Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 363: How to Keep Your Relationships On the Rails | Kaira Jewel Lingo

Episode Date: July 12, 2021

Today’s episode is about a Buddhist tool for resolving conflict and keeping your relationships healthy. Today’s guest, Kaira Jewel Lingo, was an ordained nun of 15 years in Thich Nhat Hanh’s Order of Interbeing, and is now a lay Dharma teacher based on Long Island. She graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. and M.A. in Anthropology and Social Sciences. She’s edited a few books by Thich Nhat Hanh, including Planting Seeds: Practicing Mindfulness with Children. In this interview, Kaira Jewel talks about: the Beginning Anew practice (and how even skeptics can see the value in it); how Beginning Anew can strengthen relationships and resolve conflicts; the four steps of the practice; and her own experience with the practice, as both a teacher of it and a practitioner of it. If Kaira Jewel's insights on gratitude within the practice intrigue or inspire you, you might like a fantastic meditation we released recently on the Ten Percent Happier app called "Daily Gratitude Booster" by Matthew Hepburn. It's the perfect way to cultivate a regular practice of gratitude, which, like meditation itself, is a skill that you can improve. Check it out by downloading the Ten Percent Happier app wherever you get your apps (https://10percenthappier.app.link/install) or click the link in our show notes to be taken directly to Matthew's meditation: https://10percenthappier.app.link/DailyGratitudeBooster. Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/kaira-jewel-lingo-363 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. Hey, hey, today we're going to talk about a Buddhist tool for resolving conflict and keeping your relationships on the rails. I will admit a front here that I had a bit of a bad attitude

about this whole process we're gonna unfurl for you on the show, but that's often a good thing because I've learned that when my temptation to dismiss something arises, usually there's something worth investigating underneath. My guest is Kyra Jewel Lingo. She was an ordained nun for 15 years in the Tick-Not-Hon order of interbeings. She's now a lay Dharma teacher based on Long Island.

She graduated from Stanford University with a BA and an MA in anthropology and social sciences. She's edited a few books by Tick-Not-Hon, who in case you haven't heard of them, is a great Zen Master. One of the books she edited was called Planting Seeds, Practicing Mindfulness with Children. As you'll hear, she has a pretty slice since a humor that started to reveal itself as the interview proceeded, which made me like her even more. In the interview, we talk about the beginning a new practice, which is really the heart of the interview. We talk about how even skeptics can see the value in this practice, how it can strengthen

relationships and resolve conflict, the four steps to this beginning a new practice. We talk about chirogeals own experience with this practice as both a teacher of it and a practitioner of it. Quick item of business. If chirogeals insights on gratitude, intrigue or inspire you, I want to highlight a fantastic meditation. We released recently on the 10% happier app called Daily Gratitude Booster. It's by my friend and colleague, Matthew

Hepburn, who is phenomenal and will be on this show soon, I hope. This meditation is the perfect way to cultivate a regular practice of gratitude, which, like meditation itself, is a skill that you can improve. Check it out by downloading the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps, and you can just click the link in our show notes to be taken directly to Matthew's meditation. One tiny audio note before we dive in, there were some loud,

noxious background sounds when we record this interview, including some gnarly moments involving a rogue lawnmower. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the reality of recording in a pandemic, this interview, including some gnarly moments involving a rogue lawnmower. This ladies and gentlemen is the reality of recording in a pandemic. Just wanted you to be aware of that. It's not that big of a deal. It doesn't come close to drowning out the overwhelming wisdom of Kyra Juel Lingo, speaking of whom.

Here we go. Kyra Juel Lingo. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. You're here to fix all of my relationships, which I appreciate. Tall order. How do you know? For anybody, for anyone. Okay, got it. Okay. I'm not offended anymore. I was. So tell me about beginning a new, what's the history of this practice before we dive into the steps of it? Yeah, well, this started from the time of the Buddha. There was a practice every two weeks for monastics

to do a kind of checking in, reckoning, seeing how life was unfolding and making a man's practicing repentance for things that had gone off. So, it's a long, very long history, but my real experience with beginning a new commas from my time living in the community with Tick-N-Hon and the Plum Village monastic community where we would also practice every two weeks to sit down in a circle with a vase of flowers in the middle. This would be the nuns or the layw together amongst would do theirs together. And we would take time to basically refresh our relationships to begin again. And so there are several steps. And what we would practice as a group, as a community, were to water each other's flowers, to express our

appreciation. That's the first step so that we wouldn't take each other for granted and forget to nourish the beauty that was there among us. The second step is to express regret to say, you know, this thing happened, I didn't like that I said that or did that and I'm sorry. So to clear the things that can accumulate and start to make relationships really difficult, there's a third step that would happen only between two people, so we wouldn't do that in our every two-week practice.

But if there has been a conflict or a misunderstanding, it's a chance to clear that by expressing our hurt to the other person, that's a third step. And the fourth step is to share what's alive for us, what difficulties we're having, to sort of give people context. If there's something that's shifted in our life, that the people were close to they won't take it personally or project things onto us not knowing the backstory. This is a practice, you know, I learned doing as a nun, but I've done it now as a layperson in, you know, a couple relationship.

I've done it with my family members. I've done it with colleagues that I work with, done it with kids and families and teens and their parents and it has many, many applications, but it's really a chance to deeply appreciate the people in our lives. And it can save relationships. It's a practice that can keep things fresh and keep difficulties from growing to where they explode irreparably. I believe that. I do want to get a question out of the way, though,

from a skeptical standpoint. Sure. Brace yourself. All right. See on your face. She's like, okay, here we go. So I've done a non-zero amount of relationship work. Couples therapy with my wife.

Couples therapy with the CEO of 10% happier for many years. You know, we had an executive coach who would work with the two of us. Tilly broke up with us because he thought we now we could figure it out on our own. I've done, I did for a long time for about nine months of training to become a hospice worker within a Zen context. There were lots of, you know, dyads and things like that. And then lots of diversity, equity and inclusion work where there's a lot of sort of breakouts and, you know, one-on-one exercises.

So I'm not totally new to this kind of exercise. And yet, I always find that some people love this stuff and I get that. So I don't want to, in any way, disrespect the form here. But for me, just given my conditioning, I find that I slide into, oh my god, you're saying, I got to water somebody's flowers now. This is so forced, so earnest, so cheesy. Like, I have trouble getting over that. Sure.

And, yeah, I'm definitely critical of myself for that. But I have a suspicion that I'm not alone. So what would you say up front to people who may be, you know, kind of on my obnoxious end of the spectrum? Sure. That's important. It's the same as gratitude practice, right? Do you have a resistance to practicing gratitude in general?

Certainly not in general, because I've seen all the sciences show. Yeah, so this is just gratitude towards the people that you're with. Same thing. All the science that supports why it's important to be grateful for our lives in general, it applies to the people we live with, people we work with. Why not just extend it? It's not about flattery, it's not about saying things that aren't true. It's just about looking at the humans that happen to make our life possible and saying thank you, saying I'm not looking past you because I'm so busy, because I'm so preoccupied that I'm just taking your presence,

your very precious presence in my life for granted. It's a humility practice and it's normal that it would feel, it confronts our ego, because our ego wants to stay focused on us. And this is a chance now to focus on others. And it's good. It's a heart opening, heart growing practice. Part of, I think, the resistance is, you have to be vulnerable to express your appreciation

to someone else. And maybe it's like, okay, how can I be with this part of me that gets freaked out by that? You know, I probably didn't phrase the question correctly, because I don't actually have discomfort around expressing gratitude to other people, actually, really like that. It's more the whole beginning and new format as I was reading about it. So you're gonna, you know, you want me to say,

it was some flowers in the middle, I know that's optional. And do this four-part structure and one of the phrases is watery each other's flowers. It's the overall earnestness of the effort, the intentionality of it, all of the of it, all of the language that goes with it, all of that. Yeah.

Well, I think there's lots and lots of ways to do it that, you know, the monastic life is a very formal kind of life. A lot of things have a formality to them. And of course, now as I've transitioned out of monastic life, I love the essence of all those things that we did and I also love not doing them so formally. And so let me just tell you some stories of how I do beginning a new in a way that for me doesn't feel formulaic, although I understand that when you hear anything, like here the step one and now here's the step two.

You know that that can trigger a lot of things in many of us. So I went to a school and this was in the UK with I was a nun at the time we went with other monastics. We offered the staff and teachers a chance to do beginning a new. Mainly when I lead this for other people, it's just the first two steps. It's just expressing our appreciation for each other. You could just let go of watering flowers as a phrase,

if that doesn't work for you. Just expressing appreciation, yeah? First step, and the second was a chance to express any regrets, which is also totally optional. If there's no regrets, you don't have to say anything. So it could simply just be people sharing their appreciation. So it was the end of the week. The teachers, staff, 20 people or so, we got in a circle.

And people began to share what they were happy about in their community, working with each other, what they saw was really good about their school, the kind of efforts people had made that were really inspiring, really selfless, really kind, caring, and just to put it in context, everyone was tired when we started this practice. It was at the end of a day of many different workshops and events. People were amazed at the end how different they felt, how much more energized they were, how they felt more connected to each other, they felt more bonded, it really was a refreshment,

a restoration, and they said they didn't feel tired anymore. And that was my experience. We would always do beginning and new on a Sunday evening before the beginning of the next week. So it was very, very kind of tired at the end of all the things of that week. So sometimes I would kind of be, oh, beginning and new. I'd be tired and not wanting to go,

but when I would go, I would go. Nevertheless, I'd be tired and not wanting to go, but when I would go, I would go. Nevertheless, I would always come out of it feeling really glad I had gone. And what I observed is this phenomena. I feel like when anyone would appreciate someone else, it would be like a sprinkler in a garden, everyone would get watered. Everyone would get refreshed. So I got to see something in another person through that person's eyes that I had never seen. So then I'm like realizing, wow, I'm living in this amazing community

where people do all these wonderful, loving things for other people, I may not see them all the time, or they may not involve me, but here the community is watering each other and I would get watered. So all of my wholesome seeds and my consciousness would be stronger after sitting and listening to people share these things. So for anyone who struggles with any kind of set of lists, so this is what you do this time. At this point, first, then you do this and all it really means is whoever you want to do this with, whether it's your child or your partner or your co-workers or your parents or whatever, a friend just sitting

down or not even sitting down, you could do this as a walk. You could do this while you're on a training somewhere, just saying these things I really care about in you. What I find makes this especially sweet is I like to combine it now with my partner with a special drink like hot chocolate or chai or some couples might do it with a glass of wine or whatever. Like, making a special something, we just got a puppy and we're learning about positive reinforcement.

So every time she does something you like, you give her a treat. It's kind of like that. So, associate coming together to do this practice with a special thing that you wouldn't normally have on a daily basis. So I mean, that's really all it is. And with my partner, we do it every week. And it's just expressing our appreciations, expressing our regrets. We just do the first two steps generally.

And when things, difficulties come up through the week, we tend to address them pretty quick. So the beginning of it was generally this like very looked forward to a event on a Saturday morning. When it was cold in the winter, we'd always like a fire. We'd plug in Christmas lights. There was this like creating the atmosphere

and it would be 40 minutes, you know, there wasn't like an hour or I mean, if we wanted to do it longer, but basically, you know, put on timer, I talk for 20 minutes, he talks for 20 minutes. I'm a little bit pretending to be more skeptical than I actually am. I am a little skeptical. Not of the practice per se, but of a little bit of the sort of linguistic accoutrement, and also just the formality of it. I can sense some resistance too, but if I'm here, you're correctly. I hear one thing that you said, and then kind of maybe an implied, or at least maybe I'm

reading it into what you said, but the first thing is, like just customize it. Do it however you want to do it. You don't have to be super personicative about this. And the second is it works. And do you want to have good relationships or not? So maybe if you want to have good relationships, get over yourself. Or even better relationships. You may already have good ones. I'm close to my dad, but when I wrote him a love letter, naming all the things I appreciated about him, that brought a lot of joy, you know, that deepened things. So, I think maybe it makes sense to go through the four steps in more detail if

you're up for that. Why don't we do one at a time? You just go into greater depth about the first one, then I'll maybe ask some questions about it, and then we'll move on to the second. Sounds good. So in the first step, you are letting the person or the people that you're with know what it is that you really appreciate in them. I also want to say for when you are using this to practice with a conflict, this step you cannot skip it. And it's important that it be the first step. If you're sitting down with someone to work through something, you know, difficult that happened,

actually looking in to see what is it that this person does or is that's wonderful, helps you to come from a place where you're seeing the whole picture. Versus just, you know, we tend to get consumed by the negative. And so if they've done something that has hurt us, and that's all that we see that they are. So this is a really important, like for me, just like being a mature person to step back and say, well, there's always something that I can appreciate about this person that has happened beautifully or that I want to appreciate. And there may also be things that I have done that either contributed to the conflict or that were unskilledful myself. So those two things before going into, this is what's happened that has hurt me,

are really, that's a real teaching, you know? And they're in that order for a reason. So that's just about when you are using this to resolve a difficulty, but in any case, sitting down and really looking at the person, there's this beautiful book of Sister Chun Kongs on beginning a new, this is Tiktok Han's main assistant and a longest time student. But it begins with an intro from Tiktok Han.

And he says, you know, we always have to ask the people we live with. Do I know you enough? Do I understand you enough? And this opportunity to say what you appreciate in the person you're sitting in front of is about that. It's like looking and seeing, what are some things I haven't thought to appreciate that you're doing that are enriching my life. You know, in addition to the things that I do see, there are things that are happening all the time that, you know, really may not see. So it's about really seeing the person. Maybe in more depth than we may have time for in the busyness of our daily life.

So it's like slowing down to see who are you. Do I really see who you are? I'm the goodness in you. Because whatever we water grows, so if we're constantly harping on someone's weaknesses, that's what's going gonna get strengthened in them. But if we are regularly telling people, boy, you're really good at this. I really appreciate you for this.

That's gonna grow. So we're gardeners of each other. Each person is our garden. And so this is a chance to really make it clear. These are the things I really want to see get bigger in you because they are wonderful. If I don't water them they won't grow. So we actually have a big influence on what's manifesting in the other person's consciousness. So that's the first step of just taking the time to recognize and see,

and you know, in the retreats I've led for families, we always do beginning a new, in a four or five days, six, seven day retreat. We end with beginning a new. So the parents go out and they pick something in nature that represents something that they love about their child or their children. And the children with us, the staff, we help them make a little card where they express their appreciation for their parents. And then we all sit together and family by family. We usually sit outside. The children present their cards and the parents go around and they speak out loud in this group.

What is it that they really appreciate in their child? And I can't tell you how moving this is. To me, to many people cry, whether it's what they hear from someone else or whether it's not often that people do this in daily life. And especially, it's not often that people do this in daily life, and especially it's not often that people do it, where they're witnessed by others. So again, when one parent is saying something beautiful about their child, every other child's

wholesome seeds are being watered, all the other parents are getting nourished. It's like a shifting of the culture, because we've all been so socialized to focus on what's not going well and to speak those things. When things are going well, we don't say anything because that's what we think is supposed to be that way, but when it goes off the rails, then we say something. So this practice is so powerful, like I'll have kids that are age five, age six, they'll sit still for a whole hour because they're wrapped. I mean, they understand this is a sacred moment where each family is kind of doing a healing process.

So, the flower watering, that first step of sharing our appreciation, it's a very deep practice. It's especially powerful in a group. Just one other story, I'll share about it, also visiting the same school in the UK that I mentioned earlier. Some monastics had been there at the beginning of the school year and they had done a practice that's in the book, Planting Seeds, Practicing Mindfulness with Children that I edited. But it's from our Plum Village Children's program. You put the child's name in the center. It's a picture of the flower. They're in the center of the flower in a circle. Then you have big petals

enough for each of the children in the class. And you pass each piece of paper around the whole class and every student writes in one of the petals what they appreciate about that student, whose name is in the center of the flower. So they had done this at the beginning of the year. Every child got this piece of paper with all the things that their classmates appreciated about them. And so we came halfway through the year. Every child got this piece of paper with all the things that their classmates

appreciated about them. And so we came halfway through the year to visit again. And I came into their classroom. These were, I think, 10-year-olds. And this boy came up to me. And he took from his locker very carefully, preserved this piece of paper immaculately. And he opened it up and he showed it to me and he looked and he said, how are we going to get to do this again? You can see how much it moved him that he had a chance to do this with his classmates. He was dying to do it again. So it can bring so much happiness to a class,

to a group, to spend time this way, even ending a big project together with people that you work with, just taking time to let everyone have a turn where they get appreciated by the group. Just a couple questions on this step. One is how long would you take? And I know it's customizable.

What would you recommend? I'm sitting down with my wife or taking a walk with my wife or doing it with a close work colleague. Is this step generally? Each person goes for five minutes. And if you're doing this every Saturday morning, and you can go for 20 minutes with new stuff to appreciate. And I don't prepare. I don't think in advance what I'm going to say. I mean, you know, so much

happens in one day, you know, like he does the dishes or he picks me up from an appointment or I have this question I need his help with or he comes and you know asks me for my advice on something and shares how things are going with him or he takes care of our puppy. There's just, it's interesting Dan what happens what I notice is it's a snowball, right? When you start doing it, the process leads you to see more things as you're talking, because you're giving that part of your consciousness nourishment. So it starts to activate and it says, oh yeah, and there's this, oh yeah, and there's this. And if you wouldn't sit down and do that, you wouldn't have those insights into your person, whoever it is. But it's something about giving that part of your consciousness airtime, that it actually

has a lot more down there than we know. And it starts to become very fertile with more things than you would have thought when you sat down. So, that actually goes to one of the other things I want to ask you about was earlier on, this is a few minutes ago now, you were talking about how you want to sort of water the parts of the garden in your whoever, your interlocutor, if it's your partner or your colleague or a child or whatever you want to, if you're talking about the good things they're doing, then that's the part that will grow in them. But it also seems that you're

taking care of your own garden at the same time, as you just indicated, that you're going to grow the part of your mind that sees the goodness in which counteracts, and this is this shows up in gratitude research generally. It counteracts our evolutionarily wired negativity bias. So powerfully, so powerfully, because it's like you look with almost a different pair of eyes. You're looking for the good. You're looking for things you've missed. And one thing really, if you think of the seeds in the soil of our mind, when one gets

activated, it vibrates and activates all these other wholesome seeds. So then you have a snowball. And it is very much, you know, it has a healing effect on us, not just in the other person, and a strengthening effect. And what's so important about this step is when you do it regularly, when the inevitable misunderstanding and unskilful things happen, it's so much easier to deal with them because you have this buffer. You know that the person you care about sees your goodness.

So when they say, look, you just really messed up. You don't take it as personally. You don't feel like it's a character flaw. You know, okay, I had an unskilledful moment. Let me do better because you've been receiving all this really yummy watering. So you can handle some pruning. Well, that actually brings me to the other thing I was going to ask you about, which was even, you know, way back now chronologically, you talked about how this is especially important

the first step, the gratitude, the expression of gratitude, if you're using beginning a new to resolve a conflict. And increasingly as I've gotten more training in communication skills, I really like to think about it in terms of the brain, which we want to do is not activate the amygdala, the stress, the fight or flight aspect of the brain, because then the prefrontal cortex shuts down. We just, we know this. And it just strikes me as a great way to prevent amygdala hijacks to you say, yeah. That's a great way to see it completely. I mean, just anytime anyone says,

I need to talk to you. Yes. It's like, yeah, it's a big response, but we can say those things in other ways, right? That help the person stay online and help us stay online in terms of our prefrontal cortex. Yeah, wonderful. Okay, so let's do step two. Yeah.

So this is a chance to express our regret. Step two. Yeah. So this is a chance to express our regret. And if you think of something that you've done that you regret as being like a pebble, I think a lot of times we can say, oh, it's not a big deal. And we just don't mention it.

We ignore it. But over weeks and months and years, all those pebbles accumulate. And they lead us to actually think poorly of ourselves, because there's this kind of a knot inside that's been growing, and they also can create knots in someone else that we're close to that we live with or work with. So I really see this as like you want to clean your house on a regular basis. You want to clean the relationship. You want to say, look, there are things that happen because we're human that are always going to happen, that let's clear these up, let's not let them accumulate and start to damage.

They can eventually start to damage even the core of the relationship. So even small things, that time when I spoke more sharply than I wanted to. I'm sorry for that or I was rushing and I wasn't so present in this moment or I really didn't notice that things were happening in this way for you and I wasn't there to support you the way I wanted to be. So, I mean, again, just what's genuine,

you're not like digging for stuff that's not there, but just if there's something that you see that you, you know, would like to make amends for. What I noticed when I would do this in the Sangha in the community was there could often be things you felt badly about that maybe nobody else was upset at you for, but you're sitting there carrying this weight around. And in beginning and new, you have a chance to let it go.

And you may hear from people, oh, that wasn't a problem for me at all. So sometimes it's actually a time to just clarify, am I perceiving things correctly in terms of how things are landing for you? And when it has landed in a harmful or inconvenient way for others, it's just really important that they know that you saw that, that you don't wanna keep doing that. So it really is a way to keep tension from accumulating from eventually exploding.

And with parents, it's profound when parents are not able to be humble and also express their regret to their children. It can really validate the children's experience. No? It takes away some of the hierarchy for a parent to just be, yeah, I'm not stuck, I'm sorry. And sometimes that comes with, will you help me in this way so that I don't burst out like this or...

And again, when one person begins to soften enough to say, I'm sorry about this, it can. I've seen it do this, doesn't always do this, but it can water that same energy in others. So then the parents saying, I'm sorry about this, and then I'll watch the child say to their sibling, I'm really sorry that I've done this, which they wouldn't have done otherwise.

Right? So we're so interconnected. And when one of us begins to let our hearts open enough to say, look, this wasn't right. I want to try doing that better. It's possible, you know, not guaranteed, but it's possible that, you know, you're modeling that for whoever else sees you do that. So that's extremely powerful. That's the thing I think that influences people the most according to research is other

people modeling it. If they see other people doing it, they're more likely to do it. I want to get to Steps 3 and 4, but let's take a quick break. Sure. And I want to say, and we come back, I want to talk about Steps 3 and 4, and then I also want to ask about whether there are scenarios or relationships where this practice is not appropriate. Sure.

So we'll be right back with that. Much more of my conversation with Kyra Jule Lingo right after this. Hey, I'm Aresha, and I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wundery's podcast, Even the Rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about drag icon RuPaul Charles. After a childhood of being ignored by his absentee father, Ru goes out searching

for love and acceptance. But the road to success is a rocky one. Substance abuse and mental health struggles threaten to veer Ru off course. In our series RuPaul Born Naked, we'll show you how RuPaul overcame his demons and carved out a place for himself as one of the world's top entertainers, opening the doors for aspiring queens everywhere. Follow even the rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. Alright, we're back. Let's talk about step three, which as you said, I believe you said earlier, is steps three and four are optional. Yeah.

If there's been a conflict and you want to just, you know, work through it with the person, then you would do beginning and new just with the person you had a conflict with. So say you're living in a family and you got into a fight with your sister. You wouldn't do these three steps with anyone else present unless you were asking someone to kind of hold space for you both who was neutral, who was kind of impartial person that you both trusted. If you felt that it would get too heated with just the two of you, you could have a third person be there as your support or you both could bring a support person who could just be there to listen and support

you to stay present. So this third step of expressing your hurt only happens with the person who was part of that situation of hurt. So this wouldn't be done in a larger group. And so this is a very important step. We need to be able to tell the people in our lives that we've been hurt because that's often what leads to real breakdown and communication and a breakup of a relationship is that we haven't been able to say, you know, either we say it in a way that creates more of an out, like an outburst or we suppress it. But there's a middle way, which is to say, I care deeply about you. These are the things I really treasure in you. These are the things I see I have done that haven't been helpful to our relationship. And this thing happened that I was really hurt by. So the way we want to say it is not blaming, not judging,

taking responsibility for whatever our role was in the situation, but letting them know when you did this, when you said this, this is how I felt, this is how it landed for me. Maybe you didn't mean it that way, but it impacted me like this. And I want you to know because, I mean, it's so painful if you're the one that's hurt someone else and you never know about it. And somehow just this person starts avoiding you and breaks off the connection and you never know why, right? So it's giving them a chance to know you and not keep stepping on your toe in that way, because they don't probably want to be stepping on your toe in that way,

but they may not know that that's what they're doing. And so you're giving them a chance to be in right relationship with you if they choose. So it's a really important step. Can bring about a lot of healing. Of course, both people have to be ready to do this step. So I'll tell you another story of a relationship I had with a sister when I was a nun that I was, you know, close friends with, but also had a ton of conflict with. I later learned the term frenemy. I was like, oh, that's what we were. And so there was, you know, I have so much trouble imagining you have

any conflict with anybody, but okay, I'll suspend disbelief. Well, I definitely have my stuff, that in this case, I think this person was a difficult person for many people. I'll say that, not that I was perfect at all, but what I saw was when I would come to her and offer what had hurt me, it always backfired. And it was because as I looked more and more into the situation, I saw that she had just had so much suffering in her life way more than I did. And I realized I really needed to change my perception because I was actually building up resentment in myself by always complaining internally to myself about her. Like I remember one time at breakfast, she came down late for breakfast and I was like, there she is down late for breakfast and I was like there she is late again

And then something in me made me ask myself well if she had been on time what would you have said and Right away. I knew I would have found something else to be critical of in her so I Started to see oh my gosh part of the problem really is me and me being so critical of her Yes, she has a lot of anger in this case and can be really harsh in her speech, but I'm also contributing. I'm feeding this resentment. So when I saw that and I saw how basically she just couldn't take criticism, you know, it wasn't productive. I realized, let me just really water what's good in her. And the next time we had a conflict, I tried to settle myself without asking her to acknowledge

what she had done that had hurt me. And I just told her what I really appreciated in her. I didn't try to ask her to change her behavior. And that became my strategy. My main strategy was just to tell her how wonderful she was. And what I experienced was she was a walnut. I was getting the shell for so long. And when I started to just tell her what I really saw was good in her, which

was genuine. I wasn't making anything up. I got the meat of the walnut. And she started to be so much more loving and so much more kind and so much more sweet. Because she was realizing this person sees my goodness. So she wasn't getting so hardened and defensive and attacking. And of all the people that I'm really in touch with after I left the monastery, it's her that I talk to most regularly that I have, you know, a really deep bond with now. And she was the person who I thought I suffered the most with even 10 years ago or something. And so it's some discerning to see if the person we're having difficulty with is that we'll actually serve to point out what's not going well. It's not to take down the other person. It's not to make them smaller or to paint yourself

as a victim, even if you really were the one who was harmed. Still, all your words are coming from the intention to rebuild. And if the other person is in that place, then there's at least a possibility that a deeper understanding can come about. This isn't a practice that works perfectly every time. And as we'll get into, there are moments when it's really not appropriate. It's not the right tool to bring out. But if both people are putting in the internal work to see what is it that I care about in this person, how do I see I'm responsible for some part of the breakdown here? And

then both people can say, you know, this was what hurt me. And then when the other person speaks about what was hurt, and then we just listen. We don't correct them. We don't. I mean, we just give them a chance to share. Sometimes it's appropriate in that moment to say, if they would like that, if we feel calm and stable, we can say, okay, actually, in this situation,

this is what was going on for me, and this is why I spoke that way. There can be a kind of natural back and forth of like, oh, okay, I get it, and I understand, or we can just say, I'm sorry, I'm really sorry, that I caused harm for you like that, you know, and so we can repair it right then. That can happen. Or if the other person is saying things that actually have a lot of misperceptions in them, we may just want to let them release what's inside of them. You have to judge if they're able to take in a different perspective in that moment or not. But often we advise waiting to correct someone's misperceptions to say, I heard you, so you

make a time, at the end of that beginning and you say, can we meet again in a few days or next week? And then you have a chance to say, I really, I heard you, I hear how much this hurt you and I just want to clarify, this wasn't what was happening in my experience and actually that thing that you perceived in this way, it actually happened like this. But we want to kind of not enter into a back and forth, know you're wrong, that's not what happened, because then it's just like an argument. So we want to give space for the hurt to be expressed. If it's something that can easily be resolved and apologized for, or if you can take responsibility,

we can do that in that moment. Or maybe they ask us, or we might ask them, well, what were you intending when you said this or did this? And so then a conversation can perhaps clarify something we don't understand. But if there's still kind of some intensity, then we may not want to correct what we're hearing as in this perception until another time a few days later. I'll just share with you some advice that I've gotten from my communications coaches shout out to Dan and Mudita.

They had this concept of linear causality, being a bit of a, not a bit of a, but almost entirely a wrong headed way to think about things. And so they have a big injunction against using the term, you made me feel. It's more like when this happens, I felt the following way.

Yes, right. So exactly. It's more like when this happens, I felt the following way. Yes. Exactly. I like to use the nonviolent communication setup of when you said or did this, I felt. That's where you're taking responsibility. We felt that. They didn't make us feel that way. We felt that because we have that seed in us and it arose at that time.

That emotion in us is the first cause of our experience. They are the second, just the trigger, but we're responsible for us feeling that. So when you said this or did this, I felt this way because I have this need. I don't always do that whole thing, but I liked it exactly as you said. I like to not say, you made me feel this way, but when this happened in this way, this is how I felt. And it's also nice to even say things like, I know this isn't probably how you were experiencing it, but this is how I was experiencing it. You know, like giving the person the benefit of the doubt to just say, maybe this wasn't

at all what was in your mind, but this is how it was landing for me. Because we all know what that's like when we make this crazy story about the other person in our mind, right? When we're not in that most balanced frame of mind, when we're hurt, when we're reactive, and we really put a lot of stuff onto the other person, it can kind of be even humorous to just be like, oh, I know, I was thinking all these thoughts and it's kind of be even humorous to just be like, oh, I know I was thinking all these thoughts and it's nothing at all related to reality,

but I just need you to know this is where my mind went. It's like this revelation, if the trust is there, we're actually saying, look, these are some places where I get triggered. And when this kind of thing happens, I go right into that place. It probably has nothing to do with you, but I just need you to know. I went right to that whatever really reacted place. I think there's magic in that. I mean, we had a guest on a while ago,

now probably 18 months of a, Brunei Brown is a big best-selling author. And she says that there's this magic phrase that she and her team use several times a day, which is the story I'm telling myself is. And I love that and why use it a lot. But the CEO of 10% happier Ben Rubin, who's a close friend and close colleague, one day he and I were talking and I was, he could tell I was anxious about something, but that I wasn't saying it because I was worried that it would trigger him. And he was like, no, no, no, let your amygdala speak. And it was another magic phrase, which is, you know, everything I'm about to say under the rubric of letting my amygdala speak, it's all been shouted out in advance as story.

So it doesn't land as accusation. And then you're not triggering the other person's amygdala. That's beautiful. I love that. Yeah. So step four is what? So step four is really like, this step you can do in a group. It's not necessarily related to a conflict. It could be that you just do steps one, two and four

in a family, in a couple, in a group. Step four is really saying, look, these are some of the things that are happening for me in my life. These are some of the difficulties I'm going through. This is sort of the milieu that's influencing me right now, especially if there's anything challenging. So if you had a difficult conversation with your parent, your spouse, or your friends at work might not necessarily know that you were carrying this heaviness. But it's influencing you.

It's influencing how you interact with them. You might not even notice them because you're so caught up in that. And they could take it personally, right? So it's a way to just let people know, look, this is sort of what's happening. I'm worried about this health condition someone I love has or, you know, I hurt my back, I'm not feeling so well or I'm really tired, I can't quite figure out what's going on but I don't feel quite myself. So I just,

it's just a way to kind of let people know what's happening for you that could be helpful for them to be more supportive, to be more understanding, to not take any changes in your behavior personally. So it's again, this like airing out all these steps or like airing out helping undo any misperceptions that may be there. So when I hear that this person I care about has just had this really bad news, I understand why they haven't been responding to my emails, which I was starting to take personally. So it's just a chance to like, okay, got it. I know that's where you're coming from, and now I can just be here for you.

So that can happen if there's something that needs to be mentioned. Again, it's optional if there's nothing really in the field. That's not a step that, for instance, me and my partner tend to do that much because those are the kind of things that we tend to just talk about when they arise, but it actually can be helpful. I think we said we wanted to actually bring more of the full practice into our Saturday mornings to help just look at our whole relationship that past week. Let me just explain why we just started with the first two and there's a wonderful

Dharma teacher in Germany, Annabel Zinser, and she and her partner, when they began their relationship, they just did the first two steps, just expressing kindness, appreciation, and regrets. And it was to give the relationship a chance to really strengthen and solidify in the beginning a new time. And so I took that from her. So then I suggested to my partner, why don't we just do the first two steps? And now we've been doing it for a good more than six months or so.

And so we both felt, well, let's start doing more of the practice, where we also share, you know, these are difficulties I'm having. Or this is something that I didn't quite understand why you did this or said this. But I would suggest starting in with people who may not know much about mindfulness practice or who may be unfamiliar with this kind of thing to just start with appreciations and regrets, but then as the ground gets more solid, you can bring in, I mean, and actually, that fourth step, it's not necessarily something

so challenging. You could bring that in right away if it's appropriate, but it's the third step that maybe could take some time. But the fourth step of sharing what's going on with you can really also support understanding when there's conflict, when you share your hurts. So all of those really can support each other.

But there's one thing I wanted to say down about an experience that I had recently in beginning a new... I just wanted to say like success in this practice doesn't mean the relationship needs to continue. So I just want to make that clear that if something has broken down, you can like for me what I realized in this process of doing beginning a new, I realized I cared about this person, I saw the goodness in them, I saw the things I had done that had also led up to the conflict. We did a beginning a new, and it was really clear to me that I didn't need to keep being

in relationship with them, because that wasn't actually supporting, there wasn't enough strength there to support what was being asked, what we were trying to do. For me, it was also a learning of like, it doesn't mean that the beginning of a new wasn't successful or didn't work because we're deciding not to continue on in the relationship that we had before. It was a, I think, a very heartfelt honoring of what we had experienced together and then a parting of ways. So it's not that everything that's all the relationships are supposed to continue the way they were.

But beginning a new can still be a useful tool to say, thank you, I learned a lot. I wish you well. And goodbye. Another spin on this, now that we're sort of adding perspective on the practice here, having gone through the four steps is, and I'm just imagining this is true, but you'll tell me if it isn't. It may be the case that people try this.

And step two goes off the rails because I say, I'm sorry for X, Y, or Z, and the person I'm doing it with gets triggered by the apology because it's not enough for a reminds of them of what a jerk I am or whatever. That doesn't mean you should give up on the thing. It'd be once in a while that it might not go well, but that doesn't mean it overall isn't a useful exercise.

Yeah, totally. I mean, first, let me back up and just say, it could be that you want to do beginning a new with someone who doesn't want to do beginning a new with you or who isn't ready or even who isn't alive or who isn't whatever, any more in your life. One beautiful thing that Tick-N-Out Hun says is that reconciliation takes place within oneself. But actually, we can do the reconciliation in ourself to a large degree. If we know ourselves well, if we know how to come back to ourselves

and take care of what's in us, so we can do the steps of appreciating the person, acknowledging any of our contributions to the difficulty. And basically, it's a forgiveness practice. Beginning a new can lead us to coming to a place of forgiveness. And even if we can't meet and talk or directly do this with someone, we can still be helped by these steps. And even expressing our hurt, in my case, you know, we can, I'm a Buddhist

in front of a Buddha or the Buddha in myself, I can say, this really has hurt me on struggling with this. We can touch the earth. We can ask the earth to help us hold the hurt. We can tell ask the earth to help us hold the hurt. We can tell something, someone we can release that in some way and say, I really want to heal this. I want to learn either to forgive this or to somehow be reconciled in myself because as long as we're not reconciled in ourselves, we are causing our own suffering. So that's one piece, but in this question you asked, there's going to be ways that it may not click with the other person. And those are learning moments too, to be present for. Okay, I said that, they reacted in this way, okay. So, was that something that they were bringing to this, that I need to be aware of?

Was this something I was bringing? And so, I think this, you know, the real slowed downness of this practice, that's part of the steps, is just to not let it speed up and everything merge into this one thing. It can help us to just track. Okay, maybe we pause. Now, isn't a good time to continue? Or let's each go back and reflect, and then after a little time of looking, we can come back and see what was it that led to that painful. So totally, yeah, you can take time to just see what is it that's not working here, what is it that how are we rubbing each other

the wrong way? And you know maybe things need to lighten up a little. Maybe we're taking it too seriously or we're getting too bogged down. Or like I've experienced sometimes apologies that feel irritating because I'm like, you did just nothing, let it go, it's no big deal. It's kind of like, don't be so hard on yourself or don't go into this sort of, maybe your own sense of doubting yourself too much.

So then I can sort of, in whatever skillful way I can, just try to support, say things, do things in a way that support more self-confidence in the person. Well, I wouldn't necessarily say what I just said to you to them, but I have recognized that sense of irritation when someone gets too much into the expressing regrets. You know, because I'm like, you don't need to feel so bad. I don't feel bad.

So we want to just care for ourselves and care for each other. And maybe if we notice things getting sort of too heavy or too sticky, then what is it that would help? Maybe it's going for a walk and doing beginning a new on a park bench with ice cream, you know, or maybe it's keeping it shorter, like just a 10 minute exchange. Or maybe it's doing it longer, more in depth. I mean, it depends on what it is

that's coming up, because maybe those things that are not clicking are indications of something else and to be attended to. Just before we go, the question that I put on the table earlier, are there situations or relationships in which you would recommend against using this tool? I mean, in general, I would just say both people should be ready to do it and have enough tools on their own enough in a sort of self-knowledge enough in a sort of self-knowledge that they're not going to dump on the other person. So you want to really make sure that you're not like at an eight or nine or ten on the scale of intensity of anger or resentment or bitterness. You want to be at like a five or lower. And it's not that you are suppressing your hurt, your difficulty. When you express your hurt in the beginning and you may cry, you may feel the intensity grow as you're expressing,

but you wanna have done enough work before you come into a beginning and you, that you're not like raging, wanting to strangle the other person, that doesn't work. And both people have to kind of have some kind of awareness that we are coming together because we would really like to to resolve this. But you know, there are many situations

actually down where if there's any abuse involved, I mean, if there's any real inability on one person's side to respect the dignity, the safety of the other. This isn't where I would start. Sometimes I feel like people in spiritual practices judge themselves if they have a really difficult relationship that hasn't been resolved or if they hate someone, like, that's okay. We work on that, but it doesn't mean we go try to put ourself in danger or expose ourself to the most toxic, most harmful person in our life because we're trying to practice

all these virtual teachings. Yes, we are going in that direction to where nobody is put out of our heart, even the people who have hurt us most deeply. But I think we would only do this process with someone who respected us, who we respected. And felt there was enough trust to be vulnerable with, because if someone is being abusive or has whatever kind of psychological reality that doesn't allow them to be really stable enough to witness and be taking responsibility for their own actions, then this wouldn't

really have limitations because this is about building trust. It doesn't mean that it has to be this super wonderful relationship. Beginning a new can really transform difficult relationships, but there has to be some kind of a psychological stability and willingness to bring about some kind of amending on both sides. So I guess there are quite a few situations which wouldn't qualify. It doesn't mean that in the future those relationships couldn't come to a place where they might be safer, but we would want to respect the limitations. All in all, though, notwithstanding my initial,

somewhat playful semi-serious skepticism, I'm fully sold. I think there's a lot to recommend this practice and I really appreciate you coming on to talk about it. Before I actually let you go, though, can I push you to kind of plug a little bit if people are interested in books you've been involved with? I know you have an upcoming book that we're going to have you back on the show to talk about in greater depth. If you've got website or talks or events, can you just let everybody know how they can get more of you? Sure. Just my website chirojoule.com, which is I need to put more energy into keeping updated,

but I do have a couple of different things coming up this May, June, some teachings, and some retreats in the fall. And you edited a book on children? Yeah, planting seeds, practicing mindfulness with children. As the book I mentioned, and there's a couple other books that I have writings in together. We are one that's by Tick Not Hon, teaching some retreats for people of color. I have a chapter in there and I edited that book. Yeah. And it's just so everybody has it. The name of the new book that's coming out in October.

We were made for these times, 10 ways to skillfully move through change, disruption, and loss. Sounds like we're going to have a lot to talk about when you come back. In the meantime though, Hardy, thank you and great to meet you. Oh, you too, Dan. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks again to Kyra Jewel, really enjoyed meeting her and she's got a new book coming out in the fall, so hopefully she'll come back. This show is made by Samuel Johns, DJ Cash, American, Bike Mama, Maria Wartell, and Jen Pliant with audio engineering from Ultraviolet Audio. As always, a big shout out to Ryan Kessler and Josh Kohan from ABC News.

We'll see you all on Wednesday. I think you'll be happy to hear what I'm about to say, which is our guest on Wednesday is the venerable Joseph Goldstein. So, we got a goodie for you coming up on Wednesday. venerable Joseph Goldstein. So we got a goodie for you coming up on Wednesday. Hey, hey prime members, you can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with 1-replus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.