Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 246: Losing Your Patience? Here's How to Get it Back

Episode Date: May 11, 2020

This pandemic is a colossal test of our patience - from dealing with family to interminably long wait times on calls with the unemployment office to just wanting this whole nightmare to evaporate so we can go back to the movies. We've got a special, two-part episode this week. In the first part, we bring on a pair of researchers who study patience. The good news: they have found that patience is a quality we can train and develop through meditation and other strategies, including cognitive reappraisal, transcendence, or just learning how to fake it until you make it. (Side note: we also fall into an interesting chat about the benefits of defensive pessimism versus strategic optimism.) After the researchers, we bring on legendary meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg for a deeper dive into how to use meditation to increase our patience, especially when it comes to interpersonal stuff (which, let's be honest, includes other people and ourselves). Our patience experts are Dr. Sarah Schnitker from the Psychology and Neuroscience Department at Baylor University, and Dr. Kate Sweeny from the Psychology department at the University of California, Riverside. Where to find our guests online: Dr. Kate Sweeny / http://www.katesweeny.com/ Dr Sarah A. Schnitker / https://www.baylor.edu/psychologyneuroscience/index.php?id=950614 Sharon Salzberg / https://www.sharonsalzberg.com/ Other Resources Mentioned: Wendy Wood University of Southern California (Habits Research) / https://www.marshall.usc.edu/personnel/wendy-wood Richie Davidson Research on Pain and meditation / https://news.wisc.edu/meditation-expertise-changes-experience-of-pain/ Walter Mischel Marshmellow Test / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment Additional Resources: Ten Percent Happier Live: https://tenpercent.com/live Coronavirus Sanity Guide: https://www.tenpercent.com/coronavirussanityguide Free App Access for Teachers, Healthcare, Grocery and Food Delivery, and Warehouse Workers: https://tenpercent.com/care Get more focus and clarity by bringing mindfulness to your company with a team subscription to Ten Percent Happier! Visit tenpercent.com/work to learn more. Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/patience-246 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. to baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. All right, let's do one item of business before we jump into the episode. We spend half of our waking lives at work. Actually, now we're spending basically our whole leaking lives, many of us at work because our home is also now our work. Given all of that, could you and your colleagues

use a bit more focus and clarity? With a little meditation help everybody get along better, whether it's in person or over Zoom, we are now offering team subscriptions to the 10% happier app. So if you run a business, or if you're the head of people or HR at a business, and you wanna buy a bunch of subscriptions,

something that people have been asking us for for a long time, and we haven't been able to do, we can now do. So come to 10%.com slash work, 10%.com slash work, and learn much more. All right, let's get into this week's episode. This pandemic has been a colossal test of our patients from dealing with family to interminably long wait times

on calls with the unemployment office to just wanting this whole nightmare to evaporate so we can go back to the movies. Today, we've got a special two-part episode. In the first part, we bring on a pair of researchers who study patients. And the good news here is they've found that patients is a quality that we can train and develop through meditation and a whole bunch of other strategies, including cognitive reappraisal,

transcendence, or just learning how to fake it until you make it. Side note in our conversation with these researchers, we also fall into an interesting chat about the benefits of defensive pessimism versus strategic optimism. After the researchers, though, we bring on legendary meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg for a deeper dive into how to use meditations specifically to increase our patience, especially when it comes to interpersonal stuff, which, let's be honest, includes other people and ourselves. So let's start with our experts, Dr. Sarah Schnittger from the Psychology and Neuroscience Department at Baylor University and Dr. Kate Sweeney from the Psychology Department at the University of California at Riverside.

Here we go. All right, thank you both for joining us. Glad to be here, thanks. Yes, thank you. Really appreciate it. Kate, let me pick on you first. Can you just describe how you became interested in the subject of patients and what your research has shown you? Yeah. So I'm a social psychologist by training, which basically means I study,

you know, how people kind of live their daily lives, adults, normative adults. And when I started graduate school, I was studying essentially the benefits of pessimism. So the ways in which racing for the worst when you're waiting for some kind of news can be really beneficial for protecting you from disappointment and so forth. Later on that research expanded out and so now I kind of study waiting and uncertainty more generally. And of course, the best version of that is patience. So that's kind of for Sarah and I got connected who will meet shortly. And so when I think about uncertainty and waiting, you know, I'm really thinking about the kind of situational press. So the fact that that's a really stressful experience for most people. And I think a little bit less about the ways in which certain people might more patiently handle that than others.

And what we've confirmed is that, yeah, it's really hard. If your heads of uncertainty are really challenging, very stressful, very difficult to cope with. And we have certainly identified some ways that people can cope better, which I'm sure we'll talk about at some point down the line here. But essentially, you know, it started small, got bigger, and now we've just been trying to hunt down good ways of coping with these experiences. So you've looked at, just according to your bio here, you've looked at law graduates awaiting news about the bar exam and then patients awaiting biopsy results. So yeah, a lot of uncertainty and fear

in both of those situations. Yeah, absolutely. We've also looked at lots of other contexts, like voters waiting for election results. We've looked at the last few major elections in the US and lots of other kinds of professional and academic and health waiting periods. But certainly those are two of the ones that are the biggest.

And people ask me a lot, like, does it matter if you're waiting for life or death news versus finding out whether you pass the bar exam? And I have to tell you, the people waiting for bar exam news just look just as freaked out as people waiting for biosevere results. So I think life and death is often in the eye of the beholder with these situations. And by what measure did they look just as freaked out as people waiting for biopsy results. So I think life and death is often in the eye of the beholder with these situations. And by what measure did they look just as freaked out? What are

the metrics you're using to see how freaked out somebody is? Yeah, so mostly we just ask people. It would be ideal, you know, if we had a mind reading machine where we could really tell like in reality how worried are they? But for the most part, we just kind of trust people that they know when they're worried, they know when they're stressed. And so we actually measure it in lots of different ways to try to make sure that we're not getting kind of idiosyncratic answers on a particular measure. But it includes things like worry, like repetitive thoughts, so kind of obsessing about the uncertainty general emotional state, symptoms of ill health, poor sleep, so lots of different

markers of poor well-being in these moments. Okay Sarah, let me pick on you now for a second. So can you just tell me a little bit about your background, how you came to this issue and described the research you've done? Yes, definitely. So like Kate, I am also trained in social psychology, but I also focus on understanding personality a bit more, and trying to figure out how we, each as individuals are different from others and what goes into making a person. And so, when I began grad school, I was really interested in studying the development of character strengths, both in adults, but also in adolescence. And as I began looking at the scientific literature, it really struck me that no one was studying patients at all.

Like, no one. I found four sources, and one of them was Charles Darwin, talking about the emotional, the bodily expression of the emotion of patients. Right? So it struck me as very odd, and that's not a very common thing as a researcher defined an area that is so understudied. And so I said, hmm, what's going on here?

First of all, why is it we don't care about patients, and then what should we not, and started to explore that question? And pretty quickly, I came to the conclusion that this is actually a pretty important thing being patient. But that, at least in the United States cultural context, and I think in a lot of the Western world, we've come to ignore patients, really,

since the Industrial Revolution, that we think, if you have to wait or you have to suffer or deal with uncertainty, that's a technological failure. And instead of saying that that's a natural part of life, and that's part of being a human being, and that we can cultivate the strength of patients in order to deal with suffering and uncertainty and waiting better, instead our approach in the 21st century is, let suffering and uncertainty and waiting better. Instead, our approach in the 21st century is let's fix it with our technology. So very quickly said, oh, this could be a problem because a lot of the things that are most important in life, you don't have control over and you have to wait. And we all now are in this situation of COVID-19

where we all are dealing with uncertainty. We can't immediately fix it. And so a lot of my work has been starting to explore how we can help people cultivate the virtue of patients, understanding just what is it as a character strength, and also in the beginning, too, trying to show that it is a good thing, that this is something you want in your life.

You know, I think a question I often get from people is, well, won't you just become a doormat or be really passive and just let life pass you by if you become patient? And so our research suggests that is not the case. And instead, people who are dispositionally patient actually exert more effort in the pursuit of their goals. It allows them basically to regulate their emotions so that they can make choices and know when to act, when not to act and not just be driven by fear or anxiety or anger and instead be making wise decisions. You said before in one of the paragraphs you just uttered so eloquently that one of the things you were looking at is what is

patients. So I'm just curious how do you define patients? Yeah so we define it as the ability to be calm in the face of frustration, obstacles, suffering. So it doesn't necessarily involve waiting for something. I think that's a common component. But there may also be forms of suffering that you have to patiently endure that are never going to go away. So someone who has a chronic illness, they know that that's never going to be fixed,

but they are patient with that suffering. We also that that's never going to be fixed, but they are patient with that suffering. We also see there's different types of patients. So you have kind of that long-term life hardship patients, like a chronic illness. If you think about what causes suffering in your life, you might also realize, oh, it's the people I'm around. Right? Those of us who are stuck in captivity with people, that can be, you can require patients. I have a three-year-old. This is a time for being patient with her and with myself. And so we see that interpersonal patients is somewhat distinct, but really important

for well-being. And then you have more your daily hassles patients. So this is, I think, what people typically think of at first. So getting stuck in traffic jams, waiting in lines, waiting on the phone, for many people right now, waiting on the phone for the unemployment office, right? This is the daily hassles components, which also if you're impatient with those that can be a source of ill health and stress, but we find all three are really critical and in many ways, that long-term

life hardship patients and the interpersonal patients that are most predictive of well-being outcomes. This memory is coming to mind. I had a babysitter growing up, Wanita. She was not actually Latinx, her mother, who she described as a heavy drinker, used to like to read, she was Irish, but she used to like to read romance novels and the lead character, and one of the novels was named Winita. So anyway, Winita was our babysitter, and my brother and I were of gigantic pains in the butt,

and I remember her driving her yellow VW bug through Newton Massachusetts, when my brother and I just tormenting her and she would grid her teeth and say, patience is a virtue. So it's interesting that if I heard you correctly that there are these three types of patients, you know, how am I online at the pharmacy, how am I interpersonally, and how am I with long-term discomfort or misfortune of some sort, and that it sounds to me like they're connected deeply and how you are in one area is going to say a lot about how you are in another. And that's what our fancy statistics show us.

They have some distinctive to them, but they really do have this, I think, solid core to them that the person is cultivated habits whereby they can regulate their emotions effectively. And the other thing that I think is the common core to all of them is that a person has a purpose behind their waiting. That's actually something we've shown is really essential.

So if you have no reason to wait or suffer, why? Why are you doing it? Right? So you just give up or you get angry. And so in our work showing that there needs to be some kind of higher order beyond the self-purpose. For some people that's really building a community that they care about, contributing to society, for some people that can be more spiritual connecting with something transcendent, whether that's God or karma or higher power, whatever that may be. But having something that really energizes you and says it's worth suffering for this is necessary.

But I can see how that would apply in interpersonal relationships and if you were dealing with a chronic illness, but how does a transcendent meaning apply at the drugstore? I think this is the opportunity to practice for those other two. I think is is the opportunity to practice for those other two. I think is what happens. I know that's what I try to do is in those situations kind of reframe. Okay, this is a good opportunity for me to practice this skill that I know is so essential as a mom. Kate, I understand you've been looking at how folks in China handled the lockdown there. Can you give us a sense of what you found?

Yeah, so this is a study I did with some collaborators in my department and in China in February. So at the peak of the COVID problem there and before it really, I mean, now we know it was here, but before we all kind of got used to that idea. And what we found is that a lot of interesting things, but one of them is that of course, the longer people had been in quarantine and their quarantine was a pretty severe restriction, not even going out to the grocery store, leaving the house. People who were in that state longer were worse off

on lots of measures, even beyond the ones I mentioned earlier, also like drinking more, smoking more, eating less healthy, things like that. And we're lonely, of course. And so given, things like that, and we're lonely, or of course. And so given that they had that in a form of suffering due to the quarantine, we were interested in looking at any, you know, whether anything we measured might give us a hint

of what could make that lengthy quarantine easier. And again, I have to tell you, I was running these analyses. I think within 24 hours before the decision got made at my university, they like shut it all down. So little did I know how much I would need this research, this finding. But what we found basically is that there are lots of things that are correlated

with related to having an easier time, you know, in the moment that people were filling out the survey. So like being more mindful, for example, seem to be at least associated with good things, being more optimistic. But we only found one thing that actually seemed to reduce or emulatorate the effect of the quarantine length, which was being in a state of flow. And so flow is basically this sort of feeling or the state you get into. When you're doing something that is just the right amount of challenging

where you can kind of track your progress, it's a pleasurable activity, and you're just all the way in. Like you lose yourself, you lose track of time, totally absorbed when I'm trying to get people to think about what their flow activities are. I always say, like, what's the thing if you sit down to do it 30 minutes before you leave the house, that you know you will completely lose time

and be late for wherever you're going back when people left the house? So what we found is that people who said that they'd been in that state more in the previous week, it kind of didn't seem to matter how long they'd been in quarantine. The people who'd been in quarantine for two or more weeks looked essentially the same as people who were not yet in quarantine in terms of like every measure of well-being that we have essentially. So again, it's great to be mindful, it's great to be optimistic, have satisfaction with

life, lots of other things, but none of those really seemed to kind of cut down the effect that that longer quarantine was having on people's wellbeing. Every time I hear about flow, I feel bad about myself, because I just don't know if I ever get into flow. Maybe the one thing that I do would be playing the drums, which I don't do that often, but when I do it,

sometimes I get bored, but sometimes it's amazing, and I do lose track of time. What else would one in a flow state? It's different for everyone, because you have to match those three pleasurable challenging, but not too challenging, and also tracking progress. Different activities will get different people there. The ones that are most reliable are either video games or gamified other kinds of activities.

So like I'm trying to learn Spanish on Duolingo. Duolingo is a very gamified version of language learning where it gives you little rewards. And pleasant sounds when you do well and it makes honking terrible sounds when you do poorly. And the little owl from there, logo comes up and says nice things when you're doing well. So you get that kind of like progress tracking the rewards for doing well. And it gets harder as you go on and I happen to enjoy it. So for me, that's a great flow activity. But again,

games, any kind of video game is just kind of custom made to create this because most video games get harder as you get better and give you lots of feedback about how you're doing, and if you enjoy them, then all the better. But people can get in flow, like my favorite flow activity is data analysis. I'm guessing that doesn't resonate with most normal people. Oh my god. Who have we brought onto this podcast? There are a lot of research right here.

So that's great for me, not probably for most people. Other people might get it gardening, which I find tedious and horrible. People commonly also mention things like organizing or cleaning out closets or addicts. I think I'm seeing people look for flow in this frenetic bread baking phenomenon that seems to be happening right now. It's not baking muffins, it'll pretty much come out

well no matter what you do. It's this challenging task. And also you get to post-beautiful pictures of your newest sourd challenging task. And also you get to kind of post-beautiful pictures of your newest sourdough recipe. And so you get that progress. And I think that's people looking for flow. That's so interesting. Did you get any data from the Chinese subjects

of what they were doing? No. I wish we had. No, we haven't. We have lots of other data from other studies, but not in that moment, not with that population, sadly. But so what you're telling me, and I guess anybody who has a teenage child hearing this is going to be really disappointed in you, but what you're telling me is that video games may be really good.

Yes, good for some things, I guess not good for others. You know, if your goal is past the time and feel good, it's not the worst activity you could choose. I mean, if your goal is get your homework done, maybe not the best activity, but, you know, if you're stuck in quarantine with little else to do, yeah, I might prescribe a little bit of gaming here and there, if that's something you enjoy. And did you look at whether, I know you asked about mindfulness, but did you correlate that in any way

to significant meditation practice? By the way, one can achieve flow in that. I think I probably have at times. I think that's absolutely right, although it's probably not the most natural flow activity for most people except maybe the most practice meditators. So we didn't get a lot of information in this study about where their mindfulness was coming from. It was more of a general measure of like, are you feeling these things that look like mindfulness in the past week? So people presumably who do more, you know, meditation and other mindful practices probably feel more of it, but we don't know where it was coming from. And I think, you know, maybe it doesn't matter

necessarily where it's coming from if you're finding it one way or another, whether it's coming from lengthy meditation or just general presence. As you move through the world, I think it seems to be benefiting people either way. What about physical activity? Because I know in China there's martial arts, there's, I think, Chi Gong. I know it's Asian, but I think it's Chinese, which is kind of a slow motion meditation, yoga, physical activity of any sort. Is that a flow activity?

And do you think that's something you would recommend to us to do right now? Yeah, so it can be a flow activity. Anyone who works out a lot probably has experienced both flow like exercise and not so flow like exercise. Like I hate running. I was getting okay at doing it on the treadmill

before all this happened. And then I tried it in my neighborhood. And I was like, nope, not feeling flow or mindfulness. This is terrible. I'm going to stop. So I've gone back to yoga, which for me does actually create more of both the mindfulness and of course the many other benefits of physical exercise, but also a little bit of that flow because for me it does combine the right set of ingredients. I enjoy it. I do classes where it's challenging but not overwhelmingly so, and I can kind of track my progress at least just internally.

Like, can I hold that position that I couldn't hold before? Can I stretch further than I could yesterday? So for me, that works, whereas like jogging did not. So it's not automatically flow, but it can be. The worst thing that's happened to me with jogging recently is now my watch tells me how fast I'm going and how what my time has been.

And so now I'm ruining every run trying to beat the last run and usually failing, which is another, it's just a way I've ruined helloton for myself as well. So there are ways for us to take things like meditation, like exercise, or even music, anything, and ruin it for ourselves. Oh yeah, we're great at that. Yeah. I'm sure people out there making soda bread have ruined it for themselves too.

So Sarah, what do you think? Let me just get to the heart of the matter now because we're vectoring toward it. But people are, I think justifiably impatient right now, handling it in various ways. What's your best expert advice for how to boost our patient's quotient under these pretty suboptimal circumstances?

Yeah, it's not gonna be easy. That's the hard thing about patients. It takes a long time to become patient. Right, it takes patients to be patient. I'd say, when I talk to people about, okay, how do we grow your patients? I like to use the weight acronym. So, WY is patient's important to you,

A, for awareness of starting to understand how you're actually feeling. And that's for many people, actually not easy. I do this with my three-year-old daughter a lot of just trying to identify what emotion she's feeling when she's getting upset. And I've noticed I start doing it more with myself and then start to do it with other people, which I'm sure they find very annoying. But it's hard. Am I angry right now? Am I sad? Am I anxious? Just being able to become aware of what it is,

I think that in itself can often take some power away from that emotion. And so then after why is it important awareness, I like to talk about identifying ways to regulate. And this could differ depending on the person. So I think what Kate was talking about in China, like finding flow states, that, especially in this kind of waiting situation

with COVID-19, where it's so uncertain, and the time scale for how long this could be is really large. It could be a year to 18 months, right? We, so that flow state kind of activity could be highly effective. Another strategy that we find is quite effective is what we call cognitive re-apraisal, which is basically just trying to think about it in a different way, in a way that reframes the situation. Sometimes that could be benefit finding, which we see people taking the opportunity to do.

So, wow, I get to see my kids a lot more. I've seen more people talking to their neighbors from far away in my neighborhood than ever. That in some ways we're building our community and people are getting more physical exercise outside. I've never seen so many people taking walks. Right, so just trying to find benefits in the hardship, it doesn't discredit that something bad is happening,

but reappraising to see what good is happening or just finding a new way to realize this could be worse. There's lots of ways to reframe are just finding a new way to realize this could be worse. Right? There's lots of ways to reframe that just in themselves blunt that emotional impact. And then the last step, so we talk about why is patient important awareness of your emotions, identifying ways to regulate, and then tea for transcend.

So find something bigger beyond yourself. And I think with something like COVID-19, that's actually pretty important that this is for not just me and my own health and my own safety, but for that of our entire community, that okay, even if I'm a person who's not at risk, there are a lot of people at risk. And I'm doing this for the greater good. And our society can get back to normal in a healthy manner, even though it feels like it's going to take a long time with this approach of social distancing, that that actually is a good approach.

And my suffering now is helping others. I mean, you did say early on that having, a meaning behind your patients really can turbocharge the whole enterprise, so that's the transcendence. Yeah, that's the transcendence, something bigger. Back to A, the awareness of your emotional state. That to me as a meditator screams out like, okay, well, this whole weight

thing can work better if you have the self-awareness that's generated in meditation. Definitely. And in one of our early studies, we actually tried out, created a patient's training program for college undergraduates. And with that program, every session we had included a meditation component. Because for many people in our society, our lives are so busy, and we're constantly inundated with information and stimuli that most people are not able to become aware, unless they stop and induce some type of meditative practice, whether it be more of a mindfulness meditation or some other type of meditative activity. Kate, you're nodding your head,

I'm wondering if you went away on that. I concur. I think that a lot of these processes do get easier with mindfulness. I sort of put flow over mindfulness in terms of talking about our results from that study in China just because it didn't seem to have this very consistent effect of emulating the effects of quarantine, but it's possible and would be hard to look at statistically. But it is very possible

that having mindfulness as a base and then building flow onto that is particularly effective. I would have to believe. But what I'm hearing overall from you guys is that patience is a skill that can be generated. Because I am constitutionally not very patient. I can't sit still very well. And the more I meditate, the more I notice how my day is infused with rushing. And my meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, is always talking about notice rushing as a feedback, as this toppling forward that's happening for me in meditation, or when I'm putting my shoes on,

or I'm waiting for my son to reach the end of his sentence, so I can tell him it's time for a time out, or whatever it is, it's just there so prominently now. It's just sailing it, partly because I've got the boosted self-awareness from meditation. Yes, I'll stop talking, but I wonder if this provokes any thoughts for you to review. No, I definitely am a big advocate that we can improve our patience. And we found that not only were the participants who were in the course instead of the control group, they were more patient at the end. They also showed a decrease in depressive symptoms. So if you look actually

at ancient philosophy, the virtue of patients is discussed as between two vices. So one of recklessness and impulsivity, and the thing we typically think of as impatience. But the other poll is a term I can never pronounce, a Akidia or a Sedia. Basically, it's giving up on life and giving up on the things that are most important to you. Sometimes it's translated as sloth or boredom to you. Sometimes it's translated as sloth or boredom or busyness. It's, wait, we don't really have a term for it in our language, but a lot of it is things that go along with depressive symptoms of no longer able to stay engaged. And when I think about it with patient, right, it's, if you become so overwhelmed, you start to just give up on goals and on life. And I think that's a real danger we see

during this quarantine for COVID-19. People are disconnected from things that are most important to them and disconnected from everything and from the things that they're passionate about. And so it makes a lot of sense to me earlier what you're saying with flow, Kate, because I think with flow, you get that energy of feeling that passion, that thing that energizes

you, right? And with patience, it helps you to not become so overwhelmed that you just have to disengage because you can't handle the negative emotion and that anxiety. And so you just get up instead. So, and I'll just add, I think a lot of my research has sort of looked at what we do when we aren't there yet. So, if you find yourself thrown into a terrible uncertain situation or a terrible interpersonal situation in the case of that sort of patience, what do you do that? And so, a lot of my research is kind of looking for cheats.

Like, if you find yourself losing your mind because your patience is not where it needs to be, well, okay, maybe try meditation, maybe try to find a flow activity, you know, we've got some others like expose yourself to something that will bring awe into your life. So, you know, they're all kind of cheats to try to achieve what patients achieve naturally. But are those cheats or are those just genuine tools that will get you to patients? Well, that's a good question. I think they're genuine tools.

I think cheats is underselling them. Right? Because no one ever achieves perfect patients. Right? So I think those are the habits, the practices that you can really start building. And I like to call patients a character strength or a virtue rather than a personality trait because I really think

it is something that you can create as a habit in your life. And that habits is finding little rewarding things that will help you keep doing that habit. And I think with something like patients, right, finding those treats of, you know what? I was patient today. Let me do my 10 minutes of video games because that's fun. Like, it's okay to, you don't have to knuckle down and achieve it in one's felt swoop that it's small habits over and over again, in a particular context. And we're all at home right now. And that's a context we always are in.

So now is a great time to really start developing those habits and maybe creating little spaces within your home of, okay, here's where I can go and meditate and practice this thing. And when you go sit in that particular spot, it can help you to activate those good habits. The patients, Jim. Yes.

So you talked about impulsivity. What came to mind for me, you're talking about impulsivity is kind of being one of the opposites of patients. And the marshmallow test came to mind for me. For me, so Kate, you're smiling. Just for people who are unfamiliar with this, I think it was Stanford or I don't know where it was,

but they did this test where they had brought in little kids. This is a test I would have failed as a kid and I would fail right now. They said, you can have this marshmallow right now and then you're done or you can sit here patiently and we'll give you two. And the kids, those who waited for the second marshmallow,

there were correlations as I understand it in terms of life outcomes that were pretty powerful. So I'm curious if this lands in any way for you and then I also want to use that as a way to get to eating because I think this is something we do when we're feeling impatient. I'll jump in first and Kate, you probably have some thoughts as well.

Right, the marshmallow test is really honing feeling impatient. I'll jump in first and Kate, you probably have some thoughts as well. Right, the marshmallow test is really honing in that very specific ability to delay gratification, which yes, we know is quite important. And I think is an ingredient to help with patients. I think patients is a little bit different than that marshmallow test because there's a lot of choice and agency there that we don't always find in especially on certain waiting situations or situations of long-term suffering, right?

So I'm like, what is the second marshmallow I'm waiting for? I'm stuck here. There might not be a magical cure that if you just do the right things and do the perfect diet and do the perfect exercise, that you still might have this bad thing that you have to deal with. And so that's where I think delay of gratification

can be really helpful for patients, because we do often have quite a few choices in agency. But sometimes we have to figure out what to do when we are up against this hard limit or against this thing that isn't going to change. And that's where I think having the skills of patients of having a bigger purpose of why the suffering matters, of being able to find ways to make sense of that difficult thing

and then regulate around it are really important. What do you think Kate? Yeah, I don't know that I have a ton to add, but it is sort of an interesting take on patients to think of it as sort of one piece of self-regulation or self-control, which is really what we're talking about with the Walter Michelle stuff about marshmallows. You know, and it does, again, I'm going back to why I called some of these coping strategies a cheats earlier. And I think what I was sort of thinking when I said that was that if patients is kind of a, you know, like a muscle you can develop essentially to some extent, which, you know, of course, you do through practice, but then maybe becomes a bit more automatic, that I, I guess that then makes it sound a bit like self-control in

that you can develop it. And then again, coming back to my comment about cheats, I think what I was thinking is like some of the strategies I study would work, even if you were, you know, a 90 pound weakling, it doesn't really matter. Like you can do it either way, even if what those become are habits of patient people. So not a direct answer, but just some additional thoughts there. So you're saying, if I hear you, and I notice this comment come up in some of the research that our producer Samuel sent me, that it's possible in some ways to fake patients? Yeah, I think so. I mean, you know, again, it sort of depends how you define patients really like deep down.

Like, is it something that is inside us or is it a behavior that we do? And that's often really hard to disentangle with psychological stuff. But I guess, you know, when I think of patients in this sort of virtue language, it does feel like something that we maybe have a little bit of inside of us and can build as Sarah has said, whereas I think you can fake being patient pretty well to yourself when it comes to things like flow. You just made the hour go by fast. It's not that you handled the hour well.

It's just you made it fly by because you were playing a video game. That feels like a cheat to me. It's not like real patients that'll pay off later. It's just you got through this bad hour or this bad day. But I would say meditation isn't a different category for me because you are leaning in to the feeling. It's a really hard thing to do. You're leaning into the discomfort, the restlessness, the uncertainty.

There's an art to it because you don't want to overwhelm yourself either, especially if you have some trauma in your background. This is by many definitions, there's a collective trauma that we're in right now. So there's some delicacy that is called for, but in general, we are sort of the theory of the only way out is through, is the meditation world's sort of rallying cry here. And that doesn't strike me as a cheat,

that strikes me as like, I'm gonna embrace this thing, and the benefit is that over time, I'll be less controlled by the restlessness, et cetera, et cetera. And I would say too, you know, I was talking about earlier the kind of weight, plan to patients, the awareness. I think the cheat is you try to just deny

that there was ever the negative emotion. I think some people just go straight to the video games and try to pretend they aren't upset at all and just kind of dove around it. So I think it's sometimes okay to use those flow, but I completely agree that the meditation approach says we're jumping all the way in. We're going to become fully aware of that negative emotion. Not judge it. See what happens with it. And I think that's really a critical step to achieving that long-term, more dispositional character virtue of patience.

You can't get to that personal, it can work for you wherever and whenever you are, that you've got to be able to actually address that negative emotion and not just go through escapism. Yeah, and I agree. I mean, I think, you know, again, just coming back to that one study, though, there's lots of studies on the benefits of flow and, of course, mindfulness. But it does seem to me that the fact that

the sort of long quarantine in that study was about two weeks, two to three weeks. And so, you know, it seems to me that the fact that the long quarantine in that study was about two weeks, two to three weeks. It seems to me that you could perhaps persist through a couple days to maybe a couple of weeks by just like, as you said, avoiding denying, flowing in a way, is it just take your mind away? It's not going to be sustainable for a really long period of time. As we're looking at really long periods of time here, I do think that practice of mindfulness that is more kind of portable, whether or not you can, in that moment, use a flow activity or not, you can at least have that inside, that that becomes much more important over longer periods of time.

Kate, let me get you to talk about interpersonal patients. What is your research either professionally or personally shown you here? What is your research either professionally or personally shown you here? So I haven't looked as much at that. My sort of intersection research wise, at least with patients is really on the, like, patients with uncertainty side of things, but, I mean, Lord knows we've all had plenty of experiences with our personal patients personally. And I certainly have as well. I don't have kids.

So that's one that I think is like a constant test for most people of interpersonal patients that I don't have have a very energetic dog that occasionally tests me. But social connection and social support are of course like wildly important for well-being all the time. I was in fact just teaching a graduate seminar this morning and we were talking about relationships and social support and really digging into the fact

that those are so threatened during this period of time when most of us are relatively isolated. And so, you know, one of the things that I think is really key is, you know, finding those ways to connect to others and to sort of feel that sense of connection where it might not be. It's interesting, too. I think even find that social connections with TV show characters can actually services surrogate as well for people. So your Netflix binge actually could be a really healthy thing to do right now. I think the research actually supports it meets a lot of those social needs. And so, you know, I think so often we poo poo on media and consumption of video games and TV shows and things like that.

But I think in this kind of time in particular, it's really an amazing tool that we can use to help ourselves and to kind of replenish and feel connected even if we can't be with real people. You find it kind of tricks the brain. And I think with that, and with interpersonal patients, we haven't been able to look at it a ton yet, but I think we do show that the ability to empathize with others seems to enable you to be patient with other people.

So if you realize, oh, there's a reason there being difficult, it's a whole lot easier to then extend grace and not be upset by them. And I would say that consuming novels, TV shows actually can really help build your empathy skills because you're following this story and it kind of takes you step by step and how to relate to other people. And so even if you're not around people during this time, especially those who are maybe all by themselves, you can be building your patients just by building your empathy and engaging with narratives that are really compelling and practicing connecting with characters. And it's fun. I was going to ask you because when you're talking about flow before,

we're talking about video games, I was going to ask about you know, because when you're talking about flow before, we're talking about video games I was going to ask about Netflix, although since ABC News is owned by Disney, I should say Disney Plus or who? Disney Plus. Yeah, that's Disney Plus. Is that a flow activity? Not generally. So that sort of binging Netflix, though I completely agree with Sarah that it might serve other functions and it's you know, relaxing and if you're doing it with someone Of course, that's another bonding experience as well. But in terms of flow, I would say most TV and movies and even books, they just don't kind of get quite there.

And people challenge me and others on this all the time. Even I have thought a lot about this because I love reading novels and I can lose time. It certainly has that piece of it if I'm really into a good book or a great TV show. But what I at least have found, and I think that the research on flow would be consistent with this,

is that it's great if you're kind of doing okay. Like if your mind is relatively clear and quiet, then a good book, a good TV show, yeah, it can be really a positive experience in lots of different ways. But if your mind is spiraling out and you're ruminating or worrying, and it is

just a mess up there, my mind at least will speak for myself is very capable of continuing to do that while I'm watching TV or reading a book and it really, you know, it's a bummer because then it also ruins the fun thing I was trying to do and so I think that, you know, again, it's I'm certainly an advocate of entertaining yourself however you can in these moments but if what you're looking for is to quiet your mind and pass the time quickly, you might actually think a little more creatively about what is not maybe as obviously relaxing but is more engaging and that might be a better option.

Sarah, you were talking about empathy as a tool for interpersonal patients. Have either of you looked at loving kindness practice as a way to boost empathy or I think more technically accurately compassion. Yes, we actually included some loving kindness meditations in our patient's training program. And so those, that was a component of what was effective for people to increase their patience. And I think loving kindness practice is so powerful too because it builds connections. You realize how you are part of a bigger whole. That's not necessarily, I think, it's intent, but at least for myself, as I've done it,

I realize it kind of puts that transcendent on the map for you, that I'm one small piece, and I start with myself, and then realizing I'm part of this giant universe with people that I love, but also some enemies, but kind of all of nature. And that I find for myself, it kind of leads to some moral elevation even after I do it for a while. And I think it kind of secretly gets that transcendent element into the practice of patience and helps you realize, this isn't just for me. This is something much bigger than me. And actually feeling love and compassion and positive things for other people in the world that aren't just me,

really helps with building that empathy and saying, I feel like the center of my own universe, but I am not the entire universe and that there's other people and creatures and all kinds of animals and all kinds of things that we need to be considering that makes it a whole lot easier to deal with the dog that's barking in them all the night. In contrast, interestingly, the one way that I've used loving kindness and meditation in my research is actually like the control comparison group. And the reason is because,

again, the kind of patients, I guess that I look at are the sorts of struggles that I look at aren't really as much interpersonal. They're very much in your own mind. And so when we were starting to think about the role of mindfulness and specifically mindfulness meditation and making waiting a little bit easier, we thought, okay, well, what's basically the same as mindfulness meditation in every way in terms of the breathing and the relaxation and the sitting and the contemplating, but doesn't necessarily as much at least have the present moment non-judgmental thought piece of it, which is where I really think that it's useful for waiting. When we're waiting for something or feeling uncertain, there's just a lot of mental time travel. You're kind of zinging back and forth, like I should have studied more for that test. So my gosh, what's going to happen if I fail? No, no.

And so mindfulness is really well suited to shutting that mental time travel down a little bit and keeping you in the present moment and also to be more aware of what your worries are and what your ruminations are. So again, where it's loving kindness has many, many benefits, not as well suited to that situation. And so when we stay in our lab, mindfulness meditation is good for waiting. It's actually in contrast to loving kindness meditation, which didn't hurt anybody, but didn't help nearly as much. Interesting, because I would imagine you could be easier on yourself in the face of all of the uncertainty. That would be a benefit of loving kindness meditation if you're waiting for biopsy or something like that. I can imagine that would be the case. This was with

the bar exam, so it wasn't quite as, yeah, I mean, literal life or death at least. But yeah, I, you know, those are the only two groups we had in that study. So what I'm guessing is, is that everyone benefited a little bit relative to doing nothing, maybe in terms of self-compassion, which obviously is a component of mindfulness as well with the non-judgment piece of it. So, you know, everybody got that boost, but then the mindfulness people also got, and these were, by the way, not practice meditators. This was like 10 minutes, maybe once or twice a week. We wanted them doing it every day, but of course they did not. But even with that, it did seem that mindfulness

was even a little bit better. And again, I think it's because it does more tackle the sense of mental time travel and worry a bit better than loving kindness might. And I wonder too, if you think about, so if I'm trying to figure out what I should do, like, I think as individuals are thinking about, what practice should should I be adopting right now or what do I need today? I think you could think about what are my main struggles right now is that I'm stuck in my head and can't get out of this repetitive thought loop and super anxious.

Right. So that I think is when you want more than maybe the just the mindfulness meditation or is is that my spouse is driving me nuts. And we are just all fighting with each other in the house, maybe then the loving kindness meditation. Or maybe if you're like, I don't wanna do this anymore, I think it's done. Why am I following these rules? I think then loving kindness meditation might be really helpful to realize you're connected to others and that you need to act for the sake of others.

So I think as people are practicing meditation, just thinking about kind of taking a moment to say, what is it I need today? Where am I at? Checking in and saying, okay, maybe this practice. I imagine if you actually have a community that you talk to around meditating or someone who's guiding you, that would be really helpful because we aren't always great at knowing what we need, probably most of us aren't. So that's where it's always good to have someone else be thinking about this with you.

I know what I need pretzels in Disney Plus. Exactly. But the Penguin's movie on Disney Plus is so. And the elephant, I love their nature movies. It's like something I actually enjoy watching with my daughter. I know I got to get my son off Scooby Doo and get over to the nature movies that would make my life so much better. I had a question about for UK, you brought up a four pessimism, the benefits of pessimism.

What are your thoughts on the balance between optimism and pessimism and the current predicament in which we find ourselves? Yeah, great question. I have thought a lot about this. I mean, I've been thinking about this question broadly for like decades, but I've been thinking about it now because most of what I've studied when it comes to the benefits of pessimism,

how to do with a period of uncertainty that has a clear end. And so what we know with a fair amount of confidence at this point is that if you're waiting for something where you know when the news is coming or when the thing is ending, then having sort of shifting away from a general attitude of optimism

to a bit more of a pessimistic mindset and at the moment of truth, which could mean moments, but also even days or weeks, but depending on the time course, towards the end of it, picking could mean moments, but also even days or weeks, but depending on the time course, towards the end of it, picking up a little bit more of that preparation, rather than the optimism as healthy. It does in fact make bad news easier to take, it makes good news feel even better,

and actually even during the moments of feeling pessimistic, if you're doing it in the right timing, it doesn't actually hurt that much because it gives you a sense that you're controlling your future emotional states. It can actually reduce anxiety if what you're anxious about is being flattened by bad news. So it's great for that, but of course here we have this bizarre open-ended who knows when this ends kind of uncertainty, you know, it's not some piece of news we're waiting for. It's, you know, seismic shifts in our ability to handle this pandemic,

which could happen in a month, probably not, but maybe two years or never. And so then I really struggle actually to give good advice in terms of how to manage your expectations. But I do think what I'm doing at least, is trying to maintain as much optimism as I can, not wildly unrealistic optimism, but kind of a general sense of like,

hey, humans have survived worse than this before. We will probably in the end be okay, or at least most of us will. That sort of general positivity, I try to do that as much as I can, but then I kind of periodically, whatever that means for a person, maybe once every few days,

just kind of check in and like with myself and kind of make sure, am I gonna get blindsided by something here? Am I insufficiently prepared for, I have elderly parents, for example, am I insufficiently prepared for something God forbid to happen to one of them? Or am I insufficiently preventing bad outcomes for myself?

Do I need to think a bit more about my own preparation? By the way, I have to pause and say, my parents will probably listen to this and they hate when I call them elderly. They are youthful, older age people who are very well and I'm not well worried about them, I promise, I'm a dad, I swear. But, you know, if there are things that I feel like I really am, like, not ready for, then of course I should think about that and be prepared. But then I just don't think that's sustainable over the period of time that we're in without

incurring a pretty huge cost of misery. So, I think my best advice in this bizarre, open-ended long-term situation is find optimism everywhere you can and let pessimism in once in a while just to make sure you're ready for what's coming next, whatever in the world that might be. That's somebody who's employed defensive pessimism throughout his life. That actually strikes me as quite reasonable. Are there questions I should have asked vis-a-vis patients that I failed to ask? I think we got most of the important stuff. Yeah, agreed. Well, I'll do some cognitive reframing.

If we weren't in this situation, I might not have met the two of you. So, they're exactly one good benefit to find. Yes. Thank you both for doing this. Really appreciate it. More 10% happier after this. Life is short and it's full of a lot of interesting questions. What does happiness really mean?

How do I get the most out of my time, pure on earth? And what really is the best cereal? These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life is Short, with Justin Long. If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions like, what is the meaning of life? I can't really help you. But I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others. And that's why in each episode, I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists, scientists, and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life. We explore how they felt during the highs, and sometimes more importantly, the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay happy during some of the harder times.

But if I'm being honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff like if you had a sandwich named after you what would be on it. Follow life is short wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen ad free on the Amazon music or wonder yeah. Okay, thanks to Sarah and Kate. Let's bring in Sharon Salzberg. She's the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society and one of the founding teachers of the 10% happier app. She's a regular on this show. She's also written a bunch of books, including Real Happiness and Real Love. We talk here about how to use meditation to boost patience.

We talk about the difference between patience and passivity and we talk about how to be patient with yourself as well as others. Here we go, Sharon Salzburg. Well, thank you for doing this, really appreciate it. It's always nice to see you. It's always nice to see you too. So you've had a chance to read the transcript

of the conversation that our listeners will have just consumed. What are your general thoughts on meditation and patience? Meditation makes you more patient. And of interview, that's it. I used to say to myself early in my practice where it felt like nothing was happening, least I'm developing some patience, which within the Buddhist context is a high virtue. I mean, that's not a small thing. It's really a very big thing, actually. And of course, it's one of those qualities

that so readily misunderstood. It's hard to get. Even, you know, this is quotation from the Buddha that, a patient says the highest austerity, or sometimes translated as the highest renunciation. And we tend not to like either of those words, austerity or renunciation. So it's not that attractive mostly, but really it's considered a tremendous strength. Why? Well, I think it's tied into things like not only tolerance

and forbearance, but acceptance and perspective. It's like I never have raised a child, but you are in the process of raising a child. I'm assuming that when your kid is trying to walk and they fall down and they fall down and they fall down and they fall down. I don't know how frustrated they get or if they just are doing it, but how frustrated do you get? And can you accept that this is a nature of development? This is how things are going to happen, Mark. I also think of this story. Joseph Goldstein tells about his mother as she was getting older. And as a younger woman, she'd been tremendously adventurous. Like he always says, she went to Indy before I did. You know, she was very bold and audacious.

She went to India before I did you know, she was very bold and audacious and but now you know This is some years later and she was a vegan California and they were taking a walk and he said they got to a place that was The mildest of inclines ahead of them and she freaked out like I can't do that. There's too much for me I can't do that and he was too much for me. I can't do that. And he was complaining like, come on, you can do that. You know, like, it's nothing. It's really nothing. I'm pressing her. And she was just so resistant. And then he realized, oh, for her, it's like man Everest. You know, that's how she's seeing things. And then he dropped into the way things actually were in that moment, not holding on to the expectation of the past, and then real relationship can happen in that moment. So he had to be impatient with the new reality.

I have aging parents. You've met my parents many times. And I continuously having to remind myself that I'm not Interacting with the mom or dad that I remember. I'm interacting with the mom and dad that are here right now and That I don't know if it's patients or wisdom or just practicality, but it's incredibly useful You know there are those very touching stories about people whose parents has dementia and They say very touching stories about people whose parent has dementia. And they say, where's mom? And maybe the dad says, where's mom? And the now adult child says, well, she's

in a nursing home and dad freaks out. And an hour later, he asks it again. And the sun is like consistent. You've got to see things as they are, you know. And dad can't do it. So like the billionth time they say she went to the store or something. And it's just like, okay, here we are. This is a different reality.

So do you find that meditation, I mean, do you ever get impatient? Has it worked for you after all these years? I'm better. I'm a lot better. I mean, it has a lot to do with, you know, if you as a meditation teacher, if you're teaching a brand new student and they are full of doubt, because it's worth doing, you know, you have to understand this is the process. This is just how people feel and it's genuine and it's important to express and it's not really fair to say, well, I've had to answer that question 70,000 times and you know, like, it's also a visionary quality in that sense

and that you can have a sense of this is now for this person and it may well be that they grow and they change and it's not always going to be this way it's not fair to them to just categorize them as like a certain kind of person because that's their experience now or that's what they're relating right now. And that's been a beautiful evolution as a teacher, it's kind of allowing people to unfold at their own pace and not superimposing my own timetable on them. Or I think for anybody who's got a friend who's suffering and maybe self-destructive in terms of habits and things like that. Of course,

there's urgency in our wish that they change, but there also needs to be a kind of patience. It's like, you know, their life is not unfolding on our timetable too bad, right? But that's also the reality of things. What is the mechanism by which meditation? And this is a, can be a tricky question because there are different types of meditation. What is the mechanism by which meditation, and this is a, can be a tricky question because there are different types of meditation. What's the mechanism by which it develops this quality of patients for us? Well, I think with mindfulness practice, which is designed to help bring us closer to the experience, that's actually happening, and notice pretty quickly our assumptions and our add-ons and our interpretation and our projection into the future. Once we can see those more as they are arising, we have the chance of letting go of them. And without those, you know, like hurry up mom, why aren't you the way

you were 50 years ago, then we can, we're less drop into how things are. And that is the quality of patients. It's that kind of acceptance. Acceptance is a funny word too, because it doesn't mean you're enjoying the way things are, you know, that you're delighted like, great, you know, mom can walk up a hill anymore, or even that you're complacent or apathetic. It's not that either, but it's being so close to reality that that's the basis of what you say and do. This is the truthfulness of that.

And with loving kindness practice, I think we, which is a different methodology, we actually step into a different realm that may be less familiar to us than being nasty to ourselves and having super perfectionistic unrealistic standards and judging ourselves by them. We step into a realm of practicing what it's like to be kind to ourselves or to others. And so here too, we get to see those habits. First of all, just as habits. But also, it's not the only alternative that they can be very strong. And they're where we tend to live maybe.

But it's not the only way of seeing things. And the other way of seeing things are approaching ourselves and others is not stupid. You know, it's not just... It's not an anyway phony. It's just different. Let me pick these apart. I want to, I'll talk about mindfulness first and then we'll go to love and kindness. I'm a big fan of both.

As you know, it's actually your fault that I'm a big fan of both these. Yes, I'm so happy. Yes, and you had to exhibit a lot of patience with me over the years. So unmindfulness, I am not a patient person. I am rushing all the time, and I notice this, this is one of the things I have to be patient with myself about, the more self-awareness I have, courtesy of meditation, the more I notice

how much I am rushing. And I feel it as like a burning or a buzzing, a very uncomfortable buzzing in my chest if I'm paying attention. And it's, you know, it's even here a little bit right now. What do I have to do after this? Am I gonna, when am I gonna fit in a workout and when am I gonna fit in some meditation today

and blah, blah, blah, and then with the training of meditation that you've helped teach me, I notice it and then kinda blow it a kiss and let it go and it just comes back over. You have to keep doing that. It's not magic, but it's better than just being owned by it all the time. Am I describing the process accurately to you? Yeah, I never suggested you blow something to kiss. So I wouldn't dare. So we heard that. I added that on that. That's all me. That's really impressive. Like last time I spoke to you, I used the word heart and I immediately,

you know, it shivered just like, oh, I said heart. So I definitely have not suggested you blow something. But wow, this is great. Well, you know, with that sort of reflexive utterance on my part of blows, something I kiss, is actually the result of the combination of mindfulness practice and love and kindness practice. That's how it's showing up for me.

Instead of just seeing the rushing kind of gritting my teeth, noting it and quote unquote letting it go, I think what's happened over time with adding a lot of love and kindness practice in is that I actually view it with, you know, this is, I think I heard Jack Cornfield say this the other day, this is just the organism, however unskilledfully, trying to protect itself, you know, this is an old program in here. And I should give it some respect. I mean, it's, yeah. And sometimes it's useful,

not very often, but it's not trying to mess me up. It's actually trying to do the opposite. Yeah. No, I think it's a great attitude to have toward what may be things that are hindering us in the end, you know, or at least for now, not feel embarrassed about what we're thinking or, you know, putting ourselves down for it, it's like, hey, okay, you know, you can take a rest. That's okay. Yeah, I think that's a perfect description of the process because a lot of old habits arise and one of the things I've gotten a lot from my meditation practice, which maybe fits in, is the value of a moment of coming back or releasing, even if it has to be done again and again, because that's the kind of thing that one even if it has to be done again and again, because that's the kind of thing that one might easily decry,

like, oh, I blew it, I ended up running to get to the meditation cushion, and said, you know, I don't know how to breath, because I was rushing to meditate. But within that, there are moments of saying, take a breath, just relax, you know, and then we get caught up again, and then we relax again, or we step back, we have some spaciousness, we have some perspective, and then we get caught up again and then we relax again or we step back, we have some spaciousness, we have some perspective, then we get caught up again and mostly people put themselves down because of ultimately they did run to get to the meditation cushion or something like that, but every single moment when we step back, when we kind of regroup, when we recover is a very

valuable moment because that's really planting the seed of being able to do it again and again. And it's not nothing really to be able to let go of really burden some pattern of thinking and just be in the moment, even if it doesn't last for six hours. I wanna make sure I understand that. So we may catch ourselves having rushed or been impatient,

either well standing online, hopefully socially distanced at the supermarket or waiting on the phone line for the unemployment office to finally pick up or you know, having been impatient with somebody with whom we're locked down or with all the forms of impatience that are available to us and there are many. We might catch ourselves being impatient in those moments, tell ourselves a story about how we're never gonna stop being impatient. But actually, if we've got a little mindfulness on board,

first of all, that's what's allowing us to catch ourselves. And there may have been little moments throughout the alleged rushing where actually you did catch it midstream. And so actually you're there's 10% 20% 30% less momentum to the rushing during the time when you thought you were rushing. That's great. And those those moments being able to realize what's going on to begin again to come back to your aspirations, come back to your values, come back to even to your breath, which actually function in the same way. If you come back to your breath, you often do come back to your values and what you really want more than anything. And then you get lost again. You know, usually we only focus on the moments we get lost, but in fact growth and progress happen through those other moments, even though they don't last for long. And so that has also

helped me be patient because in the beginning that was the most ludicrous thought. The world to me, you know, like, you know, yesterday I could only be with three breaths. Surely I should be with 18 breaths today before my mind wanders. And tomorrow, before the eight, and then, you know, and that's the way we tend to think.

But to be instructed that the most important thing is the moment after your mind has wandered, after you've completely blown it, after you've gotten lost, how do you recover, how do you come back and come back again and again and again and again and it's not a waste of time, it doesn't mean you're doing it wrong, means you're doing it right. And to me that's where the loving kindness practice, which I will have said this in my introduction to you You've been the sort of premier purveyor of this kind of practice in the West and that's been it's an amazing service You've done

The loving kindness practice is key as an intertwining with the mindfulness because it's the moment of waking up That is the key moment in mindfulness, but that I think there is so much subtle or not so much not so subtle aversion, self-laceration, judgment, braided through those moments for most of us. But if you've got the warming up of the mind, loving kindness practice on board as well, then when you wake up you can recognize, oh, this is just a pattern. It is trying to help me. This anger I'm feeling right now is, in my case, like inserted by my grandfather probably,

and but maybe I can see it warmly because it is trying to protect me. And here we go, back to the breath. Yeah, no, exactly. And I think that's why when I started teaching loving kindness practice in the West, it was 1985. And a lot of people were kind of resistant. It felt flowery or like a feel-good practice. Or as I sometimes say, it was like a girly practice, you know. And I think it took a while,

I mean, I had just had a three month experience in Burma of only doing loving, kindness practice in a very immersive, intense way. So I saw within myself how it affected myself judgment and my fear and my sense of isolation and it was radical and important for me. And so when I came back and started teaching it and I met a fair amount of resistance and judgment. I just thought, I'm hearing not like I think it's important. And it's been of course gratifying to me in all kinds of ways. Over the years to see, really, it's exactly what you said that it's not that easy to be mindful. You know, look what we're asking people now in this time. Sit with your anxiety. Sit with your grief. Sit with this massive uncertainty and be with it all in a different way.

And it's not that easy, but it's such a tremendous strength. Even for a little bit of time, we can do that because that's what we're actually feeling, you know, and to be able to be with all of those feelings without hating ourselves for it or feeling ashamed of it on the one side or being completely overcome and defined by it so that we're choking, you know, it's too much, not falling into that either and finding that place in the middle, which is how mindfulness is sometimes defined. And I think all the loving kindness we can use will really help us.

It's interesting, right there in your story of having come back from India in 1985 and started to teach, you know, loving kindness meditation in the West and running into all sorts of obstacles and judgment, even in the Lovie-Dovey Buddhist world. There's patients in that, patients with the people with whom you're interacting and patients with yourself to maybe get over whatever doubt you were experiencing in the face of the doubts raised by others, et cetera, et cetera.

So it's kind of that story proves the point in and of itself. Thank you. And I think one of the things I like about really exploring patients is that it can seem so passive and that you're not going to keep acting or you're not going to protest or take a stand. It's like, should we be feeling patients toward people who are walking around New York City streets without a mask? I don't think we don't want to be consumed with ill will.

We need perspective, we need understanding. But I think people need to act in some way, whether it's a government official with a regulation or I understand in New York that the commentary is rather colorful when somebody's seen walking with that and asking and that other people are taking it upon themselves to in a very New York way to express themselves and I think that's appropriate, you know, that's correct. But okay, that's an interesting case study because I know you're saying that patients is not blind acceptance or resignation

passivity, but there are, I suspect, wholesome and unwholesome ways to act. So, I was using a bunch of expletives at somebody who's not wearing a mask. Is that kosher or is there a way to do it that makes sense? Well, there's always a way to do it. I mean, that's more skillful. I was just amused because it was some New Yorkers are claiming that with pride, you know, like, but, you know, you actually don't have to do that with ill will and sort of hatred. That would be really good idea. And there are far more skillful ways of acting in most situations. And if we're mindful enough, sometimes we can discern what they are. And we do the best that we can. But, you know, I just found that

rather amusing because I miss New York so basically. Well, I can tell you, I know you're up in central Massachusetts and I'm here in New York. It is weird. It's kind of a nightmare. I'm not going to lie to you. I mean, I'm not going to give up on New York City. I know you're not either, but it's hard. You know, everybody's wearing masks but it's just, it's hard. You know, every can't go to the, everybody's wearing masks.

It's just a strange situation. I know. I know. Go to the store and they've got plexiglass everywhere. And yeah, it's weird. But let's keep going with this patience and interpersonal relations, because I, yeah, we, there's the sort of level of being frustrated with people who are not taking social distancing as seriously as we would like them to the politicians we see on TV, but then there's also people that were locked down with. And so how would loving kindness and or mindfulness help us with forbearance, but not passivity in those moments. I think it's many levels.

One is the way we learn to communicate, which is not condemning. Hopefully, you know, like instead of saying, you're an idiot, I can't believe you're always leaving the laundry on the floor or whatever, you're putting away the dishes wet or whatever that irritant might be. It's actually, every sound so hackneyed and cliched, but it's actually expressing your

feelings, it's using eye language. I was really concerned when I went to get my bowl for cereal in the middle of the night having work constantly. It had all this moisture in it, and I'm freaked out about fungus or whatever. I find those things also difficult and annoying because they seem so formulaic, but learning to, and that takes tremendous patience

to be willing to express things in a way that are actually more vulnerable and therefore more honest. Like, I want it or I hope for, I would be so gratified if, you know, whatever. It's much easier to say you're an idiot and you never show up and you don't take care of anything. But if you are willing to do that, that's the whole other level of communication. And then I think there's a certain understanding even as we ask for something, even as we try to make a change in some way, that people have really, I mean, this is another cliche. So I hate to say it, but people really are doing the best that they can. And my colleague Sylvia Borsstein,

who I know you've talked to recently, always used to say that when we were teaching together, and I was like, oh, come on Sylvia, you know, like really? And she'd say, no, people are doing the best that they can. There was actually, I read a quote from maybe my Angelouf, who said, when you know better, you do better. And that was, you you know a form that I Thought oh right, you know same for me when I know better. I do better

And I think even just holding that vision as you're locked down with somebody or you're in communication with them Even as you express what you want what you need what you'd like to see how things might change It's having that understanding, really. People kind of aren't doing the best that they can. Let's help them do better if we can. I think for me, I have that understanding intermittently, but what has helped me boost that bedrock understanding, which can then level up to informing how you actually act,

is that in the practice of love and kindness, which your, whatever, it's a little bit clunky on some levels, but so is lifting weights, you're kind of systematically envisioning people and then sending them these phrases, may you be happy, may be safe, healthy, live with these, or may be free from suffering, depending on the flavor of love and kindness you're doing, or the flavor of Brahmid Vihara that you've chosen in doing that over and over and over again, you kind of just, you're training up the basic understanding that this is a human being, and you have, you're training up your capacity to see the best in them, to want the best for them, and just when I need it sometimes, that shows up for me, not always, but sometimes. your capacity to see the best in them, to want the best for them. And just when I need it sometimes that shows up for me, not always, but sometimes.

You know, I did a webinar, I guess you'd call it for international humanitarian aid workers a few weeks ago. And these are people, really people from all around the world who are in devastating conditions often and they can't work and, you know, their work is like a mission. They can't get into the refugee camps right now where their funding has evaporated and and these are activists and they can't act. And so they were in lockdown and very all around the world. And there was a whole level of all around the world. And there was a whole level of dismay at themselves, which was like an ad-on. You know, I shouldn't be this frustrated. I should have I should find a way where I can make a difference. I should, you know, here I am and it's hard with my family and it shouldn't be that way.

And it was that whole other level that actually was the most immediate burden in a way. That was extra and they had had a workshop a couple of weeks before with Parker Palmer, the educator, great human being. And at the end of his workshop with him, he had everyone unmute themselves so they could all hear one another and he had everyone say both to themselves and one another welcome to the human race. So they asked me if I could think of another one, you know, a pithy slogan to end my time with them and I said, not kind of like that one, you know, like, you know, when you get, that was pretty good. And encapsulates it all.

Welcome to the human race. Here we are. So that's Omni, that has the potential to be understood in an Omni directional way. Like you can say that to yourself when you're noticing something about yourself, you don't like, but you can say that to yourself about other people when they're behaving in ways that you don't like.

Patience all around. Yeah, patience all around. One last thing to ask you about, and I'm thinking of your neighbor up there in central maps, Joseph. He's got this whole wrap, and I'm sure you have your own too, but it's his that is just coming up in my mind right now,

and this is more on the mindfulness meditation tip. But of using rushing in our practice in and our life as a feedback to pull ourselves up and notice, can you from your own perspective talk about that? Because I think it's a great tactic. Yeah, I mean, when I did the podcast with you after I got out of the hospital last year, when I had sepsis and it was really sick. And I told you the story about how the first time I got up to walk was on a walker, up and down the hospital carters, as one does. And I had a physical therapist with me. And at one point, she said to me, it's not a race, you know,

you'll get all that further. If you just stop now and then take a break, that became my mantra because I realized a lot of times I'm just like racing. It's the way you describe, you know, this morning I've got to get this done and listen to the next thing. And I'm just like, you know, there's so much to do and I have to care of everything. And I realized I'd get a lot further if I actually would stop now and then not just being this forward propulsion all the time. So when I moved to my friend's house where I stayed for another two months and I would walk every day outside and first with a walker and then with a cane and just walking. That really was my mantra. I would just

stop. When I had a physical therapist with me they was like, stop. You know, when I had like a physical therapist with me, they'd say, why are you actually stopping? And I said, because I'm taking a break. And then I'm going to go on. And so that's one way of doing it. You know, and it's certainly recognizing that internal feeling of I'm way ahead of myself. I'm not actually embodied or present in this moment, and just coming back, you can actually take a break if that helps, and just kind of regroup, and then go forward again. And Joseph's point is that you can move quickly, but not rush. You know, that is a certain sensibility. It's a certain sense of being ahead of yourself. That doesn't mean you have to just creep around and never move quickly or never have a long

to-do list of things to accomplish you can. But I'd watch out for that internal sense because actually you lose focus and you lose presence, you lose balance, and you lose insight. We're just like getting the thing done and It doesn't really work though. Well So it's interesting. So just as Acceptance doesn't mean passivity and resignation Patience doesn't mean you're scaling back your ambitions or or your pace to some point that's glacial

Yeah, I don't think it does. I know you're, you miss New York, you wanna rejoin to human race. All of that requires patience. How are you doing with, because I think that's a level of patience that our researchers talked about, you know, they talked about, in the moment patience with, you know,

waiting on hold or waiting online interpersonal patients and then the sort of the macro patients required to get through this, the desire we all have to just have this thing and so we can get back to quote unquote normal. How are you doing with that level of patients say, because I know you love being out and doing things. Yeah, yeah. I'm a stranger on that way for a meditator. Well, I think it's the same skill I've been practicing forever, which is not easy to do, but it's really useful and it works on a moment-to-moment basis, which is when I start adding a future conceptualization in a useless way, like, what's it going to be like if I can't

get back to New York even by September? Not only am I here in the country with like a ladybug in the station, country life, but like what about my apartment, what about, you know, and it's impossible to know, it's impossible to deal with right now. And it only produces a kind of angst, you know, because I'm not only living the reality of now, I'm living the most grim possibilities of the future for me, because that's where one's mind tends to go. We don't think, oh, unhappy delight, like everything's safe, and I'm going to get back to New York,

and my life is going to be as rich and as intricate as it once was, and I'm going to be able to go to the theater, and it's just like, maybe I can continue and actually write a play. It's like, that's not where my mind goes, right? It's like, oh, no, you know, it's like that future. And even though everything is unknown, it's the worst possible image of the future. And I'm trying to bear it all at once and it's impossible. So I mean, I think if you go back to like Richie Davidson's research on physical pain and how the different between meditators and non-meditators,

all in FMRI machines, the season, doing some kind of pain, is that when the pain was withdrawn, the non-meditators would flip into a cycle of anticipation. When's it coming back? Maybe it will be worse. How about it will it be? And so they never got any rest, they never got any rest, but they never got a break. Whereas the meditators might have had as one does as a human being, or you can even say an animal,

a reaction to the pain, but when the pain was withdrawn, they had some peace. And they could just return to what actually was. And it's kind of the same mechanism. You know, that cycle of anticipation is usually dreadful. And it's unreal. You know, if it's one thing, if you're grappling with the kind of reality,

you're going to have to deal with part by part. But it's just anticipation. And so the patience comes from seeing, wow, that's just being lost in a world I have created. And you either say, let's create another world, let's create an alternative or you come back. And then that coming back and to your breath, to your body, to this moment, to connection

with those around you, there's something very complete in that moment because of the nature of the connection. You know, the contact is very full and that brings its own kind of relief. Yeah, it does. And then you just have to do it over and over and over. That takes patients too because you do have to do it over and over and over again. There's some great quotation from the Buddha. Is it something like, I think the literal quotation is goodness, but the way I usually describe

it is, the mind will get filled with qualities like mindfulness and loving kind of moment-by-moment, the way a bucket will get filled with water drop by drop. And I love that image from the first time I heard it, because right away I could imagine myself standing by that bucket. Either looking in it and thinking, is it gonna be great when it's filled and I'm floating down the streets and wearing my white sorry, I'm completely enlightened,

but not bothering to add the next drop, which is this moment, or very easily standing by that bucket and looking in it and thinking, it's really empty, it's a bleak picture. And again, not bothering to add the next drop, which is this moment. And since I started using that example and teaching, people have come up to me with these different iterations, like standing by the bucket, your bucket, and not even looking in it, but looking over the next bucket.

I'm thinking, oh, that's really full. A lot of people come up to me and say, I think my bucket has a hole. And I said, these buckets don't get holes, really. It's just the next drop and the next drop and the next drop. That's a pretty good place to leave it, I think. I really appreciate you doing this. I know you, we called you on short notice. So thank you for, for agreeing to do it. It's always a pleasure. I'm actually seeing you this afternoon too. This is my Dante. Oh, we're doing T-Page Live together. Yeah. Oh, nice.

Yeah. Awesome. This is, that's a really good news. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. Yeah. Big thanks to Sharon. Big thanks to the team who work incredibly hard

to make this podcast happen. Samuel Johns, our captain, our producer, our sound designers, our Matt Bointen, and Anya Sheshik of Ultraviolet Audio and Maria Wertel is our production coordinator. We derive a lot of wisdom from our colleagues such as Nate Toby, Jen Poient, and then Ruben. Also a big thank you to our ABC compatriots, Ryan Kessler and Josh Cohan. We'll see on Wednesday, we've got a great episode, my old pal and just mentor and in meditation and many other important things, the psychiatrist and author, Dr. Mark Epstein. See you Wednesday.

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