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Embracing Imperfection: The Path to True Self Acceptance with La Sarmiento

In this episode, Tim Shriver discusses the power of dignity and building an inclusive world. Tim shares his experiences working with the Special Olympics, highlighting how the athletes embody resilience and hope, often thriving in the face of adversity. He also delves into the significance of inclusivity and how it can transform our communities, encouraging us to see the inherent dignity in every individual, regardless of their abilities or circumstances.

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Key Takeaways:

Explore the benefits of building inclusive communities for a happier and more connected society
Embrace the impact of intellectual disabilities on families and gain a deeper understanding of their experiences
Navigate mental health and addiction recovery with valuable insights and support for a more empathetic approach
Learn effective strategies for fostering dignity and respect, creating a more inclusive and supportive environment for all
Understand the crucial role of relationships in personal happiness and well-being, and how to nurture them within your community

Connect with Tim Shriver: Instagram | X

Tim Shriver is the host of Need a Lift?; Chairman of Special Olympics International, made up of 6 million athletes, families and volunteers; and co-founder of UNITE – which promotes national unity and solidarity across differences. Tim began his career as an educator and co-founded the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), which is leading the global movement for social and emotional learning (SEL). Tim has produced 6 films, is the author of the New York Times bestseller Fully Alive – Discovering What Matters Most, and co-editor of The Call to Unite: Voices of Hope and Awakening.

If you enjoyed this episode with Tim Shriver, check out these other episodes:

How Relationships Shape Our Happiness and Well-Being with Robert Waldinger

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Episode Transcript:

Eric Zimmer:

Hi, Tim.Welcome to the show.

Tim Shriver:

Thank you. Delighted to be with you and your wolves.

Eric Zimmer:

Yes, it’s a real pleasure to talk to you. As I dove deeper into your work, I liked you and your ideas more and more and more. So that’s nice. Thank you. I think there’s a lot of great stuff to talk about here, but we’ll start in the way we normally do, which is with 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 think about it for a second. 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 know what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

Tim Shriver:

Well, I mean, first of all, I think it’s a beautiful story. It has this quality of intimacy when you think about this child and this elder. wondering and thinking about these questions together, the goodness and the evil in the world, how we prevail, how we make decisions. So I think it’s a beautiful parable. You know, when I’ve heard it in recent years, Eric, it’s always reminded me that the good wolf within us feels malnourished. You know, I’ve worked in the Special Olympics movement for basically all my life in one way or another, as a teacher for a good part of my life. I feel like I’ve had a front row seat for people who are just doing beautiful work, just giving of themselves, full of compassion, zeal, energy, a determination to change the world in the most hopeful and positive of ways. So I feel like the good wolf in me has been fed at a banquet. But I look around me and I talk to people, my children, you know, my friends, people I know and care about, they feel so discouraged and so beaten down by the incoming messages in the culture. And I think that, you know, if I were extending this metaphor, I would say the evil wolf, the bad wolf is stuffed to being engorged almost with food, overfed. And the good wolf is sort of over in the corner, starving for food. and I think it’s just an invitation for us to remember that we have the good wolf within us and that feeding it both for ourselves and for others is a recipe for changing the course of the future.

Eric Zimmer:

I love that idea and I think there is a real need for all of us to think about what we are feeding ourselves. I mean, obviously food is one thing, but if you are what you eat, in many ways you are what you see and what’s around you. And if we don’t make an effort to look for the hopeful side of things, we don’t see it. It’s tacked on to like a two minute thing at the end of 58 minutes of Awful news. Yeah, you get the two-minute cute little story and I’ve just found for myself I have to actively seek that out on a regular basis in order to feed that good wolf because it’s not what shows up at the top Yeah

Tim Shriver:

Yeah, I think, you know, you’re pointing out this issue of, like, managing our incoming. Like, we manage our calories, or we manage our salt, or our sugar, or we manage our fats, or our meats, or whatever. We think of that sort of intuitively. This is what we do for ourselves, this is what we do for our children. Don’t eat too much of this, don’t drink too much of that. But we’re increasingly in a moment in which we are coming to realize we also have to manage what we consume at the level of our minds and our hearts. We have to actually manage it the same way we’d manage calories or the same way we’d manage fats or sugars or whatever. I met this teacher once and she said, you know, she’s so positive, so positive, bubbly, enthusiastic, she’s a special education teacher. And I said to her, how do you stay so positive? She said, I get up in the morning, I think she said at 4.30. and I have changed the last year, I don’t let anything into my heart, into my mind, through my phone that feels like a toxin to me. I do my exercise, I read my meditations and prayers, things like that. I don’t let anything else in. And most of us don’t think that way. We think, well, let’s click on this and let’s click on that. We don’t think it’s poisoning us.

Eric Zimmer:

Yeah, I think that’s a key point.

Tim Shriver:

But it is poisoning us. Yeah, yeah. So we’ve got a whole new challenge like, you know, that food pyramid that we used to see in schools and stuff with, you know, this much carbohydrates, this much fat, this much all. We need kind of like a consumptive pyramid of how much toxic news we can tolerate. like maybe it’s good to know some of what’s going on in the world of politics where people are yelling at each other or some of what’s going on in the world of culture where people are yelling at each other or maybe we need to know some of that but if you eat too much of that it’s going to poison you Yep, yep. You need something that’s going to remind you that there is peace within you, that there is a wholeness out there in the world, that there are people filled with compassion. That’s what I’m trying to do with Needle Lift, you know, which is the podcast I’ve been working on the last several months. I’m way behind you but trying to… We are aligned you know and what I’m looking for is people who are looking at situations where there’s pain and bringing purpose, looking at situations where there’s despair and bringing hope, looking at situations where it looks like things are overwhelming but these are people who are finding the inner resolve like their inner life is strong You know, they found a spiritual kind of or an emotional foundation that allows them to navigate hard incoming negativity and transform it into something hopeful and, you know, devoid of hatred and contempt. So look, I agree with you. We need a lot more attention. to what we consume through our minds and our hearts and we need a lot more attention to identifying those people who will inspire our minds and our hearts to believe in ourselves and in each other

Eric Zimmer:

Yeah, you say somewhere, I found myself over and over again, confused by the strength of people who seem to be experiencing both pain and triumph at the same time. Say more about that.

Tim Shriver:

Well, I think one of the riddles of people who have the good wolf well fed is that it often gets fed in moments of turmoil, in moments of stress. You know, there’s the line from one of the spiritual teachers that says, you know, no great spiritual progress is made in times of comfort. So many of the people I’ve had the privilege, I meet moms, for instance, who have children, let’s say with Down syndrome, who were told from the moment of birth, your child doesn’t matter, your child’s going to be a burden, your child isn’t going to be able to make you proud, you know, to have friends, to go to school, to learn to read. All these messages that these moms and dads are bombarded with. And I come into their lives and what do I see? I see this huge smile. I see this endless optimism. I see this kind of almost invulnerable hopefulness. Like nothing can beat them up. Like you can’t say anything. that would sap their spirit of its energy. So I wonder, you know, that’s a strength that’s been refined in a fire of difficult and challenging and often oppositional energy, but they come out of it many times. Not everybody, you know, and many of us have these experiences in small ways and we get bitter and angry. Yeah. And resentful. And we all do that. I mean, I do it. When we see people who have had these experiences and come out of them seemingly with hearts that are almost exploding with love, I think to myself, man, I’m in the presence of greatness, you know? And it may just be a mom with a eight-year-old little daughter who has, you know, Down syndrome bringing her to a 50-meter dash. But man, does she radiate the kind of energy I want to live in.

Eric Zimmer:

It’s so interesting what you’re describing there. And I’ve heard you talk elsewhere about, you know, one of the things that the Special Olympics doing all that work taught you was to look at people from a different angle than the one we societally normally do. And this is a crazy analogy I’m about to make here. But you’re talking about a type of capacity in these people that reminds me of when I think about octopuses. And what I mean by that is they have an intelligence that is so different than ours, that is just fascinating. They can make their skin change color instantly. I mean, I could go on and on about them. But it’s this completely different type of capacity. And I think what I’ve gotten from your work is learning to see that capacity in people who may have intellectual disabilities or other types. There’s a quality of heart that can be found there that a lot of us that are going about our day and are, you know, quote unquote, more normal may not have as much of.

Tim Shriver:

Yeah, I think, you know, the irony, I think you’re right. I’m not sure about how octopuses work, so I’m going to let your listeners figure out how to Google that and figure out where that lands, but it makes sense to me. And this is often the tragedy that people who have experienced great rejection develop the capacity for great acceptance. You know, what is the unique gift that people with intellectual differences often bring to the table? It’s their common experience of having been often rejected. And again, that’s not a good thing. That’s a horrible thing. But it often has nurtured in them a kind of a tenderness and a gentleness and openness to people that they themselves might not have experienced from others, but that they themselves develop and give back to others. You know, there’s a quality in people, Eric, I would say, you know, in the good wolf side of us, maybe we all have it at some level, that just kind of doesn’t hold our weaknesses against us. I would say if you go to a Special Olympics event, there’s not a single person in the crowd who hasn’t, at some level, discriminated against people with intellectual disability. I mean, literally everybody there has in the back and sometimes very much in the front of their mind thought, these people are too different. I can’t hire them. I don’t want to live with them. I don’t want one of them in my family. I don’t want them in my child’s school. Maybe they haven’t said it, but they felt it. And the Special Olympics athletes know they felt it. And yet when they look across at the person in the stands or the person serving water at the finish line or the person helping to line the field. our athletes just seem to have the capacity to go, I get it, but I’m still okay with you. I’m still gonna give you a hug.

Tim Shriver:

And that’s not restricted to people with intellectual challenges for sure. But that quality, which I’ve learned in many ways from them, I believe to be central to feeding the good wolf. I believe that when the good wolf is fed, that part of us has this big capacity, not to give people a pass when they make mistakes, but to kind of let them know that we get it. To maybe challenge them if they’ve made a mistake to change without hatred, without acrimony, without name calling, without brutality. that a vicious need to humiliate the mistake maker, but instead kind of with a open welcoming sense in which here we are now, this is your chance to grow through what you’ve just done or experienced. You know, we’re really good as a culture at calling people out. We’re not so good at helping people change and finding ways to rehabilitate people. We’re good at throwing people in jail. Yeah, you know, emotional jail, physical jail. We’re not very good. At helping people come back in my view. No, this special olympics community is really good at helping people rehabilitate

Eric Zimmer:

So they would get over an idiotic podcast host comparing octopuses I mean, it’s a good point. Is it? No, but I mean seriously, let’s just say Let’s just say you’d made a big blunder here. You’d said something and you thought, oh my god, I can’t believe I said that. Which, of course, everyone has done that, right? I’ve done it a million times. I’m like, oh no, I can’t believe I just said that. You know, at Special Olympics, everybody’s like, yeah, don’t worry about it.

Eric Zimmer:

Yeah, yeah.

Tim Shriver:

And you know, there’s a part of us that says, no, no, no, Eric made that terrible analogy to an octopus. He should be shown the door and should be told and you should boycott his boat, you know, whatever, make it up. You know, our athletes are like, yeah, I don’t think that’s going to work.

Tim Shriver:

I’m not showing anybody the door. I’m inviting him to the next race.

Eric Zimmer:

Yeah, it’s beautiful. And I think you’re talking about how we have a tendency to call people out. I think that there’s a thing that’s been on my mind a lot ever since Me Too really got a lot of energy. But in general, and we talk about cancel culture, and I’ve thought about this since I was 25 years old and, you know, starting to recover from heroin addiction, is like, what does it mean to get a second chance? When do we say, hey, that person learned from that thing and they changed. They, like you said, they’re rehabilitated in some way. And I think that’s a really tricky thing to figure out in individuals in our own lives, but also culturally, it’s very difficult to sort that out. And I think as a culture, we’re starting to reckon with that idea a little bit more.

Tim Shriver:

Yeah. I mean, I’m curious because you’ve went through the experiences you’ve gone through and the addiction and the bottoming out, I guess is the right way to put it, but use your own language experiences. Do you think those experiences have made you more capable of seeing through the weaknesses in others or beyond the mistakes that others make? If I made some terrible gaffe on this show, are you, because of your own journey, less likely than you might otherwise have been to say, God, that guy was a disaster. Jesus, get him away from me.

Eric Zimmer:

I think so. You know, we all have natural capacities. And I think one of my natural capacities is to try and see and understand the backstory of anyone and the belief that what people do makes sense to them. So why does that make sense to them? But absolutely, if you screw up as often as I screwed up and, you know, was a homeless criminal, you know, and just an active outright criminal to fund my habit. Yeah, I think there is a certain amount of learning to forgive yourself, which I think translates into learning to forgive others or at least understand others. So yeah, I think, I don’t know who I’d be if I didn’t have that experience, because it’s unfathomable. But yes, I think that is an element that is really important is when we can forgive ourselves. I think there’s some synergy and it goes both directions. You know, learning to be kinder to ourselves helps us be kinder to others. But I also think learning to be kinder to others can sometimes translate back to learning to be kinder to ourselves. It’s a bidirectional relationship, I think.

Tim Shriver:

Yeah. One of the guests on Need A Lift just recorded a conversation with her yesterday, Reverend Angel Kyoto Williams, you know, who grew up, had a dad as a firefighter, wonderful parent, but also had a caregiver who abused her as a little girl. And she was describing to me the experience of the abuser and of her dad and her dad’s inability to protect her And she described it all as sort of seeing in them a certain helplessness, seeing that they were caught in a web of experiences that they themselves couldn’t get out of at the time. It doesn’t excuse the abuse. The abuse was destructive and painful. But she saw a little bit more of their backstory than just their mistakes. And, you know, there’s this tension, I think, you know, whenever we talk this way, it’s like, wait a second, are you saying that it’s okay to abuse people and not have the Me Too movement? No, I’m not saying that. Are you saying it’s okay to be, you know, in some ways abusive of people with intellectual disabilities or race or culture or gender or whatever? No, it’s not okay. But if we want to heal those wounds, if we want to stop that kind of abuse, how we go about doing it is not necessarily clear, I don’t think. And just saying, hey, Eric, you are terrible, you are a criminal, you are a heroin addict. At the end of the day, that doesn’t bring anybody to recovery.

Eric Zimmer:

It doesn’t, because I think this is a very nuanced area that we don’t really know how to do, because it’s variable on people, is this idea of when you tend to come at someone, right, with criticism, that person is almost always going to get defensive and defend themselves. You see this with alcoholics and addicts all the time. If somebody is just riding them to get into recovery, they’re having to justify to the other person why they do what they do, which is justifying it to themselves in some way. You leave somebody in addiction with a little bit more space, most of those people know there’s a real problem. But they won’t admit it to anybody else if the admittance is, you know, being attacked and shamed and all that. And yet, at the same time, when you have somebody who’s in active addiction like that, you don’t pretend nothing’s happening. You know, I talk to families a lot, and I’ve gone through this with people I love who’ve been in addiction. What’s the right way to relate to somebody who’s in active addiction? You know, the tough love movement, I think, missed a lot of things. It got some things right, but I think it missed some things.

Tim Shriver:

You know, I was talking to a friend of mine who works in the addiction space and she put it this way. She said, you know, whether we’re dealing with addiction or whether we’re just dealing with our brothers and sisters or spouses, whatever, oppositional energy creates oppositional energy.

Eric Zimmer:

That’s a great phrase.

Tim Shriver:

It’s pretty simple. If I say to you, Eric, why the hell are you wearing your hair that way? you’re likely to say well you know because you know and then just become indignant you know like it’s just it’s just oppositional energy creates oppositional energy and you know threatening energy creates defensive energy it’s it’s just almost inevitable you treat someone with contempt you create an almost immediate and almost impulsively irresistible desire for revenge So, you know, if you want to disintermediate the problem that’s causing the addiction or the abuse of women or children or anybody else, it’s unlikely to work if all we do is name and shame and humiliate the person who’s… Again, it’s hard to say this because people that have done abusive and horrible things, you know, the impulse is we got to name and shame and humiliate them because we got to get them to stop. And I get it. I’m just not sure we have a very good track record of having that work.

Eric Zimmer:

You nailed it in a phrase. We’re not good culturally at how to rehabilitate people. And part of the problem is that some people just don’t want to be rehabilitated. If the behavior continues to go on, there’s no real choice.

Tim Shriver:

Yeah. You’ve got to step in. You’ve got to create boundaries. You’ve got to put people in jail if they’re violent. You’ve got to put people out of your life if they’re abusive and all those kinds of things. But one guy, I was reading this quote from Pharrell Williams, and I’ve used it a lot to try to teach people around dignity issues. It goes on quite a bit at the beginning, but in the end of the quote, he says, even with people I disagree, I’m wishing them the best. You know, it’s okay to set a boundary to say, hey, look, Eric, you and I have been friends for 20 years, but what you’ve been doing the last five years, I just can’t keep. I’ve got to create a boundary. We’re not going to talk now. I’m kind of done. But to carry that boundary with a feeling that I’m hoping for the best for you on the other side of your life, of our life, of this friendship that I’ve ended, to me, that’s kind of the spiritual magic.

Eric Zimmer:

Yeah, I love that. I know someone who has a very difficult family relationship and their their mantra has sort of become minimum contact, maximum sympathy, right? Like, like they’ve just decided that like to be around that person is to be abused. So yeah, I need to minimize that. And yet I can try and keep my heart open to them as a person, which is really, really difficult to do.

Tim Shriver:

Yeah, I guess my point is like, here we are on this podcast talking about this, that needs to be a national conversation. I think, like when we talk about the good wolf, you know, to the extent we want to feed the good wolf, that wolf within us needs some food around this gift, this quality. How do we set boundaries, stand up for principles, work for justice, by whatever definition we are given to understand justice, how do we do all that? with a lot of empathy and a lot of love. Instead of with a lot of hatred and a lot of revenge, vindictiveness. That’s a good challenge for us all.

Eric Zimmer:

Yeah. I saw a clip of you talking and you said something about when you fight for your principles, add one additional principle. And that principle is, while you fight for your principles, treat others with dignity. And I love that idea, which is really good. You’re part of something else called the Dignity Index. Can you share a little bit about what that is?

Tim Shriver:

Yeah, the Dignity Index is a little tool we created. My colleagues, Tom Raschert and Tammy Pfeiffer, created this tool that allows us to score the language we use when we characterize people with whom we disagree. So it’s basically if you and I, Eric, let’s say we don’t agree on picking anything, the border. You want to have open borders and I want to build a wall. So we disagree. The dignity index would let us score how I treat you, not how I treat the issue. How I treat you. Do I call you a name? Do I consider you to be evil? Do I characterize you as inferior to me, as stupid, as uninformed, as selfish? Or do I go even farther and say, your position is so dangerous, you don’t actually deserve to live. You need to be… That’s the language of war. Or do I go up the side of dignity and do I say, you know, Eric, you’ve got a position. I got a position that that would be kind of equal time. We each need a chance to, or do I go to the top of the dignity scale, which is an eight, which is you and I don’t agree, but I will never violate your Eric, your dignity under no circumstances, no matter how much we disagree, I will always do my best to make sure you know your dignity is intact around me. So we can score you now. It’s objective. It’s not like a Trump voter scoring Kamala Harris or a Kamala Harris voter scoring a Trump voter or somebody trying to catch Senator this or minister that in a mistake. It’s just an objective score. And it’s pretty reliable. It doesn’t matter whether you’re right or left or, you know, rich or poor or black or white or straight or single or whatever. You can score pretty objectively. And what’s been so exciting about it, Eric, is that when people learn it, you can learn it in 10 minutes. It’s not like complicated. It’s a pretty simple scoring tool. when you learn it you start to have what we call the mirror effect you start to see yourself so instead of saying hey look Eric he’s done all this bad language he’s like a three on this or two on that or six on I start to see hey you know what Tim is a two. Like I just used two language when I was talking about my cousin, I can do better than that, you know? And you start to realize that how you treat someone is very central to whether or not your ideas prevail. Because when you treat someone with contempt, you make an enemy for your cause. So if I want to argue to you, we got to build a wall, we got to build a wall, you idiot, I’ve immediately made you into an enemy of the wall. Right. As opposed to winning you over, because I think I’m winning you over by calling you a name. But all you have to do is let people stand back and watch. And they go, of course that’s not going to work.

Eric Zimmer:

Yeah. There’s the relationship expert John Gottman, who’s been around a long time. And I’m familiar with his work a little bit. I don’t know it a lot. Yeah, I think he had the four horsemen of the relationship apocalypse or something, right?

Tim Shriver:

That’s right.

Eric Zimmer:

And one of them was certainly contempt.

Tim Shriver:

Yeah, that’s right.

Eric Zimmer:

It destroys.

Tim Shriver:

Yeah, it’s cancer to our relationship.

Eric Zimmer:

It totally is.

Tim Shriver:

And it’s cancer to a culture, as it turns out. And sadly, you know, when we look at the data, we are living in a culture that normalizes treating other people with contempt when you disagree with them. Instead of a culture that penalizes people for treating people with contempt when they disagree, we reward them. Yes. So we create this vicious cycle of incentives to be more and more contemptuous. Instead of the alternate cycle, this is why I say the evil wolf or the bad wolf is overfed and the good wolf is emaciated. When I get likes and I get popular and I get more power and attention by being contemptuous, then you’ve created all the wrong incentives for the good wolf.

Eric Zimmer:

It’s really true and it’s really hard to resist that if you’re someone who’s trying to get attention in the public eye a little bit, right? Like, you know, I want people to listen to the podcast. So I’m trying to get attention. And there are ways to do it that would be much more effective knowing what we know about the algorithms. And it’s a difficult temptation to resist.

Tim Shriver:

It is. It is. And that’s why we need subcultures that create a counter incentive. where, and I think this is, you know, what you’re trying to do. You’re creating a listener community. I’m trying to join you, your listener community, invite you to join mine. Small cultures, maybe there’s 5,000, maybe there’s 25,000, maybe there’s 100,000. And they create subcultures of people who go, wait a second, that’s the world I want to live in. I want to live in a world where my ideas are explored, where people I agree with are listen to, where people I disagree with are better understood, where we come to solutions that actually work, that we can implement, that we can solve our problems for ourselves and our families and our community. Like I want to live in that world. I don’t want to live in that other world. So I’m going to opt for Eric’s podcast as part of my community. It’s not going to be the same as the hundred million likes you’d get if you, you know, called someone by the most vicious names possible.

Eric Zimmer:

Compared them to an octopus or something. Yeah.

Tim Shriver:

No, but you know, these things change over time. Human beings, we create cultures. We change them. I think we’re at a point where millions and millions of Americans want to change. They just don’t know how to do it. They don’t know where to look. And thank God some of them are looking to you.

Eric Zimmer:

Now, let’s change direction a little bit. I want to talk about something that you explored a little bit in your memoir. For listeners who don’t know your background, you’re part of the Kennedy Shriver family. You’re part of a very well-known, very successful, very ambitious family. And you talked about, when you were younger, the pressures you felt to actually measure up in that family. And you also talked about how to sort out your accomplishments, you know, feeling like maybe they’re just because you were, you know, related to the Kennedys. Now that, I think your memoir was 2014, which means you probably wrote the book in something like 2012. It’s 12 years later, 13 years later. Where do you stand with that today? Talk to me about, you know, sort of how you worked through that and any evolution that’s happened in you sort of since the memoir.

Tim Shriver:

Yeah. Well, thanks for taking a look at it. That book, Fully Alive, was my attempt to do kind of three different things. One is tell the story of the athletes of Special Olympics and the effect they’ve had on changing my life. The other was to tell the story of how my family, largely my mother and her siblings, contributed to creating a movement around unlocking the gifts of people with intellectual disabilities. And the other was to tell my story. I’d say on all three fronts, I feel a good deal of, I guess what I would say is I felt like I got a lot of head nodding when I talked about that book. When I talked to people about the gifts of people with intellectual disabilities and how they in effect taught me the gift of how to be free to be myself, people go, oh, Oh, yeah. I’ve been to a special. I know what you mean. I know what you mean. What I did learn is that’s not a gift you learn as an idea. That’s a gift you practice as an experience, right? So I go back, you know, our local Special Olympics Unified Basketball program starts in two weeks. second week in January. I can’t wait for the Saturdays. The same way if, you know, some people look forward to going to the gym, you know, to practice building up their abs or their shoulders or whatever they’re building up. I look forward to going to the Special Olympics practices to building up my sense of my own freedom and my own dignity, uh, and to learn from those athletes. I’d say with respect to the story of my family, you know, President Kennedy, my uncles, Teddy and Bobby, my mom, my grandparents, I feel proud that at least some people know that a good part of that family history is not just about political success. It’s about the tenderness and heart that was infused in that family system by my Aunt Rosemary. She’s the missing piece in most of the stories that people tell about President Kennedy and about my Uncle Bobby, my Uncle Ted and so on. They tell the story of big legislation and speeches and dramatic events and tragedies. But I’m glad that at least somewhere in the record, Rosemary’s role is remembered, or at least has been shared.

Eric Zimmer:

I loved that part of the book because I actually do know a little bit about Rosemary because President Kennedy was part of a big movement to sort of shut down the big institutions, implement community mental health. We could debate a long time whether that was a good move or a bad move. It was a good move. But anyway, go ahead.

Tim Shriver:

Yeah. Okay. Well, mostly, mostly.

Eric Zimmer:

Yeah. That’s certainly something we could debate. I think in principle, it’s a good move. I think the follow up to it that was supposed to happen did not happen, which created a crisis anyway. My point being, I’ve heard about Rosemary a little bit in that context, but I loved hearing more about her. Maybe you could just share a couple minutes of her story and a little bit about your sort of thesis that the tenderness and the kindness that the Kennedys have came from interacting with her.

Tim Shriver:

Yeah, well, you’ve got it. I mean, my mom was one of nine children. My grandparents, my grandfather was very successful in business in the 20s and 30s and 40s and up into the 50s. He’s made a huge fortune by those standards. Those did not, you know. By today’s standards, I suppose it’s only a modest fortune, but still, he made a lot of money. And he and my grandmother are well known for their three sons. Jack, who became the President of the United States, and my uncle Robert Francis Kennedy became Senator from New York and Attorney General, and my uncle Ted Kennedy became Senator from Massachusetts. That’s the story. That’s the narrative. Patriarch, big Irish Catholic family, three gigantically successful boys. And then you have the tragedies of the murders and so on. What’s missing in that story is the birth of Rosemary Kennedy, who unlike all of her eight brothers and sisters had an intellectual disability. And in 1920s America, a wealthy family with a child with intellectual disability sent that child to an institution. That was the end of it. Doctors would have said give up the child, pretend like nothing happened, go home, take care of your other children. This child will be taken care of well somewhere else. Just move on. And they chose to keep her at home. So each of Rosemary’s siblings, including my mom, grew up looking across the table at a sister who had no school to go to, who had no friends, who had no childcare program, who had no doctor. who had no recreation program, who had no summer camp. And my view is that my grandmother and my grandfather, in keeping her at home, taught her siblings that they had to be able to see what the world didn’t see. The world saw Rosemary as a zero. They knew She was beautiful. They knew she was funny. They knew she was gifted. So they learned to see what the world couldn’t see. They learned to see human dignity where the world saw human nothingness. Yeah. So they didn’t talk about it a lot. But my view is that when President Kennedy gets up at his inauguration and says, you know, ask what you can do for your country, it’s because he knew that when people are asked to give of themselves, that they get their best selves in return. He knew it. Like he’d done it his whole life with his own sister. Every time he was asked to take care of Rosemary, to include Rosemary, to take her with you, he knew it was to his benefit that he had this beautiful sister. So at some level, the lessons that my Uncle Bobby taught, that my mom who, you know, started this camp for children with special needs in her own backyard. I mean, 1962, she had like four phone calls in the spring. You know, her brother was the president. She was working on trying to policy change. And the fourth mother called her and said, you know, Mr. Driver, there’s nowhere for me to take my child. None of the camps will take my child. And she said, yes, there is. You bring your child in my house. God damn it, you bring your child here. There is going to be a summer camp. It’s going to be in my backyard. Now, where did she get that resolve, that fire, that, you know, where did that heart fire burn from? It burned from knowing her sister deserved those chances and didn’t get them. And she wasn’t, she couldn’t tolerate having another mother tell her there was nothing so I kind of feel like the hidden Spiritual energy in that family and you know, I’m not saying this to lionize my mom or her brothers and sisters politically I’m saying that you know, a lot of people come up to me still, you know, President Kennedy’s been gone 60 plus years They still come up. Oh, I so admire your uncle. I so I you know, when he was president or your Uncle Bobby, he’s my role model, you know, and I think what they’re telling me is there was something in those boys and in that generation, there was some quality in them. And when I think about what that quality was, it was Rosemary’s heart beating through them.

Eric Zimmer:

It’s a really beautiful idea. And it makes a lot of sense in that we are deeply shaped by the experiences that we have. And we’re deeply shaped by what we’re taught about how to handle those experiences. And it seems pretty clear that that generation of Kennedy’s was taught to treat her with dignity, to treat her with respect. And they also, like you said, they got to see her, who she was.

Tim Shriver:

They got to see her. The world couldn’t see her.

Eric Zimmer:

Yeah.

Tim Shriver:

So, you know, if you’re a political leader and you’re trying to say, hey, our country, you know, we’re talking about the cycle of contempt right now. I mean, I want to be able to say, hey, gang, which is what you’re saying. Don’t you see you’ve got a good wolf? Come on. I know you do. You know this because of your own life. You know even in the depths of your own despair there was something in you that was still there that wanted to be healthy and strong and contributing and compassionate and good to yourself. You know it was there. I don’t have to explain it to you. I don’t have to read a book about it. You don’t need a lesson plan to unpack it. You know it. So when you speak to an audience or when you’re speaking to your audience here on this podcast, you’re telling them, I know you’ve got it in you. Come on. I know you’ve got it. Don’t trust me. You’ve got it. And that’s what I think my uncles did. They said to the country at a time, at different times when it needed to hear it. Hey, America, you can do this. We can take on civil rights. We can work to create, extend health care. We can build a more peaceful future. We can volunteer and create connections to people all over the planet in service of peace. I know we can do this. So they knew at some level to trust their gut on these things and not just to trust the polls and not just to trust, you know, what people ask of their government. Most of the political rhetoric we hear nowadays is all about like, is the government delivering for people what they want? It’s a very good question. And if it’s not, it needs to be fixed. But there’s a second question, which is, are people giving to the country what they can? And that’s just as important, but almost nobody asks it. But my uncles and my mom and her siblings, her sisters, I think they did ask it. And I think they asked it because Rosemary told them to.

Eric Zimmer:

Yeah.

Tim Shriver:

Even though Rosemary never wrote a book, Rosemary never gave a speech, Rosemary never started a company, Rosemary never excelled in a test, Rosemary never won an honor, ever. Nothing. Her whole life. On those measures of success, she had nothing. But on the most important measure of success, did she inspire the hearts of people that she touched? I think she gets an A plus plus.

Eric Zimmer:

Let’s talk about another idea that runs throughout your work, which is the idea of inclusiveness. Talk to me about what inclusiveness means to you. Why is it so important to you?

Tim Shriver:

Well, I think, you know, the tendency we have as human beings is to sort, you know, like good, bad, friend, foe, you know, tall, short. smart, stupid, all those decisions we make. And, you know, sometimes we’re classifying things that are good. You know, if somebody’s 6’8″, maybe they play center on the basketball team. And if somebody’s 5’8″, maybe they play point guard. It might not be the other way around. So that’s all okay. But what happens, I think, is that we slip from sorting in order to make sense of the world to sorting in order to create hierarchies. in the world. I like you, you’re good, you’re desirable, you not so much. And we start to exclude and we often exclude by when we judge books by their cover. when we judge people by blunt instruments. If you have a low IQ, not desirable, sorry. The Special Olympics movement is in 200 countries. You know, there’s 5 million athletes, volunteers that do 50, 60,000 games a year. Every single one of them is a rebellion against the tyranny and the brutality of exclusion and judgment and contempt. And every one of those events, whether it’s a little swimming race or a bowling competition or a skating competition or a track meet, every one of them is an invitation to say, when in doubt, when you have the option, when you have a choice, try to choose to be inclusive. That’s it. Do your best. Choose to include. That’s the message. The healthcare benefits of joining a community of opening yourself to others, of being a part of civic organizations, religious organizations, political organizations, social cause organizations. The benefits to our health, to our hearts, to our brains, to our souls are enormous when we include. But we have so many messages about who to exclude. You know, don’t hang out with those people. I can’t believe people say this to me. A lot of my friends are Democrats. I spent a lot of time in Republican circles working on this dignity work. You met with them? I’m like, yes, I met with them. I spent 30 years in Special Olympics. What do you think I am? I mean, I got the basic message. The basic message is have your heart open to everyone. So this inclusion message isn’t, you know, I think sometimes it gets distorted as a political agenda or… fight between this group and that group in the special olympics world inclusion is all about relationships it’s all about being open to another person it’s not about saying i’m better than them or they’re worse than me or i need to force you to let me in or i need to force you to get me out or whatever it’s just all about saying you know when i meet eric we come from different places we wear our hair differently we have different stories be inclusive if you can Try. Just try to listen. Try to find the good. Try to see what their gift is. If you find the gift, celebrate the gift. That’s the Special Olympics message. You know, we have a lot of people who can’t use language to express themselves, who can’t necessarily run unassisted. when they’re running a race. But in the Special Olympics movement, those are not the right measures. The measure is meet, train, play, and then find something to celebrate. Because if you have no words, and it took you 45 seconds to run 50 meters, and you worked really hard to do that, and you trained hard, and you have your coach there with you, I’m telling you the crowd will cheer louder than they cheered in the final four. Because they’ll know they’re in the presence of a gift. And it may not be the gift you see when you watch the NBA or when you watch the Olympics, but man, is it a gift. It’s a beautiful gift. So maybe that’s a long answer, Eric. I’m sorry for that. But, you know, choosing to include is good for us as human beings. It’s good for our physical health. It’s good for our emotional health. And it’s certainly good for, you know, I would argue our political health at a time when our country is really hurting. You know, people are really scared of each other and they’re threatened by each other and they’re fearful. We’re fearful of one another. We’re fearful of the future because we’re fearful of one another. We need a little dose of wisdom from the Special Olympics community that just says, hey, you know what? You don’t have to agree on everything, but try to be inclusive. Do the best you can. Try a little harder if you’ve tried already and give it another shot because there’s something good in that person. You just got to go find it.

Eric Zimmer:

I’ve heard you talk about this and you talk about this idea of, you know, every one of us wants to be part of the circle that includes us. C.S. Lewis talked about this, right? Like everybody thinks there’s like an inner ring of if you just got into that, you know, and once you’re in that, you know, it never really ends. But you say that this idea of seeking belonging in that way is backwards. We get the sense of belonging by giving it. And I think you’re talking about seeing with different eyes and seeing that it’s good to be part of a group, even if it doesn’t have the social status that many of us are seeking and chasing.

Tim Shriver:

I mean, status, you know, some of the most insecure people in the world are people who have the highest social status. Why? Because they’re always threatened that they’re going to lose it.

Eric Zimmer:

Yeah.

Tim Shriver:

And I mean, I’ve been very privileged and blessed to be able to be around people with enormous political and financial power. But I got to tell you, a lot of times they’re not very happy. And a lot of times they’re quite unsettled and insecure about themselves. And you think, why is this guy, he’s got a billion dollars or why is that person insecure? Just came here in his private jet or why is she insecure? She’s on the cover of magazine and everybody adores her and admires her. And it’s like, those are not the things that deliver. You know, that’s the false programs of happiness, you know? Like, if only I get a lot of approval, I’ll be happy. It doesn’t work. If only I get a lot of control over other people, I’ll be happy. Also doesn’t work. You know, what works for happiness is deep, enduring, honest, authentic relationships. That’s it. I mean, the social science will tell us that, religion tells us that, philosophy tells us that. That’s it. I mean, yeah, we all need our basics, you know, we need food and shelter and things like that. And we need to be in a situation where we’re not at risk of losing food and shelter and these things. But after a fairly basic security around, you know, basic goods, after we’ve achieved a fairly modest level of security, the only thing that contributes beyond that to happiness is relationships. And it’s not like whether you’re the head of the Rotary Club or the Lions Club or the Democratic Party or the church council or whatever it is, it’s not that you’re the head of it, it’s that you’re in it, you know, that you’re feeling and seen and understood by other people. So this is a hard lesson for us to learn, but stature does not convey happiness. It’s kind of a scientific fact.

Eric Zimmer:

Yeah. Absolutely. We’ve only got a few minutes left here, and there’s two things I would love to get through here. The first is a question that we could spend an hour on, so I recognize I’m setting myself up here. But people talk about how polarized the country is. I love history podcasts. There’s one called The Rest is History. It’s a couple of English guys. It’s great. And they’re doing this long series on 1968, which I’m sure you know, is the year that your uncle was assassinated. Martin Luther King was assassinated. And I’m looking at that, and I’m looking at our current times, and I’m thinking, I keep hearing again and again, this is the worst it’s ever been. I just don’t know if that’s true. What do you think?

Tim Shriver:

Well, I’ll go with John Lewis, uh, who said towards the end of his life, I was at a speech. He must’ve said it a million times. He said, anybody who thinks things haven’t gotten better, hasn’t lived my life.

Tim Shriver:

Yep. So the year I was born in 1959, there were probably 200,000 Americans living in institutions with intellectual disabilities. Today they’re basically are zero. The year I went to school in 1965 or six, there were no children with intellectual disabilities in any school in America, pretty much. except segregated schools. Today, almost every school, public school in America has children with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the school. That’s a big win. So I’m just looking at it from the point of view of one group, one population. I think that you could say the same thing about black Americans. Yeah, there’s a long way to go on all these things. We don’t shrink from the severity of the challenge by acknowledging the enormity of the change.

Eric Zimmer:

That’s a beautiful way to say it. Yeah.

Tim Shriver:

And our country, I look around, it’s more inclusive, it’s more diverse, it’s more wealthy, it’s more loving. I mean, like when I was a kid, I would never say I love you to another guy. I barely said I love you to my own mother. And now I hear that from friends all the time. My kids, when their friends come over, they say, oh, I love you. I mean, you can say that’s a small thing. I think it’s a big thing. Yeah. So I think there’s a lot of things. I think the country’s more diverse. There’s more attention to mental health. than there ever was. There’s more support for a whole diverse way of raising families that women and men are finding their ways into. So look, we’ve got big challenges. We’ve got a mental health crisis. We’ve got an income inequality crisis. We still have persistent and almost unforgivable discrimination in our country. We have a long way to go, but I’d say probably there’s a billion people in the world. I’m just going to say this because it’s a crazy number, but I’m guessing there’s a billion people in the world. If tomorrow you told them they could move to the United States, they’d say, yeah, they would. Yeah. Maybe two. Yeah. They’d come here in a heartbeat. Yeah. Why? Because still we do represent an enormously privileged way of living, an enormously privileged type of government. And I got more than my fair share of complaints about our government. I got a lot of complaints about a lot of things. But I don’t, for a minute, let it convince me that we haven’t made progress. And certainly in my lifetime, I’m with John Lewis. We’ve moved forward in many, many ways.

Eric Zimmer:

Yeah, I totally agree. All right, last thing. You talk about a miracle, and I love this. You said, a miracle is not a manipulation of the laws of nature and history. It can also be a way of describing a dramatic change of mind and heart at the most fundamental levels of reality. Say anything you would like to in closing, but I just think that’s such a beautiful idea.

Tim Shriver:

Well, I hope it speaks for itself because miracles, the premise is unchanged about who causes them. I think miracles are a function of how receptive we are to seeing the infusion of reality with laws of the spirit, the laws of the spirit which transcend and are matched by the laws of nature. They don’t disrupt, in my view, the laws of nature, but they operate alongside them. So when human beings fall in love, it’s a miracle. They don’t think in love, they don’t plan in love, they don’t decide in love, they fall. We fall. And we can fall in love this afternoon with a walk with a child. We can fall in love with a tree that’s changing colors. We can fall in love with the chance to see someone in an intensive care unit being cared for by a nurse with tenderness that’s unbounded by professional training or compensation or rules. We can fall in love with when the heart overtakes us and reminds us that we’re citizens of yet another dimension of reality. I guess that’s the way I’d put it. We’re all destined for something beautiful. And we come from something beautiful and a miracle is when we see it. And it’s there all the time. I mean, it’s just there all the time.

Eric Zimmer:

Well, that is a beautiful place to wrap up. Tim, I’ve really enjoyed this. This has been great. I wish we had two more hours to go.

Tim Shriver:

Thank you so much for thinking and working and playing around with some of the ideas that have been living in my head for a long time. And I’m grateful for the work you do and hope that our efforts at Need A Lift kind of create another kind of pod sister or pod brother of yours that will complement what you’re doing and hopefully add the voices of people on Need A Lift contributing to feeding the good wolf. Thank you so much, Tim. Thank you.

How to Thrive All Winter: Mindset Shifts for Beating the Cold and Dark with Kari Leibowitz

January 21, 2025 Leave a Comment

Fixed and Growth Mindset with Carol Dweck

In this episode, Kari Leibowitz discusses how to thrive all winter with mindset shifts for beating the cold and dark. She shares her journey from being a winter hater to embracing the beauty of the season while living in Tromsø, Norway, a place known for its extreme winter conditions. Kari delves into the importance of attention and expectation in shaping our experiences, particularly in winter and emphasizes that our mindset can significantly influence how we perceive and interact with the world around us. Discover how we can shift our focus from the challenges of winter to embracing the beauty and unique joys of winter!

Key Takeaways:

Embracing winter challenges and mindset
Insights from research conducted in Tromsø, Norway, regarding winter depression
The role of expectations in shaping experiences of winter
The concept of seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and its complexities
The importance of adaptation to seasonal changes.
The interplay between comfort and challenge during winter
The significance of social gatherings and their adaptation in winter
The idea of “clearing the way” for beneficial mindsets and supportive conditions
The relationship between mindset, reality, and individual perception

Connect with Kari Leibowitz: Website | X | Linked In

Kari Leibowitz is a health psychologist, speaker, and writer, and the author of How to Winter: Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on Cold, Dark, or Difficult Days. She received her PhD in Psychology from Stanford University, served as a US-Norway Fulbright Scholar, and taught the ‘Mindsets Matter’ Stanford Continuing Studies Course. Leibowitz combines scholarly expertise with practical strategies to help people understand and harness the power of their mindsets and find joy in winter. Her writing on the power of wintertime mindset has appeared in the Atlantic, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. She has taught winter workshops to businesses, universities, non-profits, and organizations around the world.

If you enjoyed this episode with Kari Leibowitz, check out these other episodes:

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Episode Transcript:

Eric Zimmer 00:00:01 Hi, Carrie. Welcome to the show.

Kari Leibowitz 00:00:24 Hi, Eric. Thanks for having.

Eric Zimmer 00:00:26 I’m excited to talk with you. Your book is called how to Winter. Harness your mindset to thrive on cold, dark, or difficult days. And I will tell you, this is very timely because it is cold here. It is dark and the winter weather has caused me a couple of difficult days recently, so this is right on time for me. But before we get into that, we’ll start like we always do with the parable and the parable. There’s two. Nope. 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.

Eric Zimmer 00:00:59 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 think about it for a second. 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 in your life and in the work that you do.

Kari Leibowitz 00:01:26 Yeah. So, I mean, I’m here as a psychologist and a mindset researcher, which is my profession, but also certainly seeps into my whole life philosophy and the way that I live. And so to me, when I was thinking about this, I was really thinking about feeding as attention as the power of our attention and what we are attending to, what thoughts we are giving power to and attending to most, what language and words we’re using to reflect the things that we notice in the world. Really shapes our reality in profound ways.

Kari Leibowitz 00:02:07 And I think a lot of us think of attention as being automatic, but it’s also, of course, very trainable and influenced by things like our mindsets. And so to me, it’s really about which, Wolf, which part of you, which mindset are you reinforcing with that attention? And how is that going to become self-fulfilling and create your reality?

Eric Zimmer 00:02:33 Yeah, I love that. I’m I’m at work on a book. And I was just yesterday literally writing about attention, about this very idea. And I was writing about the idea that you just sort of referenced that it’s both sort of conscious and unconscious. It’s a little bit like our breath, right? Like you can focus on your breath and do this and then you could forget about it and it just kind of does its thing. Attention is the same way. You can consciously choose where to direct your attention and it just goes off on its own. Also, and what it chooses to go off on is is very interesting. There’s a lot of different factors that control that.

Eric Zimmer 00:03:11 But what I’ve noticed and is, and I think everybody who’s paid any attention is probably noticed this, that for a lot of us, if we’re not careful where our attention goes is to what’s not right, what’s wrong. It’s just a natural place for it to land. And on the topic of winter, that’s really easy to do because, you know, we’re going to talk about changing this mindset. But initially you’re like, it’s dark. I don’t particularly like that. It’s cold. I don’t particularly like that. all these things sort of, you know, it’s easy to find what’s wrong with winter. So maybe we could start off by you talking about how you started to learn how to find what’s right with winter.

Kari Leibowitz 00:04:00 So, you know, I’m here today as a reformed winter hater. So I grew up at the Jersey shore, which is a very summer centric location and, you know, really lived for those summers and really didn’t enjoy the winter. But in 2014, through sort of a series of, adventures and, different events, I ended up moving to Northern Norway, to a city called Tromso.

Kari Leibowitz 00:04:28 I’m going to do that again. but in 2014, I ended up moving to a city in Northern Norway called Tromso and Tromso is over 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, and it’s so far north that they experienced two months of what’s known as the polar night, which is the time of year from late November to late January, in which the sun never actually rises above the horizon. So you get a little bit of indirect light, but you don’t see the sun for two months. And I was there because people in Trump so actually have relatively low rates of winter depression or seasonal affective disorder. There’s not none. But given how far north they are, given how long and dark and cold their winters are, the rates are a lot lower than we would expect, and I was there to research and try to understand why is this? And do they have strategies for surviving the winter that maybe we could use elsewhere?

Eric Zimmer 00:05:26 And maybe their mental health is so bad you don’t even have a scale to measure it.

Eric Zimmer 00:05:31 Maybe that’s what it is because I’m hearing this. I’m hearing this and thinking, hang on a second. You know, those of us who think we have seasonal affective disorder.

Kari Leibowitz 00:05:41 Yeah. So I think your response reflects what I thought before I went there and what people said to me, like, I moved, they’re really afraid of the winter because everyone I told that I was doing this was like, oh my God, I could never do that. I would get so depressed. People would ask me, are you going to go there to research why they’re not depressed and get depressed yourself? And there’s this assumption that winter is really inherently depressing. But in Tromsø, I was introduced to a new way of seeing the season, a new way of experiencing winter, and a new mindset for looking at the cold, dark days of winter with a little bit of a different eye.

Eric Zimmer 00:06:27 Okay, so I want to I want to explore what that different eye is. I do have a couple questions though, and you can say, hey, we’re going to get to those in due course if they if they’re out out of place.

Eric Zimmer 00:06:41 But there’s two things I’m thinking of. One is it does appear that seasonal affective disorder seems to be a real thing. I don’t know, I’d be curious your thoughts on that. And then secondly, the other thing that I’m thinking about is, you know, you can find a lot of studies that show, like people who work say, second shift really have worse mental health outcomes. And I’m curious if how much of either of those things is expectation driven and how much of it is reality. And let me try and put a let me try and say this slightly differently, right. I do think that life is not what happens to us, nor is it how we respond to it. It is a co-creation of those two things. And so there’s some of each at work here. So tell me how you think about that, having really studied this in more detail.

Kari Leibowitz 00:07:34 Absolutely. So as mindset researchers, you know, I’m often trying to get people to understand the impact of mindset. But of course, our objective circumstances also matter.

Kari Leibowitz 00:07:44 And it’s always going to be the interplay of our objective circumstances and the power of our mindset, which is something I really observed in Norway, where my mindset shifted in response to a culture around me, infrastructure around me, things like that that supported enjoying winter. The thing that I like to focus on in my work is that mindset is often overlooked. We often really know that the objective circumstances matter, but underestimate the impact of our mindset. Now, seasonal affective Disorder is a little bit complicated, and I have a lot to say on it. So I’m going to try to keep it succinct. And then you can use whatever is the most interesting. So there is actually a lot of debate amongst psychologists about how quote unquote, real seasonal affective disorder is. I don’t think that that debate is the most useful thing to get into. I think the most useful thing is to understand a little bit about the history of the disorder and how it’s understood today by clinical psychologists versus by the broader population. So first of all, seasonal affective disorder was discovered in the United States, in Maryland, not in the Arctic, not in Iceland, not in the Netherlands, not in places with longer, darker, colder winters.

Kari Leibowitz 00:09:07 It was discovered at this sort of middle latitude, and it was originally measured with something called the spec, the Seasonal Pattern Assessment Questionnaire. And basically this questionnaire measures how much people’s behavior changes in the seasons. So what times of year do you sleep the most and socialize the most and eat the most, and feel the best and feel the worst? And this scale supposed that if you had a lot of seasonal variation, you would have winter depression. If your behavior is changing too much, if you’re having too extreme fluctuations. That’s a symptom of winter depression. Now, in a place like Tromso, where I lived, they go from 24 hours of full sunlight in the summer, where the sun never sets, to 24 hours, where the sun doesn’t rise in the winter. And in a place like that, it doesn’t really make sense. This idea that you wouldn’t have a seasonal fluctuation in your energy, or your mood, or your motivation, or what you eat. And so people in these places tend to adapt more to the winter and not see that as problematic, but see that as healthy and normal and living in tune with nature.

Kari Leibowitz 00:10:26 Now, since the initial development and conception of seasonal affective disorder, most psychologists now use different criteria. They don’t use that seasonal pattern assessment questionnaire anymore. It is now considered a subtype of clinical depression. So that means first you have to meet the criteria for a clinical depressive episode, and then you can be diagnosed with the sort of seasonal pattern that indicates winter depression. And I think this is a really important thing about winter depression that gets misunderstood, because I think a lot of people feel that it is a lighter, milder form of depression, that it is a less stringent criteria than full blown clinical depression, when in fact it is not. It is a subset of clinical depression. And so you first need to meet those criteria. What I think a lot of people, especially in the US experience, is maybe some form of the winter blues that comes from the fact that we are affected by this change in daylight. We are affected by rhythms of light and dark. So I think this gets back to your question about people who work the second shift having worse health outcomes.

Kari Leibowitz 00:11:37 We know that light and darkness affects our circadian rhythms. So light in the morning helps us feel awake and alert and improves our concentration and improves our mood. And darkness at night makes us sleepy and helps us get ready for bed. And if we’re living out of sync with that, we’re fighting our natural internal rhythms. And what I think happens a lot for people in winter is they feel more tired in the winter because there’s this real change in the environment, but their lifestyle or their schedule or their personal belief system doesn’t make space for fluctuations in energy and mood and behavior. And so when they’re fighting the season and they feel down, they automatically go to, oh, I must be depressed. I must have seasonal affective disorder. So some of that is definitely expectation of what you think winter is going to be like. But some of that is also meaning making where you know everyone. I think there’s a lot of warnings about seasonal affective disorder that come up every single year, more so even than other mental health disorders that are far more prevalent.

Kari Leibowitz 00:12:47 And so when somebody feels down in the winter, there’s a real top of mind explanation for it, which is, oh yeah, I must have seasonal affective disorder.

Eric Zimmer 00:12:56 Makes sense. It sounds like the first way that it was measured was partially measuring change in behavior and interpreting that as bad. Right. If there’s a change in behavior, then it shows that the season is affecting you in a bad way. and, you know, a big theme that’s in your book is that. And you just you said it there when you were talking, like, of course things change, particularly if you’re in a place where you have no light. And so what we’re talking about is skillful adaptation to the changes that are occurring naturally and allowing our lives to try and flow with those changes instead of trying to force our existing ways of operating into a different environment that’s not conducive to it. Is that is that about correct?

Kari Leibowitz 00:13:47 Absolutely. I mean, if you look at every other living thing on the planet, plant or animal, they’re all changing their behavior in the winter.

Kari Leibowitz 00:13:54 They’re all slowing down. They’re all resting more. But I think a lot of us see it as a personal failure of strength or grit or willpower, when we can’t have the same energy and sleep schedule and productivity year round. So if you live north of Boston, there is more than a six hour difference in daylight between the summer solstice and the winter solstice. So you’re getting more than six hours less daylight in the winter than the summer. Now, if you live at other latitudes, it might be a smaller difference, but there’s still a difference in how much daylight you’re getting. And you know, we like to pretend we’re not animals on a planet, but we are animals on a planet, and that’s going to affect us. And I think making space for that can actually be a lot healthier and feel a lot better than trying to fight it and sort of tough it out through it. By beating ourselves up when we’re more tired at this time of year.

Eric Zimmer 00:14:54 Yeah, it’s really interesting. I’m reading a book right now.

Eric Zimmer 00:14:56 It’s a fiction novel called orbital, and it won the Booker Prize this year. And it’s a it’s based on a bunch of astronauts who are out on the International Space Station. And one of the key ideas in the book is they get, I think it’s 16 sunsets and sunrises in their 24 hour day, and they’re only going to be out there for a certain amount of time, six months, nine months, right? And it’s interesting to see, because the training they’re given is stay on 24 hour time, stay on 24 hour time. You have to remain anchored to 24 hour time. But they’re seeing sunset and and sunrise 16 times a day. They’re trying to sort of adapt to that and live in that world, but also stay tethered to a world. And they make the point. And she makes the point in the book, too, that you just made, which is that as animals, we are synced. You know, we have, you know, billions of years of the, you know, sunrise, sunset, certain amount of light, certain amount of dark, that adjusting and the animals adjust to that.

Eric Zimmer 00:16:05 And it’s interesting to see them as humans being told, don’t adjust to what you’re seeing. Adjust to this external idea of what time is. And it’s it’s just a similar concept to what you’re describing.

Kari Leibowitz 00:16:17 Yeah. And I think, you know, there are benefits to it. Right? If you’re the kind of person that likes that routine, if you’re in space and you’re trying to stay tethered to your life on Earth, right. Maybe it’s valuable to try to keep that routine. But I also think that there is something that we’ve lost when we’re fighting this natural rhythm and something to be gained by leaning into that natural rhythm and letting different times of year affect us in different ways. Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:16:48 So let’s move into some of what you learned there. You’ve got a great quote in the book, and maybe we can just use this as a, as a place to jump off. And you say people in Tromso don’t dread winter. They embrace it as a season of unique beauty and joy. And then you also go on to say, mindset is the difference between suffering through winter and savoring it.

Eric Zimmer 00:17:08 So let’s talk about some of what they do there that makes winter more enjoyable for them that we often don’t do here.

Kari Leibowitz 00:17:19 Yeah. So I noticed three things that, you know, three sort of broad strategies and there’s lots of little things within them. But I think people in Northern Norway appreciate winter for what it is. So they’re not bemoaning that it’s not summer. They’re letting it be a time for slowing down and sort of embracing it. They make it special. So if appreciating it is about noticing with your thoughts. Making it special is about using your actions to create opportunities in the winter. So doing hobbies that you enjoy in the winter. Making it cozy. Working with the darkness by lighting candles. All of those things give you something to look forward to in the winter and make the season special. And then finally, they’re getting outside at all times of year, in all weather. And they really don’t let the darkness, the cold or the wet stop them from going outside, connecting with the outdoors, moving their bodies.

Kari Leibowitz 00:18:20 And so broadly, those strategies I’ve found and I’ve observed them not just when I was living in Tromso, but since that I’ve traveled to, you know, winter places all over the world researching the book. And those three strategies pop up again and again. And what I like about them is that you can make them your own. You don’t. They don’t have to look the same for everyone. And you can do specific practices within each of them that fit for you and your lifestyle and your climate. But these broad principles of appreciating the season for what it is, trying to make it special, and getting outside, they’re all ways of finding the opportunities in the season, rather than seeing winter as only limiting.

Eric Zimmer 00:19:01 Okay, so let’s start at the the the prequel to those, which is expectation. Talk to me about the role of expectation in the co-creation of our reality.

Kari Leibowitz 00:19:14 Yeah. So in my other line of work, which I did as a graduate student at the Stanford Mind and Body Lab, I was a placebo researcher, and I was researching how placebo effects influence our health and well-being, because there’s a whole bunch of evidence that placebos work and placebos can help us heal from all different kinds of conditions.

Kari Leibowitz 00:19:36 And a big factor that is part of that is our expectation of healing is what we believe is going to happen. So if you take a sugar pill and you feel better, it’s not the sugar and the sugar pill that is healing you. It’s at least in part your expectation of relief. And what I think expectations do is they prime our attention to notice certain things in our environment that make things more likely. So in the case of winter, if you think of winter and you conjure only the worst parts of winter, right? The miserable cold days, the grayness, the feeling uncomfortable, the feeling tired, then not only are you setting yourself up to experience that, but that is the that is the psychological pathway that is easiest for your mind to take all season long. So every time you see something that confirms your expectations or that matches your expectations, that’s going to stand out to you even more and that’s going to create your reality. The other thing expectations do, and this is something that humans are actually unique in, is humans are the only animals that can worry about something that has not happened yet or may never happen, right.

Kari Leibowitz 00:20:54 And so expectations can also create double suffering, where not only are you suffering during the winter, but you’re suffering in anticipation of the winter. And then I think the other thing that expectations do is they also prime our behavior. And so when we are focusing on all of the things we don’t like about winter, there’s a really strong incentive for us to push away from that, to try to deny or ignore or deflect or sort of other what we might call unhealthy coping mechanisms. It doesn’t really help us to go towards doing the things that can actually make a difference, and make the winter more comfortable and more enjoyable.

Eric Zimmer 00:21:40 Yeah, you you talk about the you know, this winter can be an invitation to to shift our perspective. And yeah, so much of our experience and again we, we hit on this earlier right. It’s a co-creation between what actually is and what we think about what is but what we think about. I mean, the number of studies on this is is amazing. And we can just tell it ourselves, right? I mean, the example there’s two examples I can give.

Eric Zimmer 00:22:08 One I give often is just like I get I get I have some back pain. And so when my back hurts a little bit, my default if I, if I tune in my brain is saying something on the order of my back is killing me, my back is killing me. And and if I stop that train of thought, and I actually pay attention to what’s actually going on. It’s really more like my back is a little bit tight in this very little area down here. And you talk about later in the book about the the relationship of words, you know, and a previous guest once said, extreme words create extreme emotions. And I love that idea because when I say my back’s killing me, I’m creating this certain frame or tone that’s very different. The other one I play with in the winter and I did it. I did it just last night. I had to take the the trash out and it was really cold and it was dark and I didn’t really feel like getting my coat on.

Eric Zimmer 00:23:10 So I’m just going to just hop over there. My first thought was, it’s effing freezing out here, right? That’s my first thought. And then I just thought, well, what if I just think of this as invigorating and all of a sudden it’s a different experience? I’m not saying I wasn’t cold. Of course I was cold. But how I felt about being cold, how I related to being cold was different. And this is really what you’re you’re driving that here?

Kari Leibowitz 00:23:35 Yeah. The same sensation interpreted in two different ways feels different, you know, and a lot of things in life and in the winter they’re ambiguous or they’re complex, right. The cold can be effing freezing and invigorating. Those things can exist simultaneously. But which thing you’re focusing on is going to determine your experience. And I really like and appreciate your example about the back pain. This is something that we use in my house a lot. So my husband, has some, you know, GI distress issues. And so, you know, sometimes they’ll flare up and you go into that stress and anxiety mode of like, oh, I’m going to feel so bad.

Kari Leibowitz 00:24:15 Oh, I’m going to be up all night. Oh, I’m whatever. And the thing that I have found that helps him the most is when he’s like, oh, my stomach hurts. I just ask him, how bad is it? And a lot of the time he stops and he’s like, oh, it’s not that bad. Like it’s actually it’s not the actual sensation you’re experiencing in the moment that is so unbearable. It’s the fear and anxiety and uncertainty that it’s going to get worse. But if you can just be in the present moment with it. Not always, but sometimes, or even a lot of the time, it’s a lot more manageable than your runaway train of a brain is telling you it is.

Eric Zimmer 00:24:55 Yep. Absolutely. I want to I want to hit on placebo for a second. This is I’m indulging a curiosity here. Placebo works on some people. It doesn’t work in other cases. you know, I’m thinking of my mother right now. My mother has a lot of chronic pain and has had it for a long time.

Eric Zimmer 00:25:14 I’m not asking you to solve my mother’s problem, by the way. and she has had a number of procedures done, including back surgery, where our expectation was this is really going to help, and then it doesn’t really seem to help. And I’m curious, like because I feel like as I think about that, I’m like, well, okay, there’s the reality of whatever nerves are being affected or not being affected and what what the impact is on those. There’s the expectation that this should make it better, but there’s also probably fear in there that it’s not going to do any good because previous things haven’t done any good. So do I really, you know, like all this swirls together. Do we know in what situations and under what circumstances and what type of people placebo tends to work best on?

Kari Leibowitz 00:26:05 I mean, this is really the million dollar question and the thing that we’re trying to figure out. So we, you know, we do know that placebos tend to work very well on situate on conditions for which there is a large psychological component.

Kari Leibowitz 00:26:20 Right. So in general, things like chronic pain, anxiety, depression. although there are many conditions where objective metrics like Parkinson’s, tremors or blood pressure or heart palpitations, also respond to placebos. I think the thing with expectations and something like surgery, and I’ve seen this with family members as well, is it’s really complicated because expectations have to be properly calibrated. And this is where, you know, we keep coming back to this, that it’s the combination of objective reality and your mindset. And your mindset can’t completely override objective reality. And so I think especially when you have something like a surgery, if your expectation is that it’s going to solve all of your problems and that afterwards you’re going to have no pain and you’re not thinking about the recovery you’re going to have to do and you’re not thinking about the physical therapy you’re going to have to do and you’re not thinking about, how much pain reduction would actually be considered a success. Then expectations might backfire because you thought it was going to be one way, and then it’s a different way.

Kari Leibowitz 00:27:37 And we know from research, for example, on doctor patient relationships that if you set two positive expectations that are totally out of line with reality, all that does is sort of undermine trust. I also.

Eric Zimmer 00:27:53 Manage expectations. Yeah, I see this again and again. You know, that people are not adequately prepared for their given the best case scenario.

Kari Leibowitz 00:28:03 Right. And I think a lot of it is on meaning making. So we actually have a whole line of work where we tell people that the side effects of treatment in cases where this is true are actually a sign that the treatment is working. And so that helps people integrate unpleasant physical sensations with a positive interpretation. Right. And you could imagine something like that. Right. That after surgery you’re going to feel sore. But that’s a sign that your nerves are recalibrating or you know. I’m not a doctor, but that kind of, you know, like if you have a wound and your wound is itching and you don’t know that wound itching means healing, maybe that itch is unbearable because you’re worried it’s infected.

Kari Leibowitz 00:28:47 But if you know that wound itching is a sign that it’s healing, maybe it’s still uncomfortable, but it’s okay. And so a lot of this is about, you know, it’s not just expectations. Are you going to feel good? Are you going to have pain? Are you going to feel bad? It’s what is the meaning of the pain that you’re feeling right? Think about a marathon runner. Think about a woman in labor. The meaning of that kind of pain is very different than a chronic pain. That you don’t know if it’s ever going to go away. That feels debilitating. So a lot of it is about not just setting positive expectations, but what are the most adaptive expectations that can help you make sense of the objective reality you’re facing in a way that is useful for you.

Eric Zimmer 00:29:53 Yeah, yeah. so what are some of the words that the Norwegians use around winter that help them to reframe it?

Kari Leibowitz 00:30:03 so you might be familiar with a Danish word hygge. the Little book of Sugar. That’s the Danish word for coziness that is very popular. The Norwegian counterpart to that word is so making it cozy. and it turns out that a lot of places with long, dark winters have special words that that mean cozy, but really take on a heightened meaning. You know that where it’s something to really aspire to, something to really luxuriate in. And, you know, I think this idea of quality of humor is it’s it’s really an inner contentment. You know, it’s not a it’s not your Scandinavia decor. It’s not an aesthetic. Although, of course, you know, things can facilitate feelings. It’s really this feeling of, you know, when it’s dark and cold and blustery outside and you’re inside and you’re warm and you’re comfortable and you’re with your loved ones and you have nowhere to go.

Kari Leibowitz 00:30:58 And that feeling is it’s very prized and it’s very sought after in Norway, especially in northern Norway during the polar night. So hygge is a really good one. another one that I talk about a lot is Free Love Sleeve, which translates to open air life. And this is about the Norwegian’s connection with nature and the outdoors, and having time spent outdoors in nature, usually moving your body, but sometimes even just like drinking a beer or sitting at a cafe. Being part of everyday life year round and it’s a really strong cultural value. It’s something that’s taught in schools from a young age. You can get a master’s degree in free of sleep in Norway, in sort of education of the outdoors. and it’s something that I think people there really embrace and embody on a daily basis.

Eric Zimmer 00:31:57 Do the Scandinavians know their language? Sounds like a muppet language, or did Jim Henson get draw his language? I’m kidding, because I don’t know what our language sounds like to them. I’m sure it sounds in its own way.

Kari Leibowitz 00:32:11 I do have such a fondness for the Norwegian cadence.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:14 I love it too.

Speaker 4 00:32:15 Yeah, yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:16 You can tell. Like I think Jim Henson must have must have been influenced by them. I love that idea of the outdoors. I was talking with you before the show. I was in Amsterdam recently. Right. And in Amsterdam, everybody gets everywhere on bike. I guess I shouldn’t say everyone. A whole lot of people. Way more than you might even imagine as possible. Go everywhere on bike and they do it in all weather.

Kari Leibowitz 00:32:42 Yes. So I, I live in Amsterdam now, and the Dutch have a saying, you’re not made of sugar, you won’t melt in the rain. And that is, you know, when you are biking everywhere, come rain or shine, that is something that you have to say to yourself sometimes before you’re going outside for a rainy bike ride.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:00 Well, I will say this I noticed about, the the the Dutch in the rain. They’re a little more intense in their cycling.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:09 Like, I was certain I was going to get run over in that city. I was just certain I was going to get hit by a bike because in the US, when you cross the street, once you enter, once you leave the part where the cars are, you’re safe. You’re just trained. Once I get past the cars, I’m safe. Well, in Amsterdam, once you get past the cars, you have about a foot of safety before you have the bikes. And, I mean, I just felt like for sure I was going to get run over. And I noticed that when it was raining, they were just a little bit more intense in the like. I’m getting where I’m going sort of thing. But they were all still out there.

Kari Leibowitz 00:33:43 In the Netherlands, the bikes have the right of way. So it goes bikes and then pedestrians and then cars. and you know, frequently my friends and family in the US will tell us to watch out for the bikes. And my husband and I like to say we’re the bikes now.

Kari Leibowitz 00:33:57 We are the bikes now watch out for us. But in the rain there is something about, you know, you’re in the elements and so you’re especially motivated to just keep going and get where you’re going. But it’s also this is another good lesson in expectations, because, you know, even as someone who has written this book about Winter, who lives in the Netherlands, who bikes in the rain, there are so many times when it’s raining and I look outside and I’m like, oh, I really don’t want to get on my bike. Like it does not look nice. And then I have to. I have no choice. It’s the only you know, it’s not the only way to get around, but it’s usually the fastest and the most convenient. And so I put on my clothes and I bundle up and I go outside. And not always, but I would say nine times out of ten, it is so much more pleasant than I thought it was going to be nine times out of ten.

Kari Leibowitz 00:34:47 Having learned this lesson a million times, my expectations were wrong and it looks like it’s pouring, but actually it’s just misting. And once I get moving, I feel so good and I’m like, I’m tough. I’m alive. Like the wind, the rain. And there’s something about it. Like we’re like, I. It’s so hard to internalize this lesson that it feels better than it looks.

Eric Zimmer 00:35:11 Yeah. I’m fascinated to know what you think about that because I have a similar. Listeners of the show have heard me talk about this countless times, where every single time in my life I’ve exercised and it’s, I mean, probably tens of thousands at this point. I don’t know, it’s been a lot. Every single time I’m like, that was I’m so glad I did that. If you follow basic reward theory, I would run to exercise, but I don’t. I have to force myself into it, or force is the wrong word. I have to lead myself to it way more often than I would think.

Eric Zimmer 00:35:48 And you know, I’ve asked a bunch of people about this, and, and a lot of people have just said, look, the basic animal condition is to conserve energy. You’re about to put out a whole lot of energy for what’s potentially questionable benefit. There’s always going to be some degree of resistance. So that’s just natural. Don’t, you know, don’t make a big deal out of it. And I’m curious whether you think this not wanting to be out in the freezing cold or the rain is a biological sort of wiring because, you know, it’s not good to be out in the cold, in the rain. If you’re a hunter gatherer, for example, and to what extent? That’s sort of hardwired. And to what extent there’s cultural aspects of that. And I guess what I’m saying is that do you think for the average Dutch person, it’s easier to get out in the rain than it is for you? Or do you think everybody is facing some degree of what we’re talking about here?

Kari Leibowitz 00:36:44 I do think most people face some degree of this.

Kari Leibowitz 00:36:46 I think the question is, how much are you able to embody this learning? Right. So maybe if you are a Dutch person who grew up biking in the rain in all weather, it is more embodied for you that it’s going to feel good or not feel bad or not be such a big deal. and then there’s very real biological things that happen when we, you know, expose ourselves to the cold over and over again. We we get used to the cold. You know, you can think of the first chilly fall day in autumn when you break out your sweater and your coat and you’re freezing and a a day of that exact same temperature in March, you’re wearing a t shirt. Right. And so there is also something about that’s not just mental about how often you do it, but that’s physical that the more you do it, the easier it gets. I do think that you can override some of these mental resistances by focusing on how good these things feel, by really noticing at the end of a workout that you feel good, and then really motivating yourself to do the next workout.

Kari Leibowitz 00:37:59 Not by saying, oh, I should exercise now, but by being like, I will feel better in half an hour for having done this. You know, I do think that, you know, there is that there’s what we call affective forecasting errors, which is when we are bad at predicting how we’re going to feel about things. And humans are often bad at predicting how they’re going to feel about things. And then there’s also, right, you know, loss aversion where anything that is perceived to have a cost to you, that potential cost is going to weigh very heavily, potentially more heavily than the potential gain. but I do think that with attention and intention, you can at least reduce some of these tendencies to have that resistance by, you know, having a more positively reinforcing pattern. Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:52 So let’s talk about let’s try and put this into practice. So take we can use me if you like because this is happening literally right now. When I was in Europe one of the amazing things was I walked all the time everywhere, right? It’s just a lovely thing.

Eric Zimmer 00:39:07 Much harder to do here in the States for a whole bunch of reasons. But I have been committed to like, okay, I’m going to, you know, 10,000 steps is an arbitrary number, but it’s a good arbitrary number. So I’m going to try and commit to moving that much every day. It is cold here, and I have been walking on the treadmill in our, you know, apartment complex gym. Better than not walking. Certainly. Right. Good. I’m giving myself the thumbs up for that. And I also think being outside is lovely. I love to be outside. And yet I’m finding it hard to talk myself into doing it. So coach me through this. What should I what can I say to myself that’s going to help me embrace the cold and get outside and take the walk?

Kari Leibowitz 00:39:55 Make it nice. Make it comfortable. So the first thing is to dress appropriately. So in Norway and throughout Scandinavia. They have this saying there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.

Kari Leibowitz 00:40:06 And that was something that I really learned. You know, I grew up in new Jersey. It gets cold in the winter and I was never dressing appropriately growing up in new Jersey, you know, I would wear my normal jeans and sneakers and t shirt and throw on a coat and wonder why I was freezing when I went outside. So in Norway, I really learned to embrace the woolen leggings, the layers, the undergarments, to really be comfortable for going out in the cold, which makes such a big difference. So I would say you want to be warm. I would do something else that makes it enjoyable. So you could go to a favorite spot. You could go to a park or walk around by a lake or a river. You could make yourself a thermos of something nice and warm. You could listen to your favorite podcast. You could listen to the one you feed on your walk. Obviously, you could invite a friend to go with you. You could listen to an audiobook. But, you know, I think we have this general idea of, you know, health is supposed to be painful, right? Like it’s all about willpower and it’s all about.

Kari Leibowitz 00:41:16 Yeah, forcing ourselves and doing it, even if it doesn’t feel good. But the truth is, you can get the benefits even if you make it feel good. And so what are the things that would make it feel good to you? Maybe you phone a friend. Maybe you walk to a special destination, you know, a favorite bakery or a coffee shop or something, if that’s accessible or possible for you. you do something that makes it into a pleasurable activity, and then you do it with an open mind. You say, I’m going to try this and I’m going to see how it feels. And this is something that I assign my students to do. I assign people in workshops to do of go out and take a winter walk And most of the time when my students write their reflections, they all sound the same. I didn’t want to take a walk. It was so cold. I almost turned around. I almost chickened out. The first 5 or 10 minutes I was freezing, my nose was running, I was unhappy, and then all of a sudden the air turned from frigid to crisp and I noticed there were some birds out and the sun was shining on the leaves, or the rain was making a nice sound and my mood lifted.

Kari Leibowitz 00:42:31 And I came back and I thought, you know what? I’d like to do that again. And so sometimes I think, just do it as an experiment with an open mind. See how it feels. And then if it’s good, maybe you’ll do it again.

Eric Zimmer 00:42:46 Now you need to help reframe me on the fact that there’s no leaves on the trees. It’s gray and brown. What do you got for me there?

Kari Leibowitz 00:42:56 Well, I would say that this is an opportunity to flex your curiosity and to really notice things as they are, right? Like, you know, bare tree branches against the sky. Beautiful. Are there no birds around? Are there no animals or are there things to see?

Eric Zimmer 00:43:18 Just unhappy birds.

Kari Leibowitz 00:43:19 Just unhappy birds. That doesn’t sound like projecting to me at all, right. And I would say, you know, are there is there winter weather to look at? Are there clouds in the sky? Does the sun ever come out? This is something I encounter a lot in places, you know, like Ohio, like Amsterdam, like London, that have this reputation for a long, gray winter and do have very gray winters, but also where the sun is coming out a lot more often than people actually notice, because there’s such a bias towards the grayness and a narrative that it’s gray all the time.

Kari Leibowitz 00:43:55 I was in London on a day that I walked around for an hour in the sunshine, and then in the afternoon it rained and I was in a pub and the bartender looked outside and was like, oh, such a rainy day. And I was like, I was out in the sun for an hour, you know. You know, and if it rains at all, it’s a rainy day. But if it’s sunny for only a little bit, it’s not a sunny day. And so I think you can just go out and be present to what? What is is it really as grey and boring and uninteresting as you think, or are there things that you can find to be fascinated about if you do the same, walk in the same place every week? Is there an evolution in the bare trees? Is there an evolution in the ground and the sky? And I think it’s not as easy to do this in the winter. Like I’m not going to like we shouldn’t pretend that it is, you know, in the spring, in the summer it’s easier, but I think.

Kari Leibowitz 00:44:56 that is one of the opportunities here, is really to challenge ourself and to flex these muscles and to say, okay, if I can do this in the winter, then I can really do this at any time. And I think that’s the value of a lot of these practices in winter, is that it gives us a chance to experiment and try things that are maybe a little bit more challenging and see what’s possible.

Eric Zimmer 00:45:23 Yeah, I think we talked about attention earlier, and I think there are ways that we can use it. I think you might have worked, you know, challenge ourselves to be more curious. I think there are ways to prime our attention. So things like, well, what’s something I’ve never seen on this walk before? You know, I’ve started to, to to think about the gray and go, okay, what kind of gray do we have? What are the variations in the gray? There are days it’s just socked in monoculture one gray. But there are lots of other times it’s gray.

Eric Zimmer 00:45:58 But there’s more going on. There are shades of gray. There are sections of gray. It’s. And so there there is stuff to look at. Right. And this is where I lean on like my Zen training. Because in Zen training, the whole idea is if you pay close enough attention to what’s ordinary, it can become extraordinary, right? That’s how you transform the ordinary day to day things into something more special as you give them very close, warm attention.

Kari Leibowitz 00:46:28 Yeah. And I think that that is such a powerful practice. And, you know, so often we have these mindsets about winter. We have these narratives about winter. It is gray, it is dark, it is gloomy, and it prevents us from noticing the shades of gray or presents us. It prevents us from noticing the shades of gray, or it prevents us from noticing when the sun actually comes out, or it prevents us from noticing where, when. Oh, it’s February and actually the buds are starting to be on the trees a lot earlier than I ever thought or noticed.

Kari Leibowitz 00:47:00 Because I have the narrative that it’s winter until April. You know.

Eric Zimmer 00:47:04 There are some buds on some trees on my walk. I guess I didn’t tell you the whole truth, because I have gotten out a few times and walked outdoors, and I’ve seen buds on a couple of trees and I’m like that I don’t. Is that normal? It’s it’s it’s early January. Should that be happening? I don’t know I don’t know the answer. I don’t know what kind of tree it is, but but there are some.

Kari Leibowitz 00:47:23 Yeah. And I don’t know either. But I think that that noticing is, is really powerful and is really a great experiment. I also think, you know, you are allowed to like going out because it makes being in feel really good, right? There is not really anything like going for a long winter walk and then coming home, and it’s warm and you make something hot to Hot to drink, and you eat a little sweet snack and you’re on the couch. But you you feel good.

Kari Leibowitz 00:47:56 You don’t feel like, oh, I’ve just been like, you know, I have a I have TV madness and a headache from, like, staring at screens the whole day I was outside, I got some fresh air. And now it feels great to be home. And that is part of the winter experience, you know, reframing. It’s so nasty out to it feels so good in here is part of winter and I think you’re allowed to celebrate that as well.

Eric Zimmer 00:48:23 You have a line in the book. You’re sort of talking about this idea of comfort and then challenging ourselves to become uncomfortable. And you say challenge and comfort are two sides of the same coin. What does that mean?

Kari Leibowitz 00:48:38 It means that these things really go together. And, you know, I think we think of them as in opposition. You’re challenging yourself or you’re feeling comfortable. But actually these things facilitate and enable each other that when we do something that is a little bit challenging, then we can really luxuriate in the comfort that comes afterwards.

Kari Leibowitz 00:49:04 Or if we let ourselves be comfortable and rest when we really need it, then we have the fortitude and the resources to challenge ourselves and push ourselves a little bit. I also think there are two sides of the same coin in that you really need them both, and I think this is sort of the nuance of winter, right, is that sometimes we want to practice listening to our bodies and embracing rest and letting ourselves slow down. And sometimes we want to say, okay, I haven’t been outside in four days and it’s time to bundle up and go on that walk, even if I feel a little bit of mental resistance to that. And I think part of this is really tuning into what do we need? What is going to make us feel good now and in an hour and in a day? And sometimes that requires guilt free indulgence and rest, and sometimes that requires a little bit of pushing and effort. But those things aren’t in opposition. Those things are sort of flowing together and reinforcing each other.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:18 Let’s change direction a little bit and talk about, being together in the winter. It sounds like the Norwegians, this is something they embrace. I feel like outside of like, say, a Christmas holiday or New Year’s, which it’s interesting to think about those holidays in the context of being placed there to facilitate the very things we’re talking about. Right? You know, it’s not an accident that they happen at the time of the year that those sort of things happen at, but in the, in the US, a were were less and less good at gathering in general. And I would say we’re probably even less good at gathering in winter. People generally want to embrace the it’s yucky out there. I’m not going to go out kind of thing. So how might we think about gathering in winter in a different way?

Kari Leibowitz 00:51:12 Yeah, I think this is another place where, you know, it seems like things are in tension, but actually we can reconcile them, right? That people feel maybe less motivated and less social.

Kari Leibowitz 00:51:24 But also we know that winter can be a time of loneliness and isolation, and that can be a struggle for people. So how can you balance those two things? And to me, it’s really about adapting the way that we socialize and changing that for the winter. So in the summer, you know, I want to go to the beach with people, I want to go to the park, I want to want a picnic. I want to go to the brewery. I want to, like, gather in a group and be high energy. But in the winter, I want to be low energy. I want to be in my comfy clothes. I want to be warm. But I know that if I don’t socialize, it really for me takes a toll on my mental health. And so I like to do a lot more sort of what we would call low arousal social gatherings, calm, peaceful gatherings. So I’m thinking small groups coming over for dinner or stopping and grabbing some bagels and coming over for a late breakfast on Sunday.

Kari Leibowitz 00:52:22 I’m thinking having friends over for a movie night. I’m thinking of even having people and saying, do you want to come over and do a passive hang where we both read our books or even scroll on social media, but we’re just near each other? I think that’s one of the things that we find comfort in. You know, over the holidays when we gather with family is it’s not always this active catch up activity doing something. It’s just being in each other’s presence. And so for me, in the winter, those are the kinds of socialization that I really crave is something that feels slow, that feels like a low bar and low energy, but that still is allowing me to connect with people. So this might look different for different people. You know, you could have people over in order takeout. You could have, you know, your reality TV night where once a week people just drop in and watch reality TV in their pajamas. You know, you could have meeting for a cup of coffee.

Kari Leibowitz 00:53:26 But I think, you’re allowed to shift the way that you gather and socialize to match your mood and your energy and what you need. And I think that’s really the key insight of what do you need at this time of year. And how can you get that in your gatherings and your socializing with other people?

Eric Zimmer 00:53:50 So I think we’re nearing the end here, but I wanted to talk about the last chapter in the book, which is called Clearing the Way. You say that clearing a path is an act of faith, believing in the journey ahead. Talk to me about, you know, clearing the way in winter, what you mean by that? And then talk about the emotional and psychological aspects of of what you’re talking about.

Kari Leibowitz 00:54:20 Yeah. So I think this is really about facilitating the right conditions for the most useful mindsets. And, you know, I’m happy that we’ve already talked a lot about sort of the intersection between objective reality and mindsets.

Kari Leibowitz 00:54:36 Because, you know, I love being a mindset researcher. I think it’s really powerful and that we can empower people because you have control over your mindset. It’s something that no matter what your circumstances are, it has the potential to influence your wellbeing within those circumstances and is something that you can take action on. But that doesn’t mean that the objective circumstances don’t matter. And this is something I really observed in Norway, is that a I was surrounded by a culture of people who were appreciating and celebrating winter, and that really rubbed off on me and made it easier for me to do that and be. I was in a place that had the infrastructure to make it easier to enjoy winter, where there’s good lighting and ski trails and the roads are plowed. So when it snows, you don’t have to stay at home. And it’s easy to find the right undergarments so you can be properly dressed. And all the cafes have the cozy lighting. All of those things facilitate our mindset. And of course, you can adopt the mindset to embrace winter wherever you live and work with the circumstances that you have.

Kari Leibowitz 00:55:45 But when the path is cleared for you, it’s that much easier to adopt that mindset. And you know, I’m a social psychologist by training, which is really about the psychology of how we respond to other people and our environments. And so I think it’s really important, especially for me, to acknowledge that mindset is not a replacement for things like infrastructure or being able to heat your home in the winter, or having access to places that you can go outside and take a walk safely and enjoy nature year round. And so ideally we would have both, right? We would have what psychologists call the seed in the soil. You would have the soil of the context that is fertile for these mindsets to grow in. And so we would help people adopt the most useful mindsets. But those mindsets would be supported by their communities, their families, their contexts, the physical reality of where they live. And I think that, you know, that’s something that we can’t ignore when we talk about especially like, oh, the Norwegian mindset for loving winter, it’s all about, you know, their mindset and you can just extract it.

Kari Leibowitz 00:57:03 But that’s really happening in the context of all of these other things.

Eric Zimmer 00:57:08 Yep. Well, I think that’s a wonderful place to wrap up. You and I are going to continue in the post-show conversation for a minute, because I want to explore this last idea in a little bit more depth, right. You said that we have control over our mindset, so I’d like to poke around that a little bit. Do we really what. Yeah. And then and then secondly, and I know you you you know, if I examine that word, you’d probably add nuance to it, which I’m going to give you the chance to do in the post-show conversation. And I also. I’m fascinated by this interplay between this, between the, the circumstances, the social, the factors, and then the individual factors and, and how to work with those as people. Because on one hand, you can acknowledge that the circumstances aren’t set up for you to appreciate winter in the same way that Norwegians do. And thus you can say, well, I’m not.

Eric Zimmer 00:58:04 I can’t really do it because I don’t have that. And that’s one side of the coin, and that’s probably not the best mindset. And on the other hand, you you could say, none of that stuff matters. I’m a self-made man. I will I will do my own thing. And we know that environment matters so, so, so much. And so I always like a chance to dive deeper on this with anybody who studies this. So that’s what we’re going to do in the post-show conversation. Listeners, if you’d like access to that as well as an episode I do called teaching song and either a poem or a quote, depending on how I feel. and you’d like the joy of supporting a show that really could use your support. You can go to one. You feed, net, slash, join, carry. Thank you so much for this conversation. I’ve really enjoyed it and it’s very timely. I’m going to go out and walk.

Kari Leibowitz 00:58:54 Great. Thanks so much Eric. It was a great chat and I really appreciate your very thoughtful questions.

Healing Painful Patterns and Finding Freedom with Radhule Weininger

January 17, 2025 Leave a Comment

Healing Trauma with Dr. James Gordon

In this episode, Radhule Weininge discusses healing painful patterns and finding freedom. She delves into the intertwining of psychology and spirituality, emphasizing the importance of self-compassion and the role of mystery in the healing process. Dr. Weininger’s insights offer a unique perspective on addressing emotional wounds, highlighting the significance of awareness, patience, and resilience in the healing journey.

Key Takeaways:

Discover the path to healing psychological and spiritual wounds for inner peace and growth
Uncover the key to understanding traumatic patterns in life for breaking free from recurring challenges
Embrace the power of mindfulness for heightened self-awareness and emotional balance
Cultivate self-compassion as a vital tool for healing and transforming psychological wounds
Explore the fascinating mystery of interconnectedness and its impact on personal healing and growth.

Connect with Radhule Weininger: Website | Instagram | Facebook

Radhule is a clinical psychologist and teacher of Buddhist meditation and Buddhist psychology. She is the co-founder and guiding teacher of the non-profit, Mindful Heart Programs which offers a safe refuge for meditation and education programs in mindfulness, meditation, and nature connection in the Santa Barbara area. Prior to its closing, Radhule was the resident teacher of mindfulness practice at the La Casa de Maria Retreat Center in Santa Barbara, California. Her book is called Heart Medicine: How to Stop Painful Patterns and Find Peace and Freedom–At Last

If you enjoyed this episode with Radhule Weininger, check out these other episodes:

Healing Trauma with Judith Blackstone

By purchasing products and/or services from our sponsors, you are helping to support The One You Feed and we greatly appreciate it. Thank you!

Episode Transcript:

00:00:20 – Chris Forbes
Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Dr. Radhule Weininger. She’s a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, and meditation teacher. She also leads meditation groups in Santa Barbara and retreats globally. Radhule is the author of two books, including the one discussed here, Heart Medicine how to Stop Painful Patterns and Find Peace and Freedom.

00:01:38 – Eric Zimmer
Hi Rodeli. Welcome to the show.

00:01:41 – Radhule Weininger
Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me.

00:01:43 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah, I’m really excited to have you on. We’re going to be discussing your book, which is called Heart Medicine how to Stop Painful Patterns and Find Peace and Freedom at Last. But before we do that, we’ll start like we always do, with the parable. In the parable, there is a grandparent who’s talking with her 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 and thinks about it for a second and looks up at their grandparent and says, 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 in your life and in the work that you do.

00:02:29 – Radhule Weininger
Thank you for bringing this parable. It’s actually one of my favorites and I use it quite a bit in teaching because it’s so apropos to always where we are, but also where we are today. And it means that we have a choice. As I say in my book, Lerbs, we all have long standing recurrent painful patterns. We all meet triggers. The world isn’t easy, and we have a bit Of a choice on how to respond. And we can respond with kindness and patience and wisdom and compassion, or we can react in an angry way or selfish way or greedy way, or impatient way, or just putting our heads in the sand. So I think that is what it means. You know, it’s like we do have actually some power to see where our life goes. I know Jack cornfield said once he paraphrased an old Chinese proverb that says intention leads to behavior. Behaviors create habits. Habits have something to do with our personality, and our personality has something to do with our destiny in a way. A similar way to talk to the two wolves.

00:03:59 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah, yeah, totally. So the heart of your book talks about these, as you said, lerps, Long standing, recurrent painful patterns of hurt, which I’m pretty sure any one you feed listener hears that and goes, oh yeah, okay, all right, I’ve got those, but let’s explore them a little bit more. What are these things, these lerps?

00:04:20 – Radhule Weininger
Well, I think these are knots in our psyche. Old wounds that are basically becoming calloused. And they become these knots of behaviors, of memories, of thoughts, of feelings, of body, symptoms, sometimes of events. And they have been talked about in the west by Jung and by Freud as complexes. And in the east they are called samskaras or in pali, sankaras. And the only difference is that in the west they are usually seen as originating in our childhood, and in the east they are seen as passing through lifetimes. And you know, it doesn’t really matter. It just matters. We know that they’re old. You know, they’re old and they are reoccurring. And this thing about loops is that they are like patterns of relating. They’re dynamics that reoccur. And so we often come to a place where we say, why this again? You know, doesn’t this feel similar, Even though these are completely different people or completely different circumstances? And then at times we feel like sitting ducks to our own old painful patterns.

00:05:47 – Eric Zimmer
You say at the heart of a lerp is a term that’s used a lot more in modern day use, which is that there’s a trauma at the heart of a lot of these, Whether we’re talking about a capital t or lowercase t trauma, that that’s where these originate?

00:06:04 – Radhule Weininger
Yeah, that’s right. And when you say lowercase t or uppercase t, I imagine that you mean with uppercase something huge happening, like a war or an earthquake, or our house burns down, or somebody dies or we get abused really badly. And lowercase t are more these Micro traumas, let’s say an atmosphere in the house, maybe a way we were neglected kind of in a subtle way, you know, like I fed and closed you. But maybe we never got the right attention or we were pushed in a certain way, or there was huge competition with our siblings, or we felt really misunderstood. So these are probably more the lowercase t’s, is that right?

00:07:00 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah, that’s precisely what I mean. Yep. So one of the things I loved in the book was first, how much you shared your own experience with these, and then secondly, how clear you made it that this is not a quick fix situation. Right. Like these things don’t go away quickly. You talk about how Native Americans knew for thousands of years that forests and grasslands, you know, had to be tended over a long period of time. And you say with this work, there’s no shortcuts, only diligent, careful tending. We’ve got to work with these things thoroughly, persistently, and with loving care. And I think that’s so important because I think we get very frustrated on our healing journey when it doesn’t happen quickly.

00:07:45 – Radhule Weininger
Yeah, that’s right. And I think unfortunately, our society primes us for that. We are kind of in this consumer society where we want quick fixes, quick pleasures, and I think especially pharmacology leads us in that direction. Take this pill and that pill and this intervention and you’re just fine. And so I think our frustration tolerance or our ability to suffer with ourselves has to be built up again, you know, to see ourselves with compassion and understanding and patience.

00:08:24 – Eric Zimmer
Looking at your own life, where do you think your lerps came from or some of them? I mean, I suppose we all could probably list a handful of them, but yeah, definitely.

00:08:35 – Radhule Weininger
And I think that’s how it started. My mentor is Jack Kornfield for over 20 years. He’s a psychologist and meditation teacher. So we talked a lot about it. He really encouraged me to work with this and others and write about it. And my lerbs came from my mom. I grew up in post war Germany and my mother had me out of wedlock. She was quite traumatized by the war herself, where she was a young medical student medicine on the east front. And her fiance died and came from a Catholic family. And so she had a baby with another doctor which was in Bavaria, 1957. Very shameful. You know, it was kind of unheard of. And so she hid me in an orphanage for two years and then presented me to her family as adopted, which I guess was a little bit more face saving than having A child without being married. And then she was always very busy, you know, as a doctor. I was having luckily a very nice nanny from when I was 2 to 4. But then we moved to my aunt’s house. So I think the first one was abandonment and maybe a sense of rejection. So I think that I noticed is always a really tender point for me when I feel excluded. And I think that was even more than in the family because they treated me a little strange, you know, they didn’t quite know where I was coming from. And there were all these stories and wasn’t quite clear and there was a lot of shame and embarrassment. So that sense has stayed with me, you know, when I don’t feel quite accepted or what maybe others can let roll off their backs more easily was just for me really a trigger and brought up a big inner reaction.

00:10:45 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah, I can only imagine too what the collective society in post war Germany was like. Yeah, post war America was like, yay, Right? It’s a period of prosperity, everybody’s happy, and we think of it here as this grand time in America. But I’m sure your experience there is so radically different. I mean, Germany was just destroyed.

00:11:09 – Radhule Weininger
Right. And deeply ashamed and guilty and in denial. And even though my grandfather, he was a historian and he himself was prosecuted by the Nazis for speaking up, but there was still, you know, the whole. They were refugees from what is Poland now. And so they had come with supposedly three pairs of clothes and an old pot. And my grandparents were in this refugee resettlement camp for a few years. So, yeah, there was lots of shame and poverty and then having, on top of all, a kid born out of wedlock for refugees. You know, I feel very much for refugees nowadays. You know, when I hear about how many Ukrainians are resettled and south and middle Americans losing their homes, you know, it’s like I just can only imagine what that must feel like and how many lerps those poor kids will have.

00:12:14 – Eric Zimmer
It’s a little overwhelming sometimes as we get to know more about trauma and how it affects people. And then you see so much of it in the world and we know how it just carries on and it gets passed on. And it certainly, in my less hopeful moments, I feel very deeply overwhelmed by it. Feeling like we’re caught in this cycle.

00:12:36 – Radhule Weininger
And I think our lerps, our long standing, painful patterns from our childhood, get re brought up by new difficult environments. You know, war definitely brings up something for me and maybe for other families too. So I think this is a highly triggering outside environment for all of Us and depending on what we experienced when we were little or maybe in past lives, whoever knows, things are getting inflamed again. And yeah, there is a question how to respond. And I feel think the response has to be both psychological and spiritual.

00:13:20 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah, you know, two of your main mentors. I’ve had the great privilege of speaking with both of them in the last few months for this show. Jack Kornfield and Joanna Macy. And you know, Joanna Macy’s work is, you know, very focused on being able to feel the heartbreak of the world and yet remain resilient in face of that. Let’s turn back to lerps a little bit and I want to talk about. I just sort of cast the dark side of lerps there. But you say that they also have the potential to help us find meaning and amazingly to discover the very purpose of our lives. Say a little bit more about how meaning and purpose are embedded in these things.

00:14:02 – Radhule Weininger
Yes. You know, the first noble truth by the Buddha is the truth of suffering. And that also can bring awareness. You know, it’s kind of a bit of a wake up call. Like I had to come to a place where I had in my early 20s, a stomach ulcer and two car accidents. Actually I was two months in the hospital and that led me to go to Sri Lanka. I went with my boyfriend 1980 to Sri Lanka and ended up in a monastery there. He and looking back in some ways I’m grateful that I in a way hit the wall or let’s say my windshield because I wouldn’t have stopped and really had to reevaluate my life, feel deeply what wasn’t right and actually look for meaning and purpose. So in some ways this has become a doorway, you know, and I think Pama Children says it so beautifully when pain is the doorway. And I think it’s too hard to see that in the moment. You know, if something terrible happens to somebody, you can’t just say, see this is a doorway. You know, it would feel misunderstood or you know, it feels like a narcissistic wounding as we call it in psychotherapy. But maybe later in hindsight we say, you know, in a way this was a wake up call. And that gave me a chance to reorient my life.

00:15:42 – Eric Zimmer
You know, I basically burnt my life to the ground at the age of 24 with heroin addiction. And I’m grateful for that because I was forced. At that age people are often like, well, how did you get into being interested in all this stuff? And I’m like, well, I kind of I was forced into it in a really strong way, and I feel grateful in many ways for me that it was that bad, that quick. It’s given me more of my adult life to work on healing.

00:16:08 – Radhule Weininger
Exactly. You know, I was 22. Yeah. So in some ways, I’m glad it happened early.

00:16:17 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah. Yeah. You know, when you talk about that doorway, there’s that old saying, when one door closes, another door opens, which I think speaks to kind of what we’re talking about, like that, you know, we can walk through these things. But the thing about that little saying, which it’s a nice little saying and it’s true, but is that, you know, often nobody talks about what seems to me to be a long, dark hallway. Like, one door closes doesn’t mean the other door opens right up. Very often you’re like, well, now I’m in the dark, and you’re. And we’re there for a while, and we have to kind of just keep walking. And then another door opens and we go, oh, I see. All right. You know, this makes sense now. But that dark hallway is part of the journey. I want to hit one other piece of lurps here before we move into healing them. And I want to talk about why do we obsess and repeat? Right. There is a part of lerps that is this obsessive rumination chewing over the same. We just going through the same thing again and again. What’s happening there?

00:17:17 – Radhule Weininger
Yeah. You know, Freud called it repetition compulsion. I think there are different opinions why that is. One is it’s just becoming a habit, basically, to repeat. If you look at it more positively, and I’m also drawn to see it more positively. It’s like we want to jump over the hurdle. You know, we repeat it. Because there must be a way through. You know, there must be a way through. There must be a way through. So it’s maybe both. You know, there’s a habitual piece, and then there must be a way through or over this. But it’s quite heartbreaking at times how we do things again and again and again and get stuck in such a rut. And sometimes the pain can become. Actually, there’s another. Sometimes these Freudians have such good words, it can become a pain, mama. You know, the pain becomes the familiar thing. And, you know, if we don’t know peace, then pain is maybe the only thing we have.

00:18:27 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah. So as we turn towards healing here, you say that awareness practice is fundamental to working with all forms of these lerps. Say more about why awareness is so fundamental. And what you mean by awareness in that context?

00:18:43 – Radhule Weininger
Well, what I mean by awareness is that we look back at ourselves and we say, ah, that’s what’s going on. Rather than just distracting ourselves or putting our head in the sand or turning to addiction or TV or our devices or whatever, we have to not be there. And I think that’s basically what awareness is. There’s self awareness, you know, being aware of what’s going on in ourselves. There’s metacognitive awareness, which is really noticing the processes in our heart and mind. And then there’s awareness of our environment. Then there is the moment by moment non judgmental attention that John Kabat Zinn talks about. And then I see sometimes awareness as like the Tibetans do, as a field quality, as something that is already there, that is always here. The field quality of awareness we can tap into the groundless ground of being in the last maybe five, 10 years. I find that actually more and more important because it gives us a wider perspective.

00:20:30 – Eric Zimmer
What you’re pointing at there is this idea of there being two types of healing. And I’m putting words on things that don’t quite fit, but we’ll run with it. And the one would be psychological healing.

00:20:43 – Radhule Weininger
Yeah, right.

00:20:44 – Eric Zimmer
It’s going back and looking at what happened to us, specifically understanding what that causes us to do, processing that, unwinding it. But it’s very personal, it’s very specific to me and my thing. And then there’s another type of healing, spiritual healing, that makes me think of something that Marvin Gaye talked about, which was a different type of healing, but that is not what the show is about. That may not be a reference you get, but some of the listeners will anyway. But spiritual healing and what you’re talking about there is connecting to something that is bigger than us, that is non personal in a sense. It’s not about me and my stories. And you just mentioned that over the last five years or so for you that that second part has become more and more important. And I’m curious if you have an opinion on whether the psychological healing that you did before that made that spiritual healing easier to do. Did it have to happen in a certain order? Did you pursue them? I think to some degree. In parallel, what are your thoughts on how those two work together?

00:21:54 – Radhule Weininger
I’m thinking about that a lot because I’m trained as a psychologist. And actually in my early 20s, with these car accidents, I started psychotherapy, which was unusual in Germany in 1980 or 79. And I also started meditation, which also was very Unusual there. My relatives thought I had entered a cult. You know, they thought it was basically dangerous. And I think they go hand in hand for a long time. It was probably until the 90s, I felt there were, like, two camps when I started my PhD, you know, after I got my MD in Germany, I got my PhD in America. But my more psychoanalytic supervisors thought that my spiritual path and I always went to retreats all the time, whenever I could, was basically an escape. You know, like, they called it like an oceanic merger or something strange. And I couldn’t basically talk about it. While many of my early spiritual friends thought that psychology was a waste of time, you know, it should just be spiritual. And it was really Jack, who I met in 86, but maybe it was a bit later that he said that, you know, like, that they actually fit together. And he gave me permission to bring those together for myself and in my work. But I always had the sense that they fit together. There was just no platform for that. You know, there was no conceptual framework for that. And I was trained as a therapist not to talk about spirituality. So whenever I did, I felt I had to not tell my supervisors or I had to kind of hide it. And it was actually Jack in the early 2000s, who asked me, do you meditate with your clients? And I said, no boundaries and transference, countertransference, this and that. And he said, rodali, get over it. And so he really gave me permission. And since then, I have gotten big time over it, and time has moved with me to a degree that now insurance companies pay for it. So it’s really wild how times have changed. And I do think they so fit together. You know, I think our spiritual healing, and it doesn’t have to be religious, but spiritual in a sense that there is something bigger that holds us, too, that has meaning, and that is there. And I remember at one long retreat, it was actually a solo retreat, but I had Jack over Skype every few days, and I asked Jack, you know, is the universe personal or impersonal? And he said, hmm. And then he said, I think it’s both. And I said, that’s what I thought, too. And it’s the great mystery. You know, like the Native Americans call it the great mystery. We just can’t wrap our mind around it. It’s certainly not a person or it’s not anthropomorphic. And I’m quite happy to say I just can’t wrap my mind around it. But I can feel it. What do you think?

00:25:34 – Eric Zimmer
I think the answer to many Questions is both. Yeah, you know, I’m kind of a both person with a lot of these things that seem like they are delineated, they’re closer together than we often think. I’ve been thinking recently about different topic but, well, similar topic. We talk about thought and emotion and we separate them. Right. But I’ve started more and more to go, well, we could talk about them as if they’re separate in some way. And there’s some ways we could point to them being separate, but they never seem to be without each other. They seem to co arise. So, you know, are they more one thing than we think? There’s certainly a deep interconnection and co arising between them.

00:26:16 – Radhule Weininger
There is. And then with body too. You know, body is also co rising with emotions. Maybe the difference is thoughts just in their pure form don’t have so many physical residues, but emotions do. And you know, we feel them in our bodies as a tightness in the chest or not in the stomach or hot or cold or whatever it is. The core rising is just the right word and it’s just how can we hold them? And I guess if we have this wider perspective, you know, if there is the sense of awareness also having a field quality, there’s a spaciousness that’s bigger and that holds us all in which we are all interdependent and co rising like Joanna says. You know Joanna, who actually was this morning at our meditation.

00:27:19 – Eric Zimmer
Oh, how lovely.

00:27:20 – Radhule Weininger
Yeah, she’s there many mornings and so she says that everything is co rising and interdependent and that interdependence then brings compassion.

00:27:36 – Eric Zimmer
So let’s move a little bit into your program of healing. You’ve got 12 steps of healing. And these are not to be confused with the 12 steps of say AA or a 12 step program. These are different 12 steps and we’re not going to make our way through all 12 of them. But I thought we might pick a couple out, if that’s okay.

00:27:57 – Radhule Weininger
Sure.

00:27:57 – Eric Zimmer
The first one is to recognize what your LRPP or your LIRP is. And you have 12 different things that might be a clue to us. Can you just mention what a couple of those are?

00:28:10 – Radhule Weininger
Yeah. The first one is that we feel it in our bodies. You know, something hits us or we feel winded or suddenly our head hurts or we feel a tightness in our jaw or our chest or hot or cold or something happens and it’s like, oh, wow, I don’t feel right. And then often there is an emotion that’s bigger than the situation would warranted. Or would be expected. You know, why does this bend me so out of shape? You know, somebody disinvited me from their book club. Why is that so real?

00:28:50 – Eric Zimmer
And now I’m gonna burn the city to the ground.

00:28:56 – Radhule Weininger
Right. Except exactly. Exactly. And then rumination. You talked about rumination. You know, our mind spins. We wake up at night between three and four, and the mind just goes and can’t stop. We can’t fall back asleep or early in the morning. Or maybe we feel a sense of, you know, like post traumatic stress symptoms, like a sense of unreality or maybe a bit of tunnel feeling or a bit of dissociation or something like that may happen. Or a generalization. You know, we feel, oh, wow, it was just the book club that rejected me. But now I feel the world is against me. You know, we generalize out from the book club to the world.

00:29:49 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah.

00:29:49 – Radhule Weininger
So these are a few of those.

00:29:51 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah. One of them you mentioned, and you sort of hit it. There is this narrowing awareness, and that’s probably the one for me. My mode of LERP coming up is shut down. It’s just the power down. You know, my awareness just shrinks till it’s just like me sitting, you know, sort of immobilized. Luckily, that rarely happens to that degree anymore. But I can remember many experiences where, like, it would happen. And that was the thing for me was just this almost complete sort of shutdown.

00:30:22 – Radhule Weininger
Shut down. Right. And it shuts itself down. You know, we don’t even say, okay, now I’m shutting down. It just happens.

00:30:31 – Eric Zimmer
Yes. Yes.

00:30:32 – Radhule Weininger
And that is so insidious.

00:30:34 – Eric Zimmer
No to that insidious nature of it. I often think about. This is particularly poignant for me right now. I’m going to see my dad this weekend. My dad has Alzheimer’s and he’s declining quickly. And we never had a great relationship. And I would periodically throughout my adult life, I would be like, all right, I’m, you know, I’m going to play golf today with my dad and I’m gonna like, dive under the surface with him. Right. I’m gonna, like, make a deeper connection with him. And I would get in his presence and all of a sudden that desire would just vanish.

00:31:05 – Radhule Weininger
Oh, yeah.

00:31:06 – Eric Zimmer
And so it wasn’t even like I was consciously choosing like, oh, I’m afraid to do this. This feels too risky. It was like all that desire to do it just gone.

00:31:17 – Radhule Weininger
Yeah.

00:31:17 – Eric Zimmer
And it was like you said, it’s so insidious because I thought, oh, I guess I don’t really want it. And I Was like, no, I don’t. You know, with some more reflection, I was like, that’s not actually what’s happening here. Right. Just the situation is triggering a shutdown process that happens completely unconsciously.

00:31:34 – Radhule Weininger
Yeah, it is. It’s very unconscious, you know, and we have to be really patient with ourselves. And, you know, besides mindfulness as the next step, you know, noticing our feelings and thoughts and body symptoms and being aware of them, there’s self compassion. Because I think first when we see, we see. And sometimes it’s too much. Oh, I didn’t want to see all of that, you know, so how shut down I am or how bent out of shape I am or how great my craving is or whatever, you know, so how rejected and ashamed I feel. And so I think we need this. I call it a psycho spiritual container of mindfulness and compassion and patience with ourselves and really a lot of kindness.

00:32:54 – Eric Zimmer
I’m wondering if you could say a little bit more about practicing self compassion, because I think it’s something that more and more everybody is aware is probably a good idea and is really, really difficult.

00:33:07 – Radhule Weininger
It’s diffic.

00:33:08 – Eric Zimmer
You actually describe a situation in the book that happened early in the pandemic where you sort of spiraled into a LERP and, you know, you were finding it hard to give yourself self compassion. Can you talk about how you found your way through that?

00:33:20 – Radhule Weininger
Oh, with my ex husband, yeah. Yeah. So I felt really triggered because, you know, we always, even though we get along really well, there’s this thing about the kids. Where do the kids live? And which actually I hear a lot of people can understand well and identify with. And then I felt just again overlooked and not heard and not recognized and kind of frustrated with myself that I couldn’t get with it better, you know, why can’t I just let it go, you know, and so noticing my own lerp, why this was hitting me so badly. And also his lerp, he comes from a similarly wounded family to mine. And I think that’s often with our partners. I think some smart psychologist said we are meeting often people on a similar level of development or not development. So we meet others that are also having their lerps. They are then our exes, and we have to share our kids with them. And so it needs a lot of compassion to hold us, to find our way through.

00:34:44 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah. So I assume for you, some of what’s happening in that moment is you’ve got all these things happening, and as you said, there’s a little bit of, you know, why can’t I let this go, right? Like, I’m a psychologist, I’m writing a book, I’m a mindfulness teacher. Like, what’s the matter with you? And I think anybody who’s been working with these things for a while is going to have some flavor of that, right? Some flavor of. I know the answer here. I interviewed the poet David White yesterday and he had a line that just really hit me and he said, heartbreak is when we’re called to let go and can’t. And I thought, oh my goodness, like that just really landed for me.

00:35:24 – Radhule Weininger
Yeah, that is good.

00:35:25 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah. So you’re in this place where you feel like I should be doing better, but I’m obviously not. So how do you find self compassion for yourself there?

00:35:33 – Radhule Weininger
I think with experience, I think it becomes almost like a new pathway, a new habit. I think once we are able to have it once or twice or three times, it’s more possible again to do that. And sometimes remembering the little kid I was, you know, the isolation and not self pity, but self empathy. And that also, if I don’t see myself as a psychologist, this adult who’s tough, but if I see myself in my more wounded form and vulnerable form, then I can have more compassion.

00:36:17 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah. And you have practices in the book for this. You’ve got a few that you use specifically for self compassion. And I wonder if you could share a little bit about one of the practices. There were three that sort of jumped out to me. There was Recognizing Ourselves practice, Understanding our Suffering practice, or the good enough parent practice. Pick one and tell us a little bit about what it is or how you do it.

00:36:43 – Radhule Weininger
What was the second one you mentioned?

00:36:45 – Eric Zimmer
The second one was Recognizing Ourselves practice.

00:36:49 – Radhule Weininger
Right. So I think really allowing yourself to get into a relaxed place to allow yourself to feel your body, your breath, and especially to recognize in your body where you feel raw and where you feel vulnerable. You know, it’s like maybe even put your hand on your heart and they found out this has actually a physiological effect to do that. And then in your mind’s eye bring to mind this feeling that you might have of rejection or maybe of being left out or missing out or whatever it is. And to feel, where is this? Maybe it is in my heart going right through to my back and stay with that felt sense. And then maybe having an image come up from a time when we were small where we felt that sense of heartache, maybe a rawness, a tightness in the heart, in the back, all the way through, where that was maybe a bit of nausea in the Stomach, maybe a little bit of lightheadedness, and bring in this child, you know, that exile, as they call it now, an internal family systems. You know, bring in the exile and give them your love, your attention, your kindness, and feel with them and maybe even feel what it felt like for them physically. You know, it’s kind of unexile, the exile. Make them your kin again, your internal kin, and really feel that in your body. And maybe there will be some compassion, maybe there will be some forgiveness. You know, sometimes we have to forgive ourselves for being in the wrong time, in the wrong place or whatever happens, and then really staying in connection with the breath, breathing through it all and coming back to body and breath with self acceptance.

00:39:20 – Eric Zimmer
You know, as I read your book and I look at the practices, there’s a part of me having done 400 of these interviews where I look at them and I go, okay, well, I’ve seen a lot of this before. Right. I really think though, the way that you sort of combine the spiritual and the psychologic is really well done. There really is within these practices, instead of talking about the two being complementary, there actually is a commingling of them. The good enough parent practice being, you know, sort of an example of that or the understanding our suffering practice. There’s mindfulness, there’s awareness, and there’s current moment awareness and mindfulness, and there’s bringing some of the psychological things into that. And I think that container is interesting. You use the word psycho spiritual container, which is it’s one thing to sit in, say, our therapist’s office and talk about a certain thing, and it’s a different thing to do it when we’re in a slightly different state of mind, one where we have relaxed the body, where we have dropped deeper into our awareness, which is what a lot of your practices are calling us to do. They’re sort of centering us, dropping us in, and then allowing us to try and process some of those things from that place.

00:40:46 – Radhule Weininger
Exactly. And I think that’s something I’m becoming more and more cognizant and aware of, that this wider perspective is really helpful and the wider spiritual container. And I think some people are catching on to that, like Richard Schwartz from ifs. You know, how the big self is really helpful, especially with personal woundings. I just saw that a few weeks ago and I thought, wow, he’s coming to a similar place. I didn’t even know, you know. So I think now we have permission to bring the psychological and the spiritual together. And soon insurance companies will even pay for it, no, you know, you know, it’s like time is moving on probably with the urgency of the times. We need it. We need the strengthening of the holding container. Just the psychological is not enough. And I feel maybe what helped me is that I kind of intuitively knew that all along, since 1980, but I felt I had to do it in secret because my spiritual teachers or my therapist didn’t know, you know, and they were in different camps. And now we are becoming one camp and which is so beautiful. And that is what our world needs. And to have this camp without card membership, you know, we don’t have to be Christians or Jews or Muslims or man. We can be, but maybe we can also be more than that or we can be neither of it.

00:42:34 – Eric Zimmer
Well, I certainly think we have way more options on the table for us, which is in many ways a very good thing as you’ve described. And yet I’m also struck by looking at some of the practices in the book that you’ve got. And again, these are awareness mindfulness practices. Recognizing that that word practice is really important, that you’re able to do some of these things because you have developed some mindfulness, some stability. You know, I think we have a tendency. I certainly have had one over the years. I think I’ve gotten better at it and I. I’ve learned. But it used to be like, pick up a book, read it, because I’m like, okay, oh, finally I’ve got something that’s going to fix me. And I read the book and it says, do this practice. And I half heartedly do it while I read the book. And then I go, that didn’t do anything. And I set it aside and I go, well, all right, what’s next? You know, versus really realizing that this is deep work that as you said, I quoted kind of very early on is, you know, we have to do it thoroughly and persistently and cannot be in a hurry.

00:43:39 – Radhule Weininger
Yeah. And you know, there is. Do you know this quote by Jack Kornfield? The miraculous to happen is an accident, but practice makes us accident prone.

00:43:51 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah.

00:43:52 – Radhule Weininger
You know, I think practice makes us accident prone.

00:43:55 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah.

00:43:56 – Radhule Weininger
And it kind of keeps a channel open not only to our own heart, but also to the great heart of the world.

00:44:06 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah. So what would you say to someone who is feeling like they’ve been working on this stuff for a while and they still feel like, you know, I get just all wrapped up in my lurps. I’m doing this stuff for 30 years and I still just feel like stuck. What words of wisdom Would you have for people who are kind of in that place?

00:44:27 – Radhule Weininger
Well, I would say I know the feeling. Recently at a retreat, it happened to me, you know, I was at this four week retreat in Spirit walk and I did actually a little Dzogchen thing with two other teachers and during the four week retreat and then when I came, the other people I was doing that with, they were doing this together for a long time. They said, oh, we don’t know if we want you in our group. And for two days I didn’t hear anything from them. And it really lurked me, you know, because Spirit rock had been the place of working through lerps for me. And I thought, oh, here I am with my lerp. You know, it really helped to find out that my LERP was still well and alive, but that I noticed it. And then after two days they said, oh, it’s all fine, you know, we just do this together. And everything puffed away, you know, all the stress. And I actually thought, isn’t this interesting? Usually I would have been chewing on my lure for probably two to three weeks. And now it was two days where it passed, you know, and it just puffed away. So I would say it will still come up, but it will pass maybe a little quicker.

00:45:51 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah. The thing I often think about is what would I be like had I not done so many of the things that I’ve done. So it’s very easy to habituate to what my current state of mind is and be like, okay, well you know, but then to look at like how far in some ways we’ve all come. And I think that’s an important part of the journey is to sometimes reflect and go, oh geez, you know, I’m not free from suffering because you know what, I’m human, so of course I’m not going to be. But you know, it’s not like this work hasn’t borne a lot of fruit. You know, it’s just not perfection because sometimes we get sold or we want, you know, we all naturally want a pain free life.

00:46:30 – Radhule Weininger
That is right. And in a way marketing and advertisement pushes us to that to not be terribly modest and you know, to kind of overstate ourselves. And you know, so I think that that’s unfortunately part of even here in our psycho spiritual community, we are definitely not free from that totally. And there’s a big challenge to our authenticity and our humility. It’s like if you’re too humble, you won’t be anybody. But then we don’t want to be anybody because there’s no self. Well, where do we go? It’s a tough one. And to just, again, maybe be compassionate with our human condition. And we are always teetering between the personal and the universal reality. You know, we have to get our driver’s license renewed. And also, at times, we are really at one with the universe.

00:47:36 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah. When I think of Jack Kornfield more than anything else, I think of the phrase that he’s used so many times. It’s not his phrase, but he’s used it so many times that I so associated with him is the 10,000 joys and the 10,000 sorrows. And that for me is just one of the most grounding ideas for me. Whichever side of that I’m on, I go, oh, okay, yeah, normal, you know, and if I’m on the 10,000 sorrow side, I go, okay, that’s normal. And, you know, there’s some joys coming around the corner because, you know, and if I’m on the joy side, I’m not surprised. Let’s wrap up with sharing a little bit more about step 11, which is letting in the mystery. I know we’ve touched on it a little bit. It’s always a great place to go. So I’ll hand it over to you with no specific question there. So much as talk about the role of letting in the mystery in this healing process.

00:48:25 – Radhule Weininger
You know, it’s really coming to the experiential place that the mystery is here, that it’s more than a thought, it’s more than a concept. And I think there are practices like the Tibetan pointing out, practices that allow us to get to this place, or I think Locke Kelly does it these days in a more accessible way. And actually, that’s kind of how I teach these days because I think it’s so important to experience physically and energetically the great interconnected beingness of us all, and to feel that awareness can sink from my prefrontal cortex into my heart, into life around me, and that inside and outside is actually not that different and that they are interconnected and that I can see, even be mindful from that greater perspective. And it’s quite interesting. It’s in a way, like being in a flow state state, you know, we can actually be very alive and very aware and very attentive from this place. It’s not being spacey, it’s actually being hyper aware, yet relaxed at the same time and connected. And I find that is, for me, one aspect of the great mystery. And we can connect it however we want through our heart when we are really in our heart we feel this complete openness. Love is probably the main entry point to the great mystery. But then, you know, if there are prayers we have from our childhood, from whatever religious upbringing we have, that is fine to bring them in. You know, often in the beginning of a practice, mindfulness or effortless mindfulness practice, I start with a heart opening. And not just because I think it’s a good thing, but also because it calms our mind, it calms our whole system down. It’s like a little child that is afraid and when a mother holds it and comforts it, then it feels secure and then the ruminating busy mind calms down. Then our heart becomes like the doorway to the great mystery. And it actually was Henry Miller who at Epidaurus in Greece say when my little heart beats in unison with the great heart of the world. It’s a beautiful quote. And I think that’s like to speak with Joanna Macy that when we can be in touch with the great mystery and come to engagement for our world. Because part of the great mystery is compassion is love. And I think Ram Dass was one who was really telling us that, you know, it’s like you swim in God, you know, you swim in love. And I think with that love we can hold our lurps, you know, then with that love we can be patient with our lurk that love. We have enough space.

00:51:55 – Eric Zimmer
Well I think that is an absolutely beautiful and perfect place to wrap up. So thank you so much for coming on the show and spending time with us. I really enjoyed the book. I think there’s a lot of great practices. The practices are available. I believe if you get the book you get linked to all the practices as guided meditations.

00:52:15 – Radhule Weininger
Yeah.

00:52:16 – Eric Zimmer
And we’ll have a link in the show notes to where people, people can buy the book and also to your website and all that stuff.

00:52:21 – Radhule Weininger
Yeah. And you know you can even have the practices without the book. Maybe I’m not a good salesperson but on my website you can find them and you can find them on the Shambhala website. And I teach every morning 7:30 to 8 and you just come in through mindfulheartprograms.org and it’s free. I’m quite stubborn to not put a price on the meditations. We have a few other great teachers so anytime join us.

00:52:53 – Eric Zimmer
I assume that’s Pacific Time. 7:30 Pacific Time.

00:52:56 – Radhule Weininger
Yeah, it’s Pacific Time. And Monday night 7:15 and Monday mornings we have a wonderful meditation at 10:00 in the morning and actually a lot of Europeans are joining us to that one.

00:53:12 – Eric Zimmer
Well, again, thank you so much.

00:53:14 – Radhule Weininger
It was really a wonderful interview. And thank you so much for your wonderful presence.

00:53:21 – Eric Zimmer
Thank you.

The Power of Silence: Wisdom on Stillness and Solitude with Pico Iyer

January 14, 2025 Leave a Comment

Why Silence is Powerful in a World of Noise with Leigh Marz & Justin Zorn
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In this episode, Pico Iyer discusses the power of silence and offers insights and wisdom on stillness and solitude. Pico delves into the impact of silence on mental health and offers his deep understanding of the transformative effects of solitude in the pursuit of personal growth.

Key Takeaways:

Embrace the power of silence to unlock personal growth and inner peace.
Discover the pathway to joy through contemplative practices in your daily life.
Explore the profound impact of solitude on your mental well-being and clarity of thought.
Uncover the spiritual journey of Leonard Cohen and its relevance to personal growth.
Learn to balance hope with reality in facing life’s challenges for enhanced mental well-being.

Connect with Pico Iyer: Website | X

Pico Iyer is the acclaimed and bestselling author of more than a dozen books translated into twenty-three languages, most recently The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise. His journalism has appeared in Time, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, the Financial Times, and more than 250 other periodicals worldwide. His TED talks have been viewed over eleven million times. His new book is called Aflame: Learning from Silence

If you enjoyed this episode with Pico Iyer, check out these other episodes:

By purchasing products and/or services from our sponsors, you are helping to support The One You Feed and we greatly appreciate it. Thank you!

Episode Transcript:

00:00:23 – Chris Forbes
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. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Pico Iyer, an English born essayist and novelist known chiefly for his travel writing. He’s the author of numerous books and has contributed to Time, Harper’s, the New York Review of Books, and many others. Today, Pico and Eric discuss his newest book, A Learning From Silence.

00:01:39 – Eric Zimmer
Hi Pico, welcome to the show.

00:01:41 – Pico Iyer
Hi. I’m so happy to be here.

00:01:43 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah, I’m really excited to have you on. You’re somebody that I have wanted to talk to for a while now because I think you’re just such an exceptional writer. So I’m happy that we’re going to get to discuss your latest book, which is called A Flame Learning From Silence. However, before we get into that, we’ll start like we always do with the parable. And in the parable there’s a grandparent who’s talking with their grandchildren and they say, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One’s 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 and they think about it for a second and 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 in your life and in the work that you do.

00:02:34 – Pico Iyer
It’s interesting because that’s the very question I ask myself almost every day. And I remember, especially during the pandemic, every day when I woke up, I thought, am I going to concentrate on what opens me up or on what cuts me up. Am I going to listen to the news which will make me feel despairing and hopeless and powerless? Or am I going to take a walk and watch the sun rise over the hills and see the golden light over the town and feel suddenly reminded of all the blessings that usually I sleepwalk past? And so I think that parable is almost the perfect guidance for any life. You know, I remember when I was a kid at high school, we had to read Hamlet and there’s that famous line, there’s nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. And I think that’s much more true than sometimes I remember that we have a choice more than we imagine how we’re going to respond to things. And out of that choice comes. So I love the way that that parable is reminding us it’s up to us. We’re not at the mercy of circumstances, we’re not at the mercy of the heavens. We can make the choice whether we choose to look towards the sky or towards the darkness.

00:03:43 – Eric Zimmer
That’s lovely. And I think it’s a great place for us to jump into your new book. Because in your new book, as I mentioned, called A Learning from Silence, you are reflecting on I don’t know how many years, maybe you can tell us in a minute time, of you going away to a place, a Monaster monastery, where you are alone and quiet. And one of the things that comes through in the book very clearly is that you notice that when you’re there, your thoughts have a certain way of working that might be closer to what we would consider the good wolf. And that when you’re caught up in the busyness of day to day life, your thoughts look more like what we would say the bad wolf looks like. And you’re very eloquent in that. But maybe first from your perspective, tell us a little bit about the book.

00:04:34 – Pico Iyer
Well, you know, I love that question because in some ways I would say my thoughts disappear and my. And I disappear when I’m in that very active quicken silence that’s been developed over 40 years of meditation and prayer by the monks. And so what I love about going into silence in a monastery or a convent is there are no thoughts, there’s the world. And I think at some level it’s my thoughts are the bad wolf. In other words, full of anxiety and unsettledness and competitiveness, fear. And what’s outside me is the good wolf. And so as I’m driving up, every time I drive along a highway along the coast of California. And then I drive for two miles up to the top of the mountain where this Benedictine hermitage in Big Sur, California, sits along the freeway. As usual, I’m fretting about my deadline. I’m worried about my aging mother. I’m conducting an argument with myself or with some friend I saw a week ago. I’m full of my thoughts, which I think are the bad wolf. And I get there, and I step out of my car, and I step into my small room with the ocean in front of me and the sun sparkling across the ocean and the sound of birds and a rabbit running across my garden. And my thoughts disappear and the world comes in. And that is where the good wolf makes his appearance. So it’s almost like the difference between the social self and the silent self, or the daily self and the eternal self, that when I’m babbling to you or when I’m down at the supermarket later, I’ll be filled with my thoughts. But if ever I take the chance and make the resolve to step into silence, I’ll be freed of my thoughts. And it actually goes back to what I was thinking when you asked me about the parable. Because I remember that one of the monks who stays in the monastery where I’ve been hanging out for 33 years now says that joy is the happiness that doesn’t depend on circumstance. In other words, all of us feel happy when the sun is shining and we’re with somebody we love and everything’s going wonderful in our lives, and then light falls and the one we love leaves, and we’re feeling despondent. But joy is the spirit that I think monks and nuns cultivate that any of us has access to that remains even when it’s dark and the rain is pounding on our walls and we’re not feeling fully healthy. And still we realize that there’s a joy at the center of our being and a joy at the center of our world. And so I suppose joy in that sense is a place beyond even the good wolf and the bad wolf, where we’re not even making distinctions between good and bad or black and white.

00:07:00 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah, I mean, I certainly think that has been the call to me of the spiritual life and the contemplative life is to find that place, that there’s an inner peace, regardless of what else is happening. I remember, I glimpsed that when I read some Zen Buddhism a long time ago in high school. I just intuited that that’s what they were talking about. And ever since, that’s been Kind of like what I would like to get to is to more closely resemble that.

00:07:29 – Pico Iyer
Yes, yes. And I think the beauty of it is that all of us have the possibility to reach it. Monks and nuns do it on a full time basis, but you and I can try to figure out the circumstances that are most conducive to us feeling exactly that.

00:07:44 – Eric Zimmer
So let me ask you a little bit more about something you just said. You said that when you get there, your thoughts disappear and that the thoughts of the world are there. You mentioned you’ve been going there for 30 some years, so you’ve got some practice in doing this. To what extent is that been an acquired thing that like over years of going there you’ve recognized that you let the other self sort of go faster or were you experiencing that really early on when you would go or some combination?

00:08:16 – Pico Iyer
Such a good question, Eric. And honestly, in my case it was instantaneous. The very first time I went, 33 years ago, half a lifetime ago, and I was in my early 30s, I stepped out of my car in this ringing silence. I walked into my simple room and I felt in heaven. But I know many people subsequently I’ve told my friends to go and they don’t necessarily have that connection. I’ve always loved the Big Sur coastline where that monastery happens to be situated. I’ve always loved the ocean. So somehow it agrees with me. But I think it’s a matter of affinity, as with people. I happen to have fallen in love with that place. But you wouldn’t fall in love with it any more than you might fall in love with my wife and I might not fall in love with your partner. So I don’t necessarily feel that everybody should go to the place I go to, but I do feel there’s somewhere that’s perfect for them that I hope they have the chance to find. And in my case, I’ve been to many other retreat places in England, in Australia, in Japan, and they all move me and liberate me in some ways. But this was the one that I was meant to go to. And so from the first day I felt that, and I remember, I think I went for three days initially and the second day I went into the bookstore and there was a monk there and he said, how’s it going? I said, this is heaven on earth. And he looked at me searchingly and he said, well, I’m glad you get on with it. Not everybody does. Heaven is by no means guaranteed, but clearly you are in the place that’s right for you, so keep on Coming. And that’s why as soon as I went there, I stopped really looking for other places. Because I felt, for whatever reason, this is the one that works for me. Maybe it’s even like listening to songs. The song that transports me won’t be the one that works for you, but there is a song that transports you you, and that will bring you to the same place. But in my case, therefore, it was not acquired. I think what was acquired is that initially I’m an only child. I’m a writer, as you know. I live most of the time at my desk. I love being by myself. So I went into this place, which is like the dream of a writer’s retreat. I had a desk, I had an ocean view, I had food provided three times a day. I’m in heaven. And no Internet, no cell phone, no distractions. But what it took me a while to acquire was the sense that the point of going there wasn’t to be alone and in heaven, but to learn how to be with others. And I realized, of course, the monks are the opposite of solitary, because they’re caring for one another and caring for guests like me around the clock. So I did learn many things over the course of the years. And I did acquire a sense that solitude was a means to an end and means to an understanding, compassion and community. Which is probably a good thing for somebody like me, because otherwise, left to my own devices, I’d want to spend all my time alone. And I was so happy to find this quintessential place of aloneness. And then it reminded me, well, well, this is only a doorway to learning how better to go back into the noisy world. And the one other thing I will say is that I was instantly in heaven. But as I started going more and more often and staying for longer and longer, two weeks, three weeks, sometimes it would be stormy and it would be absolutely pitch black. And the rain would be pounding on the roof, shaking the walls. And I was very cold and I couldn’t see a single sight of human habitation around. And I was in some ways imprisoned. I couldn’t leave my little cell because the rain was too strong. And I didn’t know if I be able to drive out again. And it was like being in the wilderness. 40 days and nights in the wilderness. It felt like that. Very lonely, unsettling, scary. And that was a good reminder that it’s not always going to be sunny. And in that sense, heaven is not guaranteed every day that I’m there. But even in the rainy times, I thought if it’s going to be a storm. I’m probably better off in this safe place of prayer and community than driving along the freeway.

00:11:57 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah, it’s interesting. You quote Father Thomas Keating who says that contemplation isn’t a cure for anxiety. And then you say, you know, the dark places don’t go away when you step into silence. If anything, they rise to the surface, but here you can see them clearly as you never could when barreling along the freeway. And I think that’s really interesting is some of it’s the thoughts. But in many ways what you’re describing is the space that emerges around the thoughts. That that context is what changes so dramatically.

00:12:28 – Pico Iyer
Y that was amazing, Eric. You found exactly the sentence in the book that corresponds to what I’d been saying, but exactly so. And I think the second part of that Thomas Keating quotation is that as you said, contemplation isn’t a cure for anxiety, but it allows you to see it on a larger canvas. And I think that’s a little of what I get in that silence. I’m stepping into a much larger canvas where I and my little concerns and hopes are very, very tiny. And what I’m surrounded by isn’t something terrifying, but rather something radiant. And I realize that the more I’m out of the pict, the happier I am that I’m the one who’s sort of corrupting the beauty of the overall scene. And if I can leave myself down on the road, the beauty can come out undisturbed. So. Exactly. So you see it in a larger perspective of time and space. And I think, as with the storm, it’s a training in impermanence. This too shall pass. And you realize that as I’m sitting in the storm it feels terrible, but the next day I wake up and it’s glorious again. And I’m just reminded, don’t get invested in the moment because something much bigger than all moments.

00:13:35 – Eric Zimmer
You also talk a little bit about sometimes when you’re there that you see the radiance in other people, the people that are there. And you have a line where you say, well, where are these people in my day to day life? And you basically say, well, they’re everywhere. Right. And then you have a line that I absolutely love. You say, it’s never possibility. That’s not present. Only me.

00:14:01 – Pico Iyer
Exactly. Yeah. One of the big surprises for me of going there is I’m a fairly shy and reclusive person. And as I said, I love being by myself and happy to spend weeks on end more or less by myself. But when I go there and I’m walking along the monastery road, quite often I’ll run into a fellow travelers or another stranger who’s staying there, and we’ll maybe stop to chat for a couple of minutes, and I’ll quickly find that that person feels like my oldest friend. And it’s because I think both of us are speaking from our deepest selves. We’re not chit chatting about the election or what happened to the Dodgers last night or the state of the weather. We’re speaking about something much deeper. Both of us have probably come to silence, drawn by the same kind of thing. We want to make contact with something deep and real inside ourselves. And so we’re not joined by our jobs or friends we have back home or our circumstances. We’re joined by something much more essential. And so every kind of interaction I have along the road with anyone I’ve met before or never met before really leaves me rich and replete and very happy. And as you said, then I think, well, wait a minute. Why is this not happening at the rest of my life? And it’s because I’m not really attending to people in the rest of my life. I’m at the surface of myself, and they’re probably at the surface of themselves, too. But it’s a fault of me, not of the world. I think Emily Dickinson says it’s not revelation that’s missing, it’s our unfurnished eyes. And so it’s almost as if there I get the eyes with which I can see the light and everything. And then the challenge, which is very tricky, is how you can sustain even a tenth of that when you’re back in the world and you’re distracted and you’re racing from the bank to the pharmacy. How can you still see the light in other people? As you probably know, I’ve been lucky enough to spend 50 years talking and traveling regularly with the Dalai Lama. And there’s somebody, because I travel right next to him eight hours a day, day after day. Whoever he meets, he finds the common point and he sees the light. And his friend, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, is the same. So it can be done. But it’s very difficult for the rest of us, I think, to try that. But it’s a good reminder that the light is there, if only I can find the eyes to see it. And so I never imagined when I traveled, as I said, into this blissful solitude, that one of the real blessings I would take back would be my interactions both with the monks and with Just the regular folks who were staying there for two days or three days. And it doesn’t have much to do with me or even with them, but just with the conditions that allow us to see the light within one another. And I guess, you know, one of the things that always strikes me, one of the reasons I wrote the book, is this is a benedictine hermitage. The 15 or so monks there are steeped in a thousand year old congregation called the Camaldolis. They’re the most contemplative group within the Benedictine order. But. But I’m not even a Christian. And so what strikes me is even though I don’t share their faith, they make available the silence, where instantly I can find whatever is most sacred in myself. And really I think I owe a great debt to them. I had lots of preconceptions about what monks were before I started hanging out with them. And one of the first to disappear was that the monks are the least dogmatic people around. They welcome everybody of any faith or no faith at all, and know that whoever you are, you are fine. That light that you were describing, it’s people like me who are dogmatic. But these men are so rooted in their faith that they’re open to everyone. I feel just like the Dalai Lama.

00:17:25 – Eric Zimmer
I read a quote of yours and I don’t know where it comes from, so I don’t even know if it’s accurate. But I’m curious. And in the quote you said something to the effect of that you don’t meditate, you don’t do yoga, that those just aren’t things that you do. A, is that true? And B, if that is true, talk to me about what contemplation in silence then looks like for you. What does that mean? I know it’s a very sort of Western thing to ask, but what are you doing when you are there? You’re not participating in the monk services, right? They have a lot of different services that organize and structure their day. You’re not sitting in meditation. So talk to me a little bit about how you’re getting these contemplative benefits without what’s traditionally thought of as maybe a contemplative practice.

00:18:13 – Pico Iyer
Thank you. And it is true. I have said that, and it’s still true of me. I take walks and I take retreats. And I think I always stress that because when I write about these contemplative worlds, I’m keenly aware that some people who, intimidated by meditation, feel that they’re not qualified to do it. Try it for a while and find that Their fidgety monkey mind is still cavorting from branch to branch, one way or another. And then they try yoga, and perhaps they’re not physically comfortable doing that. And so I’ve always stressed that to say that this contemplative space is available to, I think, any one of us, even if we don’t feel that we’re up to doing yoga or having a meditation practice. The challenge is to find what is the best way to do it. And I will confess that I didn’t have any interest, I thought, in contemplation until my house burnt down in a wildfire. I lost everything I own. I was sleeping on a friend’s floor, and then another friend said, oh, if you’re sleeping on the floor, you should go to this retreat house three hours up the coast, and at least you’ll have a bed to sleep in and a desk and an ocean view and food provided for $30 a day. And I thought, what’s not to lose? And that’s what took me to the Benedictine hermitage where I stay. And so instantly, almost against my will or without my knowledge, I was ushered into this contemplative space. And although I don’t meditate or, as you said, I don’t go to their prayers, just being in that silence, being free of distraction for day after day, being able to take walks and feeling that the lens cap has come off. I’m open to all the world, and I’m liberated from Little Pico. All of that, I think, brings me to the same space that people perhaps find when they meditate. And I’m sure I’d be a deeper and richer person if I had the discipline to meditate. But I suppose I’m issuing the invitation to anyone who is cowed by that kind of formal practice. Don’t worry. There are opportunities for you, too. And I think these days, the world is moving so quickly, and all of us are aching and longing for a release from the rush and distraction. I have friends who take runs every day or swim or play the piano or play tennis. And I think all of those steps towards that, anything that can free your mind from your thoughts and allow you to be open, as I was saying before, to things that are much wiser than you are can begin to serve the same purpose, even though they’re not as good as true meditation. When I’m back in Japan, I go to the health club every day, and I do my 30 minutes on the treadmill, and I make sure not to turn on the TV or to have any distraction when I’m there. And even those 30 minutes just clear my head, remind me what I really care about, fill me with ideas sometimes. So I go energized mentally and emotionally as well as physically when I return home from that. And so there are many spaces in these days. And I think I sometimes am tempted to say, I don’t have time to meditate or take a retreat or to take a walk. And it’s almost like saying, I don’t have time to take my medicine. I don’t have time to be healthy. I don’t have time to see the doctor. It’s a very foolish thing for me to say. If I’ve got time to watch the Dodgers in the World Series, I have time to do what’s much more essential, which is try to clear my head. So I stress that I don’t meditate. To say this is an invitation open to anyone.

00:21:43 – Eric Zimmer
It’s interesting because I have done a lot of Zen practice and you go on a Zen sasheen or retreat, it’s very intensive meditation. And then a number of years ago, I started sitting retreat a few times with another gentleman who’s sort of. Of non affiliated. I don’t know if you would have heard of him. His name’s Adyashanti. And what was interesting was on the Adyashanti retreats you do meditate some, but way less than you do on the Zen retreats. And what I found was that what I would then do is spend the entire afternoon. I would just go hike up in the Sierra Nevadas. And I ended up finding that that worked better for me than a retreat, that I meditated all the time, you know, some meditation, fine, good. But that there was something about being in that silence. But further, that there was a container of silence around the whole week. And I’m sort of sharing a little bit about what you’re sharing, which was that silence itself, without even adding anything else onto it, was very healing.

00:22:48 – Pico Iyer
I love that. That’s a perfect example because I think sometimes we can get stuck in very fixed notions that you have to meditate to get this. And that may not be exactly the right thing for you. It’s like wearing somebody else’s clothes that don’t happen to fit. So you may know that When I was 29, I was living the fast paced, exciting life in midtown Manhattan. I had a 25th floor office apartment on Park Avenue, lots of very stimulating job writing on world affairs. And I left all that to go and live for a year in a Zen temple in Kyoto. But my year in a Zen temple actually only lasted a week, though subsequently, I’ve spent a lot of time around Zen temples, though not in the formal practice that you did. And soon after I arrived, I read this sentence, which is that it’s easiest to sit still in the zendo. The challenge is, how are you going to sit still in the world? And I realized that, again, even the Zen meditation was a means to an end. I was too immature to be able to engage in that practice at that time, though I’ve done more of it subsequently. But nonetheless, there might be other things that would still bring me to that space. And one of the things I do in the book, as you know, is to quote from. From Emily Dickinson and Henry Miller and Thoreau and all these people, none of whom were official spiritual teachers or meditators, but all, I think, who are speaking for the contemplative wisdom. And it’s a way of saying, again, it belongs to all of us. It’s not particular to these Benedictines or to the Buddhists who are celebrated for meditation. It’s there, but we have to find our own form. And I love the fact that your walks in the Sierra, they’re already a rather liberating place. Brought you to even further maybe, than that zendo.

00:24:25 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah. So you mentioned this idea of translating or keeping some fraction of what you gain in silence as you go back into the world and you reflect on this a fair amount in the book, you actually say you have a realization. What does it mean to sit in silence? If it leaves me, at least from my first few hours back, less attentive, less thoughtful than I’d ever hoped to be? I think you’re describing, you come back and jump into emails and you’re a little bit frantic. So what have you learned over the years about how to take some of what you get in silence and bring it into the rest of your life?

00:25:07 – Pico Iyer
So I think very soon after I started taking retreats, it became clear to me as I’d never seen before, it was almost a fork in the road. And one way led to success as I conceived of it as a boy, you know, getting money, power, having a good job, and the other led to joy. And I think I’d been on the success track before, and I suddenly realized that’s not going to really leave me happy, even if it leaves me more financially secure. And that joy was a path to go on. So to some degree, I even more dramatically left my job, left a steady income, left all the possibilities of that world behind to live in a two Room apartment in the middle of nowhere in Japan as a result of going on retreat. One of my surprises was as a very solitary person who loved to be by myself, I realized I dec to get married and to take on two stepchildren and a lot of new financial responsibilities by being on retreat. And I realized again, as I say, that retreat opened a door to a whole different set of values than the one I’d had before. Completely reoriented me in terms of what was important and what was sustaining to me. And I remember, and as you say, I describe it in the book, one year into taking these retreats, I went down to the foot of the mountain where there was a payphone. And I called my girlfriend in Japan. And she heard the light in my voice and the excitement, and she felt a little rattled, maybe jealous. And she said to me, you know, if you were to meet another woman, no problem, I could defeat her. But how can I compete against the temple? And that sentence was such a good one. And it so startled me that as you read then and there, I decided the next week or later that year to fly across the world and to make a commitment to her. And that meant living in a two room apartment. Our rent is $500 a month. Been there 32 years now, so we live very simply, almost as students do. Supporting her two kids and living a life that maybe five years earlier would have seemed very deprived to me. Who would want to live in a foreign country where you can’t speak the language in a tiny apartment where there’s not even space to open the bathroom door fully? But being in the monastery had taught me what is really richness. Richness is not a big bank account. It’s being free of longing. It’s being free of the thought maybe I should be somewhere else. And whenever I was in New York City, I was leading the life of my dreams. But a part of me thought, what would it be like to live in Japan or to be in Tibet or whatever? As soon as I arrived in Japan as a result of my retreats in the monastery, I never thought again, should I be somewhere else? I knew that I had found my place. So it just reminded me what real poverty is and what real luxury is. And luxury, I saw, was a day that lasted a thousand hours. A day where to this hour? I’ve never yet used a cell phone. We don’t have a car. It’s a very simple life. And a simple life feels like a much more complete life than when I was acquiring accomplishments and amenities and distractions. So I think it really just completely changed the way I think about the world and what I really cherish and need. And I suppose it turned my attention to what I think of as the inner savings account. I remember a few years ago, I was sitting in this little apartment in Japan, and I got a phone call that my mother, in her mid-80s, had just had a stroke and was in the ICU. So I got on the next plane, I flew over, and I was by my mother’s bed for week after week as she was hovering between life and death. We all face those kind of situations often. And what struck me then was really all the money in the bank was no help to me or to my mother. And all the books I’d read and all the books I’d written, none of that was useful. The only thing I could bring to that moment of urgency was whatever I developed in silence, which is what I think of as my. My inner savings account. That that was really the treasure I had to draw upon. And it’s the case with all of us when we suddenly get a bad diagnosis or face something really difficult in our lives. I don’t think it’s the material things that ever come to our rescue. It’s only the, so to speak, immaterial things we’ve chosen to develop, probably by going on retreat or engaging in Zen practice or whatever form that contemplation takes.

00:29:19 – Eric Zimmer
So can you say anything about what. But if you were to be able to name what those things are that were of benefit to you in that moment, say the moment where your mother is really sick or something very difficult is happening, you say, these things I developed in silence. Are you able to put a name to those? And if you’re not, that’s okay. But I’m just curious.

00:29:42 – Pico Iyer
Such a beautiful question, Such an essential question, I think. Impermanence. Nothing lasts for a. Which I suppose I knew from my reading, but I felt in my bones after I began staying on retreat and watching the clouds pass across the sky. And as in Zen practice, to see nothing stays the same for a second, even including our emotions or including our good luck or our bad luck. I think seeing something that doesn’t seem to change makes one less afraid of death, in the sense that when my father suddenly died of pneumonia and I didn’t know what to do and my mother was bereft, I got in my car and I drove for three and a half hours north just to sit on the benches in the monastery. And I sat there and I looked at the ocean that never moved. And I heard the bells. And although that, too, is impermanent at some level, it was a vision of some silence beyond the reach of the clock. And my thoughts that seemed to be as close to permanence as you could get. And I just sat there for two hours and then drove back that same day. And it just put that death into context. So maybe something of the larger canvas. You know, you and I, Eric and Pico, come and go, but there’s something beyond us that’s just rolling on the river of life, I suppose some people would call it. And having that understanding, I think, too, takes the edge or the urgency off some of those difficult moments. And I suppose the less one’s living in one’s individual self. You and I began by talking about the bad wolf is perhaps my thoughts, and the good wolf is what’s outside them. And the more you can bring what’s outside your thoughts to that moment and see it’s nothing personal. And that in some ways, there’s no way you can affect the situation, but you can affect how you choose to respond to it. I think there’s a lot in that. I sometimes think, almost to my own surprise, that of all the people I’ve met in my life, the one who has suffered most is the Dalai lama. He’s lost 13 of his siblings. He’s been exiled from his homeland for 65 years. He’s called a demon in monk’s clothing by the government of one of the largest nations on Earth. And all he radiates, as we know, is joy and that infectious laugh and that constant smile. And it’s a good example, I think, as I say, Archbishop Desmond Tutu was the same, of how even facing constant challenge in the most difficult circumstances, we have the capacity to summon something beyond that. And I haven’t exactly named all the things that you asked me to name, but I love that question, and it’s one I need to think about. What precisely is it? I suppose the Dalai Lama’s favorite phrase is wider perspective. Maybe that’s a good one. It gives me a wider perspective. I’m not looking at things through the little keyhole of Pico. I’m seeing things on a larger canvas.

00:32:22 – Eric Zimmer
I love that. I don’t know who said it, but I’ve sort of captured it as a phrase that I think is useful, which is just with about anything, like, when in doubt, zoom out. Like you said, just bigger perspective, whatever it is. Is there some way to get a bigger perspective on this? Because that almost, at least for me, always seems to be where some degree of freedom lives.

00:32:44 – Pico Iyer
I love that. And it’s so quotable. That’s a great one liner. Whenever you’re in doubt, zoom out. Perfect.

00:32:50 – Eric Zimmer
Yes. Speaking of one liners, you’ve got some great one liners in the book that I was really struck by as I went through them. Maybe I’ll pull one or two out. Now that we’re mentioning one liners. Yes, I love this one. You say in my life below, and what you mean is your life back in the normal world because you’re reflecting while you’re in the monastery, in my life below. I’m so determined to make the most of every moment here, simply watching a box of light above the bed. I’m ready at last to let every moment make the most of me.

00:33:21 – Pico Iyer
Yes. And it’s a way of saying, as I speak to you now, I’m in my typical daily life, which means I’m ruled by my plans, which says 8am I talk to Eric. And 11am I go and get lunch. And 3, 3pm I go to this meeting and everything’s ruled out by my tiny and imperfect mind. When I’m there, I wake up and I can do anything or I can do nothing. And I make it an important principle not to tell myself what I’m going to do, but to listen. And it goes back to something I was thinking of earlier in our conversation. Because I think the part of us that talks is to some extent the ego. And it comes from the smallest part of ourself. And the part of us that listens is what’s beyond, ideally, and comes from the good wolf, something much wider than ourselves. And so there I listen. And who knows what it is I’m listening to? Is it listening to my higher self or intuition, subconscious, doesn’t really matter what you call it. But I just listen. I wake up. And what does this moment call for? Shall I take a walk? Shall I open a book? Shall I write something? Shall I just sit here, Sit here, sit here and enjoy the beauty of the world around me. And what a liberation, to use your word, that is. I’m not determining it. I’m not imprisoning myself within my sense. This is where I have to be at 9:30. I can be anywhere at 9:30. I can Be anyone at 9:30. And I can. And it took me a while to realize it was only by doing nothing that I could do anything at all. In other words, it’s only by going to this place where I’m no one and I’m nowhere and I’m not doing anything that I could be open enough to realize what I should do when I come back into the world two days later. So it’s a way of saying that I’m much happier to be guided by something outside me than by my fallible little sense of what’s important.

00:35:07 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah. It makes me think of something you’ve said in the past and I don’t know where, but you’re talking about Japan and you’re saying something to the order of that. Like a perfect date in Japan is two people go to a movie together and they sit and they watch the movie in rapt attention and then they leave and they don’t say the first word about it to each other and. And that somehow in the silence between them is the more real version of themselves. I’m not getting that exactly right, but I’ll let you kind of clear up what I haven’t quite gotten there.

00:35:44 – Pico Iyer
Yes. So you were talking about your Zen practice and just I think yesterday I came upon this great sentence by Shunryu Suzuki, who set up the San Francisco Zen center and wrote Zen mind, beginner’s mind, which to me is the great medicine that anyone could draw upon. And he looked across the room at his students and he said, all of you are enlightened so long as you keep your mouth shut. And I think to speak to your sentence. Silence is what brings us together in our deepest and most intimate selves and speech is what brings us back into our thoughts and our dividedness and we’re flying off in opposite directions. The less we speak, often the closer we are together. We know that’s the definition of friendship or true love. In many ways that silence brooks no argument. It’s the place beyond either ors and your version of the truth versus my version of the truth. And you’re right that I think the Japanese are very wise about this. But I think anyone who enters contemplations finds this. And as you know, one of the monks I talk about a lot in the book is the singer poet Leonard Cohen. And he was the most articulate writer I’ve ever met. But what struck me was that when I would go and see him in his little house in a very beat up part of la, we would chat for a little bit, have lunch maybe, and then he would pick up two chairs and take them out to his little garden in front of a flower bed and he’d sit down and I would sit next to him and I would wait and wait and wait and wait and he would say nothing. And 10 minutes would pass. 15 minutes would pass. Finally, the first time this happened, I. I thought, maybe this is a gentle hint. And I said, oh, you must be busy. I should leave. And he looked up at me beseechingly, please don’t go. So having been a Zen monk and lived deep into silence, as you did in your Zen practice, he had come to the understanding that silence was the deepest thing that we could share and also brings us to a sense of what we can share. Speech is reminding us of all the things we don’t share. So every wise person I know, I think, knows the value of silence. And Japan is a wonderful society that draws on that collective wisdom that when you go to a movie with a loved one, you’re sharing a beautiful experience. Why tarnish or scribble graffiti over it with your particular response, which is probably not that of your beloved?

00:38:36 – Eric Zimmer
We have to come back to Leonard Cohen in a second because he’s the one guest I most wanted on the show in the decade I’ve done this that I never got. So we’re going to come back there. But I want to go back to this idea of silence between people and words being what pulls them apart, because I recognize in you saying that an essential truth. And there’s also something, though, where I don’t think that’s all, because I come from a silent family, but not the good kind of silent family. There’s something more in that silence that brings people together versus a silence that separates, or a silence that’s born of fear or awkwardness or avoidance. And I’m curious what that thing is that goes along with silence that makes it companionable and draws people together.

00:39:28 – Pico Iyer
Thank you. That’s a perfect point. And as I listen to you, I think collective silence, shared silence, communal silence. So you’re absolutely right. When we receive the silent treatment, when we talk to somebody we care about and they’re just shut off, they’re using silence as a way to get away from us. Silence becomes menacing and hostile and obstacles communion. So individual silence can be used as a sword or a shield or in all kinds of not so healthy ways like individual speech. But communal silence is where you and I and many others are joining something, again, much larger than us, that speaks for that maybe larger canvas or the ocean in which we’re just drops. My experience is that if I step into a church or a temple or any place where people are sitting silently, I always feel refreshed and liberated. In other words, I’m stepping into a silence that doesn’t belong to any one person in the pews, it’s been constructed around them. And I think that’s what the monks and nuns do in their spaces. But you’re absolutely right. When I come back to my apartment and my wife is staring there without saying a word, that’s her silence. And it’s the opposite of comfort. So I’m glad you made that point because it’s an important distinction.

00:40:42 – Eric Zimmer
Right. But there can be a very companionable deep silence between two people. So back to Leonard Cohen. So I mentioned he was the one guest I most wanted to have on this show that obviously didn’t work out because he’s not around to do it. But at one point I got to know a monk who was with him at the monastery that he studied at in Los Angeles. And I’d gotten to know this monk a little bit. And I said to him, you know, I hate to ask this, like I really hate, you know, I hate when people, people ask people to introduce them to other people. I want you to know you can 100% just say no to this. But do you think there’s any chance that Leonard might ever be a guest on the show? And he said, well, you know what, I’m happy to ask him. He said, but you should know that his monk name means great silence. So I wouldn’t hold your breath.

00:41:33 – Pico Iyer
Was it by any chance Gento, whom you got to meet? A youngish monk, Shozan Jacques Harbner, as he writes.

00:41:40 – Eric Zimmer
That’s him, Yep.

00:41:41 – Pico Iyer
Yes, yes, I know him too. Wonderful, great friend. Yes, yes. And a great writer too. Yes.

00:41:46 – Eric Zimmer
Oh, he’s outstanding. He’s so good. Yes, yes, it was him. But based on what you’re sharing about Leonard, it sounds like that name is apt. The deep silence.

00:41:56 – Pico Iyer
Yes. So his name, which was Jikan, I heard translated as the silence between two thoughts. But it’s very similar to what Gento said, but yes. And I think his teacher, Sasaki Roshi, was very precise in choosing that name for a man of words and a man who lived by words. When I first met Leonard, it was while he was living as a monk on top of Mount Baldy in high dark mountains behind Los Angeles. And what struck me instantly when I got out of my car, I didn’t recognize him, though I had been a fan of his for more than 20 years because he was wearing horn rimmed glasses and a very unflatten cap and a torn, ragged black robe. And he didn’t carry himself like a famous person or a man of accomplishment or a published writer. He carried himself like an anonymous grunt, a nobody. And I quickly saw he had brilliantly erased the being known as Leonard Cohen. He’d gone there to become nothing, to become nobody. And I remember I asked him about his career, and he looked at me quizzically and he said, well, I don’t know exactly what you. You call my career. That’s really not a very relevant consideration here. So apart from everything he had let go of everything that goes with Leonard Cohen, including the fluency and the beautiful gift with words.

00:43:18 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah. You recount in the book that you said to him about being at the monastery that here you find answers. And he replied to you, here you find freedom from answers.

00:43:30 – Pico Iyer
Yes. And freedom from questions, I think. And freedom from all the chatter of the mind and. Yeah, freedom from the longing to search. I think to go to a place like that is to realize you don’t have to look for anything. You have to be found by something. You have to sit still long enough to be discovered rather than to think you have to travel the world to see something.

00:43:50 – Eric Zimmer
So I want to pivot a little bit and talk a bit about a book that you wrote. I believe it was the one before this one, although I may not have that exactly right, called the Half Note Own Life. It’s one of your more recent books, I believe. Did I have that right?

00:44:05 – Pico Iyer
Yeah, it was the previous one, and it goes with this one. Exactly right, yeah.

00:44:08 – Eric Zimmer
Part of the question you’re asking yourself in that book is what kind of paradise can ever be found in a world of unceasing conflict and whether the search for it is problematic in and of itself. Say more about that discovery process and where you land with that.

00:44:28 – Pico Iyer
Thank you. Exactly. That book is about cutting through our many notions of projection. We think it’s going to be in a golden island. We think it’s in the future. We think it’s in the past. We think anywhere but here. And I think we tie ourselves in knots and delude ourselves and take ourselves in the wrong direction by searching for a paradise. And at some level, we all know not just that paradise is in the eye of the beholder, but it’s in the being. It’s something that you develop whereby, as we were saying earlier, you can see the light in everyone. And you. You can see the light in every place. Wherever you happen to be is paradise. And I don’t include it in the book, but I remember one time I was standing along the river in Varanasi in India, the great center of Hinduism, and I’m of Hindu birth, and it’s Chaotic. There are flames on each side of you cremating people. There are dead bodies floating apart. There are naked wise men moving around. It’s just mad carnival. And even though I’m from India by birth and from Hinduism by descent, I was totally freaked out by this place. And standing there bewildered. And suddenly, out of nowhere, two Tibetan monks arrived. One an elderly Tibetan, one a younger AmErican. And the younger AmErican, whom I knew already from New York, came up and he surveyed this scene of absolute chaos. And he said, isn’t this wonderful? This is the whole human pageant. This is birth and death and transformation and everything in between. And essentially he was saying, this is paradise, this place of confusion and chaos. This place, this is the paradise, the only paradise we can trust and embrace because it’s a paradise rooted in real life. It’s not a set apart from reality. It’s right at the heart of things. And he had come to that wisdom because he was a monk who had practiced for a long time in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. So, yes, that book is about cutting through the silliness with which we project paradise onto other places and how can we find it within. And this book about the monks, of course, is speaking at people who have found their paradise exactly where they are. And the notion of being a monk, especially maybe in the Christian tradition, is that that walled cloister or enclosure is a model of paradise. And you’re living there full time and coming out of paradise in order to serve the world the way a bodhisattva might. So this is about people who don’t need to search and have been found, as it were. So you’re absolutely right. I think of these two books as brother and sister in a certain way. And the other point about the book I published just two years ago, the Half Known Life, is I’m traveling to Iran and North Korea and Kashmir and Jerusalem and all kinds of war torn places. But in almost every place I visit in that book, I’m in the passenger seat and there’s a local who’s driving me around. And that’s a very conscious choice to remind myself I’m in the passenger seat. In life, I’m not in control. I’m being led by other people and I’m being defined by circumstances. And it goes to your point about I wasn’t trying to make the most of every moment. I was letting the moment make the most of me. In other words, it was freeing myself from the delusion that I can control the world or create the circumstances and opening myself up. So that notion of being in the passenger seat was important to me in that book.

00:47:40 – Eric Zimmer
So without revealing what you’re working on now, I’m curious, what questions are the ones that are sort of at the center of your life today? I’ve heard you describe that you write books about something that you want to think about for five years or so. Again, I’m not asking you to disclose anything, but I’m curious what questions are really alive for you right now?

00:48:05 – Pico Iyer
I think maybe all my adult life, I’ve been working with the same question, which is how to allow hope and reality to sit side by side. At the core of that book called the Half Known Life, I quote the great Irish poet Seamus Heaney. And when he saw Nelson Mandela released from prison after, I think, 27 or 29 years, Heaney wrote, once in a lifetime, hope and history can rhyme, which has become quite a common sentence. Now, how do we match hope and history? Because history has left all of us with wounds, with traumas, with fears that we can’t just wish away or pretend never happened. But a life without hope is no life at all. So how can we see the world clearly as it is and still remain hopeful? And I think I’ve never seen in my lifetime the world so despairing as it is now. So maybe it’s an ever more urgent question. And so each of my books. Books. Is trying to come at that from a different angle. And this book aflame about the monks. I mean, they’re living in a constant state of faith, which you could say is enlightened hope. But how do you match that with reality? How do I, as a visitor to their world, getting a glimpse of the light that you and I have been talking about, keep that light alive when I’m back on the crowded freeway and everyone’s honking their horns and I’m an hour behind schedule and all of that. So I think every one of my books is coming at that essential question. I don’t want to live without hope, but I also really want to attend to the world. And I think one of the sentences you read earlier in our discussion had to do with looking at the world closely enough to love it and not to just assume that it’s a broken world entirely.

00:49:47 – Eric Zimmer
Right? Right. I think that is a fascinating question. Like, what is worth hoping for? Or what can we hope for? I think is a really deep and interesting question, because if we look at, say, certain types of faith traditions, right, they’re hope is that this all has a rhyme and a reason and a purpose, and that where they’re going next is going to be a good place. But for those of us who don’t necessarily believe that, like you said, what can I take from that? Which is a beautiful thing, but that more matches my view of the world and what is. And I think about this a lot. I think about it with trust also. Like, what can we trust in? You know, they’re similar questions that for a lot of people, don’t have easy answers.

00:50:35 – Pico Iyer
They don’t have easy answers. I’m so glad you mentioned the word trust, though, because I’ve been speaking about the hermitage I keep going to. And soon after I went there, I realized it was a place of love. But I realized, more important, it was a place of trust. And I could trust everything there. And I couldn’t exactly tell you why I could even trust myself. Which is why when I wake up, I don’t. I don’t make a plan. Because I know whatever happens is right. And it’s why I feel so close to everyone I meet along the road. Because I trust them implicitly, as I might not if I met exactly the same person on the main street of my hometown. There’s some quality that whatever is happening in that silence, which is a much bigger canvas than the one we usually inhabit, is going to be the right thing. And therefore, you can surrender, as people ideally do in their traditions. You can submit everything is going to be right. And the monks are great exemplars of trusting the moment and obedience to whatever they’re given, including sickness and calamity. Hope, as you say, is a much different thing. And as you know, I quote in the book. I stumbled upon a book in the monastery bookstore which quoted Vaclav Havel, great playwright and former president of Czech Republic, who says, hope isn’t the notion that everything will turn out right in the end. It’s just the notion that something makes sense, even if it’s a sense which we can’t understand, that there is some kind of order to the world. Now, you said that maybe that’s something in the Christian tradition that those of us who are not Christians can’t exactly hang onto. But I’m glad you used the word trust, because maybe hope is just trust in the universe. Bad things are happening. I am suffering. Things are never the way I would like them to be. But maybe the universe is wiser than I am. And that’s all I really need to.

00:52:19 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah. And I think that in a certain light, it is. You said it. Trust in the moment, right?

00:52:25 – Pico Iyer
Yes.

00:52:26 – Eric Zimmer
Trust in reality. And again, I think this gets to, what do we hope for? What do we trust? Because if my trust is that nothing bad will happen to me, well, that’s a terrible. Like, that’s not gonna happen. Like, you know, that’s not the way the world works. So it makes me think back a little bit to what you said about the thoughts that are yours and then the thoughts that are bigger than that and that are everything. Right. So if my hope or my trust is in me or what’s going to happen to me, it could be a difficult hope or trust. But if it’s to the world, well, that’s back to our bigger perspective. Right? That’s a bigger perspective. You also quote somewhere Thomas Merton saying something along the lines of, the only faith he could trust would be the one that came to him not as an answer, but as a probably unanswerable question.

00:53:23 – Pico Iyer
Yes. I feel that the people who are deepest in faith are the ones who can live most comfortably with doubt. And I heard that Pope Francis, of all people, when he prays, doesn’t pray for an answer to his questions, but just for the strength to live with the unanswerable. And yes, and I think the word reality, which you and I have been using a little, is an interesting one, because if I look. Look at the reality outside my window today in this comfortable town in California, it is pretty frayed and fractured and broken. But I think stepping into silence has admitted me to some reality that’s beyond behind and beside the one that I usually see in which I can have much more confidence. But I love what you say about the wrong forms of trust. Whenever I travel with a dialogue, I’ll attend his big public meetings, and nearly always at the end of the meeting, somebody will get up and say, with great sincerity, your holiness, what do you do when you’re really hoping to reverse climate change and bring peace to the Middle east and live comfortably with your neighbors and it doesn’t work out? What do you do when your dream doesn’t work out? And he looks at them with great kindness and wisdom like an uncle, and he says, wrong dream. If you’re hoping to bring peace to the Middle east tomorrow, tomorrow you’re always going to be disappointed. If you’re going to want to reverse climate change by next week, forget about it. If you hope to be married to Brad Pitt, ain’t gonna happen. But if you hope to find something in the person you love that Brad Pitt would envy, it can happen right now. But he always stresses, you have to be very realistic and rigorous in measuring your hopes, your dreams, because as you said otherwise, you’re just drawing the prescription for your own brokenhearted.

00:55:07 – Eric Zimmer
Well, I think that is a beautiful place for us to wrap up. Pico, thank you so much. I’ve really enjoyed this conversation so much and I’m so glad we got to talk.

00:55:17 – Pico Iyer
Really, it’s been a delight for me. Eric, this is the richest conversation I’ve had in a long time because you know exactly all the things I’m describing and you’ve come at it through Zen practice and other things and walking in the Sierra. So what a joy to talk to you. Thank you.

00:55:46 – Chris Forbes
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January 10, 2025 Leave a Comment