Tara Brach - Cultivating Inner Strength – A Conversation with Tara Brach and Lori Deschene

Episode Date: October 27, 2022

Cultivating Inner Strength – A Conversation with Tara Brach and Lori Deschene - What gives us the inner strength to meet life's challenges with resilience, heart and wisdom? Drawing on themes in Lori's new book, "The Tiny Buddha's Inner Strength Journal," Tara and Lori explore the mindset that is conducive to growth, working with negative beliefs, ways of transforming fear, and what it means to have inner strength in facing loss and death. We also talk about what can most empower and energize us in responding to a world struggling with multiple crises. Find Lori Deschene's "The Tiny Buddha's Inner Strength Journal" here: tinybuddha.com/strong. Lori also created several free companion resources, available at tinybuddha.com/strength-tools.  

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste, welcome friends. This gathering today will be a conversation with a guest. L'Eau-Dashane, some may know as the publisher of the Tiny Buddha, also an author. And our focus together will be on how to cultivate inner strength. And I know for so many that this is a deep inquiry during times of great stress, times of global crisis, how do we build the inner resources that carry us? What are the attitudes, what are the practices, what are the understandings that really let us navigate from our best selves, from the clarity and presence, from the courage and

open-heartedness that we really want to live from. So, friends, I hope you find this conversation as relevant as I did. Thank you for being here. Namaste and welcome, friends. So today for this talk, we actually have a guest and I am really, really excited to introduce you to Lori DeShane, who's the founder of Tiny Buddha, and many of you I know know about it. Tiny Buddha is a self-help site that just it has thousands of contributors who share stories and life lessons, and so you get to hear from others. And Lori is also the author of Tiny Buddha's Gratitude Journal, Tiny Buddha's Worry Journal, and the most newly released is Tiny Buddha's Interstudent.

Strength Journal, which I have right here. I just want to show you it's really, really good stuff. And so, yeah, so we're going to talk about inner strength. But first, may I welcome a new friend, and I am so glad, Lori, that you're part of this. Thanks for being with us. Thank you so much. I'm just honored and thrilled to be here to talk to you today, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. Yeah, yeah. First of all, Tiny Buddha, how did that name, I've always wondered about Tiny Buddha, how you got that name? Well, actually, a friend of mine, I could say I could give credit for that. And it was because it started on Twitter with just short quotes. So Tiny Buddha, just tiny pieces of wisdom daily. And it was on Twitter, you know,

for a while just tweeting, maybe I'd say a year before launching the site. And but I think it's come to, it has evolved to represent sort of the tiny Buddha in all of us, I think, that everyone has their own inner wisdom and their own light to share. And that's how I see the site, really. It's a collection of voices and stories. And, you know, no one's a guru. Everyone's something to teach and something to learn. And so that's what I think it means now. And it really has that feeling. I mean, I know you put at the bottom, you know, I'm producing this or whatever, but this is really ours. And it really has that feeling. Yeah. So, okay, so this recent book, which is on inner strength, wow, I'm curious. So what made you want to hone in on inner strength right now? Well, at the time when I

first started writing it, it was at the beginning of the pandemic. And I knew from my own experience and from what people were sharing through the site and comments and emails that, you know, obviously it was a very trying time for a lot of people with all the implications of the pandemic and people being thrust out of their regular lives and isolated and trying to figure out, you know, what this was going to mean for them and their work and their families and their health and, you know, sick loved ones and everything going on in the world. So it seemed like the right time to, you know, and I was also soon after I started pregnant in the pandemic with the poor sleeping two-year-old and, you know,

colder months and being inside and, you know, so grappling with a lot of my own stuff. And I thought, oh, what is it that helps people be more resilient during these times, you know, extreme or more than usual challenges? What can help us feel mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually strong enough to cope with whatever it is we may be facing and hopefully take something good from it, you know, not just get through it, but be better because of it. And I'm just, Wow. You have one year old and a three-year-old. And these are pandemic, you know, timed babies. My first son was, so I think, eight months at the start of the pandemic. And my second was, yeah, born, you know, it was a pandemic baby. But we knew we wanted to have a sibling for him. And it was the time to do it because of my age. So we went for it. Yeah. So, okay. So inner strength. First of all, just say,

little about what do you mean by inner strength? And I know you mentioned the word resilience. Anything else you want to say in giving us kind of a definition? I would say I define inner strength as a confidence in our ability to make the best of what's in front of us, to learn from it, to grow from it, to know that even if we have times when we're overwhelmed by the emotion of it all, we can handle it. We know that we can, we've been there before. the emotion will not overpower us. I think it's also really feeling empowered in that you can take responsibility for the things that help you feel your best.

And then you can implement those things in your life, whether it's self-care physically or mentally or emotionally. There's something in you that's stronger than what you're going through. And then you're going to find. I love what you just said. There's something in you that's stronger than what you're going through. And it kind of makes me think of in Buddhism in Tibetan Buddhism, the phrase the lion's roar, which it has to do with this profound confidence that no matter what comes up, we can be with it.

The Dalai Lama described it as we have the power of heart and awareness to be with everything, including death, dying, loss, everything. So I love your definition that we, no matter how strong it is, there's something deeper and stronger in us that can meet it. Yeah, thank you. That's beautiful. Yeah. I like the image of a deeply rooted tree. You know what I mean? That you can handle one hell of a storm.

You might lose some leaves, but you can handle it. That's a great image, a deeply rooted tree. And part of what makes me love it is, you know, you're probably familiar with the biosphere experiments. where they did this, they kind of enclosed environment to look at really Earth life systems. And what they found was that the trees didn't make it in this enclosed area because there weren't winds to stress the trees. And I think that's so interesting that we need the stressors. That's part of what creates the heartwood in a tree.

So I love your image that, yeah, the stressors come, but they allow. us to develop that heartwood and root more deeply? Well, I think it's, you know, it's human nature to want to avoid the challenges. And if someone were to list out, okay, this is coming for you. You'd probably say, okay, how can I get around that? But then when you look back, you think, well, if that hadn't happened, I wouldn't have learned this and I wouldn't have developed this strength or this passion or this empathy for other people or all these things that help me be this person that I want to be in the world and someone who I'm really proud to be because of all these things. Yeah, it's true. if we look back at our lives and say, you know, what were the most difficult things we encountered,

we can also see when were the times that we had the steepest growth curves. And of course, it's like so many people say, enough of the FGOs, you know, the effing growth opportunities. Enough of it. I just want to be steady for a bit. Exactly. Take some breaths. So, okay. So one of the strategies that you share in each of your books that I think is so powerful has to do with journals and journaling. So tell me what you know about that, because they're very interactive, all of them. They're really cool. Thank you very much. Well, I've been a fan of journaling since I was young, really. I mean, I started journaling when I was 12, and that's when a lot of my own personal issues started when I was struggling with bulimia and

depression. And I think for me, my journals were at that young age, a place to make sense of the world, you know, it was my own space, a space where I could just get it all out. And probably when I was younger, some of my journals were a little darker and not quite as healthy as the older ones, or maybe I was putting a lot of my feelings in there. And sometimes my self-loathing, to be honest, and I still have all those journals. And I look back and I can see a trajectory over time, whereas I've gotten older, whereas I got older, I focused, I started to focus more on lessons, learned and changing my perspective on things. And maybe in the beginning when I was very young and didn't have the tools at my disposal or I felt more like a victim and hated myself, my journalist turned

into a place where I was able to learn to love myself because I was able to reframe things and then feel proud of how I was reframing things. And then, you know, find lessons, as I mentioned, and recognize triggers and patterns and how I could do things differently. And I think that that's part of the power of journaling is that it gives you a space to take a step back. Sometimes I think that our thoughts go through our heads so quickly that we don't even necessarily recognize which ones we're letting take root of us and how they're controlling us. And journaling gives us a space to, it really empowers us to take the thoughts that are, I guess, the most empowering thoughts and run with them and to explore the ones that aren't and why we don't have to believe them. And to

change our stories and I guess really to be the hero of our own story. That's what I think journaling does. It's your own book of your own life and you are the hero of your story and you get to decide how you're going to make sense of things and what you decide things mean and what lessons and blessings you're going to take from your experiences. Yeah, yeah. You know, you said it lets you step back and that really struck me because in a way what it's saying is journaling, it is a mindfulness tool. Oh, yeah. it really lets you witness. I mean, if you're journaling, you actually have a space to start noticing the content but realizing I'm not that content. And that's where the choices that you

actually are empowered to rest in a larger space and pick and choose. I mean, I know for myself that one of the exercises that I've always loved is in some way writing out what I'm afraid of as if I'm writing it to, you know, the wisest, kindest part of myself. And then writing back from that wise, kind place, a response to the fears. And I feel like journaling gives us the space that we can actually begin to get outside of the stuck places. So we have a capacity to see them from a fresh perspective. Yeah, and I love that idea of, you know, speaking from the anxiety and then the higher sense. because then you recognize you are not your anxiety.

That's right. Yeah. And that's always helpful to me because I know it's very easy to identify with that feeling and then judge myself for having and being that feeling. If I think I am anxiety, then I'm not going to feel very good about myself, especially given what I do in the world because there's a sense of I shouldn't have this right now. I shouldn't be feeling this. You know, but the journaling gives me a place to say, okay, it's okay to feel this.

And there is also this other part of me, this, this wide. part of me and that's me as you know that is I can be proud of that and I can listen to that voice over this one you know you're describing the difference between um disidentifying and not identifying disidentifying means I'm not that anxiety I don't like that anxiety it doesn't have anything you know and then the not identifying is the anxiety is like a wave in the ocean I'm feeling it and I'm larger I'm more than that and so okay so technical question here. More and more people are not writing by hand anything. You know, cursives only taught in 59% of schools now. I mean, it's amazing. And young people don't know how

to read or write it, a lot of them. So do you journal by hand? Because it seems like for a lot of people, it's going to end up being, you know, on a keyboard. Which is mind-blowing. I do journal by hand and I find though that my handwriting's got significantly worse over time because most of my journaling is short form these days just because of time and when I start writing like my gratitude list or whatever I'm like wow how is it that I buy my writing is so bad because I just don't write as often as I used to by hand but I still do it when I can because I do find it's a very just getting into my body in that way is very healing and therapeutic to I feel like just looking at screens all day long and just, you know what I mean?

It gets me caught up in my mind and just in this world of the, you know, the tech. But being able to step aside from a screen and actually feel a pencil in my hand and feel the paper, you know, and just that that's a mindfulness practice in itself, that tactile experience. That's a beautiful response. And I want to maybe circle back to what you said about screens because I feel like inner strength and not being addicted to screens are highly related. Okay, but we'll come back to that. You start this new book with having a growth mindset, which I think so, it's so powerful, just to sense, well, what's the attitude that we want to approach our life with that actually

inclines us towards growing? Can you speak a little bit about it and also about, you had a particular reflection? And I'm not going to give away most of your prompts because they're so amazing to have good questions. But I want to name this one because just to give those that are listening a feeling for it. And this one is to ask someone for constructive criticism, you know, for constructive criticism and sense that. So can you talk about what made you suggest that and what you mean by a growth mindset? Well, I think it's very easy to fall into this trap of I am this. You know, where I am is fixed.

And then you can fall into a despair, really, if you think you have no capacity to get beyond that you're stuck in a way with something that you're not happy with or proud of. You know, and that obviously is a very disempowering way to live life, to think that there's no opportunity for change or growth. I think, especially with constructive criticism, I know from my experience,

and I see it happen a lot, just moderating, you know, my Facebook page, people very easily shut down to criticism. And sometimes, you know, it's because it is delivered in a harsh way. But sometimes there's even when it is delivered harshly, there's a seed of truth in there, something to learn and grow from. It's very hard not to take something personally, both because of the way it's delivered and because it's a threat to the ego to hear that there's something that you could do differently. But ultimately speaking, I think that if we really step back, we could see that it's a gift to be able to learn things that we could do differently because that's how we grow. approve and become better people and stronger people and in more of every I always think of it as when I step back and you know if I get out of my defensiveness when that might happen I know okay

something in here is going to help me be more of who I want to be and that's a gift you know if I know want to show up in the world and maybe there's something I can learn I'm going to open up to the possibility that there's somewhere something new that I don't yet know some gap in my knowledge or some, you know, maybe I said something in a way that I didn't recognize how it would be received or delivered or I didn't know something that someone schooled me on. But speaking to a growth mindset, more generally, I have a story I always like to share about when I was in the Netherlands and this is related, but a little tangential, but we'll go with it anyways. When I was in Netherlands for the first time and I was riding a bike in the road as they all do there, I hadn't

ridden a bike since I was a kid. And I had a really hard time starting up. again after stopping at a traffic light. And I just couldn't seem to get it together. I'd fall off a little when I tried to restart the bike. And I said to one of the people who, you know, lived locally, I'm sorry. I'm not really good at riding a bike. And he said to me, not yet. That's so good. I love it. I did. And then by the end, I was there for a month. And at the end, I was great. I was, you know, and I try to think, you know, I think it's easier sometimes to have a growth mindset when it comes to something like that because we don't personalize it as much. Like, okay, I'm not so great at riding a bike. You know, okay, I don't feel so bad about that. But if it's

something that has to do with maybe, you know, how I engage in relationships or how I just, how I maybe talk or communicate or those are things that it's very, it's easier to get defensive about because it feels more like me than riding a bike. But I try to remember that, that it's all that in the end. So I'm not, you know, it's something I can get better at over time. Not yet. I love it. Well, to me, this has got a, it's just really profound, actually, because if I think of the people I know that keep on waking up and evolving and deepening, those are the people that actually take feedback from the universe and use it to keep growing. It's like all of evolution has to do with adapting.

The species that have adapted were able to take feedback. or the parts of the species. So it's like we need to be able to take it in. And there's a wonderful Zen phrase, which is to be without anxiety about imperfection. It's like, it's a given that it's not yet. You know, why should we be perfectly formulated, you know? So that courage and interest. And I'll say one more thing about it, Lori, that hit me as you were talking. I remember meeting a couple that were, you know, like in their 80s. And they really were a great couple. And I asked them kind of the secret of their, you know, their intimacy.

And they said that part of their agreement with each other is to keep asking each other and inviting feedback on something that needs attention. And I just thought, wow. I think that what's nice about that is that they're being vulnerable with each other regularly. And that's such an important part of intimacy. see and yet it's very easy to when you start to maybe put a wall up for whatever reason to get defensive with the other person instead of being open to what they see as a valid observation and something you're going to take to heart. So that's a... I'm right there with you. And that's the essence of

growth is being willing to be vulnerable, you know. And of course, as it happens, for some people, there have been enough wounding and trauma that it's not like it's, it's a lot. It's a lot of, it's nobody's fault that they can't be with vulnerability. It's just the place to, it's just the edge to play. And again, from the Buddhist tradition, there's one of the aspirations of the Bodhisattva, the being that's awakening is that whenever difficult circumstances come, there's this prayer, may this serve awakening. And it's not like saying, may this go away. May I get more safe and comfortable. It's like, may this serve awakening? And I, when I was reading your book, I thought, you really captured some of the great ways that we can kind of position ourselves

so that when things are hard, they grow us versus having us shut off. So I really was, I really appreciated the way you started things off. And I want to just bring it to another area that I know you paid really good attention to, which is we get so caught in negative beliefs about ourselves. And you and I both have, you know, done a lot with this one. And I'm just wondering if you might share with those who are listening some of the common themes that have come up in tiny Buddha posts on this and what you've been advising and guiding people in the journaling.

in regards to their negative self-beliefs. Yeah. Well, I think that a lot of what comes up is people, you know, feeling like they're inherently flawed, which I can relate to, and feeling not good enough or just not capable of handling hard times. You know, maybe this fear that it will break them or that they don't have what it takes in some capacity. I think those are all really common beliefs. And I think part of what comes up over and over again when people share what's helped them is this idea of looking back and seeing their past from a different perspective and recognizing all the times that they've done more than they maybe give themselves credit for.

Or also seeing where these beliefs originated. You know, I think a lot of people have similar backgrounds with a lot of times harsh parenting or, unattentive parents and, you know, where all these beliefs start to form that I'm bad or I'm not important. I'm not worthy, you know, of being heard, seen, respected. You know, I think especially years back, it was common for children not to be given the same respect that they were expected to give adults just because they were children and not to blame everything on parents. Because I'm a parent And I'm certainly not saying that's what we should be doing. But it just was kind of the way that was common back then.

I thought if that's how you instill respect is to teach children that they need to earn it, I guess, in a way that adults necessarily don't. So I think that's a big part of it is people understanding where these beliefs first formed, you know, and then recognizing that it wasn't personal. That's something that was really helpful for me. When I think about certain things that happened to me in my past that gave birth to these beliefs, about myself and I assumed these things happened because I was X, Y, Z. I realized, no, it's, that's not why they happened to me. It could have been anybody else in my shoes in that position. The same

things would have happened. So I don't have to internalize these beliefs to mean anything about me. And then I also think part of it is, like I said, looking back and seeing, you know, maybe the evidence to the contrary, like I mentioned, that's part of why I wanted to start the site, because I had seen myself for a long time. I saw myself with shame. And then being able to do something positive with it was a way to feel proud of maybe where these same experiences led me. And I think if we look back through our past, we can with a different perspective,

see a lot of things we could be proud of instead of ashamed of. A lot of times we rose to the occasion and we proved to ourselves and other people that we are not these things that we think we are, these horrible, you know, these we're not as small or insignificant or bad people we are you've done a lot of good if we look look for it yeah and that's one of the things i like about tiny buddha is that the more people that share oh i'm living with this belief that you know i'm failing as a parent or i'm living with a belief that i'll never really be able to be intimate with others it's like when you hear other people sharing the same beliefs you have, you realize, oh, there's a lot of us that got programmed this way.

In some way, it makes it not my personal pathology. It's just the negative beliefs that get, you know, wired in. And it's even more profound when we start seeing the messages that society gives us, you know, I often think that we're not thinking our thoughts, we're thinking society's thoughts. Yes. It's like how many of us, I know you struggled with eating disorder, I struggled with eating disorder, I mean, how many of us were given the certain body type images that we're supposed to meet and landed up, you know, in some way on the spectrum of, you know, bulimic, anorexic, over. overeating, you know, it's not our fault. So the negative beliefs really get installed and there's something about realizing it's not just me walking around with these kind of beliefs that actually

gives us enough space to then say, so do I have to believe this? And what's it really like when I'm believing this? I mean, often when I'm working with people, I'll just say, when you're believing that, how does it feel in your body? And they can feel like just how much it just squeezes and the ache and the feeling of pain in their heart. And it's like, that brings up compassion. Then there's this really deep caring like, oh, I don't want to be caught in that prison. But sometimes it's not until we really get how much pain we live in when we're thinking those thoughts, that the compassion comes up and then we begin to have more of the energy and clarity to begin to free ourselves. You know, one thing that I always liked is the idea of I look at a

picture of myself at like four and I'll say, would I get to that little face, you're not good enough. You're a bad person. Like would I ever look at this little innocent face and dump all that, you know, heavy self-hatred, you know, you wouldn't, you'd want to hug that little person and say, no, you're, you know, you just want to protect little you. And when I think of it that way, I'm like, well, I'm still little me, you know, we're still these little inside, you know, we're that vulnerable part of us. When I'm talking to my sister, I'm always highly empathetic. And I'll say to her like, sister, blah, blah, blah, blah. We'd ever nice kind thing I'm going to say. So I got into the habit totally unconsciously. One day I was talking to myself in my head and I said, sister, I was like,

well, what did I just do? I literally just treated myself like I would treat her. And I felt, and I don't do that all the time. But, you know, when I do, it feels like a real victory. Because then it's like I, it's pulling yourself apart from these beliefs and recognizing, those are things I adopted. And anybody in my shoes would probably have adopted the same beliefs. If you think about the path you've traveled and what you've been exposed to you and your environment and the influences, anybody probably would have formed those same beliefs. so you don't have to feel be guilty about it and you can separate from it in that way, sort of like you were saying.

I love that. And really, that is the centerpiece of healing when there can be nurturing to that vulnerability, whether it's that we nurture ourselves or we kind of get larger and then treat that place as if we would treat any young being. We need to have pathways to that. And we are survival of the nurtured. You know, and it's most difficult, and I just like to name this, when we're part of a non-dominant population in a society that's shaming, demeaning,

and making inferior, whether it's non-dominant due to race, our religion, our, you know, gender identity, sexual orientation, it helps then to have a larger group of people that we're comparing notes with just as again we talked about with tiny Buddha that it's not me, it's not personal. This is a society that's got its own sickness that's installing these negative beliefs in us. So it's an important commitment to wake up out of the prison of limiting beliefs. And I'm really glad that you went at that one right at the beginning. Yeah, thank you for that.

This is a little bit related, but you do a piece on thoughts, and you have different mental exercises to do with thoughts, especially when there's obsessive thinking and so on. And I'm just wondering if you want to share a little bit with all of us who are listening and how to work when the obsessive thinking undermines inner strength. One thing I find that for me, and I see that this helps a lot of tiny Buddha readers too, is just to recognize, first of all, awareness. I think it's very easy to not even realize you're caught up in obsessive thoughts

because our minds are loud so often that it can just feel like normal to be sitting there ruminating and, you know, playing around an idea over and over again in your mind at different angles, fear-based ideas. So just recognizing it and patterning to rest. get out of my head and into my body. I always find that helps. Take a walk, you know, stretch a little bit. Just try to get into the physical sensations, do the, you know, tune into your senses, that sort of thing, the five things you see. And that always, I find that just getting a little space from the obsessive thoughts sometimes diffuses them a bit. You know, another thing,

in terms of obsessive thoughts and anxiety, a tiny Buddha contributor once wrote that there's always a lie in anxiety. And I hadn't really thought of it from that angle before. And I loved that. Okay, what's the lie in my obsessive thoughts? Is it really that big of a deal? Is everyone really going to hate me? Is everything really going to fall apart? Was I really a horrible parent? You know, like when you start to realize there's probably a lot of lies in what you're thinking, somehow that makes me feel a sense of peace to recognize that. I don't have to believe all of these catastrophic thoughts are the truth and latch on to them. And then, you know, just exasperating. or bates and snowballs.

That's a powerful reminder just to say, and I say this to myself a lot, I don't have to believe my thoughts and I don't have to believe my thoughts and I don't have to believe my thoughts, you know. It's like, what are we believing in? Again, they're installed, you know? They're thinking society's thoughts. We're thinking fear-based thoughts. and they may be a semi-helpful map of something or they may not be.

And often they're not. And as you say, often if they're painful, we're believing something that's not true. Well, and I often think to myself, too, is that these obsessive thoughts are an attempt to protect me from pain in the future. But they're causing me pain in the present. So if I'm going to hurt, why don't I just accept that whatever comes when it comes, comes, I'll deal with it. I love it. You might as well go for it and be with it. So obsessive thoughts underneath them, there is fear. You know, there's, we're afraid of something and we're trying to control reality, the mental control tower, if we can figure it out,

if we can anticipate it, we can have an end run around it and so on. Underneath is fear. So let's talk a little bit about how. you use the journaling and the prompts to work with fear and anxiety? Well, I think that my overarching goal with the journal was to help. I think that when we're worrying about the future, a lot of times because we don't think we can handle what's coming. So we feel like we have to figure it all right now. So in that moment, it doesn't hurt us. But I think when we take the time to do all these things to foster inner strength and confidence in ourselves. One powerful outcome of that is that we can then say, okay, I don't have to know

everything that's coming or plan right now. Oh, I'm going to handle it all because I can trust when I get there. I can handle it. And that's been huge for me to be able to have trust in future me, because if I have trust in present me, because I've taken care of my needs, you know, I'm feeling strong in mind and body, I can let that go till it comes and trust that I'll handle it then. So that's, I think, a big part of the whole process of the journaling with this journal in particular, is just building that trust in your ability to handle it. And that really is trust is the word. The more trust we have in reality, in our capacity to respond, the more we're going to be safe,

not from aging, sickness, death, and loss, but safe in the deepest sense. the kind of spiritual sense will be at home. And I find that though when anxiety comes up, it's not a cognitive thing I can talk myself out of too easily. The one frame that for me is often the most powerful fear, anxiety, is to sense, okay, this is life that's trying to protect me. this is life-loving life in its own way. It's trying to protect me. And so, especially in these last years, when fear comes up, that's a reframe that really helps me, is just say, okay, this is life, that's loving life, and it may be habitual and misguided, but it's loving life. And that at least gives me a chance to instead of running away from it being with and you have a beautiful thing on

fear you have two different ways of saying fear and one of them has to do with running away and one has to do with being with you remember what that was here is face everything and um rise i think or forget everything and run something along those lines like that well if you get the journal you'll find that one out but it's it's really cool because it's like you know that whole thing of a dog's running at you, you know, fiercely whistle for it. You know, it's like, lean in, view with what's there. And by the way, we can't always do that. Again, if it's overwhelming, we have to have other ways of finding some stability and safety and kindness. But eventually, fear won't go away until we experience it directly. The issues are in the tissues. And so there is something about,

about how do we just learn to be with it. So one of the reframes, as I mentioned for me, is, you know, this is life-loving life. And the other is, and this really is where Tiny Buddha helps so much is when people are sharing all their different fears, you really start getting it that it's not my fear. It's the fear. Yeah. This is life-loving life. This is the fear.

then it's a little bit easier to breathe with it. I'm putting my hand in my heart right now, to feel it and to hold it with kindness. It's very hard when we think that there's something terribly wrong. We're believing our thoughts and we want to get away from it. Well, you know, when you said life-loving life, too, that also made me think of, I remember a time when I was, you know,

I had been very ashamed for the longest time of my eating disorder, being bulimic. To me, I saw myself as truly a disgusting human being. and it sort of fed into the cycle too where I'd feel bad, I'd binge and purge, then I'd have more shame because I felt bad, I'd do it again, and it was this really hard cycle to break out of. And I remember in therapy, I think it was a time when the insight came that that was me protecting myself and the only way I could, you know, if I could have done better with the arsenal of tools

I had at my disposal, then I would have. That was me trying to protect myself. And so I think that's a very comfortable. thought to realize that all these different things that we might find that are maladaptive or self-harming, that we're not, we don't need to be ashamed of it or feel that we were weak because we did it. That was us using what we had at the time to do with the best we could to take care of ourselves. And as the quote, you know, Maya Angelou, when you know better, you do better. And then that comes back to the growth mindset. Just keep learning and keep, you know,

accept yourself where you are in a moment and that you really are looking out for yourself as best you can. That is so right. We really are doing the best we can. I mean, imagine for a moment if we all just said truly, okay, I am doing the best I can. There's more. And right this moment, it's the best I can. Forgiven, forgiven. I mean, it just, that actually opens a space for us to continue evolving. It's like if we don't do that, we stay stuck. So I love your example. I mean, the example of the bulimia, and I had the exact same thing. The more you acted out, the more shame, the more you're driven to the eating. And it's a vicious cycle. And yet, the eating really is trying in some way to nourish us, to numb us from pain to take care of us. So,

It's the best we could do in the moment. Yeah. Yeah, right there with you. Towards the end, you talk about nature and being in nature. And I was this morning walking just so aware of how, no matter how much fear or anxiety I have when I'm out in nature, it connects me with something larger. and I just was wondering if you might want to share a little more of your experience of that and what you do with the journaling on that. I always feel the same thing.

I think sometimes I don't realize just how suffocated I feel inside until I get out. And I think it's sort of parallels the mental space that you want to create when you can get out in physical space. And all of a sudden, everything that felt like it was closing in on you, it just releases. It's like, to me, sometimes I think of it as like a vice off my brain being loosened. Suddenly I can breathe and I can stretch out and I can, and it's such like a central experience of hearing the leaves rustling and the birds in the sky and feeling the wind in your skin. And suddenly just don't feel so, I think it just trapped in alone in this little bubble of your own self-marinating thoughts. You're out in the world and you're part of something bigger, like you said.

Something beautiful. Nature is all best. moves me. You know, it sounds cliche to say, I'm a big tree person. I love just the variety and beauty of trees, just how they stretch up to the sky and they're massive and they're powerful and they're all unique. And so I sometimes find myself just looking for trees and I'll think, okay, that thing I was worrying about, it's just, it's diffused completely like a balloon losing its air as I've somehow gotten myself obsessing over trees now. No, not obsessing, but you know, just taking in nature and allowing its relief.

I think that's what it is too. Sometimes I might say to myself, oh, I can't go for a walk unless I can walk 10,000 steps, which is crazy. That is like I'm a task master and it's about getting out and having to meet some physical goal. But if I can just say, okay, just get outside. Even if you only have five minutes, you know, just let yourself do that. Do it not for a goal, just for relief, just for pleasure, just for, you know, that release from it all. And it always provides that. Yeah, and that's a great description of being inside the prison of our mind and then opening into the spaciousness of the natural world. And that itself, you can just, as I listened, I could feel, I'm actually looking out the window also, but feel just an opening. and I know there is like unbelievable amount of research on this now, how much being in our larger body, the earth, like really sensing, it's not like nature out there, it's like this is our nature and we get reconnected to our naturalness to the elements when we're in communion, you know? And I know I have different little exercises in my own practice I do outside of just on purpose coming into my senses, sometimes doing a smell walk or I'm just smelling and taking in sense and sometimes just listening and just playing with the senses and the way they get such intimacy with the beauty.

And as you're speaking it reminded me because you mentioned trees and I'm right there with you. you know, just in love with trees, reading about Carla Rovelli, who's a quantum physicist, and he describes, and he's very well known for relational physics, you know, like really sensing that we don't exist outside of our relationship with everything else, and describing how he got very anxious before giving talks. This isn't like historic. He gets anxious before for giving lectures or whatever. So what he does is he goes outside and he puts his hand on a tree. And he just is touching a tree.

And he says, then it's completely fine. Everything flows. But I just, that really stuck with me, Lori, because I can so relate. You know, my version of it is in some way to be touching or with a tree and just sense we're friends, you know, that there's some innate sentience and a weakness. And we know more and more research is showing our trees exist in a profoundly collaborative way with each other and the wider field. It helps us to remember the deepest truth of our belonging to be in nature.

Yes. Yeah. Okay, so further expansion on inner strength. in terms of for so many, the rubber hits the road with the very big losses, facing our own mortality, facing the death of loved ones, you know, dying. You know, it's like how do we have inner strength when we're really up against the edge of that? And I just wonder, and I know you speak about connecting.

to something larger than ourselves and so on. So anything that comes to mind in that kind of deepest of realms. I think a part of being strong is embracing when you feel weak. And I think when I think of loss in depth, I feel weak in the face of it. And I think rather than fight that and try to strong arm it and find a way to be somewhere other than where I am with it, I just try to let myself be in that place with it and just tell myself, well, it's scary and it's heavy.

and it's for many the dark the heaviest thing they'll ever face is the loss of the people they love who really make up not only the biggest part of our life but in many ways our identity you know who we are in relation to these people and for me I don't know that I have necessarily the greatest answers for that yet but I just embrace the feeling of vulnerability and weakness and fear and maybe just letting that be is in itself strength it is I'm with you I think that's the ground level what you're saying, which is whatever comes up. This too, you know, as they say, you know, this too, can we have that courage of heart that says, okay, be with this? I often, you know, I have faced great loss. I have a few decades on you, sweetie, so it happens more.

The truth is that impermanence is the big one, you know, and we, the more we have to, face it, the more we start tapping into those strengths that are always there, but sometimes it takes having to call them forward. And I know for myself, and especially if I just imagine, okay, in a minute I'm going to die, you know, what is it, what's real refuge? You know, what is it that really is the refuge? In some way, there's a calling on the love, the love awareness that is timeless, that's beyond this coming going body, that there's this knowing of a belonging that's bigger than what's inevitably going to die. And the sooner we have access to that, you know, the sooner we have a pathway to sensing a timeless kind of presence, I think the more

there's a sense that no matter what happens, it's going to be okay, no matter what. And it doesn't mean it's going to feel good and doesn't mean the fears aren't going to come up, but no matter what, it's going to be okay because who we are is that loving awareness that's larger than this body. And we will keep on contracting back into this small body that wants to protect itself. And then we're just doing the best we can as you and I follow. Yeah, I've often told myself, I wish I had different religious beliefs because they would be more comforting, but I don't. And so I've actually dealt with a lot of the existential angsts as of late. For some reason, it keeps popping into my head this idea of, you know, just the not knowing, I guess, what happens when you die.

You know, I mean, I wish I had faith in something more specific and concrete that could give me more comfort because I can see how that can do that for people. But living, you know, I remind myself, I try to remind myself just because I can't say I believe that. mean, I know what's, the unknown is far bigger than me. So perhaps there's more to this me than I even know to imagine. And that's what I would like to believe. Well, that's the attitude that actually opens you to whatever. It is a mystery. And we don't know. All we can sense is what our own experience has been. And so, but this leads to, to me, something that kind of circles around to where we started, which is a lot of the people that have been, you know, posting and so on, on Tiny Buddha are really responding to the catastrophes, the crises of our globe.

And so when you're sharing about inner strength, how are you addressing inner strength as we face, you know, the catastrophe of a warming planet, you know, that's the suffering's already here. It's not like in the future, it's here. And, you know, nuclear threats. And I saw one post, one woman who, you know, was talking about her fear, you know, very cute fear of nuclear threat, which is not ill-founded. So just to invite you to speak a bit about what can give us a sense of inner strength in the face of that. I think really that comes back to just coming together. Inner strength, I think, by definition, is an individual thing. It's inner within one. But to recognize there's, you know, that we can come

together as a people and solve the problems of our time together and speak with each other and open up to each other and share our fears with each other and that no one has to figure anything out on their own. No one has to be, and no one has to carry it alone. You know, no one, has to feel the weight of it all that we can. And that's what these communities online and offline, I think, are for for people to have a place to make sense of it and to find solutions and to figure out how we can come together to enact those solutions. We're stronger in numbers, always have been.

I agree. And I think it points to something really interesting. And you started to name it about just the language of inner strength. that in a sense, what we call inner strength is the energy and courage and aliveness and love that really lives through us. It's kind of universal and it lives through us when we're available. And I'm right there with you that the more we hold hands, the more we have access to it, in the moments I feel a sense of belonging. like right now you and I speaking and just feeling okay here we are together you know and

there is more inner strength and it's not so personal it's just that there's a larger truth than this idea of an individual which I think is really an illusion and just to share a little bit more I've been feeling you know I like everybody that I know a huge amount of distress and fear and concern about the growth of authoritarian, the strength of authoritarianism around the globe, and in particular in the United States, the real fragility of our democracy. And about a month or so ago, I've been doing some activism anyway, but I got very involved with a group of people that are just working really hard just to get out the vote, nonpartisan group, get out the vote.

And something about that, Lori, is like what you were saying, get together. Well, we got together. And I just felt the sense of empowerment, not like we're going to win, somebody else is going to lose, but just the empowerment of belonging with people who care that are just trying. And we don't know what's going to happen, but we have to try. And we can't do that alone because it gets overwhelming. feel like we need to hold hands. So I love what you were saying about that. Well, I was thinking, the two thoughts came to mind. One being that, you know, it takes strength to be vulnerable with people.

But when we're vulnerable with people, other people give us more strength. So it's kind of like this reinforcing cycle of nurturing the strength it takes to open up and to form these groups with other people where we can feel the sense of belonging. And then that reinforces our strength. And also, I think there's something to be said for when you do put yourself out there to work toward a common goal. and then you see other people doing it and it reinforces this idea. There are people who care. People are good. And then when you believe that you do more good because you feel, you know,

just kind of a reinforcing cycle, you want to do more good when you are surrounded by people who you can see, you believe in them and then you believe in yourself. And it's just like, I got lost there in the word. No, but actually, you may have thought you got lost, but I was just right there going, yeah, yeah, yeah. because it is reinforcing. It's like it's very easy to read the newspaper and go into the sense of, you know,

all the manipulation and deceit and and ugliness. And of course it's there. We're in a very fearful world and it's bringing out the shadow. But there's so many people, there's never been this many people who are caring. And I feel your care. You know, I feel like that's so much of what you're doing, creating a space for people to come together and feel that shared hearts goodness. And it feels crucial at these times that we remember, you know, not be Pollyanna. Like there's not a lot of really, really dangerous stuff going on.

And there's a lot of caring. And that can give us hope. And I will say one thing that I always, you know, Tiny Buddha always seems to focus, I think, the site focuses. more on, it does focus more on the individual healing, but as we heal individually, we're then better able to come together, you know, because then we do break down those barriers that separate us from other people, all the, you know, the defenses and the, you know, I think that we need to be able to trust in other people's goodness to want to come together. And we don't always have access to that, maybe because we don't trust in our own. What we see in ourselves, we see in other people.

So I think that's a big part of what, you know, what Tiny Buddha does, at least I hope. is help people to do the inner healing for themselves and to believe in themselves so then they can go out in the world and be part of the bigger, you know, the solutions to the problems that we face collectively. Well, I hope whoever's listening, you'll check out Tiny Buddha. I really do, you know, and I also hope that you'll check out this Tiny Buddha's Inner Strength Journal because there's a lot that'll have you get in touch with yourself more and wake up. that goodness and that strength. And Lori, I really want to thank you for coming on. And is there anything else that maybe you didn't say that has come to mind? You're welcome to say it. No, I think I said pretty much everything. Nothing comes to mind in the moment except thank you. Thank you so much again. This was such a wonderful talk to have with you. And I'm truly touched to have had the opportunity. And I really enjoyed our conversation. So thank you.

Oh, yay. Good. Well, and to all of you listening, thank you. for your attention and I thought we'd maybe close with a very brief reflection just to kind of come into our bodies and hearts even more so just to take a moment wherever you are and if it helps to close your eyes close your eyes lower the gaze and just take a few full breaths and maybe as we've been speaking you've been considering a place in your life that's challenging where you want to have more access to that strength, that courage, that confidence. You might just take a moment to let your attention go there. We touched on the Bodhisattvasp aspiration. You might sense what happens when you just offer the wish, may this situation, may these circumstances

serve awakening. May this awaken more compassion, more wisdom, more confidence. Just notice what happens. You might shift the phrase a little and say, how might this awaken? More compassion, more wisdom, more confidence.

Sensing, as the Dalai Lama said that we can trust in the power of heart and awareness, to awaken us through all circumstances. Thank you. Thank you, Lori. Thank you, friends. It's a pleasure to hold hands together. For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list,

please visit tarabrock.com.