Speaker 1: If you're anxious, you fritter away the energy that you
Speaker 1: can have being alert, prepared, engaging with your life, and
Speaker 1: creatively trying to figure out what to do.
Speaker 2: Wow, welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great
Speaker 2: thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 2: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 2: you think ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 2: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 3: Fear is instinctual. It's like a cobra in a box
Speaker 3: of kittens. It grabs our attention and it won't let go.
Speaker 3: But anxiety, that's something else. It's the ghost of fear
Speaker 3: haunting us long after the danger is passed, or before
Speaker 3: it even occurs. In today's conversation with Martha Beck. We
Speaker 3: explore why anxiety can't simply be silenced. It has to
Speaker 3: be replaced, replaced with creativity, curiosity, and a deep kindness
Speaker 3: towards ourselves. And when we do that, something important begins
Speaker 3: to happen. Life starts to feel like something we can
Speaker 3: actually live rather than just survive. I'll take any opportunity
Speaker 3: to talk with Martha. I think she's one of the
Speaker 3: most gifted and thoughtful teachers we have Today. I'm Eric
Speaker 3: Zimmer and this is the one you feed. Hi, Martha,
Speaker 3: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Oh, Eric, is so good to be back. I love
Speaker 1: this podcast.
Speaker 3: Oh thank you talking with you. It's a pleasure to
Speaker 3: have you on and it's nice to see you again.
Speaker 3: We're going to be discussing, at least part of the
Speaker 3: time your latest book, which is called Beyond Anxiety, Curiosity, Creativity,
Speaker 3: and Finding your Life's Purpose. And I'm sure will veer
Speaker 3: kind of all over the place, but yes, that may
Speaker 3: anchor us correct. But before we get into that, we'll
Speaker 3: start the way we always do with the parable. And
Speaker 3: in the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking to their
Speaker 3: grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 3: inside of us. That are always at battle. One is
Speaker 3: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 3: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 3: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 3: grandchild stops. They think about it for a second. They
Speaker 3: look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which
Speaker 3: one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 3: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 3: the work that you do.
Speaker 1: It's everything. I grew up in the rigid religious system
Speaker 1: in Mormonism and was told to follow the rules and
Speaker 1: only feed any impulse that had been given to me
Speaker 1: by the religion. And when that happens to you, a
Speaker 1: lot of people who leave Mormonism don't go to any
Speaker 1: other religion because you break free from it so hard
Speaker 1: that you reject all belief systems. When I was around
Speaker 1: seventeen eighteen, I went off to Harvard. I started getting
Speaker 1: different types of thinking, and then it just sort of
Speaker 1: blew up in my head and I decided that the
Speaker 1: only thing I could do to build my life was
Speaker 1: to find what felt like the truth and what felt
Speaker 1: like joy, and that I would go toward that no
Speaker 1: matter what, and if something felt like fear or less
Speaker 1: joy and less freedom, I would not go there. As
Speaker 1: life went on, I made my choices based on that,
Speaker 1: and that's sort of shaped everything. And I'm so grateful
Speaker 1: for that metaphor that so many people out there are
Speaker 1: hearing it now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's a great way to segue into
Speaker 3: your book, because what you're basically saying there is you
Speaker 3: tended to follow. If I use the subtitle of your book,
Speaker 3: the things that made you curious, the things that made
Speaker 3: you creative, the things that made you calmer, and use
Speaker 3: those as a guidance versus following the things that made
Speaker 3: you fearful or anxious sort of.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's interesting because I've had a whole career
Speaker 1: helping people build their lives based on feeding the good
Speaker 1: wolf and following your better angels or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: But I also had very high anxiety, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people that I've worked with and people that i've
Speaker 1: known as friends, very creative people, had tremendous amounts of anxiety.
Speaker 1: And I didn't see that always as part of the
Speaker 1: bad wolf, because it's so innocent to be afraid in
Speaker 1: a world where things go wrong and where we all
Speaker 1: know we're the one animal that knows for sure we're
Speaker 1: going to die. So I thought anxiety was just part
Speaker 1: of the human condition, and so I didn't steer away
Speaker 1: from it the way I have learned to. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until I started living by this code of absolute integrity,
Speaker 1: and I wrote a book called The Way of Integrity,
Speaker 1: because I came to find that if I only did
Speaker 1: things that felt aligned with all the parts of my
Speaker 1: being body, heart, mind, soul, if I just always walked
Speaker 1: the line of truth there, then I wouldn't feel any
Speaker 1: psychological pain, which has been true for me. But people
Speaker 1: came up to me after I wrote that book and said,
Speaker 1: I'm living in total integrity, but I'm afraid all the time.
Speaker 1: And I thought, okay, so that's just the human condition.
Speaker 1: And then I thought, no, no, that's not the way
Speaker 1: it works. And so I went and I researched anxiety,
Speaker 1: and I dug into it and into the brain science
Speaker 1: and into the social science of it. And what I
Speaker 1: found is that we live in a society that really
Speaker 1: encourages high anxiety, and the way we learn and the
Speaker 1: way we organize our lives is very conducive to high anxiety.
Speaker 1: But it actually isn't normal. What's normal is something that's
Speaker 1: not around most of us anymore. That is sorry, I'm
Speaker 1: going on and on, But if you and I had
Speaker 1: been born three hundred years ago, we would have woken
Speaker 1: up surrounded by nature, by animals, hearing the trees, water,
Speaker 1: other people's voices. We would have spent the day in
Speaker 1: our group of people we mostly knew, doing things with
Speaker 1: our hands as well as our minds that were deeply
Speaker 1: meaningful to us. And that type of scenario is what
Speaker 1: we evolved to live in, and that's what puts the
Speaker 1: nervous system in a state of regulation. And nowadays we
Speaker 1: live in a profoundly abnormal situation for the animals of
Speaker 1: our bodies, and we're anxious because we're in cages all
Speaker 1: the time, and some of those cages are physical and
Speaker 1: some of them are psychological. And in this book, in
Speaker 1: the research for it, I tried to find my way
Speaker 1: out of that, and so two thirds of the book
Speaker 1: are about what happens after you get away from that,
Speaker 1: and it's actually really fun. That's where the cure riosty,
Speaker 1: creativity and finding your life's purpose coming there. There is
Speaker 1: my dissertation. Everybody can go to bed now.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that, yes, I think we are probably
Speaker 3: living in a deeply anxiety producing culture. We are living
Speaker 3: in ways that don't allow us to soothe ourselves. And
Speaker 3: we could go back, though, to say the Buddha and
Speaker 3: he's writing about something similar a little bit right, He's
Speaker 3: going back and he's saying like, Hey, these things that
Speaker 3: you manufacture in your mind cause you to suffer more
Speaker 3: than is necessary. And so I think that it's just
Speaker 3: gotten worse. Right, I think that the world that we
Speaker 3: may have lived in when we were closer to nature,
Speaker 3: had more maybe natural balms in it than today's world does. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it keeps getting amplified. There's something that you talk about
Speaker 3: in the book that I'd love to really start with,
Speaker 3: which is that you talk about fear, which is a
Speaker 3: natural response. You make examples in the book I Love
Speaker 3: Your Kittens and Cobra's example, like, if you open up
Speaker 3: a box and there are eight kittens in one cobra,
Speaker 3: what are you going to pay attention to the cobra?
Speaker 3: I just think that's so it made me laugh when
Speaker 3: I heard that. But if there was a cobra in
Speaker 3: this room, I would naturally be fearful, and that is natural. Yeah,
Speaker 3: But you describe anxiety more as like being haunted, right,
Speaker 3: I love that phrase. Tell me what you mean by that.
Speaker 1: Well, fear is like being shot from a cannon. I
Speaker 1: interviewed a lot of people who'd been through life threatening situations,
Speaker 1: and they experienced fear in those situations the way animals
Speaker 1: probably do. And that was an extremely intense bolt of
Speaker 1: alertness and energy that allowed them to react to the emergency,
Speaker 1: whether it was a car accident or being mugged or
Speaker 1: whatever it was. And then the feeling went away, the
Speaker 1: hormones dropped, it was gone once they were safe, unless
Speaker 1: they had lingering trauma. And this is where our humans
Speaker 1: can do things in our brains that are not good
Speaker 1: for us that most other animals cannot. And that is
Speaker 1: that the part of the brain that tells stories and
Speaker 1: thinks in logic and abstraction and time starts to tell
Speaker 1: a story about how there is danger out there waiting
Speaker 1: to get us. It's not in the room anymore, but
Speaker 1: it could be back any second, and what if this happened,
Speaker 1: and what if that happened? And just today, looking at
Speaker 1: my Instagram feed, it was like a thousand terrifying stories,
Speaker 1: legitimately terrifying. Yeah, And I was saying when I got
Speaker 1: on with you, if I'd known this would be happening
Speaker 1: when I wrote the book, I may have shaped it
Speaker 1: slightly differently, but you were reminding me that it's still true.
Speaker 1: I'm in a completely comfortable room, well fed and housed
Speaker 1: and healthy. There is nothing for me to be afraid
Speaker 1: of right now. So looking at my Instagram feed and
Speaker 1: painting a picture with my mind of a world that
Speaker 1: is very dangerous, pure anxiety, I just let myself f
Speaker 1: into the trap of doing that again. But at least
Speaker 1: now I know how to get out.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So let's talk about separating these two things, because yes,
Speaker 3: you and I were sort of extrapolating on this before
Speaker 3: we started, which is that for certain people today, Let's
Speaker 3: say you are an immigrant in the United States. Right now,
Speaker 3: it's a time that I think it's reasonable to have feasts.
Speaker 1: Absolutely and and well, here's the thing, that bolt of
Speaker 1: fear that fills the body with cortisol and adrenaline and everything.
Speaker 1: That's only for things that are physically here and now,
Speaker 1: and it's so that you can fight, flee, or do whatever.
Speaker 1: Then there is alertness and awareness, so I said, other
Speaker 1: animals don't have anxiety because you know, if your dog
Speaker 1: or cat is in a safe room, they relax, They
Speaker 1: save their energy. I've watched an antelope get charged by
Speaker 1: a lion and it took off running really fast, and
Speaker 1: the lion gave up and just stood there and panted,
Speaker 1: and the antelope stopped immediately and went back to grazing. Like,
Speaker 1: you don't waste any energy on that adrenaline response unless
Speaker 1: you absolutely have to. However, if you are in the
Speaker 1: African wilderness where I saw that, you'd better be very aware.
Speaker 1: If you're not aware and alert, then danger will come
Speaker 1: upon you and you might not have time to get away.
Speaker 1: Once I was with some friends and we were relaxing
Speaker 1: on this river bank in Africa, and I put my
Speaker 1: head down on the sand because I wanted to see
Speaker 1: if I could hear the footsteps of elephants. And I did,
Speaker 1: and I was like, you guys, there are elephants. And
Speaker 1: my friends were like, Marty, there are elephants. Get in
Speaker 1: the damn jeep. And I was like, but I couldn't
Speaker 1: hear their footsteps. That was stupid. That was just playing stupid.
Speaker 1: I wasn't afraid when I ran over and got in
Speaker 1: the jeep. But I was alert, and I was aware,
Speaker 1: and I had a plan. That jeep was parked there
Speaker 1: for a reason. We didn't go far from it, for
Speaker 1: a reason we knew the boundaries. In the social science sociology,
Speaker 1: they say that those who are not prepared to remember
Speaker 1: the past are doomed to repeat it. I think that's
Speaker 1: George Santeana. If we don't keep our wits about us now,
Speaker 1: danger could very well come upon us quickly. And yes,
Speaker 1: it is unfair and horrible that that risk is distributed equally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a scary time, and it's a time to not
Speaker 1: get anxious, because if you're anxious, you fritter away the
Speaker 1: energy that you could have being alert, prepared, engaging with
Speaker 1: your life and creatively trying to figure out what to do.
Speaker 3: Yes, And I think what you just said there is
Speaker 3: kind of the key to the game, because I always
Speaker 3: go back to and I reference it a lot on
Speaker 3: this show because it's one of the most foundational teachings
Speaker 3: I think that I know of, and it emanates of
Speaker 3: the serenity prayer right, the courage to change the things
Speaker 3: you can the acceptance. But there's a part of it
Speaker 3: where Stephen Covey took it for me a step further,
Speaker 3: and he talked about the circle of influence in the
Speaker 3: circle of concern, and the thing about it that I
Speaker 3: come back to again and again with all these situations
Speaker 3: was his point was, if you spend all of your
Speaker 3: time out in your circle of concern, worried, frightened, anxious, afraid,
Speaker 3: your circle of influence shrinks. But the more time that
Speaker 3: you put in your circle of influence, the more it grows.
Speaker 3: And I think the corollary of that is what you're
Speaker 3: talking about, which is this idea that being anxious doesn't
Speaker 3: prepare us better to deal with the world. It exhausts uses,
Speaker 3: it disheartens us, it discourages us, and so finding a
Speaker 3: way to work with it skillfully actually makes us safer.
Speaker 1: Yes, much.
Speaker 3: But the thing about anxiety, and you alluded to this
Speaker 3: in the beginning where you were like, oh, I think
Speaker 3: it's not this thing to move away from. Is it
Speaker 3: always convinces us that it's right? Yes, well, yes, I
Speaker 3: know anxiety is bad and I shouldn't be anxious except
Speaker 3: I really have a reason to be this time, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: And it's not that you don't, it's just that it's
Speaker 3: a profoundly not useful response.
Speaker 1: And it's based on such a weird factor of the
Speaker 1: human brain. And there's a neuroscientist named Ian McGilchrist who
Speaker 1: writes brilliantly about this. The left hemisphere of the brain
Speaker 1: is the one where most of the language and almost
Speaker 1: all of the anxiety are located. My friend Jill Bolty Taylor,
Speaker 1: who was a neuroanatomist who had a stroke, a left
Speaker 1: hemisphere stroke, she said that working only with her right
Speaker 1: hemisphere when she didn't have a left hemisphere, effectively there
Speaker 1: was no anxiety whatsoever, no time, no fear, just presence.
Speaker 1: So what Ian McGilchrist and a lot of other neural
Speaker 1: logists have written about is the part of the brain,
Speaker 1: the left hemisphere, that generates most or all of our anxiety.
Speaker 1: It has a characteristic called hemispatial neglect, which is so
Speaker 1: weird and I don't really know the reason for it.
Speaker 1: But people who have lost the right side of the
Speaker 1: brain so they're only working with their left side of
Speaker 1: the brain, the left side of the brain controls the
Speaker 1: right side of the body and vice versa. So someone
Speaker 1: only having a left hemisphere not only only works with
Speaker 1: their right and left leg, they actually don't believe their
Speaker 1: left arm and leg belong to them, or that they
Speaker 1: even exist. They don't shave the left sides of their faces,
Speaker 1: they don't look at people who are on their left.
Speaker 1: It's this weird thing the left hemisphere has of believing
Speaker 1: that it is the only thing in existence and that
Speaker 1: it is absolutely right and its stories are the only truth.
Speaker 1: So if you go online, you can see a lot
Speaker 1: of left hemispheres screaming at each other. I know the
Speaker 1: truth and your perspective does not matter, is not real.
Speaker 1: And that was a really amazing thing for me to
Speaker 1: study because it describes so much of what I see
Speaker 1: going on as people anxiously shout at each other. But
Speaker 1: it's a very bizarre kind of mental illness really, and
Speaker 1: and McGilchrist says, we act like people who have had
Speaker 1: a right hemisphere stroke, so it's very weird.
Speaker 3: We did a fascinating episode. It's been several years ago,
Speaker 3: but we had Jill Bolty Taylor on. We also had
Speaker 3: a friend of mine. He was originally like a coaching
Speaker 3: client and it just over the years of gon and
Speaker 3: know him who did indeed have a right brain injury
Speaker 3: really and still has a right brain injury, and his
Speaker 3: recovery has been all about how does he bring that
Speaker 3: right brain online?
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 3: You know, so he's kind of the opposite of Jill, right,
Speaker 3: he was Jill's opposite. And I love the way when
Speaker 3: you talk about this you do the standard disclaimer that
Speaker 3: I think is worth doing real quick, which is so
Speaker 3: that all the neuroscientists can settle down, which is that, look,
Speaker 3: of course, we are all using all parts of our brain.
Speaker 3: Brains connect, there's networks. It's not as simple as saying
Speaker 3: this part of the brain does that. And you know,
Speaker 3: the split brain experiments and all these different things show
Speaker 3: us there are very different ways. And I think that
Speaker 3: some people, I think, get all into like it's all
Speaker 3: should be all the right brain and it should be
Speaker 3: the whole brain. The problem is that we are oriented
Speaker 3: in one direction ninety eight percent of our time. It's
Speaker 3: sort of like when we talk about being present and
Speaker 3: people like, what are you just supposed to be present
Speaker 3: all the time? And I'm like, no, try it, Like,
Speaker 3: let's try and get the ratio to like ten percent,
Speaker 3: Like you know, like if I could get to ten
Speaker 3: percent present, I would take it, you know, like I
Speaker 3: just need to move in that direction. And I think
Speaker 3: it's the same thing, like we want to move in
Speaker 3: the direction of wholeness. And I wanted to talk about
Speaker 3: this because you recently talked about this very eloquently, and
Speaker 3: it's going to take me a second, but well, actually
Speaker 3: I'm gonna let you do it, because you were talking
Speaker 3: about the idea of breakdown and to break through, and
Speaker 3: then you went to talk about the double slit experiment.
Speaker 3: So kind of walk me through this, because I think
Speaker 3: this is really important.
Speaker 1: I have no memory of what you're talking about or
Speaker 1: what I was smoking, but I'm going to follow that lead,
Speaker 1: and you just tell me where I'm.
Speaker 3: Off from, all right, I'll fill in the gaps, all right.
Speaker 1: So I think that if you go long enough in
Speaker 1: a state of anxiety, which is a sort of false fear,
Speaker 1: you do things. You create things in your psychological life
Speaker 1: and also around you in relationships and the things you
Speaker 1: build in the world whatever. You make things that are
Speaker 1: inherently flawed because they are based on a limited version
Speaker 1: of reality. So people who go out and sort of
Speaker 1: build themselves a giant pyramid of power without any meaning
Speaker 1: in it, they're creating something out of anxiety that is
Speaker 1: destined to collapse, and so they will have breakdowns at
Speaker 1: some point. And I had that when I was at
Speaker 1: Harvard and I had a child with Down syndrome, and
Speaker 1: it broke down my whole concept of intellectual meritocracy and everything. Anyway,
Speaker 1: you're gonna you're gonna break down if you feed that
Speaker 1: wolf forever. So what happens then, though, is what the
Speaker 1: left hemisphere sees as fragmentation and letting go is actually
Speaker 1: gives space and permission for the meaning systems and the
Speaker 1: perceptions that we see more with our right hemispheres to
Speaker 1: come back into consciousness very fully, and if we can
Speaker 1: contextualize both together, we'll be living in a really interesting paradox.
Speaker 1: So when Jill had her stroke, her left brain went
Speaker 1: on and off for a while, and she was in
Speaker 1: the shower for part of that thinking that it would
Speaker 1: help this horrible headache she had. And she told me
Speaker 1: that when her left brain was active, she saw her
Speaker 1: hand against the tiles, and when her left brain went
Speaker 1: off duty, so to speak, what she saw was not
Speaker 1: hand in tiles, but two intermingling fields of energy. And
Speaker 1: both perceptions are accurate. So the double slit experiment pertains
Speaker 1: to this in that way. Back in nineteen twenty three,
Speaker 1: so it's been more than one hundred years ago, someone
Speaker 1: designed this experiment where if they shot little photons through
Speaker 1: a screen that had two slits in it, it would
Speaker 1: behave like water. If you threw two buckets of water
Speaker 1: through two slits, they would make a certain pattern where
Speaker 1: the water would disperse differently but then come back together
Speaker 1: after it went through the slits. Then when they tried
Speaker 1: to observe this process, what happened was completely different. The
Speaker 1: photons went through the two slits and created two perfectly
Speaker 1: vertical straight lines, as if you'd shot a number of
Speaker 1: bullets through a screen. So one interpretation of this, and
Speaker 1: has been the paradox of matter for as long as
Speaker 1: I've been alive, is somehow, when consciousness is not observing
Speaker 1: or we're not measuring, what is happening to particles. They're
Speaker 1: just waves of energy what Jill saw with only the
Speaker 1: right side of her brain. When we're observing them and
Speaker 1: controlling them, the probabilities of that energy cloud collapse into
Speaker 1: a point and it looks like solid matter, and it
Speaker 1: behaves like solid matter, and we are living in both
Speaker 1: realities all the time. And I think when you get
Speaker 1: back to a balanced brain what you're talking about even
Speaker 1: ten percent, if you get back into nature and you integrate,
Speaker 1: your right brain starts to wake up the way it
Speaker 1: does my mind does. When I go into nature, you
Speaker 1: begin to see a vast array of possibilities in reality
Speaker 1: instead of the narrow, tight, circumscribed, nasty little lives.
Speaker 4: That our culture prescribes for us.
Speaker 3: In my Zen training, we talk about this in the
Speaker 3: sense of the relative, in the absolute. The relative is
Speaker 3: A good example would be think of like my hand,
Speaker 3: my hand. I could just describe it as my hand,
Speaker 3: and it is one hundred percent in my hand, and
Speaker 3: it does things that hands do, and luckily it works well,
Speaker 3: and it's all that. That's the absolute view. It's the hand,
Speaker 3: it's a whole thing. There's another view that is one
Speaker 3: hundred percent true at the same time, which is that
Speaker 3: these are all separate fingers. Yes, and these fingers are
Speaker 3: not the same as each other. This finger is different
Speaker 3: from that finger. That's different from that finger. And so
Speaker 3: I think what the physics pointed to, what the spiritual
Speaker 3: tritions have pointed to, is that there are indeed, these
Speaker 3: two views of the world. One is that everything is
Speaker 3: one unitary, whole thing, and the other is that there's
Speaker 3: all this division, in separation and fear. And at least
Speaker 3: what Zen teaches is that the fully realized view is
Speaker 3: that you can see both at the same time. Now,
Speaker 3: most of us are not fully realized. But what I
Speaker 3: think we can do, and I'm going to tie this
Speaker 3: back to breakthrough and break down in a second, is
Speaker 3: I do think that even if we're not fully realized
Speaker 3: enough to see that all at the same time, we
Speaker 3: can learn to switch back and forth. Yeah, we can
Speaker 3: go and we're looking at it only this way. There's
Speaker 3: another way. Let me look over that way, right, and
Speaker 3: we can do that. And I think that as we
Speaker 3: look at the world today, or honestly our lives at
Speaker 3: any point, we can see all the things that are
Speaker 3: kind of wrong, the breakdowns that are going to happen,
Speaker 3: all of that, and we can see that there's a
Speaker 3: breakthrough that's possible, and that neither of those things is
Speaker 3: right or wrong to the other. It's the holding both
Speaker 3: or at least, as I said, being able to switch
Speaker 3: back and forth, at least try to switch back and forth.
Speaker 1: I think you can get to the point where you
Speaker 1: hold both things at once. I mean, I think that's
Speaker 1: where we are, where we're in flow, that famous psychological condition.
Speaker 1: It's a state of bliss. It's very difficult to sustain,
Speaker 1: but it's also fun. Can I use that word?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 1: I started having the experience in meditation. I don't even
Speaker 1: know if I should be talking about this, but when
Speaker 1: I was meditating a lot in the forest, it was
Speaker 1: quite common, like every day everything would pixelate and turn
Speaker 1: into these showers of light, and animals would come up
Speaker 1: to me, and it was very it was very woo woo,
Speaker 1: and which is why I don't talk about it much.
Speaker 1: But hour after hour after hour, I would sit in
Speaker 1: it and try. I knew that the brain is plastic
Speaker 1: and can be rewired, and I knew that my culture
Speaker 1: had wired my brain to believe in a very boring existence.
Speaker 1: Life is a bitch and then you die, Like why
Speaker 1: not get off now? But I knew that my brain
Speaker 1: was going outside my culture and even outside its ordinary
Speaker 1: view of material reality.
Speaker 5: And I remember going to a a meeting with my
Speaker 5: book agent and an editor during that time, when I
Speaker 5: was in this Manhattan office looking down at the City
Speaker 5: and they were talking about I.
Speaker 1: Said, I just don't want to kill more trees. Man,
Speaker 1: I don't think like it. If I'm going to write
Speaker 1: a book, it has to be worth the trees. And
Speaker 1: then I actually said something. I don't know what was
Speaker 1: being said, but I blurted without knowing I was going
Speaker 1: to say it, Oh, oh, you guys still think that's real.
Speaker 1: And I pointed out at New York City and what
Speaker 1: I meant was just the buildings. Of course it's real,
Speaker 1: but there was a blaze of energy, of the life,
Speaker 1: energy of consciousness of millions of humans, and I was
Speaker 1: like drunk on it. It was so huge. I kind
Speaker 1: of like living that way. And that's why I had
Speaker 1: to go back and write Beyond Anxiety, because after all
Speaker 1: that meditation, when I'd got to that place, there was
Speaker 1: no anxiety anymore. I don't know what you plan to
Speaker 1: talk about in this podcast, but I'm enjoying.
Speaker 3: We're good, although of just now, I just turned my
Speaker 3: book into the publisher about a month ago, and now
Speaker 3: I'm like, is.
Speaker 1: It worth the trees?
Speaker 3: You've set a new bar that I have to clear here.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sure he's going to be worth the trees. No, question. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think things are breaking down in large ways.
Speaker 1: You know, you look at climates, ecosystems, and then you
Speaker 1: look at the human systems all over the world, and
Speaker 1: you look at our local political systems and even things
Speaker 1: like supply chains and stuff, and the fear is that
Speaker 1: they will break down. And I think that that's a
Speaker 1: very legitimate fear. In fact, I think it's a near
Speaker 1: certainty at this point. I think we are out in
Speaker 1: the wilderness where we need to be alert. And I
Speaker 1: was trying to write about this eric and I was
Speaker 1: reading all these books on economics and they weren't tracking
Speaker 1: because there was no economic policy that matches what we're
Speaker 1: seeing today. And I was like, I don't want to
Speaker 1: read this. And then something inside me said, read about fungus,
Speaker 1: and I was like oh. And I started reading about
Speaker 1: the my ceial networks that exist under every forest ecosystem,
Speaker 1: that are made of fungi and roots and mosses and algae,
Speaker 1: and they are constantly conveying chemistry to each other, coordination, communication, water,
Speaker 1: and the whole forest knows itself through this my celial network.
Speaker 1: And I believe that there is something similar coming up.
Speaker 1: It's like a city has been shattered, and through the
Speaker 1: stones of the fallen buildings, a forest is rising that
Speaker 1: is made of a new way of living and allows
Speaker 1: us to be a new kind of human. And I
Speaker 1: think that's pretty cool.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think there is both those things. Like you said,
Speaker 3: there is breakdown and it's the sort of old back
Speaker 3: the cliche of the Chinese symbol of crisis and opportunity.
Speaker 3: Right before we dive back into the conversation, let me
Speaker 3: ask you something. What's one thing that has been holding
Speaker 3: you back lately? You know that it's there, You've tried
Speaker 3: to push past it, but somehow it keeps getting in
Speaker 3: the way. You're not alone in this, and I've identified
Speaker 3: six major saboteurs of self control, things like autopilot behavior,
Speaker 3: self doubt, emotional escapism that quietly derail our best intentions.
Speaker 3: But here's the good news. You can outsmart them. And
Speaker 3: I've put together a free guide to help you spot
Speaker 3: these hidden obstacles and give you simple, actionable strategies that
Speaker 3: you can use to regain control. Download the free guide
Speaker 3: now at oneufeed dot net slash ebook and take the
Speaker 3: first step towards getting back on track. So let's redirect
Speaker 3: here a little bit too specific ways of working with
Speaker 3: anxiety people who have anxiety, because it's a topic that
Speaker 3: always does well yes on the podcast. Right, So let's
Speaker 3: start with this phrase here, which you say, anxiety can't
Speaker 3: just be ended, it must be replaced. Yeah, what does
Speaker 3: that mean?
Speaker 1: That was the big smashing gong moment for me doing
Speaker 1: the research, because I was trying to learn a little
Speaker 1: about the neurobiology of anxiety and how it works. So
Speaker 1: I was looking at the left hemisphere and how the
Speaker 1: very ancient structures sound the alert, and then the storytelling
Speaker 1: structures that are more recently evolved tell a story about
Speaker 1: it that goes feeds back into the more primitive structures. Okay,
Speaker 1: so there's this anxiety spiral. But it started ringing a
Speaker 1: bell in my mind because a few years earlier I
Speaker 1: had done a course on creativity, and I had studied
Speaker 1: the neurobiology of creativity, and I realized that the sort
Speaker 1: of spiral I was seeing on the left hemisphere when
Speaker 1: we're anxious is what's happening in the right hemisphere when
Speaker 1: we're creative. And I knew from a huge amount of
Speaker 1: research that when we get anxious, it flatlines our creativity,
Speaker 1: and I thought, where's the research that says when we're
Speaker 1: creative it flatlines anxiety and there was none. But I
Speaker 1: started to think these two things may toggle that when
Speaker 1: our anxieties up, our creativity is down, and vice versa.
Speaker 1: This was during the pandemic, and I did experiments on
Speaker 1: myself to see if I could change my anxiety levels
Speaker 1: by turning on my creativity the right side of my
Speaker 1: brain deliberately, and oh my goodness, it worked like the
Speaker 1: best drug you can imagine. I would get up in
Speaker 1: the morning and just do things that I knew would
Speaker 1: activate the right hemisphere of my brain, and I went
Speaker 1: into absolute and total delight. It was like being a
Speaker 1: little kid again. I can't even describe the joy I felt,
Speaker 1: the liberation. So I got something going on here. So
Speaker 1: I started working with people on zoom calls, you know,
Speaker 1: one hundred people, three hundred, sometimes a thousand, and I
Speaker 1: would have them put in a number to represent their
Speaker 1: anxiety score, which was usually high because we were in lockdown,
Speaker 1: and then I'd have them do like mental exercise is
Speaker 1: that forced them to open up the right hemisphere of
Speaker 1: the brain into that creative mode. And then I'd say,
Speaker 1: now put in your anxiety scores again and it would
Speaker 1: be zero zero zero, zero zero. So I realized that
Speaker 1: it's not enough to calm down your anxiety and make
Speaker 1: it go away. If you don't turn on the creativity systems,
Speaker 1: the anxiety will creep back in, and culture will force
Speaker 1: it at you. And you know the cobra kitten paradox
Speaker 1: or tendency that'll send you into anxiety. But if you
Speaker 1: are in a creative space, if you're going through this
Speaker 1: sort of spiral that starts with curiosity and turns into
Speaker 1: connection and then into courage, compassion, a sense of meaning,
Speaker 1: all these different things open up when you're creative, and
Speaker 1: there is simply no space to be anxious. And I
Speaker 1: have to tell you that since that time, my life
Speaker 1: has been almost deliriously happy. It actually works.
Speaker 3: Yeah. When I read that line, anxiety can't just be ended,
Speaker 3: it must be replaced. The first thing that came to
Speaker 3: mind was addiction. You know my history as a recovery
Speaker 3: parent addict, and that's a deep belief I have about addiction.
Speaker 3: You can't just yank whatever ex substance is out of
Speaker 3: somebody's life and expect it to work. It's fulfilling a
Speaker 3: purpose in thereact. Now it's not doing his job very
Speaker 3: well anymore. Right, you know, it's actually wrecking the entire system.
Speaker 3: But you can't just yank it out. It has to
Speaker 3: be replaced. And when we look at behavior change, it's
Speaker 3: the exact same thing. If you're trying to get somebody
Speaker 3: to change a habit, there's a habit loop, and what
Speaker 3: you want to do is change the behavior in the middle.
Speaker 3: You can't just get rid of it. And so I
Speaker 3: thought a lot about that, and I certainly know that,
Speaker 3: you know, in my own life, the ability to be
Speaker 3: curious about something changes something from as aj Jacobs said
Speaker 3: to me once, which he got from Quincy Jones, you
Speaker 3: reframe it from a problem to a puzzle. Yeah right,
Speaker 3: you stop saying I have problems, I have puzzles, And
Speaker 3: immediately there's your shift. There's another thing that you do, though,
Speaker 3: before we get to creativity, and I think this is
Speaker 3: an important one, which is that you talk about the creature.
Speaker 3: So talk to me about what you mean by creature
Speaker 3: and why that's even like sort of a preliminary step
Speaker 3: even to the creativity side.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because if I go to somebody who's super anxious
Speaker 1: and I say creativity will fix that, you know, sing
Speaker 1: a song. No, it's not going to work. That's bullshit.
Speaker 1: Excuse my language. Yeah, but here's the thing. In our
Speaker 1: very left hemisphere dominated society, we see our brains as machines,
Speaker 1: and so an anxious brain is a broken machine. And
Speaker 1: you take chemistry, and you take analysis, which is like
Speaker 1: analysis literally means to chop something up to see how
Speaker 1: it works, and you, by god, fix that machine. But
Speaker 1: the anxious human brain is not a machine. It's a
Speaker 1: frightened animal. And if you approach an animal and say
Speaker 1: I'm going to chop you up or numb you with
Speaker 1: chemicals or bring you down, I want to end you.
Speaker 1: This is the way people talk about their anxiety, and
Speaker 1: they don't know their threat and a frightened animal. And
Speaker 1: so here's the interesting thing as well, psychiatrists and I
Speaker 1: love that they've studied this and that there are meds
Speaker 1: that can be helpful, and a big fan of all
Speaker 1: of that, but it's such elitist. Knowledge is so rare.
Speaker 1: But every single one of us, from little babies to
Speaker 1: old people and everyone in between, male, female, every gender
Speaker 1: knows inherently how to approach a frightened animal. We don't
Speaker 1: have to learn that in graduate school. The calming of
Speaker 1: anxiety is such an important survival skill that we are
Speaker 1: born with it all through our DNA. So I've asked
Speaker 1: so many people this and they always give the same response.
Speaker 1: So if you were to open the door and find
Speaker 1: a puppy, a bedraggled, tiny, freezing, shaking, grubby little puppy
Speaker 1: on your doorstep, and you made up your mind that
Speaker 1: you were going to help this animal, how would you
Speaker 1: approach it physically? How would you actually approach the animal.
Speaker 3: Very slowly, very calmly, little bit by little bit and yeah, quietly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, making reassuring sounds and all of that that calms
Speaker 1: the amigdala. And I was so struck by this when
Speaker 1: I read a book by an FBI hostage negotiator named
Speaker 1: Chris Voss, brilliant, brilliant hostage negotiator who went out and
Speaker 1: dealt with you know, sociopathic terrorists, murderers, And how did
Speaker 1: he do it exactly the way you just described, soft,
Speaker 1: low voice, reflecting their experience, so they know that they've
Speaker 1: been seen, You know that. He calls it the late night.
Speaker 6: DJ voice, Like yeah, okay, here's what I think you're saying.
Speaker 6: And the call it is like, yeah, I hear you.
Speaker 6: He even says, study Oprah because she can do that.
Speaker 6: So the first thing you.
Speaker 1: Do with your own anxiety is to realize that it
Speaker 1: is that frightened animal. Whether it's a tiny little puppy
Speaker 1: or a big scared horse, it's frightened and the only
Speaker 1: way it's going to calm down is if you approach
Speaker 1: it with compassion and with gentleness and with kindness. In fact,
Speaker 1: I came to see the Dalai Lama has said my
Speaker 1: religion is kindness, and I thought, oh, what a nice
Speaker 1: thing to say. Oh, I think that is a statement
Speaker 1: of incredible power. Kindness to the self is the balm
Speaker 1: that starts to soothe those jagged edges that we have
Speaker 1: inside us that we need medication or drugs or whatever
Speaker 1: we're trying. We're trying to soothe the pain, and the
Speaker 1: best soother for that pain is gentle, loving, compassionate energy
Speaker 1: giving that to yourself.
Speaker 3: I think it took me years to come to similar
Speaker 3: conclusions CBT and even a lot of the Buddhist inquiry methods.
Speaker 3: All these ways of working with our thoughts have been
Speaker 3: an enormous gift that we have, and my experience is
Speaker 3: when the emotional level rises above a certain point, none
Speaker 3: of that works at all. It doesn't work. And so
Speaker 3: the first step is and the analogy I use you're
Speaker 3: using frightened animal, but I think of like a child,
Speaker 3: Like once a three year old has gone into full tilt,
Speaker 3: you can't reason with a three year old at that point.
Speaker 3: You can't be like, now, look, it's good to share
Speaker 3: our toys to you know, you've got to get the
Speaker 3: kid to calm down then you have a chance of
Speaker 3: working with the stories. And I think it's the same
Speaker 3: with us, Like if we can't calm down, no amount
Speaker 3: of trying to come up with the right thoughts or
Speaker 3: the rational thoughts or the helpful thoughts. And like you said,
Speaker 3: kindness is kind of the way to do that, because
Speaker 3: when we're not kind to our we just keep turning
Speaker 3: the emotional temperature up. I mean that's what that's what
Speaker 3: harsh self criticism does, is it just keeps turning the
Speaker 3: emotional temperature up. You're going in the wrong direction. And
Speaker 3: so you get to it with the creativity. Creativity is
Speaker 3: a great way of redirecting the brain towards a learning
Speaker 3: different capability, but it can't do it when it's boiling.
Speaker 1: Yes, the soothing of the parts of ourselves that are
Speaker 1: in legitimate pain is so important. And I've done the
Speaker 1: same thing you did where I sat in meditation and
Speaker 1: I thought, okay, well, I can go past my fear
Speaker 1: and my sorrow and everything into no thingness right, And
Speaker 1: I did. I had a lot of mystical experiences, but
Speaker 1: I also realized, and partly being a mom does this
Speaker 1: for you? Teaches you this. It's something that Jack Cornfield,
Speaker 1: the great meditation teacher, talks about. He talked about teaching
Speaker 1: someone who broke down and started solving midway through this
Speaker 1: long meditation session, and the other students were really angry
Speaker 1: that he was disturbing things and everything, and he had
Speaker 1: been unable to sit still and hold at bay the
Speaker 1: memory of bearing his seven year old daughter who had died.
Speaker 1: The grief had hit him so hard, and so the
Speaker 1: other students didn't know this, and they were like, shut
Speaker 1: him up. And the meditation teacher came and took him
Speaker 1: to a different place and just sat there with his
Speaker 1: arm around the guy's shoulders and let him cry. And
Speaker 1: then that man became a meditation teacher, and he said,
Speaker 1: now I'm the one who takes people out of the
Speaker 1: group and holds them while they cry, and that is
Speaker 1: I think the most sacred work that any human being
Speaker 1: can do. And it is absolutely necessary to come out
Speaker 1: of our fear.
Speaker 3: So what are some techniques for soothing the creature?
Speaker 1: So it's very physical, okay, I mean it's so interesting
Speaker 1: reading Chris Voss's work because you realize that even when
Speaker 1: somebody's got a gun to some no one else's head,
Speaker 1: there's an unregulated three year old inside them, and they
Speaker 1: will respond to certain physical triggers, like being spoken too softly,
Speaker 1: being held. So if you put a blanket around yourself,
Speaker 1: if you're alone, if you have someone that you love
Speaker 1: around you, you can ask for a hug that will help.
Speaker 1: But you put a blanket around yourself and then you
Speaker 1: start to do something that I call kind internal self talk.
Speaker 1: So it's kist or kissed, which is a silly name,
Speaker 1: but I don't mind it anymore. I used to be
Speaker 1: embarrassed by it. But all you need to do is
Speaker 1: just make those kind sounds that you would offer to
Speaker 1: a three year old, or to a puppy or a
Speaker 1: man who was grieving an inconceivable loss. You just say
Speaker 1: things like I've got you, You're right here. You can
Speaker 1: feel exactly the way you're feeling. That's a really important thing.
Speaker 1: If you're anxious, don't say calm down, everything's fine. You
Speaker 1: stop and say are you afraid? I get it, I've
Speaker 1: been there, I'm here, I love you. Go ahead and
Speaker 1: feel it. There are no limits here. You're not wrong,
Speaker 1: you're not broken, you're not bad. I'm here for you,
Speaker 1: I love you. Just poor kindness out of the part
Speaker 1: of yourself that can access compassion. There's the line from
Speaker 1: this argonaut to Maharaj that I love that says, the
Speaker 1: mind is interested in what happens, while awareness is interested
Speaker 1: in the mind itself. The child is after the toy,
Speaker 1: but the mother watches the child, not the toy. So
Speaker 1: when you're in grief, you're holding an object the way
Speaker 1: a child would hold something painful, and it's agonizing, and
Speaker 1: you can get lost in that. But if you can
Speaker 1: access awareness simply by saying to yourself, I'm here for you,
Speaker 1: I've got you, we're all right in this moment, we're
Speaker 1: just here together, you become the awareness that is the
Speaker 1: mother force watching the mind in its agony, and you
Speaker 1: can start to locate yourself in the compassion instead of
Speaker 1: in the anguish, and that is a massive crossroads in
Speaker 1: your whole life.
Speaker 3: I know that a lot of people report that they
Speaker 3: find this very difficult after a lifetime with a really
Speaker 3: strong inner critic. Is just continuing to try and do
Speaker 3: your best. The path forward here.
Speaker 1: I would piggyback on other people's experience. Thank God. When
Speaker 1: I was in my twenties, I had group therapy because
Speaker 1: I was completely numb to my own pain. But when
Speaker 1: I saw other people in pain, my heart opened and
Speaker 1: I could see that there was nothing bad about them
Speaker 1: and that they deserved and needed comfort. I felt the
Speaker 1: impulse to offer it to them. That's why I became
Speaker 1: a self help author. So what I would do is,
Speaker 1: like these phones we have that feed us all the
Speaker 1: doom scrolling, they also feed us things like stories. I
Speaker 1: love things that just are images of compassion. Like there's
Speaker 1: a guy who goes and plays a pink guitar to
Speaker 1: different animals, and you know, the horses. He plays to
Speaker 1: them and they come and they kiss him on the
Speaker 1: face while he's playing. I saw a video of a
Speaker 1: cat giving birth behind a water heater in some city
Speaker 1: street and while she was giving birth, a pigeon built
Speaker 1: a nest around her to keep her safe. By the
Speaker 1: time she was nursing five kittens, there was a nest
Speaker 1: and this little pigeon running back and forth like that
Speaker 1: cat would have killed him. He didn't care. He was
Speaker 1: offering kindness. And when I see the kindness of the
Speaker 1: one consciousness that I think animates it all, it breaks
Speaker 1: through some of that human calcification in me and opens
Speaker 1: my heart a little wider. It's worth looking for those things.
Speaker 3: In the sort of calming the creature aspect you talk
Speaker 3: about using our senses. Yes, give us a practice there.
Speaker 1: All right, let's do it in real time. And I
Speaker 1: love doing this with large groups on Zoom because I
Speaker 1: have them put things in the chat. So we're going
Speaker 1: to list a few items and I'm going to write
Speaker 1: them down so I don't forget them. And then I'm
Speaker 1: going to ask you to use the right hemisphere of
Speaker 1: your brain to activate sensations in your memory and create
Speaker 1: a story. So tell me two things you love to taste.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, I've been eating a very particular diet lately,
Speaker 3: so pizza. Okay, I'm not sure this is going to
Speaker 3: be helpful. What else this may cause grief? Dark chocolate?
Speaker 1: Okay, dark?
Speaker 3: Can't have dark chocolate?
Speaker 1: Okay. Two things you love to hear?
Speaker 3: Oh boy, the sound of me playing my guitar.
Speaker 1: Hmm, okay, the guitar. What's another one?
Speaker 3: Birds?
Speaker 1: All right? So imagine yourself in a place where you
Speaker 1: can hear a lot of birds singing. You're playing your guitar.
Speaker 1: You got this delicious pizza with some dark chocolate there
Speaker 1: that you're munching on between songs. Now tell me two
Speaker 1: things you love to touch with your.
Speaker 3: Skin My dog and I guess my partner.
Speaker 1: Wonderful. So let's say your partner is leaning against you
Speaker 1: lovingly while you play the guitar. Your dog is right
Speaker 1: there on your feet. Maybe you got the chocolate, you got,
Speaker 1: the pizza, you got, the guitar, you got the birds.
Speaker 1: Now tell me two things that are not food that
Speaker 1: you love to smell.
Speaker 3: This is quite an experience I'm having here. Let's see
Speaker 3: what do I love to smell? I guess roses and
Speaker 3: coconut shampoo.
Speaker 1: Ooh, okay, So let's say your partners just had a
Speaker 1: shampoo with the coconut shampoo, and do you smell that
Speaker 1: wonderful scent drifting off clean hair. And you've got your dog,
Speaker 1: and you've got roses all around you. There's just a
Speaker 1: rose garden around you, and the birds are singing. Your
Speaker 1: guitar is going. You got the chocolate, you got the pizza. Now,
Speaker 1: tell me two things you love to see that you
Speaker 1: haven't mentioned yet.
Speaker 3: Two things that I love to see that I haven't
Speaker 3: mentioned yet. Well, any kind of tree. Really, trees are
Speaker 3: I'm a big fan of trees. And pictures of my son.
Speaker 1: Okay, so there are pictures of you. Wouldn't it be
Speaker 1: better to just have your son there?
Speaker 3: Well you didn't, or do you just like the pictures? Well, no,
Speaker 3: I'd rather have him there. But that you're just asking
Speaker 3: to do you love to see your son? I love
Speaker 3: to see my son. Okay, Yeah, there's no limits on this,
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 1: No, So your son is there, he's sharing the pizza
Speaker 1: and the chocolate. He's smiling, he's singing along with the guitar.
Speaker 1: Your partner's there with the coconut hair. You got your dog,
Speaker 1: the trees, you got the roses. You've got all these
Speaker 1: things at once. Now, really picture it. The taste of
Speaker 1: the pizza. Taste it the chocolate, hear the guitar, hear
Speaker 1: the birds, Feel the weight of your dog's head on
Speaker 1: your feet, feel the weight of your partner's shoulder against yours, like, really,
Speaker 1: really vividly create this scene. And now tell me how
Speaker 1: anxious you are when you're doing all that with your brain.
Speaker 3: Not anxious, You can't be.
Speaker 1: You literally can't do it because all those sensory things
Speaker 1: are handled on the right hemisphere. And that's what I
Speaker 1: meant about. We're in this abnormal environment because when we're
Speaker 1: out moving among plants, animals, and one another, people, we
Speaker 1: know all of that is activating our right hemispheres. It's
Speaker 1: not a chance in hell that we're going to go
Speaker 1: off into just left hemisphere thinking. But put us in
Speaker 1: an office under fluorescent lights with a boss glaring at
Speaker 1: us and money to be made, and all that stuff
Speaker 1: is gone, and we're living in a prison.
Speaker 3: And the point of the exercise, though, is that even
Speaker 3: if I can't manifest all those things around me imagining them, yes,
Speaker 3: I am able to shift the state of my brain.
Speaker 1: Yes, And we're always imagining things, and those are always
Speaker 1: shifting the state of our brains. So most of us think, okay,
Speaker 1: this is going to go on the way it has,
Speaker 1: or this is going to get worse. We tend to
Speaker 1: remember our worst heartbreaks and injuries because we want to
Speaker 1: guard against trauma. So we're continuously projecting an image of
Speaker 1: a world that is very dangerous and very cold and
Speaker 1: very harsh. That's an imagined reality for most of us
Speaker 1: in most moments of time. Most of us are pretty
Speaker 1: much okay most of the time, but we're not in
Speaker 1: the okay. We're in the imagined terror. When you just
Speaker 1: did that, you weren't imagining something as opposed to letting
Speaker 1: go of real life. You were simply replacing what you
Speaker 1: usually imagine with what I was telling you to imagine. Yep,
Speaker 1: They're equally valid, and I prefer the one that makes
Speaker 1: us feel better. I prefer to feed that wolf.
Speaker 3: Yep. Well, I think about that all the time, This
Speaker 3: idea that we are a fair portion of what we
Speaker 3: would call our reality we are making up.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I would write, I believe almost all
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean a lot of it. And so
Speaker 3: I always think about this idea, like, well, if I
Speaker 3: am sort of co creating so much of reality, whether
Speaker 3: that's what I'm imagining, whether that's the stories I'm telling,
Speaker 3: whether it's the meaning I'm giving things, then which version
Speaker 3: of that is most useful to me? You know which
Speaker 3: version is most useful. If back to the double slit experiment,
Speaker 3: light is both a particle and a wave, which it is.
Speaker 1: Well, everything is all matter is both particle and wave.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if that's the reality, then in any given moment,
Speaker 3: which interpretation is most useful for me? And obviously I
Speaker 3: think we can and say that it's probably more useful
Speaker 3: if I'm going to be living in an imaginary world.
Speaker 3: To be living in an imaginary world that calms me
Speaker 3: and soothes me and makes me better able to function
Speaker 3: in the world I'm going to then be in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And it gets even better
Speaker 1: than that, because what you imagine you tend to create.
Speaker 1: And you can believe in the New Age manifestation thing,
Speaker 1: or you can just believe in directed attention, You're not
Speaker 1: going to create something you've never imagined. So by going
Speaker 1: into those parts of imagined reality that feel positive, you
Speaker 1: actually come up with the ideas that will allow you
Speaker 1: to make the best life you can have, to make amazing,
Speaker 1: fabulous things instead of just repeating what you've been taught
Speaker 1: to imagine by your culture. So yeah, it's not just
Speaker 1: a useful thing to go into it. It is fundamentally
Speaker 1: formative of the rest of your life. That's what I
Speaker 1: mean by creativity. It's not about painting, singing, dance. Those
Speaker 1: are all wonderful, but it is the creation of your
Speaker 1: life itself that your whole brain wants you to focus on.
Speaker 1: That's what I believe. And there's no anxiety when you're
Speaker 1: doing it.
Speaker 3: So we've talked about anxiety, we've talked about curiosity, we've
Speaker 3: talked about creativity, and then the last part of your
Speaker 3: subtitle is and finding your life's purpose. So that seems
Speaker 3: like a big last thing to tag on the end
Speaker 3: there not that you haven't been talking about life purpose
Speaker 3: for a long long time and we are at the
Speaker 3: last several minutes of this conversation. But why did life's
Speaker 3: purpose come into the end of your search for how
Speaker 3: to work with anxiety?
Speaker 1: It's inevitable. So if you look at the two spirals
Speaker 1: that was that I talked about in the book, the
Speaker 1: anxiety spiral on the left side of the brain, it
Speaker 1: makes your life tighter and tinier, It makes you avoid
Speaker 1: more and more things. It pulls you inward and captures
Speaker 1: you on the right side. When you go through a
Speaker 1: creativity spiral, it starts with curiosity, and then it goes
Speaker 1: to connection, and then it goes to whole new types
Speaker 1: of synergies, putting together information in new ways, and then
Speaker 1: it goes back to curiosity and into more connection, and
Speaker 1: it creates a spiral of creativity that opens you up
Speaker 1: instead of shutting you down. So the more you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, look at what you're doing now, like this
Speaker 1: concept of feeding the right wolf and the healing you've
Speaker 1: done in your life, you couldn't help wanting to reach
Speaker 1: other people who were also potentially suffering the way you've suffered.
Speaker 1: So it was part of your creativity spiral to start
Speaker 1: to create this in order to fulfill your own longings,
Speaker 1: your own desires, your own joy. Frederick Moigner, the theologian, said,
Speaker 1: your mission in life is where your deep gladness and
Speaker 1: the world's deep hunger meat. And you can't help wanting
Speaker 1: to feed the hungry when there's this fullness of joy
Speaker 1: that is generated inside you. And the more you help
Speaker 1: other people, the more it feeds the joy. So you
Speaker 1: end up in a cycle similar to the one that
Speaker 1: has people trapped in their rooms shaking, and primly only
Speaker 1: the opposite effect. It's like a mirror opposite in the brain,
Speaker 1: and it has exactly the opposite effect. And if you
Speaker 1: keep pursuing that, if you keep creating on a day
Speaker 1: to day basis, what can I make with today? Doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be art? It could be a conversation, could
Speaker 1: be getting dressed in the morning. Whatever you create that
Speaker 1: becomes your right life. As it gets bigger and bigger
Speaker 1: and bigger, it becomes it morphs into your life's ultimate
Speaker 1: purpose and you don't have to go looking for it.
Speaker 1: It shows itself.
Speaker 3: Say that question again, what can I make today? Or
Speaker 3: with today?
Speaker 1: Yeah, once you've calmed yourself down, if you're anxious, you've
Speaker 1: been kind, and you've calmed yourself down, just look around
Speaker 1: and think what can I make? Instead of Oh my god,
Speaker 1: what are we going to do now? What are we
Speaker 1: going to make now? And that little shift between do
Speaker 1: and make is the difference between flight and creativity. So
Speaker 1: every moment of your day is something you can potentially make.
Speaker 1: And meditation is so beneficial for that because it shows
Speaker 1: you you are making things in your mind without moving
Speaker 1: at all, all the time.
Speaker 3: You literally can't not do it without extensive training. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and even then, I don't think you realize that your
Speaker 3: brain stops. You just relate to it completely differently.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and even so, you're making a different brain. And
Speaker 1: the ancients knew that that's what they were doing, even
Speaker 1: though they didn't use that language. Now we've been able
Speaker 1: to observe it with instruments, but they were creating with
Speaker 1: incredible intensity. Just sitting there.
Speaker 3: Before we wrap up, I want you to think about this.
Speaker 3: Have you ever ended the day feeling like your choices
Speaker 3: didn't quite match the person you wanted to be. Maybe
Speaker 3: it was autopilot mode or self doubt that made it
Speaker 3: harder to stick to your goals. And that's exactly why
Speaker 3: I created The Six Saboteurs of Self Control. It's a
Speaker 3: free guide to help you recognize the hidden patterns that
Speaker 3: hold you back and give you simple, effective strategies to
Speaker 3: break through them. If you're ready to take back control
Speaker 3: and start making lasting changes, download your copy now at
Speaker 3: oneufeed dot net slash ebook. Let's make those shifts happen
Speaker 3: starting today one you feed dot net slash ebook. I
Speaker 3: love that idea too, where you say that essentially what
Speaker 3: you're doing is your You aren't going out and necessarily
Speaker 3: tracking down your life's purpose, you are living your way
Speaker 3: into it. Yes, as I would say is that book
Speaker 3: is largely about little by little you live your way
Speaker 3: towards what that perpose.
Speaker 1: And every moment that you free yourself from unnecessary fear
Speaker 1: and anxiety and come back into the present moment and think, huh,
Speaker 1: what can I make now? Every moment you do that,
Speaker 1: your life's purpose is emerging like a spring that's been
Speaker 1: held down by a lot of rock, and every little
Speaker 1: bit you pull away, there's more flowing outward. It starts
Speaker 1: to water a whole garden that you can't even imagine.
Speaker 1: It's a function of nature. And in the end, as
Speaker 1: with all flow, you're just riding along going, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I can't believe this is happening through my life, through
Speaker 1: my body, because I'm not really doing it on purpose
Speaker 1: any more than I'm making rainbows up here in the sky.
Speaker 1: It's worth going for well.
Speaker 3: I think that is a beautiful place for us to
Speaker 3: wrap up. You and I are going to continue in
Speaker 3: the post show conversation where I want to ask you
Speaker 3: about what a sanity quilt is and who the kind
Speaker 3: Detective is?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, all.
Speaker 3: Right, So listeners if you'd like access to that post
Speaker 3: show conversation, as well as ad free episodes a special
Speaker 3: episode I do for you each week where I share
Speaker 3: a teaching, a song I love, and a poem I love.
Speaker 3: You can go to one you feed dot net slash
Speaker 3: join and become part of the community. Martha. Thank you
Speaker 3: as always, it's a real pleasure to have you.
Speaker 1: It's an honor. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for listening to the show. If
Speaker 3: you found this conversation helpful, inspiring or thought provoking, I'd
Speaker 3: love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing
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