0:00

Okay about this episode. One

0:02

of the things that I heard from many of you is that

0:04

being cooped up at home with family members

0:06

was challenging. Whether it was the kids driving

0:09

you crazy or arguments with your partners,

0:11

this was proving to be a difficult experience

0:14

for many of you. So this episode

0:16

is intended to offer some tips for dealing

0:18

with this. We brought back some wonderful

0:21

guests who are very generous with their time

0:23

on very short notice. This episode

0:25

features Susan Piver, Lodro

0:28

Wrinsler, Rosalind Wiseman,

0:30

Ralph de LaRosa, and yet another

0:33

visit from the always great Rick Hanson.

0:35

I hope this provides you with some useful

0:37

tools for navigating close quarters

0:40

with your loved ones. Welcome

0:50

to the one you feed throughout

0:52

time. Great tinkers have recognized the

0:54

importance of the thoughts we have quotes

0:56

like garbage in, garbage out,

0:59

or you are what you think ring

1:01

true, and yet for many of

1:03

us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower

1:05

us. We tend toward negativity, self

1:08

pity, jealousy, or fear.

1:11

We see what we don't have instead of what we

1:13

do. We think things that hold us

1:15

back and dampen our spirit. But

1:17

it's not just about thinking our

1:19

actions matter. It takes conscious,

1:22

consistent and creative effort to make

1:24

a life worth living. This podcast

1:26

is about how other people keep themselves moving

1:28

in the right direction, how they feed

1:31

their good wolf. First

1:46

up on this episode, we have Susan Piver,

1:48

a meditation teacher, speaker, and

1:51

New York Times bestselling author of

1:53

nine books. It's Susan. I

1:56

appreciate you coming back on and spending

1:58

a little bit of time with us. As I

2:00

mentioned you earlier, the subject of this episode

2:02

is really you know, a lot of people

2:04

are in very close quarters with people.

2:07

They're not getting any break from them, whether it be

2:09

their kids or their partner, and they're

2:11

finding their irritation is growing, their

2:14

finding that they feel bad, like they

2:16

should be doing better. I shouldn't feel

2:18

this way, And so we're just offering

2:20

listeners some different ideas on how to work

2:22

with this situation. Yeah, I can

2:25

completely appreciate the difficulty that so

2:27

many are facing in close quarters,

2:29

and routines are disturbed, and

2:31

time is no longer manageable in the

2:33

same ways. And so the first thing

2:35

I would say is, please don't get

2:37

upset with yourself for becoming irritated,

2:40

and please don't expect yourself to be

2:42

able to handle anything, you

2:45

know, the way you normally would, because

2:49

everything is upside down, and no

2:51

matter how well intentioned we are and how

2:53

much we love our families, which I'm sure people

2:56

do, we are all subject

2:58

right now to unbidden moods

3:01

and mood swings. So to have patience

3:03

with ourselves easier said than

3:05

done, I realize, and patients with others

3:08

also easier said than done, is

3:10

required right now, and

3:13

it's expected that people

3:15

would be uncomfortable, right.

3:18

Yeah. I think that's so important. I mean, I think

3:20

there's a couple of things in what you just said that came

3:22

to mind for me. One was, ay, you're

3:24

not alone, So you're not the only person out

3:26

there who's doing the fact I'm doing an episode about

3:28

it means you're not alone because enough

3:31

people I've heard it from that I've gone, oh, I need

3:33

to do an episode about that. And and

3:35

then secondly, like you said, I think

3:37

we are in very difficult times and

3:40

none of us knows how to cope with what

3:42

we're doing. I've I've you know, I've I've often

3:45

said it. You know it seems like a lot of people are working at

3:47

about capacity right now,

3:49

so it's just a hard time. It

3:52

is a hard time. And I at first, I'm

3:54

sure like many people were like, oh, I'll

3:56

write that book, and I'll redesign

3:58

my website and I'll learn to speak another language.

4:00

And I quickly realize that

4:03

those were terrible ideas and

4:05

that this is actually more of a chance

4:08

to experience at

4:10

least a little bit of liberation from the

4:12

tyranny of productivity.

4:15

I mean, when you're a parent, it's different.

4:17

There are things you must do and responsibilities

4:19

that you have that you cannot experiment with

4:21

ignoring. But instead

4:24

of trying to get things done and

4:26

make sure your kids homeschooling is

4:28

perfect, to work

4:31

with the people you love as

4:33

someone who's on their side, someone

4:35

who can maybe help experience

4:38

this together. Because we can't help

4:40

people solve this the problem of

4:42

pandemic, but we can, I believe,

4:45

grow closer through experiencing

4:48

the ups and downs together, um

4:51

as opposed to trying to perfect it and

4:53

ward it off. To feel

4:56

what your loved ones are feeling with them

4:59

is I think the most beneficial thing you

5:01

can do, certainly more beneficial

5:04

than trying to get them to feel something else or

5:07

solve the problem of difficult

5:09

feelings, which I know we want to do for people we love.

5:11

But it's really a chance to practice

5:14

being with each other. I love

5:16

that. That's great. Again, easier said than

5:18

done, because to be with each

5:20

other we have to have some willingness to be

5:22

with ourselves, and

5:24

the discomfort that you may be feeling, or

5:27

I may be feeling. That's hard to do. We

5:29

want some certainty, but of

5:31

course there is none. And in

5:34

wisdom traditions, as far as I understand,

5:36

no wisdom tradition says pandemics are awesome,

5:40

or you know, it's great when everything is upset. No,

5:42

no, No wisdom tradition says that. However,

5:45

many do say that when

5:47

you enter an experience where you

5:49

have no more game, where

5:52

your strategy is no longer apply,

5:56

no one says that's great, what that

5:58

feels good? But there is some sense

6:00

that there's an opportunity for something

6:03

fresh to enter, something

6:06

more deeply wise, to

6:08

arise in our minds because

6:11

they're not bound by convention

6:14

right now. Yep. That is

6:16

one of the great things about a lot of wisdom

6:18

traditions, as they do point us towards

6:21

this idea that growth

6:23

can come from difficulty, and actually modern

6:25

neuroscience does too with with post traumatic

6:27

growth, and so there's lots of indications

6:30

that this can be a vital

6:32

time for growth. And I

6:34

think a lot of people, though, we don't

6:36

want to turn that into, like you said, the tyranny

6:38

of productivity, Like okay, I

6:40

have to make this a time for growth. And the thing I

6:42

think is so interesting is that a lot of the work on

6:45

post traumatic growth seems to be the

6:47

way we grow through difficult situations

6:49

is not by learning another language or

6:51

by homeschooling our children perfectly, it's by

6:54

facing our own emotions and our thoughts

6:56

directly. That's very interesting and

6:58

that that makes a lot of sense to and

7:01

at the same time interestingly,

7:03

at least in my experience, it's

7:05

much more likely that that will happen, that you'll

7:07

be able to face what you feel and experience your

7:10

the truth of your inner world if

7:12

you don't make it a project like

7:15

I must conquer this and the you

7:18

know these are the three steps to do so

7:20

it's it requires more bravery and more

7:23

spaciousness than that two.

7:27

Actually, just approach yourself and your

7:29

experience with curiosity rather

7:32

than a punch list,

7:35

which is hard to do because that's, you know, a

7:37

culturally not encouraged.

7:40

When We're in a moment, you

7:42

know, and I'm feeling really irritated,

7:45

and I'm about to snap again at

7:47

say my kids, what are some sort

7:49

of on the spot things that we

7:52

can do to work with our

7:54

emotions right then, right in that moment

7:56

that are a little bit more skillful, a

7:58

little bit a little bit wiser ways

8:01

to work with those emotions as they're as

8:03

they're arising in the moment. I have too

8:05

many suggestions, all

8:07

three actually, now that I think of it. One is very,

8:10

very very simple. It may sound very trite, but try

8:13

it and see see what happens. And that

8:15

is to literally feel your

8:17

feet on the ground. If you're sitting up

8:20

in your feet, aren't a gonna put them on the ground, and

8:22

literally transfer your attention from

8:25

your anger, from your thoughts, from your irritation

8:27

to your feet and really just feel

8:30

yourself planted on the earth. I

8:33

can't really explain why that's helpful, but that's

8:35

just one suggestion of something you could try.

8:38

A second suggestion is, instead

8:40

of trying to stop feeling irritated, which

8:43

never ever ever works. That's like throwing

8:45

gasoline on the fire, because

8:47

that's an aggression. Aggression does

8:49

not defeat aggression ever in the history

8:51

of planet Earth as far as I can see.

8:54

But what does seem to be useful is to turn

8:56

towards what you feel and

8:59

allow yourself to feel it in

9:01

a particular way. It just might sound woo

9:03

woo, but it isn't. So we usually

9:06

when we say turn towards what you feel, what we do is

9:08

turn towards the story behind what

9:10

we feel. Well, it's because you said this and you did

9:12

that. I told you never do it again, and you did it anyway, it's

9:14

the ninth time today and raw.

9:17

You may be completely right, but that's

9:19

not the feeling. Those are the thoughts behind

9:21

the feeling. The feeling usually lives

9:23

in the body. It's you feel it in your chest,

9:25

or in your stomach, or your head, or wherever

9:28

it is you feel it. Some people feel it

9:30

in the environment rather than in their personal

9:32

body. But if you turn your attention

9:34

to the feeling and just sort of

9:36

go, oh, it doesn't feel

9:39

good, But let me experience

9:41

it separately from the story that

9:43

gave rise to it.

9:46

That introduces a little space, and

9:49

that space is everything when

9:51

it comes to expressing anger,

9:54

that spaces everything, that it's not a

9:56

mystery that people count to tend and so forth. It's

9:58

the same principle, just introduced space with

10:00

gentleness towards yourself, which means

10:03

you feel what you feel. And then the third

10:05

and final suggestion is you're just gonna

10:07

get irritated and you're gonna feel bad, and

10:10

you're going to apologize, and you're

10:12

gonna be human, and you

10:15

know, let yourself

10:17

off the hook, give yourself a

10:19

break and try your best to be kind

10:22

of course, but when

10:24

you lose your temper, come back to square

10:26

one. And square one is always I'm

10:28

here, I love you. I don't

10:30

want it to be this way. I want to be connected.

10:33

That's ground zero, so you can always just

10:35

come back to that. Wonderful. Those are three

10:37

great suggestions. Thank you so much.

10:40

My pleasure. Really was nice to talk with

10:42

you again, you too, I enjoyed it very much.

10:44

Good luck with everything, please be well. Thank you.

10:47

Next up we have loadro Rensler.

10:50

He's an author, Buddhist meditation

10:52

teacher and in addition to his books on

10:54

Buddhist meditation, also has a

10:56

weekly Huffington Post column heldro

10:59

Welcome. Thank you for having me. It's

11:01

always an honor to be here with

11:03

you. Yeah, it's been a while since we

11:06

had you on. I was saying to you when we were talking

11:08

before when you came on the show. Uh,

11:10

you came on very generously

11:13

to a unknown podcast at

11:15

the time that had just started, and I

11:18

was I was touched by your generosity and

11:20

doing that, So thank you. That's very

11:22

sweet of you. I I just remember having a

11:24

great time with you. I don't remember conversation,

11:28

and I'm glad it's been um

11:30

so well listen to and all of them that's still

11:32

out there. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. So

11:35

the topic here is people

11:37

are cooped up. They're staying at home. For

11:39

some people, there's a lot of people in a really

11:41

small space, and part of what they're wrestling

11:43

with is irritation and

11:45

frustration with whether it's their kids driving

11:48

them crazy, their partner driving

11:50

them crazy, and they're feeling irritated,

11:52

and they're feeling bad about feeling irritated,

11:55

like, oh jeez, you know, I really

11:57

wish I wasn't so grumpy with my kids.

11:59

So I'm just trying to offer people some

12:01

strategies for dealing with all of that a

12:03

little more skillfully. Yeah, I love that, And also

12:06

it reminds me of two things. The first thing is,

12:09

um, someone put out on Twitter the

12:11

other day. You know that my wife

12:13

and I have a fun game we played during quarantine.

12:15

It's called why do you do it that way? And there

12:17

are no winners. I

12:20

sort of love that because the

12:22

other day I was like taking I was cleaning the cat

12:25

litter and my wife was like, will

12:27

you dump it in here instead of over there?

12:29

And I was like are you kidding? You

12:31

know both about our meditation teachers,

12:33

and we had to laugh at ourselves and be like, look

12:36

at that. What a cliche. You

12:38

know. It is that sense of we're on top of each

12:40

other. There's not the same sort of level of

12:42

interaction with other people that we would normally have.

12:45

It feels like there's just there's

12:47

like breathing stale air at times. Um

12:49

So I understand why people would feel a

12:52

wide range of emotions, which is the second thing I want to mention

12:54

with what you just throw, It's

12:56

like, Okay, we've got frustration, we've got and we've

12:58

got guilt because we don't want to snapping at that

13:00

person over the cat litter, and you know, it's like we've

13:03

got it all, and it's very juicy

13:05

and human about this moment where we're

13:07

being face to face with our own

13:09

mind to a large degree, you know, I don't

13:11

think there's often many more distractions

13:14

for us to be like, Oh, I don't

13:16

wanna get annoyed with this person,

13:18

or I don't want to feel this way, so I'm going to go dot

13:21

insert your favorite habit, you know, have a drink,

13:23

bench, watch Netflix, you know, go spend time

13:25

with friends, go for a run, whatever. And

13:27

here it's like, oh, I'm I'm still in

13:29

the room with you, okay, right,

13:33

So I guess you know, in terms

13:35

of bringing on that meditation teacher guy, the

13:37

thing that you would not be surprised to hear is

13:40

the idea that the principle

13:42

of mindfulness is being present to what's currently

13:44

occurring without judgment. So

13:46

if we feel anger, it's

13:48

okay for us to feel anger. If we are

13:51

feeling shame or guilt, we've it's okay

13:53

for us to feel that. So I think there's some aspects

13:55

here that maybe the difference

13:58

in terms of like being in the space and

14:00

having these strong emotions but not causing

14:03

harm to ourselves or others. Might just come

14:05

down to can we feel what we feel without

14:08

judgment that we dropped the stories

14:10

that we tell ourselves. Oh my gosh, they always

14:12

leave things in the sync or whatever it is, drop

14:15

the story, feel the feeling, and

14:17

when we feel the feeling, and it could be those

14:20

three things. It could be guilt, It could be a shamed It could

14:22

be frustration. It could be sadness. There could

14:24

be any number of things. But we all of a sudden, we're saying, oh,

14:26

I'm actually getting to the heart of the matter instead of just reacting

14:29

all too often when we have strong

14:32

emotions. And don't get me wrong, right now, I

14:34

mean, we could talk about family on top of each other.

14:36

We could talk about NonStop new cycle. I know that

14:38

you've got a great series going right now, but

14:40

it seems like a lot of it is there's fear,

14:42

anxiety, panic at the door. What

14:45

are we gonna do? Are we're gonna hide? We're going

14:47

to go in the other room and pretend like it's not happening.

14:50

Are we going to open it up and say, come on in for

14:52

a bid? Come on, sit down across the

14:54

table from me. We're going to have a chat.

14:57

When our chat's done, i'm gonna ask you go.

15:00

And that's essentially what the meditation

15:02

techniques that I offer are. It's

15:04

not even a load rovint thing. It's like Buddhist

15:06

meditation generally. Can we just be with the

15:09

thing, you know, offer being

15:11

mindful of the breath, and that allows us to acknowledge

15:13

stories, come back to the breath. It's a great training

15:15

ground to let go of stories. But here, what

15:17

we're talking about today is that sense of sitting

15:20

across the table from anger or

15:22

fear and saying, okay, what's

15:25

your deal? You know, can I just feel

15:27

you without adding fuel to the fire? Right,

15:30

instead of adding that fuel, pouring gas

15:32

on top of the fire, with adding all of their stories about

15:34

why someone's wrong or what we should do, we're

15:36

just holding our hands up and feeling the warmth of the thing.

15:39

Yeah, feeling the warmth of the fire long

15:41

enough that we say, okay, if I don't add fuel. At some point,

15:43

it goes away, it dies out. The motion

15:45

moves through us, as opposed to getting

15:48

stuck in the body in the mind. That's such

15:50

a challenging practice

15:52

to drop the story

15:54

because it's like, all right, I'm gonna drop the story. Feel

15:56

the emotion. And I dropped the story

15:59

and I start to feel the emotion. Then boom,

16:01

there's the story again. I I

16:03

hang on a second, I'm dropping the story. Get go on. You

16:06

know this is just practice, right, you nail

16:08

that? Yeah, as usual. Um, it's

16:10

just like training the mind in any other

16:12

direction. I wanted to learn a new language,

16:15

we would sit there and we'd go over the same language

16:17

drills day and yeah, until we finally we're able to

16:19

feel fluent enough to speak it. Same

16:21

thing with this. It's like we might make mistakes along

16:24

the way. Mistakes are learned so incredibly human.

16:26

Don't know, it's made more than me. But

16:28

there is something about like, Okay, I've got

16:30

to learn from the thing, and I'm not going to act that way

16:32

again. It's it's actually, you know,

16:35

one way that we learned is saying, okay, I don't want

16:37

to snap at the person about the catlet or again, yeah,

16:40

good at all. And we learned that way

16:42

too, and it sort of gives us the impetus to say,

16:44

I've gotta trust something else and I've got to double down

16:46

in the practice of it all. Maybe two

16:49

quick ways to interrupt. That would

16:51

be one one of my

16:53

favorite things, particularly if you feel highly triggered

16:55

by an emotion and they are doing

16:58

the catlet or wrong or whatever it is,

17:00

is to just take three deep breaths in through the

17:02

nose out through the mouth. You need to do seven

17:04

to seven. But you understand, when we focus

17:06

for this this short period time on

17:09

something like that, it de excites the body

17:11

but also drops the storyline for that thirty

17:14

to sixty seconds, which is long enough of a gap for

17:16

us to say, Okay, what do I want to do here? How do I want

17:18

to right? And the other

17:20

thing. If we are also

17:22

says like playing out the same story over

17:24

and over and over again about the cat letter, at

17:28

some point we might want to just ask ourselves a simple question,

17:30

is this helpful? Which I love? And just

17:33

getting inquisite? We're like, oh, maybe the first

17:35

time on how I want to talk to them about it, that's

17:37

helpful. The second time I would find it the

17:39

fiftieth time this is no longer helpful. Right.

17:43

By becoming gently inquisitive with the stories

17:45

we tell ourselves, we might be able to drop them that much quicker.

17:48

Excellent, well, wonderful, Thank you so much

17:50

for those short bits of insight.

17:53

This is a big topic, but we've got, you

17:55

know, several very short conversations.

17:57

So thank you so much. And get

17:59

the Catlett all right, man, Yeah no, it really

18:02

only goes on the toilet from now on. I promise you, Eric

18:04

cat litter in the toilet, You're gonna

18:07

get emails from listeners. Somebody's gonna have a

18:09

problem with this. I

18:11

inte them. I'll have his email

18:13

in the show notes. Folks, thank

18:18

you so much, my pleasure, thanks for having me

18:20

back. Our

18:51

next guest is Rosalind Wiseman.

18:53

She's an educator, writer, and founder

18:56

of Cultures of Dignity. Two of Rosalind's

18:58

books are on the New York Time Times best seller

19:00

list. Hi, Rosalind, welcome to the show.

19:03

Hey, thanks for having me. I'm excited

19:05

to have you back on. And what we're going

19:07

to talk about today is we've

19:09

got a lot of people who are living

19:12

in close quarters and spending a lot of time

19:14

together and uh, it's

19:16

getting challenging for some people. Kids are driving

19:18

them crazy, partners irritating

19:21

them, um, and so I just wanted to get

19:23

some tips from you on how

19:25

to cope with this, or how can we deal with

19:27

these emotions? Well, first of all,

19:29

I think acknowledging that we're all in a hard

19:32

situation is really important. And

19:35

um, it's inevitable that people are going to get

19:37

on each other's nerves and you can still love people

19:39

and they can still irritate you to no end.

19:41

So both things are true. You love people

19:44

and you can't see on them at the same time. So I

19:46

think that's really important to remember. Um.

19:49

Second, as I think that when we

19:51

have um where things are

19:53

going to get heated, I mean, this happened to me yesterday

19:55

where with one of my kids, where things are going to get

19:57

heated and nothing is really gonna go well

20:00

in that moment. So in that moment

20:02

to be able to say, Okay, we've gotten

20:05

to a place where things are not going to get better

20:07

in this moment, so we need to like

20:09

we need to do something later when we've

20:12

calmed down. But beyond that,

20:14

you also have to prepare. So what I

20:16

do, especially with my children, UM

20:19

is in my big children, they're seventeen and nineteen,

20:21

but I really didn't matter

20:23

how old they are. I try and remember

20:25

and keep in my head before I'm going to go

20:27

talk to them a time or a place

20:30

or an age or something where I can just

20:32

feel so fondly of them before I go

20:34

and talk to them. So I think this would work

20:36

well even you know, it doesn't have to be your kid,

20:38

but like a partner, that you think of something

20:40

that they did that really made you feel

20:43

great, or that they really did something for

20:45

you, something positive, so that when you walk into

20:47

the meaning, you're not bringing with you all of this

20:49

hatred and resentment that people can see

20:51

on you the minute you walk in the door. And

20:54

I also just want to make a caveat

20:56

that this is really I'm

20:58

talking about basically functioning relationships

21:01

because many of us are, unfortunately

21:04

too many of us are in relationships that are

21:06

abusive, or people are in our

21:08

families or closest to us, related

21:10

or not are truly undermining our dignity.

21:13

And so that's not that's not

21:15

what I'm talking about. That's a different situation. But

21:17

I'm talking about in general, relationships

21:19

that are basically functional um

21:22

but still can have moments that are really hard or you

21:24

feel disrespected or undermined. Lots of

21:26

great points in there. I think the first

21:29

one is that to expect, like,

21:31

yes, we're going to feel this way and that

21:34

it's okay. And I was talking with somebody

21:36

yesterday who was just sort of she was

21:39

basically saying like, I shouldn't be irritated

21:42

with my children, I feel, And I'm like,

21:44

wait a second. Everybody gets everybody

21:47

gets irritated with their children, right,

21:50

If you're not going to get irritated at your children, who

21:52

in the world are you going to get irritated? Who

21:55

is more irritating and who knows how to get under

21:57

your skin better than your kids? I just think that's

21:59

so funny, And I think what you just did,

22:01

there's a great thing, like, yes, it's you

22:03

know, a sense of humor about a lot

22:05

of this can can really help us. Um,

22:07

So it's okay that we feel this way. It's normal.

22:10

And then I like that bringing better

22:12

memories to mind sort of before

22:14

we go into a situation, trying to cultivate

22:17

a little bit of a warmer heart. Yeah.

22:21

I try and remember it when I'm going into

22:23

conversations, and it can be hard. Yeah.

22:25

Yeah. Any other ideas. I

22:27

think that if you want to have a conversation with somebody,

22:29

you can call it like a family meeting. Like so,

22:32

say, for example, your kids aren't cleaning up. Maybe

22:34

somebody who's listening to this can relate to this. You come

22:36

downstairs in the morning and the kitchen is

22:38

racked like every day,

22:40

and

22:42

and you just can't you just you just lose

22:45

it, and um, that's not a good time to

22:47

have a family meeting. But later you

22:49

can say to people like, I'd like to be able to

22:51

have a meeting about this, And

22:53

people are gonna roll their eyes and they're gonna try and blow you

22:55

off. And that's sort of what in some ways, what being

22:57

a family is, but meaning that you

22:59

know, you can sort of take liberties sometimes that you don't

23:01

take with other people. And I want people

23:04

to think of, well, what's my goal and what is

23:06

the thing that I want to accomplish during this meeting,

23:08

Like what's the one thing I want to do about how

23:10

I show up during this meeting? So I can

23:12

be taken seriously, but also I can possibly

23:15

listen to other people. And

23:17

again, like I had this experience yesterday

23:20

where I really am in

23:22

a very large disagreement with my seventeen

23:25

year old son about the way he sees things

23:27

and the way I see something about And we had a pretty

23:29

big conflict yesterday, and

23:31

it gave me the opportunity to practice what I preach.

23:34

And I'm sitting there and I'm thinking to myself,

23:36

how in the world is this person not understanding

23:39

what I'm saying or doesn't give it any credit.

23:42

And I really do believe that listening

23:44

is being prepared to be changed by what you hear.

23:47

It doesn't mean that your opinion and your experience

23:49

doesn't matter, but if you do really need

23:51

to or I try really hard,

23:54

and I would ask people to think about that listening

23:56

is being prepared to be changed by what you hear. And

23:59

so, like last, the concrete

24:01

thing I could say is an extension of that is

24:03

that I think people should go around and

24:05

take turns, like one person speaking

24:08

for a minute or ninety seconds, and

24:10

the rule is that no one's going to interrupt

24:12

them, and everybody goes around

24:14

and then and says there one minute,

24:17

and then people can ask clarifying questions.

24:19

But you need to be clear about what a curious

24:21

clarifying question is versus like an obnoxious

24:23

question that questions you're intelligence so

24:26

right, and so I think that also needs to be

24:28

a level set in the very beginning of the questions

24:31

we will be asking are curious questions

24:33

like well, I don't like, for example, I don't understand

24:36

when you said this, or I really not getting it? Can you give

24:38

me more information about that is different than

24:40

the tone of voice of like why would you ever

24:42

think that you know you not emptying

24:45

the dishwasher? I mean that those kinds of tones

24:47

of voice, you're just making it worse and I can't

24:50

listen to it all. Yep, I love that

24:52

idea that listening is preparing

24:54

to be changed is so good. It

24:56

really points to even a

24:59

deeper witness. It's hard to practice.

25:03

It is hard to practice because we think we're right

25:06

right to substantively answer that. It's

25:08

that we think that our truth. We are so focused

25:11

on getting the other person to understand

25:13

what we are saying and to agree with us. Then

25:16

in the process of that that we stopped

25:18

listening to the other person. And again,

25:20

like yesterday, I so vehemently

25:23

was disagreeing with the person in my

25:25

family that I was having this conversation with, and

25:28

yet there was a moment in the conversation where

25:30

he said something that I actually got

25:33

his emotional truth. I got. I

25:35

got it like I I saw it. And as soon

25:37

as I saw it. I think what

25:39

happened is he saw that I saw it, and

25:41

then the conflict level went down. Yes,

25:44

yes, that's so. It's

25:46

amazing what happens within us when

25:48

we finally feel heard. Yes exactly,

25:51

you know, we can stop making at your racket

25:53

because we're like, oh, okay, I've been hurt,

25:56

you know. So yeah, well, thank you so much

25:58

for taking the time to come on and are a couple

26:00

of ideas with this. I appreciate it, and I appreciate

26:02

your your honesty and openness

26:05

about you know the fact that even people

26:07

who write about this stuff for a living have these challenges,

26:10

oh my gosh all the time. And

26:12

actually, just let me say that we I have

26:14

these things for parents now that um

26:16

I'd love for people to check out, and some of them are free,

26:18

some of them are for purchase that some are free,

26:21

and it's all about how do we treat each other with dignity

26:23

in these times in very concrete ways. And so

26:25

they're called tiny guides and therefore

26:28

parents to be able to look at and to

26:30

be able to help them, not some enormous resource

26:32

that's exhausting, and you know, just like, oh god,

26:34

I can't do one more things, but on tiny little

26:37

things that can help you through throughout your day. Great.

26:39

And where are those Cultures of Dignity

26:41

dot com website on my website? Perfect?

26:44

All right, thank you so much, thank you. Pleasure

26:46

to talk to you again. Absolutely. Hi,

27:06

Ralph, welcome back. Thank you so much.

27:09

It's great to be back. I'm happy to have

27:11

you back on the show. We are talking

27:13

today, as I mentioned to you earlier, about

27:16

you know, people who are spending a lot

27:19

of time together with their family members

27:21

or cooped up with other people and they're noticing some

27:23

irritation rising. Um,

27:25

and you know, just trying to give people some skills

27:28

for dealing with that irritation as well as

27:30

dealing in some cases with the bad

27:32

feelings they have about being irritated. So

27:35

just any ideas you have around that topic

27:37

in general. Yes, absolutely,

27:40

you know. I actually listened to a podcast recently

27:43

that was an interview with an entire

27:45

family who did a through hike of

27:48

uh not the Appalachian Trail, I believe

27:50

the Pacific Coast Trail, and

27:53

um, they had a seven year old kid

27:55

with them as they went on a

27:57

six month hike together, and every

27:59

day this kid would have a complete

28:02

meltdown um that would

28:04

last about ninety minutes, and

28:07

they came to call it uh cry

28:09

thirty. The family

28:12

came to call this moment cry thirty

28:14

where they just knew that that this kid was going

28:16

to have a meltdown and they were going to have

28:18

to endure it. They were going to have to stop, let go of

28:20

their plans and just like ride it out with

28:22

her. And they came to anticipate

28:24

it, and they even gave it this name right uh,

28:27

And that helped them to frame the

28:30

experience and to

28:32

help them really to befriend the experience and

28:34

to accept it. And it was

28:36

really interesting because then the kid got on

28:39

and she talked about her experience of

28:41

like having these daily meltdowns

28:43

but being supported by her family and

28:47

how over the course of these hikes

28:49

the freakouts got less and last she

28:52

got it down to where it was like

28:54

maybe fifteen twenty minutes and they started out

28:56

like a full hour and a half. And

28:58

so what I was thinking about when you invited

29:00

me onto the show is, you know, if

29:03

we can anticipate that we're going

29:05

to be irritated, if we can anticipate

29:07

that we are going to be frustrated or

29:09

that we're going to be twiggered or set off.

29:12

That is actually, in a way good

29:14

news because we can prepare for it.

29:17

Certainly, giving you know, situations

29:20

a name like that helps

29:22

it to become more concrete and less

29:24

of war fills. Certainly, any time

29:26

that we name an emotion, it changes

29:29

which side of our prefrontal cortex

29:32

is engaging with that emotional

29:34

experience. We actually moved

29:36

from what's called the avoidance systems to the approaching

29:39

systems, meaning that we're more likely to get

29:41

curious about this situation.

29:44

If we can just name it sad or

29:46

frustration or anger, we're

29:48

more likely to go into problem solving mode.

29:51

But if we know if we're living with

29:53

a roommate or a family member that has

29:55

been routinely getting

29:57

on our nerves, you know, we can frontload our

30:00

day. I mean, this is really where meditation

30:02

comes, uh in so handy,

30:05

right, we can frontload our day in anticipation

30:09

for such situations. You

30:11

know, maybe do a little extra meditation

30:13

or a little extra calming breath work

30:16

in your meditation practice to frontload

30:19

your day and really set yourself up. I

30:21

love that idea. I've made me think back

30:24

to a previous relationship of

30:26

mine, which I will not name, but

30:28

one in which the other person

30:30

had a certain behavior pattern, and

30:33

this is slightly different. But I started to ask

30:35

myself, like, why am I getting upset

30:37

that this keeps happening, Because of

30:40

course it keeps happening, Like it's like getting

30:42

mad that the sun is coming up every day.

30:44

Like at a certain point, if

30:46

I can just expect that this is

30:48

what's going to happen, I'm not going to

30:50

react so strongly to it. I'm just going to go,

30:53

well, yes, of course it's happening again, exactly.

30:56

And in that way, you were taking ownership

30:58

of your own emotions, right,

31:00

because there's a person's behavior

31:03

and that's theirs, and that's their stuff.

31:05

But you know, why are we taking their behavior

31:08

so personally unless it's coming

31:10

directly at us in some way, and even

31:12

then that's their stuff. You

31:15

know, there's there's that famous story of the

31:17

Buddha who gets accosted

31:19

by somebody while just walking

31:21

down the street for no reason, and he

31:23

tells them, hey, listen, you know you're somebody

31:25

that I've allowed into my house, but you

31:28

have a gift for me that I

31:30

don't accept. You you hang onto

31:32

your hostility and anger. I'm not going to accept

31:34

that today, And that's

31:37

that mental framing of it helped

31:39

him to let it go and not be perturbed

31:41

by somebody else's bush story.

31:45

What we're really in the realm of here

31:48

is talking about how we relate to our

31:50

emotions, right, that it's

31:52

never just irritation, you

31:55

know, it's it's for example, you

31:57

know, but it's irritation usually

31:59

plus my wanting

32:01

the irritation to go away, right,

32:04

And that's a certain type of relationships.

32:06

Like if I was in the presence

32:08

of a friend and wanted them to go away, it's a very

32:10

similar thing. You know. We

32:12

could also not care that we're irritated. We

32:14

could also be totally intoxicated and

32:16

taken over by the irritation, and in

32:19

that way, the irritation dictates everything

32:21

that we think, say and do next. But

32:23

we could also befriend the

32:26

irritation, feel it in our

32:28

bodies again, name it, and

32:31

hopefully that opens the doorway to getting

32:34

curious about it. One of the things

32:36

I love to do with clients is

32:38

ask them, you know, what are you feeling right now?

32:41

Where is it in your body? You

32:43

know? Is it tightness? Is

32:45

it heaviness, is it tingles

32:48

something else and maybe

32:51

displacing a compassionate hand there and

32:54

letting that part of you know that I'm

32:57

right here with you. That's sort

33:00

of inner attunement has

33:03

actually been shown by neuroscience.

33:05

Dan Seagle actually talks about this a lot. We

33:07

have almost the exact same neurological

33:10

response as if somebody

33:12

else was holding that space for us when

33:14

we just turned inside and let our emotions

33:17

know like I'm here with you, I hear you, I

33:19

feel you. This is really hard right now,

33:22

but before we even get to that moment, I

33:25

think just knowing that that moment it's

33:27

going to come and preparing for it

33:30

is is huge. If

33:32

I made this offer. One more little anecdote

33:35

here has actually come up with a

33:37

couple of clients who are at home with kids

33:39

right now and who have told me

33:41

that, you know, at this time every

33:43

day, that is just when I hit my

33:45

breaking point, and I just I

33:48

you know, no parent really wants to

33:50

be irritated with their kids, but I

33:52

think that it's natural to

33:54

be irritated with your kids there they're a lot

33:57

and that's okay, you know, um,

33:59

not at mint that you're irritating with your

34:01

kids. That's more of a problem, right, And

34:04

I'm a huge advocate. This is what I told

34:07

this is what I'm constantly actually telling clients

34:09

is just go to the bathroom.

34:11

Mom needs to go to the bathroom right now. Dad needs to go

34:13

to the bathroom right now. It's got the bathroom

34:16

for you know, twenty minutes, do a breathing

34:18

exercise in the bathroom, or you

34:21

know, just know that this is you know,

34:23

it's your cry thirty moment, right

34:26

even if it's that at

34:28

whatever time of the day it is, you

34:30

know, you know that it's going to come, and

34:33

so you can prepare well for it.

34:35

You can breathe, you can name

34:37

the emotion, you can relate to the emotion. You

34:40

can prepare yourself well with

34:42

a solid self care ritual in the morning.

34:45

We have so much agency

34:48

to impact our mental emotional

34:50

world, much more than than we think

34:52

that we do. Yep, well,

34:55

thank you. Those are two wonderful

34:57

ideas and very helpful. And I love

34:59

that for story. I think that's great. And

35:02

yeah, thank you so much for taking the time to come on.

35:04

It's such a pleasure to talk with you. Yeah, thank

35:06

you again for having me A short and sweet

35:09

yes, these are short and sweet. It's a we're

35:11

trying something different, but it seems to be going well.

35:13

So thank you. I love it. Thank you as well,

35:15

Eric, I hope to speak with you against doing matt

35:18

Okay. Last, and most

35:20

certainly not least, is Rick Hanson.

35:22

He's the founder of the well Spring Institute

35:24

for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom

35:27

and an affiliate of the Greater Good Science

35:29

Center at UC Berkeley. Rick

35:31

has also been an invited speaker at

35:33

Oxford, Stanford, and Harvard and

35:36

taught at meditation centers worldwide.

35:39

Rick, Welcome back. Eric. It's a

35:41

pleasure to be here. Uh,

35:43

just the shared interest in the fundamental

35:46

theme of your work, you know, the one you feed.

35:48

So I'm really glad to be having a

35:50

chance to talk with you again. Yeah, it's lovely

35:53

to have you. We've I think this is like twice

35:55

in twice in two weeks or something for

35:57

us, So that's good. I like it. I'm always

35:59

happy to see you. So this little

36:01

special episode is about dealing

36:03

with our families, mainly our loved

36:06

ones, and being cooped up and getting irritated

36:08

with the kids, are frustrated with the spouse and

36:10

and just how to deal with those emotions more

36:13

skillfully. I just love to get a

36:15

couple of ideas from you. Okay, that's

36:17

cool. Well, first, I'm living the dream

36:20

nightmare. Uh. My wife and

36:22

I were sheltering in place with our thirty two

36:24

year old son for about a month, and that kind

36:27

of kind of old for him, including not being

36:29

able to see his girlfriend. And then meanwhile,

36:31

as he moved to an apartment nearby,

36:34

so now we practice social distancing,

36:36

which broke my heart. I mean it's kind of months

36:38

probably before I give my son a hug again. I'm

36:41

I'm an older person, so I'm a little more thoughtful.

36:43

My wife's also older, so you know, we're attentive

36:45

there. Yeah. Meanwhile, our daughter

36:47

moved back home from Greenwich Village,

36:50

Manhattan, right in the middle of the Petro Petri

36:52

dish, and probably he

36:54

had the illness so far, so we're

36:56

all living together. I moved out of a bedroom.

36:59

I'm sleeping in the ring room. Now, you

37:01

know, it's happening, and

37:04

I think of it a little bit like we're separated

37:06

from people that we really like spending time

37:08

with and we're cooped up with people who

37:11

we love. But after a

37:13

while, it can kind of start to great,

37:16

right, so what to do about her? I'm

37:18

in a similar boat. My son has been

37:20

quarantined at home with his

37:22

mother. So um, he's back

37:24

from school, but quarantined at home with her. So

37:27

I see him when we go take like

37:29

six ft apart walks. But

37:31

but I miss him, you know, I wish

37:34

I was I wish I was seeing more of him. Yeah,

37:37

So lately I've been really reflecting, i'd say,

37:39

and probably a couple of really practical things.

37:43

The first is to remember

37:45

that they're scared too. They're

37:47

stressed to their

37:49

wolf of hate is poking

37:52

its head up, looking around, maybe for something

37:54

to bite. Also, they're

37:57

wolf of love inside is

37:59

longing for connection. In other

38:01

words, they're in this boat too, and

38:04

just that recognition maybe expressed

38:06

in the mind with soft thoughts like

38:08

like me, you fill

38:10

in the blank, like me. You two are stressed,

38:13

like me. You two misdoing

38:15

a lot of things you used to do. Like

38:18

me, You two are finding other people

38:20

annoying potentially myself.

38:24

Yes, that's always a useful, useful

38:27

thought. Yeah, common humanity in other words,

38:29

that's that really is great, And neurologically

38:31

in the brain, that sense of compassion and

38:33

common humanity and and shared

38:36

kinship, you know that we're in this storm

38:39

together. Does good things in

38:41

the brain. It releases oxytocin, which

38:43

tends to calm down activity and the alarm bell

38:46

of the brain, the amygdala. It also,

38:48

because it is emotionally rewarding,

38:51

helps buffer uh negative

38:53

emotions. Positive emotions buffer negative

38:55

emotions. So you know it neurologically,

38:58

it makes sense why it works, but fundamental it

39:00

just feels good to realize

39:02

you know, they're suffering. Also, that is

39:04

a great point, great reflection. I

39:07

have found that to be out of years

39:09

of studying Buddhism. I found that basic

39:12

idea that like everybody

39:14

I see wants to be happy, like me to

39:16

be have to been such a powerful

39:19

over the years, just transforming

39:21

the way I view the world. It's so powerful.

39:24

That's totally true. And there's a

39:26

second thing that I've I've been doing a lot myself,

39:28

and it relates to my latest book, Neuroderma,

39:31

because it's one of the methods that I explore

39:33

in it based on this really good

39:36

recent brain science. It's

39:38

simply that when we get

39:40

a sense of things as a whole, maybe

39:43

a sense of our body as a whole or

39:45

the room we're in as a whole, or

39:48

the whole situation we're in all together,

39:51

right, Or you move your eyes

39:53

out towards the horizon, so

39:55

you're kind of moving away from yourself.

39:58

But that naturally does is

40:00

it reduces taking things

40:02

so personally and getting

40:05

caught up in being attached

40:07

to various parts of things and

40:10

our attitudes about parts of

40:13

reality, and draws us into a

40:15

more impersonal, in a healthy way,

40:18

sense of reality altogether, the big

40:20

picture and including

40:22

just looking out to the horizon. It's very

40:24

effective. And when you do that, you

40:26

just notice within a breath or two or three,

40:29

you're getting calmer, you have more of

40:31

a sense of the big picture, You're less

40:33

caught up in your own opinion, you know, your

40:35

own righteousness, my precious,

40:38

you know all that stuff. It's a really effective

40:40

method. It's great. I love that idea.

40:43

I think that that speaks a lot to

40:45

Zen practice or just Buddhist practice in general,

40:48

which is yet tapping into this vastness

40:50

that's here. You know this. I

40:53

like the science there that's behind that, And I just always

40:56

thought like any time we could take a bigger

40:58

perspective, we don't there, right,

41:00

You know, bird's eye view, big

41:02

picture, you know, and you

41:05

just watch what happens there. You are typing

41:07

away in your computer irritated about

41:09

something. Then you say okay,

41:12

okay, and you just look out the window, right

41:15

you, or you look up at the sky, you see clouds.

41:17

Within ten seconds,

41:20

you start feeling better. It works.

41:22

Yeah, yep, yep, totally. That's

41:24

a that's another great one. You want a third one

41:27

out of my bag while we're

41:29

here, Yes, we've got you. Let's

41:31

get a third. And all of these are evidence

41:34

based, right, both the evidence

41:36

of direct practice, which you and I

41:38

share an interest in, as well

41:40

as scientific evidence. A

41:43

third simple go to is when we're

41:45

starting to feel stressed or

41:47

irritable or pressured,

41:50

you know, just not good. A

41:53

very useful thing to do is

41:55

for a breath, or more like

41:58

three breasts in a row. Tune

42:00

in to the internal sensations

42:02

of your body, so you can feel the error

42:05

coming in. You can feel your chest rising

42:07

and falling, You could feel your diaphragm

42:09

moving. These are internal sensations

42:11

distinct from saying touching the back of

42:14

your hand. And when we tune

42:16

in to our internal sensations,

42:19

we draw upon a part of the brain called the insula,

42:22

which is very involved with that, and

42:24

when that part of the brain gets active, it

42:27

quiets verbal activity, partly

42:30

in part because we're tuning into nonverbal sensations,

42:33

so you get the benefit there, quieting

42:35

the voice in the back of the head, the inner chatter,

42:38

you know, the inner narrator. And

42:40

also as we tune into our

42:42

body, it pulls us out of the

42:44

default mode network, which you know about

42:47

more kind of in the back of the midline of the cortex,

42:50

which is where we go when we're lost in thought,

42:52

and it's really where we go when we're ruminating,

42:55

right when we're caught up in negative rumination,

42:57

worries about the future, worries

42:59

about the we can't control, regretting

43:02

decisions we've made, resenting other

43:04

people that they're not being safe enough for

43:06

they're being too paranoid, or whatever. Our deal

43:08

is, right, the ruminator, you

43:11

know, the default mode networks like a big simulator

43:13

ruminator. The ruminator gets

43:16

quiet, a circuit breaker of sorts

43:18

flips when you tune into the internal

43:20

sensations of your body. And here too, you

43:22

can notice the benefits within half a minute.

43:25

I love it. Those are three great tips

43:27

and really helpful. So

43:29

as always, Rick, thank you so much for

43:32

for joining us and sharing

43:34

your wisdom. Eric, is a pleasure. And when

43:36

you give that nod to uh

43:38

you know the ancient teachings, the heart

43:40

of which is really a recognition of impermanence,

43:43

right, the radical transience of

43:45

experiences, the slower

43:47

but still transience of things like a pandemic.

43:51

You know, keeping in mind impermanence

43:53

practice you and I share is a really useful

43:55

thing these days, too, Amen to that. Sometimes

43:58

just remembering this too, you shall pass

44:01

is really good medicine. Yeah,

44:04

yes, thank you. It's a pleasure

44:06

to see you again. Good to see you too. Eric.

44:25

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