Speaker 1: If we're really honest with ourselves. When I think we
Speaker 1: sometimes discover is that we often learn more when we fail,
Speaker 1: because challenging experiences often lead to growth. Welcome to the
Speaker 1: one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the
Speaker 1: importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think ring true,
Speaker 1: and yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good Wolfe. Thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 1: We are going to go psycho on you, and I
Speaker 1: don't mean psychopathic. I'm talking about psychotherapy. Our guest today
Speaker 1: is Dr Jeffrey Reuben, a private practice psychotherapist and author.
Speaker 1: Jeffrey is widely regarded as one of the leading authorities
Speaker 1: on the integration of medicine and psychotherapy. In his recent
Speaker 1: writing and workshops on the art of Flourishing, Dr Reuben
Speaker 1: is especially interested in illuminating both the forces in the
Speaker 1: world that are driving us crazy and those personal and
Speaker 1: collective resources we can draw on to stay sane. Here's
Speaker 1: the interview. Hi, Jeffrey, Welcome to the show. Thanks Eric,
Speaker 1: good to be on it. I wanted to bring you
Speaker 1: on because you do something that's very interesting to me,
Speaker 1: and I feel like I've been trying to do from
Speaker 1: sort of u um end user perspective for years, which
Speaker 1: is to bring together Western psychology and Eastern spiritual traditions
Speaker 1: and find the ways that those come together. So I'm
Speaker 1: excited to have you on and we'll talk a lot
Speaker 1: more about that, but we'll start with as we always do,
Speaker 1: with the parable. So our show is called The One
Speaker 1: You Feed, and it's based on the parable of Two Wolves,
Speaker 1: where there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and
Speaker 1: he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of
Speaker 1: us that are always at war. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred and fear, and the grandson stops and
Speaker 1: he thinks about it for a second, and he looks
Speaker 1: up at his grandfather and he says, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. I love that parable, Eric. The first
Speaker 1: three things came to mind when I read it, and
Speaker 1: that's what I want to talk about. First number one,
Speaker 1: I think our character is built by habit. As Aristotle
Speaker 1: says in his Ethics, what you build grows a great.
Speaker 1: Female trainer Namily Brandon I once saw used to say
Speaker 1: to me, in other words, people at the gym who
Speaker 1: lift weights and don't do cardio or stretching develop bigger muscles,
Speaker 1: but not greater flexibility or endurance. And it's the same
Speaker 1: thing with the virtues and the qualities that you're talking about.
Speaker 1: If we practice them, they become integrated in our lives
Speaker 1: and they become kind of second nature. The The other
Speaker 1: thing that struck me about the parable was that it
Speaker 1: assumes a clear line between what we could call good
Speaker 1: and bad qualities. And I love the what are called
Speaker 1: the good qualities and joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy,
Speaker 1: and truth. And I think we'd have an infinitely better
Speaker 1: world if we were all consciously trying to cultivate those qualities.
Speaker 1: But I think in actual life it's a little more complicated.
Speaker 1: And let me give two examples. M Good experiences like
Speaker 1: success actually are often obstacles to things like creativity because
Speaker 1: we keep doing what worked. And what I think, if
Speaker 1: we're really honest with ourselves, what I think we sometimes
Speaker 1: discover is that we often learn more when we fail,
Speaker 1: because challenging experiences often lead to growth. And the other thing,
Speaker 1: maybe more and more subtle and more portant, is I
Speaker 1: think there's a constructive place for some of the qualities
Speaker 1: that we would think of as the bad qualities. For example,
Speaker 1: when I think of the greatest social change movement in
Speaker 1: the last fifty or sixty years, I think of the
Speaker 1: civil rights movement, the women's quality movement, and I think
Speaker 1: those were fueled by outrage and anger. And I think
Speaker 1: qualities like jealousy, while very very painful, maybe sometimes embarrassing,
Speaker 1: often signal what we want more of in our lives.
Speaker 1: So personally, in my own life, I try to take
Speaker 1: seriously study and learn from both what are conventionally positive
Speaker 1: experiences like love, truth, spirituality, humility, as well as what
Speaker 1: we might think of as negative bad experiences. Does that
Speaker 1: make sense? It does? It does. And I think the
Speaker 1: idea that I think I may have even read it
Speaker 1: in one of your works or and I'm paraphrasing, is
Speaker 1: that that these emotions are bringing us information. That's right,
Speaker 1: that's right. You're teaching us something. They're giving us feedback
Speaker 1: about something that's really, really valuable. And while again, we
Speaker 1: want to cultivate these qualities that are obviously lacking in
Speaker 1: the world, like love and hope and mility and kindness
Speaker 1: and empathy and truth, we also want to be careful
Speaker 1: about demonizing the other qualities because another thing that happens
Speaker 1: is we start demonizing them and ourselves. So if we
Speaker 1: have a moment of outrage. Years ago, I was in
Speaker 1: a cab in New York City and I looked trying
Speaker 1: to look the cabby in the eye through the mirror,
Speaker 1: and it was a female cab driver, the first that
Speaker 1: I've ever had, and we started talking and um, she said,
Speaker 1: you know a beautiful sunset today, And I said, I
Speaker 1: didn't see it. I was in the office and she said,
Speaker 1: what are you doing. I said, psychotherapist and she said, oh,
Speaker 1: I go to a therapist. And then she paused for
Speaker 1: a second and then she started talking. I could tell
Speaker 1: she felt a little bit of guilt, and she said,
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit angry at my therapist now. And
Speaker 1: I said, maybe there's something that's hurting you, or maybe
Speaker 1: there's something that's frustrating you, or maybe there's something that
Speaker 1: you're outraged about. And she really connected with that, and
Speaker 1: it was a doorway for me and to the fact
Speaker 1: that these emotions were all trying to say something to us,
Speaker 1: to kind of you can think of them almost eric
Speaker 1: in a Youngion ways letters to our selves from ourselves,
Speaker 1: all the range of emotions, and I think we do
Speaker 1: better when we open to the full range of them,
Speaker 1: try to study what they mean, and they figure out
Speaker 1: how to cultivate the ones that, you know, make our
Speaker 1: lives more wholesome. Yeah. We had a guest on last
Speaker 1: week and her book is called Expectation Hangover, and it's
Speaker 1: about how expectations can lead us astray. But she talks
Speaker 1: about something that really made sense to me, and I
Speaker 1: think this is going to tie well into the topic
Speaker 1: of bridging Buddhism and psychotherapy, but she talked about something
Speaker 1: called the spiritual bypass, which is where instead of feeling
Speaker 1: the negative emotions, you simply use a spiritual technique of
Speaker 1: some sort to try and bypass those emotions exactly. And
Speaker 1: then the really sad thing that happens is we have
Speaker 1: a new problem that's created. And I think this happens
Speaker 1: with a lot of contemporary what we could call maybe
Speaker 1: psycho spiritual teachers or gurus. What happens is the person
Speaker 1: feels energized after the workshop. They feel like they're going
Speaker 1: to declare they're going to pick better partners, they're gonna
Speaker 1: be kinder to themselves, show more self compassion, whatever. And
Speaker 1: then they revert back to the pattern before the workshop,
Speaker 1: and now they feel a new emotion cold shame or
Speaker 1: guilt because they feel badly that they can't manifest these
Speaker 1: positive qualities. So it sets up a kind of war
Speaker 1: within ourselves, with one side trying to fight the other
Speaker 1: side to be better, and we end up feeling worse
Speaker 1: about ourselves, I think, feeling bad about feeling bad exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: And one of the people who was the best selling
Speaker 1: one of the happiness books. She said, I feel worse
Speaker 1: than I'm not happy all the time. Basically, I think
Speaker 1: I think I read that in the book, and I
Speaker 1: feel sad because it's preventable. It's truly without any money,
Speaker 1: it's just preventable if we just have the awareness that
Speaker 1: whether it's God or whether it's evolution, we're built in
Speaker 1: a way that we experience these full range of emotions
Speaker 1: and they all have something to teach us. Yes, certain
Speaker 1: of them get us more into trouble. If we're more
Speaker 1: angry all the time, we will ash with people. You know,
Speaker 1: it will affect our blood pressure and so forth. And
Speaker 1: if we feel more love and empathy and patients and kindness,
Speaker 1: we will have more harmonious relationships and it will be
Speaker 1: easier on our immune system. But still, we do have
Speaker 1: this capacity for the full range of emotions, and we
Speaker 1: need to let ourselves have them and then see what
Speaker 1: they can teach us. I think so you say that
Speaker 1: um Western psychotherapy and Eastern tradition, specifically Buddhism in this case,
Speaker 1: are that they are both very helpful in in in flourishing,
Speaker 1: and that not only they not only are they complementary,
Speaker 1: they actually help fill in blind spots that the other has.
Speaker 1: Can you explain maybe how they work together and what
Speaker 1: those blind spots are first in the Western psychotherapy and
Speaker 1: then in the Buddhist meditation. Sure, that's a that's a
Speaker 1: good question, um, Okay. One of the blind spots in
Speaker 1: the West is that it's Western therapy broadly defined. It realizes,
Speaker 1: like the Bible that um, you know, you shall seek
Speaker 1: the truth and the shoot truth shall set you free. John.
Speaker 1: It realizes that awareness is crucial to change, um, but
Speaker 1: it isn't as skilled as meditative disciplines broadly defined, whether meditation, yoga,
Speaker 1: tai chi, sensory awareness, the whole range of awareness disciplines.
Speaker 1: Western therapy tends to not be as skilled at cultivating
Speaker 1: heightened moment to moment concentration, which meditative disciplines. Contemplative disciplines
Speaker 1: are wonderful at training contemplative disciplines. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: and this is an awareness I had several years ago
Speaker 1: that was really transformative to me personally into my work.
Speaker 1: Eastern contemplative disciplines are not as focused on meaning what
Speaker 1: things mean. So you have an interesting situation where in
Speaker 1: meditating or in doing awareness discipline like yoga or tight sheet.
Speaker 1: More and more feelings, body sensations, feelings, fantasies, thoughts bubble
Speaker 1: up to the surface of consciousness, but often meditators kind
Speaker 1: of let go of them too quickly. I think they
Speaker 1: get prematurely detached from them, one example being the spiritual
Speaker 1: bypass that you were talking about a minute ago. And
Speaker 1: then we can't use the information that comes up because
Speaker 1: we've let go of it too quickly. So one later
Speaker 1: bring the East and West together in a way that
Speaker 1: I think is really complementary enriches each is using meditative
Speaker 1: disciplines to cultivate heightened concentration, focus, and presence to really
Speaker 1: here when we listen, really taste, when we eat, really here,
Speaker 1: when we listen to music. Use the contemplative disciplines to
Speaker 1: cultivate that, and then use Western psychotherapeutic tradition, which are
Speaker 1: interested in figuring out the meaning of what comes up
Speaker 1: um to understand more of what just came up instead
Speaker 1: of just that something came up what it means. Those
Speaker 1: are the first two stages of meditative psychotherapy. One we
Speaker 1: cultivate presence, two we translate or decode what things mean.
Speaker 1: And the third is that we use a self reflective,
Speaker 1: self aware relationship, the psychotherapeutic relationship to both bring up
Speaker 1: places where we're stuck from the past and open up
Speaker 1: new possibilities for change and transformation in the present. That's
Speaker 1: another difference. That's the place where the West can help
Speaker 1: the East. I think the East often uses a relationship,
Speaker 1: but the relate like in a zen or in Um
Speaker 1: Tibetan Buddhism, but the relationship is not like the therapeutic relationship.
Speaker 1: The teachers often not looking at their own blind spots.
Speaker 1: I think it's often assumed the teachers beyond blind spots
Speaker 1: because they're enlightened. And as we've seen with you know
Speaker 1: a lot of the scandals that have gone on it's
Speaker 1: go on up till today in the Yogurt and Buddhist
Speaker 1: traditions that don't mean to be picking on their om,
Speaker 1: just trying to be honest about it. We see what
Speaker 1: these these um scandals often that there's the teachers are human,
Speaker 1: all too human, as Nietzsch would say, and so we
Speaker 1: need a relationship that reflects on itself. That whether the
Speaker 1: person in the healing role of the authority role looks
Speaker 1: at what they might be contributing to the relationship. Is
Speaker 1: your process of therapy or psychotherapy that you do those
Speaker 1: sort of in one session, like somebody comes in and
Speaker 1: you you do meditative practices and then go into psychotherapy
Speaker 1: or is it more of a develop that mindfulness and
Speaker 1: and those meditative and qualities and awareness outside of here,
Speaker 1: and then when you come in, you're going to be
Speaker 1: more receptive or more aware of things that you can
Speaker 1: bring in that we can then work on. It can
Speaker 1: be both one of the really sacred things to me
Speaker 1: in in psycho actually in spiritual practice. I'm also a
Speaker 1: meditation teacher, but we're two hots editation teacher and the therapist.
Speaker 1: What's really sacred to me and both Eric is really
Speaker 1: really radically individualizing it so that each spiritual teachers student relationship,
Speaker 1: each psychotherapist client relationship is individualized based on the uniqueness
Speaker 1: of the person that I'm working with. So I don't
Speaker 1: like to voice any general method on people because it
Speaker 1: might not be what the you know, what the person needs.
Speaker 1: There's a wonderful story of that in the beauty chapter
Speaker 1: in Flourishing about my yoga teacher t K. V. Desiccatar,
Speaker 1: a wonderful yoga teacher and suicidal German student comes to
Speaker 1: him some years ago and says, I want to learn yoga.
Speaker 1: Will you teach me yoga? And Mr deska Char was
Speaker 1: a world renown teacher of yoga and his father was
Speaker 1: a world renown teacher. Um he says, sure, I'll be
Speaker 1: glad to teach you. And the student says, um, okay,
Speaker 1: should I learn yoga postures? You teach me postures? Mr
Speaker 1: deska trust is now. The student says that he's suicidal
Speaker 1: and if the work doesn't help him, he's gonna he's
Speaker 1: gonna kill himself. Also, he has horrible headaches. Mr Deskatre says, sure,
Speaker 1: I will. I will try to teach you. The student says,
Speaker 1: when you teach me yoga postures? Mr Deskatre says no, Well,
Speaker 1: then will you teach me chanting? Mr Deskature says no.
Speaker 1: Will you do breathing the yoga breathing? Mr Deskature says no.
Speaker 1: And then the student says, what good are you? You're
Speaker 1: a yoga teacher and you won't teach me any aspects
Speaker 1: of yoga. Mr Deskatres says, instead, I propose an experiment.
Speaker 1: Can you get access to a cheap camera and film
Speaker 1: and the German student says yes. Mr Deskatre says, I
Speaker 1: want you to take pictures of symmetry in nature, pictures
Speaker 1: of symmetry and nature for six months. Then I want
Speaker 1: you to come back to me. So the student goes
Speaker 1: off and he takes pictures of symmetry in nature, and
Speaker 1: after doing it for a while, he begins to feel
Speaker 1: that the world is beautiful. When he begins to feel
Speaker 1: the world is beautiful, he begins to feel the world
Speaker 1: has meaning, and he feels the world as meaning, he
Speaker 1: no longer feels suicidal, and the headaches disappear. So to me,
Speaker 1: it's a wonderful story not only of a very skilled healer,
Speaker 1: but he has a he has a world renowned yoga teacher,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't teach him traditional yoga. I mean that
Speaker 1: you could argue that taking the pictures and being focused
Speaker 1: and concentrated was a yoga because it's that being, you know,
Speaker 1: a tuned in the present. But that's sort of the
Speaker 1: way I think about therapy, that I really just try
Speaker 1: to do what's helpful for for each person and individualize it.
Speaker 1: So some people who see me in psychotherapy have no
Speaker 1: idea that I wrote psychotherapy and Buddhism or that I
Speaker 1: wrote meditative therapy and now others come to me because
Speaker 1: of that, So I kind of like that that, but
Speaker 1: I really try to individualize it for each person, and
Speaker 1: I think the spiritual path has to be the same thing.
Speaker 1: I think one reason the meditation doesn't work for everyone
Speaker 1: is often the same approach is applied to everyone, but
Speaker 1: everyone is different. So for one person, I might not
Speaker 1: have them do sitting meditation. I might have them sit
Speaker 1: and listen to their favor music except really hear it
Speaker 1: for the first time, because music is the entrede to
Speaker 1: something that's authentic for them, that's they're passionate about and
Speaker 1: they're alive about. So I think it has to be individuals.
Speaker 1: So I don't have a standard method for anyone. But
Speaker 1: with some people, yes, it's it's about cultivating those three things,
Speaker 1: and for some people it's about cultivating them in the
Speaker 1: outside and then bringing them in. It's it's it's both,
Speaker 1: but it really depends on the person. I think that's
Speaker 1: so important about meditation because it seems to me that
Speaker 1: so much meditation is pretty much taught. As you know,
Speaker 1: the breath is a big one, right, focus on the
Speaker 1: breath and or or or a mantra repeated mantra. And
Speaker 1: it took me years of doing both those things on
Speaker 1: and off and getting frustrated at never really clicked for me. Um.
Speaker 1: Some of it I think was my expectation. Listeners have
Speaker 1: heard me talk about this. I sort of expected that
Speaker 1: while I meditated, I would feel great, and when I didn't,
Speaker 1: I thought it was wrong. And when I changed my
Speaker 1: mindset to more like, all right, this is like mental hygiene,
Speaker 1: and I'm just going to relax and if I if
Speaker 1: I sit here for a half hour and I enjoy it, great,
Speaker 1: If I don't, great, either way, I've done it. Um.
Speaker 1: But the one that unlocked it for me was sound.
Speaker 1: When I started just saying, all right, I'm going to
Speaker 1: pay attention to every sound that's around me, and for
Speaker 1: some reason, that just worked really different for me than
Speaker 1: maybe there's just something about the breath that I just
Speaker 1: don't lock on. You know. I've had that experience a
Speaker 1: lot and teaching the last few years, and I'll teach
Speaker 1: certain people they say, look, I tried this twenty or
Speaker 1: thirty years ago, and it never clicked. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that often clicks is is sound. And now
Speaker 1: that the clicks is just be aware of body sensations,
Speaker 1: just bodies, not breath, but body sensations in general, or
Speaker 1: the body at rest. It really has to be individualized,
Speaker 1: and a lot of times, I think, tragically, a little
Speaker 1: bit like in therapy, the person blames themselves when it
Speaker 1: may be that the approach wasn't individualized to their uniqueness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've heard so many people say I just can't meditate.
Speaker 1: I can't meditate, And I think I probably said that
Speaker 1: for a while at one point, and I think I
Speaker 1: do think that you're right. A lot of people think
Speaker 1: it's a personal thing versus a being taught, right, And
Speaker 1: I think get in your expectations in line of what
Speaker 1: the experiences is going to be like, yes, and finding
Speaker 1: your own unique passion finding. So if you were a
Speaker 1: walker or you were a gardener, I might say, let's
Speaker 1: see if we can garden in a different sort of way.
Speaker 1: Really be present when you're digging the earth, or really
Speaker 1: be present to the sound, you know, as your feet
Speaker 1: are touching the leaves and the forest, really open to
Speaker 1: whatever it is that you're passionate about that you do
Speaker 1: sort of seamlessly on weekends at night on vacation. I
Speaker 1: think to link the meditation to what you're passionate about
Speaker 1: in your life, rather than force you to do something
Speaker 1: that might not be your own natural way. So you
Speaker 1: touched on it a little bit in the in the
Speaker 1: story you just told of the young man who was
Speaker 1: told to go take pictures of symmetry and nature. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that you talk about in the
Speaker 1: Art of Flourishing is appreciating beauty, and you talk about
Speaker 1: three different types of beauty. So I was wondering if
Speaker 1: you could tell us a little bit about those three
Speaker 1: different types and what are some good ways to bring
Speaker 1: that into our life day to day. You know, one
Speaker 1: of them is character. I don't think. I think, well,
Speaker 1: let me start from another angle. I think we have,
Speaker 1: at least us men have too narrow a conception of beauty.
Speaker 1: We often link it to bodies and faces, and I
Speaker 1: think that's one aspect of beauty. Obviously there's also beauty
Speaker 1: and nature. But I think we really need to broaden
Speaker 1: our sense of beauty to include things are like virtuous qualities, Uh,
Speaker 1: virtuous of people loving hearts. That's sort of a thing.
Speaker 1: And then I think it's a very very, very different
Speaker 1: sense of it we have at that point. You know
Speaker 1: what I mean, it's that we need a person. We
Speaker 1: need to do is really broaden our conception of beauty.
Speaker 1: Just really look at it in a wider way. You
Speaker 1: could look at it as anything that sort of draws
Speaker 1: us to the world, that it makes us appreciate the
Speaker 1: world's magnificence, the miraculous nous of being able to take
Speaker 1: a breath, or a worm squirming on the ground. The
Speaker 1: beauty is an invitation in a way, to awaken out
Speaker 1: of our self absorbed slumber and are being lost in
Speaker 1: our own thoughts and are ruminating about the past or
Speaker 1: scripting the future. Beauty is an invitation to come back
Speaker 1: to the world, come back to the president, and really
Speaker 1: appreciate the miraculousness of things. Uh. And in that way
Speaker 1: we can be transported by it, we can be vitalized
Speaker 1: by it, I think. And that's what I mean. I
Speaker 1: think that's one way. Well, you know, appreciating excellence of character,
Speaker 1: for example, what we could think of as a beautiful soul.
Speaker 1: I don't think we think about that enough, but that's
Speaker 1: really beautiful. And when we meet touch people, whether it's
Speaker 1: one's grandfather or some or a parent or someone else's parent,
Speaker 1: or a public figure. UM. It makes us feel more alive,
Speaker 1: and it makes us feel more hope, and it makes
Speaker 1: us feel um, mortality. So that's I think that's an area,
Speaker 1: in addition to kind of conventional beauty that we need
Speaker 1: to focus on. I have stories in the you know
Speaker 1: the book about that about a guy, uh, it was
Speaker 1: a Joe Tamesco who didn't seem to have much money.
Speaker 1: He was a handyman. He realamed his neighborhood. He filled
Speaker 1: his home with things that he scavenged from the streets,
Speaker 1: and he was really upset about the attacks nine lemon
Speaker 1: attacks in New York City, and he left in his
Speaker 1: will one point four millions of the city of New
Speaker 1: York for a daffodil project. And so the thousands of
Speaker 1: volunteers planted I think more than two million daffodils in
Speaker 1: New York City. And so that kind of thing that
Speaker 1: to me is really really beautiful. UM. I also think
Speaker 1: UM beautiful performances. You know, it can be in sport,
Speaker 1: it can be in r it can be in drama, UM,
Speaker 1: poetry readings. I think we need to open to those
Speaker 1: sorts of things as well as what we ordinarily conceive
Speaker 1: of as beauty, you know, physical sites basically or nature
Speaker 1: um and the other thing is And I feel that's
Speaker 1: throughout the art of fourishing and throughout you know, the
Speaker 1: the listeners that you have, throughout all of your encounters
Speaker 1: with new methods of healing and medicine, and there's there's both.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of troubling things going on in
Speaker 1: the world, and there are a lot of new opportunities
Speaker 1: and new trends in the world. And as we encoun
Speaker 1: under the new trends, I think we need to be
Speaker 1: open two new things we can contribute, new things we
Speaker 1: can learn. So that I'd love it if there were
Speaker 1: listeners who said, well, there's really a fourth kind of
Speaker 1: beauty that Jeffrey didn't mention, because then we're all adding
Speaker 1: to what you could think of as social evolution. We're
Speaker 1: all contributing to making the world a better place. So
Speaker 1: these are just some of the ways I've thought about beauty.
Speaker 1: But I would encourage you in your own life, to
Speaker 1: own lives, to think about what's touched your heart, what's
Speaker 1: moved your soul, and to think of those as possible
Speaker 1: as possible sources of beauty that you could invest in
Speaker 1: and you could cultivate dogs. Dogs. Yes, dogs, Dogs are
Speaker 1: definitely one for me. Yes, yes, you see there's another
Speaker 1: one that's right, that's right. And you know you see
Speaker 1: this when someone's dog is ill or lose as a
Speaker 1: pet and they're sheepish about saying, and I'll sometimes say
Speaker 1: you lost a member of the family. It's not a pet,
Speaker 1: you know, well, it's just a dog. How is it?
Speaker 1: I felt like my best friend. It's not really right
Speaker 1: to say that, Jeffrey, and I'll say, it felt like
Speaker 1: I'm remember the family. Yeah. Oh, total acceptance, no judgment,
Speaker 1: always there there when you come home at night, cuddles
Speaker 1: doesn't demand you know. So yes, dogs, dogs nature, virtuous
Speaker 1: characters or beautiful performances. All of this and more, I
Speaker 1: think is what I'm trying to point to when I
Speaker 1: say beauty. Yes, there's a there's a decent likelihood we
Speaker 1: are going to hear some dogs at some point during
Speaker 1: this interview. I'm, as I mentioned earlier, recording at my
Speaker 1: house and not at Chris's tonight, and I've got three
Speaker 1: of them, so uh, I would I would be surprised
Speaker 1: if we don't hear him at some point one of
Speaker 1: the things about appreciate beauty that I like. And it's
Speaker 1: sort of a practice that I started doing, and I
Speaker 1: think I might have I think I twisted the traditional
Speaker 1: gratitude practice a little bit because I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: I should do gratitude every day, and so I would
Speaker 1: do that, and I would try and think about things
Speaker 1: I was grateful for. But what I realized over time
Speaker 1: is it became more a list of things that I
Speaker 1: happened to appreciate during the day, things that I noticed
Speaker 1: that we're whether it be a sunset or whether it
Speaker 1: be a good cup of coffee, or a band that
Speaker 1: I listened to that I remembered, like, God, I love
Speaker 1: that music, and and so what really was sort of
Speaker 1: an appreciation um And I think the interesting thing about
Speaker 1: when you start to think about that, at least for me,
Speaker 1: was I become more open to finding it if I'm
Speaker 1: looking for it. Yes, absolutely, absolutely, Yeah. Yeah. There's a
Speaker 1: way in which what we can see is shaped by
Speaker 1: how we look and what we look for. You know,
Speaker 1: if someone is starving and they're gonna attend to not
Speaker 1: see beauty around but you know, conventional beauty, but they're
Speaker 1: gonna tend to see restaurants or yeah, so what we
Speaker 1: so we can try to open the valves of perception
Speaker 1: in a way, so we're more and more open, and
Speaker 1: then more and more can touch us. And I think
Speaker 1: that's something that doesn't cost any money and is available
Speaker 1: right now. I mean, but the other side of that
Speaker 1: is more and more of the world suffering will also
Speaker 1: touch us, So we need to learn to dance with that.
Speaker 1: That's why I said earlier than these so called negative
Speaker 1: experience are also part of life. But if we try
Speaker 1: to understand bots and cultivate both, I think we have
Speaker 1: a more well rounded experience or rich or fuller experience
Speaker 1: of life. Ye. And you had a bunch of different
Speaker 1: things in the Art of Flourishing. I think it was
Speaker 1: twelve different areas, and there's no way we're going to
Speaker 1: have time to go through them all. But I wanted
Speaker 1: to touch on a couple others. One was expand inner space.
Speaker 1: I was wondering if you could elaborate on what that means.
Speaker 1: And what I thought was also really interesting was you
Speaker 1: talked about protecting it and enlarging it, so maybe you
Speaker 1: can work that into your sure. Sure, Yeah, that's one
Speaker 1: of the important concepts in the book Inner Space. You know,
Speaker 1: the same yoga teacher Mr Dessar once defined duca, which
Speaker 1: is famous in the Buddhist tradition Polly and sanscrit Uh.
Speaker 1: You know arm at a joint, a wheel out of socket,
Speaker 1: um suffering unsatisfactory nous. But Mr Desiccature gave a different
Speaker 1: definition in sanscrit He said it also means calm means space,
Speaker 1: and duke means bad or sort of closed down. And
Speaker 1: so I got curious about what's the opposite of If
Speaker 1: duca is bad space, you're in a bad and people
Speaker 1: will say that in a relationship, I'm in order to
Speaker 1: each other, I'm in a bad space, or I gotta
Speaker 1: get out of here. This doesn't feel like a good space.
Speaker 1: So that raise a question what is good space and
Speaker 1: what is the opposite of duca? And I thought a
Speaker 1: good space or an expanded space, not a constricted space.
Speaker 1: And so expanded in a space is the capacity you
Speaker 1: all have as you're listening right now, we all have.
Speaker 1: It has nothing to do with education level or money,
Speaker 1: or what's going on in our life or whether we
Speaker 1: have an illness. It's that capacity. It's not a place
Speaker 1: with physical place within us, but it's a capacity two consider,
Speaker 1: to imagine, to open to something. It's a kind of
Speaker 1: inner flexibility and freedom. And you can feel it right
Speaker 1: now if you're If you're in that kind of space,
Speaker 1: I think it's the birthplace of intuition, creativity, um, empathy, love.
Speaker 1: I think it comes out of expanded inner space. So
Speaker 1: it's a very very important quality. So I start the
Speaker 1: book The Order Flourishing with talking about expanding in the
Speaker 1: space because I think, again, it's something it doesn't cost
Speaker 1: any money. We can we can do it, and if
Speaker 1: we're working very hard, we can still do it. You
Speaker 1: can be in a prison sell and do it. You
Speaker 1: could be in a monastery and not do it. It's
Speaker 1: just can we cultivate and kind of openness of mind
Speaker 1: and an openness of spirit? And yes, one way to
Speaker 1: do it is to watch what's watched, what things close
Speaker 1: us down. In the yoga tradition, they teach us to
Speaker 1: be mindful of what we're taking in, and they talk
Speaker 1: about in terms of protia, horrors, sense data. I've had
Speaker 1: people who are clients who are sleepless, and I asked
Speaker 1: them what they do before they go to sleep, and
Speaker 1: they might say, I'm thinking of someone and this was,
Speaker 1: you know, after nine eleven, they watched kind of provocative
Speaker 1: talk listen to provocative talk radio, and it just stirred
Speaker 1: them up. And then I said, what's your favorite music?
Speaker 1: And I said Mozart and back, and I said, what
Speaker 1: if you listen to that before you went to bed?
Speaker 1: And then they reported that they started doing that and
Speaker 1: they slept much more soundly. So we can be sensitive
Speaker 1: to what we take in, and we can try to
Speaker 1: not take in that which closes us down. That's one
Speaker 1: thing we can do about interspace. Comedy expands into space.
Speaker 1: You feel tight, you feel disturbed. You listen to a
Speaker 1: comic play with certain things that are going on in
Speaker 1: the news, it opens up perspective, you start to see
Speaker 1: it in a wider way. You get Breathing is another way.
Speaker 1: Meditations another way, movement, jogging, gardening, friendship, walking, playing with animals.
Speaker 1: There are all sorts of ways of doing it. Again,
Speaker 1: it's it's the same thing. Would make me very happy
Speaker 1: if if listeners came up with their own ways, not
Speaker 1: just the ways I listened them. I was a bunch
Speaker 1: in the book decluttering. There are a bunch of ways
Speaker 1: that do it, but you have to find the way
Speaker 1: really that works for you. But it's a listening to music,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a capacity to open up more, be
Speaker 1: more light spirited, and be more flexible. I want to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about self care. We've talked on
Speaker 1: this show before about how important it is. One of
Speaker 1: the ways that people need to feed their good wolf
Speaker 1: is to take time to do the things that matter
Speaker 1: to them, the things that are important to them. And
Speaker 1: we've talked about how that can lead to conflict in
Speaker 1: family life at certain points. But you've got a very
Speaker 1: interesting idea that says that self care is the foundation
Speaker 1: for intimacy, and that intimacy is the culmination of self care.
Speaker 1: Can you elaborate on that. Yeah, I want to say
Speaker 1: something else before that, and that's that the key to
Speaker 1: self care to me, and a key to flourishing is
Speaker 1: figuring out what helps you flourish, whatever it is, friendship, travel, animals, leisure, time,
Speaker 1: meaningful talks, whatever it is, and then build it into
Speaker 1: your life, meditation, yoga, build it into your life rather
Speaker 1: than fit it into your life. The big trap with
Speaker 1: that with a lot of people as they fit things in,
Speaker 1: and that which gets fitted in drops out high percentage
Speaker 1: of the time that which is built in, which is unquestioned.
Speaker 1: It's just part of your routine, like cosmetic stuff in
Speaker 1: the morning that gets done. So that's really crucial in
Speaker 1: self care. Build build it in. Uh. Yeah, it struck
Speaker 1: me as I was writing the book There Are to
Speaker 1: Flourishing that. Yes, self care is the foundation of intimacy.
Speaker 1: That one of the problems in a lot of intimate
Speaker 1: relationships is that there's not enough self care. People are
Speaker 1: not taking care of themselves. And if we don't take
Speaker 1: care of ourselves, it's a breeding ground for feeling deprived,
Speaker 1: feeling resentful, resentful, feeling closed down interspace, feeling uncentered, and
Speaker 1: it reads havoc on the relationship. It just makes it
Speaker 1: really difficult to have a close relationship, whether it's a friendship,
Speaker 1: whether it's a loving relationship, whether it's a good relationship
Speaker 1: with a colleague. We're more impatient, we're more burdened, we're
Speaker 1: more snappy, that kind of thing, And and it struck
Speaker 1: me at the end of the first section. The book
Speaker 1: is divided into two. The first half is on what
Speaker 1: I called genuine self care. In the second half the
Speaker 1: book is on intimacy. It struck me as I ended
Speaker 1: the first half of the book that the final stage
Speaker 1: of self care is going beyond the self service, friendship
Speaker 1: intimate relationships. So that's why I say that self care
Speaker 1: is the foundation of intimacy, but intimacy is a culmination
Speaker 1: and final stage. That it's not enough for self care
Speaker 1: just to be worrying about my body fat, or my
Speaker 1: this or my that. We also need to go beyond
Speaker 1: beyond self, which paradoxically nourishes the self. I heard you
Speaker 1: talk once about cotton candy self care, which I really liked.
Speaker 1: Can you explain what that is? Sure that became an
Speaker 1: important principal eric in the first half of the book.
Speaker 1: Cotton candy for those who remember cotton candy at amusement
Speaker 1: parks when you were a kid. Maybe cotton candy looks good,
Speaker 1: taste good, and three seconds later it evaporates. You're hungry
Speaker 1: for more. So the problem is that as most of
Speaker 1: us are more besiege with seven technology and people going
Speaker 1: to the the bathroom middle of the night and then they
Speaker 1: check their phone or check the computer or you know
Speaker 1: this this kind of thing that I get a text
Speaker 1: all the time. Um, we're more besieged, and when more besieged,
Speaker 1: were more tired, We have more crunched inner space. And
Speaker 1: then what we tend to do is feel that anything
Speaker 1: that's good for us is one more to do that's
Speaker 1: just too much. I just can't meditate, I can't wake
Speaker 1: up earlier in do yoga. Anything that you ask someone
Speaker 1: to do for self care feels like too much. So
Speaker 1: what we tend to do is engage in bad self care,
Speaker 1: what I call cotton candy self care. So we will
Speaker 1: and I'm not don't mean to pick on Law and Order,
Speaker 1: but we will watch a Law in Order rerun or something,
Speaker 1: or surf the net, yeah for six of them, or
Speaker 1: surf the net, or it doesn't matter, you know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter what it is. It's a personal thing. It's
Speaker 1: at the end of the night, did you feel nurtured
Speaker 1: or the end of the night, do you want to
Speaker 1: stay up later because you're bored? Because you didn't really
Speaker 1: you kind of got empty carbs of them, of the
Speaker 1: mind and the spirit. You really didn't nurture yourself. So
Speaker 1: it's a hard thing to do it first, but it's
Speaker 1: a shift from cotton candy self care to genuine self care.
Speaker 1: The irony is the genuine self care will actually give
Speaker 1: you more energy and nurture you. And the cotton candy
Speaker 1: self care, the empty cards of the mind or the
Speaker 1: spirit just make you feel just like empty carbs. It
Speaker 1: just makes you feel more sluggish, and that is happy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's so true. And I think everybody I
Speaker 1: know I do wrestles with that when you're really tired,
Speaker 1: worn out and it just feels like i just don't
Speaker 1: want to do anything, and so I'm just going to
Speaker 1: zone out in front of the TV. And I realized
Speaker 1: after a few hours that I I generally don't feel better.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there's a time and a place
Speaker 1: for everything, obviously, but but by and large, if I
Speaker 1: can just get that little bit of effort into what
Speaker 1: you would call or nourishing self care, to that be
Speaker 1: exercise or um meditation or reading or any of the
Speaker 1: playing music for me as one of them, if I
Speaker 1: could just put that little bit of extra effort, and
Speaker 1: You're right, I come out the other side of it
Speaker 1: feeling like I actually have been nourished, like I have eaten,
Speaker 1: like I've been filled up, instead of just kind of
Speaker 1: being restless and and still discontent. Exactly you're feeling re
Speaker 1: nude rather than depleted. I mean, one question to ask,
Speaker 1: and I'm very sympathetic. I know it's tough people, But
Speaker 1: one question to ask is will this nourish me? To
Speaker 1: really sort of stop, slow down and ask it before
Speaker 1: you turn on the TV or go online and start
Speaker 1: mindless surfing, you know, or ask what will nourish me? What? What? What?
Speaker 1: What is my system need right now? What do I
Speaker 1: really need? You know? It could be a meaningful talk
Speaker 1: with his friend. Again, it's very personal. What I try
Speaker 1: to do in the art of living is is outlined
Speaker 1: general principles, but leave a lot of room for people
Speaker 1: finding their own unique path because I believe so strongly
Speaker 1: everyone has to find their path. So for some people
Speaker 1: might be playing music, for another might be taking a
Speaker 1: walk with your dog, for someone else meditating, someone else yoga.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really much as someone else that could be
Speaker 1: cooking a new dish. Whatever is going to open up
Speaker 1: your inner space, make you feel renewed and nourished, and
Speaker 1: the effort that it takes well repays it. If you
Speaker 1: can take that initial plunge and do it instead of
Speaker 1: just the habitual cotton candy exactly well, Jeffrey, Thanks so much.
Speaker 1: We're kind of at the end of our time here.
Speaker 1: I feel like we could probably do this for another
Speaker 1: two hours. But um, I really enjoyed. I really enjoyed
Speaker 1: the book, and I'm really interested in the work that
Speaker 1: you're doing that's integrating these two things, because I do
Speaker 1: think there's a lot to be gained from from both traditions.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Eric. Yes, someone said to me a few
Speaker 1: years ago, you know, there's nothing new to say about
Speaker 1: psychotherapy and Buddhism, and I sent them an email back.
Speaker 1: I could not agree with you less. Um. I think
Speaker 1: we haven't tapped the surface of what they could offer
Speaker 1: each other. And I think that's what we one thing
Speaker 1: we can do in you have to try to flush
Speaker 1: that out. Great well, thank you, Thank you very much. Eric.
Speaker 1: Take care, take care, bye, okay bye. You can learn
Speaker 1: more about Dr Jeffrey Rubin and this podcast at one
Speaker 1: you feed dot net slash Ruben