Speaker 1: Today's episode is brought to you by our newest Patreon members,
Speaker 1: Nan David, Tim, Michael, Stacy, Matt, Byron, Christie, Kimberly, Lisa
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Speaker 1: our members who support the show. If you'd like to
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Speaker 1: many benefits of membership, go to One You Feed dot
Speaker 1: net slash join. I really think it's sixty your fault.
Speaker 1: Who did I just put in charge of my internal state?
Speaker 1: Welcome to the One you Feed. Throughout time, great tinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true, And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good Wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Fleet Mall.
Speaker 1: Fleet is an author, consultant, trainer, meditation teacher, and executive
Speaker 1: coach who facilitates deep transformation for individuals and organizations through
Speaker 1: his philosophy and program of Radical Responsibility. Fleet is a
Speaker 1: senior mindfulness meditation teacher into highly respected traditions. He's also
Speaker 1: a row she or zen master and Dharma's successor of
Speaker 1: Rosy Bernie Glassman in the zen Peacemaker's community. Today we
Speaker 1: discussed his book, Radical Responsibility, How to move beyond blame, fearlessly,
Speaker 1: live your highest purpose, and become an unstoppable force for good.
Speaker 1: High Fleet, Welcome to the show. Hey Eric, thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. It's a pleasure to have you on. We
Speaker 1: are going to discuss your latest book called Radical Responsibility,
Speaker 1: How to move beyond blame, fearlessly, live your highest purpose,
Speaker 1: and become an unstoppable force for good. But before we
Speaker 1: do that, we are going to start like we always do,
Speaker 1: with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his
Speaker 1: granddaughter and he says, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the others a bad wolf which represents
Speaker 1: things like greed and hatred and fear. And the great
Speaker 1: Otter stops for a second. She thinks about it, and
Speaker 1: she looks up at her grandfather and she says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one win? 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. Yeah, well, it really goes
Speaker 1: right to the heart of the matter. Eric. You know,
Speaker 1: I believe that we are set up, really neurobiologically, psychologically,
Speaker 1: emotionally to either be able to operate from a place
Speaker 1: of vulnerability and resilience and by vulnerability I mean openness
Speaker 1: and in a relational way, and or to operate from
Speaker 1: fear and survival. And neurobiologically we're kind of set up
Speaker 1: for both, and it can it can kind of go
Speaker 1: either way. And so it really comes down to whether
Speaker 1: we allow fear to set in. And we know that
Speaker 1: human beings, when we become fearful in order to you know,
Speaker 1: get our perceived needs met, we'll do some pretty terrible things.
Speaker 1: But the vast majority of us get up every day
Speaker 1: and do our best to really take care of ourselves,
Speaker 1: take care of our families. We queue up at the
Speaker 1: at the well, at the market. We're pretty cooperative, pretty collaborative.
Speaker 1: As long as we're not fearful. We're naturally, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty well behaved and uh and relational and social and
Speaker 1: so forth. And so it's really the question of fear
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I think if if we're really
Speaker 1: looking to quell a lot of our very difficult social
Speaker 1: problems and political problems, is how do we lower the
Speaker 1: fear level for people? Because when you can help people
Speaker 1: feel less afraid, they're naturally, you know, pretty well behaved.
Speaker 1: We get that, we get the best from ourselves and others.
Speaker 1: So a lot of my work is really focused on
Speaker 1: helping people become more resilient so that there are fewer
Speaker 1: situations that will throw them into that fear and survival
Speaker 1: based reaction, or when they when they do feel themselves
Speaker 1: getting pushed into that fear and survival based reaction, we
Speaker 1: can more easily recover from it. We have the skills
Speaker 1: to state shift and get back to that uh, to
Speaker 1: that best self and to that full access to our
Speaker 1: our brain and our good judgment, our decision making ability
Speaker 1: instead of operating in a triggered way from fight or
Speaker 1: fly and so forth. And you know, this was really
Speaker 1: um I learned this in a very personal way during
Speaker 1: fourteen years and a maximum security federal prison. So but
Speaker 1: it's really become the tenor of my work. I do
Speaker 1: a lot of work training law enforcement and correctional officers today,
Speaker 1: and you know, that's really key with them. But really,
Speaker 1: with all the work I'm doing today, it's it could
Speaker 1: come down to helping people be more resilient so they're
Speaker 1: less prone to get triggered into that fear and survival
Speaker 1: based reaction and able instead to feed the good wolf.
Speaker 1: And and then we're gonna we're gonna see more pro social,
Speaker 1: more relational behaviors. I think that's a really great interpretation,
Speaker 1: and I think I agree with you a lot about fear,
Speaker 1: and that does seem to be one of the primary
Speaker 1: things that is driving the cultural divide we're seeing. Is
Speaker 1: there's a lot of fear on all sides. You know,
Speaker 1: everyone's afraid of what's going to happen. Yeah. Absolutely, And
Speaker 1: we're actually with my with Windhorse Seminars, my company, and
Speaker 1: the work around my book radical responsibility. Uh. This year,
Speaker 1: we're really focusing on having everything we do focused on
Speaker 1: helping people become more deeply embodied, more heart centered, and
Speaker 1: more earth conscious. And you know, I think we're all
Speaker 1: becoming concerned about the pretty disturbing evidence around climate change.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's if you really look at the
Speaker 1: science and I'm not a climate scientist, but I read
Speaker 1: a lot of science and and it's it's pretty uh disturbing.
Speaker 1: And then of course we're seeing things going on right
Speaker 1: now with extremes and weather, the fires in Australia and
Speaker 1: so forth, and things could get very difficult. So you know,
Speaker 1: we want to help people become more resilient. To do that,
Speaker 1: we're helping people get in their bodies using contemplative skills,
Speaker 1: mindful of skills, awareness skills, emotional intelligent skills to get
Speaker 1: in the body become more heart centered, more resilient, and
Speaker 1: more grounded, you know, reconnecting with ourselves and with the
Speaker 1: earth such that we're more grounded and we're able to
Speaker 1: really be in a responsive relationship to life instead of
Speaker 1: that fear based, reactive relationship. And you know, as things
Speaker 1: become more challenging, which they very well may, Uh, not
Speaker 1: that life isn't challenging enough already. But not only are
Speaker 1: we vulnerable to our own fear and survival based reactive behaviors,
Speaker 1: but we're vulnerable to being manipulated by the demagogues that
Speaker 1: seeks to manipulate people around fear. And of course a
Speaker 1: lot of the divisiveness we see in our culture now
Speaker 1: is really driven by people who are manipulating people's fear. Indeed,
Speaker 1: for sure, and I agree with you about the climate science,
Speaker 1: it's pretty alarming, and it it just gets more alarming
Speaker 1: over time. But let's just kind of jump into it here. Then.
Speaker 1: Maybe let's just start with some strategies and approaches that
Speaker 1: people can use to be less afraid. Yeah, well, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't want to demonize fear too much here. Fear
Speaker 1: is a natural human emotion and it's intelligent, right. Fear
Speaker 1: keeps us from you know, putting our head again and
Speaker 1: again on the hot stove, right, or from stepping out
Speaker 1: into traffic. So fear is intelligent. It's when fear goes
Speaker 1: too far that it can lead to uh, you know,
Speaker 1: reactiveness and aggression, or can lead us to being frozen
Speaker 1: and overwhelmed and so forth. So to me, the key
Speaker 1: is really resilience. Like we all know that if we're
Speaker 1: not sleeping well, and we've been using a lot of caffeine,
Speaker 1: drinking a lot of coffee, and a lot of junk food,
Speaker 1: jacking ourselves up with sugar and sweets, and you know
Speaker 1: that we're going to be pretty triggerable, pretty irritable, pretty
Speaker 1: prone to fly off the handle, right, Whereas if we're
Speaker 1: eating a really healthy diet and avoiding too much of
Speaker 1: the stimulants and sleeping well, we're generally going to be
Speaker 1: able to handle situations with more ease and more grace.
Speaker 1: So to begin with just doing everything we can to
Speaker 1: increase our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual resilience, wellness, resilience, strength, fitness,
Speaker 1: however you would want to talk about it, and then
Speaker 1: very specific state shifting skills. So you know, there's one
Speaker 1: really simple skill that we teach in almost all of
Speaker 1: our programs, whether we're working with the general public or
Speaker 1: with prisoners, or working with police or correctional officers or CEOs,
Speaker 1: and it's called straw breathing. And uh, it's a very
Speaker 1: simple exercise where you bring then through the nose and
Speaker 1: you breathe out through pur slips, as if you're blowing
Speaker 1: through a straw. You can actually use the straw if
Speaker 1: you want. You can have a straw, and so you
Speaker 1: breathe in through the nose in any place, the straw
Speaker 1: in your mouth, and you blow out through the straw.
Speaker 1: But you can also do it without the straw. But
Speaker 1: so in though the nose out through pers slips, and
Speaker 1: then you start counting the breast, so you might be
Speaker 1: breathing in a four count and then breathing out an
Speaker 1: eight count or in a five count, ten a count,
Speaker 1: the idea of being that the outbreath is twice as long,
Speaker 1: or at least nearly twice as long as the inbreath.
Speaker 1: That's a very simple exercise, is tried and true, and
Speaker 1: people love it. I use it all the time, and
Speaker 1: it will immediately shift us out of a fight or
Speaker 1: flight response, even you know, mild kind of triggered her anxiety,
Speaker 1: or even an extreme fire flight response. Doing a little
Speaker 1: straw breathing, especially if we can do it kind of
Speaker 1: with the belly with good diabraumatic breathing, will shift us
Speaker 1: from that sympathetic nervous system response to fighter flight response
Speaker 1: into the para sympathetic response was a relaxation response, and
Speaker 1: it just works every time. It's a state shifting technique
Speaker 1: that we can use to immediately shift our physiology back
Speaker 1: into a normal state and where we have access to
Speaker 1: the entirety of our brain and our good judgment. Because
Speaker 1: when we get really triggered, whether it's a physical danger
Speaker 1: or we're getting mustily triggered, and that fight or flight
Speaker 1: response takes over the locals of control for our brain.
Speaker 1: Our neurobiology is becoming the reptilian brain, the most primitive
Speaker 1: part of the brain, which is all about survival, and
Speaker 1: to the extent that that's taking over, the executive function
Speaker 1: in the neo cortex is going offline, and so we
Speaker 1: become not very smart. We're operating on pure instinct. And
Speaker 1: so the important thing when we're in any situation where
Speaker 1: we're getting triggered by fear and is to be able
Speaker 1: to state shift back into full access to our brain
Speaker 1: and to be able to make good decisions in our
Speaker 1: own interest and hopefully in the interest of others as well.
Speaker 1: And so how long would someone do straw breathing. I know,
Speaker 1: I certainly had the experience of like, all right, I'm
Speaker 1: agitated or I'm upset, and I say, all right, take
Speaker 1: a couple of deep breaths, and I do a couple
Speaker 1: of deep breaths and maybe something happens, but not really,
Speaker 1: or I do three or four, So it seems like
Speaker 1: it takes more than just you know, a couple of breaths.
Speaker 1: How do you kind of recommend duration. I really teach
Speaker 1: that our breath is our best friend, and every moment
Speaker 1: of breath awareness we have throughout the day is a
Speaker 1: good moment. It's a real value added moment. It's increasing
Speaker 1: our resilience. It's helping us stay at a good state
Speaker 1: at a moment, but it's also increasing our reservoirs of resilience.
Speaker 1: So breath awareness, I think it's just really key and
Speaker 1: our best friend. And even that one deep breath can
Speaker 1: can really be you know, like hitting the pause button
Speaker 1: or even the reset button, that we take a nice long,
Speaker 1: deep breath with our belly, it can really have an impact. However,
Speaker 1: with with the strawbreathing, I would say, you know, to
Speaker 1: make a significant shift from being you know, fairly anxious,
Speaker 1: triggered or stressed out into you know, back into a
Speaker 1: more relaxed or at least normal baseline state, you know
Speaker 1: about a minute of of strawbreathing really has an impact,
Speaker 1: and you know a couple of minutes even more, I
Speaker 1: mean use strawbreathing. I travel constantly, and so I do
Speaker 1: a lot of drives to the airport. I live in
Speaker 1: Western mass I fly out of Hartford. It's about forty
Speaker 1: five minute drive, and often in bad weather, and you
Speaker 1: have that traffic going sixty seventy miles an hour, heavy
Speaker 1: traffic and bad weather, you know as white knuckle drives.
Speaker 1: And I'm doing a strawberry in the whole way, and
Speaker 1: I get there safely. I arrive at the airport not
Speaker 1: all stressed out. I'm able to go to security still
Speaker 1: doing strawbreathing. So I get there, I usually make my
Speaker 1: plight and I'm not all exist and stressed out. So
Speaker 1: I use it a lot. I use it actually when
Speaker 1: I'm delivering trainings. I'm out in front of people delivering
Speaker 1: training several hundred days a year. You know, I'm doing
Speaker 1: that all day long when I'm working one form or another.
Speaker 1: I have a number of different breath regulation techniques I use,
Speaker 1: but straw breathing is a key one. And by being
Speaker 1: embodied and and having that breath awareness and then using
Speaker 1: my breath in certain ways. I can work long days
Speaker 1: and at the end of the day, I'm not exhausted
Speaker 1: at all. I feel ready to go, I feel nurtured.
Speaker 1: I'm in a good place. So um, I believe in
Speaker 1: the breast stup. It works. And and but you know,
Speaker 1: to give you the simple answer. With the straw breathing,
Speaker 1: I think you know one to three minutes you're going
Speaker 1: to see a significant shift away from the sympathetic branch
Speaker 1: um fider black response back to the parasympathetic brands relaxation response. Yeah.
Speaker 1: An area that I've started to use deep breathing techniques
Speaker 1: like that, which I don't know why I didn't occur
Speaker 1: to me before, is prior to sitting down and doing meditation.
Speaker 1: Before I start doing a meditative practice, whether it's following
Speaker 1: my breath or working on one of the cohens and
Speaker 1: my zen training, I'll do a couple of minutes of
Speaker 1: the type of breathing you're describing, where where the in
Speaker 1: breath and then the outbreath is about twice as long.
Speaker 1: And what I find is that settles me well so
Speaker 1: that I can start meditation from a more settled place
Speaker 1: instead of just sort of sitting down and going right
Speaker 1: into it. Yeah, that's a really interesting one, you know,
Speaker 1: because I think a lot of us who have a
Speaker 1: background in bressed forms of Buddhist meditation, and perhaps some
Speaker 1: others as well. You know, we're kind of taught that
Speaker 1: the idea is that you sit down and you work
Speaker 1: with your mind as it is, so we're not trying
Speaker 1: to manipulate ourselves into a particular a state, right or
Speaker 1: maintain a particular state. So if you sit down in
Speaker 1: your minds all actuated, it's good to just sit through that.
Speaker 1: And I believe the drill value of that, and of
Speaker 1: course did decades of that, But I actually agree with
Speaker 1: with your approach there that I think, you know, if
Speaker 1: you've got a limited amount of time to do your
Speaker 1: meditation practice, you know, doing a little something so you
Speaker 1: can sit down and actually start from a fairly good
Speaker 1: place and actually be able to do the technique. I
Speaker 1: think actually does make a lot of sense. And and
Speaker 1: I'm teaching a kind of a new approach to uh
Speaker 1: mindfulness meditation. It really comes out of forty five years
Speaker 1: of my practice and integrating a lot of different streams.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've been practicing and zen for years, and
Speaker 1: very much in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, also in the
Speaker 1: Propotionate traditions, and and my core practices, you know, these
Speaker 1: days are really for last twenty years have been primarily
Speaker 1: in the Mohammudhas tradition and a lot of formless meditation.
Speaker 1: So this has been influenced by all these different streams,
Speaker 1: and I'm calling it neuro somatic mindfulness, and the reason
Speaker 1: being that it's about being deeply embodied. So I trained
Speaker 1: people to really get in and feel their body head
Speaker 1: to toe and really activate what's called introceptive awareness, which
Speaker 1: is the body's internal capacity for feeling. And you know,
Speaker 1: our body is sensory all the way down to the bones,
Speaker 1: and every aspect of the internal landscape of our body
Speaker 1: are organs, connective tissue, circulatory system, and it's all sensory.
Speaker 1: And so I guide people and really awakening that internal landscape,
Speaker 1: that capacity for introception at deeper and deeper and deeper levels,
Speaker 1: and you begin to experience a really profound level of
Speaker 1: physical presence and that you're you're starting to get into
Speaker 1: that interface of body and mind there and you know,
Speaker 1: what you might call subtle energies and so forth. So
Speaker 1: our capacity for a profound, deep presence and then a
Speaker 1: quality of being gives us a foundation in which we
Speaker 1: can kind of relax our more egoic, you know, fear
Speaker 1: based way of being and allows us to really relax further.
Speaker 1: And then also activating our capacity to get internal neuro
Speaker 1: biofeedback loops going so that we can begin to self
Speaker 1: direct our own physiology, our own emotional life, and as well,
Speaker 1: I think even switching neural networks in the brain. You know,
Speaker 1: we know today that there's a what's called the default
Speaker 1: network in the brain, which is that discursive mind. It's
Speaker 1: constantly thinking about the past in the future, ruminating and
Speaker 1: planning and worrying and thinking about ourselves and what others
Speaker 1: think about us and all that. That that part of
Speaker 1: our brain that makes it very hard to meditate when
Speaker 1: we're first learning. And then there's what's called the task
Speaker 1: positive network when we fully engage ourselves that actually inhibits
Speaker 1: the action of that default mode network. So I'm really
Speaker 1: beginning to feel that by ramping up our inter receptive
Speaker 1: awareness really all the way down to the boats and
Speaker 1: then paying attention, we can begin to self regulate with
Speaker 1: these internal neurobio feedback loops that don't require an external
Speaker 1: reference point like usual biofeedback where you're looking at a
Speaker 1: heart monitor, some reference point of your brain waves or
Speaker 1: something like that. So I think there are tremendous possibilities
Speaker 1: and self regulation and so combining that with you know,
Speaker 1: just sitting through whatever. You know, there's that part of
Speaker 1: meditation you just sit through and there's no particular state.
Speaker 1: But I think that that is value in that. But
Speaker 1: I think there's also value and being able to self
Speaker 1: regulate at more profound levels, especially in terms of how
Speaker 1: we're going to show up with life and and meet
Speaker 1: really challenging circumstances in life from our best self and
Speaker 1: from the greatest resilience. Yeah, that's fascinating work because I think,
Speaker 1: like you're saying, that ability to perhaps switch from the
Speaker 1: default mode network to the task positive network while doing
Speaker 1: a task like meditation, And I think that's where a
Speaker 1: lot of the challenges is that meditation for a lot
Speaker 1: of people, there's not enough there to switch into the
Speaker 1: task network. We sort of toggle between the two, but
Speaker 1: for a lot of people in early in meditation, most
Speaker 1: of it's in the default mode network. And so it's
Speaker 1: always seemed to me that the slightly more engaged we
Speaker 1: can be in the meditation moves us just that little
Speaker 1: bit over that line. Initially, what we developed with meditation,
Speaker 1: and it's an incredible first step, is we developed the
Speaker 1: kind of witness mind or or watcher mind right that
Speaker 1: instead of being lost in our experience, we could actually observe,
Speaker 1: you know, thoughts coming and going, emotional mood changes, what's
Speaker 1: going on physically, external perception, sounds, everything. We can kind
Speaker 1: of step back from that and not be lost in it,
Speaker 1: but actually observe it. So that's the witness mind, and
Speaker 1: that's really the beginning of our freedom. From from that place,
Speaker 1: we can decide how to respond to the content of
Speaker 1: our life rather than just being lost in it or
Speaker 1: being in an unconscious reactive relationship. But that witness mind
Speaker 1: even and it takes, it takes a kind of strong
Speaker 1: maintenance to stay in that witness mind, and it's it's
Speaker 1: still involved with that default mode network to a degree.
Speaker 1: And what I think allows us to relax that and
Speaker 1: and dissolve the witness mind into a more non dual meditation,
Speaker 1: we're just really in being just kind of pure awareness,
Speaker 1: pure being. What allows us to do that is having
Speaker 1: a foundation to ground that in. And for me, that
Speaker 1: is that deep embodied which of course includes the breath,
Speaker 1: but feeling the breath and the whole body, the deeper
Speaker 1: and deeper level, all the way down to the boats.
Speaker 1: We experience this internal residence which is very palpable. It's
Speaker 1: always there, we're just not tuned into it. And it's
Speaker 1: a ground of presence and being that we can anchor ourselves.
Speaker 1: And the more we've become familiar with it, that allows
Speaker 1: us not only to be fully present, but to relax
Speaker 1: that need for the observer witness and just drop into
Speaker 1: pure being. And you know, that really goes into the
Speaker 1: more profound possibilities of meditation and resilience building and so forth,
Speaker 1: and and further relaxing the need that constant thing of
Speaker 1: you know what about me? And am I going to
Speaker 1: get me? You know, the whole thing, the whole project
Speaker 1: of me. We're able to relax that more and more
Speaker 1: because we actually feel something more deeper and more trustworthy
Speaker 1: than that. And and and for me, the portal is
Speaker 1: through the body, And of course I think then that
Speaker 1: goes into subtle body and things like that. But the
Speaker 1: portal really for me is to begin with, is becoming
Speaker 1: much more deeply embodied. Yeah, and this sort of leads
Speaker 1: to something you were talking about in the book, which
Speaker 1: is two modes of mindfulness witnessing versus sensing, or observing
Speaker 1: versus feeling. And in my own practice, I am now
Speaker 1: able to almost any time I sit down to pragg
Speaker 1: and I practice every morning my my sweetheart might fiance Sophie,
Speaker 1: and I get up and and uh have a little
Speaker 1: bit of morning routine, not much, with a little bit
Speaker 1: of exercise and just you know, the bathroom and brushing
Speaker 1: teeth and so forth, and then we go in and
Speaker 1: practice for an hour hour and a half before breakfast.
Speaker 1: And and I'm able to sit down and just in
Speaker 1: my mind will just settle immediately almost all the time.
Speaker 1: And even if it's not you know, if it's struggling
Speaker 1: to set a little bit or something going on which
Speaker 1: is causing me to be a little excursive, all I
Speaker 1: really need to do is just flash on these qualities
Speaker 1: of embodiment, you know, and just just bring myself into
Speaker 1: that embodiment, and my mind just immediately settles. And and
Speaker 1: it's also I'm beginning to experiment with you know, the
Speaker 1: defaultment network kind of runs im mediately across the top
Speaker 1: of the head from front to back, and then of
Speaker 1: course is connected to substrates in the brain, the task
Speaker 1: positive network, and the direct sensing or feeling is more
Speaker 1: lateral pathways around the brain. And I don't know whether
Speaker 1: I'm actually feeling it or it's imagine, you know, when
Speaker 1: you start working with these things that actual experience and imagination,
Speaker 1: you know, subtle energy, actual energy sensation. It's all kind
Speaker 1: of on a spectrum of body and mind, right, So,
Speaker 1: but I literally try to bring my attention to the
Speaker 1: lateral sides of my brain rather than the top, and
Speaker 1: really drop into the body and feel my body all
Speaker 1: the way down to the feet and all the way
Speaker 1: down to the bones, and really feel the rib cage
Speaker 1: opening closing, and tune into, you know, much of the
Speaker 1: internal processes my body as I can, and that just
Speaker 1: immediately settles my mind and I'm able to go right
Speaker 1: into practice without really having to struggle with my discursive
Speaker 1: mind in the way that I did for years. You
Speaker 1: have heard me talk about the peloton bike before and
Speaker 1: how much I love it, and I really do. If
Speaker 1: a team of behavior scientists got together, and maybe they
Speaker 1: did in this case and designed a piece of cardio
Speaker 1: equipment to make it most likely that you would do
Speaker 1: it and get a great workout and keep doing it.
Speaker 1: What you would get is the Peloton. It is amazing. First,
Speaker 1: it's convenient. It's right in your house, and we know
Speaker 1: from lots of studies that the more convenient it is
Speaker 1: to work out, the more likely you are to do it.
Speaker 1: There's a great variety of workouts, lots of different instructors
Speaker 1: live and on demand, all different styles of music and playlists,
Speaker 1: as well as yoga, indoor, outdoor running, strength training. On
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Speaker 1: single thing that you do, which I absolutely love. So
Speaker 1: there are challenges and streaks and all kinds of stuff,
Speaker 1: which is another behavior change principle that we know really
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Speaker 1: That's simply safe dot com slash Wolf. So I really
Speaker 1: just want to talk about radical responsibility. You say that
Speaker 1: radical responsibility is a shame free philosophy that transcends blames.
Speaker 1: So tell me a little bit more, you know, a
Speaker 1: short bit about how you would define radical responsibility. Well,
Speaker 1: I often describe it as voluntarily embracing responsibility or ownership
Speaker 1: for each and every circumstance we face in life. That
Speaker 1: includes the ones where if we get a little bit
Speaker 1: honest with ourselves, we can see we play some part
Speaker 1: in creating or you know, inviting, as well as the
Speaker 1: ones that seemingly just felt all the sky landed in
Speaker 1: our lap right and everybody would agree we had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with it. And so why would I embrace
Speaker 1: ownership for that? Because it's the only place I have
Speaker 1: any real self agency or power. You know, it's quite
Speaker 1: natural to blame. We're all vulnerable creatures. We have tender hearts.
Speaker 1: We've all had our hearts bruise, we've been hurt, you know,
Speaker 1: we've all been shamed as well. We've been blamed and
Speaker 1: shamed plenty, and so when something happens, we've been enculturated
Speaker 1: to think somebody's gonna get blamed. And if I can't
Speaker 1: find someone or someone else to blame, then I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have to blame myself. And I don't want to blame myself.
Speaker 1: You know, I've experienced enough of that already, so I
Speaker 1: just naturally deflect the blame. But in doing so, the
Speaker 1: problem with that, even though it's natural and we don't
Speaker 1: need to beat ourselves up about it, but what good
Speaker 1: does it do for us, right, is that we're really
Speaker 1: giving our power. Because you know, let's say you and
Speaker 1: I are in some kind of conflict. We had a
Speaker 1: business deal that went bad or something. I'm completely convinced
Speaker 1: it's all your fault and I'm ready to, you know,
Speaker 1: go to war and you may be in the same
Speaker 1: in position, But some our friends talk us in to
Speaker 1: go to a going to a mediator, and and you know,
Speaker 1: the mediator talks to both of us were both very convincing.
Speaker 1: They're not sure what to do, but in the end
Speaker 1: they have we have a videotape and it is why
Speaker 1: I'm going to take out and put together a focus
Speaker 1: group ten really smart people that don't know either one
Speaker 1: of you, don't care who about either one of you,
Speaker 1: and we'll see what they say. So they come back
Speaker 1: and they said, well, I have to say that they
Speaker 1: did agree that that Eric bears more of the responsibility
Speaker 1: to the situation here. I said, well, I'm glad you
Speaker 1: found such a group of smart people they realize it's
Speaker 1: all Eric's fault. The media said, wellfully, no, they you
Speaker 1: know it's about sixty forty seven that you do bear
Speaker 1: some of the responsibility. Well, I don't really believe. But
Speaker 1: as long as they think it's mostly Eric's fault, you know,
Speaker 1: that's okay, all right? All on my part, I acknowledge
Speaker 1: I had some role, maybe thirty, but I still feel
Speaker 1: vindicated that we all agree that it's mostly Eric's fault.
Speaker 1: You know, that may be very normal and very human,
Speaker 1: But if that, if I'm really convinced, I mean, by definition,
Speaker 1: I'm unhappy I'm upset, right, And if I really think
Speaker 1: it's you know, sixty seventy or percent your fault, who
Speaker 1: did I just put in charge of my internal state?
Speaker 1: I put you in charge of it? Can I control?
Speaker 1: You know, we constantly do that. We put others in
Speaker 1: charge of our own internal state, our own internal happiness
Speaker 1: and so forth, And we cannot control other people. You know,
Speaker 1: We've all tried, we keep trying. We should know from
Speaker 1: experience that people are not controllable, but we can know
Speaker 1: so even beyond the shadow of a doubt, because we
Speaker 1: know that we're uncontrollable, right, I mean, no matter how
Speaker 1: much somebody tries to control or intimidate us, we will
Speaker 1: find our way to get our needs met. So you know,
Speaker 1: if people get nothing else from this and try let
Speaker 1: go of that agenda of trying to control the people
Speaker 1: and you're life, well I'll be happier. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's again, it's a natural instinct to do because we all,
Speaker 1: you know, we feel that sense of control will give
Speaker 1: us a sense of security and so forth. But but
Speaker 1: this blame thing really is giving our power away. So
Speaker 1: the idea of radical responsibility is to place ourselves in
Speaker 1: the most powerful place we can in our life where
Speaker 1: we have the most agency, and that's focusing on what
Speaker 1: can I do, no matter what the situation is, what
Speaker 1: can I do? And you know, this isn't about beating
Speaker 1: ourselves up at all. It is not about blaming ourselves.
Speaker 1: It's not about blaming others. It's certainly not about blaming victims.
Speaker 1: And you know it comes from a place having deep
Speaker 1: compassion for ourselves, deep compassion for people who for whom
Speaker 1: I have suffered terrible things happening to them. Nonetheless, at
Speaker 1: some point, for ourselves or for others, they're really saying,
Speaker 1: question is what am I going to do? You know,
Speaker 1: maybe something landed in my lape is terrible and it's
Speaker 1: really taken me down. At some point, my decisions are
Speaker 1: going to determine whether I'm able to find some way
Speaker 1: to embrace that that's now part of my life and
Speaker 1: move forward with my life, or it is going to
Speaker 1: take me down. And that's really up to me and
Speaker 1: the decisions I'm making. You know, for some of the
Speaker 1: horrible things that happen to human beings, that can be
Speaker 1: a very heroic thing. It can be very difficult to
Speaker 1: get to that place. But we're really talking about ourselves here,
Speaker 1: and you know, and can we no matter how tough
Speaker 1: of a situation we're in and how much it feels
Speaker 1: like it's coming at us from someone else, if I
Speaker 1: can focus on what can I do, because now I'm
Speaker 1: out of the victim mindset and into the mindset of possibility,
Speaker 1: be there's always a million different things we can do.
Speaker 1: There's a million different ways we can approach any person,
Speaker 1: any situation, and that just gets us back in that
Speaker 1: mind of possibility and back in the driver receipt of
Speaker 1: our own life to whatever degree. And so it's really
Speaker 1: it's just really we could call it radical self empowerment.
Speaker 1: I feel our culture and I don't mean to beat
Speaker 1: up on our culture. It's in some ways it's a
Speaker 1: human condition. And then in particular, uh that's extrapolated into
Speaker 1: our Western culture based on various influences culture and religious
Speaker 1: that we're culturated into a fairly blame and shame based
Speaker 1: culture with a lot of uh, punishment reward. And and
Speaker 1: you know, children are you know, I mean, we want
Speaker 1: our children to grow up, and you know, we do
Speaker 1: need to enculturate our children, but unfortunately there's a coercive
Speaker 1: aspect where the messages conform or you're going to be oxtracized,
Speaker 1: Conform or you're gonna be shamed. And even the most
Speaker 1: benevolent parents do this on constant lead to a degree,
Speaker 1: because they want their children to be happy and fit
Speaker 1: into whatever culture they buy into, and they don't want
Speaker 1: to be embarrassed by their own children. So there's that
Speaker 1: either subtle or not so subtle coercion. And when you're
Speaker 1: on the other side of that message of shame, right,
Speaker 1: there's a threat of love being withdrawn, the threat of
Speaker 1: being unworthy, of being rejected, and we've all experienced that,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately we set up, you know, cultural institutions that
Speaker 1: reinforce that continually. So it's that blaming shaming quality that
Speaker 1: I think drives a lot of the negative influences in
Speaker 1: our culture and so and it takes a lot of
Speaker 1: resilience to rise above that, but I think it starts
Speaker 1: for ourselves in terms of learning how not to shame
Speaker 1: ourselves and not to blame ourselves, while at the same
Speaker 1: time really in our own lighted self interest, taking as
Speaker 1: much ownership for our lives as we can, to focus
Speaker 1: our energies where it can do the most good, which
Speaker 1: is in directing our own behaviors. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of subtlety in this, right because on one hand, we
Speaker 1: hear this and we go are at a hundred percent responsibility.
Speaker 1: I'm the only one that can handle this great. But
Speaker 1: a lot of people respond negative rely to that for
Speaker 1: a lot of different reasons. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: it is because there's not an understanding, and I think
Speaker 1: there's a couple of concepts we probably should dive a
Speaker 1: little bit deeper into, and maybe we can talk about
Speaker 1: a few of them. You know, one would be blame
Speaker 1: slash fault. I think that's another word for it, right,
Speaker 1: You could say it's your fault, I blame you, same
Speaker 1: same thing that and ownership. Let's talk about the difference
Speaker 1: between those, because I think that's where a lot of
Speaker 1: people get hung up. Yeah, absolutely, that is, and that's
Speaker 1: a lot of my training. So I do radical responsibility
Speaker 1: trainings of various kinds around the world. We also deliver
Speaker 1: a very powerful training called the Event, which a lot
Speaker 1: of this radical responsibility model comes out of. It's a
Speaker 1: very intense greup process and uh, and then I have
Speaker 1: my online courses and what I'm always trying to land
Speaker 1: in their experientially. For people is the difference between ownership
Speaker 1: and blame, especially a difference between ownership and self plame. Right.
Speaker 1: And so we find ourselves in a situation right, and
Speaker 1: our tendency is just want to parcel out the fault
Speaker 1: to everybody else, or even if we're willing to you know,
Speaker 1: own something, we're still wanting to parse it out. You know, okay,
Speaker 1: alone this much, but I want I need to give
Speaker 1: that much to the other person and so forth. When
Speaker 1: we shipped from that and we're really looking at what's
Speaker 1: my part in something. We're not looking at that for
Speaker 1: the purpose of blaming ourselves at all. We're simply looking
Speaker 1: at it for insight, for learning, for knowledge. Because if
Speaker 1: I can see, here's the situation that didn't work out, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm happy about it, got a bad result,
Speaker 1: and I can see, you know, some elements that I
Speaker 1: contributed to it, or some way I unconsciously set myself
Speaker 1: up for it, or some way maybe I allowed it
Speaker 1: by just not being aware, or maybe I was enabling
Speaker 1: or people pleasing, or maybe I just didn't have good
Speaker 1: boundaries or wasn't sticking up for myself, or it wasn't
Speaker 1: speaking out or you know, there's all kinds of ways
Speaker 1: in which I may have contributed to a situation unconsciously,
Speaker 1: promoted or allowed it. And so if I can see
Speaker 1: some of that, then that gives me the insight and
Speaker 1: the learning to do differently next time and get different results.
Speaker 1: So purely for the process of purpose of learning. You know,
Speaker 1: even if I can look at a situation and walk
Speaker 1: it back a few moves and go, oh, back there,
Speaker 1: if I've gone right instead of left, that wouldn't have happened. Right, Okay,
Speaker 1: next time, I'll know which way to go right. So
Speaker 1: it's purely for a purpose of learning. It's not for
Speaker 1: beating ourselves up at all. And of course this requests
Speaker 1: why all of this is, you know, kind of an
Speaker 1: integral process, because doing the contemplative work with nurosmatic approcess
Speaker 1: of mindfulness and other other contemplative disciplines, developing the resilience
Speaker 1: so that we have the bravery to look at things
Speaker 1: with a lot of honesty, to really see our part
Speaker 1: in things and be able to gain the insight and
Speaker 1: the knowledge and the learning without falling into self blame. Right,
Speaker 1: That just takes practice and resilience. When there is a
Speaker 1: situation where, really, you know, I don't see that I
Speaker 1: had anything to do with it, or you know, even
Speaker 1: it's it's such a terrible situation of injustice. Even if
Speaker 1: I did, that's beside the point, because it's something so
Speaker 1: horrendous and that it never happened to anybody, right well,
Speaker 1: even in that situation. Again, it's not about blaming at all.
Speaker 1: It's just like, Okay, what do I need? What do
Speaker 1: I need to move forward in my life? Maybe I
Speaker 1: need to have what happened to me validated as a
Speaker 1: terrible injustice. Maybe I need to pull a lot of
Speaker 1: support around myself. Maybe I need to even look for justice.
Speaker 1: But can I do that with a sense of what's
Speaker 1: in my own interests in terms of moving forward, instead
Speaker 1: of reifying an identity for myself as a victim and
Speaker 1: then living from that place, or being crushed by what
Speaker 1: happened to me, or falling into this bitterness and anger
Speaker 1: and you know, and feeling defeated, or or or just
Speaker 1: continuing to live my life from that place of you know,
Speaker 1: you know the world is horribly and unjust and I've
Speaker 1: been victimized, And that's going to be the frame to
Speaker 1: which the lens to which I continue to look in life.
Speaker 1: So what do I need to help myself move from
Speaker 1: that place into a more resilient, more positive place where
Speaker 1: I can say, Okay, I'm you know, this happened to me,
Speaker 1: it's horrible, and now I'm going to do what I
Speaker 1: can to create my own destiny going forward. And of
Speaker 1: course there's lots of stories where people have taken terrible
Speaker 1: tragedies that befell them and one of the ways that
Speaker 1: they were able to move forward in their life was,
Speaker 1: you know, like the mother who created an organization Mothers
Speaker 1: Against Drunk Driving, Right, she lost her own son to
Speaker 1: a drunk driver, and the way that she was able
Speaker 1: to transform that and move forward was to create an
Speaker 1: organization to prevent that from happen to other people. Right,
Speaker 1: So she empowered herself to move forward in her life
Speaker 1: in a positive way. Right. Again, the distinctions, they are
Speaker 1: very subtle, but I think you hit on them pretty well.
Speaker 1: There that the place that most people go, okay, until
Speaker 1: we hit sort of like the victimless crime. Right. You know,
Speaker 1: the current movement is you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: me too, So women who have been who have been harmed,
Speaker 1: So we go well, it's not my responsibility at that
Speaker 1: point because I was harmed. And I love the way
Speaker 1: you said that part of our healing process and part
Speaker 1: of taking responsibilities for us to figure out what we need,
Speaker 1: whether that be certain types of therapy, whether that be justice,
Speaker 1: whether that be invalidated, and what we are that it's
Speaker 1: still us. And the thing that I always think is
Speaker 1: helpful when I think about this is I'm like, no
Speaker 1: one else is going to lead my healing and recovery
Speaker 1: besides me, And that's where the responsibility for me becomes
Speaker 1: very clear. If I don't take a hundred percent responsibility
Speaker 1: for the path I take forward out of this, even
Speaker 1: if what's befallen me is terrible, no one else will absolutely,
Speaker 1: you know, in the trainings only we get to a
Speaker 1: point in the training where I really encourage people to
Speaker 1: argue with me about this. We have big group discussions
Speaker 1: and we really go deeply into it, and it's around
Speaker 1: this distinct and circumstances are neutral with some people here
Speaker 1: that and we we land on that. It actually comes
Speaker 1: out of the audience. I I pull that from the
Speaker 1: audience based on this experience we go through that they
Speaker 1: see there's these two landscapes. We can experience one thing
Speaker 1: from one mindset, or we can experience it from what
Speaker 1: I call the empowerment zone mindset, and we have a
Speaker 1: really different experience and we have different you know, different
Speaker 1: thoughts and feelings about things, and so it implies there's
Speaker 1: choice involved. And if their employee, if there is choice
Speaker 1: in fact, then you know whether in a moment or
Speaker 1: at some point, there's choice about framework to continue to
Speaker 1: hold things in. Does that mean circumstances are actually neutral?
Speaker 1: You know, My certing is that they are. And some
Speaker 1: people finally out a big relief. It's very empowering, and
Speaker 1: then people begin to go the worst case scenarios and
Speaker 1: especially talk about other people. You know, take the Me
Speaker 1: Too movement for example, and that's very tricky territory to
Speaker 1: go in too, especially for a male. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to be very careful here. But you know, obviously that's
Speaker 1: something that's been a long time coming. It's women speaking
Speaker 1: up for themselves and saying enough is enough and making
Speaker 1: a boundary. And it's obviously an incredibly positive thing and
Speaker 1: something that really needed to happen, right And like any movement,
Speaker 1: there will be some excesses with it and I'm not
Speaker 1: going to draw the line and say what's successive or not.
Speaker 1: But you know, obviously, any time the penum swings in
Speaker 1: one way, it usually goes all too far and it
Speaker 1: comes back. We all know that. But one of the
Speaker 1: things that I hear some of my women friends in
Speaker 1: colleges talking about, you know, they're very grateful that this
Speaker 1: is happening. They support it whole hardly, but one of
Speaker 1: the aspects of it that they struggle with is on
Speaker 1: some levels, it begins to reify women as victims, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that's where it gets tricky. And
Speaker 1: so how can we stand up for ourselves, seek the
Speaker 1: healing we need, seek justice, whatever it may be, without
Speaker 1: kind of reifying our life position or even classifying ourselves
Speaker 1: as victims, in other words, becoming survivors. You know, I've
Speaker 1: brought the same work to Rwanda, training genocide survivors in
Speaker 1: Rwanda to work as para trauma counselors out at the
Speaker 1: abilities level throughout Rwanda. And these are toot sie villagers who,
Speaker 1: many of whom witness their own families being butchered into genocide.
Speaker 1: And I brought this work to them and they love
Speaker 1: it because they do not want to be victims. They
Speaker 1: have a very proud culture, but they do want the
Speaker 1: world to know that the genocide really happened and how
Speaker 1: horrific it was, and they're committed to preventing that from
Speaker 1: happening again in Rowanda and other countries around the world.
Speaker 1: But they see themselves as survivors, not as victim, and
Speaker 1: I think that's that's an important distinction. Another example I'll
Speaker 1: often bring up with the circumstances of neutral is Victor
Speaker 1: Frankel's work. You know, his book, not as well known today,
Speaker 1: be who has written what the late boy, these early
Speaker 1: fifties man search for meaning? But you know it transformed
Speaker 1: the lives of millions of people. And he made two
Speaker 1: discoveries in Ouchwitz, the worst, most infamous death camp of
Speaker 1: the Nazi Holocaust. I believe his family was wiped out
Speaker 1: on both sides. And he's there in the work camp
Speaker 1: where people are dropping like flies from exhausting and starvation
Speaker 1: and over work and the elements and so forth. I mean,
Speaker 1: the most horrific, dehumanizing and physically you know, challenging, life
Speaker 1: threatening circumstance you could almost ever imagine being in. And
Speaker 1: he was a reflective person, a psychologist, a psychiatrist. He
Speaker 1: wanted to survive, and he was trying to understand why
Speaker 1: are some people dying quickly some people surviving? And he
Speaker 1: discovered two things. One was that the people who were
Speaker 1: surviving had a sense of future. They were able to
Speaker 1: create some sense of possibility, a reason to live. For him,
Speaker 1: he kept visualizing his future life and getting out some
Speaker 1: day and completing his work and going ahead with his
Speaker 1: professional or his academic work and others. Maybe we're determined
Speaker 1: just to get out to bear witness to what happened
Speaker 1: to either to make sure jobs has happened or to
Speaker 1: prevent it from happening to other people. The other thing
Speaker 1: he discovered was that even in the most powerless, most dehumanizing,
Speaker 1: horrific situation, one can imagine that one always has a
Speaker 1: choice that no one can ever take away from us.
Speaker 1: And that is a choice over the attitude we bring
Speaker 1: to that situation. We may not even have a choice
Speaker 1: of life or death, but we do have a choice
Speaker 1: of how we're going to die, in what mindset, and
Speaker 1: that can be a hard, you know, tough choice if
Speaker 1: we've been choosing fear and bitterness and anger, you know,
Speaker 1: and some kind of victim mindset our whole life. It's
Speaker 1: going to be hard to and when push comes to
Speaker 1: the job to make the leap into a different mindset.
Speaker 1: So it's good to practice with the small situations. But
Speaker 1: we can and people there's all kinds of historic, incredible
Speaker 1: examples where people have made that ship. But again, you know,
Speaker 1: people tend to want to go to the worst case scenarios.
Speaker 1: We go into that mindset of giving away our power
Speaker 1: and blaming you know, everyone and everything for what we're feeling.
Speaker 1: We do it all day long, constantly. So I think
Speaker 1: it's about practicing with the small situations where we really
Speaker 1: can see. Circumstances are pretty neutral, you know. And when
Speaker 1: I say circumstances neutral, that's not a value statement about
Speaker 1: the circumstances, because obviously some circumstances feel a lot less
Speaker 1: neutral than others. Some circumstances are horribly unjust. But what
Speaker 1: it really is is it's pointing the choice that we
Speaker 1: always have the possibility of exercising choice, and therein lies
Speaker 1: our freedom, there in lies our future, there in lies
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Speaker 1: to dive a little deeper there because first, Victor Frankel's
Speaker 1: work is incredibly inspiring, right, and it it points to
Speaker 1: the remarkable human capacity. Now, I think that what happens
Speaker 1: to a lot of people is that we start to
Speaker 1: buy into this mindset. Okay, I should take a responsibility
Speaker 1: and I should be able to transcend these really negative
Speaker 1: emotions that I'm having. But we try and it doesn't work,
Speaker 1: and we try and we fall back into the same emotions.
Speaker 1: We try, we fall back into the same emotion and
Speaker 1: then now comes the blame and self recrimination. So talk
Speaker 1: about the path through that? Yeah, absolutely, well, obviously this
Speaker 1: is it is a path, right, and it does involve practice, right,
Speaker 1: So again, working with the small said suations is very helpful.
Speaker 1: I mean, I see throughout the day, I actually have
Speaker 1: a pretty strong uh impulse to blame myself. You know,
Speaker 1: I grew up in a family of five, and you know,
Speaker 1: when anything went happened, I had an older brother, he'd
Speaker 1: blamed me. I'd blame my next sister. She'd blame the
Speaker 1: next sister. And my baby says, go kick the dog.
Speaker 1: You know. You know, it all rolled downhill like that.
Speaker 1: So you know I still have that tendency and uh,
Speaker 1: and my my fiance could tell you how I catch
Speaker 1: it quickly, but that that impulse is still there. Right,
Speaker 1: So we can practice with little stuff all day long
Speaker 1: when we see ourselves going into that wanting to deflect responsibility,
Speaker 1: wanting to blame, even around very little stuff. So that's
Speaker 1: the place to practice, you know, around where we feel
Speaker 1: ourselves getting pulled back into that mindset with the difficult
Speaker 1: negative emotions. Right, Obviously there's there's work to do there.
Speaker 1: So you know, we may need to do some therapeutic
Speaker 1: work and and uh some self healing work and and
Speaker 1: of course you know I ground this whole RACKR responsibility
Speaker 1: model in training and mindfulness and awareness training and mindful
Speaker 1: self compassion and self empathy. So all this is contextualized
Speaker 1: because there's some work out there in the world and
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. But it's kind of about the mental
Speaker 1: toughness models, right, It's somewhat an alignment ratic responsibility, but
Speaker 1: they're just kind of thing, just do it, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Just get over it, do it, you know,
Speaker 1: And some people may be able to do that, but
Speaker 1: a lot of us that it's not going to work
Speaker 1: so well. So you know, for me, Iraq, responsibility is
Speaker 1: grounded in a context of deeper and deeper self compassion
Speaker 1: and self empathy, so that we build that resilience and
Speaker 1: that bravery and that ability and we do our healing
Speaker 1: work where we nunity need to do the healing work.
Speaker 1: And it's not any kind of you know, psychological or
Speaker 1: spiritual bypassing. It's not some kind of simple transcendence or escapism.
Speaker 1: It's really about if we find ourselves like just doing
Speaker 1: right with anger, negative emotions, hurt, you know, and really
Speaker 1: feeling victimized. You know that the first step is to
Speaker 1: feel what we're feeling and to honor that, Wow, I'm
Speaker 1: really angry. Where we oft and go is you're pissing
Speaker 1: me off, right, and you're you you you and day
Speaker 1: they they, But if we can shift to my statements
Speaker 1: and really, Okay, I'm really angry here, and I'm really upset,
Speaker 1: I'm really afraid. I feel like I've really been abused
Speaker 1: in some way, or I feel manipulator, I feel taken
Speaker 1: advantage of her, I just feel, you know, we just
Speaker 1: really own what we're feeling, and then we can look
Speaker 1: into that what's really going on there? Right, what's really
Speaker 1: going on there? And I find Marshall Rosenberg's work around
Speaker 1: non bind communication has been very influential for me and
Speaker 1: my work and obviously for millions of people. And and
Speaker 1: one of the key distinctions of network is is the
Speaker 1: relationship between feelings and needs. So we generally assume that
Speaker 1: our emotional responses are caused by people and things that
Speaker 1: situations outside of ourselves, and it seems very compelling. Somebody
Speaker 1: does something, says something to us, whatever, and we're suddenly
Speaker 1: having these emotions. But actually we go a little deeper.
Speaker 1: Our emotions really arise out of the experience sub met
Speaker 1: needs or unmet needs. So we all have the same
Speaker 1: universal needs, right, the need for love and respect, the
Speaker 1: need for connection with others, relationship, to need for self autonomy, uh,
Speaker 1: the need for self worth and to be valued, to
Speaker 1: be seen, to be heard. And when our needs are
Speaker 1: getting met, how do we feel? Well, we have all
Speaker 1: the warm and phos that we feel contented, peaceful, happy, joyful,
Speaker 1: glad and so forth. Right, But if we perceive that
Speaker 1: our needs are not being met or they're threatened in
Speaker 1: some way, of course, then we start to see fearful
Speaker 1: and anxious or angry or you know, all the emotions hateful, fearful, jealous, saying, envious,
Speaker 1: what's you know, all the kind of difficult emotions arise
Speaker 1: out of our perception that our needs are not being
Speaker 1: met or being threatened in some way. Well, are our
Speaker 1: perceptions always accurate? I've asked that question the hundreds of
Speaker 1: audiences and everybody know everybody really know, you know best.
Speaker 1: Our perceptions are a limited interpretation on a limited set
Speaker 1: of the available data. And you know they may be
Speaker 1: partially accurate, but often highly interaccurate, or very so, and
Speaker 1: sometimes completely interaccurate. Com believe full of assumptions and misreads
Speaker 1: of what's going on. But even to the extent it
Speaker 1: is you know partially accurate. You know, Okay, my need
Speaker 1: for the respect is really not being met there in
Speaker 1: no wonder. I'm upset. Okay, is this the only way
Speaker 1: I can get that need met? Is the other person
Speaker 1: obligated to meet that need for me? Is there another
Speaker 1: way I can get that need met? Right? So I'm
Speaker 1: in the realm of this whole internal landscape where I
Speaker 1: have a lot more power. Uh. And you know, even
Speaker 1: looking at how is that perception created? Like, you know,
Speaker 1: something happens, you know, somebody says something, I hear a sound,
Speaker 1: you know, anything goes down, anything happens. I immediately start
Speaker 1: telling myself stories. We're meaning making machines, So I start
Speaker 1: adding meaning to whatever is going on until I get
Speaker 1: to a certain point. I make an assumption about what's happening,
Speaker 1: or assumption about somebody's motivation. And then, you know, if
Speaker 1: I was a good scientist, I would then check out
Speaker 1: that assumption or trying to disprove the assumption. But instead
Speaker 1: might feel the vision and awareness narrows and I'm only
Speaker 1: noticing that data supports the assumption and it becomes a conclusion,
Speaker 1: might be a lit whereas narrows further and I get
Speaker 1: to believe. This is the ladder of inference going up,
Speaker 1: the ladder of inference in the conflict, and I get
Speaker 1: to a belief I'm willing to act on my beliefs. Effact,
Speaker 1: we're willing to kill for our beliefs. So you know,
Speaker 1: all that is a landscape that I can look at
Speaker 1: and check out and go, well is that really true?
Speaker 1: And to what extent is it really true? And you
Speaker 1: know what, what are assumptions involved in how I'm reading
Speaker 1: the situation? You know, the reptilient fight or flight response
Speaker 1: brain cannot do any of this right, So in remembering
Speaker 1: to begin to do this, even to start with my
Speaker 1: statements a while, I'm really angry instead of you're making
Speaker 1: me angry. You know, all that is getting us out
Speaker 1: of the retilient brain control back into the rest of
Speaker 1: our brain where we have much more access to our
Speaker 1: intelligence and good judgment, learning and experience. But also it's
Speaker 1: taking us into this reflective mode rather than projective mode.
Speaker 1: And it's taking us into the ownership mode and this
Speaker 1: whole landscape where I have a lot of self agency
Speaker 1: because again we can't control other people, you know, if
Speaker 1: something happens there and my belief system is when X
Speaker 1: happens out there, I have to experience why emotion and
Speaker 1: that's just the way it is. Well, then I just
Speaker 1: put myself in control, you know, the world in control
Speaker 1: of me. But if I realized that, you know, my
Speaker 1: emotions are actually arisen out of my own perceptions of
Speaker 1: the world around me, that gives me a tremendous sense
Speaker 1: of self agency. And you know, experience some resistance to
Speaker 1: go there. But when I leave people to that experientially,
Speaker 1: they're really like wow, tremendous sense of freedom and tremendous
Speaker 1: sense of self empowerment. Right, And I think it's really
Speaker 1: useful that you talk about in order to be able
Speaker 1: to do this, well, there's a series of skills we
Speaker 1: need to have and develop and build over time, and
Speaker 1: and that that can help us move out of the
Speaker 1: self judgment because I think the place that a lot
Speaker 1: of people go and I've seen this happen a lot,
Speaker 1: you know, I come up in a twilt step program,
Speaker 1: and a twil Step program does, at a certain point,
Speaker 1: particularly around the fourth steps, say hey, take responsibility for everything.
Speaker 1: And so where I see a lot of people go
Speaker 1: is from I'm blaming others and now I blame myself,
Speaker 1: and I love that your work talks about we're moving
Speaker 1: beyond that, we're dropping blame as a concept as a whole. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and this is grounded. You know. The first chapter and
Speaker 1: right Responsibility is there's nothing wrong with you, And that
Speaker 1: chapter is all about helping us get in touch with
Speaker 1: what you know, I call and why and others in
Speaker 1: a basic goodness or you know, in a goodness basic
Speaker 1: goodness and uh, you know another religious Tristans, they might
Speaker 1: call this bruta nature or christ nature or divine nature
Speaker 1: or so forth, but it's truely, it's just that in
Speaker 1: a worthiness innate wholeness that really is the actuality of
Speaker 1: our being. And the great contemplative traditions have given us
Speaker 1: skills to drop deeper into our being where we can
Speaker 1: actually experience that down below all the noise and all
Speaker 1: the stuff, there's uh and beingness there where we realize
Speaker 1: that we are innately good and all those messages we've
Speaker 1: gotten our whole life that we're not enough, but we're
Speaker 1: not good enough, or this, or that we realize they're
Speaker 1: all lives are all mistruths. That we begin to have
Speaker 1: some experiential confidence in that that gives us tremendous resilience
Speaker 1: and bravery. In fact, I would say there's nothing that
Speaker 1: gives us more resilience than being in touch with our
Speaker 1: are in an unconditional worthiness and goodness. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's just the human condition that all of us arrived
Speaker 1: into early adulthood with whatever levels of insecurity and and
Speaker 1: you know, fragile self worth and you know, to one degree,
Speaker 1: but even the people that arrived, you know, have the
Speaker 1: most benevolent circumstances. You know, they still arrive into adulthood,
Speaker 1: may be highly functioning and maybe a lot of surface
Speaker 1: confidence in their abilities and ability to enter life with competence,
Speaker 1: but you know, underneath all that, there's this whole territory
Speaker 1: where they really haven't gone. And you know, it's like
Speaker 1: a thorough talking about the great mass of you know,
Speaker 1: he was before general neutral language, the great massive men,
Speaker 1: their lives of quiet desperation, you know, waiting for that
Speaker 1: other shooter drop. And that's because you know, we haven't
Speaker 1: gone into that deeper territory. So we build our conference about,
Speaker 1: you know, around what we can do all our abilities, right,
Speaker 1: and there's nothing wrong with that. It's great to have abilities,
Speaker 1: to have competence, but of course the rug can be
Speaker 1: pulled out from any of by losing a job, or
Speaker 1: an illness or or anything. Right, So, can we develop
Speaker 1: that unconditional competence that's grounded in the direct experience of
Speaker 1: our own innate, unconditional goodness and worthiness through the contemplative
Speaker 1: practices of meditation and go forth, and then you know,
Speaker 1: develop a natural self compassion and naturally friendly, compassionate, affirming
Speaker 1: relationship with our own being. Right, and then from that place,
Speaker 1: you know, I would say it's almost arithmetical to degree
Speaker 1: that we have that competence, we can more naturally step
Speaker 1: into higher degrees of ownership for our life without being
Speaker 1: triggered back into self plame. Yeah, that's a great way
Speaker 1: to say it, and I think that's a great place
Speaker 1: for us to wrap up. So Fleet, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for taking the time to come on. You and
Speaker 1: I are going to continue our conversation in the post
Speaker 1: show conversation where we're going to go a little bit
Speaker 1: more into your prison experience and how it informed all
Speaker 1: this work, and how this really isn't um sort of
Speaker 1: armchair philosophy, but really hard earned wisdom that you had there.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna talk about that in the post show
Speaker 1: conversation listeners. If you'd like access to that as well
Speaker 1: as exclusive many episodes as well as the joy of
Speaker 1: being a member of our community and supporting the show,
Speaker 1: you can go to one you Feed dot net slash Support. Fleet.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming on. We'll have links
Speaker 1: to your book and all your works in our show notes,
Speaker 1: which is it when you feed dot net. So thank
Speaker 1: you so much. Fleet. This has really been a powerful
Speaker 1: conversation and I found reading your book a really really
Speaker 1: powerful experience. Also, thank you very much. Ered. Okay bye.
Speaker 1: If what you just heard was helpful to you, please
Speaker 1: consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast.
Speaker 1: Head over to one you Feed dot net slash Support.
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