Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - How to Get Unstuck in Life — Lessons on Love from Sharon Salzberg, Meditation Pioneer

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

What if the greatest gift you could offer this season isn’t something you buy—but rather the way you choose to meet yourself and others—with kindness?As we pause new releases over the holidays, the Finding Mastery team is taking time to rest, reflect, and be with our loved ones — because we believe relationships are part of the practice of mastery itself.So today, we’re re-releasing a powerful, audio-only episode from the Finding Mastery Vault: a conversation with THE Sharon Salzberg, one of the world’s leading teachers of wisdom, mindfulness and loving-kindness meditation. Sharon shares how love can be trained as an ability, why discernment and gratitude sharpen performance, and how to meet fear without hardening. She also walks us through a simple loving-kindness meditation you can use right away. Her lessons are as relevant now as they were when we first shared this conversation — maybe even more so in a world that could use a little more gentleness right now.So, Happy Holidays from all of us here at Finding Mastery and with that, enjoy this week’s From The Vault conversation with Sharon Salzberg.___________________________________________________________________Links & ResourcesSubscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine: findingmastery.com/morningmindset Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and XSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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That's LinkedIn.com slash Finding Mastery to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. What if the greatest gift you could offer this season isn't something you buy, rather the way you choose to meet yourself and others with kindness? Welcome back. We're welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast, where we dive into the minds of the world's greatest thinkers and doers. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Jervais, by trade and training. a high-performance psychologist.

The idea behind these conversations is simple. It's to sit with the extraordinaries and to learn, to really learn how they work from the inside out. This is not about hacks or shortcuts. It's about what they're searching for, how they organize their inner life, and the skills they've used to shape their craft and themselves. As we pause new releases over the holidays,

the Finding Mastery team were taking time to rest and reflect and to be with our loved ones. We believe that relationships are part of the practice of mastery itself. So today, we are re-releasing a powerful episode from the Finding Mastery Vault, a conversation with the Sharon Salzberg, one of the world's leading teachers of wisdom, mindfulness, and loving-kindness meditation. Her lessons are as relevant now as they were when we first shared this conversation, maybe even more so in a world that could use a lot more gentleness right now.

So, happy holidays. from all of us here at Finding Mastery. With that, let's jump right into this week's conversation from the vault with Sharon Salzberg. Sharon, I am so excited to have you back on the podcast. Our previous conversation is an audience favorite. And when people ask me, like, what is one of your favorite conversations? I definitely point to yours. And it was episode 101.

And so I'm so excited to be back with you today. And before we dive in, I just love to check in. Like, how are you? I'm really well. Thank you. I've spent the last four years fairly isolated, actually, because of various health issues. And I'm sort of in an emerging process. It's very interesting.

Yeah, there you go. Okay. So it's been over six years since we last. folk. I was going to ask, what episode number are you up to now? Yeah, it's like we're in the 400s. I know six years just flew by. So in our last conversation, we talked about being present. We talked about letting go. You went pretty deep on compassion. And a lot has happened since then. The world is now wrestling with very different challenges in some respects. What are you feeling? What are you experiencing when it comes to

the state of the world right now? That's a complex question. Well, in March of 2020, I came up here to Barry, Massachusetts, where I am now. I spent February just traveling around teaching, as I usually did. I went back to New York City, where I was also living part-time. And the city was just in a very distressing state. People were getting sick. People's parents were getting sick. Anxiety was through the roof. And I had the thought, you know, I'll go up to Barry where I have a house and a retreat center for a couple of weeks.

And I'll ride it out. And then it'll all be over. And I can just pick up my life as it had been. And some time later, I realized that was not going to happen. The retreat center had to close down. And I was very strictly isolated. teaching only online, and everything was different. Expectations had been shattered and plans were changed.

And the fundamental question I kept asking myself is, what's still true? Like, what am I counting on? What, in the midst of all of this change and disruption, what do I still trust? What do I believe is kind of an underlying truth? And I really look deeply at that question. And part of my answer was, of course, my meditation practice, which I'm sure we'll get into. And also my belief, the way the Buddha said it, you know, later echoed by Martin Luther King Jr. and many sage people was hatred

will never cease by hatred. Hatred will only cease by love. This is an eternal law. And in terms of the Buddha, I always thought, well, that's kind of weird because he talked so much about impermanence and change. And like, this is an eternal law. And not that I find that easy to access in every situation, but I really, really fundamentally believe it's true. And so as I look at the world now where hatred seems to be on the rise and there's so much division and distrust and people feeling so alone and all of that, I keep coming back to that. That, maybe it's more love, even though it sounds, you know, stupid in a way. It's not meant to be saccharin or covering over difficulty, but maybe that's really a path that needs to be followed.

So you went in to say what is more true now than maybe I was available to understand before. And this idea that we're going to work with hatred through love, we're going to overindex on love to create the change that we want, is that is a fundamental truth for you that came up from you? Or is that something that you were inspired by and metabolized, inspired by the Buddha or Dr. King Jr., and then metabolized it kind of a top down, or was it a bottom up? I think it was both if something could be bidirectional in that way. I read a book some years ago called Real Love. And I teach, as I'm sure you know, a lot of loving kindness meditation. And I've had translators and scholars say to me, like, stop being so cutesy. Why call it loving

kindness? Just call it love. That's what you mean. But that is such a complex term. Like, what do we mean when we say love? And one of the things I base the book on was this quotation from a movie called Dan in Real Life, which came out maybe like 12 years ago. And the line, one of the characters says is, love is not a feeling, it's an ability. Love is not a feeling, it's an ability. And of course, it is a feeling, and maybe the feeling we long for. But I really pondered, what does it mean that love is an ability?

And I realized that as long as I thought of it as certainly a narrow range of feeling, It was almost like a commodity, and it was also in the hands of someone else. They could give it to me. They could also take it away from me. And I would get this image of like the UPS person standing at my doorstep with this package and looking down at the address and saying, I don't think so. And going somewhere else and I'd say, wait a minute, then there's no love in my life. But if it's an ability, it's inside of me.

Other people certainly may inspire it or ignited it or threaten it, but ultimately lead his mind to nurture to bring forth if I wanted to. And that was very important. And that matched my own experiences as I went deeper looking at my own life, which is basically what one does in meditation and looking at what strength really is, not what maybe I've been taught it was, what success really was, maybe not what I've been taught it was, was love or compassion, really that stupid or saccharine or weakening was vengefulness, really that's strengthening. You know, and all those things had come up in the course of meditation, and I found that line to be a perfect match. Okay, so there's so much in here to open up. One is, I think it

makes sense for us to talk about how you practice. You know, so I do want to give some space for that. I also want to just nod. Like when I say loving kindness, and it is a foundational practice for me as well, that I find the word kindness allows me to say it more easily publicly. So I'm not sure that's what you experience necessarily. But when I say to a group of athletes or a group of executives, like, okay, look, what you just experience, I usually give them an experience if I'm training and then explain it afterwards. and I'll say that kind of the ending bit was a loving kindness meditation and the way that it just feels like people go oh I can do kindness for me wait you want me to do love for others

you know like all of a sudden it changes the tonality yes I do but like you know like first maybe we need to eat you know figure out how to get the vegetables in the palate yeah right so So is that kind of what you're pointing to when you were why you liked to add kindness? And maybe some of your wisdom counsel said, can you just drop that? Yeah, well, you know, loving kindness is a classical translation of words in Sanskrit, for example. You know, and so it's the common usage. My concern about it, kindness in itself could be better than loving kindness. But my concern about it is that the term loving kindness is not something we necessarily.

early use, or here in casual conversation, and it might make the quality seem a little archaic or arcane or precious in the negative sense of the word, and there's already so much negativity around it. The word I tend to use is connection, and it's not necessarily any motion of warmth, but it's a bone-deep recognition of how connected all of our lives are. So my favorite question going into an organization or a company to teach is how many other people need to be doing their job well for you to do your job well? Because this moment often of like, oh, you know, I'm actually counting on, I'm relying on all these other people, some of them I never see maybe, and they may be relying on me and that we live in this interconnected universe.

And I think that brings people closer to an appreciation of what's really meant by loving kindness. I'm nodding my head. And to me, those feel, obviously, all things are related. Interrelatedness is a first principle. But that feels related, but different. For me, let's just start with self. Kindness to self, loving kindness to self, love to self, feels very different. Well, hold on. There's a experience there that I'm not going to find the right words right now, but there's an experience there that is felt. And then when I extend that to other people, kindness to another, loving kindness to another, or love to another, that that feels very different than being connected. Like the being connected is rich. Another first principle of interconnectedness, I think we both nod our heads to it. but they feel different to me. I think that could be distinguished, you know, for sure. Distinguish is a good distinction, but also related.

Of course, related, yeah. You know, and so the kindness toward oneself, in a way, is also based on a deeper understanding, you know, of how do we achieve in a better way? You know, we might think ferocious, endless, harsh self-criticism is the way to change a habit or make an improvement or learn a new skill. But I think either clarity of introspection or studies, research will show that it doesn't really work, you know? It's such a tremendous drain and it's a diversion and we end up depleted and feeling demoralized. whereas some kind of kindness toward ourselves, kind of giving ourselves a break, yeah, yeah, I blew it, now let me move on, let me, you know, not spend this time an endless recrimination, calling myself a failure and so on, that's really the way to succeed in something. And so I think we can be emboldened and inspired to pursue that as a really almost like a kind of deeper understanding.

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that it's very confusing when you're in that culture to know, wait a minute, this is actually this is not a standard of excellence, this is a standard of intolerance, that that's not good enough versus we can go further. We can do more. There's more in you. And look, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. You need to trust yourself more. You need to work harder. You need to study more. So there's a difference. It's a fine line that you can palpate quite clearly. And I'd like to think I can. But the idea of as an inoculation or a hydration, or a hydration, for people to flourish, even in these high-speed environments, it seems so counterintuitive to say,

okay, everybody, in this high-speed world, we're going to take a moment, and I see you smiling. We're going to take a moment, and we're going to connect to our breath, and we're going to do a loving, kindness, meditation. So we're better teammates. You know, the looks that I get shared, the looks that I get in these environments is like, Okay, so I don't even tell them.

Like, hey, listen, we're going to do some inner work. We all understand that the inner part of the game is really important. And, you know, psychology is a study of self. So we're going to create some space so you can study and not critique and judge, but just learn. And then all of a sudden, you know, we're like, I don't know, eight minutes in. I'm like, okay, fill up with loving kindness. You know, right? And afterwards, we were like, I didn't know how to do that.

What did you mean? So I do want to ask, like, mechanically how you're teaching right now. Like, I don't want to butcher the spirit of all your wisdom, but I think it's a great service, like mechanically, how do you walk people through, creating enough space to be able to be connected to use your language or to fill up this way I think about it with love and kindness so that you can be better. Now, before we get into the mechanics, though, I can't wait to see what you do with this thought. Okay, Dr. King Jr., amazing. Nelson Mandela, amazing. Okay, so I can go down the list

of some really amazing people. And the pacivists, compared to the revolutionists that used anger and used violence and used weapons and used fill in the blanks, I think history would say that they got more change, but maybe not, but has that change has led us to the state we're in now. And the pacifist, the loving kind, hey, I'm going to stand for something and I might, I might die starving for it, and I'm going to pound my fist saying that, you know, we're not going to use violence as a means, not violence in words, not violence in actions. I just think history says you don't get the change that you would hope for.

And I would love for you to help me because that bangs around in my head. I take a, if there's a spider in my house, I pick it up and bring it outside. Okay. I'm no longer eating red meat because I want to pet cows and pigs. Okay. I haven't done that with fish yet. I'm just saying. All right, but anyway, so I am a pacifist and approach, but I struggle with the change that the

pacifist approach doesn't seem to get. And so can you help from a wise place? Well, I find it a little bit puzzling that the two examples that you used of, you know, Dr. King Jr. and Nelson Mandela. I mean, they were pretty effective, you know. They were. They were the big one. Oh, you know, all these years later, like the term pacifists, I understand the way you're using it, but it doesn't mean like placid, you know, like lying around, waiting for change to happen from somebody else, you know.

Oh, very active. Yeah. And in fact, you know, when I wrote that book, Real Love, based on the, you know, statement, love is not a feeling, it's inability. and I turned it in to the publisher, and the editor of the manuscript said to me, you didn't finish the book. And I said, what do you mean? I didn't finish the book. Of course I finished the book. That's why I turned it in.

And she said, no, no, you told some story. And then you drifted off into nowhere. Like, you've got to finish the book. So I could not finish that book. And I struggled and struggled and struggled. And then something, you know, happened in the world. I was very concerned about. And I finished the book in 15 minutes.

And it's, which was basically my realizing, if love is an ability, maybe it's my responsibility. And that emboldened by that responsibility, maybe I needed to take action, not from hatred and not from a sense of bitterness or vengefulness, but fueled by kind of a power of love because it's very powerful, actually, in those two examples, you know, at least at certain places in their life, you know, and where Nelson Mandela came to, we're still talking about it today, you know, and so it doesn't mean being passive. No, not passive an approach. Yeah.

Non-violent is another word for passivism, right? Yeah, between like them or Gandhi or, you know, these people, I wouldn't say I had that much courage, you know, to like protest in that way. but also, you know, talking to activists, I mean, I spent quite a lot of my teaching, my meditation teaching, trying to work with caregivers, people who in some ways are on the front lines of suffering, trying to help either a family member or professionally, you know, the way they work, the populations they work with. And one day I thought, like, who do they remind me of?

And I thought, oh, activists, you know, really a very similar, kind of dynamic, you know, helping others often not feeling very comfortable receiving so much as giving, things like that. So I spent much more time, you know, listening to and talking to activists. And something that I really saw from a lot of people was that so much of their original motivation maybe inevitably was anger, it was outrage. They saw terrible, terrible things maybe in their community. And they made a move. They weren't lying down. But as one woman said to me, she said, you know, the anger kind of got me up.

And I founded this organization and I worked. And then she said, and then it was killing me. She said, you know, nobody knew how to dial it down. Like my whole organization was full of backbiting and enmity and toward one another. And she said, I've got to learn how to modulate this so that it's not running me. And then, you know, she went off and became like a meditation. teacher or whatever, you know. So it's just fascinating to understand our motives and what really will strengthen us to make change. Scenario, you've got 10 activists that are nonviolent, that

are pacifists and approach, that are deeply trained in loving kindness. And then you've got 10 activists that are whatever it takes, and I'm effing pissed. And if you knew what happened to my child, if you knew what happened to me when I was a child, you wouldn't operate the way you are. And we got 10 of them. Okay. And they're like, we're changing. Those people are evil and bad.

And we have to. We owe it to the next generation to take the hill and to get to eradicate this evil. Okay. Do very different philosophies, both working to want a better life. You had 10 on one side and 10 on the other. Who would you want to pick to create the change in the world? Well, and certainly the pacifist, because for all I know, the other people would consider me the enemy, right?

That wouldn't be a very happy solution for me in terms of my abiding in a more peaceful world. So I line up. I feel like I'm straddling the middle. I like the energy of like, no, we got to get something done. And I love the approach, which is like, wait, hold on. we need to work from benevolence and we need to see the good in people rather than the evil or the whatever like and I know I'm doing a non-duality here thing but like so I get straddled between the energy of one and what scares me is that that energy if they are successful

what they know is hate and anger so when they're at the top of the hill they'll only know how to reproduce hate and anger it's either a new hill or they turn on each other right game of thrones once they're in power. And the others, on the pacifist, which is I lean toward, which is, I don't know if we're just going to hold hands and we're going to be really nice to each other. Oh, well, yeah, I mean, I think I have another book I wrote, which I recommend to you, which is called Real Change, where I did spend a lot of time interviewing activists and people who were not just holding hands, people who were working hard. Yeah. And fiercely, you know, not just kind of like meekly, like, please change, you know, but not violently and

motivated by a sense of connection. And so I think I love that energy that you're describing if we've got to get something done, you know, like let's channel that outrage and that frustration and impatience into action. That's tremendous. But I think one can get there from love and compassion. And I think there are many examples of people have so that's i i'm let me resolve your problem let me resolve all of it do both but drop the anger implant it with love yeah so i i want to see it i want to be the change and i want to see change and i'm tripled down on loving kindness as an approach and where i think myself and the listener might identify which is like but sometimes i get intolerant sometimes i'm impatient and

sometimes like, you know, I just get frustrated and I don't want to and I want to repair quickly, but it gets the best of me. So I got to keep working. Okay. So maybe that we can open the aperture. Can you share with me and the listener like a best practice that you're really tuned to right now for loving kindness or connecting at a deeper level? Well, I actually like the very classic loving kindness meditation. I learned in Burma in 1985 where I went there to do a three-month intensive retreat. And it's basically settling one's attention on repeating certain phrases, usually silently, because the phrases are a way of paying attention differently. It's like at the end of the day, for example, with oneself, if you are in the

habit of just going over and over and over and over all the mistakes you made and the word you flubbed and, you know, the ways you didn't show up and the way you had hoped to and you just go over and over and over. It's like the same list usually, but again. And instead of doing that, we kind of change channels and for a few moments wish ourselves well. May I be safe, be happy. It's like offering a blessing or caring. It's almost like asking yourself, anything else happened today, you know, other than this litany of all my mistakes, all my flaws. So it's a way of paying attention differently to use these phrases, or think of the many, many people we encounter in our lives who perform some kind of service, you know, check out person

in the supermarket or dry cleaner or somebody like that, that we tend to objectify, we tend to look through instead of look at. And so the challenge is not to try to try to. create a phony emotion or fabricate anything, but to an effect, look at them and see what happens when you silently repeat, may you be safe, be happy, you know, may your life unfold in a better way or a good way or something like that, silently. You know, I mean, you're in the store, you know, and this is a new stranger. Oh, in the store. Yeah. So that's like a thin slice, quote unquote mantra or framing or reminder, you know, but the work, let's say you've got eight minutes of work that you're going to do or 20 minutes of work.

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like that, but I was in meditation, then I might sequentially offer some of those phrases to myself. It's like having a sense of aspiration that's not blunted and a sense of blessing. And it is just changing channels. And then seeing what happens. and then maybe someone who's help. Okay. Sorry, sorry to interrupt.

So you'll start with some sort of grounding, some sort of breathing to just settle in. Yeah. Right? And that takes a couple moments. That takes like 10 for me. So, okay, quiet the system down. And then you go into the mantra that or the phraseology that you just talked to. Yeah, the phrase is for myself.

And then maybe somebody, I feel grateful to. to. And often we don't recognize these people much. You know, we take people for granted. But we call someone to mind that kind of lifts our spirits that they've helped us in some way, even if we've never met them. They're like an inspiration. And then maybe someone who's in trouble, you know, a friend of ours who's struggling. And then we usually end. This is eight minutes. This is the eight-minute version. Yes, yes. You know, we might end with a couple of moments toward just thinking about the world and recognizing that force of interconnection, just wishing peace or harmony, whatever it is for the world. And it's like an experiment, which is usually the way I describe it.

You know, it doesn't feel good when it feels forced or coerced or you've got to have a certain emotion and, you know, it's just too gooey. But when I conceptualize it and describe it as that kind of experiment, that switching of channels, paying attention to what we don't usually pay much attention to through the phrases, then we see what happens. Okay, I love the mini experimentation. Try it out and see. And I'd love for you to, this is how I first learned it, and I don't think I have a lot of variation to offer this conference. conversation. But the way I first learned it, this was like, it was like 25 years ago. And one of my mentors said, he didn't tell me what we're doing. This is my tactic that I learned from one of my

mentors. And he says, he used this metaphor of pebble in the pond. He says, just fill up with love. I don't know how you do that, Mike. Close your eyes. You know, it was kind of tactical in this approach. He says, just take a moment and fill up with love. Maybe you're going to think yourself. maybe you're going to just kind of connect to a spiritual something but just fill up however you do that and you give me time and then i'd be distracted and i come back and get distracted and then you know as i do it over and over again meaning days at a time or whatever i get more familiar with how to fill up and then from that call it all loving connection or as best as i possibly can then he says um why'd you share it with somebody one person like okay cool so from this is the phrasing i use from my heart to

your heart. And so I'm more, I got to be pretty concrete from my heart to your heart. My eyes are closed. I'm not looking at a person. They don't need to be in the room, but from my heart to your heart. And then I'm trying to take that, that good stuff in me and pour it into them. Okay. And then, and then I go to another person and I get tired. I go, wait, that's right. Come on back. I go to another person. And then the pebble, so that's my inner circle. Then the, the bigger circle, like in the middle of the external circles is like people that I feel burned by. And boy, that's hard. People that I, you know, I don't want to give love to right now.

You know, and that's a really, I want to stop before I get to that ring or I want to skip over that one and get to like, let me just share love with the world. You know, like, but that's the sticky one. Do you have a sticky one for you? And I'm not suggesting everyone do this. Like, that might be too traumatizing. might be too fill the blanks for some folks, but that's the one I find to be really tricky for me. No, I think it's tricky for a lot of people. And the reason I, I mean, I appreciate

the way you practiced. I think it's a great way of practicing loving kindness. And it's a little similar to my very first teacher, who was S. Ngoenka in India, did something a little bit similar of that. It was only later that I had teachers who really emphasized things like phrases. And what strikes me is that, you know, for me, as self-judgmental as I was, which was really crazy, it was very hard for me, you know, like fill up with love. I would think, I'm not doing it right. This isn't really love. Everyone else feels love. I don't feel any love. Where's the love? I am broken. I'm broken. I'm so bad. So for me, and I'm not. So for me, and And people like me, you know, something like phrases, which is very systematic.

I see. It's structured. And, you know, as you know, of course, people learn differently. Of course. And flourish differently, you know, based on their relationship to those systems or methods and different ones are more appropriate. So I'd say the challenge for me was myself. I mean, not that enemies or difficult people were not challenging, but I'd say the biggest challenge was really myself like this I'm this empty vessel not not so pushing so hard in this

world and trying so hard that I don't know how to do this yeah is that yeah yeah okay so let me let me just take it a little bit deeper for you here which is for you where does loving kindness come from I think it it's not we say cultivation but it's not cultivation but it's not cultivation in the ordinary sense. I think it's getting in touch with a capacity and ability within myself that certainly in my earlier life was very covered over. I was so frightened and I had a very traumatic childhood and I was very fragmented when I went to India. I felt very fragmented and I kind of knit myself back together through the meditation and discovered these, I mean you used the word resource earlier. You know, I discovered my

resources within myself, I discovered repositories of connection and care that I had no idea were really there. So I don't want to imply I'm in touch with them all the time, even, you know, 50 years or practice later. But I have a trust in that ability that I didn't use to have. In your new book, your most recent book, I should say, you know, real life. I love the subtitle as well, the journey from isolation to openness and freedom, like, well done. You talk about navigating different seasons of life. And can you point to why you wrote this book? Well, I wrote the book deep in my isolation because I ended up in Barry, Massachusetts,

not just for two weeks, but for months and months and months. and someone I wrote my first book was called loving kindness and after that came out somebody said to me what do you write next if you want to keep writing and your first book represented your life's work and I said well I guess you have to go deeper and so here I was with this time and the publisher asked me if I wanted to write another book and I thought okay what's deeper you know instead of just writing something and dashing it off and I thought But, well, really, it's, it is those fundamental questions of how do I create a life, you know, and not just feel, I have no agency in that, here I am, external circumstances could really

dictate everything about how I feel, but it doesn't have to, even in this odd, you know, experience. and I did have a repository within me that I could bring forth and isolation, physical isolation, I realized, did not have to mean at all a sense of being severed from caring about kind of the bigger picture of life. And I belonged, I was a part of things, everyone is. And that's been kind of a theme in everything I have written or cared about. out and so I thought, okay, why don't make it explicit instead of implicit and write a book about it?

How are you thinking about some of the first principles that are most important to you? You've mentioned interconnectedness. We're all connected. What are the other ones? I think you mentioned, I think if I have the language right, that we need to work from love as a first principle to create the change in the world we would want. And then, you know, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm imagining that you would, another first principle, would be impermanence, like all things are temporary. Can you open this up a little bit to the most important first principles for you? I think all of that. Thank you. And also some sense of discernment, like understanding,

like we can understand for ourselves, which I found, you know, my first experience of meditation. in India, I found breathtaking that it wasn't just following somebody else's ideas or, you know, believing something because somebody impressive had said it. But really, oh, I can take a look. I can look at what makes me feel stronger, what makes me, in fact, weaker, even if it was completely opposite from everything I've been taught my entire life. And we can look. we can understand. And so I think that that has been such a gift because when I see those

repetitive patterns, you know, of my favorite kind of example is it's a dog-eat-dog world, like don't help anybody else because they're not going to help you. The consequence of which is that we actually, of course, don't feel stronger. We feel incredibly lonely and competitive when we don't need to be and, you know, all of that. And so, the idea that we can look, and I'll call it discernment, you know, and we can discover for ourselves really where our greater happiness and flourishing can lie, I think is something I always go back to. So Dog Eat Dog World, is the world safe or hostile?

For Sharon? For me, I actually don't think in those terms. I don't call it safe, and it isn't necessarily hostile, you know. Is it dangerous or safe? Sometimes, you know, but... It's both. I mean, people say that that's, you know, our negativity bias to only fixate on the danger, the threat, you know, that's an evolutionary trait, but it's so limiting.

I mean, that's why, you know, people think something like a gratitude practice is so ridiculous. And if you practice gratitude, you're going to be grateful for crumbs and you're not going to seek, you know, powerful change and all of that, but in talking to researchers, for example, which I've done from my own writing about gratitude, and they say, well, you know, it's really different. Like if you practice gratitude and you don't only fixate on the danger and what's wrong and what you're not getting and what you've lost, then first of all, you have a sense of resource. You're not so exhausted. And you can use that energy to try to make change. And also, they said, people who practice gratitude have a real desire to pay it forward. They want to see someone else get a break or do well. And so it's an activator.

Actually, it's not something that holds us back. And, you know, but we have to really pay attention and make those experiments in order to see, oh, what is the result of like obsessing in this way? and what's the result of just stepping out of my normal way of perceiving and looking from another angle? Do you think, like, if you were in a locker room with a group of competitive athletes, and they're just kind of operating in a competitive way based on, let's say, the Western model of competition, and it's probably split, I don't know, 60-40. Maybe I'm being too nice here. percent are like, no, I'm trying to be my best and 40 percent, I'm sorry, 60 percent are saying

I'm trying to be the best and 40 percent are saying, no, I'm just trying to be my best and I'm competing with myself, you know, in the long game of life. And I'm using the current phase I'm in right now of sport to unlock a deeper part of me and more committed part of me and how to be better connected to other people. So they're like in a highly competitive, quote unquote doggy dog world, but they're choosing maybe a counter rotation to give them a competitive advantage, but also they're playing the long game. They know that sport is limited in at least elite sport. And let's just say there's 25 gals and you're going to talk to them and they want to be better. How would you help them understand the power of mindfulness? Would you go to

discernment? Because I think it gets really tricky when you say, listen, the big game of life, it's so impermanent, all things are changing. I want to help you get better with the unfolding present moment. I go there sometimes. I don't go to the non-duality approach. I think for me, it's still a mindbender. And, you know, the interconnectedness seems too far of a leap to say we're actually connected to our competitors. Let's thank them for sharpening their sword or, you know, honing their craft if we're not going to use a military warframe or a martial term. So how would you walk into a room that's kind of split between the two and offer them something that will help them now and likely could help them later as well? Well, I might go

the interconnected route, but not with the competitors. I think it's a challenge for so many to even have that sense of being part of a team, right? You would go interconnected with us in this room. Yeah, and then, because then one also faces a lot of the, you know, feeling the need to claim all glory for oneself, but do you actually win that way, you know? And I'm assuming there's a fair amount of research on success within sports and feeling more part of a team and how it doesn't. doesn't necessarily dull your sense of personal excellence, you know, you're not saying,

yeah, the other guy is going to take care of it or the other woman is going to take care of it, you know, I don't have to continue to improve. It's not like that. And so, you know, so I think the first thing to establish is that we all want the same thing, which is success and a real sense of, you know, kind of not compromising so much for success that we end up just in a way broken, you know, or not getting what we really want in the long term. Like, how do we sustain an effort? And I do think I would probably start with that sense of connection with one another. Finding Master is brought to you by AG1. One of the through lines and high performance is

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and five AG1 travel packs. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash finding mastery to get started. If you, let's say, let's go to football, American football for a minute, and in a quarterback room, there's usually two quarterbacks. Sometimes there's three, but usually there's two quarterbacks. There's a starter and a backup, and then sometimes one more that's kind of waiting in the wings on what's called the practice team. So the starter is the starter. And that's the one getting paid a lot of money and is getting to do the thing at the highest level. And everyone else in that room is like really wanting that opportunity. So if your son or daughter in any case were, or the starter. Would you suggest that they share their best practices with the two

and the three? Would you suggest they help them study to be better so that if they were to go down or get hurt or not be able to get it done that their teammate would be able to take their job and be better? Or would you suggest, look, you have to be competitive now. Give some, but hold a little back so that you can you can ride this privileged position of being the starter. How would you approach something as material as concrete that I think many of us can find ourselves in business, in sport, in the arts, you know, lots of different rooms, if you will? Well, I mean, you know, if I was working with discernment, I'd say, how does it feel when you hope, I mean, really just look. How does it feel when you have that sense of honor?

want you to take my glory, you know, so I'm going to hold on to this for as long as I can. How does it feel if you spend an afternoon kind of opening up and trying to bring someone else along? Because that's going to be the ultimate test, you know, if you end up, as many do, you know, incredibly alone feeling and holding on to something which is going to change. It's just not a very fulfilling. It's kind of a fear-filled life. But no one I can tell you that. It has to be your own perception, I think.

And the question is, how does it feel? Yeah. How does it feel when you hold back? How does it feel when you give everything? I think both can be fear-based. You know, like if I give everything, I'm afraid that they're going to use it against me. I'm afraid that they're going to be better than me and take my job. Yeah, but that you don't have to, that's right.

Of course, you know that. But, you know, what if that is the challenge? I'm going to give them everything and I'm going to get even better. That's right. Because I've got such talent, you know, and maybe that's the goad, not to in a, you know, bitter way or, you know, wrathful way. But like, okay, you know, I've nurtured you or I've mentored you in this way. And now I'm going to vault, you know, even better. Yeah, right.

And actually what we do know is when you can teach somebody something, you have to have a better command of it. And the act of teaching gives you even more command, you know, because you have to explain it in a way that is clearly understood. You know, so it actually does give you an advantage when you're giving. So, okay, enough of the concreteness there. Thank you for that. Okay. Last time we spoke, you talked about committing, recommitting to innocence and returning to innocence. Do you remember that conversation? No, I don't. I'm so fascinated. Yeah. And

it stuck with me for six years and you don't remember it. Huh? Well, man, that's good because now I can be re-inspired by it. I think, what a beautiful thing. I'm going to re-compet to this. It really was. Like, my team will laugh. Like, things stick with me and a bunch just kind of washes over. And that one stuck with me. Like, and I asked. what you really want in life and or what you're working on now it was a question what do you work on now and you said returning to a sense of innocence wow and i i want that but i i also don't want to um what's the word like i don't want to be um vulnerable in rooms that i don't want to be vulnerable in. And I've been working with this for six years now, okay? So, like, this innocence

and this doe, babe, deer type of thing has gotten a bit confusing when you're swimming or when you're in the, you know, fighting amongst wildebeest. So I'm mixing metaphors poorly, but I love that idea of returning to innocence. I'm going to adopt that again. Thank you so much for returning that to me. No, because I can feel it like when I think about or I feel into it, you know, it's like one of the things about success, you know, as I'm sure you know, and I've seen is that one can get kind of ossified and there's not that feeling of being a part of life and it's burgeoning change and opening. Like, I remember my very first meditation retreat in January of 1971 and Indian just settling my attention on the

feeling of the breath. And it was like, wow, look at that, you know, you can feel so much with like a breath. And now I think we probably had the most boring conversations in the world. It's like, my in-breath was like trembling, you know, or whatever. But it was so exciting to be so full-on and open. And, you know, we grow up and we get more sophisticated and maybe we're successful and holding an image. There are other people holding an image of us. And we can lose that so easily. And I love that idea of just returning to that. And in terms of vulnerability, I think we are all enriched by allowing our vulnerability. That just means we have to express it in every room, you know, or in every relationship. I mean, there's some places where it just

may not be appropriate. And we decide. Yeah. I've also, I have such a high regard for the doers in the amphitheater, whatever it is, because they practice vulnerability. risk-taking far more than most of us ever even think we want to. And they practice it, you know, like elite athletes practice vulnerability every day. And I think that's hidden from plain sight because we see them on TV, but we don't see them in practice in front of their coaches who determine if they're playing or not, in front of their peers who are trying to take their job, that they have to get to the edge of their capabilities, make mistakes, and be vulnerable to try again.

and to try in that messy edge again. And if you can't get it right, you know, there's a risk that you might have to sit for a while. But you can't get, that's the only way to get better, really, or progressively better. And it's one of the interesting things I've found about meditation practice because in a way you're doing the same thing again and again and again. Keep going. But if you're open, if you have that heart space of innocence of vulnerability, then it's not rote, you know, it's not repetitive. You always are in an edge and you're exploring and you're exploring different dimensions

and different things are opening up and, you know, you're not just kind of saying the same words again or, you know, oh yeah, another breath, you're right, you know, I've been here before. It is so vital and alive because of how we are approaching it, not because of the sheer repetition of the method. When you were a kid, let's go to like age six. and you heard, you're in your room, did you, did you have a bedroom to yourself? Age six, no.

No. Do you remember when you had a bedroom to yourself? Age nine. Nine. So at age nine, maybe it's a little easier at age nine anyway. And it's dark, it's 10 o'clock at night, you're in bed, you're supposed to be asleep, but you're kind of awake. And you hear a sound, and you're not sure where it came from. but you think it was under your bed. Do you, did you get really still and quiet? Did you throw the covers open and like pop your head under there and see what it was?

Or did you run outside the door and go get help? Or something else? I certainly didn't run outside to get help because I didn't think help was to be found. And I would get still in quiet, but not in a sense of. peace, but because I was so scared. Exactly. And felt so long. Yeah.

How does those three pattern options and the one that you chose, how does that show up in your life now? And I'm going to tie this back to loving kindness meditation in a minute. I think I've come to see some of my deepest, oldest patterns as adaptive mechanisms, you know, things that made sense at the time when I was nine years of. old. My father had already left. My mother had died. I was living with my grandparents, my father's parents, when I barely knew. I was really scared, and I was very frozen. And so that's like my go-to place, you know, in uncertainty. But of course, you know, 50 years of work later, 50 years

of meditation work, and I'm not only 59. I'm older than that. But, you know, if I see that arise, and I might, you know, it's not, it's not sort of the only answer anymore by any means. You know, I can see it as a habit, as a pattern, and I think better of it, you know, in cases, it's not going to serve me or anybody else for me to, like, lie in that bed, you know. be phrased, even though I will say the impulse may arise. And I think we can be kind to ourselves in that regard instead of feeling, you know, I'm so damaged or those habits or, you know, we're born in being wrong or lazy or something like that.

They were often very smart at the time and in the circumstances in which we picked them up. But it's like, it's a lot of years later. I have a lot of options now and I don't need to go there. And so in that optionality, that's why I'm wondering, when you get to that moment in meditation, when you could open the door, you could take your sheets off and go look, you know, that moment where you can get, when you go to explore an emotion or follow a thread, and you know that there's like, there's something really deep, maybe scary, overwhelming right at the next breath or a couple breaths or however long it takes to follow this next

felt emotion or thought pattern, that you could fall into a thousand pieces, well up, whatever the thing might be that feels overwhelming. What do you do in those moments? Because the initial pattern was to tighten up, and by the way, that was mine as well. I wish I was saying, I would jump out of bread, jump out of bed and, like, be a dragon slayer at age nine. That wasn't, that just wasn't me. So I know the tightening up thing. So I tighten up too sometimes when I'm at that moment to go explore the emotion or not. And so what do you do in that moment?

I would probably pull up some practice like, just breathe, just take a breath. or I mean there's so many ways in which we try to approach that fear you know not calling it an enemy feeling it in our body surrounding it with a kind of kindness instead of feeling I'm so awful you know and I've got to get rid of this and why is still here and meditating for 50 years I've been in therapy for everywhere you know so mindfulness training we'd say look for the add-ons it's like hard enough to feel the fear and face the fear but then we've got but this is going to last forever, and I'm the only one who ever feels this, and all the things we add on to it.

And so I would really try to relinquish those add-ons, be with the feeling of fear. Remember that it's maybe intense, but it's going to pass, and try to be kind to myself anyway. Are you committed when you have that opening to take it? Or are you committed, but you don't take it as much as you would like? No, I feel like I'm committed because the ultimate answer is I don't really want to suffer, you know. And how do you define suffering?

I would say, you know, well, going back to real life, that sense of feeling trapped, you know, and feeling not just that the circumstances are difficult and not that it's only that I'm hurting, but it's hurting plus, you know, all that other stuff. I'm the only one. It's going to last forever. This is, you know, all over feel. And it's just as things kind of condense, it becomes a pretty heavy burden to bear. What do you want for people? I want them to see how much ability they have, all of us to grow and to change and to be happier to love. And if we did that, how do you imagine the way?

world or a community would be? I think it would be pretty different. You know, we wouldn't be so divided and that people would care about one another. And I don't know, foo-foo way, you know, wouldn't be fancy, but necessarily. But just a responsiveness to have a sense of we and really wanting happiness. Do you have that in your most intimate life and your most intimate community? Or is it something that feels elusive? I think we have it.

I mean, I wouldn't say anyone's perfect, you know, including myself. But I think it is a kind of, as you're saying, first principle. I think it's a common aspiration and we come back to it. You know, when we used the word, I don't know if it's like recovery or return or something earlier, which I think is really the most important word. Return? Is that the returning to evidence? You're returning to innocence.

Yeah. Okay. Sharon, this is awesome. I would love to give you just a couple quick hits, like some thought stems to see how you respond to them. And it's kind of like a forcing function, which maybe you, maybe it will be really hard. You want to, will not want to play. But I'd love to try it out. It all comes down to.

Awareness. Living the good life is marked by. connection success is needs to be explored i am happy my vision is to continue uh spreading this kind of possibility relationships are important yeah okay if you could sit with a master and ask that person one question who is it? What's the question? And where would you sit with them? Well, I have had teachers, you know, for the last 50 years who I would consider masters. And I had one woman teacher. Her name was Deepa Maher, Deepa's kind of a nickname, who was the person who told me to teach. And at the time

she told me, I said, I can't. I can't. That's impossible. I'll never be able to do that. And she basically said to me a couple of things including you can do anything you want to do it's your thinking you can't do it that's going to stop you so i probably sit with her and say how did i do you know and that's something is there a word that you understand the most loving kindness it is yeah Sharon thank you for how you showed up this conversation, how you continue to consistently show up in your writings and your teachings. And I just really appreciate the gift you gave me six years ago of a commitment to return to innocence. And thank you for your time today. It's awesome. Thank you so much.

You actually literally returned the gift to me. And so now I'm carrying it in my heart. So it's beautiful. Yeah. What a gift back. So to me. All right, Sharon. Thank you so much. And then we're going to obviously point people to your book. It's such an easy good read. It's a delightful read, which I say for many of your books. Some are more stimulating harder, but it's such a delightful good read. And so where else can we point people to check out your work or be part of what you're doing? Probably my website, which is just Sharon Salsberg.com, is the easiest.

You got it. Sharon, I appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. next time on finding mastery as we head toward the new year we're sharing something meaningful from the finding mastery vault a conversation with doctors john and julie gotman two of the world's most respected researchers on love and lasting relationships in this episode they unpack the small daily habits that strengthen connection the patterns that quietly erode it and the science back practices that help us show up better for the people who matter most it's a ground hopeful way to reflect on the year behind us and set intention for the one ahead. Join us Wednesday, December 31st at 9 a.m. Pacific for this From the Vault episode. And happy holidays from all of us here at Finding Mastery.

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