Good Life Project - You Don’t Need to be Fixed: Geneen Roth

Episode Date: April 9, 2018

Geneen Roth is done trying to fix the messy parts of her life, and she wants you to consider the possibility that a good part of your magnificence lies in your mess. A mega New York Times bestselling author of books like When Food Is Love and Women Food and God, Roth has been teaching groundbreaking workshops for over 30 years. She's been featured everywhere from The Oprah Winfrey Show, to 20/20, the Today show, Good Morning America, The View and beyond.In her new book, This Messy Magnificent Life, she invites us to stand in our own imperfection, to allow space to feel loved and whole and good, even when open questions remain. And, to reclaim a sense of agency and expansion over our bodies, lives, relationships and power at a time when too many feel a lack of control and contraction.-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I pretty much say I think everybody's got three themes that they go around and around in in their lives. Mine were I'm unlovable, I'm not, I'm worthless, and the little match girl theme which is standing out in the cold with no shoes on and rags, looking at in the snow, looking at the family on the other side of the picture window, cooking turkey in the little velvet dresses and hugging and kissing and loving each other. And I'm the one always. And the theme still comes up. Something can easily trigger that where I don't belong, where I'm on the other side

of the warm, I call it. Janine Roth has had a voice in her head from the earliest possible days that she can remember. But here's the thing. She is not suffering from some diagnosable condition. It's the same voice that many of us have. Maybe we call it by a different name. It's the voice of shame and blame. It's the voice of not fitting in. It's the voice of difference. It's the voice of shame and blame. It's the voice of not fitting in.

It's the voice of difference. It's the voice of destruction. It's the voice of not enough. And that led to an extraordinarily dark place for the better part of two decades in her life. Until she had a moment of reckoning that changed everything. She since has become really a leading voice, a luminary in the world of understanding the relationship between self-worth, value, living an extraordinary life, and food. But it's not just food. It's really a much bigger conversation. In her new book, This Messy, Magnificent Life, she dives deep into a recent struggle struggle and she kind of asked the question,

okay, I have done all this work. I've spent 30 years exploring my relationship to the world, to food, to self-worth. I've been in therapy. I've done every spiritual practice in the world. And yet there's still this nagging thing in me that says I don't fit in and something is not quite right. What do I do about that? And that is where our conversation goes in today's episode. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman.

I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot.

Flight risk. I think a lot of people feel like this in their families that I didn't quite belong there. That somehow I landed and who were these crazy adults? In what way? Oh, boy. Because I was always interested in the depth stuff, feelings and saying what I saw. And that's not how life was back then. And so in that way, I felt like I didn't belong. I kept on wanting my parents to talk to each other and talk about their unhappiness and see

what we could work out. And I didn't want them to get separated and divorced and all of that. So I saw what was going on, but nobody really wanted to talk about it. And I think what happened for myself is that I, in the process, I didn't feel very lovable. I didn't really feel, I took it very personally. If there was all this pain out there, it must be that something's wrong with me. I must be the problem. If only I were different, then somehow I could either make them happy or they would be different if I was a different kid. And I funneled all that through my relationship with food. And so what happened quickly by the time I was 11, when I went on my first diet, I felt that if only I could lose weight, look differently, eat differently,

be gorgeous, sort of be a different person than I was, and everything would be fine. And I believed it. I mean, I really believed it. So I developed a severe eating disorder that lasted 18, 17 years. When you look back at that first moment, I mean, reflecting back on it, it's easier to see a lot of what happened and understand what was happening. Were you aware at all when you were sort of, quote, in it,

in your teens and then through into your 20s, was there a moment where you had a sense of the fact that this isn't okay, this is something really off here, rather than I'm just trying to fix something and I'm going to keep trying stuff and it's all going to be related around food and the way that I relate to it. I had that one moment like that, like you asked. It was all about food and the size of my body. I became obsessed. And did I know something was off? Yes, but what I thought what was off was my lack of willpower and my inherent madness that was manifesting through my relationship with food. But somehow I believed that if I could fix that, everything else would be fixed too. That's what I believed. It became just so uni-focused. And I was convinced of that. And then if, so then I went on so many diets, but when I stopped eventually, because it was torturous, it was really, really torturous the way I gained and lost weight for

all of those years. And when I stopped doing the whole thing, it's like I stepped out of the paradigm. I stepped out of the diet, binge, fix yourself paradigm. And when I stepped out of that, there was such freedom in stepping out of it. It was frightening on the one hand, but so freeing on the other hand that I realized I was never going to go back. What happened that led you to step out of it? And so freeing, on the other hand, that I realized I was never going to go back. What happened that led you to step out of it? I read a book called Fat is a Feminist Issue. Were you looking for that book? I was looking in the bookstore for ways to kill myself.

That was before the internet. And I was at the breaking point of realizing I never, I couldn't do this anymore. I'd been anorexic for a year and a half. Then I had doubled my weight in two months. And I realized if life meant this, then I didn't want to participate. I wanted out. And so I had decided to kill myself and was looking for books on guns and drugs and things like that. And I saw sitting on the floor of the bookstore, the book depot in Mill Valley, and I saw this book and I picked it up and I started realizing that maybe there was something much deeper about what I was doing with food than what was apparent. And I decided to take a couple of weeks, because at that point I had nothing to lose. I was willing to lose my life and see if it were true.

And so the very next day, I stopped dieting and I went on a whole different path, which I'm still on, really. And I mean, it's no longer about food, but it is about stepping out of the fix-me paradigm. There's something wrong with me. And if only I could fix this and fix that and fix this, I'd be fine. Yeah. Tell me more about that, about that paradigm. Yeah. I think I spent so long feeling like I was the wrong person to be living my life, that if only I were different, more of this and less of this, and when the whole relationship

with food, you know, this is not going to sound the way it was. I was going to say was healed because really it was a process just like anything is. When I was no longer obsessed with food or the size of my body, when it wasn't an issue for me anymore, which believe me, I never thought there'd come a day when that would happen, but it's been a long time since that's been true. I realized that whatever deeply fueled that, which was a sense of being damaged or doomed or too selfish, worthless, unlovable, not belonging. I mean i i pretty much say i think everybody's got three themes that they go around and around in in their lives mine were i'm unlovable i'm not i'm worthless and the little match girl theme which is standing out in the cold with no shoes on and rags looking at in the snow looking at the family on the other side of the

picture window, cooking turkey in the little velvet dresses and hugging and kissing and loving each other. And I'm the one always. And the theme still comes up. Something can easily trigger that where I don't belong, where I'm on the other side of the warm, I call it. It's over there, but for some reason, either because I'm damaged or doomed or something's wrong with me, I didn't get the right piece of DNA, I'm never going to be part of that circle of warm. And I realized that was still true, that though my eating was fine and my body was at its natural weight, I still felt like that. And so I wanted to see if it was possible to attend to that directly since I was no longer manifesting that through my relationship with food. And I'm happily married. I've been with

my husband now for a while. I have work that I love. I'm living somewhere that I love. And still, I woke up like this every day. So in a low-level way, not screaming with it, not obsessed by it, but sort of feeling something was tugging at my heart, haunted, I would say haunted by that. And I really wanted to see if it was possible to not live like that every day, to not even have that as a low-level theme, or not that I would never be triggered, but that I could stop believing it when it did get triggered. Because I don't think things go away like that,

especially things that are inscribed in your history and your legacy, your ancestry, all that you inherit. You inherit, and there's no way to disinherit it. But there is a way to be in relationship with it, which I was never able to do. Despite 30 years of meditation and just as many years of therapy, I kept waiting to be fixed. I felt like in the back of my mind, I kept waiting for somebody to save me and rescue me like I was a kid waiting for a different mom to come. So anyway, that's what got me working on this book is that, well, I wouldn't say that's not what started me working on the book. It started the process that eventually became the book because after a couple of years of that and writing pieces, which I had no idea were going to become a book or not, I thought, oh, I'm writing about something here.

I'm writing about this that I am attending to, and I'm following certain methods in a way. And so this seems like, and I wanted to write about it, of course, because I always want to write about what's this and what's happening. And isn't it amazing? And because I don't often know what I know until I write about it, I wanted to write about it. And then eventually it became a book. Yeah, no, I totally get that. I mean, it's interesting to me also that the thing that you seem to be describing, being on the outside looking in, you know, you can, there's all sorts of stuff, which is good, which is great. And yet still there is this low level of, no, it's a lack of belonging.

Yeah. And you have a person who you love and who you've loved for decades. And I'm sure you have friends who feel this way. And still there's this thing. And as you shared earlier, you can trace that back to at the earliest stage, you feeling like you didn't even belong to your own family. And 30 years of therapy, 30 years of meditation, all this stuff, it's still there. Yes. Right. It is. What do you do with that? And so here's what I've come to see. I've come to discover certain ways to work with myself

when those things come up. And those are the very things I teach too in my retreats because why not teach what you need to learn and what you have learned? And, cause I think it's universal. I do think it's universal. I think to some degree, everybody's got a little bit of it. I think the hard part, at least for me, was I thought it was possible to dissolve those things. I thought that meditation was going to help me develop that sky mind, as I learned in Dzogchen.

Perfect equanimity. Yes, perfect equanimity. Be able to watch those thoughts go by and not get involved or attached to them. And I thought therapy was going to heal those very, very wounded places. And believe me, I tried a lot of different therapy, most of which was really good. Some of it wasn't so good, but most of it was very good. But still, I thought those things were going to go away. That I was, you know, I guess I thought I was going to wake up someday having had a different childhood. I mean, if I had to say it like that,

of course, I didn't think that. But I think I thought I'd get a different childhood. I mean, if I had to say it like that, of course I didn't think that, but I think I thought I'd get a different nervous system, that I would go into parasympathetic mode much easier than I do, that I wouldn't get triggered as easily as I do. And I don't get triggered as easily except when I do. And then it's, okay, then what? And so the big myth for me was that those things were going to go away and that I was going to be a different person than I am right now. That sounds so silly, but I think I thought that. I thought I was going to be healed in a different way than I feel healed now. I mean, that actually makes a lot of sense. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between

me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. I'm often kind of fascinated by the distinction between

becoming or transformation and liberation. And I feel like, I'm curious whether you've seen this too with so much of the work that you've done, that there is so much focus of transformation, which is, to me, it's like, okay, so you're starting as A and you're transforming into B, rather than liberation, which is the truest sense of who you are is there. It's always been there and there's goodness in it. And the process isn't so much changing from A to B. The process is peeling away that which restricts you from being that truest part of who you are. I love that. Yes, I love that. I think you just said it beautifully because I think that's actually what it is. I think when I dropped the me project, as I called it, it was dropping it and accepting the fact that certain things were just not going to

get fixed. They weren't. So they weren't going to be part of that becoming process that you're talking about. But there was this huge open space that had never been broken. And that as long as I was involved in the me project, I was involved in the fixing and being disappointed and thinking I could become a different person and thinking that this was going to change and I was gonna have a parasympathetic nervous system sort of like my husband, who's just glides in a much easier way through life than I do,

just always has, always will. It's always astonishing to me. Sometimes I think he's in denial and repression. Like, no, you don't get it. How could it be anything else? The world is caving in. Exactly. Come on, get upset.

Look at the dark side, for God's sakes. Can't you just complain once? But what started happening was that I realized, you know, through how I started working with myself in a different way and then dropping the me project way, that there was always what you called it, this place that was always there. And that I didn't, well, one thing was I never thought that was for me. So people talked about that, of course, in the meditation retreats. Right, it's the heartbeat of yoga. Yes. People talked about that, of course, in the meditation retreats. Right, it's the heartbeat of yoga. Yes, I mean, it's everything.

But it felt like a step-by-step process. Do this and then do this. And there was a hierarchy. And then you do this and then you get enlightened. You know, you're there. And what I don't think, and because that whole thing, that whole paradigm just really was part of, but I can't do it, but I don't belong, but I'm always on the outside. It just hooked right into that. So I felt like that. That's good for them. Yeah. Good for them, but that's not possible for

me. They don't understand. I'm doomed. And then I started realizing what you said and what I realized too about the not brokenness. There was a part, not just a part, but a sort of an essence, an essential nature. I don't want to sound too, quote, spiritual here about this, because I don't, I believe this is true for everybody. So I don't want to make it sound esoteric in any way, but that the not brokenness was, is always there. And so it's about seeing myself as that, not taking, this is going to sound much easier than it actually is, not taking it personally when all of those oh my God, I can't believe this is still coming up after all these years. What is the matter with me? You know, that, I call that the crazy aunt in the attic voice. But when it comes up to say, oh, sweetheart, I get it. You know, yes.

And to see that what is noticing it is bigger than it, what's noticed. And so... All right. I have to stop you there because that is so important. Yeah. That awareness, that meta-awareness. Yes. Isn't that kind of the master key?

That's the master key. That's the master key. How do we get it? Well, I think the reason we don't get it is because we make it much more complicated than it is. I think that's why we don't get it. Because of what I said before, all of our stuff comes up. I can't do it. It's not, but, but, but, but, but, you know, I'll get there when, you know, when I would tell people with my first few books, you know what? Stop dieting. Stop depriving yourself. Listen to your body. Eat what your body wants. They'd say to me, and this is the answer to the question you just asked,

let me lose weight first on a diet. Then I will do that because they were afraid, like most of us are when we hear that that which is noticing isn't what is being noticed. And so if we notice it, then there's an awareness there that's noticing it, that's big, that's always in the background all the time, that that's actually who we are. But I was told that so many times before I believed it. I was like my students who were, but let me do this first and let me accomplish this first. And then, because I think when we hear that, we hear it as relaxing or we hear that as too easy or we hear that it's almost unbelievable. Right, it's just like too trippy. Yeah. Like there's another me there.

Right. That's like looking down on me and observing what I'm thinking and doing. Right, right. It's like, whoa. But then you think, well, on the other hand, what is being aware that I'm sitting here right now with you? How do I know that? Well, I know that, first of all, because I can feel my feet on the floor, my butt in

the chair, my back in the chair, but also because there's an awareness that's aware of that. And so it's the most obvious thing. It's almost like a conspiracy that we're not noticing the most obvious thing there is. But on the other hand, it's actually really easily validatable. Yeah. Because the moment you catch yourself thinking this, spinning this story, the moment you catch yourself with anything, I'm like, oh, I was just thinking this. I was just telling that story again. The you that's catching yourself. Like if there isn't this dynamic, if there isn't this ability to be aware of your thoughts, whatever consciousness is becoming aware of it, you wouldn't be able to do that.

Right. You would be 100% in your thoughts and in the stories all the time. So the simple fact that we catch ourselves all the time, if we sort of practice becoming aware of all the maniacal stuff, the crazy ant, as you describe it in the head, it's like proof. Like you don't have to just take it on faith. No. The fact that you can catch yourself telling these stories, chastising yourself, spitting

all this stuff, the fact that you become aware of that, you can't become aware of that unless there is that observer in some way, shape, or form. And that is the liberation. It's none other than that. That's it. That's it. It's that easy. It's that easy.

And that hard. And that hard. Because number one, there's the doubt that what? It's that easy? Really? Well, if it's that easy, how come everybody isn't doing it? Well, part of the answer is because we all think it's much harder than that. But the other thing is catching yourself is not the easiest thing either because we're so wedded to our opinions and our reactions and our

thoughts. And we think that because we think it, it's true. And so there's gotta be, what we're talking about right now, in the background, really? You think that? Is that really what's going on? Like if somebody doesn't answer an email from me, I can read so much into it, or a text is worse because the text is supposed to be-

You've got five minutes to get it back to me. I've done something horrible. Yes, right. They don't like me anymore. Oh my God, maybe it's what I said last week or the week before. The amount of story that goes in between the fact, the situation, and the thing I don't know, I have no idea what the reason is, but I make up the stories and then I become wedded to the stories. And so unless there's a part of me that we're talking about that's looking and seeing, honey, you're making up a story right now. Here's the fact, your text wasn't answered. That's all you know, period. Now what?

Life becomes much less dramatic. It becomes simpler, less dramatic. For me, I was a real drama queen. I really got a lot of juice out of drama. And, and. Well, I mean, there is the New Yorker in you still. Absolutely. And so, yeah, I got into it.

Oh, my God. You wouldn't believe what happened. And then when I talk about what happened in that way with the drama, it's not just what happened. It's my interpretation of what happened that gets fused together. And so what you're talking about when you say to be aware of the fact that I recount to you about the person who didn't answer my text, that's the simplest thing, or some other event that's happening. When I tell you what's happened, it's always infused with my interpretation of what happened. And unless I'm willing to separate those two, I'm sunk. I'm really sunk because I'm wedded to my story there.

I'm wedded to my opinions. I'm wedded to my interpretations. And what you're talking about and what we're talking about makes it obvious that, because I've always wondered this too, why don't people do practices that help them step into a state of sort of awareness or presence? And it actually makes sense that we build our lives, we build our worldviews around not just circumstance, but the stories that we attach them. And then we get attached to those, like the blended experience as our identities and as the world around us. And it's almost like saying, okay, so let me step back and develop these practices or that would somehow allow me to keep zooming the lens out. It requires a certain amount of willingness to let go of that worldview, like the model of the world that you know, the nature of the stories that you tell

and the way that you expect things to unfold to just kind of say, huh, what's actually happening here? It's almost like a grieving of that, that has to happen in order just to pull back into awareness. Yes, and I'm going to add an and here. I think also, at least for me, because I was so wedded to my identity, I would say really my identity as the wounded one, the one who didn't have, the one who didn't belong, the one who was damaged. So there was a whole identity around that. I didn't realize there was something better. I think in terms of, I'd say for me, rather than grieving, there was fear. There was fear of, well, what would be there if I— Who am I if I'm not this? Yes, because my whole identity was constructed around that.

And so I think for me, I stepped into it baby step by baby step. I had all these great spiritual teachings, which I didn't really believe. But something in me did because I kept going back. I kept going back. I kept being drawn. I kept feeling like, you know, there's something that's possible here from life on earth. And I know it's possible. And all these people are saying it's possible. It's not my direct experience. How can it be my direct experience? So I started doing little things every day that brought me that experience and that I committed to doing.

Like what, for example? I wake up in the morning and, you know, where I would usually do what a friend of mine says he does, something's wrong and who's to blame, is his first thought every day. And that was my thought too. I'm thinking that's most of my friends actually. Right, right. Something's wrong and who's to blame. I wake up now and this is an effort. So everything I'm about to say, they're little teeny things, but they're big efforts because I'm so drawn, magnetized the other way, I will ask myself in the morning, first I'll sense myself and I'll notice, oh, I woke up. I didn't die during the night. That's a good thing. Then I will ask myself, what's not wrong right now? What's not wrong? Because

something's wrong and who's to blame magnetizes me the other way and has me searching for negativity. After a while, it had me looking for it. What's not wrong right now is the exact opposite. It gets me in the present moment and it gets my attention because you become what you pay attention to. So it gets my attention to, oh, I can see. I can breathe. Or even if I'm looking at a chandelier in the room that I wake up in, oh, look at that. There's a light fixture there, which I would ordinarily have not noticed at all because I'm so engaged in my mind that it glazes my view onto everything. And so I don't usually see what's there or what one of the Tibetan teachers I had said, be like a child astonished at everything. And so I wasn't astonished at anything after a while. And it was just, yeah, there's that. And there's that. And even when I tried to keep a

gratitude journal, which I wasn't very good at, I have to say, it's like just a checklist. Yeah, right. I did this today. This was lovely. I saw this. You know, this happened. Check, check, check, check. But I didn't experience it. Really make an effort to take it in and to experience it intensely. And unless I do that in the morning, I mean, I can also say, okay, so what's not wrong? Okay, good. I woke up.

I didn't die in the night. I have arms. I have legs. Isn't it great? Poof, get out of bed. I know that if it's going to change, it's like a compass. It orients me in a particular direction. And if I'm going to be oriented in that moment in a different direction than my usual marriage to negativity, recently I said to my husband, you know, I know it seems like we've been married for a long time, but really, I think I've really been married to negativity this entire

time. It's like, I've been cheating on you, but not the way you think. It's okay. So if I'm going to change that, then it takes some effort. It does, but not that long, 15 seconds. I mean, that's not long, but still it's 15 seconds that you have to do. And then I'm aware of what I called about the crazy aunt in the attic all the time. That voice never shows up. I did it wrong. I shouldn't have done it. I'm a failure. I could have done it differently. And I also have realized that voice is never going to shut up. I thought for a while I could get rid of that voice, never going to shut up. And so now it's just realizing she's in the attic or it's in the attic, he's in the attic, whatever it is, and to disengage because it doesn't matter to me if I'm three floors down and it's continuing to shout the entire time. It's like having a radio on somewhere

in the house, but I can't hear it. And that's an ongoing practice too because when I'm skipping along in a day and I suddenly feel terrible and I don't know what happened because I had an interaction, but it didn't seem so bad. And, or I read something and I don't realize I'm comparing myself to somebody else. And I suddenly feel like I've been cut off at the knees and I feel really small and collapsed and I don't. And, and, and then I feel doomed and then the whole process starts again, now I'll track back and ask myself, what happened and what am I saying to myself now? Yeah. So it becomes just sort of like almost like an automatic prompt over time. Yeah, it does. And that's a small practice. It's a big practice, but it's a small practice because it just requires tracking back and questioning using that awareness we're talking about.

It's the type of thing where it's not complicated, but it's hard. That's right. Right. And it works. But it also very often, I mean, it works on the level of an intervention in the moment. But my sense is, I'm so curious whether this has been your experience too. Yes, it'll work for a moment, but then you snap back pretty quickly.

And it's the practice of making it a practice. It's the process of saying, okay, I'm going to do this every morning. And then I'm going to try and catch myself a whole bunch of times throughout the day and just ask myself these questions, do a check, that over time starts to lean more towards persistent state, if that's even something which is possible? Yeah. I think what happens is that I forget less and less of the time and remember more and more of the time and remember more and more of the time. And then when I forget,

the periods of time in which forgetting is happening become shorter. You know, the other thing I wanted to say, Jonathan, is the other practice that I started two years ago is to stop complaining. And I can't tell you how extraordinary this is. And by the way, I don't always succeed at it. Sometimes I'll ask a friend, you know, is whining complaining? It's like, I need a call here. Like, how close to the line am I? Because I don't want to break my commitment to myself, but I would like to whine a little bit right now. But most of the time, I won't let myself

complain. And I started it because I realized that most of my conversations with people were an exchange of complaints. Even my dearest friends were complaints and complaints about, you know, everything, what Ram Dass calls the organ recital. So here's what my knee is aching and my back is aching. And so there's the organ recital. And then complaints about what somebody said or did or what's not going the way I would like it to go and how somebody is, quote, misbehaving and, you know, and the government and politics, and there's a lot to complain about there. And still, I realized that complaining was running in place. It's not like it was doing anything. It's not like it was helping me act. It made me feel like I was doing something because I got to

emote and complain, but it left me in exactly the same place as I was before I started complaining. So I made a decision to stop, radical, to the point where my husband asked me after the first couple of weeks if I had the flu because he was so not used to me not complaining. It was like, what happened to the person I married? Did somebody's body come? And it was, who are you? And that made me realize really how much I had been complaining

because it was really an abrupt shift. And so that has continued most of the time, I would say, most of the time. How do you distinguish between complaining and you brought up the, I think sometimes we view voicing complaints as action, right? But there is, at least in my mind, because I look at, okay, so there's a lot of stuff that's happening out in the world today. A lot of us would love to see changed. And a lot of that change won't happen without people standing up and voicing this isn't right and then taking action to rise up and to make things happen, whatever that thing is that is meaningful to you.

And I think a lot of times, I think what you're saying, if I'm hearing it right, is there's a difference between saying this sucks, blah, blah, blah. Like this is terrible, terrible, terrible. And feeling like that is your action versus acknowledging this is not the way that I would prefer it to be. And whether you voice it or not, then figuring it. But the next question is, what action can I take to invest myself in having it be different? And then just taking that action. Yes. I think that's the big difference.

And for me, about certain things, like what's happening right now in the country with the government, I realized it was getting so painful to me that I stopped reading the news. And then I realized, wait, that's not how anything is going to change. And so I started reading it again and then really letting myself feel the sorrow that I felt about it, really feeling the pain of it in my heart, which I didn't want to feel. I was avoiding that. I just didn't want to feel it. And so I would complain about it, but that was on an upper register than really letting myself really feel what it felt like. And then from that place, okay, what do I want to do? How do I act in a way that doesn't create more war and more animosity? Because what I found out with myself, that when I warred against different parts of myself, when I made different parts of myself bad or wrong, it didn't change them. It was only when I was able

to be in relationship to them and then decide, what did I want to do? You know, for instance, I'll use weight again as a metaphor here. You know, some people can make themselves wrong about gaining weight and shame and deprive themselves. That doesn't lead to change. And they can complain about it. And a lot of people do. But you never get to ask yourself, okay, well, what am I doing here that I could be doing differently? What exactly am I feeling about what I'm doing? You don't get to those deeper registers when there's major complaints going on. And what I have found is that if I allow myself to really feel what I feel, and most people are scared to feel what they feel. They're afraid it will break them apart. They're afraid it will be overwhelming. Most of us haven't been taught that feelings

don't kill us. Most of us don't know that it's possible to, when you feel sad, to ask yourself, oh, where is that sadness? In my heart, in my belly, in my throat? Does it have pressure? And because it's not the sadness, it's a story you're telling yourself about the sadness that's so harmful. So what I do now is I just let myself feel it, which isn't always easy, and I don't always want to do it. And then when I don't do it, I just binge watch TV series. It's like, no, I don't want to. Okay, then. But when I do, it becomes much more apparent to me the action that I want to take. Do I want to get involved in a community organizing that's happening? Is there a particular organization that I want to be part of that I want to contribute to either with money or time?

So it becomes where I start asking myself questions that I can answer while being in alignment with myself rather than being against it. I'm against it. I'm against it. Because I feel like when I do anything with the I'm against it, then I become one of them. I become one of the problem people by being against it. And so it's never helped me to be against something. It's more to be for, to be very clear and aligned with what I'm for

and to keep that right in front of me and go for that. Yeah, that makes so much sense to me. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing.

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jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. I spent a chunk of time studying actually nonviolent revolution theory. And there's a guy who actually just passed recently named Gene Sharp, who literally wrote a expanded pamphlet that became the operating manual for nearly every nonviolent revolution around the world in the last few decades. Part of what he wrote, it's really interesting. This is the macro version of what you're saying on a personal level. He said, most people will go in and say, okay, we're being oppressed. Here is the dictator or the regime that's oppressing us. Our goal is to take them down. And then they would take them down, but still they didn't feel better

and the change they saw wasn't happening. And he said, the more effective, or if they made all of this effort and things changed, but that source that everyone was focusing on, like this must be taken down, still remained, even just a name. It was viewed as a success, as a failure. And you viewed yourself as a failure rather than saying, here are the beliefs, the values, here are the pillars of power that are propping this thing up currently. What do we believe about what matters, about what is better? What does better look like? Let's create that so that those pillars of power will slowly say, why am I still here? And move over to you.

And that thing kind of disintegrates on its own. And whether it does or doesn't, doesn't entirely matter to you. Yes, that's exactly what i'm saying and this is like this is the personal representation of that like sort of like macro approach right and you know i feel that too about what's going on right now because of course there's a big fabulous badly needed women me's up, which is so great that that's happening. In my mind, there's also an inner level of that, which is just speaking from direct experience and then from the women that I work with and the people that I work with, and now I'm speaking

for the women I work with, that many of us have internalized and treat our own bodies the way they have been treated. And so changing out there is really important, but we also need to look and see how we talk to ourselves and how we objectify our own bodies with nobody around. Nobody needs to be around. It's how do I look at this body? And most women treat their bodies the way their bodies have been treated. And as we can see with Me Too and Time's Up, women's bodies have been objectified. And so what I found with my own body is that I objectified my own body. And I find that with the people that I work with, that they objectify their bodies. They don't feel that their body is theirs.

They don't feel like they have a right to take up space here because that's not the message they got. Yeah. You write about this experience, I think you call it the red thread or the red thread project, which kind of touches on this. Yes. Can you share a bit about that? Because I think it touches in this an interesting way. Yeah. it started because my last therapist, who was a great therapist, had me walk across the room. She started at one end, I started the other end. And she said to me, tell me when I get too close. Just tell me to stop. She was in my face before I told her. I didn't even know when to tell her to stop. And I said to her, I don't know when to stop. And she said, well, you have energetic boundaries. And I rolled my eyes and I said, her, I don't know when to stop. And she said, well, you have energetic boundaries. And I rolled my eyes and I said, look, I'm from New York. New Yorkers don't have

energetic boundaries. Only people in California have energetic boundaries. And she said, no, everybody's got them. And the way you know you have them or else you've been taught not to have them is when somebody gets too close, you're uncomfortable. Something in your body says, this doesn't feel right. You're too close, and you step away. And I felt like I didn't know how to do that. I didn't know. I was so used to feeling like my body wasn't mine, that I didn't know that it was okay to say no and I don't want to. Now, obviously on some level I knew, but what she said to me was no and I don't want to are complete sentences and being nice is overrated. And that was very important for me to hear. Then gave me a red string

and told me to put it around myself, sit in the circle of it, put it around myself and think of myself and the red string, myself sitting in the center of the circle and the red string was my boundary, sort of my, she would call it energetic boundary. And she did this exercise with me a lot and I felt like I

wasn't allowed to have a boundary I felt like it wasn't okay my dad pawed at me you know I my dad was a world war ii veteran he sort of loved frank sinatra and that whole way of being suave love called women broads love pinching women on the ass, thought of me as an extension of him. And that's how it was. He didn't feel like he was doing anything wrong. And so I grew up feeling like I was an extension, not only of him,

but that the men who leered at me at the subway, in the subway, and the men who touched me and grabbed me. And, you know, that was to be expected with being a woman. It was just part of the whole thing of being a woman. It didn't occur to me that I could actually feel a sense of power within. Not power over, but power within. And that I could take up the space, not only in my body,

I could really occupy the space I've been given by having a body and then extend it out to have a sense of presence, a physical sense of presence, an energetic sense of presence. And then when I gave the red string to a couple of hundred women and asked them to put it around themselves before I could even finish the instructions, half the room were crying, saying to me, but my body isn't mine, but I don't know how to do this, but I'll get in trouble if I say no or I don't want to. And it would have been shocking if I also didn't feel that way. So I saw that this was something we all needed to learn. We all needed to see, first of all, because I think seeing is freeing, that to see that many of us feel like our bodies aren't ours, that we'll get

in trouble if we say no. We'll lose something if we say no. Our bodies somehow are the negotiation tool we have as women. That's how I felt. And so it was a process for me, a first seeing. And I felt that way without knowing I felt that way. It's not like I knew I felt like that. So I saw that. And then it was just the process of carrying that red string around my wrist for a while and imagining myself when talking to difficult people or people I found difficult, where I gave myself away instantly. They'd ask me something and I'd say yes before I checked in with my body to see, do I want to or do I not want to? Is this a good idea? Is this not a good idea? Am I willing to sacrifice this relationship

to say no? So I had to really come up with the answers to that. Am I willing to say no, I don't want to, even with knowing or fearing that I might lose that person. And that's part of this process that I'm talking about, the inner part of Me Too and Time's Up. I feel like Time's Up on giving ourselves away like that. But the first thing is to realize that we've been doing it on a level that can be disturbing to see. It was to me. But then with the women I work with, they've gotten very good at saying, no, I don't want to, and not being nice.

And so that's the micro level to the macro level. Yeah, it's like the inside out and the outside in. Yes, exactly. And without both of those having movement simultaneously, you'll ever only solve half the problem. That's right. That makes so much sense.

Yeah. That's what I've come to see. I want to also switch gears just for a moment and then we'll come full circle. Because I'm curious also, we were chatting a little bit about this before we came and sat down. So this recent book is your 10th book. You've been on this journey for a long time, your own personal journey, your journey of helping, it's got to be hundreds of thousands

or millions of people at this point. And so now the creator, the writer in me gets curious about somebody who's been on this path for a long time, somebody who's now 10 books in. Why a 10th book? Well, there had to be a really good reason. Otherwise, I wouldn't have written it. Unless there's something that I don't know that I want to know, that I want to find out, and every book begins with a question for me, I'm not always aware of the question exactly when I'm starting it, but it becomes obvious because writing is the way that I know what I don't know. I want to answer a question and writing is the way that I do that. And I don't want to keep writing about the same things I've written about before. I really want to explore new territory inside myself. And so until I feel like I've gotten,

I've exhausted that, I'll probably keep writing. So what was the question for this? The question was, is it possible for me to live with some degree of equanimity on a daily basis to use what seems like, this is where the title of the book comes from, the messiness of my life, the things that I felt like and certainly felt like at the beginning of writing this book that I needed to fix. Is it possible to use those the way I once used food as a doorway, as a portal to my core beliefs about being alive? And is it possible to be in a different kind of relationship with what I consider to be the wounded and damaged parts of myself? Is it possible to live in that open space that you and I talked about of awareness more and more and more of the time? Is it possible to embody that? Or do I need to, you know, keep thinking, oh, it's for other people, but it's not for me and waking up with

something's wrong and who's to blame. So that was the question I started this book with, or that was the question I realized I was answering about a year or two into writing the book. That's when I realized, and it wasn't until I got to the very end of the book, the very end, after I had submitted it for publication, where I realized that I had been following a process, certain things that you and I talked about, what's not wrong and not complaining and the crazy aunt in the attic and being in my body like that, turning towards not away from my feelings. I didn't realize I had been following that the entire time. And so I wrote about that in the very last chapter of the book. But I didn't realize I had been doing that till the book was totally done. So I love writing because it is an endless discovery for me. And besides that, it's a way that I feel like I'm just completely connected to, like my head feels connected to the

very top of the sky and the stars and my feet feel connected to the middle of the earth. And I just feel like a conduit when I'm writing where I completely disappear or what I know of myself as myself, my identity is gone. So for five or six hours a day, I'm gone. Me, I'm not concerned with the things that my ego self personality is concerned with. It's gorgeous process, except when it's not. Right. And I hate it. And I'm slogging and I resent it and I feel lonely.

And why did I ever choose this? And all my friends are going out to pretty restaurants with potted red geraniums and ordering great food. And I'm stuck here with a sentence that I've been working on for four hours and it feels like hell. Hell, heaven, hell, heaven. But you know, it's always worth it. So that's how it is. It's always worth it. And with each book, it's worth it.

And so that's why a 10th book. So as we sit here and you're through this 10th book and you, I'm assuming at least have most of your answer to the questions that started it. Although I have a feeling those questions will continue to linger with you for maybe eternity. Having really examined so much of your life of humanity, having lived and worked with so many different people, living in the world we're living in now, if I bring up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? Just exactly what we're talking about, to not miss my life while it's happening,

to be here, fully alive, to be sitting here with you, to show up and not get to the end of my life the way so many people have. I've been death-obsessed since I've been probably eight years old, realizing, oh, my God, everybody's going to die, and I'm going to die too. And I don't want to get to the end of my life and feel like I missed it. So what does it take to live a good life, to really live a good life? And that's what I realized it does take, just showing up and not being afraid of what might be uncomfortable and not protecting my little heart back there that doesn't want to get hurt, or else protecting it and seeing the effect of what it's

like to protect it. And then speaking up, because that's the other answer to your question about why a 10th book, although this isn't always true for me, because I feel like I want to tell people this. I want people to know this. And so that's part of living a good life too, is not keeping it to myself. Thank you. Yeah, lovely. to is not keeping it to myself. Thank you. Yeah. Lovely.

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making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.

The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. I knew you were gonna be fun. Tell me how to fly this thing. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him!

Y'all need a pilot?