Sense of Soul - Self love and The Joy of Caring

Episode Date: June 4, 2021

We had a beautiful conversation with the author of “ The Joy of Caring””Miriam Subirana, PhD. is a coach, artist and professor for the Global Communication Management degree at Blanquerna Ramon Llull University. She has been a meditation teacher since 1983. CEO of IDEIA Institute, on Dialogue and Appreciative Inquiry, she facilitates cultural change, leadership and organizational development in global companies, congregations and organizations. She is the author of many titles published by O-Books. She lives in Barcelona, Spain. She joined us to talk the importance and history of Self Love and share with us her book “The Joy of Caring”, which explores how we can make our relationships a genuine flow “from me to you and between us”, releasing masks, guilt and defensive attitudes that separate and exhaust us. It proposes practices that enable us to develop as creative, autonomous and emotionally mature people. To strengthen us and help us live in a more constructive and sociable way. Learn more about Miriam and her amazing book at her website www.miriamsubirana.com/en/publications/books/ Check out Sense of Soul Website at www.mysenseofsoul.com  

Welcome to the Sense of Soul podcast. We are your hosts, Shannon and Mandy. Grab your coffee, open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken. Today on the Sense of Soul, we're super excited. We have a wonderful guest for you, Miriam Subiana, and she is a doctor in fine arts at the University of Barcelona. She's also a coach and author. Her new book, The Joy of Caring, is to help strengthen us and to help us to live in a more constructive and sociable way. Thank you for joining us today

all the way from across the world. Welcome. Thank you. Great to be here to share with everyone. How many books have you written? 14. That's a lot. That's amazing. Congratulations. That's inspiring to Mandy written? 14. That's a lot. That's amazing.

Congratulations. That's inspiring to Mandy and I, who both have a lot to say and haven't put it down on paper yet. It requires first like an inner call that there's something you want to share. Then it requires discipline because otherwise there's so many other things to do

that then, you know then you keep postponing. And then it requires to love writing, to love the power of words. I find that words are amazingly transforming, amazingly impactful. And in my case, what I try is just to share my life experiences and the experiences of accompanying so many hundreds of people from many countries have accompanied and then their experiences I think can be useful for many people and so go for it write your book Mandy has a beautiful story and has always wanted to write a book.

And I think that that's, you know, both of us are mothers and we still have young kids. And it's hard to make that time, like you said, that you need, that commitment. Tell us about when you wrote your first book. How long ago was that? Well, actually, when I was creating my own web, I was looking at what things to put and I was looking for my first book and I found a book from when I was a child and it was a book about a mermaid and her grandparents and it was very imaginative and so actually I did put it in my website I thought this is my first book it's cute so I thought okay I'm gonna put that my first book which is like five pages book with drawings of

a mermaid and a boat and the boat sinks and the mermaid saves the boat and the person and you know it's like very creative so imaginative so have you always had a good imagination? Yes. And at one point I thought, okay, let's use the imagination for a good purpose. And then what happened that I started to give lectures and conferences and people were asking me, do you have this written in a book? And because I forgot, you know, that I had written when I was a child and I had written many notebooks, you know, many ideas I did write. And then a friend of mine who's a journalist, she read one of the things I wrote and she said, but Miriam, this is extraordinary extraordinary let me take it to a publisher and let's see and I thought wow and since then you know thanks to this friend who who put me in contact with the publisher then I've published in many different publishers

and so it's like finding your gift you know me, it's a given gift. And you were in Spain. Have you always lived there? Is that where you're from? I am from Spain, lived in the United States, and I studied in San Francisco in the California College of Arts and Crafts. I lived in Boston.

I lived in Israel also. So I lived in different places, but mostly in Spain, in Barcelona, yes. Doctor in fine arts. What exactly is that? After I finished my career as a fine art, then I did a PhD in Spanish and in many other countries that is called like to be a doctor so I did my PhD on the origins of abstract art and how painting water was a realistic inspiration towards abstraction

because water is a very abstract you know the water that evaporates how do you paint the water that evaporates the clouds that are made of water, the rain? So then, you know, painting water, like the impressionist painters, they started to paint abstract. And what is a trainer and appreciative inquiry? Oh, appreciative inquiry, it's a philosophy, a methodology, a way of seeing. And let me share two examples. One, if there is a glass that has water up to the middle, the optimistic will say the glass is half full. The pessimistic will say the glass is half empty. The appreciative inquiry practitioner

will say, wow, it is half full. How did it get half full? What are the strengths in the system that made it half full? How can we help use those strengths to make it fully full? So appreciative full so appreciative inquiry it's like the inquiry into what gives life into what makes things work so for example your child has five subjects and so the child has two subjects with a you know it's like the best and then has one b which is notable in Spanish. So it would be like a 10 and maybe a 7 out of 10. And then it has number 3 out of 10, which is below half. So it really didn't pass. Where does your vision go? Your vision goes into the 3 because there is a problem there. What does appreciative inquiry do? Okay, let's study the excellent performance. What has helped your child have such good grade A or better than A?

And so it's the study of excellence, excellent performance, and how through that you can change whatever you need to change but you change it not because you reject the problem but you change it because of allowing yourself to flourish so appreciative inquiry is to see the oak in the acorn. It's to see the potential of someone, of the system. And also, it's a way to have all the system. That means, for example, a company, an association, to have everyone work together towards the same goal through dialogue and through inquiry. I always say, you know, concentrate on the solution, not the problem.

So it seems like you're concentrating on the already good pieces or the excellence and then implementing that into making that become a solution for whatever is there. Very well explained. Yes, that's it. Yes. And also to connect with what gives you life instead of connecting with what takes away your life. So we talk about the positive core, what gives you life.

Oh my gosh, I love that. I also love, I've never heard that. It's the oak of the acorn. That's so cool. I love that. You know, that reminds me of my son who is he's on the spectrum of autism he really struggles in certain subjects but in other subjects he's oh my gosh right it's amazing you know how he can learn these things and how he remembers. And I always said, if someone could pinpoint

what it is that lights him up for him to be able to really grasp this, you know, we could figure out how to implement that in, you know, where he doesn't, you know, really connect with. And it's, it takes inquiry, right? It takes curiosity and digging a little deeper. And I think that a lot of people do that in like soul-seeking or truth-seekers of the world who Mandy and I definitely fall into that category. Now that we've connected with the light, the passion, right? What lights our fire. Dig deeper and deeper to kind of understand how everything works. What was the passion that led you into many of the soul-filled topics that you discuss? I would say that the passion comes from

from loving life, from loving people, from wanting the best for everyone and for myself, for everyone, of caring for the world, caring for the relationship, of a sense of real curiosity to want to find out, to want to discover, and want to get to know what is the truth behind the truth behind the truth, you know? It's like sometimes we believe something as if it was true, but actually it's like a curtain and there's something behind it, something behind. In the book of The Joy of Caring, I share many of the stories of accompanying people

that have a hard time by caring of themselves. They care for themselves or for others out of obligation, not out of joy. Yeah. Before we jump into your book, I want to go back for a moment. Okay. When you were young, have you always had this passion for people and for love and caring? So a lot of our guests that come on, they've taken their pain and made it into their purpose. Was there pain there for you that sparked this purpose? Or were you just born with this need to just spread joy?

Yes, I was born to spread joy. And I would say I saw that there were many communication problems between people. And what do I mean with that? That misunderstandings. One says one thing and the other understands something else. And actually, that took me to think and to feel that communication is too complicated. I studied two careers, the career of piano and the career of fine arts. And in a way, it's like the artist hides behind the painting. It's the painting

that communicates. And the pianist is the music that communicates. And so I never thought I would be talking so much with people. And I work by talking, you know. It's like the whole day giving classes, giving sessions, giving coaching, giving this, giving that. And so I guess that I was researching of communication, all sorts of communication, through painting, through music. It's such a beautiful purpose, because you're right, and you talk about how words are very powerful. So, and communication is how our world interacts. It's so important, and you're right. There's so many misunderstandings in communications, especially lately. I feel like it's getting worse. So I feel like your book came out. It's such, it'sating, listening, accepting, feeling, being present,

embracing, understanding, sharing, accompanying, healing, co-creating. Caring is giving out joy. And I love that. That's a lot. But I also love that you talk about how all of those things you have to give to yourself as well, because we have been conditioned to not love ourselves the way we should. Yeah, it's interesting this that you point out, that our conditionings influence the way we love or we don't love and or we hate, you know. And so loving the self is not a selfish thing it's it's just to be caring to to acknowledge yourself to be able to give to others so if a fountain gives water but the fountain is not connected to the source of water finally the fountain will be dry and this is what sometimes

happens, you know, we get dry because we don't nourish ourselves. That's a big part of Mandy Nye's message. Once we were able to identify that about ourselves and find that self-love, our lives just really awakened from there. When I think about caring is giving out joy, I think that recently this has really come up for me a lot, that we also need to allow people to care for us, or we're actually stealing that joy from them. Because if we're the only ones caring for everybody, and we're not allowing anybody else to give back to us in exchange then we're stealing their opportunity to give joy recently and that's really clicked for me because um usually i'm just giving giving giving who cares if i'm receiving but lately i've kind of been looking at that but self-inquiry well i, I mean, I don't know your case in particular, but in general,

what happens is that we have been trained, our generation, to be very self-sufficient. And if you ask for help, or if you allow others to care for you, somehow it puts you in a position of feeling that you are weak in front of the other that is where we would have a problem because we are too much concerned about the opinion of the others of how the other is looking at me and so if i am being cared for it means I am weak and which is you know which is not true but that's what what one of our beliefs and so we put pressure on ourselves so that we don't reach the point of of having to be taken care of and actually just recently I was in a meeting with friends of my mother and my mother, the youngest one was 80 and the eldest was 89 in that meeting. They wanted to know about the books I'd written and about my way of thinking and being.

And I asked them, okay, but what is your concern? And then one of them, the concern was that, oh, you know, maybe one day my children will have to take care of me. And I don't want to hear about this possibility. And I thought, you know, you've been so many decades giving yourself to your children and to your grandchildren. And what a gift if they can take care of you.

You know, it's like a is you are open to allow others to give you the beginning of your book I enjoyed how you even looked through history and how self-love has was a core value but we've lost it because Shanna and I have gotten some backlash. And even if you Google the definition of self-love, like Shanna did last week, it's all very negative. It says you're selfish. And we've been told by some very religious people that when we promote self-love, that we're actually going against the beliefs that you put God first and you don't put yourself first. What do you have to say about that? And I really

enjoyed that piece of you going back and looking at people in history that have spoke upon this, and you even put in some of, you know, a story around Jesus as well. Can you talk about that? Yes, well, what I did is a bit of a search into the history of philosophy. And since the Greeks and even before the philosophers, they talk about the importance of knowing the self and caring for the self. They talk in a way as if, you know, if you don't care for yourself, if you don't pay attention to yourself, then you fall into bad habits

and you neglect yourself. And then you are a problem for society instead of a help for society. And so it's not caring for the self or loving the self and also at the end of the book when I talk about compassion and how so many philosophers have spoken about the importance of compassion. And the Buddhists say compassion is like the highest way of love, but Christians and Jewish and from different religions and also from a philosophy point of view and they share about the importance of compassion as part of equanimity in the world and compassion is not you know you have pity for someone it's a way of love that can only flow from a fountain of love. So self-love is to connect with the fountain, the inner fountain of love that will allow you to open up to others. And one of the philosophers I mentioned is Michel Foucault, I think, from last century.

He shares about the subject of the person and of the caring of self. Amazing. I want to just play that over and over and over in my ears. You do have a very amazing way with words. And thank you for researching that and for writing about that because I've never heard that before. I always wondered too, where did we lose this? I mean, do we even have it? You know, because in generations

in my family, we didn't, you know, and I went back and I saw that and that actually helped me connect more with why and then realizing, wait a minute, I don't live in 1800s anymore I can love myself if we had a whole world that was taught this from a young age like how different this world would be so I almost feel like as many of us who is really talking about it and discovering this this could be a huge shift like in the forever. What do you think about that? I think that most of the key problems in the world come from selfishness and from greediness. And self-love is not selfish and is not greedy.

That's important to clarify. Of course, words have power and so for some people self-love may mean selfishness. So we can say love for the self. You see we just change it around. There are still people that die of hunger and there are people that have millions and you see there is inequality and slavery has been abolished but there's still a lot of slavery in the world of you know women that are sold children that are sold here and there women that are used as sex workers or very poor people that are completely tied to the system and they live in that constant poverty.

So I think, you know, like the poor become poorer and the rich become richer. And all of this inequality, just the essence is this greediness and the selfishness of not sharing. Like, for example, the example of the vaccine for the COVID. Do we really want to overcome this virus? So then why don't we share the know-how of the vaccine? Why my vaccine, your vaccine? And then, you know, some countries from poorer countries,

they don't have access to to that so it becomes all like a business like a very selfish yeah you know we are not a sharing society somehow but of course I live and I believe that we must go towards a sharing society so I don't talk about copyright I talk about the right to copy love your words that's awesome it is it's sad because when you do dive in it's just all become about you know money and greed and power and it's just it's heartbreaking especially for for people like us that are empaths and can feel the pain of the world and that we love people so much. You talk in your book about being open, that when you trust you can live open. Can you explain that?

Well, I think this is a key point. Thank you for the question. Being open is being relaxed. Being open is trusting. Being open is allowing things to come in and things to go out. Being open is like being a channel in which I can allow your love to flow in me and my love to flow in you. Being open means being transparent, being trustful. And being open means allowing yourself to be cared for and also embracing suffering. Sometimes suffering closes us up. Sometimes you see people that have suffered so much, they are like a rock, you know, they're closed within themselves. And openness is a way of embracing suffering and allowing it to go openness is also the law of life that

things come and things go so it's letting go letting come and letting go well you just touched on I don't know I think like all secrets of the universe just now but I was looking at that painting behind you and I see that light right it almost looks like there's a heart and there's this red around it so I thought of like the heart and then I thought about how when I discovered self-love like I connected to my light within right this divine light this is my soul right and in finding that light, I had this love for my purpose and being, but the real only thing that it did was open me up and made me this light to then connect with other lights. And I see that painting behind you. I think it's so beautiful, but it just made me

think about that when you were talking about being open and opening yourself because that's all it does. The self-love really isn't about self, it just starts there. But then it's just this openness to then connect to the next light. Yes, I would say, I mean in appreciative inquiry we call it the positive core. Core, the word core, in Latin it comes core, not the heart. So the word core in latin it comes core not the heart so the positive core and in contemplative meditation we call it the healthy core because this core no matter how many layers of suffering or traumas the person has had in the core, there is a healthy being. And to connect to this healthy being, we need to be able to allow the mind to be addressed

so that it's not constantly talking, talking, blah, blah, blah, you know, so much negative thoughts or unnecessary thoughts and realizing that you are not your mind but that this core is is in the essence the essence of the soul i would say the soul when we care for the self and we care for others we actually care for the core of our being and the core of the being of others so that we can connect from core to core and we can allow it to blossom, to flourish. The word courage is actually from the word core, speaking from the heart, from the core of who you are and being brave enough to share your story have you ever heard that before actually courage and heart come from the same root courage courageous corazón so it's the same root and

courage is to put your heart into what you want but not what you want from the selfish need, but what you want from the positive core, then it's connected into healing, healing the planet, healing the relationship, and allowing the joy of being to emerge whenever i'm going into like deep meditation and trying to like root myself i always go to the core of earth like my roots always like go you know i always thought that i would be like looking to the sky for the divine but for some reason i've been told that the heart and the healing comes from the core of earth yes i think in meditation we have like two movements one is like to go within to go deep and that is like the heart of the earth let's go deep yeah and the other go high it's to open up to the skies to the up to the skies, to the heavens, to the unlimited. And both movements are meditation. It's like go deep within and go high and open up so that the universe energy connects you.

I almost had, well, I didn't almost, i had this vision of like one root was going deep down into the core and mother earth was saying give me your pain give it to me when you give it to me it makes my heart bigger and then i can bring it back up to you through the other root it will be turned like out me and to love it was just such a beautiful it was during a i believe in akashic records meditation but yeah just reminding me of that core i love that and then i thought about like the core of a peach the core of an apple like without that core it couldn't grow it's just that beautiful space of of love and nourishment. Actually, in the book, I share that sometimes I use the word vital core because it's full of life, or healthy core because it's full of health,

or positive core because it's very positive. Yes. When I think of the core of my soul and where did it come from, and the only thing I can think of now that I discovered is that it came from everything else around me so you know it's like even though we were talking about it as maybe a single core it it's created from everything so you know what is the real core well actually like in the bible it says that um we are created at at his image as we imagine is in spanish i think that when you are in your divine self in in the core of your

soul you connect with the core of others because life is there and life unites us and although we are different but we are very much the same like you know the color of the skin may be different the shape of the face may be different but the color of the blood is the same and the color of our tears is the same this is physical but when we talk more about the spiritual about the soul when we are connected with our positive core we connect others with their positive core and this is very healing and the world needs more and more people that live from their positive core from their vital core from their healthy core and that they blossom, they flourish, and they share that with others. If someone is hardened and has up all of those blockages and walls, what can you do to help them? Well, I ask them questions of a perceived inquiry, like, remember a time in which you were flourishing remember a time in which you were joyful what was happening in you

and how did you connect with that joy and what energy was flowing in you and these questions connect the person with a time in which the self was connected with that positive core, then how can you forgive yourself for whatever happened? Because forgiving others is easier than forgiving the self. How long would you like to live from this hardened self, you know, from the harsh? Do you see yourself like this so many years? Do you want to change?

Like, you know, yesterday I was with someone. And she said, complaining about everything in her life. And I asked her, so how do you see yourself in the next few years? Do you want to continue like this? And she said, no. And I said, well, if you don't start changing now your way of dealing with all these things in three years,

you will be the same or worse. So it's a question of taking the decision of wanting to live from a different space. Yeah. In your book, you share that a part of caring is to be more creative. I think we all have a creative self and we've repressed it because, you know, we thought, oh, I'm not good at this and I'm not good at that and I'm not good at that.

And then, you know, we like to sing, but we don't sing. We like to draw, but we don't draw. We like to write, but we don't see we like to draw but we don't draw and we like to write but we don't write and and and we like to cook but maybe we cook out of obligation not out of creative cooking so I think that when the self connects with the creative potential then the self opens up creativity is a way of opening up, we were talking before. So I think creativity is very healing. When you asked her, what do you see yourself doing or feeling like in three years, you're talking about time. You talk about making peace with time.

Can you share more about time? Yes, well, it's two things. And now you share about, you asked me about what I said to that person about how do you see yourself in three years. Time. And this is a way to use the power of image. If I don't want to see myself like I see myself now in the future, I have to start changing now.

Otherwise, in the future, I will be changing now otherwise in the future i will be the same so that's one thing and the other is about making peace with time because we are all um somehow maybe not all but i see many people are very tense and stressed because of their relationship with time and we create unnecessary pressure in our relationship with time and making peace with time it means that whatever you decided in the past that's it it's already decided it's already happened that's what happened and so make peace with whatever decision you took in the past. And if you don't feel comfortable with that decision, if you feel guilty, then ask for forgiveness if you need to ask for forgiveness or forgive yourself, but just make peace with that.

Past is past. Then the other thing is in the present. If in the present I want to be someplace else that I am not here now, that creates a lot of tension because if I am here, I am not there. And so some people when they are here, they want to be there. And when they are there, they want to be here. And so they are not at peace with the present moment because of their expectations and they're

never being satisfied with what's happening now. And the third thing is when you make a list of to-do lists, do you know what a to-do list is? I think everyone has many to-do lists. I have a whole purse full of them. And that's the source of highest tension because sometimes we are not realistic, and we make a to-do list completely unrealistic.

In your to-do list, you have to add moments for improvisation, moments for unexpected things, because if your to-do list is at 90s, at 10s, at 11s, at 12s, and then in between 9 and 10, something else happens, then the whole to-do list becomes a lot of you know it creates a lot of tension but if you if you are wise and you incorporate moments of nothingness that's the best so you do the least put some moments of nothingness and then you will be better at peace with time and the other thing is to do less and

achieve more so don't try to go always the last minute just if you have to be a 10 just go out of your house earlier so that if you reach in time, fine, and if you reach before, then maybe you have time for a cup of coffee or for a phone call or something. But if you're always putting yourself into the limits of how you manage your own time, then you're always rushing and always having to give explanations of why you are late. Yeah, story of my life. I've always had issues of time and actually the current issue that I've had right now is that I have some healing I still need to do with feeling angry at many things in the past not even my past. I'm angry of the things that when I awakened,

I realized that many of the things that I believed in and that I was living by really weren't true. And I only realized that because I realized everything I've been living my life by was just something other people had told me to believe and told me about history and told me about family and so then I awakened to experience and then said holy shit all of it was a bunch of bullshit are you kidding me and so I go back in time and I've done a lot of ancestry work and I'm angry I thought about this when you were talking about the appreciative inquiry the only way to get through that was to hang on to the strengths that came through from it yeah it's good if you realize and I always say if you realize okay I was angry about the past or this happened to me and so if you realize that's a good a good point for for moving on because the worst thing that can happen

is that the person doesn't realize what's going on in their life. They are not aware. They are blind to what's happening. Then you stay in it, right? You stay in it. So when you realize that, that's a good point to move on.

You know, I'm at a place where I'm okay with the fact that it did make me angry because if it didn't make me angry I don't think I would have been able to get what it was teaching me yes I always say finding the lesson in the lesson we have to remember that's just a wave of emotions that you know emotions are not permanent so now what's the next stage then we go into acceptance and you talk you talk about acceptance and then finding the love in the history or in the problem and you talk about that too you talk about transforming difficulties into possibilities so let's start with acceptance what why is that important well you can only transform whatever you want to transform

from a point of acceptance. If you reject it, if you are angry about it, denying it, then you are giving it more energy. But from acceptance, you can transform. Acceptance doesn't mean you agree with it. Acceptance is a very wise way of dealing or and of living because it is only when I accept that this is as it is that I can then start thinking about okay do I want it to be different but if I don't accept that this is as it is and from the first moment

i want to change it but from a space of anger of resentment then it's very difficult to change so from the place of acceptance we have access to the highest divine power and i think that acceptance, openness, being present in the here and now are the greatest ways to access to the divine that lies in each one of us and that each one of us is. I love how simple it's put in your book. What is, is. I love that. It's just, I was like, I need to write that on my mirror. What is, is. I mean, that's acceptance to like the ultimate. Can you tell our listeners where they can find your book and tell them about your website? Ah, yes, that's important. Thank you. Yeah, so my book, The Joy of Caring, has been published by O Books. And in the website, you can find it, o-books.com. And also, I think in Amazon, you can find it. And probably in local bookstores, so that we also support our local

bookstores. My website is miriamsubirana.com. It's in Spanish and also in English, so you can find there my workshops, and the coaching sessions I give, and the books I've and the paintings so great visit alright one more thing and then I promise we'll let you go on Sense of Soul we do this thing that's called BTSD it stands for break that shit down we ask our guests to leave our listeners with just

one last thing that's on your heart today for them and now it's time for break that shit down. One last thing that's in my heart for everyone, love yourself, embrace yourself and love others and be open to what life wants from you. Instead of just thinking, what do you want from life ask what is it that life wants from you wow you've been such a joy thank you so very much for

joining us thank you and it's been great to to share with both of you you are a great woman thank you for the time to come on today okay thank you so much And it's been great to share with both of you. You are a great woman. Thank you for your time to come on today. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for being with us today. We hope you will come back next week. If you like what you hear, don't forget to rate, like, and subscribe.

Thank you. We rise to lift you up. Thanks for listening.