Speaker 1: We don't realize how superhuman we are. We don't realize
Speaker 1: our own superpowers. We don't realize how our brain is
Speaker 1: just begging for us to tickle our happines a chemicals open.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 2: ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 2: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 2: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 2: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 2: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 2: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 2: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 2: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 2: how they feed their good wolf. We hope you'll enjoy
Speaker 2: this episode from the archive. Thanks for joining us. Our
Speaker 2: guest on this episode is Rada Agrowl. She's the co
Speaker 2: founder and CEO of Daybreaker, the Morning global dance, music
Speaker 2: and wellness movement in five continents with a community of
Speaker 2: almost a half a million people around the globe. Rata
Speaker 2: and her team recently launched a science backed platform called
Speaker 2: Dose by Daybreaker, and it's a first of its kind
Speaker 2: membership to practice joy using its method connected to the
Speaker 2: eight virtues of Joy. Her book Belong answers the questions
Speaker 2: how do I find my people and how do I
Speaker 2: create large and meaningful communities in the real world.
Speaker 3: Hi, Rada, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: It's so great to be here. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: I'm really happy to have you on. We're going to
Speaker 3: talk about all the work that you do with your
Speaker 3: Daybreaker project, your Dose project, your book that's titled Belong,
Speaker 3: and we're really going to focus on joy as one
Speaker 3: of the themes of this. But before we do that,
Speaker 3: let's start, like we always do, with a parable. There's
Speaker 3: a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and she says,
Speaker 3: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 3: are always a battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 3: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 3: other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 3: hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and she thinks
Speaker 3: about it for a second. She looks up at her grandmother.
Speaker 3: She says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says,
Speaker 3: the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 3: by asking you what that parable means to you in
Speaker 3: your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, first of all, as a new mother, I have
Speaker 1: a two year old daughter, I can just imagine myself
Speaker 1: sharing the story with her very soon, and as her
Speaker 1: lights are turning on, and she's just soberable and so
Speaker 1: curious and inquisitive to share this parable.
Speaker 4: I'm so excited to do that.
Speaker 1: And then I think for me, you know, in the
Speaker 1: work that I do, which is all around feeding your joy, self,
Speaker 1: feeding yourself that chooses to unlock the eight virtues of
Speaker 1: joy which we can get into, I just feel like
Speaker 1: it's such a perfect parable for the times, especially post COVID,
Speaker 1: to not live and feed in our stories of isolation
Speaker 1: and loneliness, but live in the story and feed the
Speaker 1: wolf that is kind of running towards possibility, running towards community,
Speaker 1: running towards belonging, which takes so much courage, and wolves
Speaker 1: are courageous. So I really really love all the sort
Speaker 1: of elements of this parable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and wolves run in packs. They are not alone.
Speaker 3: If you find a lone wolf, you have found a
Speaker 3: wolf that is sick.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because, especially in this country, we sort
Speaker 1: of celebrate this concept of the lone wolf, the concept
Speaker 1: of rugged individualism, the concept of go at your own chart,
Speaker 1: your own course, and so's it's really nice to be
Speaker 1: on a podcast that celebrates this concept of wolf pack
Speaker 1: community connection and how important collective joy is to really
Speaker 1: raise a vibration of our planet.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: A friend of mine who's a zen teacher, he's actually
Speaker 3: in your neck of the woods. I don't know if
Speaker 3: he's in Brooklyn or but he's in the greater New
Speaker 3: York City area. When he was on the show, he
Speaker 3: told a story about when he was eighteen, he was
Speaker 3: riding a bus and there was some wise woman sitting
Speaker 3: next to him and she said, oh, you're a lone wolf,
Speaker 3: and he inside was very proud, like, yes, that's me,
Speaker 3: I'm a lone wolf.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: He was feeling pride, and she's like and then she
Speaker 3: turned around and said, yeah, well, lone wolves are always sick.
Speaker 3: He just tells that story. It's such a moment of
Speaker 3: sort of breaking through that egoic stance of like I
Speaker 3: stand alone and realizing like, oh wait, that's not the
Speaker 3: way to be. And you talk a lot about this
Speaker 3: in your work, but we're starting to realize the real
Speaker 3: costs of being isolated and alone.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 1: So yeah, one in four Americans have zero friends to
Speaker 1: confide INIM and his number has gone up after COVID,
Speaker 1: but it's tripled in the last thirty years. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's crazy all the wild things that have but your body,
Speaker 1: I mean, having poor social connections is as harmful to
Speaker 1: your physical health as being an alcoholic, you know, twice as.
Speaker 4: Harmful as obesity.
Speaker 1: We are more prone to depression and anxiety, all of
Speaker 1: sort of disease. We're more prone to violence, or more
Speaker 1: prone to not listening to one another, to cancel each other.
Speaker 1: There's so much that connects with I don't belong and.
Speaker 4: The lack of safety and the lack of joy.
Speaker 1: And I think that's really what I am so excited
Speaker 1: to connect is the dots between belonging and joy and
Speaker 1: how you can't experience happiness joy if you don't belong,
Speaker 1: and you can't belong if you don't practice and feed
Speaker 1: your joy. And so it's so important to remember these
Speaker 1: two connections.
Speaker 3: So something I'm going to be doing a little more
Speaker 3: often is ask you, the listener, to reflect on what
Speaker 3: you're hearing. We strongly believe that knowledge is power, but
Speaker 3: only if combined with action and integration. So before we
Speaker 3: move on, I'd like to ask you what's coming up
Speaker 3: for you as you listen to this. Are there any
Speaker 3: things you're currently doing or feeding your bad wolf that
Speaker 3: might make sense to remove, or any things you could
Speaker 3: do to feed your good wolf that you're not currently doing. So,
Speaker 3: if you have the headspace for it, I'd love if
Speaker 3: you could just pause for a second and ask yourself,
Speaker 3: what's one thing I could do today or tonight to
Speaker 3: feed my good wolf? Whatever your thing is. A really
Speaker 3: useful strategy can be having something external, a prompt or
Speaker 3: a friend, or a tool that regularly nudges you back
Speaker 3: towards awareness and intentionality. For the past year, I've been
Speaker 3: sending little good Wolf reminders to some of my friends
Speaker 3: and community members, just quick, little SMS messages two times
Speaker 3: per week that give them a little bit of wisdom
Speaker 3: and remind them to pause for a second and come
Speaker 3: off autopilot. If you want, I can send them to
Speaker 3: you too. I do it totally for free and people
Speaker 3: seem to really love them. Just drop your information at
Speaker 3: oneufeed dot net slash sms and I can send them
Speaker 3: to you. It's totally free, and if you end up
Speaker 3: not liking the little reminders, you can eat easily opt out.
Speaker 3: That's one you feed dot net slash sms. And now
Speaker 3: back to the episode. I wanted to ask you a
Speaker 3: question because the work that you do is very interesting.
Speaker 3: You probably emerged in this space and correct me if
Speaker 3: I'm wrong, But for launching Daybreaker, which was a series
Speaker 3: of early morning non substance abuse fueled right no substances,
Speaker 3: early morning dance parties that brought people together. So it
Speaker 3: was this very high energy type of connection. And it's
Speaker 3: interesting because most of my belonging has happened in much
Speaker 3: more subdued sort of settings recovering heroin addict, so twelve
Speaker 3: step programs and the belonging that I got from there,
Speaker 3: or certain therapy groups I've been part of where there
Speaker 3: was a deep sense of belonging, and yet you're sort
Speaker 3: of coming at belonging at this slightly more energetic level.
Speaker 3: And as I was sort of reading about you and
Speaker 3: looking at your stuff and me. I was like, there's
Speaker 3: a little difference there, but I thought it would be
Speaker 3: helpful to start because I would probably and I think
Speaker 3: a lot of people listening to the show would identify
Speaker 3: this say well, I'm an introvert, right, I don't know
Speaker 3: that I would identify that way. I would actually identify
Speaker 3: more the way you're about to say, which is, you know,
Speaker 3: what's a more freeing way to identify than introvert.
Speaker 4: Or extrovert totally.
Speaker 1: So just caution is to label ourselves right as, I'm introverted,
Speaker 1: I'm extroverted, I'm socially anxious, I'm angry, I'm depressed, I'm anxious,
Speaker 1: I'm you know whatever. Anything that we start labeling ourselves,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, we put ourselves pigonihole ourselves in
Speaker 1: this label. And the more we tell ourselves that we
Speaker 1: are this thing, I'm unlovable, i am unworthy, I am
Speaker 1: all of these things, we begin feeding it just like
Speaker 1: the wolves do. Right, So labels are no different. So
Speaker 1: when we label ourselves as introverted, we're actually removing the
Speaker 1: possibility for the moments that we are feeling more social,
Speaker 1: we aren't feeling more extroverted. So in my book or
Speaker 1: as I write, and as I think about and sort
Speaker 1: of dream about what would be the most freeing labeled
Speaker 1: I call it metavert, which is, there's some days that
Speaker 1: I feel more introverted, there's some days that I feel
Speaker 1: more extroverted. And let me give my beautiful, multi layered
Speaker 1: human self the opportunity to be either introvert or extroverted
Speaker 1: and allow both of those energies to enter my space.
Speaker 1: And I think that we can find comfort in that,
Speaker 1: because you know, as I've been interviewing lots of extroverts
Speaker 1: interviewing lots of introverts for so much of the research
Speaker 1: I'm doing in our joy practice, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the meditations that I have them do and we've uncovered
Speaker 1: is close your eyes and really imagine a moment in
Speaker 1: your life when you felt othered, or when you felt embarrassed,
Speaker 1: or when you felt rejected, or when you felt like
Speaker 1: you didn't belong, and those moments in your life steer
Speaker 1: you in a direction of Oh, being in social environments
Speaker 1: are scary, or being one on one in this very
Speaker 1: kind of angry environment is scary, So I feel more
Speaker 1: safe in a group environment. Therefore, I'm extroverted. I feel
Speaker 1: more safe in a one on one environment because I
Speaker 1: was bullied in an extrovert environment. So all of our
Speaker 1: histories actually move us in the direction of these labels.
Speaker 1: And I found so much peace and safety and solace
Speaker 1: when I was in group moments, in soccer, in the playground,
Speaker 1: in all these spaces, because I was athletic, and I
Speaker 1: found myself very afraid often in my one on one
Speaker 1: moments because you know, my Indian father was sometimes angry,
Speaker 1: sometimes happy, sometimes excited.
Speaker 4: Sometimes violent. It was just like there's all these.
Speaker 1: Different sort of one on one moments that as I'm
Speaker 1: actually even unpacking.
Speaker 4: This with you, you.
Speaker 1: Know, I'm realizing that's probably where I found so much
Speaker 1: safety and being extroverted. So I think so much of
Speaker 1: our labeling comes from the first formative moments in our
Speaker 1: lives that move us in the direction.
Speaker 4: I'm actually curious to hear.
Speaker 1: Is there a moment in your life that you can
Speaker 1: recall as a child that you might have felt maybe
Speaker 1: othered or pushed out or rejected, or some thing in
Speaker 1: a group environment that made you feel unsafe.
Speaker 3: I'm sure there was. I have a terrible memory, like
Speaker 3: I just remember almost nothing, but I do know from
Speaker 3: very early on. I mean I can remember as early
Speaker 3: as first or second grade trying to see could I
Speaker 3: stay in it recess and hang out with a teacher?
Speaker 4: Got it?
Speaker 3: Because I think for whatever reason, the social aspect of
Speaker 3: the playground intimidated me.
Speaker 1: Well, let's unpack that some more so, why did it
Speaker 1: intimidate you? Were there moments at the playground that you
Speaker 1: felt like you weren't allowed to plan the swing?
Speaker 4: Is where someone said go away? Or were some of
Speaker 4: the moments scary?
Speaker 3: I think that's the part for me that's harder is
Speaker 3: I can't really recall any experiences that I would go, oh,
Speaker 3: that's it.
Speaker 1: So this is why we get into our bodies. This
Speaker 1: is exactly why I would get you up. And this
Speaker 1: is what we do our joy practice, which is getting
Speaker 1: our mind to remember through our bodies. Because our bodies remember,
Speaker 1: then our bodies begin to tell us, oh, I feel
Speaker 1: better with my teacher, I feel better in one on
Speaker 1: one environments. I feel better in quiet spaces because we
Speaker 1: often will cut our experience off by the neck and
Speaker 1: not actually move that feeling into our body to get
Speaker 1: in touch with that. My whole thing is actually, how
Speaker 1: do you practice joy in our brain and our body
Speaker 1: and bring the two together to really create a practice
Speaker 1: that is gentle, but that moves you to unlock past traumas,
Speaker 1: to unlock past stories, to be able to live.
Speaker 4: Your most joyful life.
Speaker 1: And so I'd be very curious to do that with
Speaker 1: youah and see what would come up there, because sometimes
Speaker 1: we block out the most painful memories.
Speaker 3: I would be very interested in doing something like that.
Speaker 3: There's so many things in what you just said there
Speaker 3: that I'm not even quite sure where to dive in.
Speaker 3: But where I'm going to start is this idea of labels.
Speaker 3: And it's very interesting because, like you said, the downside
Speaker 3: of labeling is I put myself in a pigeonhole. And
Speaker 3: I'm going to think about this through the lens of
Speaker 3: alcoholic or addict for a second, because I think it's
Speaker 3: interesting because on one hand that lay can be very restricting,
Speaker 3: and on another hand, that label is very helpful in
Speaker 3: that it gives me a sense of what some of
Speaker 3: my and I like this word better than I am
Speaker 3: this and I would say what some of my tendencies
Speaker 3: are right, because I think we all have tendencies. And
Speaker 3: you made a very good point that our tendencies are
Speaker 3: shaped by our past experiences. It's not who we are,
Speaker 3: it's just what's happened then the way we've chosen to
Speaker 3: interpret it. And so I think these sort of labels introvert, extrovert,
Speaker 3: like introvert is a useful construct to the extent I
Speaker 3: think it's useful to construct to the extent that I go, Okay,
Speaker 3: I do know that I need to honor my need
Speaker 3: to get refueled with quiet time. But if I then
Speaker 3: label myself as introvert and think that's the only way
Speaker 3: that I get refueled or the only way that I
Speaker 3: can react, then I'm really limiting my possibility. So I
Speaker 3: find this idea of labeling and knowing our tendencies as helpful.
Speaker 3: And somebody does a lot of coaching work with people,
Speaker 3: I always find there's this how do we balance that
Speaker 3: of like, I don't want you to label yourself that
Speaker 3: way because that's limiting, and yet it's helpful to see
Speaker 3: patterns and the way we traditionally respond so that we
Speaker 3: can work skillfully with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that's the art, right, that's the
Speaker 1: art of being human. But I also think that if
Speaker 1: you feel filled up in that quiet time that feels
Speaker 1: good for you, and you have to honor that. And
Speaker 1: humans are spectacularly social creatures and if we stay inside
Speaker 1: of that quiet space, we will become sick like that
Speaker 1: lone wolf.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: And so to really honor the balance of the internal
Speaker 1: joy and the collective joy. And this is in my studies,
Speaker 1: my research, in my practice and how I teach as
Speaker 1: well how to be more joyful. We really look at
Speaker 1: sort of this concept of going in and practicing internal
Speaker 1: joy to excavate our past traumas, our past experiences, our
Speaker 1: past histories, to look at our labeling, to look at
Speaker 1: the energy with which we show up to events, community spaces,
Speaker 1: our families, to do an energy all the things in
Speaker 1: our lives that are limiting us or supporting us, and
Speaker 1: to just highlight that in this sort of joy audit right,
Speaker 1: And you know the reason why we practice joy inside
Speaker 1: and practice personal development, why we read all these books,
Speaker 1: why we show up for coaching sessions, is to work
Speaker 1: on ourselves to better relate to others. Right, Like, It's
Speaker 1: not just for our own Oh I feel better and
Speaker 1: quite it's not just about that. It's to better relate
Speaker 1: to others when you come out of that moment of
Speaker 1: re energizing refueling, you can better relate, better show up
Speaker 1: for your friends and family, better connect with your peers.
Speaker 1: And so it's to refuel to be able to connect
Speaker 1: more with others. And I just think that we forget that.
Speaker 1: I think in this sort of trap of oh, I
Speaker 1: need to be alone to be refueled, we forget we
Speaker 1: want that so that we can come back with more joy, right,
Speaker 1: And I just think that that's where we get caught up,
Speaker 1: and that's where we can continue to go further and
Speaker 1: further out of collective joy and into social isolation. This
Speaker 1: is where, again, like the concept of collective joy has
Speaker 1: become such a foreign term. You don't hear the concept
Speaker 1: of collective joy as often as you would. You hear
Speaker 1: the concept of mindfulness and you know, and being okay
Speaker 1: being alone and being okay with deep presence and awareness
Speaker 1: and all of that. But collective joy is actually where
Speaker 1: we shift the consciousness of the planet. It's where we
Speaker 1: can collectively decide, wait a minute, we are making mother
Speaker 1: Earth sick.
Speaker 4: As a collective.
Speaker 1: If we can be joyful, we will want this planet
Speaker 1: to be more alive, more sacred, more thoughtful, more thought
Speaker 1: thought of, and we're going to do better in the
Speaker 1: way we live in our lives. And collective joy also
Speaker 1: inspires Euphoria, inspires awe, inspires play, it also inspires better. Actually,
Speaker 1: immunity by community inspires more intelligence. We're actually more intelligent
Speaker 1: when we're around other people. What our five senses are
Speaker 1: being activated, not just our two senses on zoom just
Speaker 1: listening and watching, right, Like, when you actually activate all
Speaker 1: five senses in a community. You're smelling someone's perfume, you're
Speaker 1: talking to someone, you're touching someone in their arm as
Speaker 1: you talk to them. This actually makes us smarter, It
Speaker 1: actually makes us more immune to disease. It actually makes
Speaker 1: us more collectively awe in awe in joy. And I
Speaker 1: just think that we need to spread that message so
Speaker 1: far and wide, especially in a post COVID when the
Speaker 1: number of friends of mine who consider themselves quote unquote
Speaker 1: extroverted are calling me and saying, hey, I feel weird
Speaker 1: around people.
Speaker 4: Why is that?
Speaker 1: And I just think that we just have to practice
Speaker 1: and continue practicing.
Speaker 4: Joy, which is why I started joy practice.
Speaker 1: And I did it for myself because I found myself
Speaker 1: wondering too, and I started doing this joy practice every day,
Speaker 1: and it changed my entire courageous outlook, my entire reason
Speaker 1: for wanting to get up and connect with other people,
Speaker 1: to make eye contact with my mask on, to smile
Speaker 1: with my eyes, to connect with body language versus just
Speaker 1: my face in my mouth, to really understand that we
Speaker 1: cannot survive as species or thrive as humans without practicing
Speaker 1: collective joy.
Speaker 4: And that's what I'm here to share as far and
Speaker 4: wide as possible.
Speaker 1: Not just through our practice, but through thought leaders like
Speaker 1: yourself who can really spread that to other people too.
Speaker 3: It's funny because when I started this show, I thought
Speaker 3: the primary lesson was going to be go inside and
Speaker 3: work your business out, do your meditation, have your awakening right,
Speaker 3: and I thought that was primarily what was going to
Speaker 3: be the main thing that happened or that I learned
Speaker 3: or that we talked about, and certainly that's a big
Speaker 3: component of it, but equally important has been this sense
Speaker 3: of we have to connect with others, we have to
Speaker 3: have community. And it's funny that I didn't think of
Speaker 3: how important it was, considering it saved my life twice
Speaker 3: by the time I started this podcast, through my recovery
Speaker 3: right being in recovery was the people there who saved
Speaker 3: my life, you know, it was that community. But I've
Speaker 3: just become more and more convinced of that the more
Speaker 3: of these conversations I have, and the more research I've done,
Speaker 3: and the more I've worked with people like, we've got
Speaker 3: to build strong communities.
Speaker 1: How did you move past your trauma story? How did
Speaker 1: you move into a space of courageous hope? And I
Speaker 1: don't want to be heard an addict more. I want to
Speaker 1: live a different life. I think unpacking that also is
Speaker 1: so telling it. How do you go beyond your I'm
Speaker 1: an addict or I was an addict, or I'm a
Speaker 1: recovering addict, into I am a citizen that does this,
Speaker 1: or I'm a citizen that does that, instead of living
Speaker 1: in the comfort.
Speaker 4: Of the story of I was an addict.
Speaker 1: How do we go in between these two worlds with grace,
Speaker 1: hope and courage.
Speaker 4: I'm curious.
Speaker 3: That's a great question that would take longer than we
Speaker 3: have to fully unpack. But the very short answer is
Speaker 3: being a heroin addict just burnt my life to the ground.
Speaker 3: And I had some things that happened that were fortunate
Speaker 3: that allowed me to get into recovery and be in recovery,
Speaker 3: go through treatment twelve step programs. It was the people,
Speaker 3: it was the support, it was the hope that I found.
Speaker 3: But the last part you said there, I think is
Speaker 3: the really interesting part to me, and it's what eventually
Speaker 3: sort of made me at a certain point in twelve
Speaker 3: step programs feel limited. And it was this constant thinking
Speaker 3: of ourselves as people who were sick, and I just
Speaker 3: hit a point where I felt like, that doesn't describe
Speaker 3: me anymore. Let's go right, Like, I'm not saying that
Speaker 3: I'm suddenly now I can go have a drink. That's
Speaker 3: not it, right. I actually think, for whatever reason, something
Speaker 3: about the way I'm wired up me and substances, it
Speaker 3: doesn't work. And I've tried it several different times since
Speaker 3: I first gotten recovery. That doesn't work. But beyond that,
Speaker 3: in twelve step programs, people used to say a lot
Speaker 3: there's us and then there's them, or it's the alki's
Speaker 3: and the normies. And at a certain point I went,
Speaker 3: that does not resonate with me anymore. I don't feel
Speaker 3: different than the average person. Wow, I feel connected kind
Speaker 3: of with everybody. I think we all share very common challenges,
Speaker 3: and yes, maybe if you want to measure on the
Speaker 3: spectrum of addiction to substance, I'm out on one extreme
Speaker 3: a little bit, but on thousands of other measures, I'm
Speaker 3: just a normal, average person. And so that's where twelve
Speaker 3: step programs saved my life. And I hit a limitation
Speaker 3: point where I felt like, you know, that doesn't describe
Speaker 3: me anymore. I don't still feel.
Speaker 1: Sick, beautiful, And I think the best coaches and the
Speaker 1: best coaching wants you to have a sunset right with
Speaker 1: the coaching program. They want you to come in, have
Speaker 1: your recovery, and then leave, and when you leave, you
Speaker 1: can create healthier relationships. You create healthier friendships that aren't
Speaker 1: limited to my friendships are just inside of my program.
Speaker 1: And I have so many friends who we had this
Speaker 1: discussion around, you know. One was a recovering overeaters anonymous
Speaker 1: person and she said that the only way she found
Speaker 1: her friends initially was through overreaders anonymous, and she felt
Speaker 1: like when she became kind of healthier and she got
Speaker 1: her way under control, that she started overeating again just
Speaker 1: so that she can be part of this club, because
Speaker 1: she found her friends there and she didn't want to
Speaker 1: be othered, and we just begin to pathologize or make
Speaker 1: our trauma part of our social life and our sense
Speaker 1: of belonging. And that's where it becomes extremely dangerous. And
Speaker 1: I think this is what's happening in America right now,
Speaker 1: is we're saying and we're pathologizing, and I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: having a bad day, into a mental health crisis. I'm
Speaker 1: having a difficult conversation with my partner, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I'm in a traumatic moment where I need
Speaker 1: meds to help me. And all of a sudden, we're
Speaker 1: allowing the littlest things in life to take us out
Speaker 1: of courage, take us out of possibility and abundance, and
Speaker 1: into these trauma stories because it's so normalized and it
Speaker 1: allows us to join this club of I'm struggling, you know.
Speaker 1: And I know that that was my story in my twenties,
Speaker 1: and I was just, you know, always living in my
Speaker 1: father was a strict Indian, which is all kinds of
Speaker 1: different things I would say, and I would just live
Speaker 1: in that and.
Speaker 4: I was angry and I was just angry.
Speaker 1: And when I just stopped living in that story, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm a joyful person.
Speaker 4: I'm a joy towards and be around.
Speaker 1: I'm going to live in the future possibility, not live
Speaker 1: in my trauma story. My entire life change. I found love,
Speaker 1: I found financial abundance, I found community, I found everything
Speaker 1: that I ever dreamed of having from moving from a
Speaker 1: place of living in the comfort of my trauma story,
Speaker 1: living because it's comfortable and it's safe to live in
Speaker 1: the trauma story. Sometimes then the fear and the not knowing.
Speaker 1: In many ways, death is that, like I don't know
Speaker 1: what's gonna happen after death, but the not knowing of
Speaker 1: what can be if I live out of that story,
Speaker 1: what can be when I'm not in my I'm this
Speaker 1: type of person. And when I did that for my
Speaker 1: own life, when I began to say, I'm not an
Speaker 1: angry person, I'm not an unworthy person, and I'm worthy
Speaker 1: of love, I'm worthy of this and of course I's
Speaker 1: still listening that we work on every single day, and
Speaker 1: this is why we practice joy.
Speaker 4: This is why we practice.
Speaker 1: Courage, you know, which is put one of the eight
Speaker 1: virtues of joy that we identified. But it is a
Speaker 1: daily practice to again feed that wolf, feed that new possibility.
Speaker 4: And I think that's why we're so on the same team.
Speaker 1: Because it's who do you feed? Is it that trauma
Speaker 1: story or the future potential? Is it the fu sure
Speaker 1: friends that you can have, not the friends that are
Speaker 1: shitting on you, or the friends that aren't kind to you,
Speaker 1: or the friends that you've grandfathered in. What are the
Speaker 1: friends that you can actually invite into your life that
Speaker 1: you can call in.
Speaker 4: Based on the quality that you're looking for.
Speaker 1: You know, that could be a completely different type of community.
Speaker 1: And so all of these things are things that we
Speaker 1: think about through the lens of community and the lens
Speaker 1: of joy, and they're so deeply connected.
Speaker 3: So listener, consider this. You're halfway through the episode integration reminder.
Speaker 3: Remember knowledge is power, but only if combined with action
Speaker 3: and integration. It can be transformative to take a minute
Speaker 3: to synthesize information rather than just ingesting it in a
Speaker 3: detached way. So let's collectively take a moment to pause
Speaker 3: and reflect. What's your one big insight so far and
Speaker 3: how can you put it into practice in your life? Seriously,
Speaker 3: just take a second, pause the audio and reflect. It
Speaker 3: can be so powerful to have these reminders to stop
Speaker 3: and be present, can't it? If you want to keep
Speaker 3: this momentum going that you built with this little exercise.
Speaker 3: I'd encourage you to get on our Good Wolf Reminders
Speaker 3: SMS list. I'll shoot you two texts a week with
Speaker 3: insightful little prompts and wisdom from podcast guests. They're a
Speaker 3: nice little nudge to stop and be present in your life,
Speaker 3: and they're a helpful way to not get lost in
Speaker 3: the busyness and forget what is important. You can join
Speaker 3: at oneufeed dot net slash sms and if you don't
Speaker 3: like them, you can get off a list really easily.
Speaker 3: So far, there are over one and seventy two others
Speaker 3: from the one you feed community on the list, and
Speaker 3: we love to welcome you as well, So head on
Speaker 3: over to oneufeed dot net slash sms and let's feed
Speaker 3: our good Wolves together again. There's a ton in what
Speaker 3: you said there, and I think it's finding this line
Speaker 3: right because there are people where mental health is a
Speaker 3: real thing and we need real treatment. And I think
Speaker 3: it's an and right that's true, and we can really
Speaker 3: get stuck there, and I agree with you. I see
Speaker 3: a lot of times we argue for our own limitations.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what I'm saying, we don't realize how superhuman
Speaker 1: we are.
Speaker 4: We don't realize our own superpowers.
Speaker 1: We don't realize how our brain is just begging for
Speaker 1: us to tickle our happy neurochemicals open. How our brain
Speaker 1: is just waiting for us to learn how to tickle
Speaker 1: them open. Our brain is just waiting for us to
Speaker 1: access these liminal spaces that we don't know we can.
Speaker 4: And that's all I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Of course, there's deeper traumas that require deeper support, But
Speaker 1: I also really believe that if you came to me
Speaker 1: and you were having a deep moment of I don't
Speaker 1: know if I can ever do this without without men's,
Speaker 1: without anything, that I would love the challenge of getting
Speaker 1: you to realize just how superpowered you are, just how
Speaker 1: brilliant you are, just how deeply supernatural, superpowered, super everything
Speaker 1: that you are to be able to unlock that side
Speaker 1: of yourself. And to your point, addiction is real, and
Speaker 1: I write about that in my book, is that we
Speaker 1: are addicted to everything. We overeat, we overdrink, we overbinge
Speaker 1: on on Netflix, we overbinge on our phone social media.
Speaker 1: We then we overbande on alcohol and drugs. I mean
Speaker 1: We are a binged out world and community because of commerce,
Speaker 1: and the world of commerce has pushed us into wanting
Speaker 1: more and more and more, buy more and more and more.
Speaker 1: Throw more ads in your face, let me throw more
Speaker 1: things for you to need that you don't actually need.
Speaker 1: And so we're trained to binge. And again it's on
Speaker 1: us to begin to develop boundaries and moments like you're
Speaker 1: doing for yourself, to say, look, if I binge on alcohol,
Speaker 1: this is what happens to me, then let me actually
Speaker 1: have the courage to control that. Let me have the
Speaker 1: boundaries to control that. And I just think that once
Speaker 1: you recognize that we are all binging in one way
Speaker 1: or another, we will never.
Speaker 4: Get out of the cycle.
Speaker 1: And so I just think that, yeah, this conversation is
Speaker 1: so special because we are feeding so much of a
Speaker 1: sad alone pathologized wolf, and we want to get out
Speaker 1: of that and feed the other.
Speaker 3: One before we run out of time. I want to
Speaker 3: turn our attention to what you were sort of saying
Speaker 3: about tickling this joy or bringing forth this joy, because
Speaker 3: I think in my own life I've done a really
Speaker 3: good job of relieving a lot of suffering, a lot
Speaker 3: of the suffering that I had in my life. I've
Speaker 3: really banished it to a large extent, you know, at
Speaker 3: least the unnecessary mental suffering that I caused myself with
Speaker 3: unhealthy thought patterns. I mean, again, I'm not saying I'm perfect,
Speaker 3: but I've done a really good job at that the
Speaker 3: place I've not done as good a job, and I'm
Speaker 3: working on and I'm sort of realizing really in the
Speaker 3: last year, I'm like, Okay, I want to turn the
Speaker 3: dial up on this is more joy.
Speaker 4: Yes, let's go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So we don't have a ton of time here
Speaker 3: before we run out of time, but I'd like you
Speaker 3: to hit a couple key points to sort of really
Speaker 3: increasing our joy.
Speaker 1: So the first thing is, we can't just live in
Speaker 1: our heads. And I think so much of again the
Speaker 1: wellness space, the person development space, which is sort of
Speaker 1: like either in your head or all in your body.
Speaker 1: Let's get six pack ads, let's sculpt your body. Let's
Speaker 1: you know, compete and shred and all of that, right,
Speaker 1: or let's work on mental health. But what if we
Speaker 1: brought the two together, and what if we actually practiced joy?
Speaker 1: What are all the most potent joy practice that exists
Speaker 1: on the planet. And that's what I set out to
Speaker 1: do in my own life and what I wanted to
Speaker 1: bring to our community of five hundred thousand daybreak our
Speaker 1: community members around the world, and it's just like, in
Speaker 1: this time of COVID and post COVID, how can we
Speaker 1: actually find the most potent joy practice that exist? And
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things that we've done for
Speaker 1: seven years is actually teach people how to dance without alcohol,
Speaker 1: without substances, to break the codependence in order to have
Speaker 1: fun and party and dance I need to be drunk
Speaker 1: or high. And so our entire reson Detrich for the
Speaker 1: last seven years has been how do we actually break
Speaker 1: that codependence and let people recognize their self expression, come
Speaker 1: home to their movement, come home to their self expression.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have hundreds of thousands of people, many
Speaker 1: of whom have never called themselves dancers, who have always
Speaker 1: said I need a drink to dance, or say I'm
Speaker 1: so embarrassed of how I look, Which is why our
Speaker 1: joy practice is very much often blindfolded.
Speaker 4: Half of our class.
Speaker 1: Our joy practice that we have is blindfolded because you
Speaker 1: remove seventy percent of your inputs, which is from your eyes,
Speaker 1: and your eyes are a gateway to judgment, gateway to
Speaker 1: self loathing, gateway to perfectionism, gateway to so many things.
Speaker 1: When you remove your sense of sight and you throw
Speaker 1: a blindfold on, and so our blindfold isn't our equipment
Speaker 1: for dose and our joy practice, you begin to connect
Speaker 1: to the other beautiful senses that you have. You begin
Speaker 1: to again recognize that the movement in your body that
Speaker 1: wants to happen. When you remove judgment, when you remove
Speaker 1: the sense of comparison, how do I look compared to
Speaker 1: other people? You allow yourself to move to the music,
Speaker 1: our true natural state. Every baby, my daughter, I was
Speaker 1: just with her two hours ago, with her two friends.
Speaker 1: They're all two years old, and we just put on
Speaker 1: a song and I just watched them move and it
Speaker 1: was their own movements and their own sense of expression,
Speaker 1: and it was just magical. And if we can get
Speaker 1: back to the dancer inside of us, the tribal dance,
Speaker 1: the collective joy, which is what I'm studying now, whether
Speaker 1: you see Berkeley and the Great Good Science Center, which
Speaker 1: is what is collective dance doing to our brains. We're
Speaker 1: doing a whole study on not just individual dance, but
Speaker 1: what happens your brain and your body when and your
Speaker 1: court is all your stress hormones. You're tickling your joy
Speaker 1: chemicals open when you're dancing in a community.
Speaker 4: So dance is one of them.
Speaker 1: Breath work is another move a meditation, which is what
Speaker 1: dose our method is. It's not dancing necessarily, just like
Speaker 1: fist pumping to rave music. It's like dancing as a meditation.
Speaker 1: So with blindfolds on low, slow and in flow, you know,
Speaker 1: so we're like really allowing you to find movement again,
Speaker 1: get your elbows moving, get your wrists moving, just finding
Speaker 1: the beat with your nose, Like what happens when you
Speaker 1: invite your nose to dance, what happens when you invite
Speaker 1: your hips to move the way they want to. It
Speaker 1: just tickles your oxytocin, your sense of trust, It tickles
Speaker 1: your endorphins open, It tickles your dopamine when you listen
Speaker 1: to music. Dopamine is a beautiful release when you listen
Speaker 1: to music. Serotonin, you know, sense of gratitude, a sense
Speaker 1: of ease happens when you're actually moving to dance. Right,
Speaker 1: So there's every one of our neurochemicals are actually triggered
Speaker 1: when we allow music dance movement gratitude, all of these
Speaker 1: elements into our practice. And that's why we've combined these
Speaker 1: eight virtues of joy into this method that is mostly
Speaker 1: blindfolded to go inward into this joy practice, and then
Speaker 1: you take the blindfold off to then reintroduce this sort
Speaker 1: of new version of yourself that's going to come out
Speaker 1: to be ready to dance with others figuratively and literally.
Speaker 1: Our joy practice online is very much as individual blindfolds on.
Speaker 1: Let's come home to our self expression, to our bodies.
Speaker 1: Let's move our trauma from our bodies into our minds
Speaker 1: and release it. Let's get into flow state. Let's find inspiration,
Speaker 1: Let's find kindness for ourselves and for others. Let's find connection,
Speaker 1: Let's find awe, let's find play all these virtues of
Speaker 1: joy that we uncover, and then we have Daybreaker IRL,
Speaker 1: our live events that were coming back finally May twelfth
Speaker 1: in New York and then relaunching our other cities so
Speaker 1: that you can then go and practice collective joy in
Speaker 1: real life with other people intergenerationally, across all ages.
Speaker 4: And that's one.
Speaker 1: Big core value of ours too, is how to practice
Speaker 1: joy with other age groups, like as a forty two
Speaker 1: year old I had a lot of judgment for a
Speaker 1: long time to hang out with people younger than me,
Speaker 1: because I felt kind of insecure about my gray hair
Speaker 1: and feeling too old, and you know, all of these things.
Speaker 1: And then I met my husband, who's like in his twenties,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, here I am learn and
Speaker 1: realizing my own hubris, my own judgment, my own self loathing,
Speaker 1: my own limitations of being a woman, an aging woman,
Speaker 1: when in tabloids and in the world of press and media,
Speaker 1: we're taught to look younger, We're taught to put botox
Speaker 1: in and inject ourselves and all these things. So it's
Speaker 1: just practicing how to be in collective joy across all generations,
Speaker 1: people older than you, people younger than you, with children,
Speaker 1: with our master citizens what I call our community above
Speaker 1: the age of sixty five, those who have mastered what
Speaker 1: it means to be human and really practice courageous collective
Speaker 1: joy across the spectrum of all ages and genders and
Speaker 1: sociocomic backgrounds and all of that, which is just so important.
Speaker 1: It's not just about the individual, but about coming out
Speaker 1: and tickling a collective joy together. So I invite you
Speaker 1: Eric to come to one of ours in New York
Speaker 1: or LA or Chicago or San Francisco or all over
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 3: Yes, I definitely want to attend one. I think you
Speaker 3: have one happening virtually this weekend, a soak up right exactly.
Speaker 1: We have Chubby Checkers the number one song of all
Speaker 1: time with The Twist. He's coming on to perform live
Speaker 1: the Twist. And we have ten thousand people who've rsvped
Speaker 1: for this one. It's one of our lowest rsvped events.
Speaker 1: We've had up to twenty thousand RSVPs for our events
Speaker 1: with Boys to Men. We've had Gloria Estefan, Gloria Gainer,
Speaker 1: We've had the Gypsy Kings Village people.
Speaker 4: All these amazing artists come.
Speaker 1: On to lend their joy, practice their dance, their music,
Speaker 1: their gift of getting people to get up and move.
Speaker 1: Dion Warrock came and saying what the world needs now
Speaker 1: is love and it's free this weekend as well. It's
Speaker 1: a free party, so I hope everyone who's listening can join.
Speaker 3: Us YEP and just listeners out of making your life
Speaker 3: easier for you. By the time we released this, that
Speaker 3: event will have happened, but there will be plenty of
Speaker 3: other great events I'm sure that they're having, And were
Speaker 3: I not going to be in a car driving to
Speaker 3: Atlanta that morning, I might want to really check out
Speaker 3: mister Chubby Checker because that sounds like a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: A sokop.
Speaker 1: You can come on from them from the car if
Speaker 1: you're not driving, obviously, if someone else is driving. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we often have tons of people tuning in from their
Speaker 1: car and just dancing in their car seat, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so everywhere it's pre seeded. It's if you can't get
Speaker 1: up and dance, you can stay seated and dance.
Speaker 4: Joy is for all.
Speaker 1: Levels of physical ability too, you know, doesn't mean you
Speaker 1: can't practice joy if your legs don't work right, Like
Speaker 1: you can practice joy if your arms are working or
Speaker 1: if your breath is working. The joy of singing is
Speaker 1: one of our Joy series and so it's like singing together.
Speaker 1: Singing is such a beautiful joy practice. So lots of
Speaker 1: different ways to practice joy, and we have you know,
Speaker 1: fifty different styles of practice on our platform.
Speaker 3: So listener and thinking about all that and the other
Speaker 3: great wisdom from today's episode. If you were going to
Speaker 3: isolate just one top insight that you're taking away.
Speaker 2: What would it be?
Speaker 3: Not your top ten, not the top five, just one?
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 3: Think about it? Got it?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: I ask you, what's one tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little
Speaker 3: thing you can do today to put it in price?
Speaker 3: Or maybe just take a baby step towards it. Remember,
Speaker 3: little by little, a little becomes a lot. Profound change
Speaker 3: happens as a result of aggregated tiny actions, not massive
Speaker 3: heroic effort. If you're not already on our Good Wolf
Speaker 3: Reminder SMS list, I'd highly recommend it as a tool
Speaker 3: you can leverage to remind you to take those vital
Speaker 3: baby steps forward. You can get on there at oneufeed
Speaker 3: dot net slash sms. It's totally free, and once you're
Speaker 3: on there, I'll send you a couple text messages a
Speaker 3: week with little reminders and nudges. Here's what I recently
Speaker 3: shared to give you an idea of the type of
Speaker 3: stuff I send. Keep practicing even if it seems hopeless.
Speaker 3: Don't strive for perfection, aim for consistency, and no matter what,
Speaker 3: keep showing up for yourself. That was a great gem
Speaker 3: from recent guests Light Watkins. And if you're on the
Speaker 3: fence about joining, remember it's totally free and easy to unsubscribe.
Speaker 3: If you want to get in, I'd love to have
Speaker 3: you there. Just go to oneufeed dot net slash sms.
Speaker 3: All right back to it. I was sort of preparing
Speaker 3: for this and reading your work and thinking more about it,
Speaker 3: and I just got the idea of dance in my
Speaker 3: head and made me realize that a real source of
Speaker 3: joy for me for a lot of years, and this
Speaker 3: talks about this individual versus collective was playing music and bands.
Speaker 3: As a musician. I haven't done it at all in
Speaker 3: years now. I play my acoustic guitar and I really
Speaker 3: love the fingerpicking and it's beautiful, but it's not the
Speaker 3: same thing. It's not the same thing as that connection
Speaker 3: with other people and making music and moving together. And
Speaker 3: it really made me think about, like how much I
Speaker 3: miss that, how much joy that gave me?
Speaker 1: That's exactly right, And so I think that's the first
Speaker 1: audit that I would do, is just like, what are
Speaker 1: you interested in?
Speaker 4: What gives you joy?
Speaker 1: Let's look at your history and see what moments in
Speaker 1: your life gave you the most joyless write them down
Speaker 1: and when you see it, you're like, wow, Okay, dancing
Speaker 1: was so much fun. For me, I was so joyful
Speaker 1: making music, not just in a band, but performing in
Speaker 1: front of a small audience with fifty people in the crowd,
Speaker 1: creating that collective joyful moment for others, even if it's
Speaker 1: twenty people, fifty people who cares, it's just about the
Speaker 1: collective experience, and then grabbing a non alcoholic cocktail afterwards
Speaker 1: and connect over music. And I think those are the
Speaker 1: things that we want to audit in our lives of
Speaker 1: just like, not just things that calm us down or
Speaker 1: things that give us ease or bring us like you said,
Speaker 1: like take us out of trauma, but what are all
Speaker 1: the things in our lives and our past that made
Speaker 1: us the most joyful. And for me, that's travel, it's
Speaker 1: like going on adventures. It's music festivals, it's dance, it's
Speaker 1: listening to bands.
Speaker 4: It's singing.
Speaker 1: Even if I'm like kind of a husky, you know,
Speaker 1: not the best voice in the world, I just love
Speaker 1: to sing. So when my friends get together and we
Speaker 1: sing together, it just brings me the most amount of joy.
Speaker 1: And I'm just so excited to begin making practicing joy
Speaker 1: as ubiquitous as brushing your teeth or practicing yoga.
Speaker 4: Or practicing meditation.
Speaker 1: It's just so important to raise the vibration of the planet.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 3: I have really enjoyed this conversation and I feel like
Speaker 3: we could do another hour of it, but we don't
Speaker 3: have time for another hour. So this has been lovely.
Speaker 4: Eric.
Speaker 1: It's so good to meet you, to connect with you,
Speaker 1: to just experience the joy and your energy as well,
Speaker 1: and your eyes and your expression. I can just sense
Speaker 1: that is just so in you, and I'm excited to
Speaker 1: play and explore more of that together.
Speaker 3: So wonderful.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
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