How to Find Joy Even When Life Is Hard | Diane Shiffer

In this episode, Diane Shiffer, author of The Smallest of Joys, discusses how to find joy even when life is hard. She shares how small moments of beauty have helped her navigate anxiety, depression, grief, and uncertainty, and why joy and heartbreak don’t have to cancel each other out. Diane also explains her simple “sit and stare” practice, the freedom of accepting a seven-out-of-ten life, and how changing what we pay attention to can change the way we experience our lives.

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Key Takeaways:

• How to recognize and preserve the small moments that bring you joy
• Why pain and beauty can exist at the same time without diminishing each other
• How the simple “sit and stare” practice can create moments of calm during a stressful day
• Why accepting a seven-out-of-ten life can lead to greater contentment
• How to discover what genuinely lifts you instead of relying on what should make you happy
• Why self-kindness is often more effective than self-criticism when trying to make lasting changes
• How shifting your attention can help you experience more beauty without denying life’s difficulties

DIANE SHIFFER is a retired teacher, mother of five, and the Internet’s favorite nana with over 2.5M followers across platforms with whom she shares the cozy, candid, and captivating posts for which she has become well known. She began her career working in day treatment programs for people with developmental disabilities. She also worked in preschools before becoming a special services coordinator for Head Start, a federal program that provides comprehensive services to low-income children and their families. She and her work have been featured in outlets including CBS Sunday Morning and The Washington Post.

Connect with Diane Shiffer:  Instagram | TikTok | YouTube

If you enjoyed this conversation with Diane Shiffer, you might also enjoy these other episodes:

Embracing the Messiness of Life: Finding Joy in Everyday Moments with Ross Gay

How to Turn Life’s Pain into a Path of Meaning and Joy with Danielle LaPorte

Finding Hope When Life Isn’t Okay and the Power of Micro Joys with Cyndie Spiegel

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Episode Transcript:

Diane Shiffer 00:00:00  Heartbreak doesn’t make beauty any less beautiful, and pain doesn’t make joy any less joyful. They all are their own thing. They all are their own wonderful thing and can be experienced, ironically, simultaneously.

Chris Forbes 00:00:26  Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts. We have quotes like garbage in, garbage out or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don’t strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don’t have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it’s not just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.

Eric Zimmer 00:01:11  My favorite chapter in Diane Shiffer’s new book is called seven out of ten. Her claim is that most of life is about a seven out of ten of what we may have hoped for.

Some days you’re at a ten. Some days you’re at a three. But seven is the honest average. And as Diane says, 7/10 of a pie is a lot of pie. I find this so true of my own life. I’ve joked before, if someone asked me how things are, I’m going to answer strong seven most of the time. But when I decide a seven should be a nine, I tend to end up at a five. Diane is a grandmother with millions of followers on Instagram, where she filmed small moments of beauty from her own home. Her book is the smallest of joys. I’m Eric Zimmer and this is the one you feed. Hi, Diane. Welcome to the show.

Diane Shiffer 00:02:02  Thank you for having me. I’m so happy to be here.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:05  I really love your Instagram. It’s easy for everybody, I think, to pick on social media because there’s so much junk out there. But when I started seeing what you were doing, I was like, this is the great part of the internet that we don’t talk about enough.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:20  And so we’re going to talk all about how you became sort of a internet sensation, as well as your new book, which is called The Smallest of Joys How to Create Your Own Magic. Let your best be enough and find contentment exactly as you are. But before we do that, we’ll start like we always do with the parable. And in the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you and your life, and in the work that you do.

Diane Shiffer 00:03:12  Well, first of all, what an incredible parable that is. I have to say that I was talking to a couple of people before coming on this program, and when I told them that the title of your podcast, The One You Feed, they instantly recognized the title as from that parable. Right? Because it’s such an incredible analogy for life and for our emotional health. Right? Right. And without really modeling my life after that parable, I think it is exactly the way I’ve lived my life. And I think for me, those two wolves are anxiety and contentment, right? And we can choose or I can choose. I’ve made choices in life over the years to feed my anxiety or to feed my contentment. And when I feed my anxiety, when I tell myself I’m not good enough, when I tell myself, you know, doom is right around the corner or nobody likes me, or whatever those anxiety words are. When those are the words I tell myself, then I become less effective, less happy, less everything, right? But when I tell myself, when I feed myself beauty and calm and self-affirmation and safety, then I become more.  I become more, and I become more capable and more, not just more content. I become more all the things I want to be, right?

Eric Zimmer 00:05:10  That’s a beautiful way of putting it. So most Instagram influencers are not. How would you refer to yourself? I hate calling people old who you know.

Diane Shiffer 00:05:20  I’m so fine with being called old.

Eric Zimmer 00:05:23  Okay, good. I mean, I’m old. You know.

Diane Shiffer 00:05:26  You’re but a youth, you’re but a youth.

Eric Zimmer 00:05:28  But a youth. Yes, yes. Not as young as you might think. How did this happen? Like what made you decide? Like, you know what? I’m going to go on Instagram and I’m going to put videos up. Like, what was the initial impetus? Why?

Diane Shiffer 00:05:42  Well, it’s funny because I had for years and years, like I was an early adopter of Instagram, right? But it was a very typical Instagram account, You know, pictures of my kids or, you know, my restaurant lunch or whatever. It was very, very typical.  And in 2020, I finally hit 1000 followers. Like I wasn’t in search of, you know, getting a lot of followers, but I get like 1000. So I posted a very, you know, like a self-deprecating post of like, wow, I hit four digits. I’ve hit the big time, you know, thanks to all the little people and, you know, that kind of a thing. And, just making fun of myself, right? And I have a friend, Tara, whose husband is a YouTuber. He has millions of followers on YouTube. And she said, I, she messaged me and she said, you know, I know you were making fun of yourself. But she said, I think you could do really well on social media. She said, I’m going to challenge you to go over on TikTok and start making videos. This was like in June. And she said, I’m going to challenge you to make a video every day for the summer. And I was sort of intrigued.

Diane Shiffer 00:07:00  So I said, well, I’m not going to do it every day. I said, I’ll do it five days a week. And so I went over and, I did my first video, which was, you know, the typical typical boomer. I had like a mason jar of lavender lemonade on my front porch. Right. And I think I got 200 views, 230 views, something. I was ecstatic. I thought that was amazing. Right. And then that night or that evening, I realized, oh my gosh, I said I was going to do one every day. I’ve got to put something else up in the morning. So my son was taking me out for ice cream. So I’m sitting in the front seat of his truck thinking, what am I going to put up tomorrow morning? And I came across a time lapse. Somebody had asked me to videotape me doing my hair so they could copy it, so I had accidentally shot it in time lapse. So it was this time lapse of me doing my hair.

Diane Shiffer 00:08:02  So I thought, oh, what the heck, I’ll do that, right? So I put that up and I did a voiceover sort of describing what I was doing and talk about poor quality video, right? You can hear the truck radio in the background. You can hear at the end, the screen door slamming when my son’s coming out of that house into the car. But I put it up and something about it, you know, you never know what is gonna, like, take that thing that that people are going to fall in love with, right? Or that people are going to whatever. And it got like millions of views. So that was kind of what started it. I got that boost. So like my second video and I had, you know, 50,000 followers right off the bat. So that’s kind of what started it. It’s been such a wonderful ride and it has not gone the way I expected it at all.

Eric Zimmer 00:08:59  So and so listeners, it would behoove you. I think that’s a great word that I don’t use nearly enough.  It would behoove you to go look Diane up on Instagram because again, when we think Instagram, we often think somebody who’s really putting on this like, I don’t know, beautiful presentation of life, and what you do is beautiful. Thank you to me. And again, I’m sensitive around these things. You look like what my grandma used to look like.

Diane Shiffer 00:09:30  Well thank you. Yes.

Eric Zimmer 00:09:32 Old-fashioned-ish. Right. So there’s an aesthetic to what you’re doing. And I just love that. You know, I’ve seen the little curler video, and it’s funny and it is strange what just hits people. You know what things just kind of jump out there, but it’s genuinely something that is just different. It’s a little it’s a little bit different, but you’ve gone on from there to continue to record lots of videos, and a real theme through all of them, to me, is there’s a certain homeness to it. You know, you’re in your home. It’s a lovely again, looks like my grandmother’s home. I mean, and I know that and I know you like that.

Diane Shiffer 00:10:14  Yes, very much.

Eric Zimmer 00:10:14  And there’s a kindness and a warmth that radiates through all of it. So once you started getting lots of followers like this, in what ways did that start to change? You did it.

Diane Shiffer 00:10:28  That’s such an interesting question. Nobody’s ever asked me that before. I don’t think it’s changed me. It’s affirmed to me. It is affirmed me greatly. I think one thing my daughter said to me was, I might cry when I say this, because I’ve always been such an oddball, you know, I’ve always been somebody on the outliers, right? But she said, I feel like you’re finally getting all the love that you always deserved. Oh, right.

Eric Zimmer 00:11:00  So sweet.

Diane Shiffer 00:11:01  Yeah. And that, I mean, it’s an incredible thing to be somebody that’s been always kind of on the outside to finally have people being. And it’s not like I ever really. I think part of being, the kind of oddness that I am is that I’m not I’ve never been like, like, approval seeking.

Diane Shiffer 00:11:26  I’ve just been who I am. Right? So it’s not like I’ve ever been out there, like questing for people to approve of me. But when people do approve of you and love you, it’s so affirming. It’s such a wonderful thing. And you know what it does when you get something that’s so meaningful. You want to give it out? All you want to do is give it back out to other people. That’s. That is the thing. You know, I just have to go back a little bit to when you said, like, you were so hesitant to say, like you look like my grandma and all that. There was one of my daughters. Of course, if you watch my Instagram, you’re familiar with my daughter Mylene, who has down syndrome, and one of her bus drivers once said to me, she goes, I just so admire you. You’re out there on the internet looking the way you do. You know? And it was just she meant it in the most complimentary way ever.

Diane Shiffer 00:12:29  Right. You know, but it was just. Yeah. So never feel. Never feel. You have to be parse your words or anything. Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:12:38  And that is part of the appeal is you are so unabashedly yourself. Yeah. And I really love what you said about it didn’t change you. It affirmed you. That would be my experience, too, as I started this podcast. I mean, like 12 years ago, and it started doing well and and lots of people started listening. Well, it has changed me in good ways that we could talk about. But I do think, yeah, there was an affirmation that, like the way I am, who I am, which I just try and be myself as much as I can, is good. Now, I wish that we didn’t need that affirmation, and ultimately trying to get that affirmation outside doesn’t last. If it doesn’t, if it’s not internal for at least for me, if it’s not internalized in some real way, it won’t last.

Eric Zimmer 00:13:23  Because in the world of social media and podcasts, it’s all like, well, yeah, but I mean, I’ve got a lot of listeners, but not that many. And what about. Right? You can get into that. You can get into that game. I think the ways that it has changed me for the better. And I wonder if this is true for you. When I have people on and I interview them. I’m having a conversation and I’m sharing my own life. I’m sharing the things that I do in my own life to be healthier and happier and take care of myself. And the podcast has been a remarkable accountability partner for me. Like, I felt like I have to walk the walk like I have to do all these things because I’m talking about them. And I just would never want to be hypocritical in that way. And so it turned out in a way I had never expected to nourish that better part of myself.

Diane Shiffer 00:14:16  I do agree with that. I, I 100% agree with that.  And the way I agree with that is like I do get recognized when I’m out and about and things like that. And so I’m always very aware now when I’m out and about that I am. And I would hope I always was pleasant to others and things like that. I would hope I always was, but now I am very acutely attuned to that. Right. So. Yeah. 

Eric Zimmer 00:14:47  I think there can be ways that having people watching can be good. There’s also countless ways it can be detrimental. And we’ve seen many of those with with many people. But I do think there is a way for it to be beneficial. All right. Let’s change directions to your book. Your book’s title is The Smallest of Joys. So you talk a lot about creating small joy. And I’ve said this before on the podcast, but I’m going to say it again, I don’t like that word.

Diane Shiffer 00:15:18  Which one? Joy.

Eric Zimmer 00:15:19  Joy. And I’ll tell you why. It’s because I do believe in ordinary moments, and I do believe in the little things, and I do believe in the ability for them to nourish us.  But the word joy feels too big for me. It feels like I’m like. But I don’t feel joyful over enjoying this cup of coffee. I appreciate it, I enjoy it. It always feels out of reach to me, but I think people use it differently.

Diane Shiffer 00:15:44  You know what? I think I’ve talked about that actually. And if I had my book handy, I would read the little Party where I said, I think Joy gets a bad rap. I think that we think joy is is a sign to those big moments, like the birth of a child or, you know, a wedding or that magical golden day when everything goes right. And I remember the video when I did the script with that in it, in the video was this moment when I was visiting the white House and Joe Biden, and I was looking at Joe Biden, and there was this glorious group of young girls, I’m going to cry just remembering it. It was such an incredible moment. There was this glorious group of young girls in front of me, and he was interacting with them, And they were so filled with joy interacting with him, and he was so filled with joy interacting with them.

Diane Shiffer 00:16:47  And one of them had lifted her hand up, and her hand came down, and his her hand came down just miraculously in my camera shot came down and it came down around his face like this. Right. And that’s what you think of when you think of joy, right? Right. But it’s not that joy is those tiny little flickers. Like, love isn’t just that incredible, passionate moment. Love is also when you see your kitten walking across the floor. It’s not just the moment when you see your firstborn child. It’s a gradient of things. And you know what is the most beautiful chain? The most beautiful chain has the tiniest, frailest little links. Right? And that is the most precious, valuable chain is the one that has the most frail, tiny little links. And I talk about that, about saving up those tiny little moments and stringing them around your neck, the little joy links. And it’s all joy. It’s all important. It’s all valuable. You know.

Eric Zimmer 00:18:28  I think for me, it’s that joy. I have it tied to a certain emotional state. And I’m a by nature lower mood kind of guy. So what I feel is a lot more like appreciation or a slight flicker of of. I mean, it’s enjoyment. It’s pleasure. It’s just that joy feels exalted to me. But I heard you say something. You define those moments in a different way. And you said it’s those moments that lift you up, even just a little bit. And that totally resonates with me, right? It’s the little moments that just lift me up just a little bit. All the little beauties. I’m a longtime Zen student, so we spend all kinds of time talking about the ordinary moments. You know, pay closer attention, pay closer attention. So I’m on board with that so much. And I really love your chain analogy. That’s a really beautiful way of thinking of it. You said that taking those moments, saving them, storing up and then connecting them. So let’s talk about how we do that. I think if anybody looks at their life, there are little moments of pleasure that get threaded throughout.  Again, they might be small. They might lift us up just a little bit. They might lift us up a lot. But there’s these little moments. How do we store them up? How do we save them?

Diane Shiffer 00:19:52  You know, I think that I come across as a very naturally joyous person, but in reality, I have battled anxiety and depression for my whole life. It’s been like a dark talk about the dark wolf, right? You know. Yeah. That has been something I’ve battled my whole life. And so a lot of the things that I talk about are coping mechanisms, and I didn’t have the benefit of therapy or anything like that. They’re just things I’ve like by the skin of my teeth, you know, come up with to enable me to live my life and to parent my children in a whole and healthy way and to, you know, like do my work and all those kind of things. And I’m a firm believer in little tangible objects, saving little receipts. And I have a little napkin, right, that has blueberry stains on it that are from a breakfast that I had with my children.

Diane Shiffer 00:21:00  That was a particularly wonderful little morning. Right? I have that little stained napkin that I’ve saved. I have, you know, of course I have baby teeth and, you know, all those kind of things. I have a ring, an old ring that’s broken, that’s meaningful to me. I have buttons from my grandmother’s cardigan that I can remember her holding me on her lap. And I can remember looking at those buttons, you know, and so those tangible Objects I save, you know? Yeah. And those remind me, and I’ve talked about those in the books. And I think times especially when we are really battling with anxiety or depression, having a little box. Right. Pulling that little napkin out and looking at the little blueberry stain and remembering that blueberry stain is real, that joy was real.

Eric Zimmer 00:22:05  So is that something you actually turn to when you’re having a difficult time? You will go to your little storehouse of moments and review them. Yes, I guess reviewing pictures would be a similar thing, right? If you know, if you have, if you have pictures of good times.

Diane Shiffer 00:22:20  And on our phones, I mean, yeah, who doesn’t have pictures on our phones that we love and I, you know, like I encourage people have a folder on your phone like even silly pictures, you know, silly pictures of your cat’s nose or whatever, right? And one thing I encourage people to do, too, is, you know what will lift you, right? And or if you don’t know, what will lift you. Start paying attention. Start paying attention to your emotional state. Because I do think sometimes we don’t even know. We become so entangled in grief or busyness or whatever that we don’t even know what will lift us, but start paying attention to what does lift you. You know, like my son, for example, he could care less about curtains blowing in the wind, right? But you know, a car, an antique car, you know, or a fender or the patina on an old machine gun, right. That’s going to lift him. So pay attention to those things that do lift you and store them up for yourself.

Eric Zimmer 00:23:31  I love that idea. I’ve shared this on the show a bunch of times, but I know for me, music is one of those things, you know? So I have a particular playlist that I can just go to when I’m struggling.

Diane Shiffer 00:23:45  What a great dea.

Eric Zimmer 00:23:46  I know what’s on it and I can go put it on. It’s funny that we’re talking about older things like that, because maybe it was. It’s probably from preparing for this conversation with you. Oh, it’s also because I’m moving soon to Atlanta. And I was thinking about tools, and I just had this moment where my grandfather’s toolbox flashed into my mind, and I kept it for so many years, and now I don’t know where it went, but I felt a twinge of regret. Like, where is that? Anyway, thinking of it, it was a beautiful. It was a beautiful old wood toolbox. I can still think of it.

Diane Shiffer 00:24:19  I still think of it. Yeah. And that’s the thing, is that, I mean, I do have those tangible things, but I also have thoughts, I have things I remember right.

Eric Zimmer 00:24:28  So another amazing thing that I did, and it was because someone sponsored the show. They’re called Aura Frames and they sponsored the show. It’s like a digital frame. They sent it to me and I decided to send it to my mother. And the thing that was great about it I’m not they’re not sponsoring the show currently was that I could add pictures to it remotely anytime.

Eric Zimmer 00:24:54  And so when my mother passed recently, I just noticed that when I was at her place, all I wanted to do was look at that thing. It’d be like I’m, I’m interacting with the people in the room, but part of my eye is just wandering off because I enjoyed it so much. So I brought hers home and now it sits there. And so it’s like the pictures that I love are just every time I walk by. There’s a different picture there. And this morning I was like, you know, there’s not enough of my Boston terrier Beans on there.

Eric Zimmer 00:25:21  So I went through my photo because she talked about bringing joy. She was a character. And so I went and put more of her on there. And, you know, there’s lots of pictures of my partner and I. So it’s a behavior science principal also, like put it in front of you, you know, make things more obvious. And so that’s a little thing that I do find gives me a fairly consistent little moment of happiness when I look at it and I see, you know, some good moment or some trip or someone I love or, you know.

Diane Shiffer 00:25:51  I think we have to do that. I mean, we we do have to remind ourselves constantly that we have wonderful things in our life, that we have had wonderful things, that we do have wonderful things, and that we will have wonderful things. Life is very quick to make us think doom and gloom, right?

Eric Zimmer 00:26:13  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I would say this is 90% of the work that I do ends up being right around this very idea, which is that, yes, life is really difficult and challenging, and, at the exact same time. There are moments of beauty and wonder. And to use your word, joy. It’s all kind of here. But it’s very easy to. At least for me and for a lot of people I know to get sort of fixated on the stuff that’s not good, because that just that naturally draws attention. It’s an effort. It’s an effort for me to pull it back. I mean, some people have a sunny disposition. I, I do not think I was given a sunny disposition. I heard Bono, the singer from U2, say the greatest inheritance is a sunny disposition. And I was like, I did not get that one. I mean, if you added both my parents dispositions together and multiply them by ten, we might get to partly cloudy.  Now, I would say through all the, you know, all the stuff I do, I’m in it.  I’d say partly cloudy. Mostly sunny.

Diane Shiffer 00:27:20  Anyway, you know one thing I would like to say regarding that if I could is I think that there’s this idea that we’re either going to be dealing with the negative or dealing with the positive, or we’re either going to be in a, you know, negative. But I think what this is one thing, I call it two streams, okay. And it is something that when my father was diagnosed, he was at one point diagnosed with cancer. And at that point they gave him like, you know, just a few months or even weeks. He ended up living for years after that. But of course, at that time we didn’t know that. And my children were very, very young. And so I found myself living in these two realities. Right. Living in this reality where my father was dying and living in this reality, where I had to be present for my tiny children. Right. And over the years, I think I have not mastered it, of course, but working closer at mastering that, of not denying the difficult and heartbreaking, but also living in the joyful or living in the contentment and beauty and not letting that over wash this and destroy it, but letting them be two currents in the same stream.

Eric Zimmer 00:29:12  Before we dive back into the conversation, let me ask you something. What’s one thing that has been holding you back lately? You know that it’s there. You’ve tried to push past it, but somehow it keeps getting in the way. You’re not alone in this, and I’ve identified six major saboteurs of self-control things like autopilot behavior, self-doubt, emotional escapism that quietly derail our best intentions. But here’s the good news you can outsmart them. And I’ve put together a free guide to help you spot these hidden obstacles and give you simple, actionable strategies that you can use to regain control. Download the free guide now at oneyoufeed.net/ebook and take the first step towards getting back on track. The Buddhists talk about the 10,000 joys and the 10,000 sorrows, right? And that says it so eloquently and poetically to me. I shared this in. It might be the newsletter that comes out later today, but I had a little bit of that just in like very close proximity. Last week I was featured on NPR, so there was this podcast I was on a Ted Radio Hour with NPR.

Eric Zimmer 00:30:23  I got the email showing that was there. That was a moment of happiness. Yeah. Then I opened my mail and it was my mother’s ashes. And then ten minutes later, my partner called me and said, we closed on the house in Atlanta. And I was like, whoa. Talk about, like, a little bit of whiplash. But that was what we’re talking about, just in sort of like very condensed moment. Yeah. That’s it. I mean, it’s all there. And I do think we tend to think of our moods as being monolithic in a sense. Like I’m sad, but I notice for myself, even in a day where I would say I was depressed. There’s other stuff in there. It’s not like this one constant. There’s more variation, I think, in what’s going on inside us than we’re often aware of.

Diane Shiffer 00:31:10  I agree 100%. I agree. So absolutely. And I think that that is how we can, hold on to our contentment and hold on to our. I hate to use the word joy again because.

Eric Zimmer 00:31:32  I know you. You use your word. You use your word. I was just sharing my, you know, my interpretation.

Diane Shiffer 00:31:40  No, I understand, and I want to honor what you’re saying, too. I, I think that the idea that we have all these different things going on and, and it’s like, why, why is it that we think that the bad things are so much more important, right? Like one of the things I’ve said before, and I remember the video and I remember all the things I was thinking when I did this video, it’s like heartbreak doesn’t make beauty any less beautiful, and pain doesn’t make joy any less joyful. They all are their own thing. They all are their own wonderful thing and can be experienced, ironically, simultaneously.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:26  So there’s a wonderful story in your book that I think reflects both this, both hardship and some goodness in the same story. And it’s about grocery money and potatoes. Would you tell us that story?

Diane Shiffer 00:32:37  Yes. Well, that was something that happened back when finances were very, very tight and we had our grocery money stolen out of my purse at a Special Olympics event, of all places.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:52  That is appalling.

Diane Shiffer 00:32:54  Isn’t it? And I mean, I had $108, right? And this is what kills me. It was in an envelope with my grocery list on one side and the meal plan on the other. I mean, who does that?

Eric Zimmer 00:33:07  You know, there’s a lot of crime I can I can look past and and be like, wow, okay. But that one that’s really that’s poor taste.

Diane Shiffer 00:33:14  Yeah. Yeah. Right, right. But anyway, so I had no money for groceries for me and my kids. But I did have, some vouchers for the, farmers market that I had gotten through, some kind of a promotion or something. So we went to the farmer’s market, and I’m thinking I had, I don’t know how much it was $25 or something.

Diane Shiffer 00:33:40  And I was thinking, what can I get for the most volume, right, to feed all these kids for a week? And I bought a huge, like £50 bag of potatoes. And so that’s what we ate all week long. And it turned out to be the most insanely joyful, weird week. We just sort of made a game out of it. We were like, we determined we were never going to eat potatoes the same way twice. We had, you know, potato pancakes and, you know, made potato casseroles out of little bits of odds and ends and a little bit of butter left a little bit of cheese left, some applesauce, you know, the spices and that kind of thing. And we made it through the week. We didn’t go hungry. And, you know, all these years later, probably 20 years later and the kids and I will still will still be sitting around, you know, like at Christmas or something. And one of the kids will say, remember potato week, remember potato week.

And we’ll all, you know, laugh and reminisce. And it was something that was so disastrous in that moment, you know, but it just somehow turned around and it was marvelous.

Eric Zimmer 00:35:01  It’s such a fun story. It’s obviously a terrible beginning, but it’s such a testament, I think, to kind of your spirit that you found a way to make that fun. And it is interesting how oftentimes things like that are what we actually remember a couple of years ago. My son and I were fortunate enough to go on a trip together before Christmas, and we were flying home and we got stuck in Minneapolis for like three days over Christmas. And at first I was like, oh no, we’re stuck in Minneapolis. And you know, what are we going to? You know, so we got a hotel. But I remember that Christmas better. I couldn’t tell you what I did two Christmases ago. I don’t know, I mean, but I remember that one so clearly. You know, it just turned out to be a really lovely moment because, like you with your family, it was something different that we were doing together.  That was mom probably doesn’t remember it as, as as good of a Christmas as I do. You know, I grant this didn’t come out evenly for everybody. 

Diane Shiffer 00:36:03  I think sometimes too when you remove the trappings that you so usually rely upon and you just are the bare bones, right? Like you and your son. Right? And us and our imaginations. And that’s where you know so much wonderful magic happens.

Eric Zimmer 00:36:26  Let’s change directions and go to a practice that you talk about very often, which is called sit and stare. Sounds like a Zen practice to me. It more or less is. Say more.

Diane Shiffer 00:36:43  Okay. Well, I will tell you that I started calling it and sit and stare time as a way of poking fun at myself, because when I was, a young mom, that was, I was in the evangelical Christian subculture, and that was all of us were supposed to be sitting and devoting all this time to our Bible study and prayer and all that kind of stuff, and we weren’t supposed to be staring blankly into space. We were supposed to be doing deep, you know, whatever. But I found myself sitting with my coffee and just taking a few moments to just stare, not basically staring blankly into space, but staring and finding something beautiful. Just some tiny thing. And and honestly, the tinier the better. Like, sometimes it would be a flower on the table. Sometimes it was a row of stitches on my sleeve. I remember the moment when I really realized how much the practice had come to mean to me, was a morning when I was, waiting in my car. I was on my way to work. I had stopped for a drive through cup of coffee, right? Going into getting ready to go into a job that was so difficult, so stressful. And I looked at my watch and I had like three minutes and I’m like, okay, well, I have three minutes before I need to be at my desk and I’m just going to sit here. And so that’s what I did. And I just like held on to that paper cup of coffee.

Diane Shiffer 00:38:26  And it was raining and I was just watching the raindrops on the windshield and how they joined together and separated and joined together and just let myself feel that moment of beauty and peace. And somehow that moment of beauty and peace sustained me. And, you know, it was only three minutes, right? And I went into work. And when I had those stressful moments that I knew would be coming and that did come, I was able to remember back to that moment and remember that moment of peace and remember seeing those raindrops and that moment, that little practice sustained me. That beauty sustained me through that day. And so I do that almost every morning, not every morning, but almost every morning. And that practice, that beauty, that quiet, the warmth. You know, I’ve come to realize now from talking to people that it actually is a form of meditation. I didn’t realize it at the time, you know.

Eric Zimmer 00:39:43  Yeah. As a long time practitioner of meditation, I was immediately about to start asking technique questions like, how long do you stare? And what do you do if your mind is wandering away from the thing that you’re looking at?

Diane Shiffer 00:39:57  I don’t know. I mean, I just the one thing I do and this is me, okay. This is a general practice of being Diane. Somebody asked me like, I walk laps in my driveway and somebody said, how many laps do you walk? How long do you walk? Do you, do you go fast? Do you know, do you pace yourself? And I said, I absolutely have no rules whatsoever because. Because if I have rules then it’s not fun anymore.

Eric Zimmer 00:40:30  Yeah. This is a really interesting thing that I spend a lot of time thinking about is exactly what you’re saying. Like, I do need some degree of structure for me, structure and rules that point me in the right direction and get me, get me going when I’m facing resistance. But at the same time, as you’re saying, that sometimes can make the thing less pleasant. I think about this a lot with playing guitar. Like I play guitar, I like to play guitar, and I try and have a rule of playing every day.  And where the hell am I going with this?

Diane Shiffer 00:41:07  But you know what? I just want to say this. You know what, though? You know what, though, Eric? It’s important that we allow ourselves to be ourselves.

Eric Zimmer 00:41:16  Yes. There it is.

Diane Shiffer 00:41:17  Okay. So you. If you need structure for it to be grounding or to be meaningful for you. There’s nothing wrong with that. If I need a lack of structure, there’s nothing wrong with that. Yeah, right.

Eric Zimmer 00:41:31  Yep. I agree, I think figuring out what works for us and you talk about that, you know, you talked about it earlier with like finding what gives you joy. You know, not what not what it seems like everybody says should be joyful, like a cup of coffee and nature and, you know, leaves like, I love you, bringing up your your son in like a car. I have a couple of friends. We all live in different places, and we’re all connected via like a text chain.

Eric Zimmer 00:41:56  And these guys love, love, love everything that’s happening with a space program. They will text each other videos. They just love it. I’m a little bit like I couldn’t. I mean, I don’t really care. I mean, but but for them, it’s like their thing and. Yeah. And I just, I just love that ability of like I, you know, I find my, find my things. Be yourself and. Yeah. And again you talk about that so much in the book. And I just think it’s so, so really important is you know knowing ourselves, knowing our tendencies, knowing what lifts us up, knowing what brings us down. And because nothing is nothing works for everybody.

Diane Shiffer 00:42:40  Exactly, exactly. And you know, for somebody who is sitting down with their coffee and setting a timer for five minutes, that would be perfect for them, right? For me sitting there and just doing it until I’m like, okay, I’m done. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And for some days, some days I’ll like, look at a flower and then I’ll look out the window and then I’ll. In other days I’ll be staring at my cuff for like, you know. And it’s okay. It’s all okay. It’s all fine. The purpose is. And I’ve talked about this before, like, and this is with in regards to not self-discipline, but like people talk about like being hard on yourself. Right. And I said well, what is your end goal. Like let’s say physical fitness. Just pull something out of the thing. What is your end goal? Is your end goal to become a better person, to become more physically fit? Or is your end goal to, you know, like beat yourself up, right? Right. So if your end goal is to punish yourself for not being self-disciplined and physically fit, then you know, beating yourself up is. That’s exactly right that you’re doing really well. Okay. But if your end goal is to actually Become a stronger, healthier person than being kind to yourself. Being. Understanding of your failings is actually going to get you there faster and more effectively. Right? Yep.

Eric Zimmer 00:44:18  So couldn’t agree more. I have a whole chapter in my book on that, that core idea. So my favorite part of the book I have to say is the chapter titled seven out of ten. And you say, my darling, the truth I’ve come to sit gently with is this most of life at its best is about a seven out of ten of what we’d hoped. And I love that so much because I believe that’s exactly true. I feel like if you ask me now, most times in my life, how I am or how my life is overall, that’s a seven. It’s a strong seven. Yeah. Which is good. You know, I mean, I just love that. I love the way you wrote about it. And you go on to say, you know, it’s not. You’re not always at a seven. Sometimes you’re at ten. Sometimes you’re at a three.  But I tend to agree that that is like my, my set point, that that feels right to me.

Diane Shiffer 00:45:15  It’s amazing. And like I said, you know, seven, 7/10 of a pie. That’s a lot of pie, right?

Eric Zimmer 00:45:21  That’s a fair amount of pie. Yes.

Diane Shiffer 00:45:22  Yeah, it’s a lot of pie.

Eric Zimmer 00:45:24  I love it. I’m going to I’m going to imagine a banana cream pie. Although my friend last night said he bought a Boston cream pie. And those are particularly good.

Diane Shiffer 00:45:33  To that I will tell you, that was my birthday cake when I was growing up.

Eric Zimmer 00:45:38  Boston cream pie.

Diane Shiffer 00:45:39  Boston cream pie. I’m a New England girl, so.

Eric Zimmer 00:45:42  I love that my birthday cake now has generally been my partner. Ginny makes a banana cream pie. That is unbelievable. It is. It is truly. I’m sure it’s the best I’ve ever had. So. All right, 7/10 of a pie is indeed good.

Diane Shiffer 00:45:57  Yes it is. And who could complain? Really? You know, having 9/10 or 10/10 all the time is is such an unrealistic standard.

Eric Zimmer 00:46:10  100%.

Diane Shiffer 00:46:11  And it’s not, you know, like the energy of all kinds that it would take to maintain a lifestyle that is nine out of ten. Ten out of ten is so exhausting, right? How could anyone live that way?

Eric Zimmer 00:46:26  It’s funny, though, because my brain seems to consistently be thinking about it needs to be more. You know, I feel like any situation my brain naturally is like, okay, here’s how we should get this. Here’s how we could bump this up. And setting that part of me down is, I mean, it’s an ongoing challenge. You know, it’s one of my best things. I think I can change things for the better, I know, but it’s also the part of me. I’m like, you, like, just please, you know, not everything needs improved or certainly can even be improved. And oftentimes if I’m at a seven out of ten and I’m thinking that I need to be at a nine out of ten before long, I’m at a five out of ten, right? Right.

Eric Zimmer 00:47:13  You know, it just doesn’t work.

Diane Shiffer 00:47:14  I think that goes back to what we talked about at the very beginning contentment and anxiety. And there’s you throw ambition in there too. Right. And you know, ambition is a good thing. But if ambition is in there in between anxiety and contentment and are you going to let ambition take away from contentment and feed anxiety? It’s it’s a hard thing.

Eric Zimmer 00:47:41  It most certainly is.

Diane Shiffer 00:47:43  Yeah. I have never been a particularly ambitious person. My fault lies in lack of ambition, I think.

Eric Zimmer 00:47:52  So we all have our defaults.

Diane Shiffer 00:47:55  We do. We. We all have our weak areas. Indeed.

Eric Zimmer 00:48:00  In your book, you know. Along similar lines, you say that sometimes we don’t need a change of circumstance. We just need a change of focus.

Diane Shiffer 00:48:08  One thing I think I’ve learned as I’ve grown older is that if we focus our attention on the things that cause us anxiety, like as we discussed at the beginning about the two wolves, if we pay attention to that anxious wolf, that’s the one that grows, that’s the one that grows stronger. But if we instead give our energy and our attention to the wolf, that is contentment and beauty, that those are the things that grow in our life, and those are the things that give us strength. And our life becomes more beautiful, more filled with contentment. And then not only do we have lives that are filled with contentment and beauty, but we are able to share those things with other people, with the people that are around us. And I mean, what can make a life better than that? Than to give those things to other people? Right.

Eric Zimmer 00:49:16  Before we wrap up, I want you to think about this. Have you ever ended the day feeling like your choices didn’t quite match the person you wanted to be? Maybe it was autopilot mode or self-doubt that made it harder to stick to your goals. And that’s exactly why I created The Six Saboteurs of Self-control. It’s a free guide to help you recognize the hidden patterns that hold you back and give you simple, effective strategies to break through them.   If you’re ready to take back control and start making lasting changes. Download your copy now at oneyoufeed.net/ebook. Let’s make those shifts happen starting today when you get a book. 

What a beautiful way for us to wrap up, Diane, thank you so much for coming on. This has been a real pleasure and I encourage everybody to check out your Instagram. We will have links in the show notes. We’ll even link to your TikTok. But I don’t know much about TikTok, so.

Diane Shiffer 00:50:16  Thank you so much for having me. This was an absolute joy.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:20  Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I’d love for you to share it with a friend. Share it from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don’t have a big budget, and I’m certainly not a celebrity. But we have something even better. And that’s you just hit the share button on your podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it.  Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom. One episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the One You Feed community.