Speaker 1: Pushkin. Many of us have come to this particular New
Speaker 1: Year with some pretty high hopes. But in this episode
Speaker 1: of our New Year's series, I want to introduce you
Speaker 1: to a really important idea that maybe some of those
Speaker 1: grand New Year's plans, like finally losing the weight, achieving
Speaker 1: that perfect beach body, filling that calendar, and getting that promotion, maybe,
Speaker 1: just maybe those things aren't going to make you as
Speaker 1: happy as you think. Maybe they're even obstacles to truly
Speaker 1: finding happiness. Our lying minds often lead us in the
Speaker 1: wrong direction, and a really common tendency is to fixate
Speaker 1: on rigid improvement goals that actually end up compounding the
Speaker 1: real well being problems we're facing. Fortunately, there is a
Speaker 1: quick and simple practice to restore the balance, and as
Speaker 1: we keep seeing in this mini season, a better strategy
Speaker 1: probably involved being a little nicer to ourselves and to others.
Speaker 1: So if you're ready to learn how to be happier
Speaker 1: through kindness, then join me doctor Laurie Santos, as the
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab takes you out in the rain. Rain r
Speaker 1: ai N. It stands for Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture. It's
Speaker 1: a short acronym, but as you'll learn in this episode.
Speaker 1: It's a really powerful concept. All year round, we try
Speaker 1: to cram our lives with things to do, goals to achieve,
Speaker 1: deadlines to me, places to be, accolades to win, and
Speaker 1: points to prove, and around the new year, these normal
Speaker 1: urges often get a supercharge. If we're not careful, this
Speaker 1: flurry of activity and striving will not only exhaust us,
Speaker 1: but also result in lots of the things we know
Speaker 1: are bad for happiness. Will be time famished and isolated.
Speaker 1: We might even wind up suppress saying some of our
Speaker 1: true needs and emotions, often in really unhealthy ways. If
Speaker 1: this sounds like you, you're not alone. I fall into
Speaker 1: this trap all the time, and so does Tara Brock,
Speaker 1: my guest in this episode. I love that your voice
Speaker 1: is out there and what you've been bringing forward, and
Speaker 1: you're making great ripples. Thank you. That is amazing to
Speaker 1: hear in general, but especially from you. So the mutual
Speaker 1: appreciation will mean it should be a fun, fun episode.
Speaker 1: So did you hit record on your side? I'm gonna
Speaker 1: hit I am okay, we are recording. Tara is a
Speaker 1: widely respected psychologist and meditation teacher. She's the author of
Speaker 1: the book Radical compassion, And she's also one of my
Speaker 1: heroes because the meditation technique she's popularized, that practice of
Speaker 1: rain I mentioned earlier, has helped mean to not only
Speaker 1: put the brakes on a lot of unhealthy urges, but
Speaker 1: also to consider what really matters for living a happier life.
Speaker 1: But the even more amazing thing about Tara is that
Speaker 1: she honestly admits that she too occasionally gets caught up
Speaker 1: in all that not so good striving stuff. So my
Speaker 1: mom came down to live with my husband and I
Speaker 1: when she was about eighty two, and I always felt
Speaker 1: this pull and this strain between, you know, feeling like
Speaker 1: I should be more with her, and also all the
Speaker 1: pressure of getting things done for my work, for my teaching.
Speaker 1: And I'll never forget one day when she came in
Speaker 1: to show me a New Yorker article and I was
Speaker 1: actually on the computer doing a talk on love and kindness,
Speaker 1: and when I looked up, she was walking away, And
Speaker 1: I'll never forget seeing her retreating figure and thinking, I
Speaker 1: don't know how long I'll have with her, and it's
Speaker 1: just being struck. And that's when I moved away from
Speaker 1: my computer and I realized I just needed to take
Speaker 1: some time to sense what was going on. I just
Speaker 1: turned my attention inward and I could feel guilt but
Speaker 1: also the anxiety and feel it in my body and
Speaker 1: offer myself kindness, to offer some self compassion, some reminders
Speaker 1: to myself that it was really okay, that the teaching
Speaker 1: would work out, and that I loved my mom and
Speaker 1: feeling much more spacious, much more open, and that over
Speaker 1: and over again. Then over the next months, when i'd
Speaker 1: feel tight like that at different times that I was
Speaker 1: with her, I would inwardly just feel what was going
Speaker 1: on inside me and bring some kindness and kind of
Speaker 1: open up more. And I found that when I was
Speaker 1: with her, I could just show up and we'd have
Speaker 1: our big salads together at night time or go for
Speaker 1: our walks on the river, and I was just there
Speaker 1: with her. And I remember when she died, which was
Speaker 1: just a couple of years later, I really had this
Speaker 1: sense of huge, enormous grief. I can always feel it
Speaker 1: as I share, but also that I didn't have regret,
Speaker 1: so I hadn't missed my life moments with her. And
Speaker 1: people tell me over and over again that mindfulness has
Speaker 1: saved their lives, and I feel like I could saved
Speaker 1: my life moments with my mom And so, you know,
Speaker 1: you talked about feeling like struck when you had this realization,
Speaker 1: But this is the kind of thing we go through
Speaker 1: all the time. As soon as we recognize when we're
Speaker 1: not dealing with our negative emotions, right, we spend a
Speaker 1: huge amount of time disconnected and what I kind of
Speaker 1: call a trance where we're living in our thoughts in
Speaker 1: a small kind of world and not really in touch
Speaker 1: with what's going on inside us or other people. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're really we're living most of our moments in thoughts
Speaker 1: about life rather than directly contacting the emotion. When you
Speaker 1: had that moment of seeing her retreating and walking away,
Speaker 1: you know what was the realization kind of what did
Speaker 1: you what did you notice that you were missing about
Speaker 1: yourself or missing about what you were paying attention to.
Speaker 1: It was in stark relief, Laura, that I could see
Speaker 1: that I was living in this very small world where
Speaker 1: the underlying mantra was there's not enough time. That's a trance,
Speaker 1: And by trance, what I mean is living in a
Speaker 1: kind of fear based world where the story of who
Speaker 1: I am or what has to happen and it's really
Speaker 1: shaped by fear and forgetting the bigger picture. You know,
Speaker 1: if I was the end of my life looking back,
Speaker 1: what would matter was showing up and being present and
Speaker 1: being loving. And I often think of a friend who's
Speaker 1: a palliative caregiver and she's been with thousands of people
Speaker 1: at their deathbed. She says that the greatest regret of
Speaker 1: the dying and the way they put it is I
Speaker 1: didn't live true to myself. I lived according to expectations,
Speaker 1: I lived shaped by my own judgments. I lived at
Speaker 1: a fear, but I didn't live true to my heart.
Speaker 1: And that was the experience in that moment of oh,
Speaker 1: I'm not aligned right now, and that motivated me to
Speaker 1: pause and to come back into alignment. And this issue
Speaker 1: of kind of not being in align with our emotions,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is such a common thing, right and
Speaker 1: part because many of us just don't take time to
Speaker 1: deal with or notice what's going on inside ourselves. That's
Speaker 1: exactly right. We're on autopilot and lost in thoughts. Harvard
Speaker 1: research about five years ago talked about how fifty percent
Speaker 1: of the time our minds are wandering, and they're not
Speaker 1: just wandering because we have this negativity bias. We're really
Speaker 1: mostly fixated on what can go wrong or what's wrong
Speaker 1: with us, or in some way we're in planning, strategizing
Speaker 1: to avoid trouble, and we can live in that and
Speaker 1: really miss out on what's right here in the moment.
Speaker 1: So it takes kind of a recognition of I don't
Speaker 1: want to live in a virtual reality. I want to
Speaker 1: be in touch with my body, my heart, with others.
Speaker 1: And so it's that kind of recognition that motivates us
Speaker 1: to challenge the autopilot. Sometimes those autopilots, you know, they
Speaker 1: can masquerade as something that's good for us. Right. You
Speaker 1: know in your story with your mom, you were working
Speaker 1: on a talk, right, you know, it's not that you
Speaker 1: were doing something that was awful. You know, in some
Speaker 1: ways you were adding to your own productiveness, adding to
Speaker 1: your own business. But sometimes those are reactions that we
Speaker 1: have to avoid our emotions too, right, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: We get so habituated to the mindset of I need
Speaker 1: to get more done, I haven't done enough, something's missing,
Speaker 1: that kind of a mentality that we stay really busy,
Speaker 1: and part of what's going on is that we use
Speaker 1: our thoughts to stay away from the rawness of our feelings.
Speaker 1: It's like we have this escape route through obsessive thinking.
Speaker 1: And it's not like we like obsessive thinking, but on
Speaker 1: some level it serves to take us out of our
Speaker 1: body where feelings reside. So we miss and are not
Speaker 1: listening to our emotions. And not only do we miss
Speaker 1: the challenging emotions like shanga or fear, we also miss
Speaker 1: out on joy and on love and on the sense
Speaker 1: of the mystery of life. Thoughts, of course are necessary
Speaker 1: for surviving and for flourishing, but we are so habituated
Speaker 1: in getting lost in thoughts. So if you look at
Speaker 1: the last bunch of hours, where were you? Were you
Speaker 1: in a trance of thinking? I mean, how many moments
Speaker 1: did you actually feel your breath you know, or feel
Speaker 1: the air on your skin, are here the sounds around you,
Speaker 1: birds or rain, or really see the light in a
Speaker 1: child's eyes? How many moments did you actually arrive? And
Speaker 1: people realize that we're out surfing channels were either in
Speaker 1: future of the past, but we're not right here touching
Speaker 1: what's real. And we also wind up when we're not
Speaker 1: touching what's real, engaging in these behaviors that are you know,
Speaker 1: worse than getting caught up in this trance of productivity
Speaker 1: and overwork, right, you know, I think this not paying
Speaker 1: attention to what's really going on is why we don't know,
Speaker 1: engage in too much time online, or eat stuff that
Speaker 1: we don't want, or buy too many things, or I
Speaker 1: think you have this one example if you kind of
Speaker 1: find yourself having gone through a whole bag of trail
Speaker 1: mix and you're like, wait, what has happened? Right? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean talk a little bit about how these trances
Speaker 1: work and kind of how tough it is to break
Speaker 1: out of them. Well, there are all different types of trances,
Speaker 1: but they're mostly driven by our survival brain, the fear
Speaker 1: and the grasping. It's a challenging world, and so we
Speaker 1: all take on a space suit, you know, we all
Speaker 1: develop our different strategies to navigate, to get approval, to
Speaker 1: get what we want out of life, to defend and
Speaker 1: protect ourselves. And what happens is we get identified with
Speaker 1: the space suit. In other words, we think we're the
Speaker 1: one with the addiction or the one that's proved themselves
Speaker 1: with the achievements. We get identified with the surface and
Speaker 1: we forget, really who's looking through there are different ways
Speaker 1: that our space suit takes shape, and one of the
Speaker 1: trances that I think's most predominant is what I call
Speaker 1: the trance of unworthiness, because we tend to not like ourselves,
Speaker 1: and it's probably the most pervasive trance we're in, where
Speaker 1: we tell ourselves a lot of stories about what's wrong
Speaker 1: with us, and that has a profound impact on how
Speaker 1: we behave and what happens in the world. I mean,
Speaker 1: if we're caught in the trance of unworthiness, we end
Speaker 1: up trying to avoid the feelings with addictive behavior. We
Speaker 1: end up not being able to be as intimate with
Speaker 1: each other because there's a sense of well, Laurie, if
Speaker 1: I got close to you, you'd find out about who
Speaker 1: I really was, and you wouldn't like me. So we're
Speaker 1: afraid of intimacy. It's very hard to take risks at
Speaker 1: work because we don't trust ourselves and we think we'll
Speaker 1: fall shore. So these negative beliefs and feelings end up
Speaker 1: keeping us really imprisoned. And one woman, a friend of mine,
Speaker 1: was with her mother as she was dying, and her
Speaker 1: mother was in a coma, but she came out of
Speaker 1: the coma and she kind of looked her in the
Speaker 1: eye and said, you know, all my life, I thought
Speaker 1: something was wrong with me. And then she closed her eyes,
Speaker 1: went back into a coma, and died shortly after. And
Speaker 1: for my friend, it was a real wake up call
Speaker 1: that her mother had been in this trance for all
Speaker 1: those years and all the ways limited her life. And
Speaker 1: of course it motivated my friend to kind of see
Speaker 1: where in her own life she was living inside those
Speaker 1: beliefs and to learn what I've been kind of pointing to,
Speaker 1: to pause, to come into the moment, to actually directly
Speaker 1: connect with the vulnerability and do some of the healing
Speaker 1: that really frees us. And so the surprising thing is
Speaker 1: what we need to free ourselves is to actually take
Speaker 1: the space suit off. You know, sometimes we think, oh,
Speaker 1: the space suit I have now isn't really working. I
Speaker 1: need a different space suit. I need to you know,
Speaker 1: get the perfect beach body, or I need to get
Speaker 1: another accolade at work, or you know, like a higher salary. Right,
Speaker 1: we can kind of think that we need other protective coverings,
Speaker 1: but the actual way out of it is to take
Speaker 1: those things off, which ironically means looking at the deep seated,
Speaker 1: scary stuff that we're really afraid of. Quite directly, that's
Speaker 1: exactly right. The space suits can sometimes be thought of
Speaker 1: as an ego self. It's not like we have to
Speaker 1: get rid of ourselves. It's more that we have to
Speaker 1: be willing to come into the moment and sense, well,
Speaker 1: what is underneath this? What's underneath this? And there's a
Speaker 1: story of a sage who people would go through deep
Speaker 1: forests and over raging rivers and climb mountains to see him,
Speaker 1: and he would swear them to silence, and he'd say
Speaker 1: to them, Okay, this is the one question to ask,
Speaker 1: what am I unwilling to feel? And it's really powerful
Speaker 1: when we stop all our busy planning and worrying, when
Speaker 1: we stop trying to prove ourselves or improve ourselves, and
Speaker 1: just say, right this moment, you know what am I
Speaker 1: unwilling to feel? And what we will start sensing in
Speaker 1: our bodies is that there's a squeeze of deep insecurity
Speaker 1: or fear that's asking for our attention. So the real
Speaker 1: training to actually free ourselves up is to sent under
Speaker 1: the layers of protection and really start bringing a healing
Speaker 1: presence to that vulnerability. The training Tara recommends is what
Speaker 1: she calls rain, recognize, allow, investigate, nurture. It's an extension
Speaker 1: of the mindfulness and self compassion practices that we talked
Speaker 1: about with Kristaff in the last episode. But RAIN gives
Speaker 1: you an easy to follow checklist that you can use
Speaker 1: whenever you feel that stressy tightness rising. I'll have Tara
Speaker 1: run through how RAIN works when the Happiness Lab returns
Speaker 1: in a moment, Tera Brox Rain practice has become my
Speaker 1: go to strategy whenever I'm feeling frustrated with a colleague,
Speaker 1: or impatient while waiting in line, or even anxious about
Speaker 1: something at work. It's so simple but so effective to
Speaker 1: see how the process works. I asked Tara to take
Speaker 1: us back to that incident with her mom in order
Speaker 1: to illustrate how we can all recognize, allow, investigate in nurture.
Speaker 1: Anytime there's suffering, anytime there's some strong unpleasant experience can
Speaker 1: be an invitation to find out what's going on and
Speaker 1: bring a healing presence. And with my mom, as I said,
Speaker 1: the pang of sensing, I don't know how long I'll
Speaker 1: have with her. It's just like, oh okay, I'm off.
Speaker 1: So Rain starts with pausing with just in some way registering, Okay,
Speaker 1: something needs attention, and we pause and the r of
Speaker 1: rain is recognized. And what that means is to just
Speaker 1: recognize whatever's most predominant. And for me it was anxiety.
Speaker 1: There was anxiety and guilt. And with recognize, it's really
Speaker 1: helpful to mentally whisper what you're noticing. For me, it
Speaker 1: was just okay, anxious, anxious because in the moment of
Speaker 1: naming it, we're not quite as caught in what's going on.
Speaker 1: It activates the prefrontal cortex, is a little more of
Speaker 1: a kind of presence of witnessing. The a of rain
Speaker 1: is allow, and allow means instead of just steaming on
Speaker 1: forward or trying to fix something or even judging what's
Speaker 1: going on, just to let it be there, let the
Speaker 1: experience be as it is. I sometimes will just say, okay,
Speaker 1: this belongs, and it just means that these are the
Speaker 1: waves in the ocean right now. It's it's going to change,
Speaker 1: but this is what it is right now, so recognize, allow.
Speaker 1: And then I started investigating, and investigate primarily is in
Speaker 1: the body. And it's misleading because people think investigate as
Speaker 1: some cognitive surges do. Well. I acted like this because
Speaker 1: when I was very young, did Edita. It's not that.
Speaker 1: So for me, investigating meant I started just to feel
Speaker 1: into my body, my throat, my chests, and start to
Speaker 1: feel the squeeze that had been there that I was
Speaker 1: not really even noticing, of anxiety of trying to make
Speaker 1: sure I didn't fail at something, you know. So I
Speaker 1: felt that I investigated, and investigating included that belief in
Speaker 1: me that if I don't work really hard, I'm going
Speaker 1: to fail at something and people won't love me. So
Speaker 1: that kind of came into my awareness, and the squeeze
Speaker 1: in my body was really strong. I could feel it.
Speaker 1: So I began the end of rain, which is nurture,
Speaker 1: and I often will put my hand on my heart.
Speaker 1: Now research has shown that that actually creates some relaxing
Speaker 1: or soothing of the sympathetic nervous system. There is some calming,
Speaker 1: and it just feels like just a tender touch, beginning
Speaker 1: to come into a kind relationship with my inner life.
Speaker 1: So I put my hand on my heart and I
Speaker 1: was breathing with that feeling of anxiety, and I just
Speaker 1: sent a kind message to myself. I said something like,
Speaker 1: it's okay, sweetie, and you know it's okay, sweetheart, or
Speaker 1: it's going to work out. You know, what you're doing
Speaker 1: will work. It'll come through you. You don't need to
Speaker 1: struggle so hard. And to trust my love of my mother,
Speaker 1: you know, just to trust that I love her and
Speaker 1: that I can show up, because even just reminding myself
Speaker 1: of loving my mother just helped me to relax into
Speaker 1: knowing this is what matters. So recognize, allow, investigate, and
Speaker 1: then that nurturing that self compact. And then there's what
Speaker 1: I call after the rain and after the rain. If
Speaker 1: you think of a real rainfall and how the blossoming
Speaker 1: often comes after the rain. Well, it's similarly with this
Speaker 1: four step meditation and practice that it's after you do
Speaker 1: those four steps that you can sense a shift. And
Speaker 1: the shift it could be just a tiny bit art
Speaker 1: can be very deep, is in the direction of more spaciousness,
Speaker 1: open heartedness, clarity, not as stuck in that anxious, striving space,
Speaker 1: suit self and more connected to my heart. You've talked about.
Speaker 1: Rain is having those four steps, but also being a
Speaker 1: practice that weaves two things that we've talked about a
Speaker 1: lot on the Happiness Lab. One is this idea of
Speaker 1: mindfulness and the other is this idea of compassion, and
Speaker 1: so let's kind of explore how rain touches on both
Speaker 1: of those, because I think those parts are really important too. Well.
Speaker 1: Rain is a weave of mindfulness and compassion. Recognize is
Speaker 1: the beginning of mindfulness to see what's going on, and
Speaker 1: allowing is really the beginning of compassion, where we without
Speaker 1: judgment creates space for what's there. And then investigating deepens
Speaker 1: mindfulness because we're beginning to bring a very interested attention
Speaker 1: to what's actually here. So we're contacting and learning about
Speaker 1: and opening to what's actually here. And then nurturing is
Speaker 1: the fullness of compassion. As I think it was evolutionary
Speaker 1: psychologist Cosalino said, it's not the survival of the fittest,
Speaker 1: it's survival of the nurtured. By nurturing, it really frees
Speaker 1: us up from a lot of the tension that keeps
Speaker 1: us tight and small. So each of the steps deepens
Speaker 1: our capacity really for mindfulness and compassion. You've described the
Speaker 1: process as being kind of a U turn for your
Speaker 1: attention to talk about the some of the benefits of
Speaker 1: taking that U turn. Well, I love the expression you turned, Laurie,
Speaker 1: because it's as if our attentions fixated outward, and the
Speaker 1: u turn of rain actually allows us to pause and
Speaker 1: turn the attention back as to what's going on inside
Speaker 1: us because we're so unconscious. Often there's a beautiful I
Speaker 1: think it was Joseph Campbell who first put it forward.
Speaker 1: Imagine awareness as a great circle, and that there's a
Speaker 1: line going right through the center. Everything that's above the
Speaker 1: line is in awareness, and everything below the line is
Speaker 1: outside of awareness. Well, the mindfulness and compassion of Rain
Speaker 1: moves the line, so there's more in awareness, and we
Speaker 1: actually have more choice in our lives, so that the
Speaker 1: moments of our life actually align with what matters to
Speaker 1: us and actually allow us to feel happier and more peaceful.
Speaker 1: And in part because this process of connecting with our
Speaker 1: inner emotions aligns us with what really matters, it can
Speaker 1: also align us back to connections we might be missing,
Speaker 1: you know, to the people and the sort of communities
Speaker 1: around us we might not be tapping into when we're
Speaker 1: in these trans exactly right. Suffering is separation, and the
Speaker 1: more that we're caught in a trance, the more separate
Speaker 1: we are from our own bodies, from our hearts, and
Speaker 1: from each other. I'll share one story with you that
Speaker 1: kind of shows how rain works with connectedness. And there
Speaker 1: was one man several years ago. He's an executive and
Speaker 1: a tech company, and he had a really bad temper
Speaker 1: and so he alienated a lot of people at work.
Speaker 1: But he didn't come to therapy or mindfulness until he
Speaker 1: was in crisis with his family. And so we worked
Speaker 1: together and we started exploring rain how when he started
Speaker 1: feeling that building up of anger, that he could pause
Speaker 1: and notice what was going on and just pause again,
Speaker 1: allowing it and just feel it in his body, investigating,
Speaker 1: and just say something to himself to calm himself down.
Speaker 1: So he practiced it, and he told me after a
Speaker 1: while that probably one out of four times he actually
Speaker 1: could sidestep any expression of anger at all, which is
Speaker 1: actually huge. But I want to tell you about one
Speaker 1: of the times that he sidestepped. And one of his
Speaker 1: team managers had come in and had confessed that he
Speaker 1: had fallen behind on a contract that his team was
Speaker 1: working on. And this is the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: would normally have this executive I'm telling you about just
Speaker 1: go off the rails. He was about to, but he paused,
Speaker 1: he noticed what was happening recognized, okay, getting angry and
Speaker 1: let it be there for a moment and just felt
Speaker 1: his body and breathe and said it's okay, and then
Speaker 1: he took the guy in a little more. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you're doing the best that you can. This guy who
Speaker 1: had come to talk to him was just an honest,
Speaker 1: hard working person and said, well, I wasn't going to
Speaker 1: mention it, but you know, my wife has stage four
Speaker 1: breast cancer. We have two teams and it's a really
Speaker 1: hard time. And they hugged. You know, this guy told
Speaker 1: me it is the first time at work ever, and
Speaker 1: he said a few months ago, I would have unwittingly
Speaker 1: asked it to this man suffering, And it's really one
Speaker 1: of my saddest and best moments. You know, everyone we
Speaker 1: meet is struggling hard. That's a saying, and it's true.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to share that because when we look out,
Speaker 1: rather than seeing the other person's space suit, seeing their
Speaker 1: defensive ego or whatever it is, we see what's shining
Speaker 1: through it more. We see the goodness, and so we
Speaker 1: start to give each other that gift of seeing each
Speaker 1: other's goodness, which is I think it's the greatest gift
Speaker 1: we can give, and it's the medicine our world needs,
Speaker 1: is that we can go around instead of reacting to
Speaker 1: each other, pause and be able to see the spirit
Speaker 1: or the light or the love that's living through those
Speaker 1: eyes that are looking at us. Sometimes we can even
Speaker 1: find you deeper connections in terms of our identities that
Speaker 1: we didn't really expect. I've heard you tell this one
Speaker 1: story of an army lieutenant who is using rain in
Speaker 1: the grocery store, and it allowed for a kind of
Speaker 1: connection across a level of polarization. I wonder if you'd
Speaker 1: share that story too. I'd be glad too, because that's
Speaker 1: one of the ones that most touched me. He had
Speaker 1: to learn mindfulness through an anger management course. And there
Speaker 1: was one day he was in a supermarket and he
Speaker 1: had a whole pile of groceries that he wanted to buy.
Speaker 1: The woman in front of him only had one item,
Speaker 1: and she had a little girl, and she and the
Speaker 1: clerk were ooing and eyeing over the little girl. And
Speaker 1: so this lieutenant started getting chefs filled up with steam
Speaker 1: with a lot of anger. And you know, who does
Speaker 1: she think she is? And you know, I've got a
Speaker 1: lot to do and I'm busy and did da dada,
Speaker 1: and then he went, oh, yeah, signal practiced some mindfulness here,
Speaker 1: so he had time. So inwardly he just you know,
Speaker 1: recognized what was going on. He was angry, and you know,
Speaker 1: let it be there for a moment and just felt
Speaker 1: inside the clench and he registered that it wasn't anger.
Speaker 1: It was is a real fear about not getting things done,
Speaker 1: and so many of us know it that it's like
Speaker 1: our life's going to go down the tubes if we
Speaker 1: don't get the thing done we need to get done.
Speaker 1: So he was feeling fair, you know, it's okay, it's okay.
Speaker 1: He nurtured in a kind of mild way, took a
Speaker 1: few deep breaths, and when he opened his eyes, he thought, oh,
Speaker 1: that little girl's pretty cute. So the woman left with
Speaker 1: the child, and when it was his term with the clerk,
Speaker 1: he said, that little girl's really adorable, and the clerk beam.
Speaker 1: She said, oh, that's that's my daughter. My mother takes
Speaker 1: her over to visit me and my husband was killed
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan last year and this is the only way
Speaker 1: I have some time to be with my daughter. And
Speaker 1: I remember when I heard that how much it struck
Speaker 1: me that we just forget. We forget that just like us,
Speaker 1: other people are living in uncertainty. It doesn't matter how
Speaker 1: how much achievement they have, our money or whatever. It's
Speaker 1: like everyone's in a body that's going to die, and
Speaker 1: everyone we love. So it's an insecure world. And when
Speaker 1: we can remember that, we enter the shared sense of
Speaker 1: we're in it together. And there's something incredibly nourishing and
Speaker 1: healing about knowing that we're in it together, and we
Speaker 1: can show up for each other more. And you've seen
Speaker 1: the benefits of firsthand about what happens when we really
Speaker 1: take time to show up and connect. And so if
Speaker 1: you're comfortable with that, kind of wanted you to sort
Speaker 1: of finish the story of your mom, about what happened
Speaker 1: towards the end of her life and how connected you
Speaker 1: wound up feeling with her later on in part because
Speaker 1: of some of these practices. Yeah, Well, my habit had
Speaker 1: been to take her to a doctor's appointment, but really
Speaker 1: be scheming on the quickest route and how can I
Speaker 1: get back and get back to work, or be having
Speaker 1: dinner with her, but trying to figure out how I
Speaker 1: could get back to my computer. That stopped. And what
Speaker 1: happens with rain is that once you practice it, it
Speaker 1: can become quicker and more accessible. And that's why I
Speaker 1: love rain, because even when we're caught up in a
Speaker 1: really big reactivity, really angry, really upset about a mistake
Speaker 1: we made, or blaming another, there's something in us that goes, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm having a hard time, and we can remember, recognize, allow, investigate, nurture,
Speaker 1: and so it becomes quicker. And so that's what happened, Laurie,
Speaker 1: is that I would much more quickly catch it and
Speaker 1: have what I call a light rain and be able
Speaker 1: to show up for those moments. And those moments became
Speaker 1: real moments, real life, not like I was on my
Speaker 1: way back to doing something so that I could check
Speaker 1: it off the list. You know, now that we're in
Speaker 1: the new year, I think everybody's in this fees of
Speaker 1: setting resolutions, you know, things they want to change about themselves.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not often that we say, you know,
Speaker 1: instead of the surface stuff, I want to dig in
Speaker 1: and deal with my unmet needs, you know, talk about
Speaker 1: some of the benefits for our happiness that we might
Speaker 1: experience if we really, if every single one of us
Speaker 1: just decided to sort of fight these trances and dig
Speaker 1: more inward. Well, the most immediate thing is that we
Speaker 1: start trusting ourselves. I talked about the trance of unworthiness
Speaker 1: at the beginning, and most of us we don't like ourselves.
Speaker 1: In other words, if we're caught in our defenses and
Speaker 1: our aggressions, you know, if we're blaming other people underneath,
Speaker 1: we're blaming ourselves. And so when we start learning this
Speaker 1: practice of making the U turn and nurturing ourselves, we
Speaker 1: trust ourselves more. We like who we are because we
Speaker 1: sense a kind of essential being or spirit or whatever
Speaker 1: we want to call it behind the space suit. That's
Speaker 1: really the truth of who we are. And when we
Speaker 1: look at other people, we start seeing that. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot more of a sense of belonging to our world.
Speaker 1: And for myself, one of the rain practices that most
Speaker 1: nourish that was when I realized how many moments I
Speaker 1: was moving through life and if I wasn't judging myself,
Speaker 1: I was judging others. And so I began doing rain
Speaker 1: on blame and it was such a powerful pathway to reconnecting.
Speaker 1: We all blame, you know, whenever we feel threatened whenever
Speaker 1: we're insecure, we do a lot of comparing and a
Speaker 1: lot of blaming. So the way rain on blame works
Speaker 1: is you just recognize, oh, judging, judging, and allow it
Speaker 1: to be there, and then sense under the judging the
Speaker 1: uneasiness in our own bodies. And when we bring nurturing
Speaker 1: to ourselves, then we look through different eyes at another person.
Speaker 1: And there's a little metaphor I often share that if
Speaker 1: you imagine you're walking through the woods and you see
Speaker 1: a little dog under a tree, and then you go
Speaker 1: to pet the dog and the dog lurtures at you,
Speaker 1: and it's fangs are bared and it's aggressive, and you
Speaker 1: go from being friendly to being really angry. But then
Speaker 1: you see that the dog has its leg in a trap.
Speaker 1: You know, you poor thing. You might not go close
Speaker 1: because it still could be dangerous, but your heart has shifted.
Speaker 1: When we do rain and we sense underneath whatever's going on,
Speaker 1: the vulnerability that's there, our heart gets more compassionate, so
Speaker 1: that if we're behaving in a way we don't like,
Speaker 1: but we can start sensing that behind it, there's an
Speaker 1: unmet need. There's a need to feel seen, there's a
Speaker 1: need to feel loved, there's a need to feel safe.
Speaker 1: There's a lot more forgiveness, a lot more compassion, And
Speaker 1: it's the same thing with others that when others are
Speaker 1: behaving in ways that you don't like, they're hurting, they
Speaker 1: have a leg in a trap. Again. We might, we
Speaker 1: might create whatever boundaries we have to create an order
Speaker 1: to be safe ourselves and to protect other people around us,
Speaker 1: but our hearts are still caring. And when our hearts
Speaker 1: stay open, that is the gift of rain medicine for
Speaker 1: the world. If there's a medicine we all need right
Speaker 1: now other than the COVID vaccine, it's one that makes
Speaker 1: us stop to think about why we're feeling the emotions
Speaker 1: we do and what those emotions are telling us about
Speaker 1: our unmet needs. Before we start embarking on all those
Speaker 1: big plans to be better, bolder, and busier this year,
Speaker 1: we really need to consider what we're trying to achieve
Speaker 1: and why is that plan something that will really make
Speaker 1: you happy or is it just another space suit that
Speaker 1: you're using to distract yourself so you won't have to
Speaker 1: address a more fundamental thing that's really affecting your happiness.
Speaker 1: In the final two episodes of Our January Mini season,
Speaker 1: we'll drill into two very common and potentially problematic New
Speaker 1: Year's resolutions, diet and exercise. We'll see the embracing a
Speaker 1: more self compassionate approach to eating an activity is not
Speaker 1: just a happier strategy, but also a more effective one too.
Speaker 1: So I hope you'll be back for the next two
Speaker 1: episodes of The Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab was co written and produced by Ryan Dilley.
Speaker 1: The show was mixed and mastered by Evan Viola, and
Speaker 1: our original music was by Zachary Silver. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: the entire Pushkin team, including Mia LaBelle, Maggie Taylor, Carlie mcgliori,
Speaker 1: Heather Faine, Sophie Crane, mckibbon, Eric Sandler, Jacob Weisberg, and
Speaker 1: my agent, Ben Davis. The Happiness Lab is brought to
Speaker 1: you by Pushkin Industries an Doctor Laurie Santos.