am so
Speaker 1: thankful that my dad wants to play this game. We
Speaker 1: have to say three things. We thoutful every time we complain.
Speaker 1: And he said, it just like that, you know. And
Speaker 1: here's what's powerful is that it didn't It didn't matter.
Speaker 1: We all laughed and it worked. And seriously, a principle
Speaker 1: or characteristic that are so powerful that you can do
Speaker 1: it with a degree of cynicism and it still works
Speaker 1: is powerful stuff. And that's exactly what I found. It
Speaker 1: almost doesn't matter your attitude, it just has this disproportionate effect.
Speaker 1: I'll summarize the effect this way. If you focus on
Speaker 1: what you lack, you will lose what you have. If
Speaker 1: you focus on what you have, you will gain what
Speaker 1: you lack. Benjamin Hardy, who I had on the wat's
Speaker 1: Essential podcast not very long ago, he said, are you
Speaker 1: living in the gain or in the gap? If you're
Speaker 1: in the gap, you're looking at all the things you
Speaker 1: haven't achieved, or you don't have what everybody else has.
Speaker 1: The gap between what you are now and what you
Speaker 1: would like to be, Well, that gap always exists. That's
Speaker 1: never going away. So if you live in the gap,
Speaker 1: you could be making great progress actually in your life.
Speaker 1: But you'd still be miserable. Alternatively, if you get in
Speaker 1: the game, you're looking at all the progress that's made,
Speaker 1: all the good that's happened, the success is that you've had,
Speaker 1: and in this moment, I think you'll achieve more, but
Speaker 1: you'll certainly be happier in the journey. This, I would say,
Speaker 1: is one of the great lessons that we learned and
Speaker 1: are still applying and still building into the culture in
Speaker 1: our family. Makes me think of slightly different context, but
Speaker 1: same sort of principle, which is Stephen Covey's circle of
Speaker 1: concern versus circle of influence. You know. The idea is,
Speaker 1: we've got this big circle which is everything we're concerned with,
Speaker 1: the small circle as our circle of influence. The more
Speaker 1: time we spend in our circle of concern outside our
Speaker 1: circle of influence, the more our circle of influence actually shrinks.
Speaker 1: We wear ourselves out by worrying about stuff and what
Speaker 1: we can actually affect and change shrinks. Whereas if we
Speaker 1: flip it and we spend our time in our circle
Speaker 1: of influence, spend more time there, it actually starts to
Speaker 1: grow and we begin to be able to affect more things.
Speaker 1: It's a very similar idea to that when you focus
Speaker 1: on what you lack, you lose what you have. When
Speaker 1: you focus on what you have, you get what you lack. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I really agree with that. Gratitude is always within your
Speaker 1: sphere of influence. So I think it would fit within
Speaker 1: Stephen Coveyes, be proactive habit, within the seven habits. It's
Speaker 1: a concrete, immediate thing. And and you saying that just
Speaker 1: makes me once as you say one more thing about it,
Speaker 1: which is this principle so ubiquitous you don't just use
Speaker 1: it for the things that are good. This pushes people
Speaker 1: past where I think they would generally see the edges
Speaker 1: of gratuge. You it's not just that you are grateful
Speaker 1: for the things that are going right. This is deeper.
Speaker 1: Be thankful in everything when something goes wrong. I'm thankful
Speaker 1: this thing went wrong, and you don't know why. When
Speaker 1: you begin that sentence, you don't know why. Really you're
Speaker 1: not thankful, but you're pushing yourself to go through a
Speaker 1: pattern of thinking that suddenly opens you to the idea
Speaker 1: that the thing that you're calling bad could be good.
Speaker 1: That life, let's say it this way, isn't just happening
Speaker 1: to you, but for you. That the bad things so
Speaker 1: called is also happening for you that in each challenge
Speaker 1: there is an opportunity and you just haven't seen it
Speaker 1: that way yet. It becomes a way of living whatever
Speaker 1: is going on, and so immediately something doesn't happen the
Speaker 1: way you want it. The flight is delayed, the flight
Speaker 1: is canceled. Somebody's not helping you be grateful in it,
Speaker 1: and suddenly, as soon as you are, I'm thankful for
Speaker 1: this situation. It's sort of almost positive irony or something,
Speaker 1: but I'm so glad that that person isn't helping me
Speaker 1: right now. Why because I can develop in this moment
Speaker 1: greater compassion and understanding of how the world works and
Speaker 1: what they might be dealing with. I'm thankful because it's
Speaker 1: an opportunity to develop by character. And maybe this just
Speaker 1: seems a step too far for people, but to me,
Speaker 1: a person who can receive all things with thankfulness will
Speaker 1: achieve not ten et results, but literally a hundred X
Speaker 1: and it will start to flow to them. The power
Speaker 1: of what we're talking about, I think is difficult to overstate.
Speaker 1: It makes me think of the Old Taois story of
Speaker 1: the farmer who has a horse and his horse runs away,
Speaker 1: you know, and its neighbor comes over and says, I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry about you losing your horse. You know, it's
Speaker 1: the most valuable thing you had, and he as well.
Speaker 1: Could be good, could be bad, you know, and the
Speaker 1: horse comes back with five horses. I won't go through
Speaker 1: the whole thing, but I think sometimes, you know, if
Speaker 1: we can even get to where that farmer was, which
Speaker 1: was where he was was, could be good, could be bad.
Speaker 1: I don't know, right but I'm not going to rush
Speaker 1: to judge this thing is good or bad because I
Speaker 1: don't know how it's going to play out in my life.
Speaker 1: I don't know how it's going to play out in
Speaker 1: making me be the person that I'm going to become.
Speaker 1: Let me at least move from this is awful to
Speaker 1: a place that holds open the door of possibility that says, Okay,
Speaker 1: this seems bad to me right now, but let me
Speaker 1: at least move to a neutral place where I say, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be open. And then if you can
Speaker 1: even where you are, which is that that extra step
Speaker 1: beyond which says I'm going to be thankful because in
Speaker 1: some way this can be worked for me. It's that
Speaker 1: phrase I think I've often heard that things happen for
Speaker 1: the best. You know, I don't believe that, but I
Speaker 1: do believe we can make the best out of everything
Speaker 1: that happens. And I do believe that in everything that
Speaker 1: happens there is a seed of our future growth. It's
Speaker 1: in there if we look for it. I certainly think
Speaker 1: that's true. And at some point, I mean C. S.
Speaker 1: Lewis put it this way, that we have to decide.
Speaker 1: And of course he was an atheist for a long time,
Speaker 1: became a Christian, and in the journey started to write
Speaker 1: some of the most eloquent modern writings on what it
Speaker 1: really means to be a Christian and what it doesn't mean,
Speaker 1: and how it would apply in a modern context. And
Speaker 1: one of the things he observes, and somebody can take
Speaker 1: this whether they have an active faith in God or not,
Speaker 1: but he says, we have to decide at some point
Speaker 1: whether God is a vivisectionist or whether all things are
Speaker 1: there to work for our good. You know that every
Speaker 1: test is really with purpose and might even be analogous
Speaker 1: to that New Testament idea. Well, I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: a story, but there's an idea in it too. Where
Speaker 1: Jesus is brought to the most agonizing part of his
Speaker 1: entire ministry, this atonement, this this moment of total suffering,
Speaker 1: and he asked, if there's any way for this to
Speaker 1: pass from me, let it pass from me. And I've
Speaker 1: often wondered why that's even in the account. Were really
Speaker 1: saying that now, the manifestation of God in the flesh,
Speaker 1: this this superman embodiment of all that is good, is
Speaker 1: actually saying, hey, listen, I'd rather not do this, if
Speaker 1: you don't mind, you know, I'd rather not do the
Speaker 1: big challenge. And one thing I think it illustrates is
Speaker 1: it puts in the record that there was no other way.
Speaker 1: It gives opportunity for the writers to be explicit there
Speaker 1: was no other path, There was one way to being
Speaker 1: able to achieve this mission. And I do think that
Speaker 1: that is a helpful idea to all of us when
Speaker 1: we're dealing with things that would otherwise are causing us
Speaker 1: suffering or otherwise would keep us in total misery, is
Speaker 1: to just go, well, what if there was no other way?
Speaker 1: But if the only way to have learned what we
Speaker 1: need to learn in this life to progress the way
Speaker 1: that we do in this life is to go through
Speaker 1: this path where you start to do that, you can
Speaker 1: get out of so much of the self recrimination and
Speaker 1: also blaming and actively grudge keeping about other people and
Speaker 1: well that I'm a victim of their thing and this
Speaker 1: awful thing, and so on it and just go, well,
Speaker 1: what da what if? This is the path? But this
Speaker 1: is the only way for us to become what we
Speaker 1: need to become. It's the only way for us to
Speaker 1: gain the good things that are just around the corner.
Speaker 1: There was no other path. Is There's something about that
Speaker 1: that I think can be very liberating and again builds
Speaker 1: on this idea of like, yeah, let's just get back
Speaker 1: to the effortless state. There's a whole chapter on grudges
Speaker 1: in in Effortless and and the importance of being able
Speaker 1: to let go of them and talk about a way
Speaker 1: that we make life harder than it needs to be.
Speaker 1: There's no number of opportunities for us to pick up
Speaker 1: a grudge, to hire a grudge. We might say, even
Speaker 1: I like that language um echoes Clayton Christensen's question of
Speaker 1: like what do we hire this product or service to
Speaker 1: do for us? And if you do that with grudges,
Speaker 1: it opens the whole subject up because you say, we
Speaker 1: have grudges for a reason. What did we hire them
Speaker 1: to do for us? We hire a grudge. Maybe we
Speaker 1: hire a grudge to make us feel one up with
Speaker 1: the relationship with the person that hurt us. We go, well, yes,
Speaker 1: well I see, look at that, and I'll hold them
Speaker 1: to it and that terrible thing they did. See there's
Speaker 1: a concrete thing, and I can point to it, and
Speaker 1: I can point to it a hundred times. They did
Speaker 1: this wrong to me, And we do it to kind
Speaker 1: of make ourselves feel superior. But does it the grudges
Speaker 1: actually make us feel superior? Do they make us more powerful?
Speaker 1: You can evaluate a grudge like a job evaluation where
Speaker 1: you say, okay, well I hired you to do this,
Speaker 1: how are you doing your performance evaluation? Are you making
Speaker 1: me more powerful? Or you make me endlessly feel like
Speaker 1: a victim, endlessly feel weaker. Grudges make us feel weaker.
Speaker 1: They don't make us feel more powerful. Maybe we do
Speaker 1: it to get people to feel sorry for us. You know,
Speaker 1: the providers sympathy, They might give us things, opportunities, benefits
Speaker 1: might come to us. And and that's true too, but
Speaker 1: it's a short lived benefit, because in general, people get
Speaker 1: quite fatigued with that kind of victimhood story, which is
Speaker 1: one of the reasons we have to keep finding new
Speaker 1: people to tell our grudge story too, because people only
Speaker 1: have so much time for it. And so if you
Speaker 1: go through and evaluate that, you find that grudges don't
Speaker 1: perform their duties well. And so it's time to fire grudges.
Speaker 1: And when you do, when you fire a grudge, you
Speaker 1: just find your life comes back to you can move
Speaker 1: forward in your life. I asked Tim Ferris on his podcast,
Speaker 1: what percentage of your mental and emotional energy have you
Speaker 1: given to grudges and anger in your life? And he laughed.
Speaker 1: He said, for about a fifteen year period of his life,
Speaker 1: he probably gave between sixty and seventy of his mental
Speaker 1: and emotional capacity to grudges and anger. Think of that.
Speaker 1: You'd never think of fire and grudges as being the
Speaker 1: ultimate productivity hack. No one's ever said that. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe I have now, but but like you don't find
Speaker 1: that in the average productivity book. And yet, what else
Speaker 1: can you call a return of six of your capacity,
Speaker 1: of your abilities come back to you. That's all being
Speaker 1: siphoned off, that's all making us, putting us in a
Speaker 1: state of suffering instead of an effortless state, and the
Speaker 1: moment we get it back, we can take all those
Speaker 1: resources and we can actually put them to use on
Speaker 1: things that really are essential, things that really matter to us,
Speaker 1: get back to our mission, get back to the purpose
Speaker 1: of our lives, and that, to me is a worthy change.
Speaker 1: People have often asked, you know, how do I forgive?
Speaker 1: How do I let go? And I often think the
Speaker 1: very first and most important step is to do exactly
Speaker 1: what you just described, which is to see what it's
Speaker 1: costing me, you know, to really see what's happening by
Speaker 1: me holding onto this. You know it's attributed to the Buddha,
Speaker 1: but I don't think the buddhas said it that resentments
Speaker 1: are like drinking poison and waiting for the other person
Speaker 1: to die. You know, once you really sort of see
Speaker 1: the nature of a grudge, as you've said, I love
Speaker 1: your framework of it. What did I hire this grudge
Speaker 1: to do? And is it really doing it? When we
Speaker 1: get clear on that, these things are a lot easier
Speaker 1: to let go, I think absolutely right, And I mean
Speaker 1: forgiveness is a foundational principle across every religious tradition. It's
Speaker 1: part of the wisdom of of every generation, of every
Speaker 1: societal culture that survives over a long period of time.
Speaker 1: Why because is if you burden yourself with the kind
Speaker 1: of costs you're just describing, then you can't progress well.
Speaker 1: And if you make the error, as societies can definitely
Speaker 1: do of, then teaching those grudges to their children and
Speaker 1: grandchildren and great grandchildren and sharing it around, the cost
Speaker 1: is absolutely enormous. It can lead to war, to civil wars.
Speaker 1: We've seen these things, we do still see them sometimes
Speaker 1: even now. And I do agree with you too that
Speaker 1: a key breakthrough is to realize it's not a selfish thing.
Speaker 1: So I can't say it that way that there is
Speaker 1: a self interested reason to do this. The forgiveness is
Speaker 1: not saying, well, I just I'm just going to do
Speaker 1: something good for this other person. It may do good
Speaker 1: for the other person, but it isn't the point at all.
Speaker 1: I just interviewed Chris Williams. I think he'd be a
Speaker 1: great person for you to talk to. Chris Williams had
Speaker 1: a catastrophic situation in his life where he's driving his
Speaker 1: car and his car is hit broadside by a drunk
Speaker 1: teenage driver kills his wife and their unborn child, kills
Speaker 1: a couple of the members of his family that were
Speaker 1: with him that day, injures another, and then one of
Speaker 1: his children. Wasn't in the car on that day, but
Speaker 1: of course has all the massive emotional trauma of the experience.
Speaker 1: So he's in there. He says, he hears a sound
Speaker 1: right there. It's in the middle of like this, in
Speaker 1: the middle of the winter, freezing cold, is in this car,
Speaker 1: broken bended metal, everything, and he just hears this sound
Speaker 1: is screaming. It takes him a moment to notice it's him.
Speaker 1: Is in this absolute true agony. You know. He can
Speaker 1: look across his wife, he can see that she's not breathing,
Speaker 1: and in the moment he discovers the two paths. He
Speaker 1: has two choices, two wolves. Pick your metaphor. And that's
Speaker 1: what's so profound to me is that it happens so
Speaker 1: fast for him, and he realizes Path one. I will
Speaker 1: add to this trauma, bitterness, revenge, anger, hate, all of that,
Speaker 1: and then that will then destroy what's left of us all.
Speaker 1: It will then take the rest of my life. It
Speaker 1: will cost me everything that remains, plus it will cost
Speaker 1: me all of the possible upsides and opportunities and blessings
Speaker 1: that still exist in life. So it won't just cost
Speaker 1: me what I already have. It will cost me all
Speaker 1: the things I could still have or this other path.
Speaker 1: It's not like suddenly this is an easy path, but
Speaker 1: it is. He recognizes even this moment, an easier path
Speaker 1: is to forgive that person, whoever they are, in that
Speaker 1: card right now. And if he does that, it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that all the problems that he now has in
Speaker 1: his life will disappear, but it does mean he won't
Speaker 1: add to them these unbearable burdens of his well. He
Speaker 1: does make that choice, and within a very short while,
Speaker 1: the word spreads about that, and he's interviewed somehow by
Speaker 1: the media. I suppose it's quite a major story. In
Speaker 1: the moment he gets asked about it, so he makes
Speaker 1: this comment, he said, like, yeah, please, just somewhat, everybody here,
Speaker 1: just forgives someone who we're coming up to February fourteen,
Speaker 1: Fountain's Day. Do something for someone as an act of
Speaker 1: kindness in the name of my broken family. Just do
Speaker 1: something to forgive or to do good. He got thousands
Speaker 1: of responses all over the world, where people did that.
Speaker 1: And so you see already that his choice is turning
Speaker 1: a negative into a positive, and a person who can
Speaker 1: turn a negative into a positive can never be defeated.
Speaker 1: I mean, so many good things have already come or
Speaker 1: he went on to write a book about it, to
Speaker 1: teach about it, to talk about it, to share it.
Speaker 1: He continues to do it. Where he got remarried, they
Speaker 1: have more children, they've built good and good has come
Speaker 1: from it, and here we are talking about it. Now,
Speaker 1: that's the power he let go. He made another, though
Speaker 1: important distinction. I think this matters. He did the forgiving
Speaker 1: right there. And now that doesn't mean he never felt
Speaker 1: bad again, of course that's not right, but he still
Speaker 1: made an important choice. But he said, if you make
Speaker 1: forgiveness conditional, then you're trapped because even in his case
Speaker 1: where he forgave the person and has had a relationship
Speaker 1: with them, a positive relationship with them, since like the
Speaker 1: person still went to jail, they still had their cost,
Speaker 1: he says, if you make it at all conditional, you
Speaker 1: are trapped by that decision, because he said, like, what's enough?
Speaker 1: At what point has that individual in his case actually
Speaker 1: paid the full price to society? What's enough goes to jail.
Speaker 1: What if the person actually says sorry, well he did
Speaker 1: say that, is that sorry enough? Was there enough remorse
Speaker 1: in him on that day? Has he really been truly
Speaker 1: remorseful enough? Does he understand the intergenerational impact that that
Speaker 1: moment had, Like you can go on forever even if
Speaker 1: the person is trying to make amends, So you can
Speaker 1: be trapped forever if you make conditional, you make your
Speaker 1: forgiveness unconditional so that you can be unconditionally free from
Speaker 1: the burden. That doesn't mean that someone else isn't responsible,
Speaker 1: doesn't violate the responsibility that somebody else faces for what
Speaker 1: they have done to you or or wrongs that they
Speaker 1: have done. You just don't self harm over it. I
Speaker 1: think that's such a great way you just ended that,
Speaker 1: which is to think about what we are doing, which
Speaker 1: is the self harm we're doing to ourselves. I think
Speaker 1: it's really important. We've had several interviews focusing on forgiveness,
Speaker 1: and this is not an easy thing to do. I
Speaker 1: think it comes from where we set our intention. Our
Speaker 1: intention is to unconditionally forgive. That's what I want, That's
Speaker 1: where I want to be knowing that we don't always
Speaker 1: feel that, but that that's what we're aiming at all
Speaker 1: the time. I think it's similar to the idea of
Speaker 1: after I complain, I would say something I'm thankful for.
Speaker 1: In this case it's I will say after I feel
Speaker 1: frustrated with someone, I will say the words I forgive you.
Speaker 1: Like treat it like a checkbox, not a Once I
Speaker 1: feel a certain way, I will forgive you. It's exactly
Speaker 1: the opposite order. You say I forgive you even when
Speaker 1: you don't feel it at all. You just say it.
Speaker 1: You start to try to make that check box moment,
Speaker 1: and the feeling will eventually catch up with the decision.
Speaker 1: That sort of is the phrase that I think might
Speaker 1: be the most common one on this show, which is
Speaker 1: sometimes you can't think your way into right action. You
Speaker 1: have to act your way into right thinking. And so
Speaker 1: that's exactly what you're saying. I decide the action I'm
Speaker 1: going to take is every time this comes up, what
Speaker 1: I'm going to do is say I forgive you and
Speaker 1: do my best to forgive you. And I hope that
Speaker 1: by taking that action, by checking that box, that then
Speaker 1: the feelings come along. Words are so much more powerful
Speaker 1: than its obvious the words we choose are not descriptors.
Speaker 1: I think that's how they would typically be thought about
Speaker 1: by people. That we use words to describe the world
Speaker 1: we live in, to describe what's happened to us. But
Speaker 1: I think of words as creators. When we speak, we're creating,
Speaker 1: We're breathing. Our words create the future. Yes, I will
Speaker 1: say it that way. There's another biblical reference. And again
Speaker 1: you can read that as literal as somebody wants, or
Speaker 1: as symbolic as somebody wants. But if you think about
Speaker 1: the creation story, even if somebody thinks about this as
Speaker 1: a myth, as stories that frame the Western world, there
Speaker 1: are all sorts of symbolic benefits, and one of them
Speaker 1: is the idea that God says, let there be light,
Speaker 1: and there was light. There's something really important about the
Speaker 1: order that you use language to create, that language is
Speaker 1: a creative force in our lives. As a writer, I feel,
Speaker 1: perhaps especially conscious of this, that I'm writing the future
Speaker 1: into existence. When I'm writing, it's quite a profound process.
Speaker 1: I mean, sometimes it can be just a messy process.
Speaker 1: It often is, but it also as profound as you
Speaker 1: try to weigh up words, aware that it could be
Speaker 1: that a million people or millions of people will end
Speaker 1: up reading what you're writing right now that this is
Speaker 1: not just describing something in the past, that you're breathing
Speaker 1: something into existence in your words. Well, similarly, in our
Speaker 1: own lives, I think we use the power of words
Speaker 1: quite unthinkingly, sometimes a little thoughtlessly. I mean that can
Speaker 1: include something as obvious as as saying something rude to
Speaker 1: someone in your own family, you know, saying something a
Speaker 1: bit too bluntly, saying something a bit worn out. You're
Speaker 1: a bit exhausted as you say it. What are you
Speaker 1: going to get back? What is? It's so predictable, mimetic creatures.
Speaker 1: People tend to to return exactly what they're given. And
Speaker 1: so you do that you have now created in your
Speaker 1: future an argument. You have created an unpleasant conversation in
Speaker 1: the future, so was I mean words smithing is one
Speaker 1: thing for writing, but I think it's a similar process
Speaker 1: in our lives to be so careful to use words
Speaker 1: that help create the kind of life you want. There's
Speaker 1: a great book, classic book, As a Man Thinketh, and
Speaker 1: it's all about this, right, as a man thinketh, whether
Speaker 1: the verse it's from also biblical? Is a man Thinketh?
Speaker 1: In his heart, so is he that's the rest of
Speaker 1: that phrase. Well, that's interesting too because it suggests that
Speaker 1: thinking isn't something that you just do in your head. Thinking,
Speaker 1: it's something you do in your heart, which I think
Speaker 1: is quite a profound change. Their thoughts are derived from
Speaker 1: your heart, while I think words are similar to that
Speaker 1: that they derive from your heart and they come up
Speaker 1: and they create. And so trying to work out how
Speaker 1: can I use words intentionally to try and create the
Speaker 1: kind of future relationships and results that I want is
Speaker 1: a non trivial change once people start to discover power
Speaker 1: in those words. As you were quoting that, I was
Speaker 1: thinking of more my spiritual tradition of Buddhism and the
Speaker 1: Dama Pada are some of the first sayings of the Buddha,
Speaker 1: and it's basically, you know, something to the effect of,
Speaker 1: you know, mind is the forerunner of all states. If
Speaker 1: one speaks or acts with an impure mind, it can
Speaker 1: be translated a lot of different things. Suffering will follow,
Speaker 1: just like the wheel of an ox cart when the
Speaker 1: ox polls, you know, it's the same basic idea. It
Speaker 1: starts there. And as you were saying that, I was
Speaker 1: thinking of another guest we out on a guy by
Speaker 1: the name of Christian Counte, and he had a phrase
Speaker 1: that I've reflected on a lot lately, and I used
Speaker 1: it in the Spiritual Habits of course I teached recently,
Speaker 1: which was basically inflammatory words lead to inflammatory emotions. And
Speaker 1: you can say that externally, but but for me, where
Speaker 1: I've noticed that the most is internally, you know. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that I've noticed that I've gotten
Speaker 1: way better at is my brain is an exaggerator of
Speaker 1: internal state. My brain will say something like my back
Speaker 1: is killing me. When I finally tune into the thoughts,
Speaker 1: I'm like, that's what it's saying. And then I'll check
Speaker 1: in with my back and I'll be like, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I've got a little twinge back there, I suppose, you know.
Speaker 1: But I'm bringing that into life with these words. I'm
Speaker 1: creating a state of mind by the description that I'm
Speaker 1: giving something, and that description isn't even accurate. This is
Speaker 1: so true, and I think somebody with any Buddhish training
Speaker 1: will read both Essentialism and now Effortless with different eyes.
Speaker 1: It's really rich. Whenever somebody is reading it who has
Speaker 1: had some Buddhist exposure because the whole idea of effortless state.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's represented in in all of
Speaker 1: the major religions and of course cross positive psychology and beyond,
Speaker 1: but it's like not emphasized in certain cultures. And this
Speaker 1: is one of the great benefits of the Eastern philosophies
Speaker 1: and Eastern cultures is that it helps us to rediscover
Speaker 1: things that actually are in Western philosophy, but just somehow
Speaker 1: we just don't emphasize it, and so we don't see
Speaker 1: that it's right there, hidden in plain sight. Effortless state
Speaker 1: leading to effortless action. I mean that's tourism, right, I
Speaker 1: mean that fear of effortless effort or you know, to
Speaker 1: act without action. These are all not just consistent with
Speaker 1: what I'm writing about, Like they're right there, They're what
Speaker 1: I want people to get to, but I'm trying to
Speaker 1: do it in a way that would be palatable. Let's say,
Speaker 1: to two people that are working in corporate environments and
Speaker 1: so on, so that you know that they can still
Speaker 1: absorb them so you don't have organ rejection. But we're
Speaker 1: definitely looking for this deeper wisdom, and we need Eastern
Speaker 1: as well as Western off We absolutely do. There's so
Speaker 1: much to learn. There's a group that used to meet
Speaker 1: at Harvard. Think it was the Dean of Divinity at
Speaker 1: Harvard that started the group, and they would have these
Speaker 1: people meet to discuss basically into religious dialogue. And one
Speaker 1: of the rules they had was you can't compare the
Speaker 1: best of your own faith the worst of someone else's.
Speaker 1: So that seems like a good rule. It's a good rule.
Speaker 1: But a second is that we should allow ourselves. The
Speaker 1: phrase he came up with was holy envy, so that
Speaker 1: you can say, even if at first or even ever,
Speaker 1: we say, well, I'm not going to actually absorb that
Speaker 1: that's not what I believe, but I can see why
Speaker 1: that would be so good to believe. I can see
Speaker 1: why that would be so advantageous. And I think out
Speaker 1: of holy envy grows an even deeper thing, where you say,
Speaker 1: all truth, wherever it is, can be circumscribed into one
Speaker 1: great hall. All truth is inter related. And this idea
Speaker 1: that all truth is in one tradition or in one
Speaker 1: group or one philosophy. Maybe this is too blunt of
Speaker 1: a way of saying it, but to me, that's an
Speaker 1: appalling idea. What we need is to pursue truth wherever
Speaker 1: it is, to discover it, to try it takes a
Speaker 1: lot of a certain kind of mindset and heartset to
Speaker 1: even approach this. I'm working on a new book now
Speaker 1: about deep listening, and I'm so excited about this work.
Speaker 1: I've spent twenty years thinking about this and working on it,
Speaker 1: and it's finally time to do it. But one of
Speaker 1: the very first things you have to conclude to even
Speaker 1: want to get into deep listening is to just discover
Speaker 1: how little you know, how truly you know. Use that
Speaker 1: word again, appalling It is how little we know compared
Speaker 1: to what there is to be known. And so suddenly
Speaker 1: you stop being in a mindset of, well, I think
Speaker 1: the way I see the world is probably about how
Speaker 1: it is, and instead say, every person you talk to
Speaker 1: you in the in the uber car, you're asking questions
Speaker 1: and learning, and there's a lot to learn from the
Speaker 1: person who's driving you in the uber car, because well,
Speaker 1: just speaking literally, the chances are not always, of course,
Speaker 1: but the chances are that this is going to be
Speaker 1: an immigrant, and that person has made really powerful choices
Speaker 1: to be able to be where they are with you,
Speaker 1: and they've made trade offs that are serious trade offs,
Speaker 1: and they've come from a culture very different to your own.
Speaker 1: And if you listen and ask questions, you might be
Speaker 1: the only person that day, that month that's doing it.
Speaker 1: So you have a lot of opportunity and richness to
Speaker 1: have somebody describe under what circumstances they left and why,
Speaker 1: and what they're achieving and what families were. And that's
Speaker 1: just one tiny illustration of I think what stops to
Speaker 1: happen once you discover you don't even know what you
Speaker 1: don't know in life? Yeah, I think that's a profound
Speaker 1: place to operate from. Is grasping just how little we
Speaker 1: actually know. Makes me think of a couple of things.
Speaker 1: As you were talking for a minute there, I was
Speaker 1: thinking about My spiritual director is a Christian priest. That's
Speaker 1: not my faith tradition. I'm primarily zen. But he has
Speaker 1: a saying that I love. He says every time I
Speaker 1: find something I love in another tradition, because he's been
Speaker 1: a big interfaith guy for years, He's like, I run
Speaker 1: back to my own tradition and I look for it,
Speaker 1: and I always find it. It's always there, And I
Speaker 1: just think that's such a beautiful mentality. And then I
Speaker 1: was also a thinking as you're talking about deep listening.
Speaker 1: I don't know when I completed, it's been a little
Speaker 1: while now, but I did a interfaith spiritual direction training
Speaker 1: for eighteen months, and that was the heart of the
Speaker 1: entire thing. You know, if I was going to boil
Speaker 1: the entire thing down to what, what did they teach
Speaker 1: for eighteen months primarily deep listening and give me an
Speaker 1: example of how they talk that, well, it was really
Speaker 1: a lot of it, I would say. In some ways,
Speaker 1: you can sum it up so quickly, and yet it's
Speaker 1: a constant practice. And the practice was constantly recognizing when
Speaker 1: as you're trying to listen, you're being pulled into your
Speaker 1: habitual reactions, thoughts, comments, responses, all the different ways that
Speaker 1: you move from listening into reacting internally, and learning to
Speaker 1: notice that movement as it happens and just shift back
Speaker 1: into listening. You know, it's one of those things that,
Speaker 1: again you sort of describe it and you're like, this
Speaker 1: is very easy, like okay, great, just you know, just listen.
Speaker 1: You're doing podcasting now, so you know, you know a
Speaker 1: little bit about what it's like when you're trying to
Speaker 1: interview somebody. You're trying to really listen to what's going
Speaker 1: on with what they're saying. You want to respond. You've
Speaker 1: also got an idea of where the conversation might go,
Speaker 1: You've got your notes. You're sort of juggling a cup
Speaker 1: different things, right, And I think deep listening for me
Speaker 1: was learning to juggle this like listening to the person
Speaker 1: and giving them my full attention. But the other thing
Speaker 1: I'm juggling is what's going on inside me at the
Speaker 1: same time, and learning to sort of not get stuck
Speaker 1: or lost in that, because that's where typically we stop
Speaker 1: listening is when we start wanting to either respond now
Speaker 1: we're formulating what we're going to say, or there's an
Speaker 1: emotional reaction happening inside me, Like they're talking about this
Speaker 1: thing and I'm thinking, do I agree, do I not agree?
Speaker 1: What do I think about that? Or there's some feeling
Speaker 1: coming up, But it's all sort of pulling me away.
Speaker 1: So I've got to be listening really deeply to the person,
Speaker 1: but I also have to be listening to what's happening
Speaker 1: inside me, not to give it a lot of attention,
Speaker 1: but to notice that it's happening so I can shift back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds as you describe it like a meditative practice.
Speaker 1: That's often the way it was phrased. So it was
Speaker 1: interfaith spiritual direction, and deep listening was framed as a
Speaker 1: the heart of what spiritual direction is, but be as
Speaker 1: a contemplative practice. I relate to so much of what
Speaker 1: you're describing there. I think deep listening is the closest
Speaker 1: experience I have on a regular basis to meditation. I
Speaker 1: do meditate, but I find deep listening when you to
Speaker 1: use the Gottens phrase for this, that you shelve your agenda.
Speaker 1: You have an agenda, but you shelve it so that
Speaker 1: you can even be here, so you can even give
Speaker 1: attention to something. And then when you get into not
Speaker 1: just surface listening, which I think surface listening can be
Speaker 1: quite hard, but deep listening, I think once you develop
Speaker 1: the skill, you know what you're doing with it is
Speaker 1: easier than surface listening because it's so much more interesting.
Speaker 1: Surface listening is painful. If you're just listening to somebody,
Speaker 1: they're just rambling on and rambling on, and you're not
Speaker 1: really paying attention and you're not really there. It's just
Speaker 1: a tax. You're not getting much from it, but you're
Speaker 1: still having to give something, So it's kind of like
Speaker 1: a pound of flesh, but deep listening everybody so interesting
Speaker 1: once you get beyond the surface, so much going on
Speaker 1: in them, so much to relate to. There's so much
Speaker 1: to absorb. It's the richest journey of life. And my
Speaker 1: observation currently is that it is missing. In fact, I
Speaker 1: just put on Twitter. I'm going to pull it up
Speaker 1: because I thought this was really interesting. I just did
Speaker 1: this yesterday. I asked the question do you ever feel
Speaker 1: we have lost the ability to deeply listen? And there's
Speaker 1: just tons of responses. I wasn't expecting to people to
Speaker 1: really write responses to It was more of a rhetorical
Speaker 1: question or something, but I just had so many people
Speaker 1: talk about this lost art. I mean, certainly, I put
Speaker 1: out a poll on a different on LinkedIn, where I'm
Speaker 1: quite active, and I don't know it's non scientific poll,
Speaker 1: but people are so responded immediately, and people believe that
Speaker 1: we either have lost it or we never had it
Speaker 1: to begin with. It wasn't very robust, Paul, but that
Speaker 1: means that just only eleven people think that we haven't
Speaker 1: lost it, and that speaks to something. Somebody was just
Speaker 1: talking to me just just a couple of days ago,
Speaker 1: is doing a TV appearance and was talking with the
Speaker 1: director afterwards for about four or five minutes, and he said,
Speaker 1: when you told me you were writing this new book
Speaker 1: and you sort of said the approximate title of it,
Speaker 1: he said, I just realized there was something missing in
Speaker 1: my life. It named something missing in my soul. That
Speaker 1: deep listening just isn't there. It's not a part of life.
Speaker 1: Everything's interrupted. Is that at home? Everything's interrupted. There's always
Speaker 1: something someone, some input, digital input. Of course, if you
Speaker 1: have children, it's definitely going to be inputs there. Somebody
Speaker 1: knocks on the door, something's on the radio, something's on
Speaker 1: you know, there's always something. And that's even to not
Speaker 1: even to mention the phone. This uh, this, you know,
Speaker 1: makes a useful servant, but a poor master. And I
Speaker 1: sense it's just mastering so much of our lives, and
Speaker 1: still too much of my life. It just makes deep
Speaker 1: listening rarer. And yet this is what we yearn for.
Speaker 1: Maybe there is the deepest human need is to be known,
Speaker 1: to be heard, to be seen. I mean, what happens, Eric,
Speaker 1: what happens psychologically to a person who has never been
Speaker 1: deeply listened to. I haven't done the research yet, but
Speaker 1: I'm doing it beginning it to try to answer this
Speaker 1: and many other related questions. But I'm so curious to
Speaker 1: actually identify what research we have about what happens when
Speaker 1: people are never deeply listened to. I mean, we can
Speaker 1: hypothesize that they feel no value, that they feel not
Speaker 1: fully human. You know, there's a lot of childhood attachment
Speaker 1: theory around a tunement, right, we could say that the
Speaker 1: process of attunement between parent and child is a process
Speaker 1: of deep listening. I think so, And we know all
Speaker 1: the ways that when that doesn't happen that things can
Speaker 1: go wrong for children. Well, the disorder attachments can be
Speaker 1: some of the most catastrophic psychological issues that people then
Speaker 1: live with for the rest of their lives. They don't trust,
Speaker 1: they don't trust humans. Yeah, I had Josh Ship on
Speaker 1: the show. He's he wrote a book called The Grown
Speaker 1: Ups Guide to Teenage Humans. But yeah, we've had him
Speaker 1: on it been a long time, but yeah, amazing man.
Speaker 1: Josh Ship was left by his mother, abandoned, That's how
Speaker 1: certainly he felt about it, and what he learned from
Speaker 1: that experience for years was that you couldn't trust adults,
Speaker 1: and so he never did. Of course, that causes incredible dysfunction,
Speaker 1: because every time anyone does something, even if they're trying
Speaker 1: to do something good, will be distrusted by him. Even
Speaker 1: if they are sincere, even if they're genuine, even if
Speaker 1: they're reliable, they are trustworthy, he won't trust them. And
Speaker 1: so it does create a detachment that it took somebody
Speaker 1: coming along and being so consistent with him for years
Speaker 1: for him to just question the paradigm that he'd gained.
Speaker 1: And so I think maybe there's a miniature version of
Speaker 1: that going on for all of us now because of
Speaker 1: this what we we would call it disconnected, wouldn't We
Speaker 1: would say, you know, technology has made us disconnected rather
Speaker 1: than connecting us. But isn't that not much of a
Speaker 1: stretch linguistically from disconnected two detached. I wonder if it
Speaker 1: isn't true that for many people they're suffering with a
Speaker 1: sort of lightweight version of detachment disorder. They just feel
Speaker 1: disconnected from people. You know, they've been isolated for the
Speaker 1: last eighteen months because of COVID, but then even in
Speaker 1: normal life when they're in a big group of people,
Speaker 1: is almost worse. If you're in a big group of
Speaker 1: people and you feel detached and disconnected. That's like, that's
Speaker 1: a greater form of holiness if you feel that that separation.
Speaker 1: And so I mean, I think we could probably tie
Speaker 1: up all these threads into a single idea which was
Speaker 1: shared with me by a friend. He said. He said,
Speaker 1: in life, we have to shift between being in the
Speaker 1: scared state, the scared state, and the sacred state. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I love that because again linguistically just one letter
Speaker 1: difference scared and sacred. And to really get into that
Speaker 1: mode where you're listening deeply past the surface scared state,
Speaker 1: which I think is sort of at the periphery, and
Speaker 1: get deeper so you can start to feel that, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever the language we choose, that wisdom, that conscience, that guidance,
Speaker 1: and that that I think produces somehow a certain ability, confidence, ability,
Speaker 1: not sure the right word, to be able to even
Speaker 1: listen to other people, to even be able to engage
Speaker 1: your prey with the world around us, to orient ourselves well,
Speaker 1: and surely that path of deep listening within deep listening
Speaker 1: without is key to be able to live our lives
Speaker 1: more effortlessly, to even know what is essential to us,
Speaker 1: to know what's essential to other people, and then to
Speaker 1: do it, to be more aligned, is so much better
Speaker 1: than this state of suffering. Makes everything harder, makes it
Speaker 1: harder to even know what is essential to us and
Speaker 1: what is not. Makes it harder for us to engage
Speaker 1: with other people because we distrust them and we're out
Speaker 1: of alignment with them, and we're all of this I
Speaker 1: think adds up to a life that makes everything much
Speaker 1: harder for ourselves and the people around us. I think
Speaker 1: that is a wonderful way to bring it all around
Speaker 1: and sum it up. There's about seventy five ideas in
Speaker 1: the book that I wanted us to talk about, and
Speaker 1: we've run out of time. The book is called Effortless,
Speaker 1: Make it Easier to do what matters most. There's so
Speaker 1: much great stuff in it. Courage listeners to check out
Speaker 1: your What's Essential podcast? Yes, check that podcast out and Greg,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for your time. I've really enjoyed
Speaker 1: this conversation and it's been really rich for me. It's
Speaker 1: been a pleasure. Eric. It's great to be on the
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