Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 363: How to Keep Your Relationships On the Rails | Kaira Jewel Lingo (2021)

Episode Date: March 30, 2022

This episode explores a Buddhist tool for resolving conflict and keeping your relationships on the rails. This tool, known as the Beginning Anew practice, was designed by the Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, who died back in January, and who we are celebrating this week on the show. On Monday’s episode, we spoke with a long-time student of Thich Nhat Hanh, Brother Phap Dung.Today’s guest is Kaira Jewel Lingo. She was an ordained nun for 15 years in Thich Nhat Hanh’s Order of Interbeing. She's now a lay dharma teacher based on Long Island. She graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. and an M.A. in anthropology and social sciences. She’s also the author of a recent book called, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons on Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption. This interview discusses the Beginning Anew practice and: The four steps of the practice. How even skeptics can see the value in the practice. How it can strengthen relationships and resolve conflict. Kaira Jewel's own experience with the practice as both a teacher and a practitioner.Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/kaira-jewel-lingo-repostSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, my fellow suffering beings. I am repeatedly struck by how often we humans, myself included, find ourselves looking for happiness in all the wrong places. We assume consciously or subconsciously that we'll get happiness from boosting our resumes,

toning our bodies, or getting dopamine hits from shopping, social media posts with lots of likes, or whatever. Not that any of the foregoing is necessarily bad,

but study after study shows that what really makes us happy is the quality of our relationships with other people. As the great couples counselor, Esther Perrell once said right here on this show, the quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life. And yet, well, all of this is so true as to be a trueism. So many of us overlook it. The good news here is that relationships, or you might say love, or you can even use words

such as authenticity or vulnerability or intimacy, none of which I particularly like, but they'll do the trick. Anyway, relationships slash love, these are skills you can hone through meditation and any number of off-the-cushion practices. Today, we're gonna talk about a Buddhist tool for resolving conflict and keeping your relationships on the rails. I'm gonna admit up front here that I had a bit of a bad attitude about this whole process that we're gonna unfurl for you here on the show, but that's often a good sign

because I've learned that when my temptation to dismiss something arises often there's something worth investigating underneath that. This practice was designed by the great Zen Master Ticknot Han who died back in January and who we are celebrating this week on the show. If you missed Monday's episode, we spoke to a longtime student of Ticknot Han, brother Fap Young. Go check that out. He's amazing. Today's guest is Kyra Jewel Lingo. We actually first recorded this interview many months ago, and we're reposting it this week in honor of Ticknott Han.

Kyra Jewel was an ordained nun for 15 years in Ticknott Han's order of interbeing. She's now a lay Dharma teacher based on Long Island. She's also the author of a recent book called We Were Made for These Times. As you're going to hear, she has a pretty slice sense of 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 whole discussion. We talk about how even skeptics can start to see the value in this practice, how it can strengthen relationships and resolve conflict. We talk about the four steps to the beginning, a new practice, and we talk about Kyra Jules'

own experience with this practice as both a teacher of it and a practitioner. One tiny audio note before we dive in, there were some loud of not just background sounds when we recorded this interview including some gnarly moments involving a robe, lawn mower, this is the reality of recording in a pandemic, just wanted you to be aware of that. It's not a big deal though, it doesn't come close to drowning out the overwhelming wisdom of chirogeual lingo. We'll get started with her right after this. 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 Hey y'all is your girl Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress singer and entrepreneur on my new podcast baby this is Kiki Palmer I'm asking friends family and experts the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad. Where did memes come from? And where's Tom from MySpace?

Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcast. Kyra Jewel-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 anybody.

Okay, got it. 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 comes from my time comes from my time living in the community with Tick-N-Hon and the Plum Village, a 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 the laywomen together, the monks 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 it's, 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, 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 lay person 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 teams 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 and 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 gotta water somebody's flowers now. This is so forced, so earnest, so cheesy. I have trouble getting over that. Sure. 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

kind of on my obnoxious end of the spectrum? Sure, that's important. It's the same 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 up with gratitude practice. 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 going to, 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 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's the step one, and now here's a 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 and 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 or 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 really 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 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 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, you know, 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 coworkers 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 you know 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 and it was generally this like very looked forward to event on a Saturday morning.

When it was cold in the winter, we'd always like the fire, we'd plug in the 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 the 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 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 a maybe an implied or at least maybe I'm reading 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 was really, that brought a lot of joy, you know, with that deepened things. Coming up, we're going to get granular chirogeual dives into each step of the beginning a new practice. Keep it here. Like the 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, you're 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 to Add Free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. 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 a 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 unskilful 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 Chung Kong's on beginning a new, this is Tiktok Han's main assistant and 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, 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? The goodness in you. Because whatever we water grows, so if we're constantly harping on someone's weaknesses, that's what's going to 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 going to 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, you know, in the retreats I've led for families, we always do beginning a new.

In a four or five days, 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 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. You know, 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. I'll have kids that are age five, age six, still 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. You pass each piece of paper around the circle, the whole class, and every student writes in

one of the petals. What they appreciate about that student writes in one of the pedals 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 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 gonna get to do this again? You could 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 of questions on this step. One is how long would you take? I know it's customizable. What would you recommend sitting 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, 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 asks me for my advice on something and shares how things are going with him. It takes care of our puppy. 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, air time, 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 the earlier on, this is a few minutes ago now, you were talking about how you wanna sort of water the parts of the garden in your, whoever you're interlocutor, if it's your partner or your colleague or a child or whatever you wanna,

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 But it also seems that you're taking care of your own garden at the same time as you just indicated that you're gonna grow the part of your mind that sees the goodness in which counteracts, and this shows up in gratitude research generally.

It counteracts our evolutionarily wired negativity bias. Yeah, 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 on the other person and a strengthening effect. And what's so important about this step is when you do it regularly, when the inevitable misunderstandings 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 and 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 hijax to you say, yeah. Oh, 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 and if you think of something that you've done that you regret as being like a pebble. You know, 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. 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. 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 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 want to 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 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 like, yeah, I'm messed up, I'm sorry. And sometimes that comes with, will he 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 and others. So then the parents are 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'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. Let's talk about step three, which, as you said, I believe you said earlier, is step three and four are optional. Yeah. If there's been a conflict and you want to just work through it with the person, then you would do beginning

a 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, out, 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 was how I felt, this was 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. I have so much trouble imagining you have a conflict with anybody, but okay. I'll suspend disbelief.

Well, I definitely have my stuff. But 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, 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 them on a seriet, 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. with even 10 years ago or something. And so it's some discerning to see if the person we're having difficulty with is, if that will 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're 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, in them, 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, or 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. 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 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 beginningceptions 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 wanna 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 wanna 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, 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. Coming up, Kyra Jewel talks about how to communicate in relationships when you're feeling hurt or pissed.

She'll also talk about why, if this is new to you, you should start with appreciations and regrets. And she'll explain why sometimes a successful practice could also mean that a relationship no longer needs to continue. That's coming up. 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, and I like to use the nonviolent communication setup of when you said or did this, I felt,

because that's, we'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, 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 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 I 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, 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.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. 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, or 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, can't quite figure out what's going on but I don't feel quite myself. So it's just a way to 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 are 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. 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 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 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. 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 ourselves 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 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, is it 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 their own way? And maybe things need to lighten up a little. Maybe we're taking it too seriously, or we're getting too bogged down. I've experienced sometimes apologies that feel irritating, because I'm like, you did 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, you know, 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, you know. So we want to, you know, just care for ourselves and care for each other. And maybe if we notice things getting too heavy or too sticky, then what is it that would help?

Maybe it's going for a walk and doing beginning a new part bench with ice cream, or maybe it's keeping it shorter, like just a 10 minute exchange. Or maybe it's doing 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.

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 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 want to have done enough work before you come into a beginning

and 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 spiritual 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 with, to be vulnerable with, because if someone's 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 chirojuel.com. 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-N-Hon teaching some retreats for people of color. I have a chapter in there and I edited that book. Yeah. And just so everybody has it, the name of the new book that's coming out in October. We were made for these times, ten 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. to skillfully move through change, disruption and loss. It sounds like we're gonna 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. Thank you to Kyra Jewel. Check out her book, we were made for these times.

Thank you as well to everybody who worked so incredibly hard on this show, Samuel Johns, Gabrielle Zuckerman, DJ Cashmere, Justin Davy, Kim Baikama, Maria Wartelle, and Jen Plant with our audio engineering by Ultraviolet. Audio, we'll see you all on Friday for a bonus meditation from the one and only Seven A. Celasi. 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 Wondery Plus 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.