Good Life Project - Roundtable: Erin Moon and Tara Mohr

Episode Date: February 17, 2016

Today's episode is our latest experiment, a new show format we're calling Good Life Project Roundtable™.What is it? A new weekly show that won't replace, but will be added to our long-form conversations and short riffs. Two "guests-in-residence" and I will be hanging out for the better part of a month, usually 3 or 4 weeks. This really lets you get to know them and benefit from their deep interests and lens on life.In each Roundtable, we'll go deep into three specific topics. And, the thing is, nobody knows what the other person's topics will be until they hit the conversation.My guests-in-residence for today's episode of Good Life Project Roundtable™ (and the two weeks to come) are Playing Big author, Tara Mohr and yoga-educator, Erin Moon.Our three topics in this episode:Great leaders - are they always doubting and what's the deal with self-doubt?What's the deal with westerners reaching east for their spirituality?Is mindfulness always a good thing or can it sometimes do harm as well?It's fast-paced, fun, utterly unscripted and at times a bit raw, but always good-natured and very real. Enjoy! And let us know if you like this format, over on social media. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to introduce a brand new show to you. So we're not taking away the long form conversations or the short and sweet riffs, but we are going to run a bit of an experiment for the better part of a month, generally three or four weeks. Every show will each offer up a single topic. So there'll be three topics in all that we go deep into and just kind of go around the round table until we think we've pretty much got it sussed out. My guests in residence for the next three weeks are Tara Moore, who is the author of a fantastic book called Playing Big and somebody who dives deep into empowerment and realization, and especially with a focus on women. You can find her at Tara Moore. That's T-A-R-A-M-O-H-R.com if you want to learn more. And my second guest is Erin Moon,

who's a dear friend, yoga teacher, philanthropist, writer, and world traveler. I will add her website URL into the show notes also. In case you want to write it down, that's msmoonyogiactor.blogspot.com. We're going to have to work on Erin to get a shorter URL for that, but that will be in the show notes if you want to find her. So our topics for this first installment of the Good Life Project Roundtable are great leaders. Are they always doubting? And what about self-doubt? What's the deal with Westerners reaching East for their spirituality? And is mindfulness always a good thing or can it sometimes do harm as well? So I hope you enjoy this conversation. As I

mentioned, Tara and Aaron will be the guests in residence for the Good Life Project roundtable for three weeks now. So you can have some great opportunities to go deep with these fantastic, brilliant, kind and soulful women. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. Hello, everybody. This is Jonathan Fields. Allegedly. My special guests are two fabulous, intelligent, world-shaking women. Yes, no, you guys are looking at me like, who else? That's the best introduction I've had in my life right now. And I was like, hmm, how am I shaking right now?

That sounds good. I'm feeling shaky now. So directly in front of me, we have Tara Moore. Tell us a little about what you're up to. Well, my passion is all about helping everyone share their brilliance more in the world and particularly filling those gaps where women's voices still aren't being heard. And right now I'm doing a lot of talking about the messages of my work because the book just came out. So there's a good and bad of that. The good is it's sharing the message. The bad is the part of me that just likes to steep deeply in the creative process is wondering, when do I get to go back into research and writing? Oh, God, I know that feeling. I was like, must go back to the cave now.

Where's my cave? Can I just duck into a public library somewhere and feel it for a minute? I'm drawn the same way. So share the name of your book. Playing Big, Practical Wisdom for Women Who Want to Speak Up, Create, and Lead. Awesome. Fabulous book, by the way. And to my right, Erin Moon.

Yes. Bring us up to speed. The latest. I'm enjoying being a Vancouverite. And I'm actually pretty excited because this spring I'm rolling out a thing called the Yoga Project. Ah, Canadian. Project. Oh, my God.

It's happened. I'm back. After 13, I realized I've lived in New York for more than a third of my life. And it's like immediate how fast I go back to those little pronunciations. It's like code switching. I'm code switching back to my Canadian ways. Excellent. So the yoga project, as part of World Spine Care, which is a non-government organization that has spine care clinics in Botswana, Tanzania, and the Dominican Republic. And as part of the rehabilitation program, we are launching the yoga project where we're going to go in and teach local clinicians and other people who are involved with the clinics that are already there and doing diagnostics and treatment and work doing therapeutic yoga for pain management and mind care. And we're launching it this spring, and I'm the co-director of it,

so I've helped develop the manual, and I'll be teaching along with a woman named Barry Reisman. And we're talking in a medical conference just before it, which is really exciting because we're kind of introducing yoga to Botswana. But it's neat because we get to introduce yoga to Botswana as a therapeutics healing modality, which is kind of… Rather than sort of the workout. Yeah, exactly. Rather as I look hot in my Lululemon. Which you do, but there's some other benefits. Maybe a little. Just a little bit. Very awesome.

So I have asked you guys to come and hang out because it's time to play around. So Erin is a little bit of an alumni to this. So Tara, why don't we start out with you today? I love this format. So much fun. Well, I wanted to share something I heard recently that really stunned me and very large company, sort of one of the most prominent traditional business female CEOs. And she was saying to me in the course of our conversation, she said, you know, a great leader always doubts and always asks questions about their strategy and is always wondering, are we really doing the right thing? And I, of course, I've heard that message in different forms before, but what really struck me in this particular conversation was how for her, that level of doubt had absolutely nothing to do with self-doubt. And that's what I found super fascinating that whereas I think it's

true for all of us, men and women, maybe especially women, I don't know, that when we're having a lot of doubt about the work we're doing, what I hear so often for people is that what comes with that is maybe I'm not the right person then to do it, or I don't know what I'm doing. Whereas she was saying, I know this means I am excelling at my job. I am totally the right person because I have this doubt and this skepticism. So that idea that doubt about the work does not have to in any way become self-doubt has really been very helpful to me and I think can be helpful to so many of us because we link those things and they actually don't need to be linked. They could really, as she held them, they're actually, they're all opposite of each other in a way. That's so interesting the way that she would

translate those signals just like, well, number one, the way that she would separate them into two different signals. So I think most people don't. What's been your experience with that? Well, what I find interesting is what I was thinking about is it's not about uh it's the doubt of whether and correct me if i'm wrong but it's the doubt of whether or not the work will have resonance beyond kind of i because i think that we when we're trying to live authentically we come to the work that we're doing because it's actually something that we're working on or we need or some realization or self-development or whatever that we've had to go through. And so the doubt, you know, it's like you've already kind of gone through that part of your own doubt and you've worked your way into a job or some sort of impact that you're trying to make. You're just not sure if other people feel

the same way as you do. That's where the doubt lies. Am I correct in kind of? I think that's one huge area. Like, is this what a market wants? Have we gotten the who right of who we're trying to reach, right? But also those ongoing questions of, and is this the right strategy to reach them? Is this the right message? You know, when we were faced with choice A or B, and we went with A, do we need to look again at B? You know, those kinds of questions that if you're doing, I think, anything at all substantive or creative, there's, and one of the reasons I want to talk about this with you is because there's uncertainty, right? I'm very curious to hear your thoughts about it. And we just, we shut down around that. And it's like,

it's funny, I don't actually remember what, you're probably the same way. Like, I don't remember what made it into the book and what didn't. All these conversations. Somebody walks up to me like, remember when you wrote that on this? And I'm like, I have no recollection whatsoever, actually.

But I'm glad that made it into the book because I didn't remember. But yeah, you know, there are these questions of, is it good enough? And am I good enough? And they're two very separate questions, you know, there are these questions of, is it good enough? And am I good enough? And they're two very separate questions, you know. And I think, is it good enough is a constructive question to continue to ask. Because it's going to, you know, I had an amazing opportunity to sit down with Milton Glaser. And I still remember the words that tumbled out of his mouth, where he said, be in a state of doubt or at least questioning, if not just outright doubt, because that because it stops you from actually taking the risks that you need to not only make it better, but make you better. And the world needs you out there. It needs like whatever that is that's inside of you. It's like there's something of value

and we tend to discount that so much. So that actually really resonates with me strongly. But you brought up something really interesting, which is, you kind of questioned, is this more something that is apparent with women than men? And I don't have the answer to that. But Tara, you spend, I mean, so much of your work is with professional women. What's been your experience around that just day to day? Well, it's not as black and white as people think, you know, so many people assume, I think that women grapple with more self doubt than men. And when I was writing my book, I looked into the academic research on this to see, you know, what what was there in the social science research. And it's interesting that there's no consistent findings, like some studies

will show, oh, yeah, women express more self-doubt than men. Many studies show it's exactly comparable and a lot depends on who was in the sample and all of that. There is consistent findings around the fact that women have more self-doubt around things that are stereotypically associated with masculinity. So leadership, quantitative stuff, negotiation. And interestingly, there's some studies that suggest that men have more self-doubt around things associated with femininity. There's one study where they tell women and men, you know, great negotiators are good listeners and good communicators and they can read body language well. And then they send them off to negotiate. And the men who were told that versus the control group, the men perform much worse if they've just been told that because they all start feeling like, yeah, like, I can't do that. And they're paired with women to negotiate.

And so they feel like they – so that, you know, it shows up differently around different skills. So it's really, like, context sensitive to a certain extent. Absolutely. I wonder also if certain professions are just sort of, you know, like I think of, so Erin, like you've been in the performing arts for like the better part of your life. And it seems like that profession is, at least from the outside looking in, notorious for drawing people who are just riddled with nonstop self-doubt. Yeah. Well, I think it's funny because when you were talking and when you're speaking about uncertainty, I thought as an artist, I was like,

you know, and you both know this, there's this, the uncertainty is where the creative space lives. That is creation. That is, you know, idle hands. That is where the creative spark is found is in uncertainty different than self-doubt. But I think because the two kind of manifest as sisters, you know, they're kind of close to one another, that the uncertainty that's inherent in walking in and saying, I'm creating. And when you're, I mean, I guess as an actor, it's really immediate. And you're walking into all these rooms and going, here's a piece of my soul. So I've taken a piece of me and a piece of my vulnerability and a tiny weenie bit of my strength, and I'm putting it in front of you to say yes or no to. And instead of a lot of artists thinking, or actors particularly, thinking of that as, my art is meeting your art, and you're going to decide if our art is going to get together and make baby art. It comes off as as a personal affront and that then uncertainty in the creative space turns into self-doubt right and then it's like i have done something wrong there's something wrong with me i should question what i'm bringing to the table and that's it's a it's a fine line between keeping the

creative space open, I think. And like what you were talking about with Chase Jarvis in the interview you guys did and what he's kind of seems to be about, right? Is that to keep the creative space fully open and rich and happening, the self-doubt needs to be nurtured away, essentially. Yeah. So it's more specific. It's pure. And it's, I mean, so it's like, you know, I threw out those, you know, am I good enough and is it good enough? But in the context of what you're talking about, they're conflated.

Yeah. You know, so it's like, you know, classic sales training is like, you know, when somebody says no to you, it's not personal. Yeah. You know, you're trained to just like, because all day long, every day, it's no, no, no, no, no. And that devastates most people if they think that they're personally being rejected which i actually believe it is very personal i have a completely different philosophy on sales training but like the classic training is you can't take it personally

they're saying no to like the pitch or the strategy or the product or whatever it is but what you're when you're the product yeah you know it's hard to walk out of that room and say well it's not me it was just it because you are it. Again and again and again. And our entrepreneurs do this all the time. They walk into those rooms again and again and again. The thing that has really helped me with that is seeing feedback as information about the people giving it. Yeah, totally.

Period. So I still might take it seriously if i want that audience to connect with my work but i'm taking it seriously as information about their preferences what they want not about me and i think it is school this is one of the ways i think school does such a disservice because school gives the message that there's such a thing as good work and there's such a thing as bad work. And for 20 years, you know, we get conditioned in the idea that if I did good work, that's going to be met with a certain positive response. And if I did poor work, it was such a revelation to me just in the past few years. about how all through school, the teacher's reaction to my writing would change every year because of the teacher's preferences and what they thought was good writing. And so some years,

I would have this teacher who thought I was a great writer. And some years, I was told I was unarticulate or clunky or just nothing to notice one way or the other. And I actually just went on that roller coaster every year and every semester in college, never realizing, because that idea was so outside of the paradigm of school, never realizing this actually just has to do with the style and preferences of this person. It's amazing. I mean, I see that now. My daughter in school, it can be maddening as a parent. You're like, hold me back. My daughter is amazing. You missed her.

You're doing great work. But it is, and as like, yeah, as a writer too, you know, if you write articles, if you write books or anyone who puts creative work into the world, it is so much a preference thing, you know, and it's, you really just, so I love the framing that you have Tara of like saying, well, this is actually more about like the big learning for me is not whether I'm good or bad. It's just like, I'm learning more about like their lens and like what their predilections, their preferences are and what, how they're viewing me. And that's that there's information in that. That that's no matter what as I move forward is valuable. The other thing that comes up for me when I hear those questions, is it good enough?

Am I good enough? And I love that. That's such a simple, wonderful way to distill it. Am I good enough is to me, that is like a complete ego question. To me, you know, the thread that I see, everything that comes up in my life that has to do with ego is thinking of myself as sort of a defined package and then going outside myself to try and have some judgments and thoughts about that. And so am I good enough is the ultimate like, first of all, it assumes there's like a finite I, you know, that's like me. And then I'm going to, like, imagine that has edges, and I'm going to go outside of myself and try and assess

it. And I think that's always a disaster. I mean, I cannot think of one situation in which that is not a disaster. And it's not reality. We have no ability to accurately assess ourselves at all. You assess me. You assess me. But I can't assess me. I'm going to subjectively step into another human and then reflect back on how I am. Right. And that's why I also say just drop the question, are you ready yet?

That's also going outside of yourself and trying to assess yourself. You have no idea what you're ready for. It's more, are you bringing everything that you can in this moment? Because the next moment you're going to be a different person. Right. And so because you're going to learn from the last moment. And so are you bringing everything you have? Are you being truthful to yourself with the knowledge that you have,

with all of the specs, with everything that you have? Are you bringing that? Because then self-doubt actually just, it's impossible. Because in that moment, you are bringing actually everything that you have in a truthful, honest, I want to hopefully, you know, depends on, I guess, what you're doing in the world. But to serve the betterment of whomever I am serving. Yes. And we're not going to even talk about the presidential campaign. What's just going on?

Oh, come on. We're not going to dive into the assumption you just threw out. Topic number two. The Canadians want to know. Oh, now that you've got like a really hot guy who's leading the country, who's super smart and everybody loves him. Yogi wife, just saying. Great semi-socialist policies now.

So why don't we, I feel good. Shall we move on to topic number two with Erin Boone? Yes. Although I'm tempted to ask my first question after your last comment. Go wherever you feel we need to go. I know, I know. But I just, because there's always a chance we're not going to get through all three. I'm going to ask the question that's been kind of on my mind.

And then it was so funny i listened to your interview when i was with chase uh when i was coming in from um newark and it you guys kind of kind of popped on it and it was one of my questions for this so i want to roll with it a bit i'm curious as to your guys's opinions on why you think that we are reaching, as Western society, why we're so deeply and intensely and more increasingly reaching East. Why are we, you know, Buddhist curious? And why is MBSR so at the forefront of all of our minds? Why are we coming to yoga? Yoga Journal and Yoga Alliance just came out with a study and it's like 34% of United States and Canadian citizens

have tried or will be trying a yoga class within the next year, which is a big portion of the population. And I don't know if that includes already practicing and what they're putting, they might just be saying going to a studio for yoga class, but regardless kind of why, what is innately happening in our society that is making us reach East? Yeah. Which actually tees up my next question. So it kind of piggybacks on that,

but let's, let's dive into it. What Tara, what are you, anything bubbling up for you around this? Well, really just what, what was coming up as I was listening to you, I grew up in a house where there were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves of mystical texts from every religious tradition around the world, which was a really amazing way to grow up. And with a mom who was super interested in spirituality and would literally, if I said,

I don't like so-and-so at school, she would be like, how do you think God thinks about that person? From age like four. Wow. And Jungian dream analysis every morning at the breakfast table. You know, really amazing. And culturally, our family's Jewish, but my mom was always very skeptical of organized religion. I started, you know, going to the New Age bookstore with her as a kid and then going on my own as a teenager.

I went to the Zen monastery by myself when I was 14 because I decided I needed a personal retreat, you know. Oh, my God, that's awesome. So cool. Oh my God, that's awesome. It's like computer camp, cheerleading camps, and monastery retreat camp. I love it. And I still sometimes lead workshops at that same monastery when I take people on retreat now. That's awesome. grew up with that and i think that there's for me it's just about an enduring there's an enduring spiritual hunger that we have because it's who we are you know and that the corruption and misunderstanding that comes with what happens when humans build institutions got in the way of people accessing that through

their local organized religion for a long time and that you know now other avenues are opening up for that longing yeah yeah i think i mean it's interesting i almost look at it like they're actually two sides to that question like you could kind of split it as part one is why are people actually leaving more like a lot of Western based faiths? And then why are they gravitating towards this other thing? And I mean, I did some research on this over the last year or two. And there's been a mass departure from sort of like Judeo Christian faith. There is to the extent that the research I said that kind of labels the group of people who are fleeing the nuns, meaning like non-affiliated.

And that the size of that group is expanding at an astonishing pace. And when you go deeper into it, it's not that people are leaving. They feel it. If you ask them if they're spiritual, they'll say yes. But what they're leaving is the organized faith and it's the rule-based faith and the traditions. And I guess a lot of people have been trying to understand that. And I think there's, you know, certainly there's been a lot of news, there's been a lot of stories that are making religion and faith is that a lot of traditional religions and faith are very linear and rule-based, especially when you move more towards the side of orthodoxy. It's like, this is what you do between the time you open your eyes in the morning and the time you go to bed at night and year after year after year. These are the rules of the game.

So most of the questions are answered, and that's incredibly comforting for a lot of people. But I think at the same time, there's sort of like, there's so much questioning of rule based systems these days. I feel like a lot of people feel like we've, we've like, we followed the rules for a couple of generations now, if not like, you know, a lot longer, you know, a couple centuries. And the human condition is still suffering as much as it ever was, if not more. So is there a different way to get where we want to go? And so my sense is that part of the hunger is moving away from just a very heavily rule-driven approach to faith and spirituality, and moving towards more of a questioning approach to spirituality where it's kind of like, I mean, I think one of the things about Buddhism is that, and of

course this varies depending upon the school, but there is sort of this fundamental underlying thing, ethos of kick the tires. It's like, this is what we know. This is what we think to be true. But this is basically a methodology of living that is meant to live and breathe and evolve as it's exposed to the human condition. So try it on. And if actually you, you know, like, if it works, awesome. If there's something about it that you can develop into something that in some way works better, let us know. At least that's been my experience interacting with that particular tradition.

So I have a feeling there's sort of like these two sides going on. And I think they're just mass, mass, mass dissatisfaction, disenfranchisement of just the current sort of like system. And so people are just getting really, you know, what Lodurinslaer, I think, was the one who dropped it. It's like Buddha curious. Yeah. Of just the current sort of like system. And so people are just getting really, you know, what Lodurinsler, I think, was the one who dropped it. It's like Buddha curious. Yeah. Because different. Yeah.

Well, and I have a little bit also a cynical view on the difference piece in that I think there's a bit of a grass is greener on the other side where. I would agree. And also what we receive, you know, of Buddhism is it's pieces that are taken out of a historical context often, you know, and you could look at lots of ways Buddhism has been practiced that were much more burdened by the cultural and social norms of their time. That's not what we get when we, you know, here in the West, when we tend to get these really wonderful philosophical pieces and wonderful practices. And I think, unfortunately, we are also end up missing a lot of gold that's in Western religious traditions that hasn't been protected or mid made central in the organized religion form of it but you know i find i'm just i'm constantly i go through phases where i read a lot of new testament scripture i love a course in miracles which is really in a you know very

christian paradigm i think there's incredible richness in a lot of the old testament stories and commentary um and and that it's just easier sometimes when we're leaving when we're going on a spiritual quest it's it's easier to really leave home you know when we're doing that uh but not that's not the whole picture. And when you go back to the original texts, you know, they're all amazing and radical. Yeah, and I think sometimes we actually, we need to leave home to come back to home and see it differently and experience it differently.

And I think that what's really interesting and kind of both of you have hit on it is this institutionalization of spirituality and the expansiveness that we're kind of seeking. accepted status quo that has been handed to us or that we get when we go to, you know, the place, the whatever religious institution that we're going to. And when you take away the institutionalization of it, you see the through line of there is some sort of the story that is us that is our our kind of understanding of ourselves and our of love and compassion and expansiveness and they are in all the other places it's just that they got locked inside doors and um and i think you guys talked about it too um you and chase about the idea of what how technology is manifesting and how it's

disengaging us from each other on a face-to-face basis and i think part of it is that this seeking of connection because we are connecting but not connecting yeah no i totally agree with that yeah and so this kind of segues into my topic too and it was there's an article on the guardian um that i read and the title of the article is uh is mindfulness making us ill right so i and it's funny because normally i would have been like oh that's just sort of an alarmist type of thing you know they're trying to and um but i actually saw it first it was shared by somebody who um is a dear friend of mine and a Buddhist meditation teacher. And she's like, this is important. And she's non-alarmist. And she's like, and I was like, oh, so let me read this. So the title is definitely, it's a little, the conversation, what's fascinating, it kind of piggies back on the institutionalization and the sort of like the commercialization and mass distribution of these fundamental human technologies that were developed thousands of years ago for a particular purpose, now being sort of distributed in a way and without the support of a teacher, without the support of a community, and without support of the dharma or like a bigger set of teachings. In the article, I'm just pulling it up right now. I'm going to read just one little thing because it was a really surprising stat. Talking about a researcher, Farias looked at

the research into unexpected side effects. A 1992 study by Dave Shapiro, University of California, Irvine found that 63% of the group studied who had varying degrees of experience in meditation had each tried mindfulness, had suffered at least one negative effect from the meditation retreats, while 7% reported profoundly adverse effects, is such an of the day concept and word these days. And I don't agree with the headline of that article. It's not making people ill. But I do think as somebody, I have a fairly longstanding practice that it is being presented as a panacea and it's being presented as an isolated practice.

And in my experience, I'm curious because I know you guys have your own individual practices. My experience has been that all it really does is it cultivates awareness. It's, it stills the water enough so that you can actually see what's underneath it lying in the sand. But if you don't like what you see, it doesn't necessarily make it

all better you know and that's where i think you know studies like this start to to actually have some validity to it um so i can speak to that personally um because after losing my husband i couldn't lie in shavasana i couldn't i actually had a fellow yoga instructor, senior yoga instructor, tell me, I was talking to her, I was like, I can't sit. I can't meditate. I can't. And it was a newer practice to me, even though I'd been a yoga instructor for a while, just a continuous meditation practice was newer. And I wasn't able to a long time because I couldn't sit in the stillness because what was underneath was like the Kraken. I mean, it was screaming so loud and I wasn't able to handle my grief yet. I had to kind of blissfully be in shock. Blissfully meaning, you know, bringing myself to my knees and having to call people to get me out of hell at one o'clock in the morning almost every single day but um it took me so long to be able to then cultivate the meditation and then once i was able to sit and see what was underneath to then allow to to

see what was there and then and then my med a lot of my meditation practices for a while, once I was able to sit finally with those, that depression and anxiety that was underneath was weeping through it. And then when I went into a pretty intense and deep depression, I would sit and there was a calmness in that that was different than the rest of my day. So there still was a peace in just that piece of my day, even if it didn't have a reflective quality. Now I see, now that I'm kind of a little bit more on top of and part of my kind of emotional spectrum and learning who the hell I am now, I kind of have an idea of what it is to live with this grief and all that. Now it has a different quality. But I also mentor yoga instructors, and I've had expressed to me, I'm finding I'm having a huge hit of depression, which is a propensity that I go towards after I meditate,

like within my day after I meditate, within a few hours. And I think that's, it is this, and the first thing I say is, so do you have a therapist? Like, do you have someone to talk out those feelings? If it's bringing up that bubbling under the still waters, the waters aren't still. Yeah. And we used to, I mean, we had this conversation 10 years ago, probably where, you know, when I was at a point in my life where we were actually training a lot of yoga teachers. And what I noticed was that as a teacher also, that just through the yoga practice alone, without meditation, stuff came up. Just somatic releases, like the psychological.

And when we were training teachers, I would always say, listen, you are not. We're training you for 200 hours. We are absolutely not training you in the skills that you need to process that with somebody as a therapist. So one of the most important things that you need to do if you're working with somebody privately or in a class, and one of the first things you need to do as you move out into the world as a teacher is put together a short list of people who you trust who are qualified because the practices will help you process to a certain extent, but you as an individual are not, you don't have the capabilities to help somebody move through that unless of course, you know,

you are trained therapist or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very similarly. I mean, this certainly comes up, for example, when in training people to work with their inner critic are now training and training other facilitators to use the playing big model in their coaching or consulting work. And we always talk about, you know, what's what's

regular inner critic, what's an internalized inner critic voice that's connected to a trauma? How do you know the difference and that they? And that we're not training people to work with trauma. I also think this goes to, it's such a great follow-on topic because to me, this is the other side of the coin of, okay, so there's problematic things that happen in organized religion. And when we're doing institution building around religious and spiritual life on the other hand what we're missing you know by picking and choosing is there's an integrity and a rationale but around how various parts of a spiritual tradition go together and the idea of a path that has steps and i think that's a big question for us right now. Like now that people can access so much of different ideas, practices through technology, and now that we're all used to having so much choice, how are people going to get the whole that any particular tradition offers. There was a report that came out in the 90s on Jewish identity and it had like a Starbucks style cup on the front. And it was saying like, you know, I'll have my double soy latte, da, da, da, da, da, short, you know, customized thing. And that's how people were doing their religious identity.

Like I'll choose my type of milk. I'll choose the size I want. I choose how often I have it. And, you know, on the other side of the coin, there's a reason why traditions have guidelines and rules yeah yeah and going away from like things like failure and saying the i don't knows and we because we can custom craft everything you never you're like i'm gonna limit the amount of challenge that's in my life and what's funny is those traditions when practiced continually and with a certain amount of essentially dogma,

the point is it's a challenge because guess what? Life is a challenge. And it's not like you go to your religious institution or your spiritual base or if you're an atheist, whatever it is that's drawing you towards a practice, you're practicing life. You're just taking out some of the other, you know, factors. But the whole point is to make it so the living, the challenges of living life come with an ease or an equanimity or an openness that is more expansive. And that to me is kind of like the hope, right? But in that comes the fact that there's the potential

that you're going to have to actually face yourself and how you exist in this world or are existing. Even me? Yeah, especially you, Jonathan. It's not a good thing. Let me just put on my to-do list. Stop meditating. More chocolate.

And the bad chocolate, not the good chocolate. And that wraps our first ever Good Life Project roundtable. Our guests in residence are Tara Moore and Erin Moon. I hope you've enjoyed this format. Erin and Tara are with me and with you for another two weeks after this. So we're going to have a lot of fun with some really interesting and provocative topics. I'll see you next time. I'm Jonathan Fields.

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