Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Transform Your Life with the Power of Loving-Kindness | Meditation Pioneer, Sharon Salzberg

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

"Love is not a feeling, it's an ability." - Sharon SalzbergCan we really change the world by changing how we relate to our own thoughts? Our guest this week, Sharon Salzberg, has spent five decades proving we can.Sharon is a pioneer in meditation and New York Times bestselling author who brought mindfulness and loving-kindness meditation into the mainstream in America nearly 50 years ago.Sharon’s work has guided millions toward deeper self-compassion and interconnectedness. She co-founded the Insight Meditation Society and has authored thirteen influential books, including her latest, Real Life.In this episode, we explore how mindfulness and loving-kindness can help us navigate our divided world and create more meaningful connections.Sharon explains how working from love, rather than anger, can drive positive change. And it all stems from the concept that love isn’t just a feeling, but an ability… and beyond that, a responsibility.Taking a deep dive into the practical applications of mindfulness, and acting on them in our daily lives, can transform how we handle challenges and relationships.This conversation is packed with insights that will challenge and inspire you to rethink your approach to mindfulness. We’re in this together, and I can’t wait for us to experience the results._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: 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! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See 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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Other people certainly may inspire it or ignite it or threaten it, but ultimately it is mine to nurture, to bring forth. Welcome back, or welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade in training a high-performance psychologist. Today, we are thrilled to welcome back to the podcast for the second time, Sharon Salzberg, a world-renowned meditation pioneer and New York Times bestselling author.

Nearly 50 years ago, Sharon brought mindfulness and loving-kindness meditation to the mainstream in America. Her work has guided millions toward deeper self-compassion and interconnectedness. She co-founded the Insight Meditation Society and has authored 13 influential books, including her latest, Real Life. In this episode, we explore how mindfulness and loving kindness can help us navigate our divided world and create more meaningful connections for all of us. Sharon explains how working from love can drive positive change. The thing is, love isn't just a feeling, it's an ability, and beyond that, possibly

a responsibility. This conversation is packed with insights that will challenge and hopefully inspire you to rethink your approach to mindfulness. So with that, let's dive right into this incredible conversation 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'd just love to check in. 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 spoke. Wow. 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 had 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 and teaching only online. And everything was different. Expectations had been shattered and plans were changed. And the fundamental question I kept asking myself was, 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 looked 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, 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 stupid in a way. It's not meant to be saccharine 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 over-index on love to create the change that we want. Is that 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 can be bi-directional 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 based 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 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, 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 ignite it or threaten it, but ultimately it is mine 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 stupid or saccharine or weakening was vengefulness really that strengthening, you know, and all those things that 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. 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 experienced necessarily. But when I say to a group of athletes or a group of executives, like, okay, look, what you just experienced, 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 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 use or hear 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 an emotion of warmth, but it's a bone deep recognition of how connected all of our lives are. And 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 whom 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. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true. Meaningful relationships are at the center of sustained success. And building those relationships, it takes more than effort. It takes a real caring about your people. It takes the right tools, the right information at the right time. And that's where LinkedIn Sales Navigator can come in.

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kind of quickly put them on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein, just 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that fits so conveniently into a performance-based lifestyle and actually tastes good. Dr. Peter Attia, someone who's been on the show, it's a great episode by the way, is also their chief science officer. So I know they've

done their due diligence in that category. My favorite flavor right now is the chocolate chip cookie dough. And a few of our teammates here at Finding Mastery have been loving the fudge brownie and peanut butter. I know, Stuart, you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters. And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-, 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 an 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 they can be distinguished, for sure. Distinguished is a good word.

Distinction, but also related. Of course, but also related. Of course related, yeah. And so the kindness toward oneself in a way is also based on a deeper understanding of how do we achieve in a better way. 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 not spend this time in 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 of how things work. In a transactional, performance-based, high-speed, competitive environment, there's enough anxiety and intolerance and masquerading as high effort and excellence 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. 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 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. 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, 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,

we're going to create some space. You can study and not critique and judge, but just learn. And then all of a sudden, we're like, I don't know, eight minutes in, I'm like, okay, fill up with love and kindness. And afterwards we were like, I didn't know how to do that. What did you mean? So I do want to ask mechanically how you're teaching right now. I don't want to butcher the spirit of all your wisdom, but I think it's a great service. Mechanically, how do you walk people through creating enough space to be able to be connected, to use your language, or to fill up, is the way I think about 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 pacifists 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 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 die starving for it. And I'm going to pound my fist saying that 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. I haven't done that with fish yet. I'm just saying. All right. But anyway, so I am a pacifist in 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 Dr. King Jr. and Nelson Mandela, I mean, they were pretty effective, you know? They were. They were the big ones.

Oh, you know, all these years later, like the term pacifist, I understand the way you're using it, but it doesn't mean placid, lying around waiting for change to happen from somebody else. Oh, very active. Yeah. And in fact, when I wrote that book, Real Love, based on the statement, love is not a feeling, it's an ability. 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 happened in the world I was very concerned about. And I finished the book in 15 minutes, 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, at least at certain places in their life

and where Nelson Mandela came to. We're still talking about it today. And so it doesn't mean being passive. No, not passive in approach. Yeah. Non-violent is another word for pacifism, right? Yeah, between them or Gandhi or these people. I wouldn't say I had that much courage to protest in that way. But also, 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 were 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 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, 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, nobody knew how to dial it down. My whole organization was full of backbiting and enmity toward one another. And she said, I've got to learn how to modulate this so that it's not running me. And then she went off and became like a meditation teacher or whatever.

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 in approach, that are deeply trained in love and 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've got 10 of them. 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 eradicate this evil. Two 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, certainly the pacifists, 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, I'm 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 were working hard 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 of we've got to get something done. 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 who have. So that's, I'm- Let me resolve your problem. Let me resolve all of it do both but drop the anger yeah 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 triple down on loving kindness as an approach and where i think myself and the listener might identify which is like like, but sometimes I get intolerant.

Sometimes I'm impatient. And sometimes 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. So maybe we can open the aperture. Can you share with me and the listener 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 words you flubbed and 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 happen 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, checkout 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 create a phony emotion or fabricate anything, but to in effect look at them and see what happens when you silently repeat, may you be safe, be happy, may your life unfold in a better way or a good way or something like that silently. I mean, you're in the store. And this is in your stranger. What does it mean? 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, how do you structure that work? That's what I would do. I mean,

if I was sitting formally in a, you know, I wasn't at the supermarket or something 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. It is just changing channels. And then seeing what happens um and then maybe uh somebody's help okay sorry sorry so you'll 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 you know so okay quiet the system down and then you go into um the mantra that or the phrase for myself and then maybe somebody um i feel grateful to and often we don't recognize these

people much you know we take people for granted and but we call someone to mind that uh 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, a friend of ours who's struggling. And then we usually end. This is the eight minutes. This is the eight-minute version. 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 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. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentous. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO, I could tell this

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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 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 thank 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, why don't you share it with somebody, one person? I go, okay, cool. So this is a phrasing I use, from my heart to your heart. And so 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 good stuff in me and pour it into them. Okay. And then I go to another person and 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 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 don't want to give love to right now. 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. But that's the sticky one. Do you have a sticky one for you? And I'm not suggesting everyone do this. 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.N. Goenka in India, did something a little bit similar to that. It was only later that I had teachers who really emphasized things like phrases. For me, as self-judgmental as I was, which was really crazy, it was very hard for me to 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 empty. I'm hollow. So for me, and people like me, something like phrases, which is very systematic. I see. It's structured.

And as you know, of course, people learn differently. Of course. And flourish differently 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. CB Like I'm this empty vessel, not 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 just take it a little bit deeper for you here, which is for you, where does loving kindness come from? I think it's not, we say 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'd 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 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 50 years of practice later. But I have a trust in that ability that I didn't used to have. In your new book, your most recent book, I should say, Real Life, I love the subtitle as well, The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom. 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 Bering, Massachusetts, not just for two weeks, but for months and months and months.

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 had 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, well, really it's, it is those fundamental questions of how do I create a life 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 experience. And I did have a repository within me that I could bring forth. Isolation, physical isolation, I realized, did not have to mean at all a sense of being severed from caring about the bigger picture of life. I belonged. I was a part of things. Everyone is. That's been a theme in everything I have written or cared about.

And so I thought, okay, why not 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, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm imagining that 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 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 all of that. And so, the idea that we can look, and I'll call it discernment, 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. Is it dangerous or safe? Sometimes, but people say that that's our negativity bias to only fixate on the danger, the threat. That's an evolutionary trait, but it's so limiting. I mean, that's why 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 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, 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. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day.

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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. cooperating 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. 60% are like, no, I'm trying to be my best. And 40%, I'm sorry, 60% are saying, I'm trying to be the best. And 40% are saying, no, I'm just trying to be my best. And I'm competing with myself 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 in a highly competitive, quote unquote, dog-eat-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 mind bender. And 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 honing their craft, if we're not going to use a military warframe or 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, because then one also faces a lot of the feeling the need to claim all glory for oneself. But do you actually win that way? 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 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 I think the first thing to establish is that we all want the same thing, which is success and a real sense of not compromising so much for success that we end up just in a way broken or not getting what we really want in the long term. How do we sustain an effort?

And I do think I would probably start with that sense of connection with one another. 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 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 really wanting that opportunity. So if your son or daughter, in any case, were 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 got to be competitive now. Give some, but hold a little back so that 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, lots of different rooms, if you will? Well, I mean, if I was working with discernment, I'd say, how does it feel

when you hold, I mean, really just look, how does it feel when you have that sense of, I don't want you to take my glory, 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. If you end up, as many do, 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. And when no one 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. 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 you don't have to. That's right. Of course, you know that. But what if that was the challenge? I'm going to give them everything and I'm going to get even better because I've got such talent. And maybe that's the goad, not to in a 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 recommit to this. It really was. My team will laugh. Things stick with me and a bunch just kind of washes over. And that one stuck with me. And I asked, what you really want in life? Or what you're working on now? It was the question, what do you work on now? And you said returning to a sense of innocence. 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 in this doe, babe, deer type of thing has gotten a bit confusing when you're swimming or when you're in the wild, you know, fighting amongst wildebeest. So I'm mixing metaphors poorly, but I hope I'm driving the point home. 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 when I think about it, I feel into it. It's like one of the things about success, as I'm sure you know and have seen, is that one can get kind of ossified and there's not that feeling of the breath. And it was like, wow, look at that. You know, you could 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 trembly, you know, 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 doesn't mean we have to express it in every room or in every relationship. I mean, there's some places where it just may not be appropriate, and we decide. or 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, there's a risk that you might have to sit for a while. But that's the only way to get better, really, or progressively better. And that's one of the interesting things I found about meditation practice, because in a way, you're doing the same thing again and again and again.

Keep going. Yeah, keep going on that. But if you're open, if you have that heart space of innocence, of vulnerability, then it's not rote. It's not repetitive. You always are on an edge, and you're exploring, and you're exploring different dimensions, and different things are opening up. And you're not just kind of saying the same words again, or, oh, yeah, another breath, you're right. 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're in your room, 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. Did you get really still and quiet? Did you throw the covers open and 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

and quiet, but not in a sense of peace, but because I was so scared and felt so alone. 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, things that made sense at the time. When I was nine years old, my father had already left, my mother had died. I was living with my grandparents, my father's parents, whom 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 if I see that arise, and I might, it's not sort of the only answer anymore by any means. I can see it as a habit, as a pattern, and I think better of it in cases. It's not going to serve me or anybody else for me to lie in that bed and be frozen, even though I will say the impulse may arise. And I think we can be kind to ourselves in that regard instead of feeling so damaged

or those habits or 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 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 bed and be a dragon slayer at age nine. 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, not calling it an enemy, feeling it in our body, surrounding it with a kind of kindness instead of feeling I'm so awful

and I've got to get rid of this and why is it still here? I've been meditating for 50 years. I've been in therapy for everywhere. So mindfulness training, we say look for the add-ons. It's hard enough to feel the fear and face the fear. But then we've got, 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. And how do you define suffering? I would say, well, going back to real life, that sense of feeling trapped and feeling not just that the circumstances are difficult and not that it's only that I'm hurting, but it's hurting plus all that other stuff. I'm the only one. It's going to last forever.

This is all I'll ever 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 world or our community would be? I think it would be pretty different. We wouldn't be so divided and that people would care about one another and not in a foo-foo way. It wouldn't be fancy 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, including myself. But I think it is a kind of, as you're saying, first principle. I think it's a common aspiration aspiration and we come back to it. When we used the word, I don't know if it was like recovery or return or something earlier, which I think is really the most important word. Return. Is that the returning of innocence? Yeah. The returning to innocence? Yeah.

Okay. Sharon, this is awesome. I would love to give you just a couple of quick hits, like some thought stems to see how you respond to them. And it's kind of like a forcing function, which maybe will be really hard. You 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 spreading this kind of possibility. Relationships are? Important. Yeah, okay. 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's mother. It's kind of a nickname. Who's 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'd probably sit with her and say, how did I do? You know? That's something. Is there a word that you understand the most? Loving kindness. Is there a word that you understand the most? Loving kindness.

It is. Yeah. Sharon, thank you for how you showed up in 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, you literally returned the gift to me. And so now I'm carrying it in my heart. So it's beautiful. I do. 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, to check out your work or be part of what you're doing? Probably my website, which is just SharonSolesburg.com is the easiest. You got it. Sharon, I appreciate you. Thank you.

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